Sword Born

EIGHT

"Wait," Del said crossly. "Let me look first."

Accordingly, I waited, swaths of lurid crimson silk and linen clutched in one hand. Having shed the dhoti, I wore absolutely nothing. Except my string of claws.

I arched brows and tilted my head in elaborate invitation. "You have something in mind?"

She flapped a hand at me. "Turn around."

"You prefer the back view?" I paused. "Or perhaps I should say, the backside view?"

Del whacked me across the portion of my anatomy under discussion. "Stop being uncouth. I’m trying to see that stab wound."

"Well, that’s not any fun." I winced. "It’ll do a lot better if you keep your ringers out of it."

"I’ve seen worse," she said after close inspection, "but it needs bandaging. Or you’ll bleed all over your clothes."

"Not my clothes. Nihko’s clothes. Do you really think I’d be caught dead in these things?"

"You are caught," she observed, commencing to tear spare linen, "but at least you’re still alive. For the time being. And anyway, I’ve seen you in red before. It suits you."

I had once owned a crimson burnous, it was true, for meetings with tanzeers considering hiring me, or feasting me after a victory. It had even boasted gold borders and tassels. But I had never heard Del mention anything about me being suited before. "Does it?"

"Hold still." She began wrapping my thigh.

"Ummrnm…maybe I’d better do that."

"Why?"

"If you don’t know, just wait a minute. It’ll be obvious — ouch!"

"Not anymore," she said crisply, knotting the bandage tightly. "Now, get dressed so you can accompany Nihko to this household. The sooner you are accepted as the long-lost heir, the sooner we’ll be free of the renegadas."

"You act like you think I will be accepted as the long-lost heir," I accused, "and you know as well as I it’s a load of —"

"— potential," Del put in. "Possibility and potential. Which need have nothing to do with this dying old woman — this metri? — but rather with the opportunity to get free of the renegadas once you are accepted by this metri."

"Leaving you in Prima Rhannet’s clutches? Not a chance!"

Del, noting my vehemence, looked at me curiously. "It’s no worse a danger to me than any other I’ve been in."

I had no reasonable explanation at hand (or at tongue), and began to hastily don clothing. Eventually I rather lamely settled on: "I’d hate to have any actions on my part jeopardize your life."

"After three years, you should know better. Any actions on your part always jeopardize my life."

"Yes, but…" I jerked the sash tightly around my waist and knotted the rich silk; Nihko apparently liked to wear good cloth while running ships aground. "I’m older, and wiser, and less fond of danger than I used to be. For me or for you."

"We don’t have much choice," she pointed out. "They are going to take you to the Stessa metri, whatever that is, and keep me here as insurance against your escape. But that is precisely what you must do as soon as you have a chance. And meanwhile I will contrive a way to escape as well."

"You make it sound so easy!"

Del shrugged. "It’s merely a matter of seeing the opportunity, and taking it. Or making it."

Considering I had planned to do precisely that by seducing the captain, I couldn’t very well get specific with objections. Especially since I could think of no reasonable way to explain.

"I will find a way," Del said.

Having no answer to that and equally no explanation for why her presence aboard ship with its captain unsettled me, I glumly went out of the cubbyhole masquerading as cabin and took myself up on deck.

From up close, Skandi was even more impressive. Sharp-faced cliffs appeared as if some giant’s hand had broken off huge chunks of raw land, leaving behind rough folds of visible horizontal layers, bands of multihued rock, soil, and mineral. And up that cliff, zigzagging back and forth in blade-sharp angles, was a track of some kind. Even from the deck I could see colored blobs moving on the track. Some ascended, some descended. People on foot, and smaller versions of what we call danjacs in the South, long-eared horselike animals used to carry loads. I suspected horses might make a better job of it by hauling carts up and down, but one glance at the narrowness of the track, the sharpness of its turns, and the steepness of the cliff convinced me the last thing I’d want to do was attempt to ride the stud up that trail. Maybe it was better to trust smaller loads to animals less minded to state dissenting opinions.

About halfway up the track, pocking the cliff face like a disease, were blue-doored holes dug out of the porous stone. No trees and little vegetation clung to the sides; the soil seemed disinclined to pack itself tightly around root systems, so that nothing got a foothold strong enough to encourage vast growth. What was there was pretty scrubby, and twisted back upon itself to huddle against the cliff as if afraid of heights.

"Homes," Prima said, coming up beside me.

I glanced at her, then stared back at the track. "Why would anyone choose to live in a hole?" Let alone put doors over the holes and paint them blue. "Why not build homes like those?" A gesture indicated the squat, white-painted dwellings with their hump-backed roofs.

"This island was born of smoke," she said simply, "and when the gods decreed a place for Man was required, they made the smoke solid. But there were pockets in the smoke that became as holes in the rock. When the gods placed Man here, he was poor. He settled in the rudest shelter available." She smiled. "I was born in one of those caves."

"And did yours have a door on it?"

"Of course. We are civilized, Southroner."

"Ah. And should I assume that only the wealthy live in those?" This time I indicated the houses tumbling over the edge of the cliff like oracle bones.

"Only the wealthy live in those," she confirmed, "or those who aspire to wealth and behave as if the aspirations are already fulfilled."

"Your father?"

"My father aspired for a very long time. Eventually those aspirations were fulfilled."

"But not, I take it, in a line of work openly approved by the truly wealthy."

She grinned. "Oh, the truly wealthy detest my father and others like him. But they require slaves to work in the vineyards, on the ships, in the kilns. There are not enough of us who are freeborn."

"Or enough of you who wish to dirty your hands with hard work."

Prima held up both hands and displayed callused palms. "My hands are very dirty," she pronounced solemnly.

"And bloody," I said gently, "even when washed clean."

The humor faded from her eyes, but not the determination. "And how often do you wash the blood from yours?"

"I dance," I retorted. "Rarely do I kill."

"I steal," she said. "Rarely do I kill."

Impasse. I sighed and jerked my head toward the cliff. "Which one of those are we bound for, captain?"

"None of those," she answered. "The Stessa household is on top of the island, in the midst of the vineyards."

"Well," I said resignedly, "at least they’ll have something to drink."

The captain laughed. "Do you take nothing seriously in this world?"

"I take you very seriously."

She eyed me sidelong. "No, I do not believe so. In fact, you have no idea at all what to think of me."

"You ran our ship aground and plucked us off the island like so much ripe fruit," I remonstrated, "which is not precisely easy to do, plus you had me heaved me over the side of this ship — which also is not easy to do — and nearly drowned me. Not to mention the hole you poked in the back of my leg. Why shouldn’t I take you seriously?"

"Because you are a Southroner."

"Ah-hah!" I stabbed the air with a forefinger. "But I’m really Skandic, am I not? — or we would not be undertaking this deception of a dying old woman designed to gain you coin. And anyway, what do you know about Southroners?"

"You very probably are Skandic," she agreed, "in blood and bone, if not in mind, which is definitively Southron. As for what I know about men like you, you forget I am the daughter of a slaver. As heir, I was trained in the business from childhood."

I very nearly asked if her father had sired no sons — and checked abruptly as I realized that kind of question would back up her argument. Which was not a particularly comfortable realization on my part. I scowled.

"I saw many Southroners brought beneath my father’s roof," Prima continued. "Not a man among them respected women."

As annoyed with myself as with her, I challenged sharply. "You don’t even know me, captain. I submit that you are in no position to evaluate my mind."

"I was taught to evaluate men’s minds as much as their bodies," she said serenely.

"As the daughter of a slaver," I shot back, "which somewhat limits your capacity to make a legitimate evaluation. Having been captured and made over into a slave when one was freeborn is not designed to bring out the best attitude in a man, you know?"

"You know," she answered. "You may be a sword-dancer now, and very likely freeborn — but sword blades do not leave the kind of scars your back bears."

"Which renders me somewhat more familiar with the experience than you. No slaver ever knows a slave’s mind."

"And is that how you escaped? Because your owner did not know your mind?"

"I didn’t escape. I earned my freedom." And bore other scars to show for it as well as a name; the sandtiger I’d killed had been devouring children of the tribe who had made me a slave.

"As my crew earned theirs," Prima said quietly. "But there is more inflexibility to a Southron man’s mind than what slavery may cause. And if you are truly as free in thought as you suggest, you will admit it."

"Now that’s a double-edged sword if I ever saw one. Cursed if I do, cursed if I don’t."

She grinned. "Then you may as well answer."

I glowered at her. "You’re as inflexible, captain."

"Why?"

"You said you prefer women. Isn’t that inflexible?"

"You prefer women."

"Of course I do!"

"Then you are against men."

"I am a man —" I began.

"As your lovers," she clarified.

"Hoolies, yes," I said fervently.

"Then we are the same, are we not?"

"How can we be the same? You’re a woman. You’re supposed to sleep with men, not with other women!"

"Why?"

"Because that’s how it’s supposed to be!"

"Is it?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

In frustration, I set fingers into my hairline and scratched vigorously. "Because that’s just the way it is."

"For you."

"For most people!"

"What about the woman?"

"Which woman?"

"The one you sleep with." She paused. "The one you currently sleep with."

"Three years’ worth," I snapped. "Don’t assume I take our relationship lightly."

"But of course you do. Did you not intend to seduce me?"

I scowled. Cursed if I did, cursed if I didn’t.

Her expression was impish. "And would you have pursued it had the captain been a man?"

"Hoolies, no!"

"Therefore because I was a woman I was judged fair game, and you assumed I would succumb to your charms the way so many other women have." She nodded. "An inflexible — and purely Southron — way of thinking."

She was tying me up in verbal knots. "Now, wait a minute —"

"Of course, were I a woman who desired men in her bed, I might well have allowed myself to be seduced. Because you do have a certain amount of charm —" Startled, I shut my mouth on an interruption. "— and you did approach the campaign with more integrity than another man might."

That made no sense. "Integrity? I thought you were accusing me of having no respect for women."

"Integrity. Because you were at pains to pick a fight with your woman so there was reason to look to me as an alternate bedmate, and because you did not approach me directly. It was, as I said, a campaign. And I respect that. It requires imagination and forethought."

"You yourself just said I picked a fight with Del. If you value truth, how can you respect that?"

Her eyes were steady. "You would rather drown than be made a slave again. A man may lie for effect, to manipulate, and while the truth served you, it was indeed truth."

"You know that, do you?"

"I am a very good judge of slaves —"

"I’m not —"

"— and you are no longer one in mind or body," she finished. "There is no need for you to lie."

It was time to take control of this discussion. "Then if you respect truth, let me offer you this." I paused, marking her calm expression and determining to alter it. "If you attempt to seduce Del, I’ll take you apart. Woman or no."

Calmness indeed vanished, but was replaced by an open amusement I hadn’t expected. "Male," she said, and "Southron. So male, and so Southron!"

"I mean it, captain."

"I know you do. Honesty, if couched as a threat. Save I wonder which frightens you more: that I will attempt to seduce her — or that she might accept."

I shook my head. "She won’t."

"And so I offer to you my own truth, Southroner: I will let the woman decide what she will and will not do. It should be her decision, yes? Because anything else is a slavery as soul-destroying as that which you experienced."

The Southroner in me hated to admit she was right. The man who had accompanied Del for the last three years, thereby learning truths he’d never imagined, did admit it — if privately — and could muster no additional argument that contained validity.

"Well," I said finally, "at least you’ve got to give me credit for threatening you the same as I would a man."

Prima Rhannet’s generous mouth twitched, but she had the good grace not to laugh aloud.

It was midmorning as Del stood at the rail by the plank, waiting silently. I saw the stillness of her body, the posture of readiness despite that stillness, and knew she, as I, missed her sword badly.

Or even a sword. We’d both of us lost our true swords: I three years before, when Singlestroke had been broken; Del to the maelstrom of angry sorcerers who considered themselves gods. She had broken that sword, the jivatma named Boreal, to save my life, and nearly extinguished her own. Meanwhile, I had also lost the sword I’d made in Staal-Ysta. It was, in fact, buried in the rubble that covered Del’s broken jivatma. We had purchased new swords, of course — only a fool goes weaponless — but neither of them had suited us beyond fulfilling a need. And now we had none at all, thanks to the renegadas.

Two of those renegadas waited just behind Del, as ready as she to move if necessary. I knew by the expression in her eyes that she would not make it necessary. Not yet. Not until after I was off the ship and on firm ground again, where no one could toss me into the water. She would permit me to risk myself in a true fight, but not to drowning.

Nihko came up behind me; behind him, his red-haired captain, glinting of gold in her ears and around her throat. I grimaced, thinking of the plan, our circumstances; shook my head slightly, then stepped forward to bend my head to Del’s.

Instantly four renegadas surrounded both of us. Hands were on Del, hands were on me. I was shoved down the plank toward the dock and nearly tripped, catching my balance awkwardly before I could tumble headfirst into the sea. By the time that was avoided I was halfway down the plank, and when I turned to look at Del they had taken her away.

So much for good bye, good luck, or even a murmured "Kill ’em when you get the chance."

Nihko prodded me into motion as the plank bowed under our weight. I moved, not liking the instability over so much water. He escorted me off the ship, off the dock, onto the quay, and to the bottom of the track slicing its way up the cliff. From here I could look straight up and see the cliffside dwellings looming over my head like white-painted, blue-doored doom. The back of my neck prickled; the haphazard manner of construction made it appear as though everything rimming the cliff might fall down upon my head at any given moment.

"One good shake," I muttered.

Nihko glanced at me. "And so there was."

"What?"

"The histories says once Skandi was whole, and round, not this crescent left behind."

I gazed at the cliff face of the crescent uneasily. "What happened to it?"

"This was a place built of smoke," Nihko began.

Having no patience with stories about gods, I interrupted rudely. "I know all about that. Your captain already gave me the speech."

"Then you should understand that what the gods do, they can also undo." He gestured. "What was smoke became smoke again."

Hoolies, but I hate cryptic commentary! With exaggerated patience I inquired, "And?"

He turned, gesturing into the harbor behind us. "Do you see that smoke? The small islands?"

I had marked them, yes. Two crumpled, blackened chunks of land that appeared uninhabitable, in the middle of the cauldron. Rather like burned-down coals after a light rain, exuding faint drifts of smoke into the morning air.

Nihko nodded. "They are the children of the Heart of the World."

"The — what?"

"Heart of the World. It lies now beneath the sea. But the children have risen to see whether this place is worthy of their presence once again."

I gazed at him steadily. "You do realize none of this makes any sense at all."

He grinned cheerfully, unoffended. "It will."

"Meanwhile?"

"Meanwhile, the island was turned into smoke again. The land bled. Burned. Became ash. The island shook and was split asunder. You see what remains."

Not much, if what he said was true. But it seemed unlikely that such a calamity could really happen. I mean, land bleeding? Turning to ash and smoke? Shaking itself apart? More than unlikely: impossible.

Of course, I’d said a lot of things were impossible — and then witnessed them myself.

"We have maps," he said quietly, seeing my skepticism. "Old maps, and charts, and drawings. Histories. This island was once far more than it is."

Rather like Nihko himself, if what Prima had said of his castration was true. I stared at the cliff again. "I suppose we’re going up that poor excuse for a trail?"

"But on four feet," he replied.

"You want me to ride one of those?" "Those" being the danjaclike beasties that rather resembled something crossed with a small horse and a very large dog.

"It will save time," the first mate explained, "and keep our feet clean. Otherwise we will slip and slide in molah muck all the way up, like the lesser folk." A tilt of his shaven head indicated men and women on foot toiling up and down the cliff.

"Molah muck?"

"They are molahs." He waved at a string of the creatures waiting patiently at the bottom of the track. "And they can carry four times their weight without complaint."

"I’d just as soon carry my own weight, thanks. I’m kind of used to it."

"Molah," he said gently, and I thought again about how his grip had made my wrist weep, and my throat flesh burn. "And if you are presenting yourself to the wealthiest metri on the island as a man who may be her heir, you shall ride."

"Fine," I said glumly, surveying the drooping animals tied to a rope beside the trail, "we ride. But it looks to me like we’ll be dragging our feet in the muck anyhow, all the way up."