Sword Singer-Sword Dancer 2 (14 page)

I didn't much like that. "But? You said 'but'? But what, Del?"

"The stud ran away."

I sat upright, wished I hadn't. Swore softly. Stared out at where the stud had

been staked.

She was right. He was gone.

So were the borjuni.

Well, no. They weren't gone, precisely. Not altogether. Parts of them remained.

Maybe all of them, for that matter, but Del and Boreal had done a decisive job

in dividing them up. I didn't bother to count the limbs or try to put them back

with the proper heads and torsos. It would have taken too much time. All of the

parts were frozen solid, rimed with glittering ice. The ground was white with frost, though it had begun to melt in the sun.

Del had moved me or made me move myself apart from the bits and pieces. All I could see were lumps in the distance. "What happened to their mounts?"

"They ran off."

I lay back down again and thought about what I'd seen.

"Tiger--I'm sorry about the stud."

But was she sorry about the men? Probably not; I wasn't sure I was, either.

"Tell me that again after we've been walking a few days."

"I know he meant a lot to you--"

"Mashed toes, bitten fingers, bashed head, bumps, bruises." I shrugged. "I can

survive quite nicely without any of those."

"But--"

"Forget it, Del. He's gone. At least, for now. Who's to say he won't show up again later? He's done it before."

She nodded, but didn't look particularly happy. "I must have an answer, Tiger.

Before we go any farther, I must know."

"Know if I'll go with you to the roof of the world?"

"Yes. To be my sponsor."

I frowned. "What for?"

"I must face my accusers and be judged. If I have a sponsor, someone who speaks

on my behalf, it might help. And someone of the Sandtiger's stature--"

"Save it, Del. Empty flattery isn't your style, and up here I doubt they even know my name." I winced. "Why am I so stiff?"

"Because you were very nearly frozen," she snapped impatiently. "It was a storm

I called, and a bad one. A banshee-storm... Tiger--will you come?"

"Right now I'm not going anywhere."

"Tiger--"

I sighed. "Yes. Yes. I'll come. If it makes you happy. Hoolies, I haven't anything better to do."

"I need you, Tiger."

She was oddly intent. I glared. "I just said I'd come. Did you freeze your ears

in addition to me?"

"There are--things you will have to do."

The latter portion of her sentence came out very fast, as if she were afraid I

might undeclare myself if she said them plainly. But at the moment all I wanted

to do was sleep, not debate where I was going, who with, and why.

Still, something nagged at me. And I'd learned to pay attention to that kind of

nagging, particularly when Del was involved. "Bascha--"

"If I take no one with me, no one to speak for me, they will not favor my explanation," she said quietly, face averted. "I killed an honored and honorable

man, a man well-loved by every student and teacher, regardless of status. I deserve to be executed... but I would prefer to live." She drew in a harsh breath through a constricted throat, no longer avoiding my gaze. "Am I wrong to

want that, Tiger? Wrong to ask your help?"

She never had before. By that alone, I knew how serious it was.

"I'll go," I agreed. "I'll do whatever they want me to do. But not yet. Not now.

Not today. In the morning." I yawned. "All right, bascha?"

She touched my forehead and stroked back a lock of dark hair. "Sulhaya, Sandtiger. You are a worthy sword-mate."

I grunted. "But not a worthy bedmate. At least--not while there are loki lurking."

Del sighed. "It's only a week, Tiger. Can't you wait that long?"

"A week here, a week there... pretty soon you're celibate and I'm frustrated."

I

cracked one lid. "Think it can't happen? Just think back on that journey across

the Punja, while hunting for Jamail."

"I hired a guide, not a bedmate."

"And promised the bedding in order to get me in the circle," I retorted,

"after

your bout with sandsickness. I remember, Del, even if you don't... or say you don't. Typical woman, bascha--promising whatever you have to in order to make a

man dance to your tune."

"And you danced quite nicely, as I recall--" there was laughter in her tone

"--in the circle."

I opened both eyes. "What about now?" I asked. "Am I dancing again if I go with

you? Are you singing a song for me in addition to your sword?"

Color spilled out of her face. And then flowed back again, angrily. "I do what I

have to do," she snapped, "and so, by the gods, do you."

I shut my eyes again. "Already, I think I regret this."

Del got up and strode away. "Regret whatever you like."

But she came back to put a folded blanket under my head and spread the other one

over my body.

Women: they tend you or terrorize you.

Ten

"Tiger," she said, "it's time to go."

Maybe so, but I wasn't ready to. I stayed right where I was.

Del turned back a flap of blanket. "We have to go," she told me solemnly.

"They're all starting to thaw."

I frowned beneath the blanket. "Who's starting--oh." I flipped back the blanket,

sat up, glowered out at the afternoon. Purposely, I did not look at the borjuni

remains.

"If you're hungry, we can eat on the way," Del said. "I don't want to stay here

any longer."

Something in her voice got my attention fast. Del had killed before, and often,

and undoubtedly would kill again. She had learned to deal with it, as a sword-dancer must, taking no joy, no satisfaction, no abnormal pleasure in the

death. She was matter-of-fact and wholly professional, keeping private what she

felt, yet now she sounded odd. Odd and strangely shaken.

I looked at my competent swordmate and saw she was afraid.

"Del." I pushed up onto knees and toes. "Bascha, what is it?"

She rose even as I moved, stepping away from me. The set of her shoulders was different, sort of sucked in, rolled forward, as if she were feeling intensely

vulnerable. Del is not incapable of normal emotions--I have seen her frightened,

angry, pleased, and wholly exhilarated--but generally she locks away the deepest

feelings, for fear of sharing too much. She carries a shield, does Del, and employs it even with me.

Now the shield was down. Del was clearly spooked.

She moved away again as I rose to stand. Boreal was in one hand. "We have to go," she said.

"Hoolies, Del, what's wrong?"

"This place!" she cried suddenly, and the echoes reverberated. "It was here...

it was here--"

She was incapable of continuing. But even as I moved to touch her, Del turned away, turning her back on me. She walked away across the tuff, bypassing frozen

borjuni, and stopped on the other side of the tiny valley. Hugging the sword, she stopped, and fell down upon her knees.

"Here--" she said, "--it was here--"

I could hardly hear her. Slowly I approached, not wanting to disturb her, yet knowing it might be for the best. Del had lost control.

Back and forth, she rocked, hugging the naked blade. She pressed the hilt against her mouth, winding fingers around the crosspieces. She clutched Boreal

to her, as if the sword could offer comfort.

Well, it had before. While exacting a terrible retribution.

"I didn't know," she whispered. "I didn't know it--I didn't recognize it. I went

to relieve myself, and then I knew it again." She sucked in an unsteady breath.

"How could I not have known?"

I glanced around the flattened cleft between the foothills. Ocher-gold and lavender, sunlight glittering off swordborn frost and dampness. Such a pretty little valley, with such an ugly history. "Easy enough to forget, I think, considering what happened."

"What happened," she echoed faintly. "Do you know what happened?"

I did not, specifically. Del had never told me.

"So many of them," she said, "all aswirl in Southron silks... shouting and yelling and laughing... daring us to defy them--" She wavered, clutched the blade more tightly; breath hissed against the hilt. "We would have given them welcome, not knowing what they intended. But they took it, they took it and reviled us for our courtesy, not caring whom they killed, or how." Her eyes were

tightly shut. "The infants they killed outright, not wishing to deal with them... the men they hacked to pieces... the women they kept for themselves and

used them until they died. Those of us who were left--those of us not too young

or too old--they intended for the slaveblock."

"Del."

"There were only two of us left...Jamail and myself. The others were all dead."

"Del."

"He was male, and so they watched him. But I was female, and I was Ajani's.

His

concern, once he had made me so." Her eyes were open again, staring at nothingness. "But Ajani grew careless... and so I was able to flee. To leave my

brother behind."

"Bascha--"

"I left him!" she cried. "And you saw what he became--what he was made to be!"

It was not a shout of fear or pain, but of rage and realization. An angry, throttled shout that rose to a wailing cry of blind self-hatred. She was beyond

herself, was Del; she had stepped outside herself.

And I had an idea why.

I reached down, caught her shoulders, dragged her up from the ground. I ignored

the blade in her hands, even as it fell to thud on bumpy, hummocky turf. I caught her and I held her and I made her look at me. "Don't ever blame yourself!"

"I left him--"

"--because you had to. Because there was no choice. Because you intended to help

him escape as well, once you could find a way."

"They took him South--"

"--and they sold him, as they intended to do with you." I wanted to shake her;

all I did was grip her arms. "You have done more to yourself in the name of kinship and duty than anyone I know. But it ends, Del--it has to! You can't gut

yourself with it forever. Haven't you suffered enough?"

Her voice was toneless, "Not as much as Jamail."

"He is what he is!" I hissed. "Mute. Castrated, No more the boy you knew. But he

never can be, Del... he never will be, now--and you have to realize it."

"He was ten--"

"--and you were fifteen. You lost as much as he did, if in a different way."

I

sucked in an uneven breath. "Oh, bascha, bascha, do you think I don't know? I sleep with you, remember? I know your dreams are troubled."

She was shaking in my hands. "I want him," she said, "I want Ajani."

"I know. I know, Del. But you've already made your decision."

"Have I?" Her tone was bitter.

"Well, you certainly gave a good imitation of it earlier--asking me to sponsor

you and speak for you and do whatever else I have to do to convince them you should live." I let her go. "If you'd rather go after Ajani--"

"It isn't fair, Tiger!"

"Tell me something new." I reached down, retrieved Boreal--I could do that, now--and handed her to Del. "You'd better decide now, bascha. If we're going after Ajani, our best bet is to head back to Harquhal and see if we can scare up

anyone who knows where he is. Obviously, he may soon know where we are; he seems

to have loyal men."

"And dead ones," she said flatly.

"And how many does that leave?"

Del shrugged. "Ten. Fifteen. There were twenty or so. I couldn't count them all... I wasn't conscious all of the time." She shrugged again, more violently,

as if to ward off additional recollections. "I have killed five, but that is not

enough. Not till I have Ajani."

"Your decision, Del."

She looked at me in raw appeal. "What would you do, Tiger?"

"Your decision, bascha."

"But don't you have an opinion? You always have an opinion."

"I have one, yes. I know better than to state it." I smiled crookedly. "If I told you what I'd do, and you decided to do it, too, you might decide later that

it wasn't a good idea. And then I'd get the blame for suggesting it in the first

place."

She opened her mouth to disagree, reconsidered, shut it. Glumly, she nodded.

"You can go after him now," I said quietly. "You can track him, catch him, kill

him. It's what you want to do. But it might take more than two months--by then

you would be fair game as well... as much as Ajani is."

Del stared at her sword.

"Or you can go home and face your accusers, accept whatever punishment they levy--and then go after Ajani."

"If they let me live."

"If they let both of us live." I smiled as she looked at me in shock. "You got

me this far, Del. I'll see it through."

"But if they sentence me to death, as is their right--"

"Right schmight," I retorted. "If they're stupid enough to try it, they'll have

to fight both of us."

Del continued to stare. And then she smiled a little, laughed a little, nodded.

"Wouldn't that be a tale to tell."

"No doubt Bellin would enjoy it." I turned to head back toward the blankets.

"Let's go, bascha. We've got a long walk ahead of us no matter which way we go."

The sunlight beat down upon us, sucking us dry of fluids. My lungs were empty of

breath, stripped by heat of moisture, so that I rasped and rattled as I walked.

Scorched within and without, I knew only that if we did not find a cistern soon,

we would die, as the Hanjii intended us to die, the violent tribe that had left

us in the Punja. No horses, no water, only weapons, because we were a sacrifice