Sword Bound

Chapter 10

DEL AND NEESHA ACCOMPANIED ME as I took Dario back to her father. I hadn’t bothered to argue the point any longer; Del’s mind was made up. And I was beginning to think she’d made up Dario’s mind for her.

It wasn’t easy getting in, of course. The palace servants were men, naturally. Neesha they didn’t mind. But the sight of Del’s striding defiantly through their halls was enough to make them choke on their prejudice. I imagine the sight of any woman might have done the trick, but Del—beautiful, deadly Del—was enough to fill their khemi nightmares with visions of fair-haired demons.

Dario walked between Del and me. In a complete change of gender allegiance, she’d turned away from me on the ride to Dumaan to give Del her exclusive attention. Poor girl: all those years spent in a khemi household with no women—no women—present to answer questions.

At first I’d wondered if Dario had even known she was female; when I’d asked the question, she told me only that a sympathetic eunuch had admitted the truth after swearing her to eternal secrecy. It was a khemi rite to expose female children at birth, thus removing all excrescence from the Hamidaa faith.

“But you exist,” I’d protested, “Your father bedded a woman in order to get you!”

“A son. A son.” She’d answered me very quietly. “Once a year a khemi lies with a woman in order to get a son.” Brown eyes had flicked sidelong to mine. “I am my father’s son.”

“And if he knew the truth?”

“I would be taken to the desert. Exposed. Even now.”

I hadn’t said much after that. Dario’s muted dignity moved me. All those years…

Now, as the four of us walked down the corridor toward the audience tent, I knew what Del intended to do. She stood before the enthroned khemi tanzeer of Hafiz—the richest man in this finger of the Southron desert—and told him she was taking his daughter from him.

He flinched. He flinched. And I realized, looking at the expression of abject terror on his face, he’d known all along.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why in the name of all the gods did you never tell Dario you knew?”

He was not old, but neither was he young. I watched his face undergo a transformation: from that of a proud Southron prince with an eagle’s beak of a nose, to that of a tired, aging man surrendering to something he had hidden from for too long.

His hands trembled as he clutched the arms of his throne. “I am khemi,” he said hoarsely. “Hamidaa’n tells us women are abominations, unclean vessels placed upon the earth by demons.” His brown eyes were transfixed by Dario’s ashen face. “They are the excrescence of all our former lives.” His voice was a thread of sound and near to breaking. “I will touch nothing of women, speak to no women, admit nothing of women into my thoughts. I am khemi.” Then he drew himself up and, with an immense dignity, stared directly at Del. “How else am I to cherish a daughter while also remaining constant to my faith?”

Neesha, behind me, leaned close and murmured, “Does Del mean her to come with us?”

All I could do was shrug.

“A faith such as this excrescence does not deserve constancy.” Del’s tone was very cool. “She is a girl, not a boy; a woman, now. No more hiding, tanzeer. No more hiding her. And if you intend to force Dario from her true self, I swear I will take her from you. In the North, we do not give credence to such folly.”

He thrust himself out of the throne. “You will take her nowhere, Northern whore! Dario is mine!”

“Is she?” Del countered. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“Dario!” The tanzeer descended two of the three dais steps. “Dari—surely you know why I never told you. Why I had to keep it secret.” He spread both hands in a gesture of eloquent helplessness. “I had no choice.”

Dario’s thin face was pinched. There were circles under her eyes. “Choices,” she said, “are sometimes difficult to make. And, once made, you must live with them.” She sighed and scrubbed at a grimy cheek, suddenly young again. “You made yours. Now I must make mine.” She looked at Del. “Tell him what you told me—how it is for a woman in the North. A woman who is a sword-dancer.”

Del smiled a little. She faced the tanzeer squarely. Over her left shoulder, rising from her harness, poked the hilt of her sword. “There is freedom,” she said, “and dignity, and the chance to be whatever you wish. I wished to become a sword-dancer, a sword-singer, in order to fulfill a pact I made with the gods. I apprenticed. I studied. I learned. And I discovered that in the circle, in the sword-dance, there was freedom such as no one else can know, and also a terrible power. The power of life, and of death.” Again, she smiled a little. “I learned what it is to make a choice; to choose life or death for the man who dances against me. A man such as the Sandtiger.” She cocked her head briefly in my direction. “I don’t kill needlessly. That is a freedom I do not choose to accept. But at least I know the difference.” She paused. “What does Dario know?”

“What does Dario need to know?” he countered bitterly. “How to kill? Needlessly or otherwise?”

“In the North, at least she will have a choice. In the South, as a khemi—as a Southron woman—she has no choice at all.”

Neesha leaned close again. “She means to take her with us.”

Dario stared at her father. In a whisper, she asked what he could offer.

He stared at Del for a very long moment, as if he tried to decide what words he had that would best defeat her own. Finally, he turned to Dario. “What you have had,” he told her evenly. “I have nothing else to give.”

Dario didn’t even hesitate. “I choose my father.”

I thought surely Del would protest. I nearly did. But I said nothing when Del merely nodded and turned to go out of the tanzeer’s presence.

“Wait,” he said. “There is the matter of payment.”

Del swung around. “Dario’s safety is payment enough.”

“Uh, Del—” I began.

“Payment.” The tanzeer tossed me a leather pouch heavy with coin. I rattled it: gold. I know the weight. The sound.

Dario stood between them both but looked at Del. “Choices are difficult,” she said. “You offered me the sort of life many women would prefer. But—you never asked if I thought my father loved me.”

I saw tears in Del’s blue eyes. Only briefly—Del rarely cries. And then she smiled and put out a callused hand to Dario, who took it. “There is such a thing as freedom in the mind,” Del told her. “Sometimes, it is all a woman has.”

Dario smiled. And then she threw herself against Del and hugged her, wrapping thin brown arms around a sword-dancer’s silk-swathed body.

When the girl came to me, I tousled her matted hair. “Take a bath, Dari…for all I know you’re a Northerner underneath the dirt.”

We left father and daughter together as Del, Neesha, and I walked out into the Southron sunlight. I untied the stud and swung up. “Aren’t you even a little upset?” I asked, seeing Del’s satisfied smile.

Neesha didn’t understand either “She made the wrong choice.”

“Did she?” Del mounted her white gelding. “Dario told me I’d never asked her if I thought her father loved her. I didn’t need to. The answer is obvious.”

It was so obvious, I waited for it.

Del laughed and yanked yards of silk into place as she hooked feet into Southron stirrups. “Her father knew she was a girl from the moment she was born. But he never had her exposed.” She laughed out loud in jubilation. “The proud khemi tanzeer kept his abomination!”

The stud settled in next to her gelding. “As a khemi,” I pointed out, “what he did was sacrilegious. The Hamidaa could very well convict him of apostasy and have him killed, if they knew.”

Del glanced at Neesha, then looked back at me. “Choices are sometimes difficult to make,” she quoted. “But sometimes easy.”

This time, Neesha understood.

We were not offered guest quarters at the tanzeer’s, so it was back to the big oasis once again. I was beginning to think of it as a second home. Our former tree was taken, but while Del and I watered our horses and ourselves, Neesha once again went off to see what he could find.

This time no Khalid interrupted us. “Maybe he finally got the message.” After the stud drank, I scooped water for myself. “Obviously he wasn’t impressed by me, but he certainly was by you!”

Del shrugged. “He has talent. But he’s wild. He loses focus.”

“You tend to do that to a lot of men.” I expected some kind of reaction, but there was none. “Well, one of these days he’ll meet a sword-dancer who won’t put up with him.”

Del shrugged again. She drank a little then turned her horse away from the spring. I watched her walk him down the path in the way Neesha had gone. I hesitated, chewing at my bottom lip. She had exulted in Dario’s choice to stay with her father. Now she seemed disconnected from it. From me.

I followed and discovered Neesha had found us a very hospitable tree with spreading limbs and well-clothed branches. It was late afternoon and hot. Few people were moving; most slept the worst of the heat away. I thought it was a very good idea. I tended the stud first, untacking and picketing him where webby scrub grass grew in filtered shade at the edge of the tree canopy. Then I spread my blankets and flipped the saddle upside down for use as a backrest. Neesha had done the same but worked mending his bay’s fraying rope halter. Del untacked and picketed her gelding, then walked away from us, probably looking for a place to relieve herself.

I stretched out on my back, slumped against the saddle. I was tired. “Was that enough adventure for you?”

Neesha snickered as he spliced rope together. “It’s a start.”

“We’ll try to find you more before we head back home.” I watched Del as she walked back. Something about her expression prompted concern. “Bascha, are you all right?”

Del nodded as she knelt beside me and unrolled her bedding blankets.

“You don’t look it.”

She glanced at me, then concentrated on settling her bed just the way she wanted it. When we washed at the tanzeer’s, she had left her hair loose to dry. It fell in a shining curtain, hiding the side of her face as she settled down. She swung it aside, crossed her arms under her head, and stared up through leaves and branches into sky.

I remembered Lena’s words. “It’s Sula, isn’t it?”

Del sighed deeply. “I miss her.”

“So do I, bascha.” And I didn’t say it just to make her feel that she wasn’t alone. I did miss the little monkey. “How about we go up to the horse farm, then go back home.” I said to Neesha, who was finishing repairs. “You could always go off on your own if we head back sooner than you’d like.”

He stood up and went to swap out the bridle and reins for the halter and lead-rope. Returning, he said, “Well, we don’t know what lies between here and there. I may be sick of adventuring once we reach the farm.” He threw himself down on his blankets, stretching elaborately. “You took him apart, Del,” he began. “I’d never truly seen you dance before. That was most impressive. And then when you took that eunuch’s head…” He shook his. “The North must be a hard place, to train you for such as that.”

I winced, wishing his words had been a bit less blunt.

Whether that was the reason, or something else, Del’s tone was flinty. “Not as hard as the South, where women are not allowed to do and be what they wish.” Then, abruptly, she pressed the heels of her hands against eye sockets. “Oh, don’t listen to me. That tanzeer has put me in a mood with all this talk about women as abominations. Unclean vessels. To make a religion out of it! He is the excrescence.” She turned onto one hip to face us, propping herself up on an elbow. “Tell me, Neesha, were you raised to believe women have no value except to look after the man’s wishes? To make him sons? You’re a Southroner.”

Neesha froze, eyes widening. He flicked a glance at me, asking for help; he got none, so he looked back at her. Carefully he said, “My father gave her more freedom than most men give their wives.”

“He gave her more freedom,” Del said pointedly. “Do you see what I mean? It wasn’t something she was raised with. A man had to give it to her.”

I almost laughed at him. I’d been the target of such discussions many a time.

He was clearly uncomfortable, trying to figure out how in hoolies to say the right thing. “I—well…I didn’t really pay attention growing up. I just know, compared to what I’ve seen since, she wasn’t so circumscribed. She was free to speak, and she won her share of arguments.”

“And you have a sister. How is she being raised?”

Neesha’s smile came quickly. “My sister knows her own mind. I don’t think any Southroner could convince her otherwise, and that includes our father.”

Del grunted. “That’s something.”

“We used to spar,” he continued, “Rashida and I. We’d draw a circle and batter away at one another with dead tree limbs we fashioned into so-called swords.”

Del rolled back onto her spine, collapsing loosely with limbs sprawled out. “Maybe she should go to the North. Be a sword-singer. That is, if your father would allow it.”

Neesha grinned up into the sky, finding a way through the thicket. “Well, we’ll see him the day after tomorrow. Why don’t you ask the man himself?”

And that put paid to the topic. Del announced she was going to take a nap and rolled onto her side facing away from us. Neesha and I exchanged grins, and then I settled into a more comfortable position and drifted off.