“—and met Alric and Lena and the girls.” Del paused. “Only two, then. But she was expecting what became the third—”
“—and the last time we saw them—all of four days ago—she was expecting another child.”
Del’s mouth pulled sideways. “I hope this one’s a boy. Maybe then she can rest.”
“Seems to me Lena didn’t much mind having Alric’s babies.” I prodded the stud’s questing nose with a sandaled toe. “Don’t even think about it.”
“And there was Theron,” Del recalled.
Whom I had killed in the circle.
“And Jamail,” I countered.
Del’s face tautened. “And Jamail,” she echoed. Then she looked at me. “Are you really this jhihadi?”
“How in hoolies should I know?”
She stared at me. “But you said Jamail pointed at you. You swore on your jivatma.”
“He did. I did. I’m not making it up.”
“Then maybe…” She frowned. “No. It can’t be. It is impossible.”
“What? That I might be a messiah?” I grinned. “I can’t think of a single man better suited to the job.”
Her look was withering.
“All right. I know it all sounds silly. But it’s true, Del—he really did point at me.”
“So when are you going to change the sand to grass?”
I snickered. “As if I could.”
“The jhihadi supposedly can.”
“Maybe he can.”
“And you did—” Del stopped short. Her face went red, then white. She turned to stare wide-eyed at me. Her expression was particularly unnerving.
“What?” I asked sharply. “What?”
She swallowed tightly. Her voice was mostly a whisper. “You changed the sand to glass.”
Del and I spent several moments staring at one another, trying to deal with new thoughts and implications. Then I managed a laugh. It wasn’t my usual one, but enough to get by with. “Hoolies, bascha—wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out this desert prophet got the word wrong?”
Even her lips were white. “What do you mean?”
“That this jhihadi won’t restore the South to lushness, but change it instead to glass.”
“But…” Del frowned. “What good would glass be?”
“It means everyone can afford to put it in their windows.” I grinned. “Glass, grass—who can say? I think it’s all a bunch of nonsense.”
“But—” She chewed a lip, then gave it up, sighing. “I think it would indeed be a foolish thing if you were the man.”
It stung. “Why?”
She eyed me thoughtfully. “Because you are a sword-dancer. Why should you be more?”
“You don’t think I’m good enough? You don’t think I could do it?”
“Be a messiah? No.”
“Why not?”
“You lack a certain amount of delicacy. Diplomacy.” She smiled. “Your idea of dispensing wisdom is to invite someone into a circle.”
“The sword is a very good dispenser of wisdom.”
“But jhihadis aren’t sword-dancers.”
“How do you know? You didn’t even know what one was until I explained it to you.”
“Because—I just know.”
“Not good enough.” I whopped the stud between the ears. “Not now, flea-brain… no, bascha, really—I want an answer.”
She shrugged. “You’re just—you. You have your good points. A few here and there, tucked in behind all the bluster. But a jhihadi? No. Jhihadis are special, Tiger.” She watched me pop the stud again as he tried to sidle into the mare. “Jhihadis don’t have trouble dealing with horses.”
“How do you know? Iskandar himself got kicked in the head, remember?”
“And died ten days later, or so you told me.” Del eyed me speculatively. “How many days ago was it that you got kicked in the head?”
“See? That’s proof—I got kicked, too.”
“No,” Del countered. “Real proof would be if you died because of it.”
I scowled. “What kind of jhihadi would I be if I died before I could do anything?”
“Well, if you really were supposed to change the sand to glass, rather than grass…” Del’s expression was guileless. “How many days again?”
I kneed the stud into motion. “Never mind that. Let’s just go.”
“Four?” Del fell in behind. “That leaves six days to go.”
“And I suppose you’re going to count!”
Her tone was exquisitely tranquil. “I like to be prepared.”
Hoolies. What a woman.
Depending on your perspective.
Nineteen
“It makes my skin hurt,” Del said.
Eventually, I roused. “What?”
We rode mostly abreast. She glanced across at me. “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“Were you asleep?”
“No. Just thinking.”
“Ah.” She nodded sagely. “Your version of deep thought resembles sleep in others. Forgive me.”
We were still on horseback. Still riding south out of Quumi. It was mid- to late afternoon. We’d eaten on the move but an hour or so before, and I’d washed mine down with wine. The motion of the stud, walking monotonously onward, combined with food, wine, and the warmth of the day—not to mention boredom—had proved overwhelming.
Which meant I had been asleep, if only briefly; actually, it was more like a momentary nap caught between one blink and the next. When you spend as much time as I do atop the back of a horse, you learn to sleep however—and whenever—you can.
But you don’t admit it to Del.
I scowled. “What makes your skin hurt?”
“The South. The Sun. The Punja.” Del twitched her sword-weighted shoulders. “I remember what it was like, before. When the sun was so bad, and I got so sick.” She rubbed a cupped hand down one burnous-sleeved arm. “I remember very clearly.”
So did I. Del had nearly died. So, for that matter, had I, but the sun hadn’t been quite so ruthless to my copper-hued Southron hide. Oh, it had tried its hardest to burn me to bits, but I’d survived. Del very nearly hadn’t.
“Well, we don’t have to worry about it this time,” I observed comfortably.
She arched one brow. “Why not? We could come across the Hanjii again, could we not? And they could turn us loose once again in the desert with no mounts or water.”
Comfort evaporated. I grunted disagreement. “More likely this time we’d wind up in the cookpot.”
“Oh. I’d forgotten that.” Del, squinting, peered across the sand. “It all looks exactly the same.”
“It’s hot. Dry. Sandy.” I nodded. “Pretty much the same.”
“But we’re not.” She glanced sidelong at me. “We’re both a little more experienced than the last time.”
I knew what that meant. “And older?” I showed her my teeth in an insincere grin. “Believe me, bascha, now that we’re back where it’s warm, I feel a whole lot younger.”
Her assessive expression very plainly suggested I didn’t look younger. The problem was, I couldn’t tell how much of it was part of the gibing, and how much was unfeigned.
“Thirty-six is not so old,” I growled.
Del’s smile was too sanguine, and therefore suspect. “Not if you’re thirty-seven.”
“To you, maybe, it’s old—you’re not long out of infancy. But to me—”
“In sword-dancer years, it is.” She had dropped the bantering. “You are of an age now that many never see, if they live their lives in the circle.” Her tone was very solemn. “You should seriously consider becoming an an-kaidin, a—” she frowned, breaking off. “What is the Southron word?”
“Shodo,” I said sourly. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
“You have been a professional for many years. You have learned from the best. Even on Staal-Ysta, they honored your skill—”
“No, they didn’t. They just wa
nted another body.” I reined the stud away from the mare. “I’m not made for that, Del. Being a shodo takes a lot more patience than I have.”
“I think if you had a student, you would find patience in abundance. If you knew that what you taught the ishtoya could mean survival or death, you would come to know how much you had to offer.”
“Nothing,” I said grimly. “What kind of shodo would I make with Chosa Dei in my sword?”
“After it was discharged—”
“No, bascha. I’m a sword-dancer. I just do it, I don’t teach it.”
“You have taught me,” she said. “You have taught me very much.”
“I nearly killed you, too. What did you learn from that?”
“That you are a man with immense strength of will.”
I stared. “You’re serious!”
“Of course I am.”
“Bascha, I nearly killed you. Once on Staal-Ysta, and once at the oasis, after I slaughtered all the borjuni.”
“But each time you held back.” She shrugged. “On Staal-Ysta, you denied a newly awakened jivatma, freshly keyed and wild for the taste of blood, the chance to make a first kill. At the oasis, you denied Chosa Dei. A weaker man with a lesser will would have lost himself on either count. And I would no longer live.”
“Yes, well…” I shrugged uncomfortably. “That doesn’t make me a shodo.”
“I do not insist,” she said quietly. “I only point out you have another choice.”
Something pinched my belly from the inside. “Or is it that you’ve accomplished your goal of killing Ajani, and now you’re looking ahead to a different way of life?” And different people in it?
Del’s mouth tightened. “We spoke of this before. There is nothing else for me. I am exiled from the North, and I could never be a shodo here. Who would come to a woman for teaching?”
I shrugged. “Other women might.”
Blue eyes were smoky. “How many Southron men would allow their women that freedom?”
“Maybe it would be women who had no men to placate.”
Del made a sound of derision. “There are no women in the South willing to risk losing a man, or the chance of winning a man’s interest, by apprenticing to me.”
No. Probably not.
“Which leaves us,” I said, “right where we started out. Why don’t we just accept what we are, and not worry about the future?”
Del stared into the distance.
I waited. “Well?”
“There.” She pointed. “Is that something moving?”
I followed her finger and saw what she meant. A dark blotch against the horizon. “I don’t—wait. Yes, I think you’re right…” I stood up in my stirrups, peering over the stud’s ears. “It looks like a person.”
“On foot,” Del declared. “Who in his right mind would walk through the Punja?”
“We did,” I said. “Of course, you were sandsick, so you weren’t in your right mind—”
“Never mind that,” she snapped. “Let’s not waste any more time talking about it. He—or she—might not have any to spare.”
Del sent her mare loping across the desert, kicking dust into the air. The stud snorted loudly, then went after her.
There was nothing better to do. So I let him go.
It turned out to be a he, not a she. And Del had been right: he didn’t have any time to spare. By the time I reached him, Del was off her mare and kneeling beside the man, helping him suck down water from one of her botas.
She glanced at me over one dusty, burnous-clad shoulder. She said nothing; she didn’t have to. Del has a considerable vocabulary in simple body motions, let alone expressions. All in all I thought censure uncalled for—I’d gotten there not long after she had, if without her haste—and scowled back at her to tell her the silent reprimand was unappreciated.
Whether she cared was entirely up to her.
The man wore a plain burnous of tattered, saffron-hued gauze, and a matching underrobe. No sword. He was perhaps in his early twenties, but dust caked his face, so it was hard to tell. Sweat—and maybe tears?—had formed disfiguring runnels.
Now, as he sucked at the bota with eyes closed in the pure physical bliss of a great need fulfilled, water spilled down his chin. It splashed onto his grimy, threadbare burnous, drying quickly; before Del could say a word, he thrust a hand up to cup his chin and catch the runaway water.
A Southroner born and bred in habits as well as color.
The desperate thirst initially slaked, he opened his eyes for the first time and peered over the bota at Del. Brown eyes dilated as he acknowledged several things, among them her gender.
He sat bolt upright. Then saw me beyond her. He stared again at her, disbelievingly. And back again to me. He husked a single word: “Afreet?”
I snickered. Del glanced over her shoulder at me, frowned bafflement at my amusement, then turned back. That she didn’t understand the tongue was clear; she’d have said something, otherwise. But then I hadn’t expected her to. The language he spoke was an archaic Desert dialect, unknown to anyone outside the Punja. I hadn’t heard it for years.
I briefly debated the merits of lying. It would be amusing to tell him she was a Southron spirit, but I decided against it. The poor man was dry as bone, nearly delirious; the last thing he needed was me convincing him he was dead—or near death—by agreeing with him.
“No,” I told him. “Northerner.”
He sat very still, staring at her, drinking in Del as if she were sweeter than bota water.
Which amused me briefly, until I thought about how that amusement could be considered an insult of sorts. Del was worth staring at. Del was worth dreaming about. Del was even worth looking upon as salvation: she had given him water.
I grinned. “You’ve impressed him.”
Del hitched a self-conscious shoulder; she’s never been one for trading on her looks, or talking much about them. Down South, for the most part, those looks got her in trouble, because too many Southron men wanted a piece of her for themselves.
“More?” she asked briefly, offering the bota again.
He took it by rote, still staring. And drank by rote, since the first thirst had been satisfied; now he drank for pleasure instead of need.
And, I suspected, because her actions suggested it.
The stud bent his neck, trying to reach the mare Del had left groundtied a pace or two away. He snorted gustily, then rumbled deep in his chest. Tail lifted. The upper lip curled, displaying massive teeth—and his interest in getting to know the mare better.
The last thing I needed—the last thing anyone needed—was the stud developing an attachment to Del’s mare. And since a stallion outweighs a man by a considerable amount, it takes firm methods in dissuading him of such interest. Before someone got hurt.
I punched him in the nose.
Bridle brasses clanked as the head shot skyward. I took a tight grip on the reins, managed to retain them, managed to retain him—and avoided placing sandaled feet beneath the stomping hooves.
Del, of course, cast me a disapproving glance across one shoulder. But she wasn’t on the end of an uncut horse taking decided interest in a mare; her mare, I might add. If she’d bought a gelding in Quumi, we’d all be a lot better off.
Meanwhile, the bay mare nickered coy invitation.
Also meanwhile, the young man on the ground was getting up from it. At least, partway: he knelt, then placed one spread-fingered hand over his heart, and bowed. All the while gabbling something in a dialect even I didn’t know.
And then he stopped gabbling, stopped kneeling; stood up. He pointed westerly. “Caravan,” he declared, switching back to deep-Punja Desert.
I squinted. “How far?”
He told me.
I translated for Del, who frowned bafflement. Then I invited him to be more eloquent.
He was. When finished, I scratched at brown hair and muttered a halfhearted curse.
“What?” Del asked.
“They were bound for Iskandar,” I told her. “Him and a few others. They hired a couple of guides to see them across the Punja. These so-called guides brought them out here, and left them.”
“Left them,” she echoed.
I waved a hand. “Out there a ways. They didn’t hurt anyone. Just brought them out here, took all their coin and water, and left.” I shrugged. “Why waste time on killing when the Punja will do it for you?”
Del’s eyes narrowed. “Had he no mount?”
“Danjac. He was thrown, and the danjac deserted.” I grinned. “They do that a lot.”
Del looked at the young man. “So, he came looking for help.”
“He figured out pretty quickly they’d been led a merry dance. Off known tracks, far from any markers…” I shrugged. “He just wanted to find some help, someone who knew the way to a settlement, or an oasis. He’s hoping to trade for a mount and botas.” Again, I shrugged. “Meanwhile, the others are with the wagons.”
Del glanced skyward, squinting against the glare. “No water,” she murmured thoughtfully. Then glanced assessively back at the young man, scrutinizing him.
I knew what was coming.
I also knew not to protest; she wasn’t really wrong. I sighed gustily, putting up a forestalling hand. “I know. I know. You want to go out there. You want to take him back to his caravan, then lead them all to Quumi.”
“It’s the closest settlement.”
“So it is.” I stared into the west. “Might as well, I suppose. I mean, the Salset picked us up out of the desert and saw to it we recovered.”
“Don’t sound so ungrateful.”
“I’m not ungrateful. Just thinking about how much time this will eat up. And what we may find once we get back to Quumi.”
Del frowned. “What?”
“Sword-dancers,” I answered. “And, for all that, religious fools like this one.”
Eyes widened. “Why do you call him a religious fool? Just because he believes in something you do not—”
I cut her off, forestalling a lengthy discussion on the merits of religion. “He is a fool,” I declared, “and I have every right in the world to say so.”
She bristled. “Why? What gives you the right—”
“Because any man who worships me has got to be a fool.”
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