Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (6 page)

"That's what I mean. Ice cold. That was you."

"Arrogant," she said. "A braggart. A man who believed women belonged only in his bed."

I relaxed again, leaned against elbows propped on rope and stretched out reef-scoured legs. "All I ever claimed was to be the best sword-dancer in the South. Being honest isn't arrogant, and mentioning it from time to time serves a purpose in the right company. As for believing women belong only in my bed, well ..." I cleared my throat. "I think it's fair to say there are indeed times when a woman in my bed is a worthwhile, um, goal." I waggled eyebrows at her suggestively. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Which is why it was I who had to convince you to get into mine."

"You did not--"

"Oh, you put on a good show, all that bragging you did about being the infamous Sandtiger, feared by men and beloved by women--"

"Hey!"

"--but when it came right down to it, when it came to the doing, you were reluctant."

"Was not."

"Were so."

I considered mentioning ten or twenty names I could rattle off without stopping to think about it, just from the year before Del showed up, but decided even as I opened my mouth that names of women were not truly the issue, and if I named them, I might get myself in trouble. "If I was reluctant--and that's not an admission I was, mind you--it was because you'd been very clear about wanting only a guide." I sniffed. "For a woman who rarely explains anything, you were definitely clear on that point."

"That is my point," she said. "When I let you know there could be more between us, you ran the other way."

"Did not."

"Did so."

Impasse. Finally I asked, "What does any of this have to do with getting off this boat? In one piece?"

"Your plan seems to entail seduction."

"I said it was an option, yes. And it is. One of the oldest in whatever book you care to read." Which meant it might not work; then again, it had been used with success enough times to end up in the book.

Del's turn to sniff. "You were quick enough to volunteer me for the option--except the captain isn't a man, so that won't work."

"It was you who said I was looking at her!"

"You were."

"So were you."

"Tiger, I do have some acquaintance with the look in a man's eyes when he notes an attractive woman."

She would. "It doesn't hurt anything to look."

"Of course not."

That sounded suspiciously like she was pulling my leg--or else saw my point. Which raised another issue. "Do you look?"

"Of course I look."

"At other men?"

"A woman looks at other men the way a man looks at other women."

"She does?"

"Of course she does."

I had never considered that. It was new territory. Negotiating carefully, I said, "You mean women who aren't married."

"I mean any woman, Tiger. If she sees a man she considers attractive--or thinks he might be attractive, but needs additional study--she looks."

"Even if she's married." I paused. "Or sharing another man's bed. For three years."

Del smiled. "Yes," she said gently, "I look."

"How often?"

She was laughing at me. "Ask yourself the same question."

"That often?"

She crossed to the coil of rope, sat down beside me. Leaned her shoulder into mine.

"You look. I look. Looking is not leaping."

"And is there any man here you might look at? Without leaping?"

"Oh, I might look at the first mate."

"Him? He's bald!"

"He shaves his head; I've seen the shadow. And the shape of his skull is good."

"He's got those blue tattoos all over it!"

"They are beautiful designs, too, so intricate and fluid."

"He has rings in his eyebrows!" And, for all I knew, elsewhere.

"That, I admit, is not so attractive. But--different." She shrugged. "He's interesting looking."

"Anything else?"

Del nodded, then tipped her head into mine. Softly she said, "He has your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Green," she said. "And while one can see the competence in them, the confidence and willingness to risk himself, one can also see the laughter."

I digested that. "I don't see that there's much to laugh about, in our present situation."

"He does."

"He should!"

"Then it's up to us to find a way to stop the laughter in his eyes, and put it back in yours."

I twisted my mouth. "Which brings us around to the captain again."

"So it does."

"And if she's as smart as you believe she is, it might take a while. This--seduction."

"It might."

I scowled into sea spray. "You don't sound all that upset about it, bascha."

"Because I will have my own task to do."

"What's that?" I asked suspiciously.

"Seducing the first mate."

"De-li-lah!"

"Think with your head," she admonished, "not with--something else. If you should succeed in winning the captain's favors enough that it gains you a knife or sword so you may take her hostage against our safety, her crew will come for me."

So they would. I'd never believed otherwise.

"And so," she continued, "I should arm myself as well so they can't take me to force the issue, and then they will have no choice but to let us assume command. And have our captain freed, so he can sail this boat."

"Ship," I corrected. "And this is about the silliest plan I ever heard."

"Men who want something have seduced women throughout the centuries, Tiger. You yourself admitted it."

"I hope you're going to point out that women have used seduction to gain things, too."

"Of course they have. Men are ridiculously easy to manipulate from between the blankets."

I glared at her.

She shrugged. "You only think it's silly because we'll both be doing the same thing at the same time for the same reason."

"This is your revenge," I accused.

"You have no problem with me going into the circle, Tiger. Or killing to save our lives."

"Of course not." Now. Once I had, on both counts.

"And you were suggesting that I might seduce the captain, were he a man."

"I said it was an option--"

"But now that I'm so willing to seduce this first mate even as you are seducing the captain, the plan makes you uncomfortable." She paused. "Why is that?"

My head hurt. "I don't know!"

Del sighed. "Small steps," she murmured, "But enough of them lead to the same destination."

She was being cryptic again. I hate that. "What in hoolies are you talking about now?"

"I can fight enemies with you, kill with you, sleep with you. But not seduce someone else even as you are engaged in the same activity." She arched pale brows. "You do not--yet--care to share this thunder."

I hunched over on the coil of rope, elbows on knees, chin in hands. Aware of aches and abiding frustration. "I have a better idea."

"Yes?"

"Teach me to swim," I growled, "and then neither one of us has to seduce anyone!"

"Ah. Well, that, too, is an option. And then there is yet another."

I turned my head to glower at her. "I'm biting, bascha. See me biting?" I displayed teeth.

The Northern bascha was innocence personified. "You're the jhihadi," she said. "Why don't you just magick us up whatever weapons we need?"

I put the plan into action on captain's watch, just before dawn. It wasn't particularly difficult: I wasn't sleeping well, was stiff and sore, and desperately needed the exercise.

So, taking my lead from Del on the other ship, I went up on deck and began to loosen up.

I'll admit it: there are times when a man postures and poses merely for effect. I'd seen it in the stud around mares. I'd seen it in male dogs as they gathered around a bitch in season. I'd certainly seen it in cantinas when a pretty wine-girl was the desired object in a room full of men just in off the desert. Sometimes one can't help it. Other times one--can. But chooses not to.

This was one of those times.

However, I had reconnoitered before undertaking the plan. Even as I had counted the crew, I assessed them as well. Eight men. All tall, all strong, all in condition. A small woman, no matter her personal skill and abilities, had surrounded herself with large men capable of using brute strength individually or jointly to protect their captain. I didn't question their loyalty; if they were not loyal, she'd be dead already. And if not dead, she certainly wouldn't be in command of a ship, leading renegadas bent on stealing from other ships equally full of men.

In the South, I am taller, heavier, stronger, and faster than other men, not to mention very good with a sword. It afforded me tremendous advantage in the circle, as well as in most other circumstances. But here, in these circumstances, I was enough like her sailors in height, weight, and bulk, not to mention coloring, to be one of them. Therefore I had to offer her someone other than what she knew.

Though Del was frequently rough on me with regard to physical aches and pains--not to mention opinions--I'd seen her with enough babies, children, and animals to know what got to her. She was without a doubt the toughest woman I'd ever known in strength of will, mind, and sheer physical gifts, but she was, after all, a woman. She had her soft spots.

The captain was also a woman, and I was certain she had soft spots, too. I just had to find one.

I stood on the deck in the open and commenced loosening up. I did not bite my tongue against grunts of effort, of oaths sworn against stiff, slow muscles, of the favoring of particularly sore areas. I hurt all over. It affected the way I walked, the way I stretched, the way I twisted this way and that. Even the way I stood: within minutes my feet were bleeding. Any other time I'd have shrugged it off, told Del or anyone else I was fine, no problem, nothing I couldn't handle. It's easy to let pride replace truth. Sometimes it's necessary. This time, I thought, it was not.

Understanding Del was the key to this woman, this red-haired, freckled woman who had acquired a ship and eight men, not to mention various weapons and booty. Del had called her a killer: she likely was, although I had yet to see her personally kill anyone.

That she'd ordered her crew to run us up on the reef, I knew. Whether she could stick a sword into a man and cut his heart out, I didn't know. Del could. Del had. Del, too, was a killer.

That stopped me for a moment. In mid-stretch I halted, summoned up that thought, that image again. Del in the circle, circumscribed by ritual, by song. Del out of the circle, circumscribed by nothing but her will, her skill, her determination to remain alive.

Hoolies, she'd nearly killed me.

And while I recalled that, put fingers to the misshapen sculpture of scars along my ribs where her sword had cut into me, felt again the pain, the shock, the chilling flame of Boreal eating into flesh and muscle and viscera, the captain came up from behind.

"The reef was cruel," she said.

I glanced sidelong at her, saw red hair knotted back into a haphazard braid, the shine of glass beads and gold at earlobes and throat, the snug fit of the wide belt buckled around a waist I could span with my hands, and the freckled upswell of generous breasts at the droop of her neckline. A thin tunic, rippling in the wind. Baggy leggings tucked into low, heelless boots, but a curve of calf played hide-and-show in a rent. She was worth looking at. No question. And she was looking back.

So. The plan commenced.

"It wasn't the reef that drove us aground." I spread my feet again, bent to touch the deck with flattened palms. I let her see the effort not to show the effort, now that she looked.

"Better to say you were cruel."

"So I am." She put a hand on my spine, into the small of my back above the dhoti, and pressed. "Does this hurt?"

I caught my breath, swearing inwardly. If she was that kind of woman... well, it made the plan problematical. To say the least. Maybe even impossible; I had not taken this quirk into consideration.

Queasy again, I straightened, felt the fingers walk up my spine. The hand, without warning, slipped around to the scar tissue, squeezed. "That hurt," she said. "Once."

Beneath that hand, beneath the dead tissue, the bones remembered. So did the softer insides. Indeed, it had hurt. Very much. And now I felt sicker than ever.

"Your feet are bleeding," she observed.

I swallowed tightly. "Forgive me for staining your deck." I waited for her to remove the hand. When she didn't, I removed it for her, lifting it off my ribs. She was close enough for me to consider making a grab for her sword or knife, but I was certain she wanted that. Therefore I decided not to do it. Not yet. Not yet.

"My deck will survive," she said. "Will you? Can you?"

"That depends on the alternative." I took a step away, then turned toward her. "A man will do many things to stay alive."

The skin by her eyes creased. "So will a woman."

"Does that include running other ships aground so they break apart?"

"You may blame your captain for that. His choice was to come about and allow us to take his ship, unharmed; instead, he misjudged and tried the reef."

"You knew he would."

"Other men have not made that mistake. I believed he would choose to let his ship and his crew live." She paused. "And his passengers."

"It makes no sense to lose the cargo, captain."

"No sense," she agreed, "but that is my risk. I throw the dice--" A quick reflexive movement of her right hand. "--and occasionally I lose."

"This time."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is no coin of it, that is true. But there are two men and a woman."

"And you already know there is no one to ransom two of us."

A negligent shrug of her left shoulder. "Probably no one will ransom the captain, either.

I doubt he is worth much even if he has a wife."

"So much for booty, captain."

"Booty is many things. It shines, it sparkles, it chimes, it spends." She smiled. "It breathes."

This time I hid my reaction. It took everything I had. "Slavers?"

Her eyes, intently clear under sandy lashes tipped in sunbleached gold, were patently amused. "A woman will do many things to stay alive."