Del didn’t even blink.
“You have agreed to pay swordgild to Baldur’s kin; he has none. You will pay it instead to Staal-Ysta, to help in times of need.”
Del nodded once.
“As to the sentence for the murder of your an-kaidin, we will be lenient. We offer you a choice: death, or life. Exile yourself and go, or stay here and be executed.”
Instantly there was an outbreak of conversation among all those watching. Some clearly felt the sentence was just, others argued against it.
I looked at Stigand. So. The old man had upheld his end of the deal. I looked at Telek. His face was stony, but I saw satisfaction in his eyes. The honor of Staal-Ysta was upheld, Del was punished, they both got what they wanted: Staal-Ysta empty of painful reminders of deaths and births.
I released a sigh of relief. Now we could go South. Now we could go home.
“How long,” Del asked, “is the exile?”
“Forever,” Stigand told her.
Unsurprised, Del nodded. “I’d like to buy back a year.”
It stopped all the clamor dead. Everyone stared; some gaped.
Stigand was clearly puzzled. “Buy back a year?”
Del’s voice rang out clearly, carrying through the cold air. “I want the first day of my exile moved back twelve months. I will pay for it.”
“Why?” Stigand demanded.
“I have a child.” Del looked straight back at him. “I’d like to be a mother, if for only a year.”
Telek shut his eyes.
Stigand was shaking his head. “This isn’t acceptable. You gave the girl up—”
“—because I had no other choice.” Her voice was quiet, but the underlying passion carried as clearly as a shout. “What manner of mother would I be without honor? What life could I offer a child? None. And so I swore my oaths and gave her up so I could collect the blood-debt to regain my family’s honor…to give Kalle some honor.” She looked squarely at Telek. “I don’t mean to take her from you. I mean only to share her for a year—and then she will be yours forever, undivided, while I spend my life in other lands.” Bitterness crept in. “Is that so much to ask? One year in exchange for a lifetime?”
Oh, hoolies, bascha. This wasn’t part of the deal.
Stigand didn’t look worried, though Telek’s face was gray. The old man merely smiled. “You said you would buy back the year. With what? You must pay swordgild to Staal-Ysta…what is left to spend?”
“Blood-gift,” she said steadily, “for the space of that year.”
Stigand’s voice was gentle; he was certain of the outcome. “I say again: what? Do you mean to give up your jivatma?”
“No,” Del answered quietly. “I give you a new an-ishtoya. I give you the Sandtiger.”
Thirty-eight
Noise. Everyone was talking to me, talking at me: Stigand, Telek, other members of the voca, other Northerners. But it was all just noise, all of it; I walked away from it easily, pushing through the throng, and finally reached Del.
I reached out, caught one arm above the elbow, pulled her close. “We have to have a talk.”
The voca had uncaged her, each man pulling his sword from the ground and sheathing it, denoting acceptance of her proposition. All but two, that is; neither Stigand nor Telek had been satisfied, but they were soundly defeated by a distinct majority, and so eventually they had plucked their swords from the ground. Del had purchased her year.
She tried once to disengage her arm from my hand, failed, gave in. Allowed me to physically escort her away from the commotion, back through the trees to the shore to where the boat was anchored.
I released her arm, knowing I’d undoubtedly left red fingermarks in her flesh that would by morning turn blue; Del is that fair.
She stood stiffly, almost awkwardly, staring resolutely across the lake to where mountains bumped the sky. Water carries sound; I heard horses in the distance. I thought I heard the stud.
Slowly I pointed to the boat. “What,” I began quietly, “prevents me from getting in that boat and leaving?”
Del’s tone was flat. “You don’t know how to row.”
“Oh, I learn pretty fast…and you have given me more than enough provocation to get in there now and do it.”
“Then go,” she said tonelessly.
I caught her arm again, swung her around to face me. “You know perfectly well I can’t! You saw to that, didn’t you? You knew once I agreed to abide by the voca’s sentence I’d be trapped by my own words, and you could do whatever you felt like doing, regardless of what I wanted.”
“You have a choice,” she said curtly. “You aren’t a prisoner. You’re a student, just like all the others…no one will keep you here against your will. No one will chain you up or lock you into a lodge. At worst they’ll give you a jivatma!”
“I don’t want one!” I shouted. “What I want is to get in that boat—with you—and go back across the lake, where we can collect the stud and get the hoolies out of here, right now!”
“I have a year,” she said grimly. “Duly purchased and paid for.”
“With my freedom, Del!” I stared at her, astonished at the depth of her resolution; her lack of compassion for me, whom she had dispensed with so readily. “You didn’t even ask me!”
She swung to face me squarely. “And if I had come to you and said, so prettily: ‘Please, Tiger, will you do this for me; Tiger, will you give me a year of your life?’” She shook her head. “Why should I waste my breath? I knew what you would have said.”
“No you don’t. You haven’t the faintest idea. Because you’re so wrapped up in yourself and your own needs right now, you’re totally blind to mine.”
“Not blind!” she cried. “I see you! But I also see Kalle. I also see my daughter—”
“—whom you gave up the day after she was born.”
“Because I had to—”
“Don’t give me that goat dung, Del. You didn’t have to do anything of the sort. No one forced you to. No one snatched that child away from you and said you couldn’t see her again until you’d avenged your family. That was you. That was you—”
“What do you know about it?” she cried. “What do you know about love and honor within a family…what do you know about responsibility to one’s kin…you’ve never accepted any responsibility in your entire life!”
It hurt. “And how responsible were you to Kalle when you gave her up? Were you satisfying her needs, or your own?”
Del’s eyes were blazing. “It was something—”
“—you had to do, I know.” I shook my head. “You have every right to make harsh decisions for yourself, Del, even wrong ones, but you have no right at all to decide how others will live their lives.”
“Kalle is mine.”
“You gave up your rights to her.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I sighed heavily and scratched at the clawmarks in my beard, trying to maintain patience and temper, and being hardpressed. “She has a good life with Telek and Hana—you said so yourself—why destroy it now?”
“I’m destroying nothing. I’m sharing her for a year.”
“And how do you think Kalle will view that? Are you a temporary mother, coming to see her at your convenience, expecting her to give you the same love and affection she gives to Hana?” I shook my head. “How will it be for her, Del?”
Del wrenched her head around to stare angrily at the lake. I saw tears glisten in her eyes. “It’s a year against a lifetime.”
“And how will it be for you when that year is up, and you have to leave her forever? Do you think it will be easy? Do you think you can simply walk away, saying your time is done?”
“I’d rather go knowing I had a year with her, than go now having had nothing.”
It was incredibly frustrating. “But you gave her up the day after she was born, Del! You’ve spent the last five years apart from her—why be so demanding now?”
“Because I was wrong.” Del
turned to face me again. “I was wrong, Tiger.” She held herself so rigidly I was afraid she’d break. “I was so angry when I came here I could see nothing else but the revenge I’d exact from Ajani and his men. It was what fueled me, Tiger, during the journey here. Knowing I carried his child. Knowing that once I’d learned the sword, once I’d earned my jivatma, I could do what I wanted to do. I’d have the skills and strengths to do it.”
More quietly, I said, “I understand revenge. I understand hatred. But you can’t live a normal life by depending only on those emotions.”
Del’s mouth was flat. “I lived for five years on those emotions, Tiger. Don’t tell me it can’t be done.”
“I said normal life, Del. Your life isn’t normal. It isn’t even close.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But maybe spending a year here with Kalle will give me the balance I need.”
I spread my hands. “What about Kalle? How will she feel?”
Del shook her head so determinedly her braids swung against her shoulders. “Tiger, you don’t understand. You have no idea—”
“—how Kalle might feel?” I finished. “Think again, Del.”
She put the palms of her hands flat against her temples. “You don’t understand,” she repeated. “How could you? You yourself admitted you don’t know if you’ve sired any children—maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. You’re sublimely indifferent to the possibility there might be sons and daughters of your blood scattered throughout the South.” She pulled her hands away, slapping them against her thighs. “Yet you stand here and tell me you know how my daughter will feel?”
“Yes,” I told her flatly. “More than you can know.”
Impatiently, “Oh, Tiger—”
“I know,” I told her, tapping fingers against my chest. “I know—deep inside, deep in here—what it’s like to be deserted. What it’s like to grow up knowing no one claims you…what it’s like having no one at all but yourself…what it’s like knowing the woman who bore you dropped you into the sand like a load of stinking dung, then left you there to rot.” I stepped closer to her, very close. “I know, Del. I know very well.”
She stared at me, white-faced. I’d shocked her with my passion, but I hadn’t changed her feelings. Too easily she dismissed mine. “It’s not the same, Tiger. I’m not deserting Kalle—”
“She won’t know the difference,” I said bluntly. “Oh, yes, you and Hana and Telek will try to explain it to her, but she won’t understand. All she will know is that you’ve left. That you’ve left her…it’s the only thing that matters. She won’t understand all the reasons behind your departure. She’ll only know you’ve gone.”
“When she’s older—”
“How much older?” I asked. “It takes years, Del. Many, many years until you come to terms with it…and even then you never really do. You understand it a little better, but the hurt’s still there inside.” I drew in a breath. “Your own sentence is harsh. Permanent exile from Staal-Ysta, from your daughter…but have you thought about what your purchased year will do to her?”
Woodenly, “Give her time with her mother.”
After a moment, I shook my head. “Hana is her mother.”
“You don’t understand!” she shouted. “How can you understand? You’re so ruled by your own lusts and selfishness that all you can see is the threat she provides to the life you and I have shared. Well, it’s finished! What is there left of it?”
“One year,” I said grimly. “You made sure of that, didn’t you? Way back when you first started talking about dancing styles and the customs of Staal-Ysta…way back when you first started instructing me as if you were the kaidin and I the an-ishtoya.” I nodded as she stared. “I should have seen it then. All this blather about the North…I should have seen it then. You knew there was a chance you could buy your way out of an execution by offering a blood-gift to the voca—and that gift, you decided, was me.”
Del’s tone was flat. “Yes.”
Anger, oddly, diminished with her admission. I sighed heavily. Turned from her, faced the lake and mountains, folded my arms across my chest. “I suppose I don’t really blame you. And I think that’s what makes me the angriest—I do understand what you’ve done.”
“And why?”
I shrugged. “Enough of the why, I guess. Mostly, I just feel empty. Tired, numb, empty…I feel like I’ve been used.”
Stark-faced, Del said nothing.
Idly I rolled a stone out of its pocket in the ground. Bent, picked it up, tossed it out into the lake. Watched it fall, heard its splash. Saw the rings ripple out from its passage. “I can’t stay here.”
She drew in a deep, uneven breath. “There may be an honorable way yet. I think if you spoke to Telek, or maybe even Stigand, they could find a way to release you from the year.”
It brought a blossom of hope. Then it faded. “A way for me to buy myself out of my sentence?” I smiled and laughed a little. “But what have I to sell? What have I to trade?”
Del turned from me abruptly. Stared blindly out at the water, then just as abruptly swung back. “I want that year with Kalle. But I also want it with you.”
Well, I suppose that’s something.
But I’m not sure, now, it’s enough.
Thirty-nine
It was sundown. In the North, the colors are different. Here the sun moves behind snow-flanked mountains and sucks the daylight with it. But because much of the day is gray and blue and ivory, the colors of sunset are muted. It simply fades to deeper blues and bleaker grays, until the sun is replaced by moonlight, holding luminous court against pallid black.
We gathered near a dolmen on the island: Stigand, myself, Telek. For questions and explanations, hoping for solutions. None of us was happy.
Stigand was wrapped up in a warm green cloak, white braids corded with gold. He’d shrugged the folds up near his head, warding his neck against drafts. Gloomily, he stared past me to the dolmen, sucking the teeth he had left.
Telek was little better. He still wore deep brown and warm sienna. His mood was decidedly darker.
“She won’t be moved,” I said. “She has made up her mind.”
Telek’s mouth twitched in wry displeasure. “Del always was stubborn.”
Stigand’s tone was querulous. “She has no respect for our customs.”
“That’s not true,” I retorted. “And you know it, old man.”
We had gone beyond the sometimes troublesome courtesies of strangers, being faced with the same unhappy reality we each had hoped to avoid. It cut through the need for banalities like a shearing knife, showing us the brighter colors of need in place of duller conversation. We wasted no time now.
Stigand sighed, snugged his cloak closer. “The others are adamant. She has bought her year, they say, with her gift of the Sandtiger. A worthy addition, they say, to the ranks of an-ishtoya.”
I scratched through beard to chin. “I might have thought I’d at least be a kaidin.”
Telek smothered a brief laugh. “Yes, well—undoubtedly. It was not intended as an insult. But you have no knowledge of our styles, other than what Del has taught you, and that in itself is what gives you the an- honorific rather than making you merely ishtoya. It is something, Southron; be thankful.”
I looked at him squarely. “No. What I am is disgusted.” I pulled the borrowed cloak around me, swathing myself like a Southron sandbat. “I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be here. What I want is to go back across that lake and get my horse, so I can go home again. Down South, where I belong. In the Punja, where it’s warm.”
“Would that I could send you,” Stigand muttered.
“You will be here a year,” Telek told me patiently, ignoring the petulant comment. “There will be much to do. I doubt you will remain a mere an-ishtoya for long—with your Southron skills already in place, you will surely be elevated more quickly than most to the rank of kaidin—and then you may teach worthy students.”
I grunted. “I
don’t want to teach. I’m a sword-dancer; I dance.”
Stigand worked something out of his teeth, spat it onto the ground. “It is a waste of time—ours and theirs—when students choose sword-dancing over the more honorable rank of kaidin.”
Telek sighed. “Sword-dancing is also an honorable profession,” he said patiently. “Your own son chose sword-dancing over the rank of kaidin, Stigand…don’t let your prejudice get in the way.”
The old man spat again. “My own son was a fool,” he said curtly. He looked at me searchingly a moment, then his face twisted in uncertainty. “Do you know?”
I frowned. “Know what?”
“That Theron was my son.”
It rocked me. All I could do was stare in shock at the old man, whose son I had killed in the circle to keep him from killing Del. Theron, who had come South to find the an-ishtoya and give her the choice of meeting him in the circle, or going North to face the voca.
Whose dead jivatma I had presented to his father.
“No,” Telek said, “why should you? Unless Del told you, which seems unlikely; Del says very little very much of the time.”
I reflected aloud there were times Del said entirely too much altogether.
Stigand grunted. Telek smiled.
“I’m sorry,” I told the old man. “Had I known—”
Stigand didn’t let me finish. “Did he die honorably?”
The dance was fresh in my mind. No, Theron had not died honorably because he had cheated. He had requenched, as Del called it, making his jivatma doubly dangerous. Doubly powerful.
“Yes,” I lied, “he did. It was a good dance.”
Stigand sighed deeply. “Theron always was a stubbornly headstrong boy…much worse than all the others.”
I glanced at Telek, raising brows in a silent question.
“Stigand has—had—eight sons,” he said quietly.
Well, that was something. At least I hadn’t killed the only one.
Telek’s smile was very bland. “And I’m one of them.”
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