Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (30 page)

"It is? What's this one called?"

"The code of survival."

Del shot me a look that said she'd punish me for all of this one day. "Getting back to this

'because of two things' issue ..."

"What two things?"

"First was first dibs. You know, the reason men leer and say vulgar things to women."

"Oh." I took it up again. "--and two, it certainly saves time."

"Saves time?"

"Well, yes. I mean, what if the woman's interested?"

"What if the woman isn't?"

"Then she lets you know. But if she is, you sure get to bed a lot faster if you don't waste time on boring preliminaries."

Del stopped short and treated me to several minutes of precise and cogent commentary.

When she was done, I waved a forefinger in her face. "Vulgar language, bascha.

Insulting and vulgar language."

She bared her teeth in a smile reminiscent of my own. "And I suppose you want to go to bed with me now. Right here in the middle of the road where anyone might come along."

I brightened. "Would you?"

Del raked me up and down with her most glacial stare. Then she put up her chin and arched brows suggestively. "Not until after we waste a lot of time on boring preliminaries."

"Oh, well, all right." Whereupon I caught her to me, arranged my arms and hers, and proceeded to dance her down the road toward the distant city.

TWENTY-THREE

"OH, HOOLIES," I said with feeling.

We stood at the top of the cliff face, overlooking the switchback trail leading down to the cauldron of water. Steam rose gently from the living islands in the center.

"What?" Del asked, as the breeze took possession of her hair.

I pointed. "The ships are all down there."

"Yes, Tiger. That's where the water is."

"It means we have to ride those molahs down."

She shrugged. "Or walk."

Uneasily I eyed the individuals who were on foot. Obviously they were laborers, or slaves, or people not of the Eleven Families. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe what we've already done--walking to and through town--is unconscionable, or something. Maybe that's why Simonides was upset--and why, come to think of it, Herakleio would suggest we walk, if only to get my goat."

Del was perplexed. "Why?"

I chewed at my lip, marking the commerce at the trail-head. The place thronged with people and animals, not to mention the smalltime merchants who laid out their wares on tattered cloths spread along the walls. There were cheap necklaces, bracelets, earrings; sash belts, leather belts, single blue pottery beads hung on leather thongs or multicolored cord--maybe some kind of charm; sunbaked pots, painted bowls, multitudinous other items. Del and I were in the middle of it all, bumping shoulders with people and trying not to be ran into by loose goats and dogs, not to mention chickens. I occasioned little more than incurious glances, but Del, as usual, reaped the benefit of her height and coloring.

I sighed. "When Nihko brought me up, he made it clear I was not to, as he put it, soil myself by standing on the ground."

Del's irony was delicate. "Were you supposed to hover?"

"Mats," I explained. "First we had our feet washed, and then we stood on mats."

She shrugged, catching and separating her hair into three sections preparatory to braiding. "When Prima Rhannet brought me up, nothing was said of that. We rode up, then she rented a cart to take us to the metri's home."

"Nihko was pretty plain about it all." I glanced around. "But no one seems to be taking much notice."

Del began to braid the sections of hair, something I've always enjoyed watching for the deftness of her hands. "We walked while touring the winehouses looking for Herakleio."

"But we went right to the bathing pool, remember?" I leaned forward a little, enough to see a few more of the hard angles of the cliff track as I peered over the low wall. "Well, I suspect it's too late even if there is something to all this foot-washing. Guess we may as well head down."

Finished with the single plait, she did something with a strand that captured and held the braid, tucking and looping it into itself. "Walking, or riding?"

Neither appealed to me. Walking meant dodging molahs and their muck. Riding meant sitting atop a jouncing beast heading downward at a rate of speed I considered breakneck, when you took into account the pitch of the track.

Resolution presented itself. I looked around at the ground, saw a stone, scooped it up.

"Stone wins," I said, and stealthily passed it from hand to hand several times. Eventually I held both fists out, knuckles up. "Choose."

"Stone, we walk." Del flipped the braid behind her back and tapped one of my fists.

I opened it, displayed the empty palm. "Wrong choice, bascha." And tipped the stone from the other hand, dropping it back to earth.

"Well," she said with limp cheeriness, "it's a pretty day for a ride."

"Can't say as it'll be pretty by the time I get to the bottom," I declared sourly. "It's not your gehetties at risk!"

"That's why I've never understood why men are almost uniformly considered superior,"

Del opined seriously. "The easiest way to put a man out of action is to plant a knee in his gehetties, or threaten them with a knife, or--"

"All right, bascha, you've made your point," I said hastily, cutting her off before she got more detailed about threatened gehetties. "Let's find us a couple of molahs."

Del pointed. "There."

"There" constituted a congregation of molah-men hanging about the trailhead. Their molahs were tied some distance away, dozing in the sun, but the men themselves competed enthusiastically for space and custom, calling out imploringly to each passerby something I assumed was an advertisement of their services--although how one molah might be considered particularly better than another was beyond me; they weren't horses, after all. As Del and I approached, it was no different: we were accosted, surrounded, swarmed by all the men as they competed for our coin.

"Might be a problem," I muttered to Del.

"What's that?"

"Coin to pay them with."

"Ah." It had occured to neither of us; we're used to having coin of some sort, and since our arrival such things as transport and comestibles had been provided. "I have nothing.

Maybe we should walk after all."

From close up, the trail was a mass of puddles and droppings mashed by feet into a slimy, odoriferous layer of something approaching mud, or heaped cairns of fresh, as yet unmashed muck. Slaves and laborers stolidly stomped their way up and down the track, feet and ankles smeared, as they followed the beasts. No wonder Nihko had been so picky about us getting washed.

"Nah, let's ride," I said.

"What about coin?"

"Maybe this ..." I untied the knot in my necklet, pulled it free of my neck.

"Tiger! You wouldn't!"

"Not the claws ..." I worked at thread, finally slid the silver ring free of thong. "Nihko's little gift." I held it up so the molah-men could see it clearly in the sunlight, then pointed over the wall. "Down," I said, though I doubted any of them understood the word.

Shouldn't need to; it seemed pretty obvious what we wanted.

Some of the men shrugged, shook their heads, stepped back, indicating they worked for coin, not barter. A few others stepped forward to inspect the ring more closely--and then surged as one backward into the others, crying out something I couldn't understand.

Hands flashed up and made the warding away gestures I'd seen before with the first mate. Gazes were averted, heads lowered, palms put up into the air in unmistakable intent: we were not to come any closer.

Such an innocuous little thing glinting in my fingers. And yet it appeared to mean so much. "Are you sure?" I asked. "It's good silver."

More gestures, more whispered, hissing comments made to one another, and the cluster of molah-men melted away to their animals until Del and I stood in the open with no one near us at all but a single ignorant chicken, pecking in the dirt.

I let the ring slide down out of my fingers into my cupped palm. A small, plain ring about as big around as my forefinger. It wasn't whole, but cut at one point so the filed ends could pierce and be fastened into flesh. No different from what a woman might wear through her ear-lobes, though Nihko wore his--and many more of them--in his eyebrows.

And then I recalled that he'd put it on my necklet to keep me, he'd said, immune to his magic. Or whatever you wanted to call whatever it was about him that made me feel ill.

loSkandi. I'd heard--and still heard--that word said by the men who now stood away from us. I'd heard it used by Nihko, Prima, Herakleio, the metri.

Silently I hooked the brow ring back onto my thong, looped leather around my neck again and knotted it. "Let's go," I said curtly to Del. "We're burning daylight."

"Wait." She caught my wrist and halted my forward momentum. "What is it?"

I stopped short. "What's what?"

"Something's made you angry."

"I'm not angry. I'm irritated."

"Fine." She had immense patience, did the Northern bascha. "Why are you irritated?"

"Let's just say I don't like mysteries."

"And you want to know why they won't take the ring."

"I know why they won't take the ring. At least, I have an idea."

"And?"

"Nihko." I made the sound of it a curse. "I want to know what all this ioSkandi nonsense is, and what this ring is really supposed to do and mean."

"Perhaps we should ask him."

"I intend to--if I can ever get down to the boat."

She removed her hand from my wrist with alacrity. "By all means, go."

I sighed. "All right...look, bascha, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. But I've had it up to here--" I indicated my eyebrows. "--with all this magical mythical mystery stuff. I don't speak the language, so I haven't got the faintest idea what these people are saying about us; an arrogant old woman who may or may not be my grandmother is pretty much keeping me a prisoner in her house; and a young buck who may or may not be my kinsman, albeit removed umpteen hundred times, is trying to move in on my woman." I paused, rephrased immediately. "In on a woman. Whom I happen to care about a great deal."

"Thank you," she said gravely. "But why do you think Herakleio is, as you put it, trying to move in on me?"

"I just know," I said darkly.

Del is accustomed to my moods. Sometimes she ignores them, other times she provokes them. This was one of the times she wanted an explanation. "How is it that you know?"

I shook my head. "I just do."

"Is it something to do with the code of men?"

"No, it isn't something to do with the code of men. It's something to do with him being young, and you being young, and me being--well, older."

"I could make a joke of this--" she began.

"You could."

"--but I won't," she finished. "I think this is something you must sort out for yourself."

Startled, I watched as she strode the last few paces to the head of the trail and took the first step downward. "Sort out for myself? What do you mean, sort out for myself?" I went after her. "Can't you at least tell me you don't think I'm old, and that I'm being a fool? Couldn't you even lie, just to make me feel better?"

She slanted me a sidelong glance as she strode down the track. "Would it be a lie if I said you were being a fool?"

"Oh, Del, come on. Humor me."

"You're going to believe whatever you decide to believe, no matter what I say."

"Well, that may be true," I conceded, "but you could say it anyway."

"I'm saving my breath."

"For what?"

"Getting to the bottom."

"He is young."

"Yes."

"He is good looking."

"A veritable godling."

"And I suppose some women might even find his attitude appealing."

"Some would."

"He's even rich--or he will be."

"So he is, and so he shall be."

"So why would you remain with me if you had a chance to be with him?"

"Possibly because you've never given me an actionable reason to leave you."

This was a new phrase. " 'Actionable reason' ?"

"You give me reasons to leave all the time. None of them has been of such magnitude that I acted on it."

"Oh." We walked quickly, steadily downcliff, leaving the trailhead behind. "So, reasons, but no 'actionable' reasons."

"Until now," she said with bland clarity.

"Oh, come on. Do you blame me?" I dodged a molah and rider making their jouncing way up the track. "Hoolies, I'm not exactly what I was at seventeen, or even what he is at twenty-four."

"More."

"More? More what?"

"More than you were at seventeen. More than he is at twenty-four."

"In what way?"

"For one thing," she said, "he doesn't doubt himself."

"That's one way of putting it!"

"And I doubt he questions his appeal to women."

"I'll go that."

"And I don't doubt he thinks he could have me if he wanted me."

"No kidding!"

"But it really doesn't matter what he thinks, Tiger. About me or anything else."

"No?"

"What matters is what I think."

"Well, of course it does--" I stopped short to avoid a laborer whose load was tipping precariously, made my way carefully around him.

Del marched on. "And if I were attracted to him to the degree that you seem to think I could be, or should be, enough that I'd rather be with him than with you, I would make it plain to you."

I caught up. "You would."

She stopped and turned to me, which necessitated me stopping. Again. "I promise," Del said. "I vow to you here and now, on this filthy trail with muck nearly to my knees, that if I decide to leave you, if the day comes when I feel I must leave you, for another man or simply to go, you will be the first to know."

Transfixed, I stared back at her. "Is that in the code of women?"

Del's mouth twitched. "I can't tell you."

"Oh, well, all right. I understand about codes." I looked down at my muck-splashed legs.