Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (8 page)

"And now she will leave you?"

"It's a little hard to leave me when we're both stuck on this boat."

"Leave you here." She touched one breast, indicating her heart.

"Ask her," I said grimly.

"Nihko says she refuses to let you die."

I didn't realize they'd overheard quite that much. "Del does what she pleases."

"And if she pleases to keep you alive?"

I shrugged. "A man can find ways to die."

She considered that. "And why should he wish to die?"

He doesn't. But. "There are choices a man makes about the way he lives."

"Ah." She smiled. "And now you have argued together and are in bad temper, like children, because she likes you enough to wish you to survive, even if you wish to die."

"No one should interfere with a personal choice."

"No?"

"No."

"And if her personal choice is to keep you from dying?"

I glowered at the water and offered no reply.

"Would you prevent her from dying?"

That one was easy. "I have."

"And she, you?"

I turned on her then. "What is this about?"

"So, you will not admit a woman may prevent a man from dying? Does it weaken your soul, to know a woman can?"

I set a hip against the rail and folded arms across my chest. "What's my prize, if I answer your questions correctly? And how would you know if I did?"

She laughed at me. "On this ship, there is truth among men and women."

"Truth?"

"I tell you a truth. There is no man of my crew who was born believing a woman could save his life. But they learned it was so, when I saved theirs."

"You saved theirs."

"Oh, yes. I bought them."

I stiffened. "Bought them--"

"Out of slavery," she answered. "All save Nihko. Nihko came to me."

"Why?" I asked sharply.

"Ask Nihko."

"No--I mean, why did you buy them out of slavery?"

"I required loyalty. And that cannot be bought, or beaten into a man."

"Loyalty for what?"

"My ship."

I began to understand. "You couldn't hire a crew."

"Coin does not buy loyalty."

"No men would hire on with you as captain. So you bought yourself a crew another way." I shrugged. "Slave labor."

"I bought them. I freed them. I gave them the choice. Eight of ten sailed with me."

"And the two who did not?"

She hitched a single shoulder. "Free men choose as they will. Those two chose to go elsewhere."

"Loyalty you couldn't buy."

In the sun, her eyes were pale. "They would have left me later. It was better to lose them then."

"And the others?"

"One is dead," she said. "The others are here."

"Still."

"Still." She tilted her head slightly. "The only man who would ask his woman to let him die rather than become a slave is a man who has been a slave."

Anyone who had seen my back knew that. I eyed her up and down. "You seem to have an intimate knowledge of slavery."

She lifted her chin in assent. "My father owned many."

I had been on the verge of assuming she had been one. Or a prostitute, which is, I'd been told by Delilah, a form of slavery. But this was nothing I had expected of the conversation. "And does your father know what his daughter does?"

"What she does. What she is." A strand of sun-coppered hair strayed across her face. She trapped it and pulled it back, tucking it behind a gold-weighted ear. "He is a merchant,"

she said, "of men. He sells, buys, trades."

"So," I said finally, "you bought these men from your father, freed them--and now you ask them to do to other men what was done to them."

She said matter-of-factly, "Booty is many things."

And the daughter of a slaver would have no trouble finding a market for me. Or Del.

I shook my head. "No."

Small teeth glinted white. Even the rim of her lips was freckled. "She believes you worth saving."

I shrugged. "No accounting for taste."

It startled a laugh from her. I watched her eye me up and down, assessing me; it was what I had hoped to provoke in her, an interest in imagining what might come of intimacy, but now I could not help but wonder if she assessed me as a man who might perform in her bed--or perform as a slave. The chill in my gut expanded.

"So," she said, "you are willing to die for your freedom, as you believe death is better than slavery. I ask you, then, will you live for your freedom? If you were offered the choice?"

"I saw the choice you offered our captain in the reefs."

"But there was a choice," she insisted quietly. "I did not require him to sail his ship aground. He could have surrendered to us and saved his ship, his cargo, and the lives of his men."

"Maybe he didn't want to become a slave either."

"But that is the final choice," she explained. "If you have the means to buy your safety, I do not insist upon selling anyone." She flicked a hand briefly and eloquently. "Find a way to buy your freedom, if you would not have me sell it. That is your choice."

I could ignore the opening, and risk not getting another. Or I could test the possibility while making no commitment. "And what," I asked steadily, "might you count as coin?"

The slaver's daughter smiled. A light came into her eyes. "There are seven intact men on board," she said, "and I doubt you may offer more than they have."

"Have offered?" I asked. "Or are forced to surrender out of loyalty?"

"You owe me no loyalty."

"No."

"You owe me escape," she said. "To prove you are better than we judge you. And that is what you plan even here and now, as we speak."

"Is it?"

She nodded once. "I do not rule my men. I understand them."

"And you believe you understand me."

"More than you understand me." She grinned. "I repeat: I doubt you may offer more than my crew have."

I shrugged casually. "There are men--and there are men."

She ignored that. "I have seen your hands."

"So?"

"So. I know what manner of work causes calluses such as those. Not slave labor, but skill. Practice. Dedication. Discipline."

"I repeat: So?"

"You seek a sword," she said calmly. "You believe that with a blade in your hand, it will prove no difficulty to overcome eight men and one woman."

"I do, do I?"

"It shouts from your eyes. From your body. In every movement you make here, returning your body to fitness." She was serious now. "There are two kinds of men in the world: fools, and those who are dangerous."

I spread my hands. "Me? Dangerous?"

"As Nihko is dangerous. You are two of a kind."

"I've got a bit more hair on my head."

"And testicles."

That startled me. "What?"

"Some men pay with more than simple coin."

I pondered that. I pondered the idea of a man surrendering himself so far as to lose that which makes him a man. But then, there was no certainty Nihko had had a choice.

I cleared my throat, trying to ignore the reflexive tightening of my own genitals. With effort I changed the subject--and the imagery. "And your price, captain?"

With no hesitation she answered, "The woman."

I bit down on my anger. "Why barter for what your men could take?" Del would account for a few, but in the end superior numbers would undoubtedly prevail.

"For my men?" Her smile was bittersweet as she shook her head. "Oh, but I want her for myself."

I stared at her, speechless.

"And now you know," she said, "why my father cast me out, and how I came to be a renegada."

SIX

DEL, in the tiny cabin we'd been "assigned," swung around as I shut the narrow door behind me. Her expression was pensive; that changed to studied patience as she recognized me.

I cleared my throat. "Well," I began, "it seemed like a good idea. I just didn't quite figure on this--minor complication."

Blue eyes narrowed; Del knows all my tones and euphemisms. "What minor complication?"

I spread a hand across my chest. "There is, after all, one woman in the world who is not overcome by my manly charms. Only one, mind you--but still. I am crushed. I am undone. I am destroyed. I will undoubtedly never recover."

"You made your move on her." She considered my expression. "I thought you said you weren't rushing anything."

"I didn't make any kind of move," I said. "Well--innuendo. But that's not really a move--"

"Depending on how such things are interpreted."

"--at least, not the sort of thing I really consider as an official move," I finished, ignoring her interruption. "There's an art to seduction, you know."

"Seduction requires subtlety," Del said. "You have none."

"None?"

"It is one of your charms," she observed, "that there is no guile in you. At least, not when it comes to such base instincts as copulation."

I affected horrified shock. "Hoolies, bascha, why don't you just take all the romance right out of it!"

"You say what you want, Tiger. I respect that."

I leered at her. "Respect this!"

Del sighed. "As I said, there is no subtlety in you."

"Well, there was," I answered. "At least, I thought I was being pretty subtle. But it's lost on that woman."

" 'That woman?' " Del eyed me curiously. "My, this sounds serious."

I began again. "She wounded me. She cut me to the quick. She utterly shattered my spirit--"

"Which will recover," Delilah put in, arid as the Punja, "with liberal applications of my affection and attentions, I assume."

I dropped the pose, took a step forward, hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her close against my chest. Into her hair I said, "Forgive me, bascha."

Her breath was warm on my neck. "For failing to seduce the captain?"

"No. For picking a fight with you. But I couldn't think of any other way."

Del, chin resting on the top of my shoulder, held her silence.

"You did know," I said, aware of her stiffness. "You realized, didn't you, what I was doing? Out there on the deck, in front of all the crew?"

After a moment she inhaled. "A man is often the most convincing in what he says when he means what he says."

"Del--"

"That was no lie, Tiger, what you said. That was not for effect. You may have intended to mislead them, but you did not mislead me. I will say it again: you have no subtlety in you. You are honest in all things, even when you lie." She set the flat of her hand against my chest and stepped away so that she could look me in the eye. "You have an honest heart. And that is what you spoke from."

This was not exactly heading in the expected direction. I tried again. "Del--"

"You meant this as much as you meant it when you repudiated all the honor codes of Alimat." Her voice was oddly flat, as if it were hard for her to speak. "When you stepped out of the circle that day before Sabra, before Abbu Bensir and all the other sword-dancers, renouncing--"

"I know what I did," I said sharply, cutting her off.

"You meant that," Del declared, "and you meant this."

I exhaled noisily, expelling all the air from my lungs, then scrubbed the heel of one hand across my forehead. "Yes, well, we all do things we have to. Even if we don't want to."

Her tone now was almost gentle. "You used me, Tiger."

I didn't shirk it. "To make them believe. Yes."

Del nodded. "As I used you to buy my way back onto Staal-Ysta."

I blinked. This was an entirely different topic.

"I used you, manipulated you," she said. "Offered you to them, like meat on a platter. I bought my way into a place I could no longer go, because of oaths and codes I once honored."

"To see your daughter." Whom I had not at the time known existed.

"I felt it worth the price," Del agreed. "The--risk. But I was wrong. I never should have used you so poorly."

I shrugged, discomfited as much by her emotions as by such painful recollections.

"That's in the past, bascha."

"You might have left me at any time. No doubt some people would have counseled you to. Some would have named you mad, to stay with me in such circumstances. What I did was--unconscionable. Unforgivable."

I tried to be offhand. "Well, there's no accounting for a man's folly when a woman is involved."

Del's bittersweet smile was of brief duration. "Or a woman's, when a child is involved."

"So," I said after a moment, "we're even."

"Are we?"

"We've done things to--and for--one another." I hitched my shoulders briefly. "And will, I assume."

"Do things to and for one another?"

"Well, yes. It seems to be our habit."

Del nodded. "And knowing that," she said, "you will perhaps forgive me."

Oh, hoolies... "Wow what have you done?"

"I have undertaken my own seduction."

The first mate? But the captain had said the man lacked testicles!

Del read my expression. "No," she said, "not like that. Why do you assume the obvious?"

Then she answered herself immediately and matter-of-factly. "Because you are male."

She went on before I could raise a protest beyond opening my mouth. "There is the seduction of the mind as well as of the body. It requires subtlety. It requires duplicity."

She pressed both hands against her breast. "And both of those live here."

"Now, bascha, I don't think that's an accurate summation of--"

"Take pride in that you were convincing," she said. "I believed you. That's what you wanted--needed--so the others would believe as well. And so I do believe, and now so do they."

"But it was only to make the captain think we were fighting. So that it might seem more likely I'd look to her, to make you jealous."

"That would be a logical assumption, yes," Del agreed, "but I have said she is not a stupid woman. She will not be taken in by ordinary means."

"You calling me ordinary?"

"Surely the gods would curse me if I said such of a jhihadi." She doesn't miss anything, this woman. "So of course I will never do so. Ordinary you are not." Her mouth tensed into a flat, thin line as she thought of something, then relaxed. "And I have taken pains to make certain the first mate knows it."