Sword-Breaker

by Jennifer Roberson

“It’s true,” Del said quietly. “What would you have me swear on, that you will believe me?”

  Abbu grinned. “Oh, bascha—”

  “Never mind that,” I interjected. “Like I said, I think he’s hurt.” I scowled down at the sword. “I can’t tell you why. It just feels different. Sort of—bruised.” I glared at both of them, knowing how it sounded. “It feels a lot like I do: a horse ridden hard and put away wet.”

  “Poetic,” Abbu said dryly. He rubbed idly at the scarred flesh of his throat, where my wooden sword had nearly killed him so many years before. “So, is this how we leave it? You on one knee, with a bruised magical sword…” He let it go, laughing. “I should challenge you anyway.”

  Del stiffened. We both knew what she intended to say, except Abbu cut her off with a raised hand.

  He eyed her thoughtfully as he lowered it. “We never finished the dance we began in Iskandar.”

  “And you won’t,” I snapped. “Knee or no knee, I’ll dance. I’m tired of you taking on Del in my place.”

  The smile was as expected; his unspoken rejoinder was implicit.

  “Well?” Del asked curtly, wise to the ways—and thoughts—of men. “How is this to be settled?”

  Abbu and I stared meaningfully at one another for a long moment. Then he ended the contest. “Hoolies,” he said affably, “there’s nothing in this for me. Not enough coin, anyway.” He patted the coin-pouch hanging from his belt. “The shodo always said money couldn’t buy friendship—or rivalry. When the Sandtiger and I dance our final dance, it will be for another reason.”

  “More money?” I gibed.

  “Undoubtedly,” he drawled, turning away toward his horse. “If I were you, either of you, I would not go to Julah.”

  “Why?” Del asked. “If there is a need—”

  He overrode her. “There is a need not to.” All pretense was dismissed; Abbu was no longer amused. “Yes, I was asked to track both of you, catch you, and bring you back to Iskandar. Because Sabra knows exactly who killed her father. Unlike all the tribes, she doesn’t care about the jhihadi. She just wants revenge.”

  “And you’re working for her,” I said.

  “Me work for a woman?” He grinned. “What do you think, Sandtiger? You were a Southroner, once.”

  It got to me, as he intended. “Once?”

  Abbu swung up into the saddle and turned his horse to face us. “Before you crossed the border, so to speak.” He gestured negligently, indicating Del and Samiel. “Northern sword. Northern woman.” His grin was sly and crooked. “But one might be worth the trouble.”

  I scowled at him. “Get the hoolies out of here.”

  “Wait,” Del said.

  He reined in his horse, eyebrows arched.

  “Are you working for her?” Del asked quietly.

  “You should know the answer,” he told her. He hooked his head in my direction. “Tiger knows. Ask him.”

  Del waited till he was gone. “Well?”

  “No,” I answered.

  Her eyes narrowed. “How can you be certain? You yourself have said you are not friends, and so has he. How do you know he isn’t lying?”

  “He isn’t working for her. Because if he were, he’d do exactly what he’d hired on to do: invite me into a circle, beat the hoolies out of me, then haul me back to Iskandar.”

  Del’s expression was odd. “Do you think he can beat you?”

  “Right now, with this knee, Rhashad’s mother can beat me.” I hefted the sword. “Believe me, if he’d hired on—woman tanzeer or no—he’d finish the job. Abbu Bensir always finishes what he starts.”

  Del watched me maneuver my knee, extending it to pop it, then bending it back again, testing flexibility. “How are you? How are you really?”

  It had nothing to do with my knee. The woman knows me well, but not well enough.

  I expelled a breathy half grunt, half laugh. “How am I? I don’t know. Sore. Tired. Itchy. Smelly. Beat to death inside and out.” I turned gingerly, hobbling back toward my blanket spread next to the tiny cairn. “Pretty well bored with the whole situation.”

  Del followed, offering no assistance as I levered myself awkwardly down to sit. Without thinking I set the sword aside—it was, at the moment, quiescent—and began to untie knee wrappings.

  She had not yet resheathed. “What you said… what you asked. Before.” She sounded half ashamed, half concerned. “You asked if you were him.”

  I shrugged negligently, unwinding ragged fabric that had once clothed a borjuni. “Just a little confused.” With wrappings gone, the knee was fully displayed. I prodded it carefully with a forefinger, checking for puffiness and pain. “Not so bad,” I observed. “Should be mostly healed in a day or two. Then Abbu, when he comes calling, can have the dance he wants.”

  Del sighed and squatted, finally sheathing her sword. “You would be foolhardy to undertake it. Better or not, your knee will not support you in a true dance… and why are you so certain he will come back? He could have challenged you now, and had a better chance. Why do it later, when you are a tougher opponent?”

  “Because he will. I would.” I cast her a glance, smiling. “This has nothing to do with woman tanzeers. This has to do with something that’s lain unsettled between us for years.”

  “His throat.” She touched her own.

  “That’s part of it. But so’s pride. So’s reputation.” I smiled. “The South isn’t big enough for two sword-dancers like us.”

  “So one of you will kill the other.”

  “Only if one of us insists. Myself, I think I could stand it if he beat the hoolies out of me and made me yield… I don’t see much good in dying in the name of pride. Dancing, yes; it’s been a long time coming. As for Abbu?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know he’ll be back. He only gave up for now because he wasn’t working for Sabra, and because he doesn’t want anyone to think he won the dance because I wasn’t in proper condition.”

  “You think.”

  “I know. These things are important, Del… Abbu Bensir and I have spent most of our respective careers hearing stories about one another. And since he was here before I was, it grates on him harder. Nobody who’s been the premier sword-dancer in the South wants to give up any part of that honor… then I came along.” I arched my brows. “Of course, he had full warning. When I nearly crushed his throat with a wooden sword.”

  Del’s smile was wry. “Will it be like that for you?”

  “You mean, will I be annoyed when someone younger and better comes along?” I shrugged. “By the time that happens, I’ll be an old man. It won’t matter any more.”

  Del laughed aloud. “Old man,” she jeered, “it has already happened.”

  “Ah, but you’ll never be acknowledged,” I countered, “not that I’m admitting you’re better. Good, yes—but better?” I shrugged. “Anyway, you’re a woman. No Southron sword-dancer will ever acknowledge you.”

  “You do. Abbu does.” She frowned. “I think. Either that, or he’s only saying he does because he thinks sweet words will win my regard and make me want to share his bed.” She tucked hair behind one ear. “Men do that.”

  “Because it works.” I grinned as she glared, then began to rewrap my knee. “Too bad he didn’t leave us his horse.”

  It startled her. “Did you think he would?”

  “Maybe. If the other sword-dancers are still only a day behind, he could have waited for them, then gone on back to Iskandar.”

  “They are not a day behind. Sword-dancers or tribes. They are perhaps two days, because of the simoom.” Del frowned. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what?” I asked warily.

  She stroked hair out of an eye. “You turned the simoom. You stopped the wind, stopped the sand… then sent it on around us.”

  “But—I thought…” I frowned, trying to remember. I recalled wanting to do all of that, but I couldn’t remember accomplishing it. There had been too much of Chosa Dei clamoring at my soul.
“Well, good,” I said finally. “It’ll help us get ahead a little, if the simoom has set them back.”

  “Besides, had Abbu left us his horse, it would have made him a fool.”

  That caught my attention. “You think Abbu Bensir could never be a fool?”

  Del assessed me a moment. Her face was masked, but something—was it amusement?—lurked in her eyes. “I suppose he could be,” she said finally, with careful solemnity. “You and he are much alike.”

  “Now, bascha—”

  She expressed overly elaborate surprise. “But you are. He is older, of course—though how much I couldn’t say—” Hoolies, she was amused! “—and he is undoubtedly wiser, because of experience… but there are remarkable similarities.” She caught up her hair and began to divide it into three sections. “But probably only because you were trained by the same shodo.”

  “I’m not anything like Abbu! You heard what he said: ‘Me work for a woman?’—as if it might contaminate him.” I glared at her wide-eyed expression. “He’d like nothing better than to get you into bed, because that’s all he thinks you’re good for. Like most Southroners.”

  Del continued braiding. “Like you were, once.”

  I scowled. “I’m still a Southroner. Just because I went traipsing off across the border to help you out…” I frowned at my knee. “Maybe there are some things different about me now, thanks to you, but I’m still a Southroner. What else would I be?”

  Del’s tone was soft as she tied off her braid. “You don’t know, remember? The Salset never told you.”

  Vigorously, I knotted the wrapping on my knee. Changing the subject. “Our best bet is to go on to Quumi and buy another horse. Then we can head on down to Julah.”

  “Julah! But Abbu just said—”

  “Abbu doesn’t know what I know.” I moved off my blanket, began to roll it up. “Nobody knows what we—what I—know.”

  “We?” Del rose, resettling harness straps. “If you mean me, enlighten me… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The “we” hadn’t meant Del. But I couldn’t tell her that.

  “Let’s get going,” I said. “We’re burning daylight again.”

  Seventeen

  “It isn’t much, is it?” Del rode double behind me, which was hot in the warmth of the day. “When you said a trade settlement, I thought you meant something significant.”

  “It used to be.” I aimed the stud toward the lath gate attached precariously to the shattered adobe wall. “Quumi was once one of the largest settlements in the South, bursting at the seams with caravans and merchants. But the Punja came along and swallowed it, and the caravans began going another way. Soon most of the merchants left. Quumi never recovered.”

  “But this isn’t the Punja.”

  “Close enough.” I waved a hand in a southerly direction. “Half a day that way. Anyway, everyone got so used to the alternate route that Quumi was mostly forgotten. It’s never been what it was.”

  It never would be, either. What once had been a thriving settlement was now a shadow. Lath instead of adobe. Powdered dirt in place of brick. The narrow streets were clogged with windblown drifts of sand, and most of the buildings had surrendered to decades of the scouring desert wind. Quumi was tumbled together like ancient oracle bones, spills of brickwork here and there, drifts of powdery dust, slump-shouldered dwellings with all the edges rubbed off. Quumi’s profile was round and soft: bone-colored, sun-baked adobe chewed through like a loaf full of weevils.

  We approached from the north, paused at the broken city gate to flip the so-called guard a copper, then rode through.

  Del was horrified that we had to pay to enter. “The wall is broken,” she said. “But five paces down the way anyone can walk through… why pay to ride through a dilapidated gate?”

  “Because you just do.” I thought it answer enough. Anyone who knew what Quumi had been ignored its disrepair. It was a game everyone played.

  Through the broken gate into the city itself: the stud scuffed across scoured hardpack, rattling pebbles, and into the labyrinth. Quumi was a warren of tumbled buildings, but I knew my way around. I headed straight for Cantina Row.

  “It’s sort of—gray,” Del observed, as we passed into the sand-choked narrow street.

  “We’re at the edge of the Punja.”

  “But even the sky is gray.”

  “That’s dust,” I told her. “Punja dust mixed with dirt. It’s very fine, like powder… if you breathe, it blows. See?” I pointed at the powdery dust rising from the stud’s hoofprints.

  “It looks like ash,” she said. “Like a fire cairn gone to ash… or a funeral pyre.”

  The sun-bleached, wind-tattered awnings drooping from flimsy lattices and framing poles above deep-cut windows and doors lent but a trace of tired color to the overall gray-beige of the city. They fluttered faintly in a halfhearted breeze. Sunlight striped pale walls, making blocky, patched patterns against lopsided brickwork. With the hand-smoothed outer coating of adobe scoured away, drifted tufts of long-dead grass were exposed. The stud tried to grab a mouthful on the way by.

  “So long as we can find a horse—and a bath—I don’t care what it looks like.”

  “Does this place have water?”

  “Yes. But we’ll have to pay for it.”

  “We already paid at the gate.”

  “That was the entry toll. There’s also a water toll in Quumi. It’s how the place survives.”

  “But—to charge for water! What if you have no coin?”

  The stud tangled a hoof in a fallen awning, stumbling and snorting. Sun-rotted cloth tore, freeing him. I dragged his head up. “You make shift where you can.”

  “It is abysmal,” she declared.

  “Undoubtedly,” I agreed, looking ahead to my favorite cantina.

  Del figured it out as soon as I halted the stud. The building was much like the others: the outer shell of the adobe egg had cracked, baring the yolk of lopsided bricks. A bleached, patched orange-brown awning dangled from the sole remaining pole, obscuring most of the doorway. The aroma of wine, aqivi, and other liquors drifted into the street.

  She frowned, reining in. “What are we doing here?”

  “I know the owner.”

  “He or she?”

  “He, of course. This is the South.” I waited. “Are you getting off? Or do I have to climb down the hard way?”

  “Once you explain just why we have to stop first at a cantina, before buying water or a horse.”

  “There is a room for rent.”

  “How long are we staying?”

  “Overnight, at least. I want a bath, a good meal, a bed. You may join me, if you like.” I thought it only polite to extend an invitation; Del hates to be taken for granted.

  She slid off the stud. “I thought you wanted to buy a horse.”

  “First a drink. And a bath. Then food. Then a bed. In the morning comes the horse.” I kicked free of the stirrup and hoisted my fragile knee across the saddle. “What I want most to do is sit quietly for a while in the shade, out of the sun, musing contentedly over aqivi—or wine, if there’s no aqivi—and then I’ll tend to the rest.”

  Del smiled as I somewhat gingerly allowed the street to take my weight. Everything I owned ached. “Go in,” she said kindly as I bit my lip on an oath. “I will see to the stud.”

  I wasn’t about to remonstrate, even if her behavior was out of the ordinary. Usually she argues against stops at cantinas. “Around there.” I flopped a hand in the proper direction. “It isn’t much of a stable, but there’s shade and water.”

  Del took the reins. “Will I have to pay for it?”

  “I told you: I know the owner.” I paused. “He only charges me half.”

  “Half,” Del muttered, and led the stud around the corner.

  When she came back, I was sitting on a rickety three-legged stool in the rickety cantina, slumped forward over the rickety table with my chin in blue-nailed hand, elbow planted
so as to prop me up. In my other hand was a bone-beige, unglazed clay cup of aqivi, mostly drunk. Altogether I was feeling rather rickety myself, in a numb, groggy, twitchy sort of way.

  There was no one else in the cantina. Del, fighting her way through tattered awning, stopped short upon seeing me—and no one else—and stared musingly around the room.

  “Well,” she said finally, “I knew you needed a bath, but maybe I’ve just gotten used to you and it’s worse than I thought.”

  “You know,” I opined, “you’re not particularly good at that.”

  Pale brows arched. “Good at what?”

  “Making up jokes.” I hoisted the clay up to my mouth, swallowed more aqivi, set it down again. “But then, that’s never been a quality I looked for in a woman.”

  Pale brows came back down. And knitted. “How much have you had?” She moved carefully through a thicket of rickety stools and tables. “I haven’t been gone that long.”

  I considered it. “Long enough,” I told her eventually. “Long enough for me to find out Akbar’s dead.”

  She paused at my—our?—table. “Akbar was your friend the owner?”

  “Yes.” I drank more aqivi.

  “I’m sorry,” she said inadequately.

  “Yes.” The cup was empty. I put it down, picked up the ceramic jug—the lip was chipped and cracked—and splashed liquor in the general vicinity of the cup. The pungent tang of very young aqivi filled my nose. “Have some aqivi, bascha.”

  She glanced around. “Water will be fine… is there anyone here?”

  “Water costs three coppers a cup. Aqivi’s cheaper.”

  “I don’t like aqivi.” Still she looked around, peering into the gloom. “Are we alone here?”

  “Akbar’s cousin is somewhere in back.” I waved a hand.

  “Is he that borjuni who charged me ten coppers to stable the stud, then five more for water?”

  “I told you aqivi’s cheaper.”

  “You can hardly give aqivi to a horse.” She hooked a stool with a foot and dragged it out. “Of course, with his temperament, you might as well.” She eyed my jug. “Are you going to drink all of that?”

  “Unless you want to help me.”