Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (24 page)

"Choose," Del said. "If I lose, you have won."

By now, of course, everyone else in the cantina had discovered our discussion. Silence filled the taproom, along with all the stink.

Which reminded me of something. "What in hoolies are you doing here?" I asked him.

"You don't seem the type to spend much time in Akbar's place. Another, better cantina, maybe ..." I shrugged. "You're sadly out of place."

"I have informants. One came with word of a woman worth the trouble of putting myself out of place." He smiled faintly, turning my words back on me. "I will have to give him a bonus."

"She's a Northerner," I declared. "She isn't for sale. They don't do that, there."

"Here. There. It makes no difference. Most of the things I own were never for sale. But I bought them anyway." He shrugged delicately. "One way--or another."

A man pushed out of the throng. Young. Southron. Eager. A scabbarded sword hung from his hip, which meant he wasn't a dancer. He just wanted to be one. This was probably the closest he would ever come. "I'll dance against her."

Del's eyes narrowed. She assessed him carefully.

The rich man smiled. "I will pay you, of course."

"How much?" the young man asked.

"That can be arranged later. I promise, I will be generous; I see no point in shortchanging you, if you win the dance."

Now I did stand. "This has gone far enough--"

"Tiger--sit down."

"Del, don't be ridiculous--"

She said a single word in clipped, icy Northern. I reflected silently she knew more of gutter language than I'd given her credit for.

"Fine," I said agreeably.

Then overset the table and walloped her one on the jaw.

Twenty-six

Del folded, dropping her sword. I caught her, missed the sword, dumped her ungently into the corner, then spun to face the others.

Samiel was in my hands.

"My name is the Sandtiger," I said. "Anyone who wants to dance can take it up with me."

A ripple ran through the room. But nobody said a word.

"No?" I flicked the sword, throwing a bi-colored flash across the cantina: silver and black. "No one? No one at all?" I glanced at the man who had wanted to buy Del. "How about you?"

His mouth was set tautly, but he said nothing, also.

"No? You're sure?" Another glance around the cantina. "Last chance," I warned. Then I locked gazes with the young man who had offered to dance against Del. "What about you? You were awfully eager. Would I satisfy you?"

Nervously, he licked his lips. "I didn't know it was you. I didn't know she was yours."

"Not mine," I said clearly. I looked around the room yet again. "I ought to challenge every one of you to a true dance. I'm bored, and I need the work."

"Sandtiger." The young man again. "No one here would stand a chance against you."

I smiled thinly. "I'm glad you realize that."

Behind me, Del stirred.

"Stay put," I snapped, not even bothering to look. I stuck a toe against Boreal, slid her toward the corner. I doubted anyone would try, but I didn't want to take the chance. He would thank me for it. "So," I said, "why doesn't everybody go back to whatever it was they were doing?" I turned toward Del's "purchaser," lowering my voice. "Because unless you want to dance, the entertainment's over."

Aqivi-pale eyes glinted. Rings glittered as fingers stiffened. But he shook his head in silence.

"Then go home," I suggested. "Go back where you belong."

He inclined his head briefly in elegant acknowledgment, then turned and walked out of Akbar's.

That much done. Now for the rest.

"Show's over," I declared.

They all agreed hastily.

When I judged the cantina sufficiently settled, though not quite itself again, I sheathed my sword and turned to Del. She had gathered up Boreal and sat against the corner, cradling her sword.

"Here." I reached for Boreal. "Let me put her away before you cut off a leg."

Deftly, Del flipped the grip into both hands and angled the sword upward. I discovered the tip threatening intimate knowledge of my suddenly sucked-in belly. Unexpectedly, the blade was rock steady.

"Back away," she said.

"Bascha--"

"Back away, Tiger."

I took a sharper look at her eyes. Then backed. Del watched me every step, judged the distance between us sufficient, pushed herself up the wall as she scooped up dropped burnous. The misleading brightness of eyes and cheeks was banished, betraying the truth I'd missed: Del was not drunk. Del had never been drunk.

"What in hoolies--"

"To the room. Now."

I debated arguing it with her. But when a man's at the end of a sword--the sharp end, that is--he usually does as he's told. I did as she suggested.

The room was tiny, a rectangular sliver tucked away on the northern side, with a lopsided window block cut through chipped and flaking adobe letting in muted, lopsided light. The wall between the room and the next was of heat-brittle lath and paste-stiffened, bug-eaten cloth. Not the room I'd rented from Akbar, or the one we'd shared before. It was, I thought somewhat inconsequently, not so much better than the stall housing the stud. Possibly smaller.

Two paces into the sliver, I turned to face Del. "All right, what do you think--"

"A test," she said calmly, jerking closed the fraying curtain to lend us tissue-fine privacy.

"Test? What kind of test? What are you talking about?"

"Sit down, Tiger."

I was getting sick and tired of being told to sit down. I displayed teeth, giving her the full benefit of my green-eyed sandtiger's glare. "Make me."

She blinked. "Make you?"

"You heard me."

She thought it over. Then snapped the sword sideways, out of the way; rotated on one hip; caught me flush very high on the right thigh with one well-placed foot.

It wasn't what I was expecting. The day before I'd have gone down. But now I took the foot, the power, let it carry on through as I rolled my hip to the right to channel the blow past, then snapped back into position.

Del's smile died.

I waggled beckoning fingers. "Care to try again?"

She narrowed suddenly wary eyes. "Your knee..."

I shrugged. "Good as ever."

"I thought it would buckle ... I planned for it to buckle."

"Dirty trick, bascha."

"No dirtier than the trick you pulled this morning, disappearing for so long." The sword glimmered between us; once more the tip teased my belly. "Why do you think I did this?"

"I have no idea why you did 'this.' Idiocy, maybe?"

Her turn to show teeth, but she wasn't smiling. "You're different. Different, Tiger! First you say little of what the sandcasting told you, as if it doesn't concern me, and then you disappear with nothing but that sword. Why do you think I did this?"

"A test, you said. But of what, I don't know--what do you expect from me?"

Del's face was taut and pinched. "I tell myself it is the strain, the constant knowledge of Chosa Dei's presence... and that you are as you are because you fight so hard to win.

And sometimes I think you are winning... other times, I don't know."

"So you decided to play drunk to see what I would do?"

"I did not 'play drunk'--I merely let you believe what you wanted to believe: that a woman drinking so much aqivi would have to be drunk. And then you would become careless, thinking me fair game." Del's chin rose. "A test, Tiger: if you were Chosa Dei, you would not hesitate to take my sword--or me. He wants both of us."

I recalled thinking about hauling her off to bed. Guilt flared briefly, then died away as quickly. What I'd thought wasn't any different from what any man might consider, looking on a softened, relaxed Delilah. It wasn't a sign of possessiveness. Just typical maleness.

Which was not, I thought sourly, adequate grounds for sticking me with a sword.

I pulled myself back to the matter at hand. "But since I didn't try to take your sword--or you--I can't be Chosa Dei. Is that it?"

Del's mouth twisted. "It was a way of getting an answer."

I pointed. "Why not put her away?"

Del looked at the jivatma. A crease puckered her brow. Something briefly warped her expression: I recognized despair. "Because--I am afraid."

It hurt. "Of me?"

"Of what you could be."

"But I thought we just settled this!"

Her eyes sought mine, and locked. "Don't you see? You rode out this morning with no word to me. I don't ask you to tell me everything--I understand privacy, even for a song... but what was I to think? Last night your future was cast--and you told me I was in it."

I managed a small smile, thinking of other women who had grown a little possessive.

"Don't you want to be in my future?"

"Not if it's Chosa Dei's." She stabbed a hand toward my knee. "And now--this. Your knee is suddenly healed. What am I to think?"

"And my arms." I lifted hands, waggled fingers. "New fingernails, too."

"Tiger--"

"Bascha--wait... Del ..." I sighed heavily and put up placating hands. "I understand. I think I know how you feel. And believe me, I'm as confused--"

It cut to the heart of the matter. "Are you Chosa Dei?"

I didn't even hesitate. "Part of me is." I shrugged. "I won't lie, Del--you saw what he did to the sword. He left it--part of him did ... and put a little in me. But I'm not wholly him.

That much I promise, bascha."

She was intent. "But part of you is."

"Part of me is."

Del's eyes were glazed with something I thought might be tears. But I decided I was mistaken. "Which part of you healed yourself? Which part remade yourself?"

I drew in a very deep breath. "I tapped him. I used him."

"Used him! Him?"

"I went out there on purpose, summoned him, and used him. I borrowed Chosa's magic."

The sword wavered. "How could you do that?"

"Painfully." I grimaced. "I just--tried. There's a bit of him in me, bascha. I told you. And it gives me certain--strengths. But there's more of me in me."

"You bent him to your will? Chosa?"

"A little." I shrugged. "You once said yourself--and not so long ago--that I am a man of immense strength of will." Del said nothing. Self-conscious, I shrugged defensively.

"Well--I thought I'd test that. To see if you were right."

Her lips barely moved. "If you had been wrong..."

"I addressed that. I drew a binding circle."

"What?"

"A binding circle. To keep Chosa trapped." I shifted weight, uneasy. I thoroughly disliked magic, and using it myself irritated me. It made me what I detested, and I hated admitting it. "Sam--my jivatma isn't dead, or empty. There's still that power available, if I remember how to key it; work my way past Chosa's taint. And I have the means to use it, if I feel like it. If I can." I scratched a shoulder. "I'm not very good at it. I nearly made myself sick."

"Magic does that to you, remember?" Del's brow puckered. "Then you healed yourself on your own. Remade yourself. Using Chosa's power."

"Some of it. I made it do what I wanted." I sighed. "I was getting awfully sick of aches and pains."

"Why didn't you try before? You might have saved yourself some trouble." Eyes glinted briefly. "Saved your knee some pain."

"Might have. But before, I didn't think I could do it. When it first occurred to me..."I shook my head. "It's not my way to use or depend on magic. It's a crutch, like religion."

Blue eyes narrowed. "What changed your mind?"

I sighed. "The threefold future."

"What?"

"What could be. Might be. Would be." I shook my head bleakly. "I never wanted this...

none of this nonsense. But Staal-Ysta gave me a lump of iron and forced me to Make it.

To blood and key a jivatma--"

"But not requench in Chosa Dei! No one made you do that!"

I smiled sadly. "You did, bascha. I'd have lost, otherwise. And Chosa would have had you."

She knew it as well as I. Trapped in Dragon Mountain, penned by the hounds of hoolies, Del had stood no chance. He would have taken her sword, and her, then augmented his own growing power to destroy Shaka Obre's wards.

Del lowered her blade slightly. Progress. "What is to happen next? What of this threefold future?"

I shrugged. "Images. I saw death, and life. Beginnings and endings. Bits. Pieces.

Fragments. Shattered dreams, and broken jivatmas."

"Do we die?"

"In one future. In another, we both survive. In yet another, one of us dies. In another, the other does."

"That's four," she said sharply. "Four futures, Tiger. You called it threefold."

"Multiple futures," I clarified. "Only three possibilities for any of them: it could be, it might be, it will be." I spread hands in futility, knowing how it sounded. "But each future shifts constantly, altering itself the instant I look at it--even think about it. If you look straight at it, it changes. It's only if you let it slide away and look at the edges ..."

Hoolies, it was worse when I tried to explain it! "Anyway, that's what happened last night, when the hustapha cast the sands." I smoothed tangled hair on the back of my neck, rubbing away tension. "I saw everything. It moved, everchanging. Squirmed, like a bowl of worms." I tried to find the words, the ones that would make her see, so she could explain it to me. "I saw everything there was, wasn't, will be. And you and I smack in the middle."

Del's face was pale. She seemed as overwhelmed as I.

"I don't like it!" I snapped. "I don't like it at all--I'd just as soon not have anything to do with any of this... but what am I to do? I'm stuck with this sword, and it's stuck with Chosa Dei! Not a whole lot I can do about it, is there? Except feel helpless." I sighed, backhanding sweat-sticky hair from forehead. "I didn't want the hustapha to cast the sand in the first place. ..."

Her voice was rusty. "Because you knew what you might see?"

"I just--didn't." I shrugged. "I didn't have much chance to think about the future when I was a Salset chula. Slaves learn not to think about much at all, except staying alive." I hitched shoulders again in a half-shrug, disliking the topic. "I'd just as soon find out what my future holds when I'm in the middle of it."