Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (18 page)

"Yes. Julah. Aladar's daughter's domain."

"But she's in Iskandar. At least, she was. We can stay ahead of her--and out of danger--if we leave soon."

"I thought you said you'd wait all of the day and all of the night so I could have my bath."

"You've had it. I can tell. My nose can tell." Del grinned briefly as I scowled. "Shall we go?"

I flipped reins over the stud's neck and climbed aboard. "Why are you in such a hurry?"

"If finding Shaka Obre will rid my sword of Chosa Dei's taint, I would prefer to do it today rather than tomorrow."

"You don't even know where he is."

"Neither do you." She paused. "Do you?"

I aimed the stud toward the southern gate, hidden by slumping, sloppy gray-beige buildings, and flapped a hand. "Somewhere out there."

Del made a sound of derision. "That's promising."

"Then suppose you lead."

In grave silence, she reined her bay mare around in front of the stud. Who noticed. As was intended. "Like so?" Del asked innocently.

"Never mind," I muttered.

The stud was less than happy when I made him take the lead once again. I had a brief but firm discussion with him, and convinced him to let me be the guide.

I didn't think we could go all the way to Julah walking backward.

Around midday, we stopped. In silence we stared grimly at the expanse of crystal-flecked desert before us. The border was subtle, but clearly defined. This side, we were safe. Cross it, and we were at risk.

But we'd been at risk before.

Del's mare bobbed her head. The stud answered with a rumbling, deep-chested nicker that threatened to rise to a squeal. I kicked him high on the shoulder. "She's not interested," I said.

Del merely smiled. Then lifted her chin toward the Punja. "How many days to Julah?"

"Depends on the Punja."

"I know that. How many did it take us before?"

"I don't know. Who can remember back that far?" I slapped the stud's thick neck and reined him aside. "Besides, we met with a few delays, remember? Like the Hanjii and their Sun Sacrifice... that ate up a few days. Recovery even more."

"And Elamain, " Del recalled. Naturally, she would. "We rescued Elamain's caravan from borjuni. Then we took her to that tanzeer--"

"Hashi."

"--who wanted to make you into a eunuch." Del glanced sidelong at me. "I remember that."

So did certain parts of me. "Then we stopped in Rusali-- "

"--and met Alric and Lena and the girls." Del paused. "Only two, then. But she was expecting what became the third--"

"--and the last time we saw them--all of four days ago--she was expecting another child."

Del's mouth pulled sideways. "I hope this one's a boy. Maybe then she can rest."

"Seems to me Lena didn't much mind having Alric's babies." I prodded the stud's questing nose with a sandaled toe. "Don't even think about it."

"And there was Theron," Del recalled.

Whom I had killed in the circle.

"And Jamail," I countered.

Del's face tautened. "And Jamail," she echoed. Then she looked at me. "Are you really this jhihadi?"

"How in hoolies should I know?"

She stared at me. "But you said Jamail pointed at you. You swore on your jivatma."

"He did. I did. I'm not making it up."

"Then maybe ..." She frowned. "No. It can't be. It is impossible."

"What? That I might be a messiah?" I grinned. "I can't think of a single man better suited to the job."

Her look was withering.

"All right. I know it all sounds silly. But it's true, Del--he really did point at me."

"So when are you going to change the sand to grass?"

I snickered. "As if I could."

"The jhihadi supposedly can."

"Maybe he can."

"And you did--" Del stopped short. Her face went red, then white. She turned to stare wide-eyed at me. Her expression was particularly unnerving.

"What?" I asked sharply. "What?"

She swallowed tightly. Her voice was mostly a whisper. "You changed the sand to glass."

Del and I spent several moments staring at one another, trying to deal with new thoughts and implications. Then I managed a laugh. It wasn't my usual one, but enough to get by with. "Hoolies, bascha--wouldn't it be funny if it turned out this desert prophet got the word wrong?"

Even her lips were white. "What do you mean?"

"That this jhihadi won't restore the South to lushness, but change it instead to glass."

"But ..." Del frowned. "What good would glass be?"

"It means everyone can afford to put it in their windows." I grinned. "Glass, grass--who can say? I think it's all a bunch of nonsense."

"But--" She chewed a lip, then gave it up, sighing. "I think it would indeed be a foolish thing if you were the man."

It stung. "Why?"

She eyed me thoughtfully. "Because you are a sword-dancer. Why should you be more?"

"You don't think I'm good enough? You don't think I could do it?"

"Be a messiah? No."

"Why not?"

"You lack a certain amount of delicacy. Diplomacy." She smiled. "Your idea of dispensing wisdom is to invite someone into a circle."

"The sword is a very good dispenser of wisdom."

"But jhihadis aren't sword-dancers."

"How do you know? You didn't even know what one was until I explained it to you."

"Because--I just know."

"Not good enough." I whopped the stud between the ears. "Not now, flea-brain... no, bascha, really--I want an answer."

She shrugged. "You're just--you. You have your good points. A few here and there, tucked in behind all the bluster. But a jhihadi? No. Jhihadis are special, Tiger." She watched me pop the stud again as he tried to sidle into the mare. "Jhihadis don't have trouble dealing with horses."

"How do you know? Iskandar himself got kicked in the head, remember?"

"And died ten days later, or so you told me." Del eyed me speculatively. "How many days ago was it that you got kicked in the head?"

"See? That's proof--I got kicked, too."

"No," Del countered. "Real proof would be if you died because of it."

I scowled. "What kind of jhihadi would I be if I died before I could do anything?"

"Well, if you really were supposed to change the sand to glass, rather than grass ..."

Del's expression was guileless. "How many days again?"

I kneed the stud into motion. "Never mind that. Let's just go."

"Four?" Del fell in behind. "That leaves six days to go."

"And I suppose you're going to count!"

Her tone was exquisitely tranquil. "I like to be prepared."

Hoolies. What a woman.

Depending on your perspective.

Nineteen

"It makes my skin hurt," Del said.

Eventually, I roused. "What?"

We rode mostly abreast. She glanced across at me. "Are you asleep?"

"No."

"Were you asleep?"

"No. Just thinking."

"Ah." She nodded sagely. "Your version of deep thought resembles sleep in others.

Forgive me."

We were still horseback. Still riding south out of Quumi. It was mid-to late afternoon.

We'd eaten on the move but an hour or so before, and I'd washed mine down with wine.

The motion of the stud, walking monotonously onward, combined with food, wine, and the warmth of the day--not to mention boredom--had proved overwhelming.

Which meant I had been asleep, if only briefly; actually, it was more like a momentary nap caught between one blink and the next. When you spend as much time as I do atop the back of a horse, you learn to sleep however--and whenever--you can.

But you don't admit it to Del.

I scowled. "What makes your skin hurt?"

"The South. The Sun. The Punja." Del twitched her sword-weighted shoulders. "I remember what it was like, before. When the sun was so bad, and I got so sick." She rubbed a cupped hand down one burnous-sleeved arm. "I remember very clearly."

So did I, Del had nearly died. So, for that matter, had I, but the sun hadn't been quite so ruthless to my copper-hued Southron hide. Oh, it had tried its hardest to burn me to bits, but I'd survived. Del very nearly hadn't.

"Well, we don't have to worry about it this time," I observed comfortably.

She arched one brow. "Why not? We could come across the Hanjii again, could we not?

And they could turn us loose once again in the desert with no mounts or water."

Comfort evaporated. I grunted disagreement. "More likely this time we'd wind up in the cookpot."

"Oh. I'd forgotten that." Del, squinting, peered across the sand. "It all looks exactly the same."

"It's hot. Dry. Sandy." I nodded. "Pretty much the same."

"But we're not." She glanced sidelong at me. "We're both a little more experienced than the last time."

I knew what that meant. "And older?" I showed her my teeth in an insincere grin.

"Believe me, bascha, now that we're back where it's warm, I feel a whole lot younger."

Her assessive expression very plainly suggested I didn't look younger. The problem was, I couldn't tell how much of it was part of the gibing, and how much was unfeigned.

"Thirty-six is not so old," I growled.

Del's smile was too sanguine, and therefore suspect. "Not if you're thirty-seven."

"To you, maybe, it's old--you're not long out of infancy. But to me--"

"In sword-dancer years, it is." She had dropped the bantering. "You are of an age now that many never see, if they live their lives in the circle." Her tone was very solemn. "You should seriously consider becoming an an-kaidin, a--" she frowned, breaking off. "What is the Southron word?"

"Shodo, " I said sourly. "I don't think I'm ready for that."

"You have been a professional for many years. You have learned from the best. Even on Staal-Ysta, they honored your skill--"

"No, they didn't. They just wanted another body." I reined the stud away from the mare.

"I'm not made for that, Del. Being a shodo takes a lot more patience than I have."

"I think if you had a student, you would find patience in abundance. If you knew that what you taught the ishtoya could mean survival or death, you would come to know how much you had to offer."

"Nothing," I said grimly. "What kind of shodo would I make with Chosa Dei in my sword?"

"After it was discharged--"

"No, bascha. I'm a sword-dancer. I just do it, I don't teach it."

"You have taught me," she said. "You have taught me very much."

"I nearly killed you, too. What did you learn from that?"

"That you are a man with immense strength of will."

I stared. "You're serious!"

"Of course I am."

"Bascha, I nearly killed you. Once on Staal-Ysta, and once at the oasis, after I slaughtered all the borjuni."

"But each time you held back." She shrugged. "On Staal-Ysta, you denied a newly awakened jivatma, freshly keyed and wild for the taste of blood, the chance to make a first kill. At the oasis, you denied Chosa Dei. A weaker man with a lesser will would have lost himself on either count. And I would no longer live."

"Yes, well ..." I shrugged uncomfortably. "That doesn't make me a shodo."

"I do not insist," she said quietly. "I only point out you have another choice."

Something pinched my belly from the inside. "Or is it that you've accomplished your goal of killing Ajani, and now you're looking ahead to a different way of life?" And different people in it?

Del's mouth tightened. "We spoke of this before. There is nothing else for me. I am exiled from the North, and I could never be a shodo here. Who would come to a woman for teaching?"

I shrugged. "Other women might."

Blue eyes were smoky. "How many Southron men would allow their women that freedom?"

"Maybe it would be women who had no men to placate."

Del made a sound of derision. "There are no women in the South willing to risk losing a man, or the chance of winning a man's interest, by apprenticing to me."

No. Probably not.

"Which leaves us," I said, "right where we started out. Why don't we just accept what we are, and not worry about the future?"

Del stared into the distance.

I waited. "Well?"

"There." She pointed. "Is that something moving?"

I followed her finger and saw what she meant. A dark blotch against the horizon. "I don't--wait. Yes, I think you're right ..." I stood up in my stirrups, peering over the stud's ears. "It looks like a person."

"On foot," Del declared. "Who in his right mind would walk through the Punja?"

"We did," I said. "Of course, you were sandsick, so you weren't in your right mind--"

"Never mind that," she snapped. "Let's not waste any more time talking about it. He--or she--might not have any to spare."

Del sent her mare loping across the desert, kicking dust into the air. The stud snorted loudly, then went after her.

There was nothing better to do. So I let him go.

It turned out to be a he, not a she. And Del had been right: he didn't have any time to spare. By the time I reached him, Del was off her mare and kneeling beside the man, helping him suck down water from one of her botas.

She glanced at me over one dusty, burnous-clad shoulder. She said nothing; she didn't have to. Del has a considerable vocabulary in simple body motions, let alone expressions. All in all I thought censure uncalled for--I'd gotten there not long after she had, if without her haste--and scowled back at her to tell her the silent reprimand was unappreciated.

Whether she cared was entirely up to her.

The man wore a plain burnous of tattered, saffron-hued gauze, and a matching underrobe. No sword. He was perhaps in his early twenties, but dust caked his face, so it was hard to tell. Sweat--and maybe tears?--had formed disfiguring runnels.

Now, as he sucked at the bota with eyes closed in the pure physical bliss of a great need fulfilled, water spilled down his chin. It splashed onto his grimy, threadbare burnous, drying quickly; before Del could say a word, he thrust a hand up to cup his chin and catch the runaway water.