Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (11 page)

But then, for a long time I hadn't known she'd even notice or look at me.

The way Prima Rhannet was looking at her.

"Well," I said brightly, trying to sound casual, "just what did you have in mind, then?

You and I are to go ashore and go visit this old lady?"

Prima blinked, then looked at me. "No. I will stay here, aboard ship. It is best that Nihko goes as my representative. Him the metri will see. And once she understands what I have to offer, she will see me as well."

"And why will this--metri?--see him, but not you?"

Prima smiled faintly. "I have told you what I am. The ungrateful, unnatural, outcast daughter of a slaver. I am not of the proper family for the Stessa metri."

"But she'll see him?" I jerked a thumb at Nihko. "He's an ugly son of a goat with rings in his eyebrows and a hairless head painted blue. That's not unnatural?"

Nihko bared his teeth in an insincere smile. The captain looked amused. "She will see him because of what he is."

I prodded. "Which is?"

The first mate grinned in genuine amusement. "Secret."

I turned on my heel and stalked away, though it was somewhat ruined by the limp; the wound in the back of my thigh hurt. I couldn't go very far--we were on a ship, after all--but it made my point nonetheless.

Prima raised her voice. "Get dressed."

"In what?" I flung back over a shoulder. "All I've got in this whole gods-forsaken world is what I'm wearing!" Which wasn't much, being merely a leather dhoti and the string of claws. And blood trickling down my leg.

The captain shrugged elaborate dismissal. "Nihko will have something."

Nihko wasn't wearing a whole lot more than I was at the moment. But I shut my teeth together and followed him below, wanting very much to warn Del against--whatever.

EIGHT

"WAIT," Del said crossly. "Let me look first."

Accordingly, I waited, swaths of lurid crimson silk and linen clutched in one hand.

Having shed the dhoti, I wore absolutely nothing. Except my string of claws.

I arched brows and tilted my head in elaborate invitation. "You have something in mind?"

She flapped a hand at me. "Turn around."

"You prefer the back view?" I paused. "Or perhaps I should say, the backside view?"

Del whacked me across the portion of my anatomy under discussion. "Stop being uncouth. I'm trying to see that stab wound."

"Well, that's not any fun." I winced. "It'll do a lot better if you keep your ringers out of it."

"I've seen worse," she said after close inspection, "but it needs bandaging. Or you'll bleed all over your clothes."

"Not my clothes. Nihko's clothes. Do you really think I'd be caught dead in these things?"

"You are caught," she observed, commencing to tear spare linen, "but at least you're still alive. For the time being. And anyway, I've seen you in red before. It suits you."

I had once owned a crimson burnous, it was true, for meetings with tanzeers considering hiring me, or feasting me after a victory. It had even boasted gold borders and tassels.

But I had never heard Del mention anything about me being suited before. "Does it?"

"Hold still." She began wrapping my thigh.

"Ummrnm ...maybe I'd better do that."

"Why?"

"If you don't know, just wait a minute. It'll be obvious--ouch!"

"Not anymore," she said crisply, knotting the bandage tightly. "Now, get dressed so you can accompany Nihko to this household. The sooner you are accepted as the long-lost heir, the sooner we'll be free of the renegadas."

"You act like you think I will be accepted as the long-lost heir," I accused, "and you know as well as I it's a load of--"

"--potential," Del put in. "Possibility and potential. Which need have nothing to do with this dying old woman--this metri?--but rather with the opportunity to get free of the renegadas once you are accepted by this metri."

"Leaving you in Prima Rhannet's clutches? Not a chance!"

Del, noting my vehemence, looked at me curiously. "It's no worse a danger to me than any other I've been in."

I had no reasonable explanation at hand (or at tongue), and began to hastily don clothing. Eventually I rather lamely settled on: "I'd hate to have any actions on my part jeopardize your life."

"After three years, you should know better. Any actions on your part always jeopardize my life."

"Yes, but ..." I jerked the sash tightly around my waist and knotted the rich silk; Nihko apparently liked to wear good cloth while running ships aground. "I'm older, and wiser, and less fond of danger than I used to be. For me or for you."

"We don't have much choice," she pointed out. "They are going to take you to the Stessa metri, whatever that is, and keep me here as insurance against your escape. But that is precisely what you must do as soon as you have a chance. And meanwhile I will contrive a way to escape as well."

"You make it sound so easy!"

Del shrugged. "It's merely a matter of seeing the opportunity, and taking it. Or making it."

Considering I had planned to do precisely that by seducing the captain, I couldn't very well get specific with objections. Especially since I could think of no reasonable way to explain.

"I will find a way," Del said.

Having no answer to that and equally no explanation for why her presence aboard ship with its captain unsettled me, I glumly went out of the cubbyhole masquerading as cabin and took myself up on deck.

From up close, Skandi was even more impressive. Sharp-faced cliffs appeared as if some giant's hand had broken off huge chunks of raw land, leaving behind rough folds of visible horizontal layers, bands of multihued rock, soil, and mineral. And up that cliff, zigzagging back and forth in blade-sharp angles, was a track of some kind. Even from the deck I could see colored blobs moving on the track. Some ascended, some descended. People on foot, and smaller versions of what we call danjacs in the South, long-eared horselike animals used to carry loads. I suspected horses might make a better job of it by hauling carts up and down, but one glance at the narrowness of the track, the sharpness of its turns, and the steepness of the cliff convinced me the last thing I'd want to do was attempt to ride the stud up that trail. Maybe it was better to trust smaller loads to animals less minded to state dissenting opinions.

About halfway up the track, pocking the cliff face like a disease, were blue-doored holes dug out of the porous stone. No trees and little vegetation clung to the sides; the soil seemed disinclined to pack itself tightly around root systems, so that nothing got a foothold strong enough to encourage vast growth. What was there was pretty scrubby, and twisted back upon itself to huddle against the cliff as if afraid of heights.

"Homes," Prima said, coming up beside me.

I glanced at her, then stared back at the track. "Why would anyone choose to live in a hole?" Let alone put doors over the holes and paint them blue. "Why not build homes like those?" A gesture indicated the squat, white-painted dwellings with their hump-backed roofs.

"This island was born of smoke," she said simply, "and when the gods decreed a place for Man was required, they made the smoke solid. But there were pockets in the smoke that became as holes in the rock. When the gods placed Man here, he was poor. He settled in the rudest shelter available." She smiled. "I was born in one of those caves."

"And did yours have a door on it?"

"Of course. We are civilized, Southroner."

"Ah. And should I assume that only the wealthy live in those?" This time I indicated the houses tumbling over the edge of the cliff like oracle bones.

"Only the wealthy live in those," she confirmed, "or those who aspire to wealth and behave as if the aspirations are already fulfilled."

"Your father?"

"My father aspired for a very long time. Eventually those aspirations were fulfilled."

"But not, I take it, in a line of work openly approved by the truly wealthy."

She grinned. "Oh, the truly wealthy detest my father and others like him. But they require slaves to work in the vineyards, on the ships, in the kilns. There are not enough of us who are freeborn."

"Or enough of you who wish to dirty your hands with hard work."

Prima held up both hands and displayed callused palms. "My hands are very dirty," she pronounced solemnly.

"And bloody," I said gently, "even when washed clean."

The humor faded from her eyes, but not the determination. "And how often do you wash the blood from yours?"

"I dance," I retorted. "Rarely do I kill."

"I steal," she said. "Rarely do I kill."

Impasse. I sighed and jerked my head toward the cliff. "Which one of those are we bound for, captain?"

"None of those," she answered. "The Stessa household is on top of the island, in the midst of the vineyards."

"Well," I said resignedly, "at least they'll have something to drink."

The captain laughed. "Do you take nothing seriously in this world?"

"I take you very seriously."

She eyed me sidelong. "No, I do not believe so. In fact, you have no idea at all what to think of me."

"You ran our ship aground and plucked us off the island like so much ripe fruit," I remonstrated, "which is not precisely easy to do, plus you had me heaved me over the side of this ship--which also is not easy to do--and nearly drowned me. Not to mention the hole you poked in the back of my leg. Why shouldn't I take you seriously?"

"Because you are a Southroner."

"Ah-hah!" I stabbed the air with a forefinger. "But I'm really Skandic, am I not?--or we would not be undertaking this deception of a dying old woman designed to gain you coin. And anyway, what do you know about Southroners?"

"You very probably are Skandic," she agreed, "in blood and bone, if not in mind, which is definitively Southron. As for what I know about men like you, you forget I am the daughter of a slaver. As heir, I was trained in the business from childhood."

I very nearly asked if her father had sired no sons--and checked abruptly as I realized that kind of question would back up her argument. Which was not a particularly comfortable realization on my part. I scowled.

"I saw many Southroners brought beneath my father's roof," Prima continued. "Not a man among them respected women."

As annoyed with myself as with her, I challenged sharply. "You don't even know me, captain. I submit that you are in no position to evaluate my mind."

"I was taught to evaluate men's minds as much as their bodies," she said serenely.

"As the daughter of a slaver," I shot back, "which somewhat limits your capacity to make a legitimate evaluation. Having been captured and made over into a slave when one was freeborn is not designed to bring out the best attitude in a man, you know?"

"You know," she answered. "You may be a sword-dancer now, and very likely freeborn--but sword blades do not leave the kind of scars your back bears."

"Which renders me somewhat more familiar with the experience than you. No slaver ever knows a slave's mind."

"And is that how you escaped? Because your owner did not know your mind?"

"I didn't escape. I earned my freedom." And bore other scars to show for it as well as a name; the sandtiger I'd killed had been devouring children of the tribe who had made me a slave.

"As my crew earned theirs," Prima said quietly. "But there is more inflexibility to a Southron man's mind than what slavery may cause. And if you are truly as free in thought as you suggest, you will admit it."

"Now that's a double-edged sword if I ever saw one. Cursed if I do, cursed if I don't."

She grinned. "Then you may as well answer."

I glowered at her. "You're as inflexible, captain."

"Why?"

"You said you prefer women. Isn't that inflexible?"

"You prefer women."

"Of course I do!"

"Then you are against men."

"I am a man--" I began.

"As your lovers," she clarified.

"Hoolies, yes," I said fervently.

"Then we are the same, are we not?"

"How can we be the same? You're a woman. You're supposed to sleep with men, not with other women!"

"Why?"

"Because that's how it's supposed to be!"

"Is it?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

In frustration, I set fingers into my hairline and scratched vigorously. "Because that's just the way it is."

"For you."

"For most people!"

"What about the woman?"

"Which woman?"

"The one you sleep with." She paused. "The one you currently sleep with."

"Three years' worth," I snapped. "Don't assume I take our relationship lightly."

"But of course you do. Did you not intend to seduce me?"

I scowled. Cursed if I did, cursed if I didn't.

Her expression was impish. "And would you have pursued it had the captain been a man?"

"Hoolies, no!"

"Therefore because I was a woman I was judged fair game, and you assumed I would succumb to your charms the way so many other women have." She nodded. "An inflexible--and purely Southron--way of thinking."

She was tying me up in verbal knots. "Now, wait a minute--"

"Of course, were I a woman who desired men in her bed, I might well have allowed myself to be seduced. Because you do have a certain amount of charm--" Startled, I shut my mouth on an interruption. "--and you did approach the campaign with more integrity than another man might."

That made no sense. "Integrity? I thought you were accusing me of having no respect for women."

"Integrity. Because you were at pains to pick a fight with your woman so there was reason to look to me as an alternate bedmate, and because you did not approach me directly. It was, as I said, a campaign. And I respect that. It requires imagination and forethought."

"You yourself just said I picked a fight with Del. If you value truth, how can you respect that?"

Her eyes were steady. "You would rather drown than be made a slave again. A man may lie for effect, to manipulate, and while the truth served you, it was indeed truth."