Sword-Breaker

by Jennifer Roberson

  Two paces into the sliver, I turned to face Del. “All right, what do you think—”

  “A test,” she said calmly, jerking closed the fraying curtain to lend us tissue-fine privacy.

  “Test? What kind of test? What are you talking about?”

  “Sit down, Tiger.”

  I was getting sick and tired of being told to sit down. I displayed teeth, giving her the full benefit of my green-eyed sandtiger’s glare. “Make me.”

  She blinked. “Make you?”

  “You heard me.”

  She thought it over. Then snapped the sword sideways, out of the way; rotated on one hip; caught me flush very high on the right thigh with one well-placed foot.

  It wasn’t what I was expecting. The day before I’d have gone down. But now I took the foot, the power, let it carry on through as I rolled my hip to the right to channel the blow past, then snapped back into position.

  Del’s smile died.

  I waggled beckoning fingers. “Care to try again?”

  She narrowed suddenly wary eyes. “Your knee…”

  I shrugged. “Good as ever.”

  “I thought it would buckle… I planned for it to buckle.”

  “Dirty trick, bascha.”

  “No dirtier than the trick you pulled this morning, disappearing for so long.” The sword glimmered between us; once more the tip teased my belly. “Why do you think I did this?”

  “I have no idea why you did ‘this.’ Idiocy, maybe?”

  Her turn to show teeth, but she wasn’t smiling. “You’re different. Different, Tiger! First you say little of what the sandcasting told you, as if it doesn’t concern me, and then you disappear with nothing but that sword. Why do you think I did this?”

  “A test, you said. But of what, I don’t know—what do you expect from me?”

  Del’s face was taut and pinched. “I tell myself it is the strain, the constant knowledge of Chosa Dei’s presence… and that you are as you are because you fight so hard to win. And sometimes I think you are winning… other times, I don’t know.”

  “So you decided to play drunk to see what I would do?”

  “I did not ‘play drunk’—I merely let you believe what you wanted to believe: that a woman drinking so much aqivi would have to be drunk. And then you would become careless, thinking me fair game.” Del’s chin rose. “A test, Tiger: if you were Chosa Dei, you would not hesitate to take my sword—or me. He wants both of us.”

  I recalled thinking about hauling her off to bed. Guilt flared briefly, then died away as quickly. What I’d thought wasn’t any different from what any man might consider, looking on a softened, relaxed Delilah. It wasn’t a sign of possessiveness. Just typical maleness.

  Which was not, I thought sourly, adequate grounds for sticking me with a sword.

  I pulled myself back to the matter at hand. “But since I didn’t try to take your sword—or you—I can’t be Chosa Dei. Is that it?”

  Del’s mouth twisted. “It was a way of getting an answer.”

  I pointed. “Why not put her away?”

  Del looked at the jivatma. A crease puckered her brow. Something briefly warped her expression: I recognized despair. “Because—I am afraid.”

  It hurt. “Of me?”

  “Of what you could be.”

  “But I thought we just settled this!”

  Her eyes sought mine, and locked. “Don’t you see? You rode out this morning with no word to me. I don’t ask you to tell me everything—I understand privacy, even for a song… but what was I to think? Last night your future was cast—and you told me I was in it.”

  I managed a small smile, thinking of other women who had grown a little possessive. “Don’t you want to be in my future?”

  “Not if it’s Chosa Dei’s.” She stabbed a hand toward my knee. “And now—this. Your knee is suddenly healed. What am I to think?”

  “And my arms.” I lifted hands, waggled fingers. “New fingernails, too.”

  “Tiger—”

  “Bascha—wait… Del…” I sighed heavily and put up placating hands. “I understand. I think I know how you feel. And believe me, I’m as confused—”

  It cut to the heart of the matter. “Are you Chosa Dei?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Part of me is.” I shrugged. “I won’t lie, Del—you saw what he did to the sword. He left it—part of him did… and put a little in me. But I’m not wholly him. That much I promise, bascha.”

  She was intent. “But part of you is.”

  “Part of me is.”

  Del’s eyes were glazed with something I thought might be tears. But I decided I was mistaken. “Which part of you healed yourself? Which part remade yourself?”

  I drew in a very deep breath. “I tapped him. I used him.”

  “Used him! Him?”

  “I went out there on purpose, summoned him, and used him. I borrowed Chosa’s magic.”

  The sword wavered. “How could you do that?”

  “Painfully.” I grimaced. “I just—tried. There’s a bit of him in me, bascha. I told you. And it gives me certain—strengths. But there’s more of me in me.”

  “You bent him to your will? Chosa?”

  “A little.” I shrugged. “You once said yourself—and not so long ago—that I am a man of immense strength of will.” Del said nothing. Self-conscious, I shrugged defensively. “Well—I thought I’d test that. To see if you were right.”

  Her lips barely moved. “If you had been wrong…”

  “I addressed that. I drew a binding circle.”

  “What?”

  “A binding circle. To keep Chosa trapped.” I shifted weight, uneasy. I thoroughly disliked magic, and using it myself irritated me. It made me what I detested, and I hated admitting it. “Sam—my jivatma isn’t dead, or empty. There’s still that power available, if I remember how to key it; work my way past Chosa’s taint. And I have the means to use it, if I feel like it. If I can.” I scratched a shoulder. “I’m not very good at it. I nearly made myself sick.”

  “Magic does that to you, remember?” Del’s brow puckered. “Then you healed yourself on your own. Remade yourself. Using Chosa’s power.”

  “Some of it. I made it do what I wanted.” I sighed. “I was getting awfully sick of aches and pains.”

  “Why didn’t you try before? You might have saved yourself some trouble.” Eyes glinted briefly. “Saved your knee some pain.”

  “Might have. But before, I didn’t think I could do it. When it first occurred to me…” I shook my head. “It’s not my way to use or depend on magic. It’s a crutch, like religion.”

  Blue eyes narrowed. “What changed your mind?”

  I sighed. “The threefold future.”

  “What?”

  “What could be. Might be. Would be.” I shook my head bleakly. “I never wanted this… none of this nonsense. But Staal-Ysta gave me a lump of iron and forced me to Make it. To blood and key a jivatma—”

  “But not requench in Chosa Dei! No one made you do that!”

  I smiled sadly. “You did, bascha. I’d have lost, otherwise. And Chosa would have had you.”

  She knew it as well as I. Trapped in Dragon Mountain, penned by the hounds of hoolies, Del had stood no chance. He would have taken her sword, and her, then augmented his own growing power to destroy Shaka Obre’s wards.

  Del lowered her blade slightly. Progress. “What is to happen next? What of this threefold future?”

  I shrugged. “Images. I saw death, and life. Beginnings and endings. Bits. Pieces. Fragments. Shattered dreams, and broken jivatmas.”

  “Do we die?”

  “In one future. In another, we both survive. In yet another, one of us dies. In another, the other does.”

  “That’s four,” she said sharply. “Four futures, Tiger. You called it threefold.”

  “Multiple futures,” I clarified. “Only three possibilities for any of them: it could be, it might be, it will be.” I spread hands in futility
, knowing how it sounded. “But each future shifts constantly, altering itself the instant I look at it—even think about it. If you look straight at it, it changes. It’s only if you let it slide away and look at the edges…” Hoolies, it was worse when I tried to explain it! “Anyway, that’s what happened last night, when the hustapha cast the sands.” I smoothed tangled hair on the back of my neck, rubbing away tension. “I saw everything. It moved, everchanging. Squirmed, like a bowl of worms.” I tried to find the words, the ones that would make her see, so she could explain it to me. “I saw everything there was, wasn’t, will be. And you and I smack in the middle.”

  Del’s face was pale. She seemed as overwhelmed as I.

  “I don’t like it!” I snapped. “I don’t like it at all—I’d just as soon not have anything to do with any of this… but what am I to do? I’m stuck with this sword, and it’s stuck with Chosa Dei! Not a whole lot I can do about it, is there? Except feel helpless.” I sighed, backhanding sweat-sticky hair from forehead. “I didn’t want the hustapha to cast the sand in the first place.…”

  Her voice was rusty. “Because you knew what you might see?”

  “I just—didn’t.” I shrugged. “I didn’t have much chance to think about the future when I was a Salset chula. Slaves learn not to think about much at all, except staying alive.” I hitched shoulders again in a half-shrug, disliking the topic. “I’d just as soon find out what my future holds when I’m in the middle of it.”

  Del nodded absently. Then smiled a little, going back to something seemingly inconsequential, because it was a thing she could grasp, banishing helplessness. “Then—we stay together. And nothing I do and say now will alter anything.”

  “Oh, it might. It could. It would.” I spread my hands, laughing feebly in frustration. “Do you see, Delilah? There is no knowing the truth, because the truth is everchanging. The moment one truth becomes another, the old truth becomes a lie.”

  Del wiped away the dampness stippling her upper lip. “I don’t understand you. You’re not the man I knew.”

  I forced a grin. “Don’t you take credit for that? Isn’t it what a woman wants?”

  She spat a Northern curse. “I don’t know what to say. You have twisted me all up.”

  “Me,” I said, with feeling. Then, before she could stop me, I closed my hand on Boreal’s blade. “I am not Chosa Dei. A piece of him is in me, but most of me is me.” I paused. “Could Chosa Dei do this without swallowing her up? Without swallowing you?”

  She gazed down at the hand upon the blade. At flesh-colored forearms, fuzzed with fine, sunbronzed hair, and normal fingernails.

  “I know her name,” I said. “She’s mine, if I want her. If I were Chosa Dei.”

  “And me?” she asked. “Am I yours, if you want me?”

  Slowly, I shook my head. “I’d never make that choice for you. You’ve taught me better than that.”

  A long moment passed. Then, “Let go, Tiger.” When I did, she sheathed the sword.

  I sat down on our bedding, glad that was over. Too much aqivi for wits confused by new and complex truths. “What I want to know is, how did you drink so much aqivi without passing out?”

  Del smiled. “Part of training on Staal-Ysta.”

  “Training. In drinking?”

  She knelt, crossed legs, leaned against the wall. “It is believed liquor makes sword-dancers careless; I have told you that often.”

  “Yes. Very often. Go on.”

  “Therefore it is a lesson we must learn before we risk ourselves.”

  “What?”

  “We are made to drink through the night. Then again through the next day.”

  “All night—and all day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hoolies, you must have been sick!”

  “That is the point.”

  “To make you sick?”

  “To make us so sick we have no desire to drink again.”

  “But—you drank. Tonight.”

  “Drunkenness destroys balance.”

  “That’s one of the things.”

  “So we are made drunk. Several times each year of our training, to increase our tolerance. So that should we drink too much, we do not lose the dance.”

  I thought about it. Twisted as it was, it made a kind of sense. “I’ve been drinking a lot of years… what about my tolerance?”

  “Mine was perfected through discipline. Control. Yours—is merely yours, and subject to certain weaknesses in self-control.”

  “Northern pompousness.” I thought about it some more. “So all that business about being able to drink more than me…” I let it trail off.

  “I can,” Del said softly.

  I smiled, smug. “But I can piss farther.”

  She froze, and then she thawed. “I will forfeit that victory.”

  “Good.” I stood up. “Now why don’t you get some sleep while I go check on the horses?”

  “I can go with you.”

  I smiled. “I know you’re not drunk, bascha. But I did hit you pretty hard, and I’m betting your head hurts.”

  She put her hand to her jaw. “It does. I wasn’t expecting that.” Brows slanted downward. “I should repay you for it.”

  “You will,” I declared. “With your tongue, if not your fist.” I smiled, blunting it. “Get some sleep, bascha.” I headed toward the curtain. “Oh—one more thing…”

  Del lifted brows.

  “What in hoolies possessed you to challenge that Punja-mite?”

  “Which one?”

  “The rich one. The one who wanted to buy you.”

  “Oh. Him.” She scowled. “He made me very angry.”

  I eyed her suspiciously. “You were enjoying yourself.”

  Del grinned. “Yes.”

  “Go to sleep.” I turned.

  “Tiger?”

  I paused, turned back. “What?”

  Del’s eyes were steady. “If you drew a binding circle to keep Chosa Dei in, why did you not leave your sword?”

  “My sword?” And then I understood. “I could have.”

  “And Chosa would have been trapped.”

  I nodded.

  Del frowned blackly. “Is that not what we’re trying to do? Find a way to keep him trapped?”

  I nodded again. “There is a way. I found it. My jivatma is the key.”

  Blue eyes blazed. Her words were carefully measured, as was her emphasis. “Then why not simply do it and be done with this foolishness?”

  “Because,” I answered simply.

  “Because? Because what?”

  I smiled sadly. “I’d have to stay in the circle.”

  “You—?”

  “He’s in me, bascha. There’s more to do now than discharge a sword—there’s also me to discharge.”

  Del’s face went white. “Oh, hoolies…” she murmured.

  “I thought you might see it my way.” I turned back and went out of the room.

  Twenty-seven

  I didn’t go to check on the horses. I went to see the old man.

  Mehmet’s aketni had set up camp in what had become the caravan quarter. Originally it had been a sprawling bazaar, in the days when Quumi was bustling, and caravans had encamped outside the city. But as Quumi’s strength and presence faded, borjuni took to preying on caravans and travelers outside the walls. The bazaar, slowly deserted as Quumi died, altered purpose. Now it housed small caravans on the way to Harquhal and the North.

  The sunbleached, dome-canopied wagons were easy to find, even in starlight and the crescent moon’s dim luminescence. I made my way across the dust-layered, open-air bazaar and went looking for the hustapha’s wagon.

  In his typical uncanny way, the old man was waiting for me.

  Or else he was simply awake, and made it look that way.

  He was alone, seated on the ground on his cushion at the back of his wagon. Dun-colored danjacs, dyed silver and saffron by pale light, were hobbled a distance away, whuffling and snuffling in dust as
they lipped up grain and fodder. Immense, tapered ears flicked this way and that; frazzled tails snapped a warning to inquisitive insects.

  Bright black eyes glittered as I came to stand before him. “Did you see this?” I asked. “Me coming here?”

  He smiled, stretching wide the wrinkled lips accustomed to folding unimpeded upon a toothless mouth.

  I knelt down, drew my knife, drew patterns in the packed dirt of the bazaar. Not words; I can’t read or write. Not even runes, though I have some understanding of those. Nor symbols, either, denoting water, or blessing, or warning.

  Just—lines. Some straight, some curving, some with intersections. And then I put away my knife and looked at the old man.

  For some time he didn’t even look at the drawings. He just stared at me, into my eyes, as if he read my mind. I knew he couldn’t do that—well, maybe he could; but a sandcaster usually only reads sand—so I assumed he was looking for something else. Some sort of sign. A confirmation. Maybe acknowledgment. But I didn’t know what to give him, or even if I could.

  At last he looked at my drawings. He studied them a long moment, moving eyes only as he followed the lines. Then he leaned down, wheezing, and slapped the flat of his fragile, palsied hand into the middle. It left a cloudy, fuzzy-edged print that obscured most of the patterns. Then he took his hand away and drew a line across his brow.

  Which told me a whole lot of nothing.

  Or maybe a lot of something; the gesture in his aketni referred to the jhihadi.

  I drew in an exquisitely deep breath, filling my head with air. “Am I the jhihadi?”

  He stared back at me: an old, shriveled man with a streak of grit across his forehead.

  “If I am,” I persisted, “what in hoolies do I do? I’m a sword-dancer, not a holy man… not a messiah with the ability to change sand to grass!” I paused, arrested, thinking about alternate possibilities. And feeling silly for it. “Or—is it supposed to be changed to glass?”

  Black eyes glittered. In accented Desert he told me his aketni comported itself solely in expectation of Iskandar’s prophecy coming true.

  Ah, yes. Iskandar. The so-called jhihadi who got himself kicked in the head, and died before he could do any of the miraculous things he said he’d do.