Sword-Maker, page 28
Del’s tone was steady. “I will find a way.”
I sat back down in the saddle. “Can we at least get a meal first? And maybe a place to stay?”
Del extended a hand, indicating the plateau. “There is a place to stay.”
“I kind of thought we might go find a room. It might not have a roof, but then neither of us is a tanzeer. And it doesn’t look like rain.”
Automatically, Del glanced up at the sky. It was a clear, brilliant blue, without a cloud apparent. But this was border country. This was odd country; it just didn’t feel right. Too many bits mixed together: vegetation, temperature, people.
“Sandtiger! Tiger! Del!”
I glanced around. Frowned. Peered at the circles, but saw no one I knew. Only men in the circles with swords in their hands.
“There.” Del pointed in the other direction. “Isn’t that—Alric?”
Alric? “Oh—Alric.” The Northerner who’d helped us in Rusali, the domain just before Julah. I squinted. “Yes, I think it is.”
Alric approached, waving. With him walked a short, fat woman. Two little girls preceded them; in one arm he carried a third. At least, I think it was a girl; sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Del slid out of her saddle. “Lena had her baby.”
I stayed in mine. “And, from the look of it, is expecting yet another.”
The little girls, upon arrival, hurled themselves at Del, who bent down to receive them. I was privately astonished they even remembered her; they were all of three and four—or maybe four and five; at this age, who can tell?—and they’d only spent a week or so around us when Alric had taken us into his home after I’d gotten myself wounded. But Del is very good with children, and the girls had adored her. Obviously their opinions hadn’t changed.
I watched her as the girls competed for her hugs. She was smiling, laughing with them, exchanging Southron greetings. I almost expected pain, expecting Del to see Kalle in their faces, but there was only happiness. I saw no trace of anguish.
About then Alric arrived with his heavily pregnant wife. The last time I’d seen her she’d also been heavily pregnant. And since the older girls were but a year apart, I began to suspect Lena and Alric enjoyed active nights together.
Lena was Southron, and looked it; he was clearly Northern. The girls were a little of both. They had their mother’s black hair and dark skin, but their father’s bright blue eyes and high-arched cheekbones. They’d be beauties when they were grown.
Alric was grinning. “I thought so!” he said. “I told Lena it was you, but she said no. She said by now Del would have come to her senses and looked for a Northern man instead of a Southron danjac.”
“Oh?” I looked down at Lena, who showed white teeth at me. “I suppose you think she’d be better off with another Alric.”
Lena patted her swollen belly. “A strong, lusty Northerner is good for a woman’s soul.” Black eyes glinted. “And other things as well.”
Alric laughed aloud. “Although so far all this lusty Northerner makes is girls.” He patted Lena’s belly. “Maybe this one will be a boy.”
“And if not?” I asked.
Alric’s grin widened. “We’ll keep trying until we get one.”
I waited for Del’s comment; surely she had one. But the girls were chattering at her and she had no chance to speak.
Lena waved welcoming hands. “Come, come … we have a house in the city not far from here. You will come and stay with us; there are plenty of rooms. We can wait for the jhihadi together.”
I glanced at Alric. “Is that why you came?”
He shifted the baby in his arms. “Everyone else was coming to Iskandar. Even the tanzeers. I thought it might be worthwhile to come up myself and see how the dancing was.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the circles. “And, as you can see, there are sword-dancers aplenty. There will be coin as well. Or a tanzeer who’ll hire me. With all these little mouths to feed, extra coin would be welcome.”
Three little mouths to feed, and a fourth on the way. No wonder he’d come to Iskandar, but I thought it odd for Lena. She couldn’t be far from delivering.
Lena sensed my thought. “A child born in the presence of a jhihadi will be blessed throughout his life.”
“Or hers,” Alric said affably; the possibility of yet another daughter did not appear to trouble him.
He hadn’t changed much. Still big. Still Northern. Still a sword-dancer. But it seemed odd to look at him now—smiling, cheerful, openly friendly—and recall how I had felt when I’d first met him. How I’d thought he was after Del. I hadn’t trusted him at all until we’d sparred in an alley circle. You learn a man that way. Learn what he is made of.
“Alric,” I said suddenly, “how is your dancing these days?”
His brow creased. “Well enough. Why?”
“How’d you feel about going a few matches? For old time’s sake.”
He grinned, displaying big teeth. Alric was big all over. “You always beat me,” he said. “But I’ve been practicing. Now maybe I can beat you.”
I glanced across at the circles. “Shall we go find out?”
“Not now,” Lena said. “First you will come to our house. You will eat. Rest. Give us the news you have. And we will give you ours.” She slanted a glance at Alric. “Time for dancing and drinking later.”
Del came forward with a girl on either arm. The roan trailed behind them. “We are grateful for your offer. Your news will be welcome.”
I was a little surprised. I expected Del to want to go haring off after news of Ajani, trying to track him down in Iskandar, or find out if he was expected. But apparently she’d thought about what I’d said. If she was to kill the man, it would have to be carefully planned.
“Come,” Lena said. She turned and waddled away.
Alric looked at Del over the black-fuzzed head of the baby. He smiled, said something in Northern dialect, slanted an oblique glance at me.
Del’s chin came up. She answered briefly in the same dialect, then told the girls to show her the way to their quarters. Tugging on her arms, they led her toward the city. The roan trotted behind.
“And what was that?” I asked Alric.
He grinned. “I asked her if a Southroner was enough man for a free-hearted uplander woman.” Blue eyes glinted. “Speaking as an older brother looking out for a sister’s welfare.”
“Of course,” I agreed dryly. “And what did the sister tell the older brother?”
“There is no Southron translation. It was a Northern obscenity.” Alric’s grin stretched wide. “Which says something all on its own.”
Well, I suppose it does. But he didn’t tell me what.
“Let’s go eat,” I said sourly.
Alric’s eyes were guileless. “Would you like to hold the baby?”
Which gave me an opportunity to use an untranslatable Southron obscenity.
The toothy grin widened. “And here I heard you were a father.”
The stud walked onto my heels. Since I’d stopped moving, it wasn’t surprising. “A father—? Oh. That.” In disgust, I elbowed the stud in the nose and pushed him back a step. “Have you seen him?”
Alric hitched the baby higher on a big shoulder and headed for the city. “Your son? No. Just heard there was a boy here—young man, really—who says he’s the Sandtiger’s son.”
“He isn’t,” I muttered, matching my pace to his. “At least, not as far as I know.”
“Does it matter if he is?”
I thought about it. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? Maybe? What an odd thing to say.” The baby caught a handful of blond hair and tugged; Alric freed it gently. “Don’t you want to have a son to carry on your blood?”
What blood? And whose? For all I knew, it could be the blood of borjuni killers. “I figure I’m doing a good enough job carrying it all on my own.”
Alric scoffed, but gently. “A man should have a son. A man should have a family. A man should have kinfolk to sing the songs of him.”
“Northerner,” I muttered.
“And if you meet him in the circle?”
I stopped short. “He’s a sword-dancer? My s—this young man?”
Alric shrugged, frowning a little. “I heard of him at the circles. I assumed he was a sword-dancer, but perhaps he isn’t. Perhaps he’s a tanzeer.”
My son, a tanzeer. Which meant he could hire me.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. He is whatever he is.” Alric lengthened his stride and led me into the city.
Three
The building Alric had claimed for Lena and the girls was large—four rooms—but lacked a roof and half of a wall on one side. Into the room lacking most of one wall he put the carthorse and his own mount, a bald-faced bay gelding. It left two rooms vacant: he offered one to Del and me.
I’ve never been one for sharing close confinement, preferring privacy, but in some situations it’s good to have folk around. I thought it possible this might become one of them. As the city filled with strangers, trouble would inevitably break out. There would be thieves, certainly, come to prey upon worshipers, and feuds between hostile races. And if the promised jhihadi never arrived—which I believed was likely—frustration would drive impatient people to do things they might not otherwise think about. Like starting fights, and killing. All things considered, I thought Alric’s offer generous. Del and I agreed.
Lena sent the two little girls—Felka and Fabiola; don’t ask me which was which—off to help Del with settling our belongings in one of the other rooms. I briefly considered lending a hand, then decided against it; Del looked pleased to spend time with the girls, even though they’d be little help, and I felt more like sitting with Alric by the fire, sharing a bota of aquivi. Lena prepared food.
Alric wiped his mouth. “Did you ever find Del’s brother?”
I accepted the bota. “We found him. We left him.”
“Dead?”
“No. With the Vashni.”
Alric grimaced. “Good as dead, then. They’re not a hospitable tribe.”
I cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “It was a Vashni you got your sword off of, wasn’t it? The blade with human thighbone hilt?”
Alric nodded. “But I put it away and got a Southron sword. I decided it was a bit too grisly to use a sword with a hilt made out of the bone of a man I never knew—or maybe a man I did know.”
“New swords,” I reflected. “A lot of that going around.”
“I noticed.” Alric’s eyes were on the harness next to my leg. “No more Singlestroke?”
I accepted a flat, hot loaf from Lena, blew on it to cool it. “Got broken in a sword-dance after we left Julah.” I blew some more, then bit. The steaming loaf was nutty, flaky, delicious. “Like you, I’ve got another.”
“But yours is a jivatma.”
Alric’s tone was odd. I glanced at him, glanced at the sheathed sword, then looked back at him. Recalled it was Alric who’d first told me about jivatmas. About Northern blooding-blades, and how rank in the North was reckoned.
“Jivatma,” I agreed. “Del took me to Staal-Ysta.”
Blond brows swooped up. Then down. “Since you have a blooding-blade, I’m assuming you are a kaidin.”
“I’m Southron,” I said. “I’m a seventh-level sword-dancer. I don’t need a fancy name.”
“But you carry a jivatma.”
Irritably, I swallowed hot bread, then washed it down with aqivi. “Believe me, Alric, I’d give it to you if I could. But the thrice-cursed thing won’t let me.”
Alric smiled. “If you enter a circle with a blooding-blade at your beck, no one will defeat you.” He paused thoughtfully. “Except maybe Del.”
“No,” I blurted.
“But she has a jivatma, too—”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, Del and I have done it once. We’ll never do it again.”
Alric grinned. “You lost.”
It stung, but only a little. “Nobody lost. Nobody won. Both of us nearly died.” I drank, then continued before he could ask any questions. “And as for taking my sword into a circle—no. Not here at any rate—this is exhibition. I just don’t think it’s fair.”
Alric shrugged. “Then don’t sing. An unkeyed jivatma isn’t much more than a sword.”
“It isn’t like that.” I accepted a second loaf. “You don’t understand. This sword wasn’t quenched properly, the first or second time.”
“Second!” Alric’s eyes widened. “You requenched your blade?”
“No choice,” I muttered, biting into the second loaf. “The thing’s a pain in the rump, and I plan to replace it. I’ll put this one away and use a Southron sword.”
“There’s a swordsmith here,” he said. “With so many sword-dancers present, a smith would be a fool to ignore such a windfall. His name is Sarad, and he’s set up a smithy out by the circles.”
“I’ll see him tomorrow,” I said, as Del came back with the girls.
A faint frown puckered her brow, though she gave nothing away in behavior. The girls joined their mother in preparing the meal, and Del came over to sit near Alric and me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
The puckered brow didn’t smooth. “Can’t you feel it? The weather is changing. It doesn’t feel right.”
Alric and I both glanced around, assessing daylight and temperature. The way the day tasted, odd as it sounds.
“Cooler,” Alric remarked. “Well, I won’t complain. After living so long in the South, I could use some Northern weather.”
“This is the border.” I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s cool, sometimes hot.”
“It was hot,” Del said, “all of an hour ago. But now it’s cooler. Significantly cooler; it just doesn’t feel right.”
I glanced up at the roof, which wasn’t really a roof. A few spindly timber rafters remained, but most had rotted and fallen in, supplying wood for Lena’s cookfire. All four rooms were in similar shape, which left them mostly open to the elements. No proper shade, but no cover, either. Alric had strung up a couple of blankets to provide a makeshift roof, but it wouldn’t do much if the weather did turn chancy.
Del just shook her head. “I feel something in my bones.”
I arched unsubtle brows. “Getting along in years?”
She slanted me a glance. “One of us certainly is.”
“Here.” Lena handed clay bowls around with bread and mutton stew. “With the tribes coming in, we should have mutton enough to spare. And all the merchants, too; we could live here for months.”
I thought it unlikely they’d have to.
“I could set snares,” Del offered, and instantly Felka and Fabiola wanted to accompany her.
It reminded me of something. For a moment I was swept away somewhere familiar, and yet unknown; abruptly the feeling died, and I realized what I remembered. Del offering to set snares while a tow-headed Borderer boy asked to help her. Massou, Adara’s son, who had hosted a Northern demon and nearly destroyed us all.
Loki. It was enough to make me shiver. Thank the gods for the Cantéada, who had sung them into a trap-circle and freed the Borderers.
“Later,” Del promised the girls. “We’ll see first if it’s going to storm.”
Lena cuddled the baby against her breasts. “At least this little one need not concern herself with where her meals are coming from.”
Alric’s eyes glinted. “Nor I, if it comes to it.”
A gust of wind blew into the room, scattering handfuls of dust. A cool, damp-tasting wind, hinting at coming change. After months spent in the North, I knew the promise well.
Del looked at me. “Rain.”
Well, it was the border. A day’s ride south of here and rain was almost an unknown thing.
“Maybe.” I drank amnit.
“Rain,” she said again, mostly to herself.
Alric looked overhead. Two blankets tied to rotting timbers, and the weather tasted of rain.
Lena shifted uneasily. Southron-born and bred, rain was not to be trusted, or understood very well. “Maybe we should look for a house with a roof.”
Alric’s blond hair swung against shoulder blades as he shook his head, still staring into the sky. “No roofs for people like us … the tanzeers have claimed them all.”
“All?” I asked. “There aren’t that many people here—and there can’t be that many tanzeers. Not yet.”
Alric shrugged. “I looked. All the decent dwellings were claimed. We took the best we could find.”
I set the bota aside. “Tell you what … I want to take a little walk anyway, just to check things out. I’ll see what I can find in the way of better shelter. If there is to be a storm, we might as well be prepared.”
Alric rose. “I’ll go to the merchants and buy more blankets, some skins … we can put up a makeshift roof.”
Del shook her head as I glanced her way. “I’ll stay and help Lena.”
It surprised me a little. Del is not a woman for women’s things, as she has so often been at such pains to tell me. But neither is she a woman to ignore the needs of others; Lena had her hands—and belly—full with four children. Del never shirks assistance if she can offer any.
Well, it was fine with me. I didn’t think Del would approve of me talking to a swordsmith about another blade.
I left them all behind and headed out toward the circles. More wind kicked up as I walked, gusting down through narrow alleyways and curling around corners to snatch at my burnous. Grit stung my face; I blinked to clear my eyes.
“Sandtiger? Tiger!”
I stopped, squinting, and turned. From out of a broken doorway stepped a Northerner, blond braids hanging to his waist. And a scar across his top lip.
“Garrod,” I said, on a note of disbelief.
He grinned as he approached, blue eyes bright. “I never thought to see you again, once you and Del left the Cantéada and went north.” He sobered, recalling the reasons. “Did Del settle her trouble?”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “What are you doing here? Iskandar isn’t exactly Kisiri.”
