Sword Sworn-Sword Dancer 6 (18 page)

visitor, and pushed it once again against the wall. Then I stripped out of house-robe to the linen dhoti.

Took up the broken bed leg. Closed my hands upon it. Then, courting patience and self-control, I began

the practice forms I had first learned twenty-three years before at Alimat.

I had worked up a good sweat when I heard the latch rattle. Hastily I slung the leg under the bed and

donned the house-robe again, though I didn't have time to tie the sash. I thought it best not to sit on the

bed with only three legs, so I stood in front of it as if I'd just risen. By the time the door opened, I wore a

suitably expectant expression. Especially since I wondered if Umir was coming to inspect any other

portions of my anatomy.

A woman entered with breakfast. Even as she set the tray on the floor, they locked her in. Rather

than seeming startled or dismayed by her predicatment, she merely stepped aside from the tray and

made a graceful gesture inviting me to eat.

She was beautiful in the way of the loveliest of Southron women, small in stature and delicately

made, with huge dark eyes, expressive face and hands, and dusky skin set off by blue-black hair hanging

loose to her waist. She wore luxurious silks of a brilliant blue-green, and gilded sandals. That she was

here for my pleasure was obvious; she wore neither headress or veil, and did not affect the extreme

modesty of other Southron women. But neither was she overt in any way. Umir's taste in all things ran to

elegance and understatement. Rumor claimed the tanzeer did not like to bed women or men, but took his

pleasure in acquiring and owning those things he found intriguing and unique. Sometimes this included

people. This woman was definitely unique.

Once upon a time I would not have questioned her presence in his house or her role. I would merely

have enjoyed her. Traveling with Del had made me aware of certain Southron customs that were not

judged acceptable by other cultures. Traveling with Del had also filled a place in my soul I hadn't known

existed; I certainly wasn't blind to other women, nor was I gelded or dead, but appreciation now found

outlets other than taking attractive women to bed, be it in my mind or in reality.

Thus I gazed upon this lovely Southron woman and asked, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a

place like this?"

Startled out of her poised serenity, she blinked. The faintest of blushes rose in her cheeks. She

gestured again, more insistently, to the tray containing breakfast.

"Later," I said. "Umir sent you?"

She nodded, lids lowering long enough to display long dark lashes against her cheeks.

"Were instructions given?"

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Her voice was low and perfectly modulated. "I am

to do what you wish and be what you wish."

"Is being here in Umir's house what
you
wish?"

The dark brows arched. "But of course. How not? It is better by far than it might be."

That was likely true. But still I heard Del's voice in my head, arguing the point. "Given a choice,

would you leave?"

She was clearly baffled by my line of questioning. "My family was well paid. They live in comfort

now. But I live in even greater comfort. Why would I wish to leave?"

"And when you are instructed to do what a man wishes, and be what that man wishes, don't you

ever ask yourself if it's worth it?"

Unexpectedly, she laughed. "Do you?"

My turn to be baffled. "What?"

"When you hire a woman for the night, do you ever ask yourself if it's worth it?"

I hadn't hired a woman since meeting Del. But even before that, when I'd celebrated victories with

women and liquor, or with women and no liquor, it had never once occured to me to ask myself if it was

worth it. It was simply what I did. And there were always women who wanted me to do it.

She saw the answer in my face and smiled. "So, you see. We are not so very different."

But I was. Now. Yet there was no possible way to explain it to her. "Thank you for bringing

breakfast," I said, "but I'll eat alone."

She was smiling, certain of me. "And afterwards?"

"Afterwards, I will also be alone."

That surprised her. "You don't wish my company?"

It was undoubtedly an insult, but I tried to soften it. "I choose my own companions."

A wave of color rose in her face. "Umir believed I would please you."

"What would please me, and Umir knows this, is to be given my freedom."

She studied me a moment longer, as if expecting me to change my mind. When I said nothing else,

merely waited quietly, she finally accepted it for the truth. She turned at once to the door, rapped on it

sharply, and slipped out without a backward glance when the guard opened it.

I listened to the latch being locked behind her. Then I walked to the nearest wall, turned, slid down

with my back planted against it. Once upon a time . . .

But I regretted no part of my decision.

I sighed, thumped my head against the wall, shut my eyes. I could hear Umir's sword-dancers. But

all I could think about was Del as I had last seen her, left to the ministrations of a stranger while I was

here, waiting to meet a man who would do his best to kill me.

Nine days, or eight. I should have asked Umir.

Bascha, where are you? Still in the lean-to, or did
Nayyib get you to Julah?

This was not how I had envisioned it. For several years I'd seen Del and me dying together, fighting

any number of enemies. I had never envisioned us as old people, but as we were now. Certainly I had

never considered Del might die of sandtiger wounds or poison, and me sentenced to die in a circle I was

no longer allowed to enter.

Never in a thousand thousand years had I ever expected to declare
elaii-ali-ma.
Despite my time as

a chula among the Salset, I considered myself truly born the day Alimat's shodo had accepted me for

instruction. The day I had taken my name. The day I had defeated Abbu Bensir in an impromptu practice

match with wooden swords.

That image, unexpectedly, was abruptly clear and immediate. I had been seventeen, or as close as I

could reckon my age. Abbu was a good ten or more years older, the acknowledged sword-dancer of

sword-dancers. He wasn't taking lessons anymore; he had made his living hiring out for years. But he

had come back to Alimat to visit the shodo. Where he had heard of a tall, gangly kid who promised, with

proper instruction, to be as good—or better—one day.

I smiled crookedly. Abbu had intended to laugh at me, albeit quietly, noting all of my bad habits for

the benefit of others. And when he had tossed the wooden sparring blade to me, he had anticipated

demonstrating to all the other wide-eyed students how my height and gangliness would hurt me in a

circle.

Instead, my greater reach and speed, despite my awkwardness, had landed a blow to his throat. To

this day he spoke in a husky rasp.

I had eventually grown into my gangliness, adding flesh and muscle. Strength had been trained,

quickness refined. I was unlike Abbu or any other Southroner, and I could not apply all of the lessons to

my particular body. Instead, the shodo had adapted to
me
by developing other forms. In a matter of a

few years, more quickly than any prior student—including Abbu—I had attained the seventh level.

Then, and only then, had I departed Alimat to make my own way.

The way that brought me here so many years later.

I got up and stripped off the robe, tossed it on the bed, and knelt to retrieve the broken leg. Once

again I opened myself to the power that wasn't magic but that might allow me to live. The rites and rituals

of honing the body, controlling the reflexes, taught me by the shodo; and the discipline of honing the

mind, controlling that power, trained into me by the blue-headed priest-mages of ioSkandi.

The woman was long-limbed and agile, winding her legs around mine in comfortable

abandon. She wore no clothes and had teased me out of my own. The initial passion was spent;

now we lay very close, almost as one. Smiling, I twined my fingers into the silk of her hair,

wrapping each: thumb, forefinger, next finger, next, and eventually the little finger. I felt the

binding, tested it,
tugged,
then let the hair side
through. Fair
hair, nearly white; and skin lightly

gilded from the blaze of the sun. I ran hands across that skin, stroked it with fingers
—

—and sat bolt upright on the pallet I'd pulled from the three-legged bed and put on the floor.

I could see nothing in the night but raised my hands regardless. I counted, tucking fingers down as I

named them off in my head.

Right hand: Thumb. Four fingers.

Left: Thumb. Four fingers.

And again, and again. The woman was gone—Del was gone— but the fingers remained. I could feel

them.

I stayed awake the rest of the night, arguing with myself.

When dawn finally crept slowly into the room, segmented by air-holes, I was able to see truth at last.

Thumb.
Three
fingers. And a stub.

I lay down again, making fists of my hands. With two thumbs and six fingers.

Thinking: No Del, either.

Dreams, I decided bitterly, conjured pain as well as pleasure.

THIRTEEN

IN THE MORNING of the tenth day, I awoke not long after dawn. As always, the room I

inhabited was quiet, dim, isolated, cut off from the ordinary noises of Umir's rousing household. But this

time my body was poised and alert, my mind calm and prepared. Even without counting the days, I

knew.

I lay on my back on the pallet and extended arms into the air. Examined hands, front and back. I had

not dreamed again of having all my fingers. What I saw now was what I expected to see: that which had

been left to me atop the stone spire after Sahdri had amputated two fingers in an attempt to also

amputate my identity, the awareness that I was sword-dancer before anything else. Because he knew

very well I would not become what he believed I should be, and could be, unless my past was

extinguished.

The weeks thereafter had been a true battle as I fought an enemy such as I'd never met, to retain my

sense of
self.
I had very nearly lost. But eventually I had rediscovered what and who I was and had

managed to tap into ioSkandi's power. There atop the spire I'd been mage, if never priest, but also

sword-dancer. And that, I knew, was all that would serve me now.

Sword-dancer.

Sandtiger.

Both—or either—would be enough.

I pressed myself up from the pallet. Used the crock. Spent time stretching myself into flexibility,

cracked my joints, put my body through forms I could do in my sleep until every portion of me was

loose. Took up a position in front of the door in the center of the room, composed myself, closed my

eyes, and let myself go as I had in Meteiera, soaring without wings over the fertile valley at the foot of

massive spires.

Far below I saw a circle made of white stones set into the ground with expert precision. I

soared lower, lower, and saw there a man, dhoti-clad; a man born of Skandi, with the height,

breadth, power, and quickness characteristic of the Eleven Families who claimed themselves

gods-descended. Both hands grasped a sword, a full complement of eight fingers and two thumbs

wrapping hilt. It was a weapon, but also an extension of the man. Steel became flesh.

He was alone and oblivious to the world at large. He danced there, he and the

sword-his-partner, transforming the initial fundamental forms into a series of linked, liquid

movements shaped, despite his size, of grace mixed with strength, a tapestry of motion on the

frame of his will and spirit. Sweat sheened his body, slicking sun-browned flesh into a

copper-bronze human sculpture of ridged sinews, tendons, and delineated muscle: the hard,

ungentle beauty of a mature male trained beyond all others, fit beyond expectation, in body and

mind. And then the first routines gave way to those known only by the best, known only
of
the

best, kindling from the coals of talent into the intangible flame of rare gift.

He was alone no longer. A woman came into the circle. She too carried a sword. She too was

tall, long of limb and torso, powerful but inherently graceful, manifestly and splendidly female

despite her size and strength. Blonde, pale, wearing only a leather tunic, she challenged him to a

dance.

When it was done, neither had lost. Neither had won. They had merely proven how perfectly

matched they were, how exacting their precision, and how neither could be defeated.

Smiling, sated on self-awareness, I wheeled away on the wind, soaring back toward the spire.

I descended; and cool stone lay under my feet. Power thrummed in my bones, threaded itself

through muscle, tingled in my scalp. I spread my arms and gazed open-eyed but blindly into the

heavens, calling on all the skills of Alimat, the courage of a slave become a man, and the fierce