Del assessed me a moment. “Are you all right?”
“I’m tired,” I told her. “Tired of finding out my friends are dying. Wondering if I’m next.”
A brief smile curved her mouth, then died away. “I’m sorry your friend is dead. But I think you’re in no danger.”
“Oh? Why not? My line of work is rather risky, upon occasion.”
She picked at the splintered table with a fingernail cut short for bladework. “Because you are much like your horse: too stubborn to give up.”
“Right now I’m not stubborn. Just a little drunk.” I swallowed more aqivi. “You’ll say I should have eaten first, and be right. You’ll say I should quit now, and be right. You’ll say I’ll feel better in the morning after a good night’s sleep, and be right.” I stared balefully at her over the thumb-printed rim of the clay cup. “Is there anything you’re ever wrong about?”
Del stopped picking splinters. “I was wrong about offering your services to Staal-Ysta.”
I brightened. “So you were.”
“And wrong about you, period.” She eyed the cup darkly, but said nothing about aqivi souring my temper. Of course, she didn’t have to. “When we first met, I disliked you intensely. And you deserved it. You were everything I thought you were. A typical Southron male.” Her mouth quirked. “But you improved with time. You’re much more bearable now.”
“Thank you.”
“Mmm.” She glanced around again. “If Akbar’s cousin does not arrive very soon, I’m going to help myself to the water. For free.”
She wouldn’t. She’d leave the money. “Here.” I held out the cup. “It’ll wet your throat.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Have you ever had it?”
“I tried it once.”
“A whole cup? Or just a swallow?”
“One swallow was enough.”
“You didn’t like me either, at first. You just said so.”
Del sighed, scratching wearily at a shoulder. “Sit here and drink, if you like… I think I will gather the botas and fill them.”
I waved a hand. “There’s a big well in the market square. That way. They’ll charge you.”
“Three coppers a cup?” Del rose, kicking back her stool. “And how much for a bota?”
I thought about it. “Don’t know. Prices fluctuate. Depends on how good you are at dickering.” I eyed her: tall, lean, lovely. And incredibly lethal. “If you went about it right, you could probably save yourself a few coppers.”
“Probably,” she said dryly. “But I don’t think submerging my dignity for a few coppers’ worth of discount is a fair exchange.”
I filled my mouth with aqivi as Del walked out of the cantina.
Because I had no answer.
Sundown. And no candles, lamps, or torches because you had to pay for them. At the moment, I saw no need; orange-pink-purple sunset tinged the lath-screened cantina pale violet.
The hand was on my shoulder. “Come on,” she said calmly. “Time you were in bed.”
I looked blearily up from my plate of inedible mush masquerading as mutton stew. “Can I finish my dinner first?”
“I think it would finish you.” The hand changed shoulders from left to right. Now each resided in a strong, unfeminine grasp that cut through burnous, underrobe, harness straps, and flesh to the sore muscles beneath. It felt wonderful. “You can eat more in the morning, once you have killed the dog.”
A bizarre image. “What dog?”
“The one biting you. Or are you biting it?”
Oh. Now I understood. “—gods, bascha—don’t stop—”
“This?” She kneaded more firmly. “You are tight as wire.”
“—hoolies… that feels good—”
“I have left our things in the hideously expensive room that will probably fall down on our heads before sunrise. The bedding is ready. Shall we put you in it?”
“Right now I just want to sit here while you do that.”
Her right hand moved to my neck. Cool fingers squeezed sore tendons, biting through rigidity. “Up,” she said only.
I stood up unsteadily, felt her slip beneath an arm, let her take the weight my knee didn’t want to carry. “I’m terribly drunk, bascha. Incredibly, horrifically drunk.”
“I know that. Here. This way… please don’t fall down. Your dead weight would be more substantial than most.”
“Dead weight…” I echoed. “Like Akbar.”
Del didn’t say another word. She just walked me into the tiny little, hideously expensive room that probably would fall down on our heads before sunrise, and helped lever me down onto bedding. It smelled of horse and sweat and human flesh in dire need of a bath.
I didn’t lie down. I hitched myself up against the wall and stared blearily through the violet gloom of sunset to the pale-haired Northern woman who knelt before me. In silence I unhooked awkwardly from harness straps, then set aside the sheathed sword.
“He was a good friend,” I told her. “When I left the Salset, Quumi was one of the first places I came. I was sixteen years old, with hands and feet too big for the rest of me. I’d been a chula for all of my life. I didn’t know how to be free.”
Del said nothing.
“I didn’t even know how to talk to people. Oh, I knew the language—I mean, I didn’t know how to speak to them. I’d been taught to say nothing, and answer only if an answer was required.” I grimaced. “I went into four cantinas before this one, hoping to find some kind of work so I could buy a meal… in all four I just stood there inside the door, saying nothing, hoping someone would speak to me, because I couldn’t speak first. If I did, I’d be beaten…” I shifted against the wall. “No one said anything to me. Oh, they talked about me—insults, jokes, you know—but no one spoke to me. So I couldn’t ask for work. Couldn’t ask for food.”
Del’s face was taut.
“So when I came here to this cantina, the fifth, I expected much the same. Without understanding why. And I got it. Until Akbar spoke to me.” I smiled a little, recalling. “He asked me if I wanted a drink. I thought he meant water: I nodded yes. Instead, he gave me aqivi.”
Del’s eyes were strangely bright.
“I’d never had it before. Only water. But I was thirsty. And free to drink what I wanted. So I drank it all. As fast as I could.” I rubbed a hand across tired, grit-scored eyes. “I was drunk almost immediately. Akbar saw it, but instead of throwing me out into the street, he took me to a room. He let me sleep it off.” I flopped a hand on the bedding. “This room.”
Del swallowed tightly.
“Every time I came here, he put me up. At half price. And gave me all the aqivi I wanted.” I sighed, peering up at the woven lath roof trailing strips of bark and dried desert grass. Through the cracks and gaps I could see the purpling night. “One time I came, he said he had a horse. A stallion. No one could ride him, he said. He tried to kill everyone who climbed into the saddle. No one wanted to buy him. Akbar didn’t want to feed a horse who couldn’t be used. So he said if I wanted him, I could have him.” I smiled lopsidedly. “He said I was hard-headed enough to beat the flea-bitten, jug-headed, lop-eared Punja-mite of a horse at his own game.”
Silence.
“He threw me off four times. Then he gave in. I guess he decided anyone stupid enough to keep trying wasn’t worth the effort.”
Del smiled. Her voice was husky. “But he still makes the effort. Occasionally.”
“And sometimes he even wins. Except I climb back on again.” I sighed and scrubbed muzzily at a stubbled, grimy face. “I’m tired. I’m drunk. I need to sleep… but I don’t think I can.”
“Lie down,” she said quietly.
“Bascha—”
“Facedown,” she said, cutting off an unnecessary protestation of too much aqivi for bedsport. Which was just as well; who wants to admit such a thing? “You’re tight as wire, Tiger. And much too close to snapping. Let’s see if I can loosen the tension a little.”<
br />
Facedown, as ordered. Head resting on interlaced hands. It felt good just to be still.
Even better when she touched me.
Neck. Shoulders. Shoulder blades. The layers of rigid muscle knotted much too tight for comfort. Then up and down the spine, pressing and popping carefully, thumbing the tension away. At the bottom of the spine, deep in the small of the back. Then up again to the neck, tucking just behind the ears.
She laughed as I growled contentment, murmuring incoherent thanks.
But the laughter died. So did the vigor of her efforts. She smoothed the wavy brown hair left too long on the back of my neck. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It is never easy to lose those who are special to you.”
Especially when there are so very few to start with. Sula. Akbar. My shodo, twelve years dead. Even Singlestroke, a sword, who had nonetheless been very special.
All dead. Even the sword.
The only one left was Del.
Eighteen
I awoke to familiar, repeated noise: the metallic, ringing scrape of whetstone against blade. I smelled oil, stone, steel.
And Del.
I rolled over, cursing tangled bedding, and peered squinty-eyed through morning. Not dawn; beyond it. The sun was well and truly up, striking slatted patterns of mote-fogged light and shadow through the lath roof.
Which reminded me of something. “It’s still up,” I observed. “The roof.”
Del didn’t look. “Yes,” she agreed tightly, working the whetstone in intense concentration.
Combed damp hair was loose on her shoulders. The creamy tunic beneath was water-marked, but drying. “You bathed,” I observed.
“Yes.” Scrape. Slide. Ring. Hiss. “Earlier, I went to the bathhouse.”
“Akbar would bring—” I broke it off abruptly. Del flicked a glance at me, then returned her attention to her work. “I feel better,” I told her, stripping off bedding. “You worked all the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. Of course, there’s still my head…” I let it go. She wasn’t listening. “What’s the matter?”
Scrape. Slide. Hiss. “Nothing.”
“It’s not ‘nothing.’ What is it?”
She shook her head.
“If it’s because I got drunk yesterday—”
“No.”
I thought it over. “Something I said? I mean, when I passed out… ?”
“You didn’t pass out. You just went to sleep. I know the difference. And, no, it’s nothing you said; you talked, yes, but I could understand none of it, so I can’t accuse you of impropriety.”
Progress. I’d gotten more than a shrug or a single sentence. “Then what’s bothering you?”
She stopped working the steel. Displayed the blade. “There.”
I looked. In morning light, it glinted. Salmon-silver steel, warded by tangled runes indecipherable to anyone but Del. “Bascha—”
“There,” she repeated. And put her fingertip on the blade, profaning it with skin oil, but I knew she’d wipe it clean.
I saw it then. A smudge. A blemish. A patch of darkness. “I don’t understand—”
“I knocked your sword from your grasp with mine,” she said evenly. “I struck aside your infested blade with my jivatma. And this is the result.”
Infested. Interesting term.
Appropriate, too.
I pursed lips, then chewed one. “It could be something else.”
“No.” She began to work the steel again. “No, it is not ‘something else.’ It is Chosa Dei’s handiwork. He has tainted my jivatma.”
“You don’t know—”
“I know.” Her eyes were icy as she glared at me over the blade. “Do you think I can’t tell? Look at your fingernails, Tiger. Look at your hands and arms. Then tell me again it could be ‘something else.’”
I looked, as she suggested. My nails had darkened from blue to black. Not Chosa Dei’s black, though he had caused it, but the blackening of deep bruising. Of nails peeling up from fingers, readying to fall off. The hairless flesh of hands and forearms was still scaly and flaky. Still an odd corpse-white.
I shivered, then sat up rigidly, throwing aside bedding. Squinted at the light. The headache was not so bad after all… but I needed to bite the dog back. At least on the end of his nose. “I don’t know what to tell you. How long have you been working the whetstone?”
“Long enough to know it isn’t doing any good.” She gazed at me in despair. “Tiger—my blooding-blade—”
“I know.” I did. More than she believed. “Bascha, I don’t know what to tell you. Can a spell take it off? Maybe a song?”
Mutely, she shook her head. Damp hair fell over her shoulders. The fine locks next to her face were mostly dry. Such pale, lustrous silk… and so alien to the South.
I cleared my throat. “You can’t be certain it won’t go of its own accord.”
“I have told you. Chosa Dei wants this sword. He has always wanted this sword. It is the key to his power. If he had it—if he tapped into this sword—he would have all the power he needs to overcome you and break free. Do you see?”
I saw. I also felt. I knew very well why Chosa Dei wanted—and needed—Boreal.
“Then we had best be on our way.” I got up carefully, favoring my knee, and limped with slightly more steadiness into the common room. “I need a cup to start the day, and a bath—” I stopped and turned back. “Can you wait long enough for me to take a bath and get a shave?”
Del had risen also. She stood in the doorway, one hand holding aside the thin gauze curtain. The other held her sword. “For that,” she said gravely, “I will wait through the day and all of the night.”
“Thank you very much,” I said sourly. “I don’t think it will take me that long.”
“Perhaps not,” she agreed politely. “But you are very dirty.”
So I was. But I didn’t bother to fashion a properly biting retort. If Del could tease me, however lamely, about needing a bath, she wasn’t as upset as I feared.
Then again, maybe it was just that I was that filthy.
Bath first. Then the aqivi.
The dog would have to wait.
The price for bath and shave was, of course, exorbitant, like everything else in Quumi. But worth it, which is why they can ask for the moon. Even though it nearly emptied my coin-pouch, I felt very much the new man as I walked out into the street again, stroking freshly shaved jaw approvingly, and resettled the fit of the harness. Now all I needed was a cup, and I’d be ready to go.
Except for one thing.
She sat atop a dark bay mare, holding the stud’s reins. She wore a white burnous; pale hair was braided back. In harness. With pouches loaded and attached to respective saddles.
I nearly gaped. “A mare?”
Del shrugged. “It was all there was.”
“In all of Quumi, there are no geldings for sale?”
“None. I asked. I looked.”
“Did you explain about the stud?”
“The stud’s behavior is no concern of mine. That is for you to control.” She smiled sweetly. “Surely you understand how a male might learn to curb his appetites.”
“Hoolies, bascha—”
“She’s not in season.”
I swore. “Are you sure?”
Del glared. “Do you see him mounting her?”
A point. “But if she comes in, he’ll lose his mind.”
“Had he one to lose.” She shifted in the saddle. “Will you come along?”
I snatched the stud’s reins. “Come along where? Do you even know where we’re going?”
She frowned. “You said something about Julah.”
“Yes. Julah. Aladar’s daughter’s domain.”
“But she’s in Iskandar. At least, she was. We can stay ahead of her—and out of danger—if we leave soon.”
“I thought you said you’d wait all of the day and all of the night so I could have my bath.”
“You’ve had it. I can tell. My no
se can tell.” Del grinned briefly as I scowled. “Shall we go?”
I flipped reins over the stud’s neck and climbed aboard. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“If finding Shaka Obre will rid my sword of Chosa Dei’s taint, I would prefer to do it today rather than tomorrow.”
“You don’t even know where he is.”
“Neither do you.” She paused. “Do you?”
I aimed the stud toward the southern gate, hidden by slumping, sloppy gray-beige buildings, and flapped a hand. “Somewhere out there.”
Del made a sound of derision. “That’s promising.”
“Then suppose you lead.”
In grave silence, she reined her bay mare around in front of the stud. Who noticed. As was intended. “Like so?” Del asked innocently.
“Never mind,” I muttered.
The stud was less than happy when I made him take the lead once again. I had a brief but firm discussion with him, and convinced him to let me be the guide.
I didn’t think we could go all the way to Julah walking backward.
Around midday, we stopped. In silence we stared grimly at the expanse of crystal-flecked desert before us. The border was subtle, but clearly defined. This side, we were safe. Cross it, and we were at risk.
But we’d been at risk before.
Del’s mare bobbed her head. The stud answered with a rumbling, deep-chested nicker that threatened to rise to a squeal. I kicked him high on the shoulder. “She’s not interested,” I said.
Del merely smiled. Then lifted her chin toward the Punja. “How many days to Julah?”
“Depends on the Punja.”
“I know that. How many did it take us before?”
“I don’t know. Who can remember back that far?” I slapped the stud’s thick neck and reined him aside. “Besides, we met with a few delays, remember? Like the Hanjii and their Sun Sacrifice… that ate up a few days. Recovery even more.”
“And Elamain,” Del recalled. Naturally, she would. “We rescued Elamain’s caravan from borjuni. Then we took her to that tanzeer—”
“Hashi.”
“—who wanted to make you into a eunuch.” Del glanced sidelong at me. “I remember that.”
So did certain parts of me. “Then we stopped in Rusali—”
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