Sword Born-Sword Dancer 5 (36 page)

"Which I did."

"Del ..." I shook my head. "We have danced two times with intent beyond conditioning one another. Once in the North on Staal-Ysta, because the voca tricked us into it--and both of us nearly died, as you pointed out. Then again a matter of two months ago, out in the desert, when Chosa Dei nearly ate me alive from the inside out."

"Yes," Del said.

"In both circumstances, it was far too dangerous for either of us. We're lucky we didn't die on Staal-Ysta--"

"Yes."

"--and lucky you weren't swallowed by Chosa Dei when he left my sword for yours--"

"Yes."

"--and each time the threat came to life only when we faced one another with blades."

"Yes," she said again.

I stared at her. "Well?"

Del smiled. "It means in each case that our skills have proved equal to luck."

"I would like to see it," Herakleio said seriously.

I rounded on him then, blistering him with every foul curse I could think of on the instant. I only stopped when I became aware of applause, and noticed both Del and Herakleio had turned away from me.

I shut up. There on the other side of the wall was the metri, being seated in a chair with Simonides' aid, and beside her two people: Prima Rhannet and her blue-headed first mate. The captain was applauding.

"Foul tongue," she said, grinning. "One might suggest it be cut out of your head."

"Care to try?" I asked sweetly.

"Oh, no," she returned, unperturbed. "I think not. But you will be tried, and by the woman Herakleio is so intent upon seeing dance against you. Which means he must believe she is better." Smiling, she gestured briefly at Nihko, who bent and lifted something from the ground at his feet.

Swords.

He set them lengthwise precisely atop the wall, then took a single step away as if to repudiate any link to them. The message was clear: these were the swords the metri had hired them to find, so Del and I could enter the circle to settle my term of employment.

I looked at the metri. There was little resemblance to the ill woman I had seen in bed.

Her hair was pulled off her face and gathered into a variety of plaits and loops, secured with enamel-and-gold pins. She wore a tunic and heavy beaded necklace; also a loose robe that billowed in the breeze. She sat quietly in the chair, arms folded neatly across her lap, but her expression was severe.

"Now," the metri said, "let it be settled, this argument of service."

"Here and now," I said skeptically.

"Indeed."

I looked from her to her servant. "How is she?"

He seemed to understand I asked him because she would not give me the truth, even if she answered. "Well enough," he said.

"Much improved," the metri snapped, clearly annoyed. "Now, be about it. If you win, you may be excused from service beyond our original agreement. If she wins, you will stay on an additional length of time to be decided by me."

I shook my head.

The metri looked at Nihko. "Make him."

Nihko looked at me. "I can."

Del threw down her wooden blade. "I want no part of this. I agreed to dance with Tiger, but I will not do so if he is forced. It abrogates the honor codes and oaths."

"What 'honor codes and oaths'?" Prima asked scathingly. "He's his own kind of ikepra. He has no such thing."

"We make our own," Del declared, stung. "He and I, between us."

Herakleio hooked a foot beneath her wooden sword and scooped it into the air, where he caught it easily. "Then do so," he suggested. "The metri has hired you. You accepted.

Is that not honor? And dishonor if you refuse?"

Prima's tone was sly. "You renounced your honor, Sandtiger; she has not. Do you expect her to break all of her oaths simply to be with you? Or has she none left because she is with you?"

The terrace was round, but we were cornered anyway. Del and I did not even bother to look at one another. They had found the holes in our individual defenses and exploited them perfectly.

I took up the blades from the wall and handed one to Del. Her eyes searched mine, asking the question.

In answer, I walked to the center point of the terrace. It wasn't a proper circle, but our minds would make it one. I leaned, set down the weapon with a faint metallic scrape, turned my back on it and paced to the wall farthest from the spectators. Torchlight filled my eyes; I half-lidded them against it.

Prima's tone was startled. "Don't you want to practice first? To test the blades?"

Del walked deliberately to the center, bent, set her sword alongside mine. Rising, she asked, "Why? If they are meant to break, they will. But I doubt that's what you want."

"Indeed not," the metri said testily. "This is to be an honorable engagement."

Herakleio grinned widely. "Then perhaps you would do better to excuse the Sandtiger.

He has none."

"Enough," Del said sharply, taking position across from me.

I didn't look at Herakleio, but he knew whom I meant. "Say it."

But it wasn't Herakleio. Nihko said, "Dance."

Feet pounded, gripped, slid against tile; bodies bent; hands snatched, closed; blades came up from the ground. They met, rang, clashed, scraped apart, clashed again as we engaged. The blows were measured, but not so restrained that no damage would be done if one of us broke through. There is no sense in pulling back when one intends to win, or if one intends to learn. To do so alters the dance into travesty, with nothing learned and thus nothing gained even in victory.

We tested one another carefully. Last time we'd met it hadn't been sparring, hadn't been a contest to settle a complaint, but a dance against the magic that had infested my sword, that had wanted me as well. I had lost that dance, but in the losing I won. Del lured Chosa Dei out of my blade into hers, then purposefully broke her jivatma. We had not since then set foot in any kind of circle, being more concerned with surviving a journey by ship.

Now here we were, off that ship at last and on the soil of what I'd begun to believe actually was my homeland, dancing for real at the behest of a woman who had no idea what it meant to be what we were.

Or else she knew very well and used this dance to prove it.

The night was loud with sound, the clangor and screech of steel. As always, with Del and me, there was another element to the object, an aspect of the dance that elevated it above the common. We were that good together. In the circle. In bed.

--step--thrust--spin--

--catch blades--catch again--

--slide--step--thrust--

--parry--again--slash--

It was a long dance, one that leached from us all thoughts of the metri, her intentions, of Prima and her first mate, of Herakleio and his attitude. As always, everything else in the world became as water against oilcloth: shed off to pool elsewhere, while inside the circle, our dwelling, we stayed dry, and warm, and so focused as to be deaf and blind.

But we were neither of us deaf or blind; we marked movement, responses, the slight flexing of muscle beneath taut flesh; heard the symphony of the steel, the rhythm of our breathing, the subtle sibilance of bare soles moving against stone.

--slash--catch--scrape--

--the shriek of steel on steel--

Walls of air, the metri had called it. My home was built of walls I fashioned in the circle, because only here could I define myself, could I find my worth in the world. Only here had I become a man. Not in the use of my genitals, a use once copious and indiscriminatory; nor in the language of my mouth, sometimes vulgar, always ready, but inside the heart, the soul. Inside the circle I was whatever I wished to be, and no one at all could alter that.

Except me.

And I had.

One day at Aladar's palace, when I had broken all the oaths.

"No--" Del said.

I grinned.

"Tiger--"

I laughed.

With an expression of determination, Del tried the move I'd chastised her for.

"Oh, Del--" Disgust. I couldn't help it. Because now I had no choice. I broke her guard, went in, tore the hilt from her hand. "What did I tell you?" I roared. "Did you think I was joking? That kind of move could get you killed!"

Furious, she bent and retrieved the sword. "Again."

"Del--"

"Again, curse you!"

Again. As she insisted.

I stepped back, renewed the assault. Saw Del begin the maneuver again. I moved to block it, break it, destroy it--and this time something entirely different happened. This time it was my sword that went crashing to the tile. And I was left nursing a wrenched thumb.

"What in hoolies was that?" I asked.

"The reason I created that maneuver."

"But I defeated it the first time."

"Not the second."

"You'd have been dead the first time. There wouldn't have been a second."

"Maybe," Del said, "maybe not. Not everyone fights like you."

"No one fights like me," I corrected with laborious dignity, then shook out my thumb.

"Shall I kiss it?" The irony was heavy.

I bared my teeth at her. "Not in front of witnesses."

"Stop," the metri said.

I turned toward her, startled by the hostility in her tone.

"You must begin again," she declared.

"Why?" I asked.

"One of you must win. Decisively."

"I did win," I explained. "I disarmed her."

"Then she disarmed you."

I shook my head. "That doesn't count."

"Why not?" Del asked.

I shot her a disbelieving glance. "Because I'd have killed you. I broke your pattern. You'd be dead."

"But I broke your pattern the second time."

"Finish it," the metri commanded. "One of you must win decisively."

I displayed my thumb. "I have a slight disadvantage."

"Poor baby," Prima cooed.

The metri was relentless. "Is it not true that such impasses are settled in the circle?"

"Yes, but--"

"Then settle it. Now."

I glanced at Nihko. "I suppose you'll make me if I don't agree." A thought. "Or will your little ring protect me from your power, and therefore this threat is nothing but a bluff?"

But Nihko made no response. He wasn't even looking at me. He looked beyond me, beyond the wall, beyond the torchlight that bathed the terrace in gilt flickering swaths of ocher and ivory and bronze. I saw the whites of his eyes, the pallor of his face; saw with disbelief as he began to tremble.

"Sahdri," he whispered, as if the word took all his breath.

The metri stood up abruptly from her chair. "You are not to be here! You and your kind are not to be here!"

I spun then, even as Del did, and we saw beyond the torches, walking softly upon the wall, a barefoot man in night-black linen.

And then I realized his feet were not touching the stone.

TWENTY-EIGHT

"YOU ARE not to be here!" the metri cried. "This ground is mine; you profane it! You soil it! You are not to be here!"

The man atop the wall--no, the man floating above the wall--paused, smiled, lifted a hand as if in benediction. Rings glinted on fingers, in brows, in ears, depended from his nostrils, pierced the flesh of his lower lip. In guttering torchlight, his shaven head writhed with blue tattoos.

Ah. One of those.

His tone was immensely conversational, lacking insult, offering no confrontation beyond the fact of his presence. "But I am here, because I choose to be here. And your tame ikepra can wield no power against me, even if I permitted." His dark eyes were rimmed in light borrowed from the flame. "Nihkolara Andros, you have been gone much too long. We have missed you. You must come back to us." For all the world like a doting relative.

A shudder wracked the first mate from head to toe. And then he dropped to his knees, bent at the waist, set his brow upon the ground. In clear tones, he said, "I cannot. I am ikepra."

The multitude of rings glinted in torchlight. "Forgiveness is possible."

Nihko shuddered again, hands digging into the soil. "I am ikepra."

"Forgiveness is possible," the man--Sahdri--repeated. His language was accented, but comprehensible. "You need only come with me now and begin the Rituals of Unsoiling."

"Come with you where?" I asked, since no one else seemed willing to.

The light-rimmed eyes turned their gaze on me. I wasn't sure if the illumination came from the torches, or from the eyes themselves. "loSkandi," he answered. "Where people such as the great and gracious metrioi of the gods-descended Eleven send us all to die."

I glanced at Prima Rhannet. I expected her to speak, but she offered nothing. She stood there, locked in silence, staring at the priest-mage as her first mate knelt to him in abject obeisance.

"Well," I said finally, "it doesn't look like you died."

"That hour will arrive. Just as it shall arrive for Nihkolara Andros." He inclined his head toward the kneeling man. "He has returned, you see, and now is ours again. Or shall be, when he understands what lies before him, and what he is to do."

The metri too was trembling, but not from fear. "Go," she said thickly. "This man has guest-right."

The irony in his tone was delicate. "This man? Here?"

"This is business of the Stessoi," she said with a curtness I had never heard in her. "You are not of this family, nor do I grant you guest-right. Unless you and the others have forsworn all rites of courtesy in the Stone Forest, you know what you must do."

"Depart," he said with evident regret. "I had hoped for a cup of fine Stessa wine."

If possible, she stood a little straighter. "Save you steal grapes from the vines themselves, no wine of my vineyards shall pass your lips."

"I am desolate." But his gaze had shifted again to Nihko, who still knelt in the dirt. "You have a fine ship, Nihkolara," he said gently. "Surely you can find your way home again."

At last, Prima's voice. It scraped out of her constricted throat. "He is home."

Rings glinted as he lifted an illustrative finger. "His home is ioSkandi. It has been so since the day he understood what he was; was made to understand by such as the metrioi and the Eleven, who will not tolerate such as he, such as me. He has no place here. He came willingly to ioSkandi and embraced the service of the gods."