I got up slowly, swearing quietly under my breath. By the time I was standing, I realized Alric was already up. In fact, he’d taken the horses off for watering. I was in the midst of stretching and attempting to lengthen my spine when he came back. He looked altogether too alert for this early.
Which reminded me. "How was it you managed to lose your dance?"
He led the horses back to the pickets. "Musa."
"You danced with Musa?"
"I was his fifth opponent, or maybe it was sixth. I lasted fractionally longer than the fourth or fifth." He tied off the horses, apportioned more grain. "It was clear from the first time he danced that he would likely win."
"So, I take it everyone lost money when I defeated him."
He grinned. "I would assume so."
"Too bad." I glanced around for something behind which I might shield my morning donation, finally settled on the palm tree just beyond the horses. "Did you?" I called.
"What, lose money? Hoolies, I didn’t bother wagering."
"At all?"
"No. It would have been disloyal."
"Ah hah! Even you would have bet against me."
Alric was rolling up his blanket as I came back around the horses. "I didn’t know where you’d been or what you’d been up to since the last time I’d seen you. I did mention to the others I thought they were giving you short shrift, but once Rafiq spouted off about the missing fingers and your bout with the sandtiger, no one wanted to listen."
I started packing up my own belongings. "You could have put coin on me for old times’ sake."
"Lena expressly forbade me to wager."
I nodded sagely. "And you, of course, do everything Lena tells you. Or, in this case, don’t do everything Lena tells you not to do."
"We would not be having this conversation if Del were here."
"Sure we would. She’d just be giving us the benefit of her own opinion."
"You’ve been together how long?"
I thought about it. "Almost four years."
"Ah. Then you’re still a work in progress. Lena has had more than ten years to remake me."
"Del knows better than to try to remake me."
Whereupon Alric collapsed in paroxysms of laughter, drowning out even the screaming baby.
Eventually I noted, "I meant that as a joke."
The Northerner got up again and finished packing, but it was punctuated by occasional chuckles. After a while I ignored him and hauled pouches and saddle to the gelding, who peered at me out of watery blue eyes.
"What happened to the stud?" Alric asked.
I slipped into my harness and buckled it, reseating the sword I’d bought in Haziz. It would be another day ending in sunburn, since I still lacked a burnous. Fortunately I’m tanned enough that the burn is only mild. "He ran off when the sandtiger attacked. If I’m lucky, he wandered back after Rafiq and his friends hauled me away to Umir’s. Otherwise, he might still be out there wandering around." Or more likely dead. But I didn’t want to think about that any more than about the possibility of Del being dead. "He’s a tough old son. He’s likely bedded down in a good Julah livery about now." And Del, I hoped, was bedded down on a healer’s cot.
"Are you sure you don’t want company?"
"Go home to your wife, Alric. Tell bedtime stories of me to your little girls."
He grinned, reached out an arm. We clasped briefly. "Bring Del to Rusali when you have a chance. Lena and the girls would like to see her."
The gelding was saddled and packed. I mounted, settled my aching body. Whatever Meteiera may have done to me, it hadn’t made life painless. "I will."
Alric’s expression was serious. "Tiger — I mean it."
I nodded. "I know. I will."
His smile was of brief duration, as if something nagged at him. "May the sun shine on your head."
"And yours," I returned, then headed the gelding south, away from crying babies.
SIXTEEN
I went through the cantina doorway bellowing for Fouad. It was late afternoon, and only a couple of men had yet wandered in for drinks. By sundown the place would begin to fill up. As I strode across the hard-packed floor to the plank bar, shouting for their host, they watched in mild curiosity. In Julah, in cantinas, pretty much anything was commonplace.
Fouad appeared from the hindmost regions of the cantina smoothing the front of his yellow burnous, as I dumped saddle-pouches on the bar. His eyebrows ran up into graying hair. "You’re back."
"Where’s Del?"
He blinked. "Isn’t she with you?"
"Isn’t she with you ?"
"No."
I felt a stab of disquiet. "That kid came here, he said."
"Who, Nayyib?" Fouad nodded. "He did. He wanted the name of a good healer. He planned to take the healer to where you and the bascha were." His dark eyes widened. "Didn’t he do it?"
Oh, hoolies. "He showed up," I said, "but there was no healer with him. Only three buffoons hired by Umir the Ruthless." I tapped impatiently on the plank, understanding now that Rafiq and his friends had never allowed Nayyib to find the healer, just made him lead them to me. "I figured he’d bring her here afterwards."
Fouad shook his head. "I haven’t seen the bascha since she left with you, and I haven’t seen the kid since he left with the sword-dancers."
I was thinking furiously. "Maybe he took her to the healer you recommended. How do I find him?"
"No, Oshet stopped by earlier today for ale. He said he has no new patients." He eyed me, clearly reluctant. "Forgive me, but if she was that badly injured, it’s possible —"
I cut him off. "She’s not dead." Then I swore feelingly, wondering if Nayyib had brought her back to Julah but avoided Fouad’s, since his last visit had ended badly. Or maybe Del was sick enough that he’d felt it best to remain at the lean-to and not risk moving her. But it made no sense that he wouldn’t take her to the healer Fouad recommended. I had a hunt ahead of me.
"She might be elsewhere in town," he suggested, following my thought. "Maybe with another healer. Do you want me to ask around?"
"If Nayyib’s avoiding you, you won’t find him."
Fouad scoffed. "This is my town."
"He doesn’t strike me as stupid."
"It’s difficult to hide with a sick Northern woman."
Very true; unless she was dead, and he was on his own.
I dismissed the thought instantly, annoyed I’d succumbed to it. "Ask around," I said. "The sooner there’s an answer the happier I’ll be. I’ll spend the night at the inn just up the street. If I don’t hear anything by morning, I’ll head out."
"Stay here," Fouad offered.
"In a cantina?"
He laughed. "You used to stay here all the time."
"Not in an empty bed." I hadn’t stayed in a cantina since hooking up with Del. Before then, such places had been frequent lodgings.
"That could be remedied," Fouad asserted. But his humor died away. "One of my girls left to marry, and there is an extra room.
It’s small, but it claims a bed, a tiny table. You do own one-third of the place, now."
"Fine. Can you have one of your boys take my horse to the livery? I’ve got all my belongings off him."
Fouad looked dubious. "No one likes handling the stud."
"I don’t have the stud. It’s the white gelding tied outdoors." I sighed, running a hand impatiently through hair that was just beginning to regain some of its wave. "Food and drink would be welcome. And a burnous."
"I’ll bring a meal out myself."
"No. To the room. I’m going to lay low."
Fouad gestured. "Back through the curtain, down the hallway, last door on the left."
As I picked up the saddlepouches I didn’t remind him that I knew the layout from earlier days. I just nodded and went.
The room was indeed small. Smaller, in fact, than I remembered. But it did have the bed to recommend it, plus the tiny table next to it just inside the curtained doorway.
I dumped the pouches next to the bed, then unsheathed the sword and leaned it against the bedframe. I shed the harness next. Sure enough, after two days with no burnous, I had paler stripes standing out against the copper-brown of my skin. I looked as though I were wearing the harness even when I wasn’t. Leather had rubbed against the slice along my rib, but the annoyance was minimal when weighed against the rest of my body.
My smile was twisted. Nihkolara had said new scars would replace the old ones lifted from me by the mages. It looked as though I was on my way to starting a second collection.
The whisper of a step sounded beyond the privacy curtain. I caught up the sword and leveled it just as the fabric was pulled aside. Silk, Fouad’s wine-girl, bearing a tray and carrying a burnous draped over one arm, stopped dead.
I gestured her in, smiling ruefully. "We’re beginning to make this a habit."
This time she wasn’t swathed in cloth or trying to hide her face as she bore me a warning. She wore filmy gold-dyed gauze and a sash-belt of crimson tassels riding low on her hips that accentuated her Southron coloring and lush body. She accepted my invitation, set the tray on the table, then put the burnous on the bed. Fouad is a man who likes color; the gauze was a deep bluish-purple. Bright red in Skandi, now purple here. Whatever happened to subtlety?
Silk was gazing at me, black wings of hair hanging loosely beside her face.
"Thank you," I said feelingly, and set down the sword again. Fouad had, of course, included aqivi along with food. For just a moment, though, I thought longingly of Umir’s excellent meals.
"You are alone?" Silk asked.
I nodded, realizing Fouad probably had said nothing of the circumstances. I sat down on the edge of the bed and dove into mutton stew in a bowl carved of hard brown bread.
"Will you be wanting company tonight?"
It stopped me cold. I looked at her over the spoonful of stew halfway through my mouth.
"Ah," she said, and the single word contained a multitude of emotions.
"Wait," I said as she turned to go. "Silk…" But I wasn’t sure what I’d meant to say.
Her smile was sad. "It’s the Northern bascha."
I nodded.
Her mouth twisted faintly. "All those years… we used to say you would never settle on one woman. But inwardly we all dreamed it might be one of us." She gestured with one square hand. "Oh, I know — it wouldn’t be with a wine-girl. But even women like us have dreams, Tiger."
I felt vastly uncomfortable. "I don’t know what to say."
"Then say nothing. Know only that you were — and always will be — special to me."
I groped for comforting words. I’d never been very good at them. "There will be someone for you, Silk. Didn’t Fouad say one of the girls just left to get married?"
She nodded solemnly. "But she was much younger than I, and not so coarse."
The best answer was suddenly a simple matter of speaking the truth. "If you were coarse," I told her, "I would never have shared your bed."
After a moment, she said, "Thank you for that."
"I meant it."
She nodded and turned to go.
"Silk!" I stabbed the spoon back into stew and stood up. It took a single pace for me to reach the doorway, and the woman.
She wouldn’t look at me. I cupped her jaw, lifted her face, brushed away the tears with my thumbs. Then I bent and kissed her gently.
No passion. No promise. She knew what it was. She knew what it meant. But still she twined arms around my neck and clung. My hands rested lightly on her hips. She smelled, as always, of wine and ale, and the faint undertang of the musky scent she wore.
Silk broke the kiss even as I did. She raised her hands to my face, fingers scraping against stubble. She traced out the sandtiger scars. "Be careful," she whispered, and the curtain billowed behind her as she left.
No message came with news of Del’s whereabouts in Julah or that anyone had sighted Nayyib. Since I wasn’t sitting out front watching the world go by with liquor at my elbow, for a long while I paced the tiny room, fighting back a growing feeling of impatience coupled with desperation. Finally my body explained that it was tired even if my mind was not. I sat down on the bed for a while, spine propped against the adobe wall with my legs stretched out, and tried to invent logical reasons for Del’s absence.
It was entirely possible that she was still at the lean-to. Except that it had been twelve days or more since Rafiq and his friends had hauled me off to Umir’s, and she ought to have recovered enough to be moved to Julah. Even if the stud hadn’t returned, the kid had a horse. He could easily have fashioned a litter using the limbs and canvas from the lean-to and brought her to a healer.
They just kept going around and around in my head, all the possibilities. And the thoughts I didn’t want to think. I finally scooted down to lie on the bed, staring blankly at the wood-and-mud ceiling. Alric’s questions kept sifting to the forefront of my mind no matter how much I tried to ignore them. I cursed myself for it, cursed Alric, cursed Nayyib, cursed Rafiq, Umir, Musa, and the sandtiger who had attacked her.
What would I do if I were alone in the world again?
More than two years before when I had left Staal-Ysta, believing Del would die from the travesty I had made of her abdomen with my newly keyed jivatma, I had focused on the task of tracking down the hounds of hoolies and their master, to save the village of Ysaa-den. It had given me purpose. It had given me the chance to think about something other than Del, for fractions of moments.
There was, now, nothing else to think about.
I scrubbed at my stubbled face, stretching it out of shape. Then growled long and hard into my hands, needing to bleed off the tension. Finally I took the sword from beside the bed, set it on the bed between me and the wall, and closed my eyes. I did not expect to sleep. But my body had other ideas.
I dreamed of Del, which was much improvement over the skeleton in the desert and the sword I was supposed to "take up." I dreamed of Del in all her many guises, sparing no truths of her temperament. She could be cold and hard, faceted like Punja crystal, capable of killing at a moment’s notice. She could be sharp-tongued and short-tempered, and there were times her words wounded. But she could also be a soft touch when it came to baby animals and human children, ruthlessly fierce in her tenderness; and, despite a poor beginning among borjuni, passionate in bed. She was woman enough to drive me mad on occasion, because women did that to men; but she also took my breath away with the power of her pride and strength of will.
Silk had said it for me as much as to me: I had never believed it likely I would settle on one woman. Unlike Alric, I wasn’t made for a wife and children. I wanted no ties. Nearly two decades as a Salset chula had taught me never to be owned by anyone again; and what was a husband but a man owned by his wife?
Even Alric admitted Lena forbade him things. Who needs that?
And then Delilah arrived in my life, as driven as I to prove herself, if for different reasons, and having no more interest in putting down roots than I did. Except for an enforced stay on Skandi and then time spent on the island off Haziz to regain fitness, we had never stopped moving.
A sudden thought occurred: Now I was proposing to rebuild Alimat and take on students. Which would require me to stay put.
No wonder everyone thought I was sandsick!
I roused from sleep long enough to mutter something mostly incoherent about old men growing soft, then slid down again into the abyss.
Where the bones and the sword waited.
This time the skekton wears flesh, and a face. It is Del, gazing at me out of empty sockets. A hand reaches, gestures. There, she seems to say, though her mouth does not move. There. Take up the sword.
It lies just out of her reach, as if flung down or lost in battle. It is more than a sword, I see, but jivatma, fashioned in the North of Northern rites. Yet it isn’t Boreal. Isn’t Del’s sword.
It is mine. Samiel.
"There," she says, "ta
ke up the sword."
Sand drifts. Obscures the body. Carries flesh away. Bones remain. It isn’t Del anymore but the other woman.
"Find me," she says. "Find —"
"— me," I finished, and realized I was awake.
The sword lay beside me, where I had placed it. Not Samiel, just the sword I’d bought in Haziz. It bore no runes, no Northern magic. Was nothing more than steel, with a leather-wrapped hilt.
In the darkness, I lifted the sword. Closed one hand around it. Felt again the pressure of four fingers.
Four, not three.
I closed my other hand around it, resting the pommel against my abdomen so that the blade bisected air. And again, four fingers.
After a moment I set the sword down beside me and inspected my hands. Felt two stumps where little fingers had lived.
Find me, she had said. Take up the sword.
Find who? What sword?
"What in hoolies do you want?" I said. "And what am I supposed to do about it? If you want me to do something, you’ve got to give me more to go on!"
Of course, then I felt utterly absurd for talking aloud to a dream. But I was getting more than a little tired of obscurity. I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, but this was new. And already old.
I considered the situation. I had fully intended to go to the fallen chimney formation to search for Samiel. Del and I were on our way there when the sandtiger had attacked. So if I was heading there anyhow, why would the dreams seem to be commanding me this way and that, like a recalcitrant child? And what did the dead woman have to do with any of it? There had been no one but Del and me in the chimney when Chosa Dei met Shaka Obre for the final time. We’d escaped. No one had been killed. What did my jivatma have to do with the skeleton?
I sat up, planting my feet on the floor. Out of sorts, I scrubbed at mussed hair. I was bone-tired still, since sleep had brought me no rest. Finally I lighted the candle on the table, then bent down to dig through saddlepouches. I found Umir’s book and propped it on my lap as close to candlelight as possible.
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