Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (21 page)

"Stop," I said, so coldly that he obeyed me. "There is more to manhood, as Captain Rhannet put it so eloquently, than that which dangles between our legs."

Herakleio laughed. "The willingness to use it?"

Prima ignored the comment, ignored Herakleio, and stared searchingly at me a long moment. Her expression was unfathomable. Then her mouth twisted, and she looked at Del. "You do have him trained."

Del neither smiled nor replied. This time, Prima recognized the softness in the Northern woman that had nothing to do with weakness of will, and everything to do with strength of purpose. And her eyes shied away.

"The metri," I said as I picked up my wine, "is a very wise woman."

"For avoiding this?" Herakleio suggested.

"For allowing it," Del answered.

Prima didn't much like what that implied. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she contemplated the idea. She shook her head slightly, then downed her wine as if to gulp it might wash away her suspicion.

I looked at Herakleio. "Among the powerful," I said, "there are reasons for everything.

And results wrung from those reasons."

Clearly puzzled and irritated by it, Herakleio made a curt, dismissive gesture. "That makes no sense."

"The metri knows it does," I said. "And for some inexplicable reason, she seems to think I can teach you to understand."

Herakleio favored me with a withering glance. "A waste of time."

I grinned at him. "Yours? Or mine?" Prima laughed. "It might be worth watching."

Herakleio glared at her. "Do you think to live here?"

"My ship is my home," Prima replied. "But the metri has said she will receive me here before the other families." She paused. "Formally."

At that Herakleio stood up, stiffly affronted. "You soil this household," he announced, and took himself out of the chamber with definitive eloquence.

The captain grinned a slow, malicious grin, then cut her eyes at me as she poured her cup full once again.

"Good food, good wine... good friends."

I smiled back in kind. "Or interesting enemies."

SIXTEEN

AFTER DINNER I paid a visit to the kilted servant, whose name I learned was Simonides, and put my request before him. He agreed it could be fulfilled, and would be by morning. I thanked him and departed, wanting very much to ask him how he'd become a slave, how he bore it, and if he hoped for freedom one day. But I did not ask him those questions, because I knew that a hard-won tolerance of certain circumstances, the kind of toleration that allows you to survive when you might otherwise give up, was fragile and easily destroyed. It was not my place to destroy his.

From Simonides I went in search of Prima Rhannet, whom I found alone in the chamber she shared with Nihkolara. The metri's hospitality had not, apparently, extended to two rooms for such people as renegadas.

Or else she believed the captain and her first mate were lovers.

"What?" Prima asked crossly as I grinned at the thought.

"Never mind." I didn't enter, just lounged against the doorframe. "Where's Nihko?"

She was drinking more of the red Stessa wine, sitting on the bed against the wall with her legs drawn up beneath her skirts, tenting linen over her knees. A glazed winejar was nested in the mattress beside her hip. "He has gone back to the ship."

"Upset with the dinner conversation?"

"It is his task," she said lugubriously, "to be certain all is well with my crew and vessel."

"Oh, of course."

Her tone was level. "What have you come here for?"

"Explanation. Introduction. Education."

She frowned. "About what?"

"Herakleio," I answered. "You share a past. I want to know about it."

Coppery brows leaped upward on her forehead. "You want to hear gossip?"

"Truth," I said. "It seems you know it."

She studied me, assessing my expression. After a moment she hooked a hand over the lip of the winejar and suspended it in midair. "I have only the one cup," she said, "but you may have the jar."

I remained where I was. "Is it so difficult for you to be in this household that you seek courage in liquor?"

Her chin came up sharply even as she lowered the jar. "Who are you to say such a thing?"

I moved then, entered the room, did as Del so often did and took a seat upon the floor, spine set into plaster. I stretched out long legs, crossed them at the ankles, folded arms against my ribs. "Someone who knows as well as you how to read others."

She smiled at that, although it was shaped of irony and was of brief duration. "So."

"The daughter of a slaver hosted in the house of the Stessa metri, the metri of Skandi--and a woman who once shared a bed with the heir. You must admit it has implications."

Bright hair glowed in lamplight. "Herakleio," she said dryly, "has slept with any woman willing to share his bed."

"And you were willing."

"I was."

"Even--" But I let it go, uncertain of how to phrase it.

She knew. "Even. But you see, it was many years ago. Before I understood what was in me. And I fancied myself in love with him."

"What about him," I asked, "is even remotely loveable?"

Prima laughed. "Oh, you have seen him at his worst. You inspire it in him. But Herak is more than merely a spoiled pet of a boy. There is stone in him, and sunlight as well."

"And so you slept with him."

She got up then, climbed out of the bed and came across to me, winecup in one hand and winejar in the other. She sat down next to me, set her spine against the wall even as I had, and handed me the jar. "Have you never done a thing that took you at the moment as a good thing, a thing that needed doing, only to regret it in the morning?"

"I never slept with another man." I lifted the pottery jar, set lip against mine, drank. "Nor ever want to."

"Oh no, that is not in you." She said it so casually. "But what of women? Surely there have been women you regretted in the morning."

"There have been mornings I regretted in the morning."

She laughed deep in her throat: she understood. "But it is true, is it not, that we too often do what we wish we had not?"

"You regret sleeping with Herakleio."

"Yes. And no."

"Oh?"

She drank her cup dry, then stared blindly at the opposite wall. In the ocher-gilt wash of lamplight, her many freckles merged. "He was my first man," she said, "and my last."

She saw my frown of incomprehension. "Oh, there were other men in between. But I realized they offered nothing I wanted, not in my heart. It was women ..." She let it go, shrugging. "But I was afraid of myself, of the truth, and so I sought out Herak again to prove to myself that I was like other women."

"And instead--?"

"He was drunk, was Herak. He did not even know me. I was merely a woman, and likely his second of the night. He slept hard when we were done, and did not awaken even as I withdrew." She swirled the lees in her cup. "By morning I understood the truth of what I was, what I wanted; what I was not, and did not want. So Herak twice had the awakening of me."

"You are drunk, captain."

Prima smiled, blurry eyes alight. "Of course I am."

"Why?"

"Because I am here. Because Herak is. Because Nihko is not." She recaptured the jar from me and poured her cup full. "Because I want your woman, and she will not have me."

It startled me because I had not been thinking of Del, or of Del in those terms. And then it lit a warmth deep in my belly that had nothing to do with lust.

Prima Rhannet turned her head to stare hard at me. "And that is what you truly came to me for."

"It is?"

She was drunk, but for the moment a smoldering anger burned away the liquor. "You wanted to know if I bedded your woman while I kept her on my ship."

"That isn't why I came."

"Why else?"

"To ask about Herakleio."

"Hah." She drank deeply, wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand, then tipped her skull against the wall. "It must be in your mind. A woman who sleeps with women.

Others find it perverse. Disgusting. Frightening. Impossible. Unbelievable. Or at the very least, awkward."

"Well," I said consideringly, "you must admit it's a bit out of the ordinary when compared to most people."

"As is being a woman who captains her own ship when compared to most women."

"So instead of limiting yourself to only one extraordinary achievement, you accomplish two."

After a moment she said, "I had not thought of it that way."

"Which means you're doubly blessed--"

"--doubly cursed."

"Depending on who you talk to." I gestured. "Then again, you're also a renegada. A woman renegada."

"Thrice cursed!" She sighed dramatically, then glanced sidelong at me. "I enjoy being--unpredictable."

"I figured you did."

"But that is not why I do what I do, or am what I am."

"I figured it wasn't."

She contemplated me further. "She told me you were, once, everything she detests in a man."

I drank deeply of my cup, then hitched a shoulder. "Depending on who you talk to."

"I talked to her."

"Then I was. If she says so. To her."

"She no longer detests you."

I grunted. "That is something of a relief."

"She told me you still have some rough edges, but she is rubbing them off."

I grinned into the winejar as I tipped it toward my face. "I enjoy having Del rub me off."

"That is disgusting!" Prima Rhannet jabbed a sharp elbow in my short ribs, which succeeded in startling me into a recoil and coughing spasm that slopped wine down my chin and the front of my tunic. "But amusing," she conceded.

I caught my breath, wiped my chin, plucked the wet tunic away from my skin. I reeked of rich red wine.

The captain hiccoughed. Or so I thought initially. Then I realized it was laughter she attempted to suppress. I scowled at her sidelong. "What's so funny?"

"You want to know how, and why," she said. "Every man does, except those who understand what it is to desire in a way others declare is wrong. They wish to know about mechanics, and motivation."

I opened my mouth to respond, shut it. Converted images in my head, and realized with abrupt and unsettling clarity that she was no different than I. I had been, after all, a slave, someone vilified, excoriated, for something I could not help. For being what I was, had no choice in being.

And I recalled so many nights when I cried myself to sleep, or when I hadn't slept at all because the beaten body had hurt so much. And how I had longed for, had dreamed of a world in which I had value beyond doing what others told me. What others expected of me, and punished to enforce it.

"I think," I said slowly, "that it shouldn't matter what others think."

"But it does."

"It does," I agreed bleakly. "But maybe it shouldn't. Maybe... maybe what's important is how we feel about ourselves."

I, of course, had believed I deserved slavery. Because I had been told so. Because I knew nothing else. Thus even the wishes, the dreams, had worsened the guilt.

"And if she thought of you now as she thought of you originally?" Prima asked. "Your Northern bascha?"

I stared into the darkness of the winejar, unable to find an answer. Not one that made any sense, nor could make sense to her.

"It matters," she said. "One can justify that it does not, that the opinions of others are without validity, but if the one person you care for more than yourself believes you are beneath contempt, then your life has no worth."

I stirred then. "I disagree."

"Why?"

"Because true freedom is when the only person whose opinion matters is your own.

When you know your own worth."

Prima smiled. "But so often it is difficult to be comfortable in your own skin."

"Well, mine's a little battered," I said, "but on the whole I'm pretty comfortable in it."

Now.

"While hers no longer fits the way it used to."

I looked at Prima sharply. "What do you mean? And how in hoolies do you know anything about it?"

"We spoke," she answered, "as one woman to another. Women who have made a life among men no matter how difficult the task, no matter how vilified we were--and are--for it. As sisters of the soul."

"And?"

"And," the captain echoed, "she admitted to me that she has lost herself."

"Del?"

"Her song is finished," Prima said. "So she told me. She found her brother. Found the man who destroyed her family, her past, the future she expected to have. And she killed that man." Her eyes were smoky in the light. "Her song is finished, and now she hears yours."

It startled me. "Mine?"

"Of course. She came here with you, did she not?"

"You made certain of that, captain."

Prima laughed. "But you were bound here regardless of my actions."

I conceded that yes, we had been.

"But Skandi had nothing to do with her life," she continued. "It played no role."

"I don't know that Skandi plays much of a role in anyone's life," I pointed out, "except to people who live here."

"You are avoiding the truth."

I sighed. "All right. Fine. Yes, Del came with me to Skandi. In fact, it was Del who suggested it." I brightened. "Which means it does too have something to do with her life!"

The captain laughed and lifted her cup in salute. "But my point is that her song now is yours, not her own."

"And are you suggesting she'd be wiser to hear your song?"

The smile fled Prima Rhannet's mouth. "I might wish it," she said softly, "but no. She is a woman for men. For a man," she amended, "since no other man but you has taken her without force."

I was not comfortable with this line of conversation. I knew well enough of Del's past, but saw no need to discuss it with anyone other than Del. Who never did.

At least, with me. Seems she had with the renegada.

Prima saw my expression, interpreted it accurately. "I only mean you to realize what it is to have a woman such as she with you," she said. "A woman who chooses to be with you, because it is what she wants. There is honor in making such a choice, if that choice agrees with your soul. It is no diminishment for a woman to be with a man, to want to be with a man--but neither is it diminishment for a woman to want to be with a woman."