“A toy?”
“A sandtiger carved out of bone.” I shrugged. “A trinket. He said a toy can give a child freedom in mind, and freedom in mind is freedom in body. The next day he was gone.”
Del said nothing. Silently, she waited.
I looked down at the palm that bore the brand of the Northern sword. And I thought it likely Del could comprehend the magnitude of the power I had summoned, having her own measure of it.
“I took the toy, and I talked to it. I named it. I gave it a history. I gave it a family. And I gave it a great and terrible hunger.” I recalled the echoes of my whispers again, hissing into the ivory ears. “I begged for deliverance in such a way as to convince even the shukar I deserved my freedom. I asked for the tiger to come to me so I could kill it.”
Del waited, locked in silence.
I recalled the smooth satin finish of the bone beneath my fingers. How I had stroked it, whispering; how I had shut out the stink of dung and goat, the pain of a whip-laced back, the emotional anguish of a boy reduced to a beast of burden when he needed to be a man.
How I had shut out everything, dreaming of my tiger, and the freedom he would bring.
“He came,” I said. “The tiger came to the Salset. At first I rejoiced: I would win my freedom—but then I saw what the cost of that freedom would be.” I felt the familiar sickened twisting of my gut. “My tiger came because I conjured him. A live sandtiger, big and fierce as I could wish for, filled with a great and terrible hunger. And to diminish that hunger, he began to eat whatever prey he could catch.” I didn’t look away from Del’s direct gaze. “Children, bascha. He began to eat the children.”
A soft, quiet breath of comprehension issued from her lips.
I swallowed heavily, cold in the warmth of the hyort. “The Salset have no understanding of weapons and killing, being a tribe who raises goats for food, and trading. When the sandtiger began stealing children, the elders had no idea of how to stalk and kill it. They tried—two men tracked it to its lair and tried to kill it with knives, but it killed them. And so the shukar—after all his magic failed—told us it was a punishment for unknown transgressions, and that to break the beast’s power would make its killer permanently blessed by all the tribal gods.” I remembered his speech so clearly; the old, angry man, who had never thought a chula might be responsible for the beast. “It was mine to do. And so I made my spear in secret because the tribe would never countenance a chula considering such a thing; and when I could, I went after the tiger myself.”
Her hand was on my clenched fist. “Your face—”
I grimaced, scraping a broken fingernail across the marks. “Part of the price. You’ve seen sandtigers, Del. You know how quick, how deadly they are. I went after my conjured tiger with only my spear—somehow I hadn’t provided for genuine ferocity while I did my conjuring. I’m lucky these scars are all he gave me.” I sighed. “Still, he’d eaten four children and killed three men. It was more than worth the risk, after what I’d done.”
Something blazed up in her eyes. “You don’t know you conjured it! It might have been coincidence. That old wizard told you what anyone could tell you: believe in something hard enough and often you will get it. Sandtigers are common in the Punja—you told me so yourself. Don’t blame yourself for something you may have had nothing to do with.”
After a moment, I smiled. “You’re a sorceress, bascha. You know how sorcery works. It’s twisted. It’s edged. It gives you what you want if you request it properly and then it demands its price.”
Her jaw tightened. “What makes you say I’m a sorceress?”
“That sword, bascha. That uncanny, weirding sword with all the rune-signs in the metal.” I lifted my hand and displayed the ice-marked palm to her for the first time. “I’ve felt its kiss, Del … I’ve felt a measure of its power. Don’t try to deny the truth to a man who knows sorcery when he smells it … or when he feels it. That sword stinks of Northern sorcery.”
Del turned her head from me and stared steadfastly at the woven wall of the hyort. I saw the gulping of her throat. “It stinks of more than that,” she said unevenly. “It stinks of guilt and blood-debt, as much as I do. And I too will pay the price.” But even as I opened my mouth to question her, she was telling me to finish what I had begun.
I sighed. “I crawled into the lair in the heat of the day, when the tiger slept. He was full of the child he had eaten earlier. I took him in the throat with the spear and pinned him against the wall, but when—thinking he was dead—I crawled closer to admire my handiwork, he came to life again and caught me here.” I touched the scars again; the badges of my freedom. “But my poison was stronger than his because he died and I didn’t.”
Del smiled a little. “And so you won your conjured freedom.”
I looked at her grimly, remembering. “There was no freedom. I crawled away from the lair—sick from the cat’s poison—and nearly died in the rocks. I was there for three days: half-dead, too weak to call for help … and when the shukar and the elders came hunting the cat and discovered it dead—with no one claiming the kill—the old man said his magic had worked at last.” It hurt to swallow. My throat was filled up with bitterness and remembered pain. “I didn’t come back. They assumed I’d been eaten, too.”
“But—someone must have found you.”
“Yes.” I smiled a little. “She was young then, and beautiful. And unmarried.” The smile faded. I masked my face to Del. “Not everyone treated me as a chula. I was big for my age—at sixteen, the size of a man—and some of the women took advantage of that. A chula can’t refuse. But—I didn’t want to. It was the only kindness I knew … in the women’s tents … at night.”
“Sula?” she asked softly.
“Sula. She took me into her hyort and healed me, and then she called the shukar to me and told him he couldn’t hope to deny that I had killed the tiger. Not with the marks on my face. My proof.” I shook my head, remembering. “Before the entire tribe he had to name me a man. He had to give me the gift of freedom. And when the words were said, Sula—who had cut off the sandtiger’s claws—gave this necklace to me.” I tangled my fingers in the cord. “I’ve worn them ever since.”
“The death of the boy, the birth of the man.” She seemed to understand.
“I walked away from the tribe the day I put on the claws. I never saw the Salset again—until the day they found us.”
“The cat who walks alone.” Del smiled a little. “Are you so certain you’re tough enough for that?”
“The Sandtiger is tough enough for anything.”
Her eyes challenged me briefly, then closed. “Poor Tiger. I have your secret. Now I should tell you mine.”
But she didn’t.
Twelve
Del healed slowly. She was, she claimed, like an old woman: crippled, stiffened, withered. First she shed linen wrappings, then alla paste, but Sula frequently applied an oil also made out of the alla plant so the new skin wouldn’t tear and crack from unaccustomed movement. Finally some of the vivid pinkness faded and she looked more like the Del who had walked into the cantina in search of a sword-dancer called the Sandtiger.
With my long-buried feelings about the Salset dredged up and vocalized, I felt a little as if the hounds of hoolies had been exorcised from my soul. Though undoubtedly I remained alien to most of the tribe, I didn’t consider myself an outsider anymore. I was still different, but differences are tolerable. No longer was I the nameless boy whose only past, present and future was that which faced a chula.
Now, when the young women looked at me, I looked back.
And when the shukar, in passing one day, muttered an insult beneath his breath, I stepped into his path and confronted him.
“The chula is gone,” I told him. “There is only the Sandtiger now—a shodo-trained, seventh-level sword-dancer—and such a man is due common Salset courtesy.”
Sixteen years with the Salset had embedded certain behavior codes within me. Sixteen ye
ars away from the Salset hadn’t quite erased them, I discovered. Even as I challenged him, I felt the old feelings of insignificance and futility rousing themselves from the corners of my being. It was difficult to look him in the face; to meet his eyes, because for too many years I had been permitted only to look at his feet.
A shukar must always be respected, revered. He is different from everyone else; more than a man. He has magic. He is sacred. Touched by the gods; the touch was evidenced by the deep, wine-red splotch on the old man’s sallow face, stretching from chin to left ear. The Salset have no kings, no chiefs, no war-leaders. They rely on the voice of the gods (shukar means voice, in Salset speech), and the voice tells them what to do and where to go. He is the pattern of the days, forever, until the gods choose another.
To confront this old man before the rest of the tribe was my first genuine act of freedom and independence. Even as a newly-freed chula, I’d been unable to face the man. I had simply walked away from him; from the others; from the memory of my conjured tiger.
Age had swallowed the golden pigmentation of his skin. He wore a saffron-colored burnous freighted with copper stitching around the hem. His hair, once black, was now completely gray. I smelled the acrid tang of the oil he used to slick it back from his face, meaning for all the world to see the wine-purple mark of the gods on his face; showing the mark, he showed his rank. His authority. And his black eyes, fixed on my face, hadn’t lost one degree of their hatred for me.
Deliberately, he drew back lips from teeth like a dog showing his dominance and spat on the ground next to my right foot. “I have no courtesy for you.”
Well, I hadn’t really expected any different. But the denial of common courtesy (the highest order of insult in Salset customs) still rankled.
“Shukar, you are the voice of the gods,” I said. “Surely they have told you the Sandtiger walks where he will—regardless of what the cub once was.” I had his attention now; he glared back as I met his eyes directly. “You gave me no courtesy when I killed that cat so many years ago,” I pointed out, reminding him of his failure to conduct himself as a proper shukar. “I’m claiming it now, before the entire tribe. Will you shirk your duty? Will you bring disgrace upon the Salset?”
I left him no choice. In front of so many people (many of whom knew me only as the Sandtiger), even a bitter old man knows how to bow to necessity. I hadn’t claimed the courtesy due me when I killed the sandtiger, thereby releasing the shukar from a very distasteful duty; now I claimed it with every right and justification. He had to honor the request.
“Two horses,” I said. “Water and food for two weeks. When I ask for them.”
His mouth worked. I saw how yellowed his teeth had become from chewing beza nut, a mild narcotic. A common habit in the Punja; supposedly it enhances magic, provided one has it already. “We have given you life again,” he said curtly. “We reclaimed you and the woman from the sand.”
I folded my arms. “Yes. But that’s something the Salset must do for anyone. The tribe has my gratitude for the reclaiming, but you must honor my request for courtesy.” Idly I ran a finger along the black cord around my neck, rattling the claws. Reminding him how I had won my freedom.
Reminding him he had absolutely no choice.
“When you ask for them,” he said bitterly, and turned his back on me.
I watched him walk away. I knew satisfaction in the victory, but it wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected. When a man is grudgingly given what he is due anyway, there is no pleasure in it.
* * *
Del was on her feet before I expected it, moving slowly with the aid of a staff. At first I protested until she rattled off something in her Northern tongue that sounded angry, frustrated and impatient, all at once, and I knew she was almost back to normal.
I breathed a sigh of relief. We had shared a brief, odd closeness in the hyort as she lay trapped in sandsickness. While it had been special, it also proved discomfiting for me. Staying with the Salset upset the hardwon equilibrium I’d so carefully built in the years since I’d left. It left me vulnerable to things, feelings I’d left behind. The Sandtiger had lowered his guard, even if only briefly, and it was something I simply couldn’t afford. I was a professional sword-dancer, earning my living by doing dangerous, demanding work few others were willing to tackle. There was no time, no room for sentimentality or emotions other than those necessary to survival, if I were to continue.
Del came out as I lounged in the shade of an awning outside Sula’s hyort. She had put on her belted tunic once again (Sula had cleaned and brushed it), and the blue runic embroidery glowed brightly against the brown suede. Most of the pink new flesh had toughened, weathering to a more normal color (though a little darker); she was a smooth, pale gold all over. Sunbleached hair was tied back with blue cord, sharpening the lines of her jaw and cheekbones. She was thinner, slower, but she still moved with the grace and poise I admired.
I admired it so much I felt my mouth dry up. If I hadn’t been so sure she was still weak and easily tired, I might have pulled her down beside me to investigate the possibility of payment in something other than gold coin.
Then I realized she was in harness and carried that sword in her hand.
“Del—”
“Dance with me, Tiger.”
“Bascha—you know better.”
“I have to.” There was no room for argument. “I’ll be no good if I don’t dance. You know that.”
Still sprawled nonchalantly, I glared up at her. But there was nothing nonchalant about my tone of voice. “Hoolies, woman, you almost died. You still might, if I join you in a circle.” I looked at her bared sword, scowling, and saw how the patterns of the designs seemed to move in the metal, confusing my eyes. I blinked.
“You’re not that good.”
I quit looking at the sword and looked instead at her. “I am,” I explained with dignity, “the best sword-dancer in the Punja. Possibly even the South.” (I thought it likely I was the best sword-dancer in the South, but a man has to maintain some sense of modesty.)
“No,” she said. “We haven’t tested each other properly.”
I sighed. “You’re good with a sword—I saw that when we danced before the Hanjii—but you’re no sword-dancer, bascha. Not a proper one.”
“I apprenticed,” she said, “very much as you did. Before that, my father, uncles and brothers taught me.”
“You apprenticed?” I asked. “Formally?”
“With all attendant ritual.”
I studied her. I could grant that she had trained with father, brothers and uncles, because she was good—for a woman—but formal apprenticeship? Even in the North, I doubted a woman would be admitted into the sort of relationship I had known with my shodo.
“Formal, huh?” I asked. “Well—you are quick. You’re supple. You’re better than I expected. But you haven’t got the strength, the endurance or the coldness.”
Del smiled a little. “I am a Northerner—a sorceress, he claims—and he says I am not cold.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean. The edge.”
“Edge,” she echoed, exploring the word.
“A sword-dancer is more than just a master of the blade, bascha,” I explained. “More than someone who understands the rituals of the dance. A sword-dancer is also a killer. Someone who kills without compunction, when he has to. I don’t mean I kill without good reason, just for the hoolies of it—I’m not a borjuni—but if the coin and the circumstances are right, I’ll unsheathe Singlestroke and plant him in the nearest belly requiring it.”
Del looked down on me; I hadn’t bothered to get up. “Try to plant him in mine,” she suggested.
“Hoolies, woman, you’ve got sand in your head,” I said in disgust.
She glared at me as I made no movement to rise. After a moment the expression altered. She smiled. I knew enough to be wary of her, now. “I’ll make a deal with you, Tiger.”
I grunted.
“D
ance with me,” she said. “Dance with me—and when we catch up to my brother, I’ll pay you in something other than gold. Something—better.”
I won’t say it was easy to show no change of expression. “We may never find your brother; what kind of a deal is that?”
“We’ll find him.” The flesh of her face was taut. “Dance with me now, Tiger. I need it. And if we get to Julah and can’t find any traces of him, none at all … I’ll still honor the deal.” She shrugged a little. “I don’t have any gold. I don’t even have any copper.”
I looked at her. I didn’t let my eyes roam over her body; I’m not entirely insensitive. Besides, I already knew what she had to offer.
“Deal, bascha.”
The sword glittered in the sunlight. “Dance with me, Tiger.”
I looked at her weapon. “Against that? No. Against another sword.”
The flesh of her face stiffened. “This is my sword.”
Slowly I shook my head. “No more secrets, bascha. That sword is more than a sword, and you have someone hunting you.”
She went white, so white I thought she might faint. But she didn’t. She recovered her composure. I saw only the briefest clenching of her jaw. “That is private business.”
“You didn’t even know,” I accused. “What’s private about something I have to tell you?”
“I have expected it,” she said briefly. “It comes as no surprise. It is—blood-debt. I owe many ishtoya. If this is one, I will accept the responsibility.” She stood rigidly before me. “But this has nothing to do with what I ask you to do.”
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