Sword-Breaker

by Jennifer Roberson

  I grinned. “Close enough.” But I wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Blood drained from her face. The look in her eye scared me. “I wouldn’t have—died,” I told her hastily. “Not from Chosa’s devising. Umir’s men might have killed me, but Chosa wouldn’t have. He wants the body too much.”

  Her voice was oddly toneless. “If he had won, you wouldn’t be Tiger anymore.”

  I twisted shoulders. “Probably not.”

  Del swallowed tightly. “I left you to force your hand.”

  “I know that.”

  “I thought you would come.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “But you might have died, anyway… because you couldn’t come.” Del’s expression was despairing. “What have I done to you?”

  “Nothing.” I tapped heels to the stud. “It’s done, Del. None of this matters because I’m all healed and I’m still me.”

  “Are you?”

  I arched a single brow. “I’ll prove it to you later.”

  She didn’t smile at the suggestive tone. “Tiger—”

  I sighed. “I just learned a couple of tricks.”

  “Did he?” she demanded as I rode by the mare. “Did Chosa learn tricks, too?”

  I shook my head, jerking the stud’s back around as he looked for the mare. “He already knows them all.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  It was a cool, soft night, and we treated it as such. I lay on my back, contemplating the stars and moon, slack-limbed in satiation. I was bare except for the dhoti, the dampness of exertion drying slowly on my body. I felt wondrously relaxed, gazing sleepily at the sky, but Del was wide awake. I never have understood how a woman, thoroughly satisfied, wants to discuss the state of the world, while I’d just as soon let the world drift right on by, taking me with it.

  Her thigh was stuck to mine, as was a shoulder blade angled slightly against my chest. Del unstuck us both by rolling onto a hip, dragging her burnous to drape across exquisitely long, bare legs, as well as the hips and taut rump above them. Pale hair was loose and tousled: silver beacon in the darkness.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Hoolies. They always ask.

  I contemplated lying. But Del was not overly romantic—not like most other women—and the truth would not disturb her. “About Abbu.”

  She stiffened. “Abbu Bensir? Now?”

  Maybe she wanted less truth after all. “Just—never mind.”

  But she went slack again. One hand touched my chest and began counting scars. It was a habit of hers, to which I never objected, because her touch felt good. “You want to beat him so badly.”

  “Didn’t used to.” I pillowed my head on one bent arm. “Well, that’s not entirely true—I’ve always wanted to beat him—but it never mattered so much before.”

  “And now it does, because of what Umir said?”

  “Umir says whatever he thinks will get him what he wants.” I scowled faintly, considering. “I think it has more to do with Sabra.”

  “Why? You know nothing about her.”

  “I know something. I know she’s a woman tanzeer, and she’s managed to hold her place.”

  “It won’t last. You’ve said so.”

  “It won’t. But if Abbu is riding with her, after telling us he wasn’t…” I freed a pale ribbon of hair as it tangled in my necklet. “He is not the kind to lie.”

  Del shrugged, still counting scars. “Perhaps he changed his mind later. Perhaps Sabra convinced him.”

  “Nor is he the kind to be won by a woman’s blandishments.”

  “You don’t know that. Have you ever slept with him?”

  I grunted. “Do I seem like the kind?”

  “One should not judge.” Del’s voice was languorous. “I only mean that many men will do many things, depending on a bedding.”

  “You sound uncommonly knowledgeable.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “I only know what you’ve told me.”

  She considered getting testy but discarded it out of apathy. “I say again, men can be persuaded of many different things.”

  “I never thought of Abbu as a man to be bought by a bedding.” I paused. “Nor myself, I might add.”

  “I have too little coin.” Del shifted closer. “If she is a beautiful woman, he may have been persuaded to take up her cause. Or for the other reason.”

  “What other reason?”

  “The chance to dance against you. He wanted it in Iskandar, before the stud kicked you in the head.”

  I smiled. “Maybe he weighs himself against my reputation.”

  “As you do against his?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Yes.”

  I gave in. “Yes.”

  “Well, I think this will be settled between you one day. Perhaps not for years, but one day.” Her fingers found and stilled on the fist-deep, fibrous fissure carved below the short ribs on the left side of my chest. I could barely feel the pressure through the whorls of scar tissue. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  She said it every time. Meant it every time. And every time recalled how she’d very nearly killed me, in the circle on Staal-Ysta.

  “Could have been worse,” I said. “Could have been—lower—” I rolled over and atop her, crooking a leg across her hips, “—and then we’d both be sorry.”

  Del’s laugh is smoke. It curled its way around me and drifted into the night.

  When I am with this woman, the doubts all spill away. Because even if I am not real, at least I have this much.

  Thirty-four

  Ice, all around. Wreaths of it, riming rocks, glittering in saffron sunlight; in the warmth of a Southron day—

  Wait, I said to myself. Ice? In the South?

  Even deep in sleep, I knew better than that.

  Which, of course, woke me up.

  Del rolled over as I pushed myself upright and scowled fiercely into morning. A hand through tousled hair did nothing to rid myself of the afterimage, nor did a violent rubbing of squinting, sleep-begummed eyes. The impression was very clear: ice, in the South.

  “Must be sandsick,” I muttered, and reached for the nearest bota.

  Del yawned, stretched, squinched up her face against pale new sunlight, peering at me one-eyed. “Why?”

  I shrugged, sucking water.

  The other blue eye came open. “I don’t necessarily disagree, but I am curious as to why you would say so.”

  I swallowed and lowered the bota. “One need not explain one’s dreams if one does not desire it.”

  “Ah.” She put out a hand for the bota. “Unless one is the jhihadi.”

  “Jhihadis don’t need to explain themselves, either. Jhihadis just—are.”

  “Like the Sandtiger.”

  “Yet more proof.” I stripped aside blankets, stood up. I felt amazingly good for a man taken to task by a certain unspecified power, and later left for dead in the midst of the Punja. I felt intensely good—

  And then recalled how I’d been healed, or remade, or whatever you want to call it.

  Which meant the real me was just as battered and bruised, and no younger than before.

  Or whatever me I was.

  Scowling, I looked down at Del. “How was I last night?”

  Pale brows shot up. Del blinked feigned astonishment at me. I realized her interpretation of the question, in view of the intimacy we’d shared, was not to be unexpected.

  I rephrased it, waving a hand. “Not that. I don’t need reassurances about that. I just meant…” I trailed off. “I’m not doing this very well.”

  Del, somewhat bemused, slid a foot into one sandal and began lacing the cross-garter thongs to her knees. “What are you trying to say? Or ask? Or—whatever?”

  “Did I seem—real—to you?”

  A number of expressions took turns upon her face. Amusement, curiosity, bafflement; also a flicker of uncertainty. At last, as she looked up at me, an unfamiliar tranquillity, as if she knew
how much her answer meant, and was pleased to be utterly honest. “Indisputably.”

  I didn’t let up; not yet. “You never doubted for once it was me?”

  She stopped knotting sandal laces. “Should I have?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I mean, I felt like me to me.” I scratched viciously at stubble. “Never mind. I just—never mind.”

  “Tiger.” Del finished the knot and smiled up at me. Fair hair curtained shoulders. “You were as you always are. I have no complaints. I doubt Elamain would, either… or any of the other thousands of women who’ve shared a night with you.”

  No, Elamain had never had any complaints, before she nearly got me castrated. Neither had any of the other women (not thousands; Del exaggerated), but I wasn’t really concerned about them. What concerned me was that Del might—or might not—see any kind of difference in me. Anything that might indicate I was something of Shaka Obre, with a bit of Chosa, as well.

  I felt like the same old me. But the same old me was—who?

  “Sandsick,” I muttered again, and went off to water the dirt.

  Del’s purposefully idle tone drifted in my wake. “And men say women are fanciful.”

  Which is because they are.

  But I was a bit too busy to explain it to her.

  Rusali was much as we’d left it, which was a year or so before. A typical Southron town. A typical Punja town in a typical Punja domain—except when we’d left it, its tanzeer was newly dead because a Northern sword-dancer had killed him in order to requench a jivatma.

  Not Del. Theron. Who’d come hunting her for the death of the an-kaidin Baldur, whom Del had killed to blood her blade.

  In hindsight, the explanation for both of them sounded similar. But Del’s situation had been different. Theron had requenched against all Northern taboos, in order to gain an edge. Lahamu, Rusali’s tanzeer, dabbled a bit in magic, and had some experience with sword-dancing techniques. Theron decided to requench in order to have a better chance against Del in the circle, because by requenching in Lahamu he gained the Southron style, which she didn’t know.

  He’d nearly beaten her, too, but I’d figured out something was wrong and forcibly pulled Del from the circle. Ordinarily it would have forfeited the dance to Theron, but Del had quickly realized what he’d done. Theron’s transgression made the dance invalid, except I’d decided, on my own, to teach him a lesson.

  And I had. I’d killed him.

  Meanwhile discovering just what it was to wield a jivatma, when one knows its name.

  Ah, yes. Theron. Brother to Telek, son to old Stigand; both of whom, on Staal-Ysta, had conspired first to exile Del, then to kill us both by playing one against the other in the deadliest dance of all, because each of us wanted—needed—to win: Del, to gain a year with her daughter; me to win back my freedom from an oath-sworn, binding service Del had tricked me into.

  Hoolies, so much had happened. Look at us now.

  Look at me now.

  Then again, don’t. You might see something neither one of us likes.

  Rusali. Empty of Lahamu, but also now of Alric, transplanted Northern sword-dancer, and Lena, his Southron wife, and all their mixed-blood girls.

  We rode through the haphazard outskirts and into the city proper. Del was strangely bemused. “What?” I asked.

  “Remembering,” she answered. “We barely knew each other then… look at us now.”

  It echoed my own thought. Glumly, I said, “Now we know too much.”

  She smiled. “Sometimes.”

  “Then, again, there’s a lot I don’t know about you—and a lot you don’t know about me.”

  That earned me a sidelong glance. “That may be—but there’s a lot about you that you don’t know.”

  I grunted. “I know enough.”

  “Then why do you keep asking me if I think you’re real?”

  I reined the stud around an overturned basket spilling refuse into the narrow, dusty street. “Don’t you ever wonder if you’re not real?”

  “No.”

  I ducked a low-hanging awning, bumping left knee against Del’s right as the narrowing of the street squeezed us closer together. “You never once wondered if maybe you weren’t some sort of—construct?”

  “Construct?”

  I groped for the best explanation. “A conjured person. A magicked person, created by sorcery for a particular purpose.” Like changing the sand to grass?

  Del frowned. “No. Why would I?”

  I tried to figure out the easiest way of explaining, without really explaining. “Didn’t you think, when you realized how good you could be with the sword, that maybe you were something out of the ordinary?”

  Del smiled faintly. “My kinfolk always told me I was out of the ordinary.”

  I scowled. “That’s not what I mean. I mean—when you knew, in your heart, you were better than everybody. Did you think there might be a reason?”

  Brows quirked upward. “Better than everybody?”

  “Well, not me. That hasn’t been established.”

  She laughed softly. “No, I never wondered. When I was young, and my brothers and uncles and father began to teach me weaponry, it was simply something to do. Everyone else did it. My mother had the great good sense not to forbid me the chance, and the other women had the great good sense not to criticize my mother for that. And when, on Staal-Ysta, I knew I could be this good—well…” The tone died out. When it resumed, the inflection had altered from idle recollection to grim acknowledgment. “By then, I merely wanted to be as good as was required to do what I had to do, in order to destroy Ajani. I did not think again on anything else, nor to question the good fortune that gifted me with the skill.”

  “Oh,” I said at last.

  “So no, I never wondered if I was a—construct?” She waited for my nod. “I have always been what I am. What I was required to be.”

  I said nothing. It had never occurred to me, either, until I squatted before the old hustapha and thought, for the first time, that all the natter about jhihadis and sand and grass might have some foundation in fact.

  I shivered uneasily. Felt the weight of jivatma across my back, and the sorcerer it housed.

  We took a room in a small, mostly empty inn whose proprietor was so glad for the custom that he gave us his very best. Which didn’t mean much, really, but at least the bed was longer. For once my heels hit the end of the frame, instead of hanging over the edge.

  Del knelt on the packed dirt floor and sorted out botas, untangling thongs from saddle-pouch buckles. “We can’t stay long.”

  “Overnight.” I loosened a knot in one of my sandal laces. “We can pick up provisions now, or wait until morning.”

  “I’ll go now. You can bathe first.” She rose, settling pouches beside me on the bed. “Assuming you want to bathe.”

  “And I assume, by your tone of voice, you think I should.”

  Del smiled. “Yes.” And walked toward the curtain door.

  “Where are you going?”

  Elaborate clarity: “To buy provisions; I said so.”

  “We can do that together.”

  She shrugged. “No need. I’ll be back by the time you’re done, and use your water.”

  All in all I thought it somewhat odd. While Del was perfectly capable of provisioning us on her own, we usually did it together simply to make things easier. But I saw no reason to protest. Maybe she needed time to herself; women are like that.

  Especially when they spend money.

  My turn to shrug. “All right. If I’m not in here, I’ll be in the common room.”

  “Sucking down aqivi; where else?” Del pulled aside the tattered fabric curtaining the door and was gone.

  I ordered a bath brought in; the proprietor acquiesced by rolling in a warped half-cask, then lugging in buckets of water. Not many; not enough. But it was better than nothing. There were bathhouses in Rusali, but with them there’s no telling how many bodies the water’s washed. At least thi
s way Del got mine, and me she already knew.

  Not enough soap, either, but I made do, and left enough for Del. Then I took my freshly washed self into the common room, where I ordered aqivi, and spent some time drinking it.

  Del eventually came back bearing burdens, nodded at me, then disappeared into our room. I contemplated wandering in to witness her bath, then decided she might not get bathed at all, in view of what sometimes happened when she was bare of clothes and wet, and stayed where I was. Drinking.

  The aqivi ran out. I didn’t order more. I went in to see what in hoolies was taking Del so long.

  She sat with her back to me, swathed in a hooded burnous. I opened my mouth to ask her what in hoolies she was doing, when she turned, startled, and stared wide-eyed.

  Struck dumb, I stared back. We neither of us moved.

  All I saw were blue eyes. The bluest, brightest eyes. They were her same old eyes, with the same old color and clarity, but everything else was different.

  I managed at last to speak. “What have you done to yourself?”

  Her answer was very forceful, as if she tried to convince herself as well as me. “Made myself someone else.”

  I moved, finally. Stopped beside the bed. Put out a tentative hand and pushed the hood from head to shoulders. “All of it?”

  Del arched a dyed-black eyebrow. “Blonde and black hair would make me even more obvious than I already was.”

  “But—I like you blonde.”

  She scowled. “It will wash out.”

  “What about this?” I touched one darkened cheek.

  “That, too.” A black-haired, dark-skinned Del, glowering, was oddly different from the usual fairer version, even with the same expression. “Do I look very Southron?”

  “Not with those eyes.”

  She put a hand up, then let it drop back. “I’m a Borderer.”

  “Hah.”

  “You will say so, of course.”

  I studied her. Formerly white-blonde hair, sun-bleached, was now a dull black, still wet and slick. Darkened eyebrows were more pronounced, harshening her expression, and she’d even tipped eyelashes. The skin was a uniform brown several shades lighter than Southron color, not so far from my own—except she lacked the coppery tint.