Sword Born

THIRTY

Del had the grace to wait until we were on the threshold of our room. "He is good, isn’t he?"

"Oh, yes." I smeared a forearm against my forehead beneath a shock of too-long hair. "And getting better in a hurry. Why else do you think I did it?"

She nodded. "Scare tactics."

"A little intimidation is good for the soul. It makes you cautious before complacency can set in." I set the swords atop the linens chest, then took up the waterjar set on a small tiled table and unstoppered it.

Del waited until I was halfway through a swallow. "And sets back his training so you have more time to hone your edge."

I choked, turned away lest I lose control of the spray and soak her with it. Once I’d completed the swallow, I managed, "That obvious, am I?"

"Not to him; he doesn’t know you well enough." She shook her head. "I didn’t expect this of him, this attention to detail. Not yet." She paused. "If ever."

I handed her the jar. "And here we are so nicely helping him along."

She drank, handed it back. Her eyes were guileless. "You are not Abbu, Tiger, so full of complacency you forget to be cautious. And Herakleio is not you. He won’t take you by surprise."

"You just never know what anyone…" But I let it go as the echoing sound of voices intruded. Vigorous, unhappy voices just this side of anger and full of throttled consonants and hissing sibilants, trying not to shout.

"Prima Rhannet," Del said.

"And Nihko Blue-head." I turned toward the open door to listen more closely; not that it mattered, since I couldn’t understand them anyway. The voices grew louder briefly, then fell away as if the captain and her first mate had moved from the hallway to another room.

"Discord," Del said, "And unsubtle."

"Subtle enough even if audible," I retorted. "Neither of us speaks Skandic."

"Others here do."

I shrugged. "Then I guess everyone but you and I knows what the quarrel is all about."

Del sat down on the edge of the bed. "But there was one word I did understand. A name."

"Sahdri." I nodded. "Wouldn’t you like to be a mouse in the floorboards?"

Del said dryly, "Only if I was a mouse who spoke Skandic."

I smiled. "I know a mouse who speaks Skandic. A mouse who also speaks a language I can understand. I think maybe it’s time I paid a visit to the person who is truly in charge of the household."

Del frowned. "You think the metri will tell you?"

I paused on the threshold. "Not the metri. She only gives the orders. Someone else entirely makes things work."

I tracked down Simonides in a tiny suite of rooms, numbering two. A petite sitting room, a room beyond holding a bed. It was a spare, unadorned chamber of little exuberance but much meticulous tidiness, like the man himself.

If he was startled to find me on his doorstep, he made no indication. But a family servant knows how to express no emotions at all unless he is bidden to do so, and I was not the metri to bid him to do anything.

I had come full of questions, full of demands for explanations. But now that I was here, I hesitated. Even as Simonides gestured invitation and stepped aside to allow me entry, I could not cross the threshhold.

A slave’s privacy is hard-won. I had claimed none of my own among the Salset, except for inside my head. This man had a place within the household, and rooms within the rooms. I robbed him of that privacy with my presence.

He read my face, as a good slave will do. One learns to survive by recognizing what even a blink portends, the slight tilting of the head or the tension in the mouth. He knew what I was thinking. And for that reason, his second welcome was warm.

This time I stepped across. This time I was more than a guest in the house, or even the metri’s heir.

He set out a bowl of fruit, a small jar of wine, two shallow dishes. Poured them full, then motioned me to drink. I raised my dish in tribute to his courtesy, then sipped the vintage grown on the metri’s lands. It was very good wine.

I told him then what I had come for, what had provoked my curiosity. He listened in silence, making no attempt to answer before he understood precisely what I wished to know, and why. And when I was done giving him all my reasons, he told me what he could.

It wasn’t enough. But it was a beginning.

It took a while to hunt her up, but eventually I found Del in the bathing pool. I couldn’t remember a time when either of us had spent so many consecutive days in the water — especially considering I couldn’t swim — but I’d discovered it was a pleasant way to pass the time. Being clean was nothing to scoff at, but hanging about in warm water was far more relaxing than I’d ever contemplated.

Too bad the South didn’t have enough water to build bathing pools like this.

Then again, wasn’t my idea for channeling water from places it was to places it wasn’t the means to afford us such luxury?

Hmm. Worth considering, that.

I added my clothing to Del’s heap of same and stepped over the edge, trying not to splash too much. My skin contracted at the first touch of warm water, then relaxed. It felt good.

It felt wonderful.

Maybe I needed to learn how to swim.

Del, who had elbows hooked over the side and her chin resting atop flattened palms, turned her head to speak over her shoulder. "Well?"

I leaned back in the water, wishing I could float the way she could. But that required the ability to lift one’s foot off the bottom without immediately sinking. "loSkandi is an island a half-day’s sail from here. The only people who live there are the priest-mages, like Sahdri."

"And Nihko."

"The ’Stone Forest’ is what people call Meteiera, a place on the island full of great stone spires. The priest-mages live in and on the spires, in caves and nooks and crannies, or in dwellings built on top."

"On top?"

"On top."

"How do they get up there?"

"I don’t know."

"What do they do there?"

"That I know: worship and serve the gods," I answered, "and grow crops and raise livestock, and —"

"On top of the spires?"

"The worship-and-serve part takes place on top of the spires. The growing-crops and raising-livestock part takes place down below, in the valley."

She shrugged. "Sounds peaceful enough."

I went on with my unfinished line of discussion. "— and otherwise examine, learn, refine, and implement the magic that makes them mad."

"Oh," Del said.

"It kills them eventually, according to Simonides. The madness — and magic — manifests at a particular age, and while they can learn to control both, it’s only for a while. Maybe ten years. Eventually the madness wins, and they die."

"Just — die?" Del was intrigued. "How?"

"They hurl themselves off the top of the spires."

Intrigue was replaced by shocked horror. "Why?"

"To merge with the sky."

"What for?"

"That’s where the gods live. The best way to truly join the gods is to give oneself to them. Literally."

"But…" Her expression was perplexed.

"But," I agreed. "No surprise, is it, that everyone thinks they’re mad."

"How do they explain the bodies smashed to pulp all over the ground?"

"Don’t know that they bother."

"But if the bodies are smashed, they haven’t merged with the gods."

I grinned. "I think it’s considered merging in the strictly spiritual sense."

"Ah."

"Ah." I sank down so the water lapped at my chin. "No one really knows all the details of what goes on in Meteiera," I explained. "Simonides says it’s a combination of rumor, speculation, and winehouse tales. The metrioi — I found out the ’oi’ is the plural, by the way — don’t talk about it at all because it’s considered terribly dishonorable if anyone in the Eleven Families manifests this magic."

"But if they are gods-descended themselves, doesn’t this mean a few of them might be considered more so?"

"That’s one interpretation," I agreed. "Except the metrioi don’t much like it. They consider madness a flaw of a rather extreme sort."

"So they send away to ioSkandi anyone who manifests this magic."

"And promptly delete from the family histories — and the histories of Skandi — any mention of these people."

"Unfair."

"Being utterly removed from existence and any memory thereof? I would say so."

"But what has any of this to do with Nihko setting foot on the earth?" She paused. "I think that’s what the priest-mage said."

"It is. Simonides tells me that because the ioSkandics are themselves cast out of ’polite society,’ if you will, they compensate by making up even stronger rules governing the behavior of anyone living in the Stone Forest."

Del nodded. "When excluded, become even more exclusive."

"Exactly. So if a man who has already been deleted from his family then leaves ioSkandi, he is considered abomination — ikepra — for turning his back on his fellow priest-mages and the gods."

"In other words, live with us and die in a few years, or leave us and die now."

"More or less."

"So Nihko left ioSkandi and became ikepra, but so long as he didn’t set foot on the earth of Skandi itself, the ioSkandic priests didn’t care."

"They cared. There just wasn’t anything they could do about it."

"But there is something they can do about one of their own coming back here to Skandi?"

"The people of Skandi don’t want to have anything to do with their mad relatives. But they won’t kill them; they consider themselves a civilized society." I grinned derisively. "They have no problem with priest-mages coming back to the island briefly, so long as it’s only to gather up the occasional lost chick now and again."

"So they can take that chick back to the henhouse of other mad chicks."

"And feed it to the fox."

"Dead is dead," Del said.

"Exactly. As long as the mad little chicks are gone, the civilized Skandics don’t care what becomes of them, whether they die voluntarily merging with the gods, or are hurled off the spires after the Ritual of Unsoiling. Which of course means that even if the chicks don’t want to merge with the gods quite yet, they can forcibly be merged. After the proper ceremonies."

"The choice therefore lies not in deciding to die, but in deciding the time and manner."

"Hurl yourself, or be hurled," I agreed. "Of course, it’s not ’dying,’ bascha. It’s ’merging.’ "

"Semantics," she said disparagingly. "Tiger — this is barbaric. It makes no sense. There is no logic in it."

"Only if you’re mad."

"So this Sahdri has come here to gather up Nihko."

"And take him back to ioSkandi so they can clean him up and dump him off one of the spires."

"No wonder he doesn’t want to go."

"No wonder he lives on board a ship." I blew a ripple into the surface of water. "If you don’t set foot on Skandi, you’re safe from Skandic repercussions and ioSkandic retribution."

Del contemplated this. Eventually she said, "Not a comfortable way to live."

"And a less comfortable way to die."

"But so long as Nihko has guest-right, Sahdri can’t take him."

"You’ll recall Prima asked that very thing: could Sahdri take Nihko."

"Who dismissed the possibility."

I shrugged. "Nihko seems not to want to talk about any of this."

"Well," Del said, "he’s been tossed out of his family, and then tossed himself out of this fellowship of men who think they can toss him into the sky. I don’t know that I’d want to talk about it either."

"And the metri has made it clear as soon as her business with him is finished, the guest-right is revoked."

"What is her business with him?"

"I’m assuming it’s connected to this whole discovery-and-recovery-of-the-missing-heir issue," I said. "We don’t know what kind of bargain Nihko drove on his captain’s behalf before presenting me as the long-lost grandson."

"Which you are."

"Which I maybe am — but am as likely not."

"Maybe."

"Maybe." I tilted my head back, let the surface of the water creep up to surround the edges of my face. "I don’t think it really matters."

"You can’t be certain of that, Tiger."

I sighed. "No. I can’t read the woman."

"So she may well mean you to inherit."

"Maybe."

"Maybe."

"And then there’s Herakleio," I said, "who stands to lose more than any of us."

"Who’s ’us’?"

"You, because of me. Me because of me. Prima Rhannet. Nihkolara."

"Why do you include them?"

"Because the connection is there. It’s like a wheel, bascha — the metri is the hub, and everyone else is a spoke. But the spokes fall apart if there is no hub, and then the wheel isn’t a wheel anymore. Just a pile of useless wood."

"So you believe there is more to it than a simple reward for finding the long-lost heir."

"I have a theory." I smiled, staring at the arch of the dome high overhead. "And I don’t believe ’simple’ is a word the metri knows."

"What is your complicated theory?"

I had sorted the pieces out some while back. Now I presented them to Del. "That I am a threat to all of them for very different reasons."

Del, understanding, began naming them off. "The metri."

"Either I am or am not her grandson; either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s Herakleio she wants. If I remain, I’m a threat to him."

"Herakleio."

"Obvious. I repeat: if I remain, I’m a threat to him."

"Prima Rhannet."

"If I’m not the metri’s long-lost heir, Prima loses out on whatever reward it is she demanded."

"And Nihkolara?"

"The same applies to him as to his captain, but there’s more…"

She waited, then prompted me. "Well?"

"I just don’t know what it is."

"If his captain lost the reward, he’d lose his share."

"That’s the most obvious factor, yes. But I think there’s more." I shrugged. "Like I said, I just don’t know what it is."

"Maybe," Del said dryly, "it has to do with his chances of being flung off the spire. So long as you’re accepted as the metri’s grandson, he’s got guest-right. He’s safe from Sahdri and his fellow priest-mages who’d like to forcibly merge him."

"Maybe that’s it," I agreed. "But I still believe there’s a piece missing."

"And once it’s found and all the pieces are put together?"

I stood up in the water, let it sheet off my shoulders. The name for the unflagging unease was obvious now.

Expendability.

"Once it’s found, they’ll kill me."