Sword Sworn

THIRTY

The voice was the voice of a stranger, yet also mine. I heard it inside my head; heard it in my ears. In fits and starts, stumbling to find its way, it told the story the bone had guarded for years.

"The caravan was small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season. Its master was not well respected, and those with enough experience or money hired others to get them across the deadly Punja. But those who lacked both, those unaccustomed to the South, to the desert, and certainly to the Punja, knew nothing more than that the man promised to take them where they wished to go: from Haziz through Julah and then across the Punja to where South met North and formed the borderlands, cooler than the desert, warmer than the mountains. The most temperate of all locales but dangerous because of its raiders, both Southron and Northern."

I sat on sand, cross-legged, left hand hanging limply in my tap, right hand holding bone. My eyes were open, but blind.

’The caravan, being small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season, and led by a man who prized coin over lives, was caught by a storm. The simoom was but an immature version of its larger relatives, but it was enough. The beasts were made to lie down, and the people took shelter in their wagons, trying to save the canvas that formed their roofs . Eventually the simoom blew itself out, and it was discovered by th e folk, as they dug themselves free, that no lives were lost.

"The road, however, was."

I choked, coughed, drew in breath. I felt shivers course my body, but I could not stop. It needed to be told.

"The caravan master and his guide, trusting to their questionable instincts to find the right way, led the caravan on, and into disaster. A party of borjuni, taking advantage of the storm and its aftereffects, swept down upon the wagons. Men and children, being worth nothing, were killed outright. The women were taken to be sold as slaves or kept as camp whores. The horses, mules, and danjacs were rounded up. Everything of value easily carried was taken; everything requiring too much effort, or beasts to haul it, was left."

I was dimly aware of being wet with sweat, but cold. Shivers coursed my flesh. Someone’s hand was on my knee, urging me to stop. But I could not.

"And also left was the foreign woman big with child, deemed too much trouble to take with them but worth some sport. That sport left her half-dead and in labor. The borjuni, finding it amusing, deserted her as she bled into the sand, deserting also the body of her husband, who had brought her out of Skandi to find a new life where a man and a woman, despite differences in birth, might settle and be content. Alone, beaten, raped, the woman who had been raised the privileged daughter of the Stessoi, one of Skandi’s Eleven Families, found her dead husband, wept for him, then crawled under their wagon and, in a river of blood, bore him a son. She managed to take that son to her breast, to suckle him, to cover him with the scraps of her torn clothing. And died before she could name him aloud to the gods that had surely forsaken him.

"The child lived. He grew hungry, emitting wailing cries, and grew weak when the cries were not answered. But there was strength in him yet, and when the desert tribe that named itself Salset came across the caravan, he cried again. Was found. Was taken."

I swallowed, aware of pain in my throat, of exhaustion, of fever.

"The child, when judged old enough, was made a slave. His name was chula."

"Tiger… Tiger, stop now. Please. Please stop."

I stopped, because I could. Because the tale was told. The truth was known.

I opened eyes that had, at some point, closed. No longer did I sit on the sand, cross-legged. Now I lay on the sand with my head in a woman’s lap. Her hands were on my forehead, fingers stroking.

"Tiger, come back. It’s done. It’s over. It happened a long time ago."

"Forty years," I rasped.

Del took the rib bone from my hand. "Enough. Enough."

"She didn’t abandon me." A hollow, hoarse voice. "Neither did he."

"No one abandoned you," she said. "Never. They wanted you. You would have brought them great joy."

"The Salset told me I was abandoned."

"They would never say, even had they known, that you were the grandson of the Stessa metri, of one of the most powerful of Skandi’s Eleven Families."

"I was a chula."

"But not anymore. Not for many years." Del’s fingers stroked. "You should be happy, Tiger. I have crooned to you, soothed your tender temples. After I said I would not."

I grinned weakly. "You never could keep your hands off me."

She smiled. Laughed. Her eyes were the blue of Northern lakes, glistening with unshed tears, her hair pale as Punja sand.

I shivered. Realized the sun was down. Someone had thrown a blanket over me as I lay with my head in Del’s lap. I turned my head, saw a fire. "Where’d that come from?" We were in the Punja, in a sea of sand; there were no trees.

"Neesha made a fire with the wood from the wagon."

It felt odd to think that the wagon might even be the one my mother and father had bought in Haziz. Now set on fire to warm the son neither had ever known.

Nayyib came close, squatted down next to me. His color seemed pale, though it was difficult to tell in shadows and firelight. "What you saw — what you said you saw… your mother?"

"Mother. Father."

"Did the bone take you there?"

A smile twitched my lips, but I was too weary to hold it. "Memories, Neesha. The bones know what happened. I can conjure up the memories if I hold a bone. I can walk my dreams to find out what they mean."

I had said too much. Nayyib’s gaze slid away, avoiding mine; talk of magic bothered him. Then his eyes returned. "Was she a mage, then? Your mother?"

"No. Well, not that I know of. There is magery in some of the Eleven Families of Skandi, and apparently in the Stessoi, if I’m any indication… but in males, not females." And it drove them mad. But that I wouldn’t say. Not to him. Not to Del.

"Then it could have come through your father."

"No. He wasn’t one of the Eleven Families. It had to have come through my mother." I remembered the metri, my grandmother, dismissing me out of hand when she was done with me, swearing her daughter had died before I was born. I swallowed heavily against the dryness in my throat. "Is there water?"

"Here." Del picked up the bota by her knee. "Don’t drink too much at once."

I drank as much as I could, until she took it away. I sighed, closed my eyes. "… tired."

"Sleep," she said. "You went far away, and came back the long road."

I let go a trembling breath. Felt her take the bone from my slack hand. "I still have to find the sword."

"But not tonight."

Ah. Good.

I faded then, slipping bit by bit out of reality, out of consciousness, as Del, with gentle fingers, smoothed the lines from my forehead.

"Will he die?" Nayyib asked.

"Oh, no." Her voice seemed to smile. "Not for a long, long time."

Ten years. Twelve. Then darkness took me.

I awoke sometime later, feeling limp as shredded rags, still covered by the blanket. I lay on bedding; wondered if Nayyib and Del had simply rolled me onto it. I had no memory of waking to put myself there. Not good for a sword-dancer. But obviously something in my mind believed I was safe in their care, not to stir at all when they moved me.

I stared up at the sky. Still night, still dark, wreathed in brilliant stars. The fire had died to embers. It was very quiet; even the horses slept.

Del was close beside me. I sensed her there even without looking, as if every part of my awareness was attuned to her presence. She slept as she often did, coiled on her left side with a fold of blanket pulled over her ear. Loosened hair fell across her face and strayed onto bedding.

I wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the silk. But it felt good just to lie here unmoving, letting the night bathe me.

Oh bascha, I don’t want to die in ten or twelve years. I don’t want to lose you. I want to be with you, to see you grow old even as I do.

Nayyib slept on the other side of the fire. I knew he was attracted to Del; I wondered if he thought he might win her from me. If maybe he considered me too old for her, wondering what she saw in a forty-year-old man. He was her age: young, strong, athletic, undeniably attractive. He had a gentleness about him coupled with strength of mind, a quiet confidence that set him apart from other young men. Maybe it came from working with horses, from understanding their needs and fears, their moments of inexplicable recalcitrance. Or maybe it was just him.

What would Del do when I was gone? Find another?

Find Neesha?

I had no way of knowing what to expect when my time approached. Nihko and Sahdri had said nothing of that, merely that a Skandi-born mage went mad if he didn’t learn to control his magic, and that the magic would eventually burn him out merely by its presence. If I refused to use it, I might die that much sooner.

Well, I had used it. With Oziri, learning to dream-walk; spell-ing Umir’s book; dividing the sandstorm; reading the bones of the woman who was my mother.

Had used it even in childhood, conjuring the living sandtiger out of a carved one, in order to find freedom.

I wanted none of it.

It appeared to want me.

I sat up, suppressing a groan. Everything ached, even my skin. I didn’t feel forty; I felt sixty. An age I would never reach.

Slowly I pushed myself to my feet, wavered a moment, steadied, then picked my way across the sand to the dozing horses. The stud roused as I touched him, whickering softly. I felt his warm breath against my hand. Then I turned, went a few steps away and attended to my business, aware of a clenching deep in my kidneys. Maybe mages died early because they used themselves up, aging their organs ahead of time.

I turned, took three steps, found Del waiting at the stud’s head. Maybe she’d heard my joints grinding as I walked across the sand.

I saw the question in her eyes. Smiling faintly, I hooked an arm around her neck and stood next to her. "I’m fine."

I heard the pent breath expelled. For a moment we just stood there side by side, staring across the Punja glowing faintly in moon- and starlight.

She spoke very quietly. "I don’t want to lose you."

I kept my voice as low, not wanting to wake Nayyib. "What? You mean Neesha hasn’t won you from me with a glance of those eloquent eyes?"

"Neesha’s eyes may indeed work wonders on other women, but not on me."

"Are you immune?"

"Oh, no. He is a beautiful young man."

"Beautiful?"

"As a man may be," she clarified. "Not like a woman. He isn’t pretty. But the bones of his face are well suited to one another, and he moves very well. He understands his body."

I hadn’t really asked for that much explanation. But I’d never thought about how women view men, other than appreciating that many of them seemed to view me with favor. "What do you look at in a man? Women, I mean. Not just you."

Del’s breath of laughter was a quiet expulsion of air. "We don’t all necessarily see or want the same thing. There are pretty men, and handsome men, and men who lack the features that most would name attractive but claim a sense of presence that makes looks unimportant. There is no describing that. It simply is. Tall, short, heavy, thin… it doesn’t matter."

I thought of brutal Ajani, long dead. Handsome, huge, filled with undeniable presence. Yet he had used the power to rape and kill, to alter forever the life of the woman next to me. "But there are handsome men who have it."

"Yes. And those are the men that turn a woman’s knees to water and her brain to mush."

"I, of course, exude it."

"There are also men who are too confident, too certain of themselves and their appeal, and who believe they may blind women to their faults."

"Thanks very much for that."

"But I, however, am not so easily blinded."

"I sort of figured that."

"Some men may begin that way but are trainable when in the hands of the right woman. Other men are hopeless."

I wasn’t certain either of those attributes was something I aspired to.

"And age doesn’t matter," Del said. "Not when a woman meets the right man."

"Even if she’s young enough to be his daughter?"

"Lo, even then."

I had been curious a long time. Now I asked her. "When did you know you wanted to sleep with me?"

"Oh, within days. But you were such a pig-headed, insufferably male Southroner that I was appalled by my response."

"Thank you very much!"

"I argued with myself for weeks."

"As I recall, it was months before we finally did the deed." Months and months, in fact; it had been very hard on me.

"I intended it to be never. But one day I realized that ignorance could be changed, even in a Southroner. Besides, by then you knew I would never be the kind of women Southron men prefer: soft, quiet, deferential little mice who keep their houses and bear their children."

"We don’t have a house to keep and you can’t, well…" I realized belatedly that blurting out her inability to have children was not perhaps the most tactful thing. Del loved children. Enough to give her daughter to good people who could care for her when Del, consumed with vengeance, couldn’t. "Sorry, bascha."

She shied away from it, not even acknowledging my apology. "I am not like most Southron women," she went on, "but more of them could be like me if they let themselves be free."

"Maybe they’re happy the way they are."

"Or maybe they don’t know any better because they are trained from birth to be blind to their own ambitions."

"Maybe their ambitions are to keep house and raise children. Lena seems to be happy."

"Lena is happy. But then, Alric is a Northerner; he expects her to be free to express herself. I have no objection to women keeping house and bearing children, Tiger, if that is what they truly wish in their hearts, and not because their men demand it of them. I only object when men won’t allow the women who wish to be more to acheive it. To even imagine it."

I thought of Del, Northern born and raised, allowed to learn the sword even before she went to Staal-Ysta to become a sword-singer. I thought of my grandmother, the matriarch of a powerful family, conducting business with ruthless brilliance. I thought of my mother, who willingly left behind that wealth and power to go with the man she loved to a distant land known for its harshness and died because of it.

I sighed. "Maybe I was trainable because I’m actually Skandic, not a Southroner."

"Or maybe you have more flexibility of mind."

"Is that a good thing? If one’s mind is too flexible, one never has an opinion of one’s own."

"Tiger, you would never let anyone change your opinion until you were certain they were right."

"So, am I inflexibly flexible, or flexibly inflexible?"

She elbowed me in the ribs. "What you are is incorrigible."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Only when I’m in the mood."

I turned to her, wrapped her up in my arms. Lightly rested my chin on her head. "I’m a little too tired, bascha."

"Not that kind of mood."

I smiled into the darkness. "I know."

"He is attractive, Tiger, and not without charm and that sense of presence I mentioned before. But he is not you."

"Next best thing?"

"Well, I suppose if you got yourself killed in a sword-dance tomorrow, I might consider it."

"So as long as I’m alive, you’re satisfied?"

"Unless you decided to revert to the Tiger I met in that dusty cantina four years ago. Then I’d have to kill you myself."

Considering she’d nearly done it once, I knew she was capable. "Then I’ll be on my best behavior."

"Oh, no, be on your worst. Because then I can train that out of you."

I sighed deeply, rubbing my cheek against her hair. Stubble caught on it. "I want to live to be an old man, with you there beside me."

"So you will, and so I will be."

The truth was, either of us could die tomorrow. But we knew it. Accepted it. Were unafraid.

For ourselves, that is. I know we feared for one another.