Sword-Maker, page 5
So cool and clipped. So much like the old Del, with no time for other’s feelings. Full circle, I thought. Back where it all started.
But not quite, bascha. I’m not the same man. Because—or in spite—of you, I’m not the same man.
Five
I sat on my bedding by the fire cairn, scratching sandtiger scars, drinking amnit, thinking. Thinking; what in hoolies happens now?
So, she wanted to ride with me. For a while. To dance with me in the circle, until she was fit enough to challenge Ajani. Which meant she’d intended all along to leave me, once she found me. Once she was fit again.
Which meant she was using me.
Well, we all use one another. One way or another.
But Del was using me.
Again.
Without, apparently, considering my own feelings. Or else she had considered them, and thought I’d be happier without her. Once she was ready to leave.
Or else she was merely concocting a wild tale to cover up the real reason she’d tracked me down, which had less to do with Ajani and more to do with me.
No. Not Del. She’s nothing if not determined.
Nothing if not obsessed.
Which meant Ajani was still the most important issue, and I was merely a means to make her fit enough to kill him.
Which came back to me being used.
Again.
A little part of me suggested it didn’t matter, that having Del around was enough compensation. Because, of course, she would share my bed again, and that ought to be enough to make any man overlook certain things.
Maybe, once, it would’ve been. But not anymore. I could overlook nothing. Because a bigger part of me didn’t like being reduced to a means. I deserved better.
And a still larger part reminded me with exquisite clarity that Del hadn’t thought twice about offering me as bait to the voca on Staal-Ysta to buy a year off her exile.
Well, she might have thought twice. But she’d still offered easily enough without even consulting me.
And it rankled. Oh, it rankled.
I sat on my bedding by the cairn, scratching, drinking, staring. Waiting for Delilah.
She puttered with her gelding, unsaddling him, wiping him down, talking softly, settling him for the night. Wasting time? Stalling? Maybe. But probably not; Del knows what she does and why, and spends no time on what-might-have-beens after the fact.
I watched her: white wraith in the cairnglow, white specter against black trees; so white-on-white, Delilah: tunic, trews, hair, except for flashing silver. Bosses on belt and bracers. Two heavy cloak brooches weighting each wool-swathed shoulder.
And the twisted sword hilt, slashed across her back.
Hoolies, what do I do?
Hoolies, what don’t I do?
Having no answer for either, I sat by the cairn and sucked amnit, waiting for Delilah.
Eventually, she came. With arms full of gear and bedding, she came at last toward the cairn. Toward me. And at last I could tell her.
“No,” I said calmly.
In mid-step, she hesitated. Then halted altogether. “No?” she echoed blankly, clearly confused. Thinking about something else.
“You asked me to dance with you. Well, I can give it to you in Southron, in Desert, in Northern. Even in uplander.” Humorlessly, I smiled. “Which ‘no’ do you want? Which one will you believe?”
Her face was white as ice. Only her eyes were black.
With exquisite care, I set aside my bota. “Did you think I was so well-trained that I’d lie down and show you my belly so you could feel good again?”
She stood very still, clutching blankets.
I kept my tone even. Perfectly expressionless, so she would know what it was like. “You came fully expecting me to agree. Not to ask, not to request—to tell. ‘Dance with me, Sandtiger. Step into the circle.’” Slowly I shook my head. “I don’t disagree with your reasons for wanting Ajani dead. I understand revenge as well as or better than anyone. But you forfeited your right to expect me to do anything just for the asking. You forfeited the asking.”
Del said nothing at all for a very long moment. The meager light from the cairn carved lines into her face, but showed me no expression. No expression at all.
I waited. The circle teaches patience, many kinds of patience. But never have I felt the waiting so intensely. Never have I wanted it to end so badly. And afraid to know the answer, to know how the ending would be.
Her voice was very low. “Do you want me to leave?”
Yes. No. I don’t know.
I swallowed painfully. “You were wrong,” I told her.
Del clutched bedding.
“Wrong,” I repeated softly. “And until you can see it, until you can admit it, I don’t think I can help you. I don’t want to help you.”
Breath rushed out of her mouth. With it, her answer. Her explanation. Her excuse, for something requiring none because none could be enough. “It was for Kalle—”
“It was for you.”
“It was for kin—”
“It was for you.”
A painful desperation: “It was for honor, Tiger—”
“It was for you, Delilah.”
The full name made her flinch. The movement made her wince. Her defenses were coming down: against pain, against truth, against me. The latter, I thought, was what counted. It might yet make her whole.
“Pride,” I said, “is powerful. You threw mine away very easily. Will you do the same with your own?”
Her face was slack with shock. “How did I throw away your pride?”
I was on my feet, oblivious to the pain of a wrenched abdomen. Yanking her out of the saddle had taken its toll on us both. “Hoolies, Del, have you forgotten entirely? I was a slave for half my life! Not an innocent young Northern girl playing at swords and knives, well-loved by her kin, but a human beast of burden. A chula. A thing. Something with no name, no identity, no reason for being alive except to serve others. Except to service others—what do you think I did at night in the hyorts with the women?”
I saw the shock in her face, but it hardly slowed me down. “Do you think it was always for pleasure? Do you think it was always merely a man using a woman?” I shook hair out of my eyes. “Let me tell you, Delilah, it isn’t always a woman who gets used … it isn’t always a woman who feels dirty and used and without value other than what she offers in bed. It isn’t always a woman—”
Oh, hoolies, I hadn’t meant to say so much, or so brutally. But I finished it anyway, since it was begging to be said; since it had to be said, if we were ever to recover even a trace of the old relationship. Even that of the circle.
I steadied my voice with effort. “I won my freedom—and my name—through desperation and sheer dumb luck, Del, not to mention pain both physical and emotional … and yet you were willing to throw it all away again just to buy yourself some time. Is that what I was to you? A means to an end? The coin to buy your daughter? A body to barter away? Is that what I was, Delilah?”
She was strung so taut she twitched. And then, jerkily, she bent. Set down bedding and gear. Shuddered once, deeply, then caught the hilt of her sword in both hands and whipped it out of the sheath.
For a moment, for one incredulous, painful moment, I thought she meant to kill me. That I’d gone too far, though I’d barely gone far enough.
The moment passed. Del cradled Boreal. Vertically, and carefully, pressing blade between breasts. Briefly, oh so briefly, she closed her eyes, murmured something, then slowly, painfully lowered herself to one knee. Then brought down the other.
Del knelt before me in the dirt. She bent, placed Boreal flat on the ground, then crossed her arms across her chest, making fists of her hands. In deep obeisance, she bowed, resting forehead against the blade.
She held herself in perfect stillness for a moment of rigid silence, then raised herself again. Her eyes were black in the cairnglow, empty of all save the knowledge of need. Hers as well as my own.
With frequent checks and taut swallows, she spoke to me in Northern. It was a dialect I didn’t know, probably born of Staal-Ysta and precise, required rituals meant to enhance the mystery of the jivatma. I’ve never been much impressed with the trappings of such things, preferring straightforward, unadorned talk, but I made no move to stop her. Clearly she needed it.
Eventually she stopped. Bowed again. Then straightened to look at me, and repeated it all in Southron so I could understand.
Appalled, I cut her off almost immediately. “That’s not necessary.”
She waited. Swallowed. Began again.
I spat out an oath. “I said—”
She raised her voice and overrode me.
“Hoolies, Del, do you think this is what I want? Abasement? Atonement? I’m not asking any such thing, you fool … I just want you to understand what it is you did. I just want you to realize—” But I broke it off in disgust because she wasn’t listening.
She ran down eventually. All the forms were followed, the requirements satisfied. She was a true daughter of Staal-Ysta, no matter what anyone said; no matter that she was exiled. She completed the ritual.
She bowed over Boreal once again. Then picked up her sword, rose, turned awkwardly from me and walked toward the roan. Stumbling a little. Catching herself with effort. All of her grace was banished, yet none of her dignity.
She had thrown away her pride. Now both of us were even.
Six
She broke through, thrust, cut into me, just above the wide belt. I felt the brief tickle of cold steel separate fabric and flesh, sliding through both with ease, then catch briefly on a rib, rub by, cut deeper, pricking viscera. There was no pain at all, consumed by shock and ice, and then the cold ran through my bones and ate into every muscle.
Deep in sleep, I twitched.
I lunged backward, running myself off the blade. The wound itself wasn’t painful, too numb to interfere, but the storm was inside my body. The blood I bled was ice.
I drew a knee up toward my belly, trying to ward the wound. Trying to turn the blade that had already pierced my flesh.
“Yield!” she shouted. “Yield!” Shock and residual anger made her tone strident.
I wanted to. But I couldn’t. Something was in me, in my sword; something crept into blood and bones and sinew and the new, bright steel. Something that spoke of need. That spoke of ways to win. That sang of ways to blood—
I woke up sweating, breathing like a bellows; like the stud run too hard. The fire was reduced to coals with only the moon for light, and it offered little enough. I looked for Del in the darkness. Saw nothing but deeper shadows.
Hoolies, did I dream it? Did I dream the whole thing?
I sat up rigidly and immediately wished I hadn’t. Deep inside, I ached. I’d twisted in my sleep and the half-healed wound protested.
My sword was screaming for blood.
Did I dream the whole thing? Or only part of it?
A twig snapped. Movement. Maybe I didn’t dream it.
Hoolies, make it real.
I stared into darkness. So hard my eyes burned, trying to define the narrow line between dream and reality.
“I’ll make you,” she gasped. “Somehow—” And she was coming at me, at me, breaking through my weakened guard and showing me three feet of deadly jivatma. “Yield!” she cried again.
My sword was screaming for blood.
Del was gone. That I was certain of, hating it. Hating myself for the wash of fear, of anguish; the uprush of painful guilt. What I’d said to her needed saying. I didn’t regret a word of it. But none of what I’d told her was intended to chase her away.
Only to give her a choice.
Del always makes her own choices, no matter how painful they are. No matter how demanding. She shirks nothing I am aware of, counting the finished task more important than the doing. For my angry, obsessed Delilah, the end was always more important than how it was accomplished.
Which meant she might well have left, since I’d given her my answer.
Had I? I didn’t recall refusing to dance with her, so long as she admitted her wrongdoing.
She’d conducted an atonement ritual. Begged my forgiveness. Spoken freely of dishonor, and how hers had tainted me. But not once, not once, had she admitted she was wrong.
Hoolies, she is stubborn!
Cursing softly, I untangled blankets and pelts from legs, stood stiffly, cursed some more. Then heard the roan gelding blowing in the darkness and realized Del wasn’t really gone, she simply wasn’t present.
Well, a woman is due her privacy.
And then I saw the light.
Oh, hoolies, bascha, what are you doing now?
Boreal, of course. Del went nowhere without her. She didn’t always use her, being disinclined to show off, but when she did it showed. Like now, with the light.
Del was up to something.
I am big, but I can move quietly. I learned in childhood, in slavery, how to stay motionless for long periods of time. How to be invisible, so no one notices you. It saved me from extra whippings, from cuffs and slaps and blows. It was something I cultivated out of a need for self-preservation, and it served me even in freedom. It served me even now.
Silently I moved, muffling myself in my cloak, and slipped easily through the shadows. Pausing now and then, emulating trees; some say I am tall enough. And at last I found Delilah kneeling in the darkness. Singing softly to her sword.
Regardless of what had happened with my sword while killing the cat, music is still alien to me. I don’t understand it. And I didn’t, really, now, though the words were clear enough, if sung in Northern instead of Southron. But the song was a private song, composed solely for Boreal.
Del sings to her sword a lot. Northerners do that; don’t ask me why. In the South, we merely dance, letting movement speak for itself. But on Staal-Ysta I’d learned it was customary—no, necessary—for a sword-dancer to sing. A variation of the dance. Music for the circle.
For Del, it was more than that. It was music for the sword. With it she keyed the power and used it, depending on the song to harness Boreal’s magic.
Del sang softly, and Boreal came alive.
I’ve seen it before. Drop by drop, bead by bead, running the length of the blade from tip to hilt until the steel is aflame. But this time the light was dull, private, as if she purposely damped it down. Her song was barely a whisper, and the answer that came the same.
Guilt flickered. Clearly this was a private, personal ritual, meant for Del alone. But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. Magic I’ve always distrusted; now I distrusted Del.
Deep inside, something spasmed. Something that spoke of unease. Something that spoke of fear.
Would it ever be the same? Or had we gone too far?
Del sang her song and the sword came alive.
“Help me,” she whispered. “Oh, help me—”
It was Northern speech, not Southron, but I’ve learned enough to understand. Necessity had made me; this moment was no different.
Del drew in a breath. “Make me strong. I need to be strong. Make me hard. I need to be hard. Don’t let me be so soft. Don’t let me be so weak.”
She was the strongest woman I knew.
“I have a need,” she whispered, “a great and powerful need. A task that must be finished. A song that must be ended. But now I am afraid.”
Light shirred up the sword. It pulsed as if it answered.
“Make me strong,” she asked. “Make me hard again. Make me what I must be, if I am to end my song.”
Easy enough to ask. Harder, I thought, to live with.
Lastly, softly, she begged: “Make me not care what he thinks.”
Oh, hoolies, bascha. Don’t do this to yourself.
But it was already done. Boreal was quiescent. Delilah had her answer.
And I had a sword to hate.
Seven
Something bad woke me. Something snatched me out of a dreamless sleep and forced me into wakefulness. Into an abrupt, unpleasant awareness.
Something bad that smelled. Something in my face—
I don’t know what I shouted. Something loud. Something angry. And, I’ll admit, something frightened. But then I don’t know a man alive who wouldn’t feel afraid if he woke up from a sound sleep to discover a beast standing over his head.
Even as I exploded out of my bedding, the hound lunged at my throat. I smelled its stench, felt its breath, saw the white glint of shining eyes. Flailed out with both arms as I tried to thrust it away.
The hound lunged again, still trying for my throat. Dimly I heard Del, on the other side of the cairn, crying out in Northern. She sounded startled and furious; I made no answer, having no time to make the effort, but hoped she’d do something other than shout. Which, of course, she did, with Boreal at her beck.
My own sword was buried beneath tumbled bedding. Now I lay on dirt, hard, cold dirt, with my head at the cairn stones. The hound might take my throat; the coals might take my hair.
No one wants to die. But least of all with no hair.
The beast made no sound. But Del did, and loudly, as she told me to flatten myself.
I tried. I mean, no man aware of Boreal’s power risks himself so readily. But even as I kicked over and tried to dig myself into the dirt, the hound evaded the blade. Del’s skill was better than that, but my head was in the way. So were my flailing hands, locking themselves at a furred throat. I wanted nothing more than to try for my knife, but dared not take a hand off the hound, or I’d lose my brief advantage.
I felt teeth at my own throat. Snapping, grasping, grabbing. The stench was overwhelming. It smelled of rotting bodies.
Something snugged taut against the back of my neck. Something like wire, or thong. And then I realized it was my necklet. My string of sandtiger claws.
Hoolies, it wanted my claws?
But I had no time to wonder beyond my initial surprised response. I heard Del’s muttered order to watch my head, which I couldn’t actually do since my eyes were in it, and ducked. But she missed again, though barely; I heard Boreal’s whisper as steel sang past my head.
