Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (20 page)

"They aren't. They're probably pretty thirsty, but they'll survive the night. These are deep-Punja people, bascha... going without water for a day or two won't kill them. They know how to adapt. Believe me, if you know the tricks--"

"Mehmet is afraid--"

"Mehmet just thinks he'll get in trouble for taking so long." I stuffed too much dried cumfa into my mouth, and chewed for a very long time.

Del clicked her tongue in disgust.

Bulge-mouthed, I grinned.

"Jamail used to do that," she remarked. "Of course, he was considerably younger, and didn't know any better."

"See there?" I glanced at Mehmet, who glumly unrolled the spare blanket. "Just like a woman--always trying to remake a man. The thing I can't understand is, if she liked him in the first place, why does she want to change him?"

"I didn't like you," Del answered coolly, as Mehmet stared at me in blank-faced incomprehension; was he really that young? Or just slow to assert himself in the way of a man with a woman?

I chewed thoughtfully. "You've done your share of trying to change me, bascha."

"In some things, I've even succeeded." Del bit off a small piece of cumfa from her own dried stick and ate it elegantly.

I indicated her with air-jabs of my stick. "See there?" I said again to Mehmet. "What kind of women do you have in your aketni?"

Mehmet gazed at Del. "Old ones," he answered. "And my mother." Which said quite a lot, I thought.

I hefted a bota. "And I suppose they've done their best to change you, too."

He shrugged. "In the aketni, one does as one is told. Whatever is cast in the sands--" He broke it off. "I have said too much."

"Sacred stuff, huh?" I nodded. "Women'll do that to you. They twist things all around, make it ritual, because how else can they convince anyone to do some of the things they want? Old, young--doesn't matter." I slanted a glance at Del. "Even Northern ones."

Del chewed in stolid silence.

I looked back at Mehmet. "About this recompense... anything worthwhile?"

Mehmet pulled cumfa from the pouch. "Very valuable."

I arched a skeptical brow. "If it's so valuable, how come the 'guides' didn't relieve you of it?"

"They were blind." Mehmet shrugged. "Their souls have shutters on them."

"And mine doesn't?" I beat Del to it. "Given that I have one, that is?"

Mehmet chewed cumfa. "You are here." Which also said something.

I shifted irritably, rearranging my knee, and sucked down more wine. "Well, we'll see to it you get to Quumi. It won't take long--you're not that far off the track. Maybe your guides didn't really mean for you to die."

Mehmet shrugged again. "It doesn't matter. Their futures have been cast."

I quirked an eyebrow. "Oh?"

But Mehmet was done talking. He ate his cumfa in silence, washed it down with water, lay down on his back on the blanket, and stared up into the sky.

Murmuring again. As if the stars--or gods--could hear.

I kinked my head back and stared up into darkness. Wondering if anyone did.

I roused when the stud squealed and stomped. I was on my feet and moving before I remembered my knee, but by then it was too late. Swearing inventively, I hobbled toward the stud.

Mehmet turned as I arrived. He held the saddle pad. When he saw my expression--and the bared sword--he fell back a step. "I meant only to help," he protested. "Not to steal, to help. By readying him for you." He placed a hand across his heart. "First light, you said."

It was first light, but just barely. More like false dawn. But I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; if he'd really meant to steal a horse and ride out quietly, he'd have taken the mare. He knew that already, having ridden with us the day before.

Del, too, was up, folding her blanket. Pale braid was loose and tousled, flopping against one shoulder. "We can eat on the way."

I scrubbed grit from eyes and face, turning back toward the bedraggled encampment.

The blade glinted dull black in the weak light of a new dawn. A little more sleep would have been very welcome; dreams had awakened me on and off all night.

"Come away from him," I told Mehmet. "He's surly in the morning."

Del snickered softly, but forbore to comment.

Mehmet came away with alacrity, glancing over a shoulder at the thoroughly wakened stud, and knelt to refold his blanket. I bent, picked up harness, slid the sword into scabbard. And cursed as a fingernail caught on the leather lip and tore.

It didn't hurt so much as implied it. Blackened nail loosed itself from cuticle and peeled away entirely, vacating my finger. It left behind the knurled bed of pinkish undergrowth.

I wavered on my feet.

Del came over, inspected the "injury," looked into my rigid face. "It's a fingernail."

"It's--ugly."

"Ugly?" She stared, then laughed a short, breathy laugh of disbelief. "After all the wounds you've had--not to mention the gutting I nearly gave you on Staal-Ysta--this bothers you?"

"It's ugly," I said again, knowing how it sounded.

Del caught my wrist and pushed the back of my hand into my range of vision. "A fingernail," she repeated. "I think you've done worse shaving!"

"You're enjoying this," I accused.

Del let my hand go. A smile stole the sting. "Yes, I think I am. I find it very amusing."

I rubbed the ball of my thumb across the ruined bed of index fingernail, and suppressed a shudder. I don't know why, but it made my bones squirm. Also weak in the knees--and since one was already weak, I didn't need the help.

"Let's go," I said crossly. "Mehmet's aketni is waiting."

Del snickered again as I turned away. "Now he wants to move swiftly."

"Never mind," I grumbled, and knelt to roll my blanket.

Del went back to her own, laughing quietly to herself.

I hate it when women do that. They take their small revenges in the most frustrating ways.

Twenty-one

By midday, I'd lost the nail off my right thumb and two other fingers, and very nearly my breakfast. But we'd found Mehmet's aketni.

Five small wagons, huddled together against the sun, with domed canopies of once-blue canvas now sunbleached bone-gray, stretched tautly on curving frames. Unhitched danjacs hobbled but paces away in a bedraggled little herd brayed a greeting as we rode up. I wondered if Mehmet's bad-tempered one had come back to join the others.

As expected, everyone was excited to see Mehmet again, but more excited to learn he'd brought water. Del and I handed down botas as Mehmet jumped off the mare and quickly doled them out, answering excited questions with enthusiasm of his own in the deep-Punja dialect I'd yet to decipher. Dark eyes shone with joy and relief and browned hands stroked the botas.

But no one drank. They accepted the botas with fervent thanks, yet stood aside as Mehmet turned to Del and me. We still sat atop our mounts, staring down in bafflement.

"It's yours," I told him in Desert. "We've kept enough back to get us all to Quumi--go ahead and drink."

Mehmet shook his head even as the others murmured. I counted five at a glance, heads wrapped in turbans, dark faces half-hidden by sand-crusted gauze veils. I couldn't see much of anyone beneath voluminous burnouses, just enough to know the five were considerably older than Mehmet, judging by veined, spotted hands and sinewy wrists.

But then, he'd told us that.

"What is it?" Del asked.

I shrugged, reining in the stud, who wanted to visit the danjacs to show them who was in charge. Horses hate danjacs; the ill-regard is returned. "Nobody's thirsty."

Mehmet took a single step forward. "We owe you our thanks, sword-bearers. The gratitude of the aketni, for bringing water and aid to us."

I started to shrug it away, but broke it off, stilling, as Mehmet and his companions dropped to knees and bowed heads deeply, then tucked sandaled feet beneath buttocks and rocked forward to press foreheads against knees. Deep, formal obeisance; much more than we warranted. Five of them turbaned, with narrow, gray-black braids dangling beneath the neck-flap meant to shield flesh against the sun. All women? I wondered. Who could tell with so much burnous swaddling and veiling?

Mehmet intoned something in singsong fashion, and was answered instantly by a five-part nasal echo. They all slapped the flat of a hand against the sand, raising dust, then traced a line across their brows beneath turban rims, leaving powdery smudges of crystalline sand to glitter as they raised their heads.

Four women, I decided, and one old man. Six pairs of dark desert eyes locked onto blue and green ones.

I felt abruptly alien. Don't ask me why; I just did. I realized, staring back, there was nothing of me in these people. Nothing of them in me. Whatever blood ran through my veins was not of Mehmet's aketni.

I shifted in the saddle. Del said nothing. I wondered what she was thinking, so far away from home.

"You will come," Mehmet said quietly, "for the bestowing of the water."

"The bestowing--?" I exchanged a puzzled glance with Del.

"You will come," Mehmet repeated, and the others all nodded vehemently and gestured invitation.

They seemed a harmless lot. No weapons were in sight, not even a cooking knife. Del and I, after another glance exchanged, dropped off respective horses. I led the stud to the nearest wagon and tied him to a wheel. Del took her mare around the other side and tied her to the back.

Mehmet and his aketni gathered around us, but with great deference. We were herded respectfully to the very last wagon and gestured to wait. Then Mehmet and the other male drew back folds of fabric and climbed up into the wagon, murmuring politely to the interior. The wagon eventually disgorged an odd cargo: an ancient, withered man swathed in a gray-blue burnous draped over a gauzy white underrobe.

Mehmet and his fellow very carefully lifted the old man down from the wagon, underscoring his fragility with their attentiveness, even as the others gathered cushions, a palm-frond fan, and makeshift sunshades. The old man was settled on the cushions as the others stretched above his turban the gauzy fabric that cut out much of the sun.

Then Mehmet knelt down with one of the botas, murmuring quietly to the old man.

I've met my share of shukars, shodos and priestlings, not to mention aged tanzeers. But never in my life have I seen anyone so old. Nor with such life in his eyes.

The hairs on my neck rose. My bones began to itch.

Mehmet continued murmuring, occasionally gesturing to Del and me. I didn't know the lingo, but it was fairly obvious Mehmet was giving an account of his adventures since leaving the caravan. I thought back on my unwillingness to ride through the night. I'd had my reasons. But now, faced with the bright black eyes of the ancient man, guilt rose up to smite me.

I shifted weight, easing my knee, and exchanged a glance with Del. Neither of us were blind to the old man's acuity as he weighed each of us against the truth of Mehmet's story. If Mehmet had only said--

No.

Mehmet had said. I'd chosen not to hear.

Like the others, he was turbaned. The facecloth was loosened, looped to dangle beneath a chin and throat nearly as wattled. The dark desert face was quilted like crushed silk, with a sunken look around the mouth that denoted a lack of teeth. He hunched on his cushion, weighing Del and me, and listened to the man so many decades younger than he.

Grandfather? I wondered. Maybe greaf-grandfather.

Mehmet ran down eventually. And then, bowing deeply, offered the old man the bota.

The bestowing of the water. Around us the others knelt. Del and I, noting it, very nearly followed. But we were strangers to the aketni, and both of us knew very well that even well-meant courtesy can be the wrong thing to offer. It can get you in serious trouble.

We waited. And then the old man put a gnarled, palsied hand on the belly of Mehmet's bota and murmured something softly. A blessing, I thought. Or maybe merely thanks.

Mehmet poured a small portion of water into the trembling, cupped hand. The old man cracked his fingers to let the water spill through, watching it splatter, then slapped his palm downward against wet sand, as if he spanked a child.

I don't know what he said. But all the others listened raptly, then sighed as he drew a damp sandy line across an age-runneled brow.

It was nothing. But I stared. At the runnels. The furrows. The lines. Carved deeply into his flesh; now drawn in wet sand.

"Tiger?" Del whispered.

I stared at the old man. Pallid forearms crawled, as if trying to raise the hair Chosa Dei had burned away. My scalp itched of a sudden. Something cold sheathed my bowels.

I should get out of here--

Lines and runnels and furrows.

Del again: "Tiger?"

I should leave this place, before this old man unmasks me--

I lifted my hand to my face, tracing sandtiger scars. Lines and furrows and runnels. Not to mention deep-seated stripes carving rivulets into my cheek.

The old one smiled. And then he began to laugh.

Dusk. We sat in a circle with the old man atop his cushion. Facecloths were loosened and looped, displaying at last a collection of very similar blade-nosed, sharp tribal faces leeched of water fat. What I'd told Del was the truth: these Punja-bred people were more accustomed to limited water, and didn't require as much as others. The bodies reflected that.

We'd passed around the bota, each of us taking a swallow, and passed around the cumfa and bread, each of us taking a bite. Ritual duly completed, the others began to talk quietly among themselves.

They were, Mehmet explained, close kin all. Aketni were like that, he said--founded in blood and beliefs. He was the youngest of all, the last born of his aketni, and unless he found a woman to wife there'd be no more kin of the old hustapha.

The hu-what? I'd asked.

Mehmet had been patient. The hustapha, he explained, was the tribal elder. The aketni's father. Each aketni had one, but theirs was very special.

Uh-huh. They always were.

Their hustapha, he went on, had sired three girls and two boys on a woman who now was dead. They had, in their turn, sired other children, but none remained in the aketni.