Sword Born ss-5

by Jennifer Roberson

  The metri sat in a chair, hands folded into her lap. She wore the mask I associated with her so long as we were not discussing her daughter or the man her daughter had married: calmly self-contained and utterly unmoved by anything anyone said.

  There was much gesticulation and tones of hissing hostility. Del’s godling rounded on Prima and Nihko, seemingly accusing them of something they didn’t much like, as they answered in kind. I was not surprised to see the red-haired captain so animated, because it was like her; but Nihko Blue-head only rarely showed so much emotion. As for Del’s godling, well, I didn’t know him at all, but he seemed extremely comfortable with shouting, so I assumed he had lots of experience.

  This looked and sounded like nothing so much as a family quarrel. I began to suspect there was a lot more to the story than a renegada captain and her tattooed first mate, and a kid who looked enough like Nihko to be his son. And since Nihko himself resembled me, this made it a very tight-knit family indeed.

  And I couldn’t understand a word of what anyone was saying.

  Out of patience, I drew a very large breath deep into my lungs and let loose a roar that overrode them all. "Hey!"

  Even Del jumped.

  Now that I had everyone’s attention, I smiled my friendliest smile. "Hello," I said with cheerful courtesy. "Would you care to repeat all that in a language I can understand?"

  "We," Del murmured.

  "We," I amended. When no one said anything at all, I glanced at them one by one.

  Prima Rhannet’s hand was at her waist where her knife generally resided tied to her belt, but she wasn’t wearing the knife, or even that particular belt. Like Del, she wore an ankle-length sleeveless tunic gathered at the waist into a woven sash. Nihko never was so blatant about his weapons, which he didn’t have at the moment, either; he just stood with his head turned slightly toward me, eyes glittering. But the godling, as youth so often does, had turned to face me squarely, to challenge the unexpected, every powerful part of him poised for movement.

  Hoolies, Del was right. He could be me. If you stripped away fifteen years and all the scars from me.

  Or added them to him.

  It was eerie. You don’t usually recognize yourself in others. For that matter, you don’t usually recognize yourself in a silver mirror or a pool of water unless you know it’s you, and only then you know it’s you because logic argues it must be: if you’re peering into a mirror or water, the image staring back very likely is your own. I knew my hands best of all because I was so accustomed to using them, to watching them as I did things with them, even without thinking about them. But unless one studies oneself from head to toe every day, one isn’t even aware of certain aspects of one’s appearance.

  But he was me. Or I was him. Del had already noted it, and now the renegadas and the metri did as well. The kid and I stood there staring at one another in startled recognition and unspoken, unsubtle territorial challenge, while Prima Rhannet began to laugh, and Nihko… well, Nihko grinned widely in a highly superior and annoying fashion, brow-rings glinting.

  They had tossed the bones, the captain and her mate. And won.

  I touched the thong of sandtiger claws around my throat. The metri had given me back the brow ring she’d cut from the necklet, saying that so long as Nihko was present I’d do better to wear it lest I lose most of my meals. Since I had yet to learn a way of maintaining any measure of decorum while spewing up the contents of my belly, I accepted the ring, knotting it back into the thong. One of these days I was going to find out just why Nihko made me sick.

  Other than for the usual reasons, of course.

  The kid said something under his breath. The metri responded with a single word that flooded his face with the dusky color of embarrassment, or anger. As he glared at me I began to appreciate, in a very bizarre and detached sort of way, just why so many people gave way to me when I employed the most ferocious of my stares.

  There was no subtlety about Del’s godling, but he might learn it one day. If he lived.

  "Family argument?" I asked lightly.

  "They soil this household," the kid hissed, switching languages easily. "As do you."

  "Herakleio," the metri said only.

  His hands were fists. "They do," he insisted. "All of them. Prima is a disgrace to her father, her heritage — and Nihkolara is ikepra! This man"— he meant me, of course —"is a pretender." He shifted his furious glance to Del, all fired up to make other accusations, and realized rather abruptly he knew absolutely nothing about her.

  Except that she was beautiful. And, I didn’t doubt, that he had seen her in the pool. Without clothing.

  I watched the change in him. The anger, the touchy pride remained, but slid quietly beneath the surface as something else rose up. Color moved in his face again. He drew a breath, expelled it sharply through his nostrils, then consciously relaxed the fists into hands again.

  I gave him marks for honesty: he did not try to charm the woman who had just seen his childish display of temper. He accepted that she had, was ashamed of it, but did not deny it.

  The metri moved slightly forward in her chair, immediately commanding the attention of everyone in the room. She was smiling in triumphant delight, rather like a cat, as she looked first at the boy who claimed he was her kin, then at me who claimed I was not.

  The woman laughed. Slowly, as if tasting something unexpected and quite delicious. "I should have both of you sheathed in plaster," she said calmly, "and placed on either side of my gate. Surely everyone in the islands would come to marvel at my new statuary."

  "Naked?" Prima inquired.

  Rather surprisingly, the metri did not take offense. "Oh, I believe so. Unclothed, and ambitiously male."

  The kid — Herakleio? — was stunned. He turned jerkily toward her, jaw slackening. "Metri?"

  "Come now, Herakleio," she said. "Admit the truth. He is you."

  "He’s old!" the kid announced.

  Nihko grinned. Prima gulped a laugh. Del put fingers across her mouth as if to hide a treacherous response, expression elaborately bland.

  I smiled, vastly unoffended. "Older than you," I agreed, "which serves me just fine, as the first one born inherits soonest."

  A glint in the metri’s eyes told me she understood and appreciated the provocation. Especially as it worked.

  "First born!" Herakleio shouted, furious all over again. "First born of what whore?"

  "Stop." This time it was the metri, all amusement wiped away. "You soil this household with such shouting, all of you."

  Herakleio shot a venomous glance at Prima Rhannet. "And why do you care if we are naked? Men are nothing to you."

  "Oh, men are a great deal to me," she replied, unperturbed. "I have no complaint of them, in general. I merely choose not to sleep with them."

  He colored up again. "You slept with me."

  Ah. More and more interesting.

  Prima grinned. "It passed an otherwise long night."

  "But —"

  "And it served to show me my preferences were other."

  I blinked. She said it so blandly, without pointed offense, and yet no man could help but take it as an offense.

  Herakleio did, of course, and responded by hissing something of great emotion, though he said it in Skandic so I couldn’t understand. Prima merely laughed at him. Nihko, perhaps wisely, kept his mouth shut.

  I frowned at him. "What is your stake in this?" I asked. "Do you fit?"

  It instantly diverted Herakleio. "Oh, he fits. Has he not told you what he was, and is?"

  "I’ve heard a word," I said clearly. "I’ve even heard sort of a definition. But I haven’t the slightest idea what any of it means."

  "Ikepra," Herakleio sneered, glowering at Nihko. "Tell him, Nihkolara."

  "Tell him yourself."

  Always an impressive response. I sighed and exchanged a speaking glance with Del. She was as much at sea as I.

  "Ikepra," Herakleio declared curtly, as if I should disce
rn from tone and posture all the complexities of definition. "He should have been thrown from the cliff."

  "But then I would have flown," Nihko countered mildly.

  "You sailed," Herakleio gibed. "You sailed with her." A finger punched air in Prima’s direction.

  "And have not regretted it."

  This time it was Del who cut off the conversation. She looked at the metri, who was watching both Nihko and Herakleio with an unfathomable expression, and asked what undoubtedly should have been asked at the very beginning. "What do you mean to do with us?"

  The woman arched one eloquent brow. "Decide."

  "Decide?" Herakleio asked suspiciously, who knew this woman better than any of us.

  "I have two heirs, now," she answered. "Only one may inherit."

  "Two?" Herakleio exploded. "How is this possible? He is a pretender —"

  "Is he?"

  "Am I?" I fixed the metri with a scowl. "Is he kin to you?"

  "This boy?" She smiled. "Oh, yes. He is my brother’s wife’s brother’s grandson."

  I gave up trying to work that one out. "Then you don’t need me or anyone else. You’ve got your heir."

  "Male," Herakleio pronounced darkly.

  I raised my brows at him. "Is there some doubt as to that?"

  "He means he descends from the male line," Prima supplied.

  I shook my head. "So?"

  "The male line," Herakleio gritted between clamped teeth.

  I sighed. "In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not from around here."

  "We are counted from the female line," Nihko explained.

  Prima nodded. "And from the gods."

  I stared at her. "You think you’re descended from gods?" So much for my self-description of Herakleio as a godling being effective sarcasm; irony doesn’t work if you believe it’s the truth. "This is ridiculous. You’re people just like everyone else!"

  Prima slid a veiled glance at Nihko from beneath lowered lids. "Some of us are — more."

  "Were more," Herakleio corrected pointedly with intense scorn.

  After a moment I just shook my head in disbelief and looked again at the metri. "I think it’s time I left. I’ve got no stake in any of this, and no time to sort it out. I’m not your grandson, and I’m certainly not a godling!"

  "Jhihadi," Del murmured.

  As quietly I retorted, "You’re not helping."

  "But you may be," the metri said quietly, "and I cannot afford to lose you if it be true."

  "You can’t very well keep me," I shot back. "You bought my freedom from renegadas —"

  "Precisely," the metri confirmed. "There is a debt between us now."

  "Debt?" I was incredulous. "How in hoolies do you expect me to pay you back?"

  Unsmiling, she looked at Herakleio. "Take this boy and make of him a man."

  In the ensuing hubbub — Prima was laughing while Herakleio sputtered furious protest — I turned on my heel and walked out.

  Del followed me right out into the courtyard entry. There she stopped, as if surprised I hadn’t. "Where are you going?"

  I swung at the gated entrance, stiff with frustration. "Away."

  "Away where?"

  "Just away. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong with these people. I don’t want to have anything to do with these people!"

  "Not even if they are your kin?"

  "I disown them," I answered instantly.

  Del examined my expression. "I think the person with no coin or property can’t disown anyone."

  "Then I repudiate them."

  She nodded. "You can do that."

  "Good. I do. I have. Let’s go."

  She was by all appearances stuck on one question. "Where?"

  "Out of here. I’ve had enough of Skandi, metris, blue-headed priests, women ship captains, women ship captains who sleep with other women, and wife’s brother’s grandsons."

  "Have you coin?"

  "No. Where would I get coin?"

  "Where indeed?"

  I glowered at her. "Are you suggesting we stay?"

  Del assumed her most innocent expression. "The metri did pay for your release… but I merely suggest we devise a plan before we go anywhere."

  I opened my mouth to answer, shut it as I saw Nihko come out behind her, stepping from shadow into sunlight. "Plans are useful," he observed. "Have you one?"

  I switched my scowl from Del to him. "I have done very well making a living in this world without any plans. This situation is no different."

  "But it is," Nihko disagreed politely. "You don’t even speak the language."

  "You speak mine," I said. "So does Prima, so does the metri, so does Heraklitus."

  "Herakleio," Del corrected, and I shot her a ferocious glare.

  "We speak it," Nihko said, "because we have been made to. My captain and I sail to foreign ports. The metri deals with merchants and traders of other lands, and to be certain dealings are honest one must speak the language. Herakleio has learned because the metri required it of her heir."

  "Then he is her heir."

  "He is her kin," Nihko elaborated. "But male-descended. It matters."

  "Why does it matter?"

  "This is Skandi. Things are — as they are."

  "And you?" I asked curtly, angry enough to offend on purpose. "What exactly are you, ikepra?"

  Nihko did not provoke. He wasn’t Herakleio. "Ikepra," he answered. "Profanation. Abomination."

  "Why?" Del asked.

  He did not flinch from it. "Because I failed."

  "Failed what?" I asked.

  "The gods," he said, "and myself."

  I stared at him a long moment, matching stare to stare, then shook my head. "Let’s go, bascha."

  "Tiger —"

  Nihko’s brow rings glinted in the sunlight. "You would abuse the metri’s hospitality?"

  "Look, I don’t want to abuse anyone’s hospitality. But you certainly didn’t offer us any when you destroyed our ship, and you didn’t improve matters by attempting to sell me to the metri —"

  "Did sell," he put in.

  "— and she’s not exactly being hospitable by ordering me to make a man of her brother’s wife’s brother’s brother’s grandson," I finished.

  "That’s one ’brother’s’ too many," Del pointed out helpfully.

  "Do you not believe he needs it?" Nihko inquired.

  I glared at him again, eyes narrowed. "Just where do you fit, Nihkolara? Aside from being profanation and abomination, that is. What are you to these people? What are they to you?"

  "My past," he said only.

  Another figure moved out of shadow into light. The boy whom the metri wanted to be a man. "Tell him, Nihkolara," Herakleio challenged, lounging against the white-painted stonework of the entryway. "Tell him the whole of it."

  Nihko made a gesture. "Herak… let it be."

  "Herakleio. Ikepra are not permitted familiarity."

  Color stained the first mate’s face, then flowed away so he was alabaster-pale. There was tension throughout his body; Herakleio had reached inside him somewhere, touched a private place.

  Herakleio displayed white teeth in a sun-coppered face. "Tell the pretender how you fit, Nihkolara."

  And Nihkolara told me, while the heat beat on our heads.

  FOURTEEN

  I flopped flat on the bed and stared up at the low ceiling. "This is all too complicated. And getting worse."

  Del, sitting as she so often chose to sit — on the floor against the opposite wall — shrugged. "What is complicated? There were eleven women placed upon the island by the gods, and each bore eleven daughters of those gods. Then the gods sent those daughters sons of other women, and so the Eleven Families took root and flowered here."

  "How poetic," I observed sourly. "And of course you’d find it easy: it’s all about women."

  "I suspect it is simpler even for gods to get babies on women."

  I rolled my head and looked at her. "You’re finding entirely too much amuseme
nt in this, bascha."

  "Am I amused?"

  "Inside. Where I can’t see."

  Her mouth twitched. "And from those eleven daughters came sons and daughters of the sons sent to lie with them, and so the people of first couplings may name themselves gods-descended."

  "But not everyone on Skandi is gods-descended." I realized what I’d said and amended it immediately. "Not everyone believes they are gods-descended. I mean, they aren’t gods-descended, of course, because no one is, but if they think it’s possible, they might believe they aren’t. Even if others are. Believe they are, that is." I dropped my forearm across my face and issued a strangled groan. "I said this was too complicated!"

  Del seemed to grasp it well enough. "They believe they aren’t gods-descended because certain sons came to Skandi from other islands, not from gods, and married the daughters of those first divine couplings."

  From under my arm I added, "And so those who can count the generations back to those specific eleven women consider themselves superior to everyone else."

  "Well," Del said judiciously, "I suspect that if I were descended of gods, and the others weren’t, I might count myself superior."

  I removed my arm and hiked myself up on one elbow. "You would? And here I thought you considered yourself no better than even the lowliest slave, bascha."

  "I said ’might,’ " she clarified. "And it doesn’t matter, here. Here I am a woman."

  "You are a woman anywhere. And I know for a fact a lot of men are convinced you are gods-descended."

  "Thank you."

  "Of course, they don’t know you as well as I do." I flopped down again, pondering the information. "It seems obvious enough to me: these eleven women found themselves in the family way, and, thus disgraced, were exiled here." I shrugged against the mattress. "It’s a pretty story they all made up to excuse their wanton behavior, and the eleven little outcomes of it."

  "But it might be true."

  "Oh, come on, bascha — gods impregnating women?"

  "It would be an explanation for why there’s magic in the world."

  "Magic? Hah. Maybe superstition. Stories. Meant to entertain —"enlighten."— to pass the night —"

  "— or to keep a history alive."

  "— or to simply waste time." I thrust an arm beneath my head and changed the subject. Sort of. "So Nihko and the metri are related through the now-infamous Eleven Families —"