Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  And rain. The servants arrived as fear overbalanced fear. They found her sitting unharmed amid the shattered glass and plants of the solarium; droplets misted her hair and seeped into the cushions as she regarded the crushed and smoldering remains of her surroundings. But for fortune and speed, they might have found nothing but charred bone and greasy ash, or a body probability-twisted into something that had no right to exist in time-present-here. As it was ...

  “The lightning rod needs replacing,” she said, before signaling her body servant to carry her from the wreckage.

  Chapter IV

  The scream still echoed through the thunder-ridden night as the plainswoman came out of her crouch and flowed smoothly erect. That was the room directly next to hers, the one the outlander, Megan, had taken. The saber flickered into her hand as she twisted past the bedpost; three long strides brought her to the connecting door. Her dagger thudded into the wood beside the lock, and she threw her weight levering against the hilt until the ironwood lock mechanism broke from the softer oak with a rending crunch like the sound of tearing cartilage that went with a crushed knee. She kicked flat-footed, then dove forward into the outlander’s room, the curved sword moving in a neat precise arc, up into guard position.

  Megan had flung herself onto the strange bed, staring at the ceiling. Naked in the damp heat, she lay and listened to the storm, refusing to remember. Denying, as she had every time a storm had brought those memories crowding back. No, she refused to remember, she refused to feel that way ever again. She concentrated on her breath, forcing it to even out into deep slow rhythms; felt the sweat trickling down her flanks, the crisp texture of the close-woven linen beneath her. A pond of still water grew before the eyes of her mind. She slept. And dreamed, remembering.

  The rough, prickly fiber of the rope dug painfully into her hands; that was nothing, a welcome distraction from the tearing pain between her legs. She leaned into the coil of rope, grateful for its support as she stared down into the dark track behind the ship, black against the slush-white surface of the freezing river. She was cold; the tears froze on her lashes. Blood trickled warmly down her thighs, cooling. Thunder crashed to the north. Muffled now, not close and overwhelming as it had when Sarngeld had raped her.

  She looked down at the water with longing as it curled and chuckled to itself under the keel. Peace, and escape, and forgetting. A gloved hand speared down from above and caught the oak chain at her neck as she leaned toward the water. She twisted away, choking, trying to scream as he lifted her to the deck of the snip.

  Shkai’ra scanned the room, instantly aware that there was no third presence. She relaxed as much as was possible for one who had spent her childhood under the Warmasters’ instruction and laid the saber on a table before walking to the bed. The outlander, Megan, ground her teeth and wrestled with the sweat-soaked sheets. Shkai’ra stood, watching, contemplating her own emotions with detached curiosity.

  She did not feel pity; her folk lacked even the concept. Concern, perhaps. On the Plains of Night, even the fiercest was driven prey, and she had night terrors enough of her own. What connection? The stranger was interesting, true. And attractive, but no more so than many men and women she met daily.

  She sat on the bed and laid a cool strong hand on the other’s shoulder. “Wake, Whitlock,” she said in a calm conversational tone. “That fight is past.”

  Under her hand, Megan froze to utter stillness. With a shudder her body relaxed into wakefulness, and her hand went out to trace an ungloved hand, raised to touch the smooth line of Shkai’ra’s cheek.

  “Not him,” she murmured, still in the dream’s grip. She sat up. Unwelcome sobs forced themselves past clenched teeth. She had sworn that she would not weep again; shame added to her misery as she turned her face away.

  “Sorry to break down your door,” Shkai’ra said calmly. “Thought someone was chopping you up with an axe.” A pause. “I always hated thunderstorms, too.”

  Megan stilled as she woke more fully. “Thank you, for, well, being concerned. But I’m all right.” She tried to pull her barriers up, but they were still shattered by the dream. She felt the rasp of Shkai’ra’s calluses. She sat up, slowly, feeling suddenly lonely as the Kommanza took her hand away.

  The plainswoman was so close ... “This binds ...” Her voice also refused to work properly, and it came out so low that she doubted Shkai’ra heard it. Something she’d walled away inside herself long ago finally broke free, and she cried; harsh and tearing, for she fought it still, but the tears still came.

  “I felt him die ... I felt his life go, leaking out of every wound, but I live that time again, when thunder walks. Why?” Then rage welled up in her through grief and she crooked a hand in a slash across the bedding. “I could kill him again. And still feel pleasure in it.”

  Her tears were gradually slowing and her breathing becoming more regular. “So long. So long ago.”

  “They never leave us, those we’ve killed; we give them immortality,” Shkai’ra said. “I’m not far,” she went on, standing and taking up her sword. “Call if there’s need.” The broken door swung quietly shut behind her.

  “Why?”

  Shkai’ra paced like a trapped cat, her bare feet soundless on the brown tile of her own room. The shadows were deep, only a small flicker from the peanut-oil lantern in its niche casting a flickering ruddy light.

  “Why did I do that?” Why help the stranger? Not a Kommanzanu thing to do, but there seemed to be something binding them. Unlikely that they would meet in the first place, cast together by the strange gods who ruled the sea. Then to turn up at the same place in this swarming anthill of a city....

  Unease crawled in her stomach, like the Fear Snake beneath the earth in the old stories. For a longing moment, she wished she was home; then she could go to the sweatbath and throw water on the rocks, maybe get a vision from the Red Hawk, her clan’s totem. Or go to the castle shaman for a spell against misfortune. Or at least take her horse and bow and ride out on the clean steppe, out past the villages and fields until there was nothing but the bowl of the sky and the cold northern winds. Sweat runneled down her bare skin and matted her hair; like a sauna you could never get out of.

  She looked: over at the door, wedged closed with a scrap of wood for privacy’s sake. She fights well, Shkai’ra thought. Her mind played over the brief scrimmage on the ship’s deck. Strips well, too, she added, feeling a familiar pleasurable itch between her legs. There had been a nice young sailor on the ship coming north from the Kahab Sea, but that was weeks ago, and he had died when the ship went aground up in Joisi. Nearly a month celibate. I would very much like to take this Megan to bed. So strange, so tiny and so pretty.... Which was one good reason to be pleasant, although she suspected more patience would be required than she was usually prepared to show. Perhaps the spirits mean to throw us together. A shaman had once said it was her fate to lie far from home, among witches and strangers.

  At that she shrugged. I can sleep now. If the spirits wanted something, they generally got it; she only hoped that the Ztrateke ahKomman, the high gods of her people, were not involved. They had nasty dispositions. A small six-limbed joss stood in an empty lamp-niche, carved of bone and wood. Glitch, with his bulging bloodshot eyes and spikey red hair and snaggle-toothed grin. One hand was extended with a single finger raised, another held a long pin, a third a feather; the others brandished mousetraps, buckets and gluepots. Shkai’ra lit a small stick of incense and stuck it into the blob of wax on the statuette’s baseboard.

  “None of your fucking jokes,” she said to the godlet in her own language. “You just watch it, or my ghost will chase you down and tear off a pair or two of arms.”

  A slight grating sound woke Megan the next morning, and the entire weight of a tomcat placed on one paw at a time as he walked over her and shoved his nose in her ear.

  “Ach! Cat, stop that!” But she scratched him carefully behind his ears. He meowed at her and jumped down from the bed. />
  From the next room came a subdued knock and Shkai’ra’s husky voice as breakfast was delivered. Megan sighed, tried to go back to sleep, but the next time Ten-Knife-Foot pushed the door open, rubbing his cheek on it, she threw the cotton sheet off and called a servant to order her own breakfast. Ten-Knife insisted on sharing her bacon with her.

  “This one—” She looked through the door to where Shkai’ra was finishing a sword exercise, empty-handed, and pointed down to where the cat lay on her foot. “This one wants to expand his territory and is insisting that we share too.” She watched the plainswoman straighten. “Is he always this acquisitive of people?”

  “Nia.” Shkai’ra smiled, pausing for a moment and craning her head back to call through the gap between door and jamb. “He usually bites people he meets. Good morning.”

  “Goddess morning to you.”

  Megan found herself watching a droplet of sweat run down the underside of one of Shkai’ra’s breasts. The Kommanza caught the glance and smiled back with a lazy grin. Then she took a deep breath, bent backward until her palms touched the floor behind her heels, did a handstand, and then dropped into a series of exercises, stretching first, then blocks, kicks, and handblows at an imaginary opponent.

  Stop that, Megan told herself firmly, looking down at the tray in her lap as she ate and away from the rippling sweat-slick skin. The eating-pick was strange, with four tines rather than one. You decided long ago that sex doesn’t interest you anymore.

  Shkai’ra was wiping her torso with a towel as Megan came through the door. “No godsdamned point in this,” she grumbled, throwing it over one shoulder and dropping an armload of clothes and weapons on a chair. “I’ll be sweaty again in a breath, just standing still.” She scooped up the cat and sat, fanning a piece of paper at him; he batted at it with claws out, and she read the Fehinnan cursive with her lips moving slowly.

  A snuffle of laughter escaped her, growing to a throaty chuckle.

  “An itemized bill,” Shkai’ra said, ruffling the animal’s ears, “for Ten-Knife’s depredations. A trail of ruin he must have left. In one night, cat? Also a trail of black kittens with yellow eyes and terrible tempers, I’m sure.” The cat endured her fingers for a moment, then flowed through her arms and stalked away with an air of purpose.

  “How much damage can a cat do?” Megan said. “And he must have caught his share of rats.”

  Shkai’ra picked up the list. “Also a pet dog, a roast of beef, two pieces of imported sharksfin from the table of a ship-owner, upsetting a bottle of wine in the process—” More laughter, to herself. “Well, I can pay.” She tossed the paper aside and moved to the window, sighing and stretching in vast contentment. It was early morning, and the rain had washed the air of some of its tidewater sultriness; there was a freshness to the damp, a smell of coffee and food and silt-laden water from the river.

  Megan watched a moment, then poured herself a mug of tea. She leaned back against the pillows, heaped high and newly beaten into submission, promptly scalding her mouth.

  “Fishguts! I should know better.” She put the mug down and watched Shkai’ra for a long moment before gathering her hair to rebraid it. “I knew there was ... ouch ... a reason that I seldom unbound this mess. I should hack it all off.” She finished winding the braids around her head and fetched her knife as Shkai’ra drew her saber.

  “On the lunge, wouldn’t it be better to use the other arm as a counterbalance?” Megan asked.

  “Not ... if ... you’re ... using ... a shield,” Shkai’ra said, between deep even breaths. She shifted her grip to the two-handed foot fighting stance and snapped into the guard-against-spear, then whipped down into the straight cut to the head, the pear-splitter. The moves flowed one into the other, yet each was sharp and definite, ending with a “huff” of expelled breath at the moment of impact, the long flat muscles standing out under the skin in clean relief as they tensed and relaxed.

  “Not that I really know much about those ox-stickers,” Megan said. She began her own exercises, a series of fluid moves, one into the other, holding each pose a second or so, increasing the speed until she was blurring through a shadow fight that ended with the lunge; throat, heart, groin. She stood up, and nodded at her imaginary opponent, and walked back toward the bed, nipping the knife.

  Shkai’ra had finished with a sideways flick of the sword and had stood watching, wiping the steel in her hands carefully, before starting to dress. “Ox-sticker it might be, but good for keeping small people with sharp objects in their hands at a safe distance.”

  Megan glanced out of the corner of one eye. “Oh?” She found herself wanting to show off her skill. What is the matter with me? She tossed the knife thoughtfully in her hand.

  The Kommanza stuffed the last bit of bread into her mouth and finished buckling on her saber. The stiletto disappeared up one sleeve, and the dagger rode opposite the sword. Then she produced a shot-pistol from under the pillow, a heavy double-barreled weapon with a pistol grip. Breaking it open, she checked the brass cartridges.

  Megan looked down at the cup left on her tray and picked it up with an expression of disgust. “Swill!” She threw the contents as far back into her throat as possible, so she wouldn’t have to taste it, and shuddered. “Gahh, that’s awful.” She washed the taste of fish oil from her mouth with a swig of cold tea and sat on the pillow by the desk.

  Shkai’ra clicked the firearm closed with a flexing of her wrist and walked over to run a finger around the inside of the china tumbler. She tasted and made a grimace.

  “Zoweitz of foulness, what is this stuff?” She patted her pouch to make sure the other two rounds were in place; that was the price of a good horse, and the weapon would buy and stock a farm.

  Megan held up her hands and looked at the light glancing off the silvery nails. How much do I trust her? “These are steel. The witch who gave me these warned me that the iron in them comes from my body. Fish oil has the most of what is needed, and rather than letting my claws leach me of my life ...” She reached out and tapped them on the mug. The sound rang hard. “I’ve had them only about seven, eight iron-cycles; moonturnings, you would say.”

  Shkai’ra looked at her hands, halfway between nervousness and appreciation. That was a good magic, for a warrior; ten knives nobody would suspect and nobody could take away. Even the steel-sheen could have been paint.

  “Sharp, too, from what I saw on board the Radiance, kh’eeredo,” she said.

  “Sharp? Oh, I don’t have means of really honing them, yet.” Megan lapsed into silence. The word “kh’eeredo” had a sense of kinship in it, but this one had been a stranger to her just yesterday. On the ship she had distracted the sailors, but that had been for the cat’s sake.... Bonds could be used against you. They opened you up to feeling and emotion. The old habits died hard; even the donning of clothing had put the other at arm’s length. Perhaps the aloneness wasn’t necessary, here.

  Her voice was sharp as she turned her eyes away, a crease between the eyebrows. “A weapon, I take it?” She nodded at the shotpistol that Shkai’ra still held.

  “Ia,” Shkai’ra said, tossing it to her. Megan caught it automatically. “You point it, pull the hook on the bottom called a trigger, and it makes holes in things. Magic, I suppose. Expensive, too; a last chance if you’re cornered.”

  She turned and kicked her foot into a sandal, bracing the foot against the bed and winding the soft leather straps around her calf. Boots and trousers still felt more natural, but she looked alien enough as it was, and the Fehinnan clothes were more comfortable in this weather. Her back prickled slightly; it was early days, to let the little one behind her with a weapon. Still, Shkai’ra thought herself a judge of people.

  As her other hand came up to support the weight of the thing, Megan looked at the Kommanza’s back ... and felt the fool. The weapon in her hands lay heavy, metal and smooth-worn wood, a means of death. Then a snide thought. What, does she expect me to shoot her in the back? People don’t k
ill just for no reason.... Well, a symbolic gesture. A bond. So be it.

  “I see. I don’t think it’s magical.” She opened her mouth, then stopped. No, Shkai’ra needn’t know everything, yet. Decision made, she continued, “You broke that door last night because you thought I needed help. I owe you a debt.” And Jaipahl never got around to telling me how Fehinnans acknowledge obligation. She laid the shotpistol down on tile desk.

  “My knife is yours,” she said, holding the blade out on the palm of her hand. If she takes it, I’ll steal another. Shkai’ra blinked, her people’s expression of surprise; that was a ritual they used for deep trust.

  Ah, well, she thought, taking it up. She flipped it in a circle and caught the hilt. Nice piece of steel, she thought.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But you’ll need one.” She offered one of her own, a narrow stabbing poniard.

  Megan looked at it and up into grey eyes. “If I took that, to my people, it would mean that I accepted you as kin, in a way. What does it mean to your people?”

  The hand holding the poniard didn’t move, though Shkai’ra smiled. “It basically means you’ll fight for me if I need you; and I for you, of course. Not that we Kommanza need much reason to fight....”

  Megan nodded and took the knife. “All right.” What are you doing, woman? she asked herself. You can’t get committed to anyone here. You have to get home before Habiku ruins your fish-gutted household.

  She examined the ten-inch knife. The weight of it was less than the emotions it carried. She laughed suddenly, her eyes crinkling at the corners, at Shkai’ra’s expression. “How like our tools we are. Celik Kizkardaz, there is steel between us.” There was silence, then she stood suddenly. “So, show me this city that they are so proud of. Walking the streets as a zhaaid—shaaid?—What does that mean?—is not the best way to see the sights. I got called that enough to fill me to the back teeth last night.”