"You regret sleeping with Herakleio."
"Yes. And no."
"Oh?"
She drank her cup dry, then stared blindly at the opposite wall. In the ocher-gilt wash of lamplight, her many freckles merged. "He was my first man," she said, "and my last." She saw my frown of incomprehension. "Oh, there were other men in between. But I realized they offered nothing I wanted, not in my heart. It was women…" She let it go, shrugging. "But I was afraid of myself, of the truth, and so I sought out Herak again to prove to myself that I was like other women."
"And instead — ?"
"He was drunk, was Herak. He did not even know me. I was merely a woman, and likely his second of the night. He slept hard when we were done, and did not awaken even as I withdrew." She swirled the lees in her cup. "By morning I understood the truth of what I was, what I wanted; what I was not, and did not want. So Herak twice had the awakening of me."
"You are drunk, captain."
Prima smiled, blurry eyes alight. "Of course I am."
"Why?"
"Because I am here. Because Herak is. Because Nihko is not." She recaptured the jar from me and poured her cup full. "Because I want your woman, and she will not have me."
It startled me because I had not been thinking of Del, or of Del in those terms. And then it lit a warmth deep in my belly that had nothing to do with lust.
Prima Rhannet turned her head to stare hard at me. "And that is what you truly came to me for."
"It is?"
She was drunk, but for the moment a smoldering anger burned away the liquor. "You wanted to know if I bedded your woman while I kept her on my ship."
"That isn’t why I came."
"Why else?"
"To ask about Herakleio."
"Hah." She drank deeply, wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand, then tipped her skull against the wall. "It must be in your mind. A woman who sleeps with women. Others find it perverse. Disgusting. Frightening. Impossible. Unbelievable. Or at the very least, awkward."
"Well," I said consideringly, "you must admit it’s a bit out of the ordinary when compared to most people."
"As is being a woman who captains her own ship when compared to most women."
"So instead of limiting yourself to only one extraordinary achievement, you accomplish two."
After a moment she said, "I had not thought of it that way."
"Which means you’re doubly blessed —"
"— doubly cursed."
"Depending on who you talk to." I gestured. "Then again, you’re also a renegada. A woman renegada."
"Thrice cursed!" She sighed dramatically, then glanced sidelong at me. "I enjoy being — unpredictable."
"I figured you did."
"But that is not why I do what I do, or am what I am."
"I figured it wasn’t."
She contemplated me further. "She told me you were, once, everything she detests in a man."
I drank deeply of my cup, then hitched a shoulder. "Depending on who you talk to."
"I talked to her."
"Then I was. If she says so. To her."
"She no longer detests you."
I grunted. "That is something of a relief."
"She told me you still have some rough edges, but she is rubbing them off."
I grinned into the winejar as I tipped it toward my face. "I enjoy having Del rub me off."
"That is disgusting!" Prima Rhannet jabbed a sharp elbow in my short ribs, which succeeded in startling me into a recoil and coughing spasm that slopped wine down my chin and the front of my tunic. "But amusing," she conceded.
I caught my breath, wiped my chin, plucked the wet tunic away from my skin. I reeked of rich red wine.
The captain hiccoughed. Or so I thought initially. Then I realized it was laughter she attempted to suppress. I scowled at her sidelong. "What’s so funny?"
"You want to know how, and why," she said. "Every man does, except those who understand what it is to desire in a way others declare is wrong. They wish to know about mechanics, and motivation."
I opened my mouth to respond, shut it. Converted images in my head, and realized with abrupt and unsettling clarity that she was no different than I. I had been, after all, a slave, someone vilified, excoriated, for something I could not help. For being what I was, had no choice in being.
And I recalled so many nights when I cried myself to sleep, or when I hadn’t slept at all because the beaten body had hurt so much. And how I had longed for, had dreamed of a world in which I had value beyond doing what others told me. What others expected of me, and punished to enforce it.
"I think," I said slowly, "that it shouldn’t matter what others think."
"But it does."
"It does," I agreed bleakly. "But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe… maybe what’s important is how we feel about ourselves."
I, of course, had believed I deserved slavery. Because I had been told so. Because I knew nothing else. Thus even the wishes, the dreams, had worsened the guilt.
"And if she thought of you now as she thought of you originally?" Prima asked. "Your Northern bascha?"
I stared into the darkness of the winejar, unable to find an answer. Not one that made any sense, nor could make sense to her.
"It matters," she said. "One can justify that it does not, that the opinions of others are without validity, but if the one person you care for more than yourself believes you are beneath contempt, then your life has no worth."
I stirred then. "I disagree."
"Why?"
"Because true freedom is when the only person whose opinion matters is your own. When you know your own worth."
Prima smiled. "But so often it is difficult to be comfortable in your own skin."
"Well, mine’s a little battered," I said, "but on the whole I’m pretty comfortable in it."
Now.
"While hers no longer fits the way it used to."
I looked at Prima sharply. "What do you mean? And how in hoolies do you know anything about it?"
"We spoke," she answered, "as one woman to another. Women who have made a life among men no matter how difficult the task, no matter how vilified we were — and are — for it. As sisters of the soul."
"And?"
"And," the captain echoed, "she admitted to me that she has lost herself."
"Del?"
"Her song is finished," Prima said. "So she told me. She found her brother. Found the man who destroyed her family, her past, the future she expected to have. And she killed that man." Her eyes were smoky in the light. "Her song is finished, and now she hears yours."
It startled me. "Mine?"
"Of course. She came here with you, did she not?"
"You made certain of that, captain."
Prima laughed. "But you were bound here regardless of my actions."
I conceded that yes, we had been.
"But Skandi had nothing to do with her life," she continued. "It played no role."
"I don’t know that Skandi plays much of a role in anyone’s life," I pointed out, "except to people who live here."
"You are avoiding the truth."
I sighed. "All right. Fine. Yes, Del came with me to Skandi. In fact, it was Del who suggested it." I brightened. "Which means it does too have something to do with her life!"
The captain laughed and lifted her cup in salute. "But my point is that her song now is yours, not her own."
"And are you suggesting she’d be wiser to hear your song?"
The smile fled Prima Rhannet’s mouth. "I might wish it," she said softly, "but no. She is a woman for men. For a man," she amended, "since no other man but you has taken her without force."
I was not comfortable with this line of conversation. I knew well enough of Del’s past, but saw no need to discuss it with anyone other than Del. Who never did.
At least, with me. Seems she had with the renegada.
Prima saw my expression, interpreted it accurately. "I only mean you to real
ize what it is to have a woman such as she with you," she said. "A woman who chooses to be with you, because it is what she wants. There is honor in making such a choice, if that choice agrees with your soul. It is no diminishment for a woman to be with a man, to want to be with a man — but neither is it diminishment for a woman to want to be with a woman."
Put that way, well, I guess not. It was the other side of the mirror, the reflection reversed. So long as both sides of the couple were happy, with needs met, honor respected, no one forced or harmed, did it matter if the couple was comprised of two women, or two men?
Maybe not. Probably not. But it was hard to think of it in those terms. It made me uncomfortable. It was too new, too different.
More questions occurred. Should a woman be with a man because she was expected to? Because she was made to? Was it not akin to slavery to be forced to do and be what others insisted you do and be?
I had been what the Salset had made me. Prima Rhannet had apparently tried to be what she was expected to be, and found it slavery of the soul. For Del, raped repeatedly by a man who murdered her family, it might be simpler to avoid men altogether. She hadn’t. She’d sought and found me, because she needed my help. But that time was long past, that life concluded.
The captain was right: Del had chosen to be with me. Such choices, freely made, were framed on personal integrity, not on expectations. That satisfaction of the soul was paramount.
With quiet fierceness Prima went on. "Men do not believe women have honor. They are threatened by such things in us, because they fear our strength. Better to discount it, to ridicule it, to diminish it, before we recognize and acknowledge our worth. Because then their lives would change. They would no longer be comfortable in their own hearts, and skins."
I knew that in the South, what she said was true. "And yet here in Skandi, women rule the households, the family business ventures." I paused. "Even the lines of inheritance."
"But such things are expected of women," Prima countered. "I speak of the things women are not believed capable of doing."
I couldn’t help it: I was relieved to be back on ground made familiar by discussions with Del. Many discussions with Del. "Such as captaining a ship?"
"Women," she said, "should be permitted to do anything. And accorded honor for it."
I smiled. "Even if they choose to remain in the household doing those very things expected of women."
Prima opened her mouth to argue. Shut it. Glared into her cup.
I provoked intentionally. "Women should be accorded the same choices, no?"
She was crisp and concise. "Yes."
"But not every woman wishes to captain a ship."
"No."
"And if she chooses not to do so, women who choose to do so should not discount it, ridicule them for it, or diminish it."
She continued to glare, mouth hard and taut.
"The blade cuts two ways, captain."
"Yes," she said finally. "But there should be a choice. Too often there is not." Then, challenging me, "And would you have argued that before you met your Delilah?"
I smiled. "It’s Del who put the other edge on that blade, captain. Before then I would have vowed no blade had more than one."
"So."
"So."
"You are a better man because of her."
"I am a better man because of her."
She nodded. "So."
"So."
Prima drank long and deeply, stared broodingly at the wall, then abruptly changed topics. "Herak," she said, "has ambitions to exceed Nihko’s legend."
"Nihko’s?" In the sudden switch, all I could think of was what he now lacked.
She waved a hand. "Not because of that. Because of what he was. Before." Prima drank. "Nihko was the son of the Lasos metri’s sister. And women wanted him."
"I take it he wanted them back."
"Oh, indeed. And got them."
"And paid the price."
"Oh, indeed. He paid it." Prima sounded tired. "Herak, at least, keeps himself from married women, and metris, and metris’ daughters."
I shifted my legs a little, cleared my throat, tried to wipe out of my mind the vivid imagery. The ultimate punishment for a man who loved women too much, as well as the wrong ones.
"Why do you care?" she asked. "Why ask me about Herak?"
I smiled. "A dance is undertaken inside the head as much as with the body."
It mystified her.
"Tomorrow I invite Herakleio into his first circle. I like to know a man’s vices before I use them against him."
Prima Rhannet pondered that. Then she smiled in delight. "You think like a woman."
"Flattery," I said comfortably, and grabbed the wine-jar back.
Del awoke in the darkness as I slipped into bed beside her. She didn’t turn to me even as I fit my body to hers, snugging one arm over and around her waist. "Wine," she said disapprovingly.
It was, I thought, self-evident. I buried my face in her hair, inhaling the clean scent.
"Who with?" she asked. Then, thinking she knew, "Did you drink the boy insensible?"
I bestirred myself to answer. "Not the boy. The captain."
Del went stiff.
"What’s wrong, bascha?"
"Why her?"
"She had the wine."
"Why her?"
"I had questions."
Del did not relax. "And curiosity?"
Yawning, I offered, "Curiosity is generally the father of questions."
"Did she answer them?"
"Those she could. And raised some others." I tightened my arm at her waist, settled closer. "Go back to sleep, bascha."
"Why?" she asked. "Are you sated?"
My eyes sprang open. I lifted my face from her hair. "Am I what?"
"In curiosity. In body."
"Hoolies, Del, you think I slept with her?"
For a moment there was silence. "I think you might want to."
"What in hoolies for? She doesn’t like men, remember?"
"To prove to her she’s wrong."
I was so muddled by then I couldn’t even dredge up a comment.
"To change her mind."
I snorted. "As if I could!"
"But wouldn’t you wish to try?" Del’s tone went dry. "Surely you could rise to the challenge, Tiger."
I laughed then, letting the wine overrule my better judgment. My breath stirred her hair.
In the voice of confession, she said, "I don’t understand men."
I was fading. "Oh, I think you understand men all too well, bascha." I yawned again. "Beasts driven by lust and violence."
"I was driven," she said, "by lust for violence."
I wanted to understand, to tell her I understood, but I was too sleepy. "I’d rather you were driven by lust for me."
She relaxed then, utterly. The tension drained out of her on a resigned sigh. I knew better than to believe she’d never come back to the topic, but at least for tonight I was to be allowed respite.
Maybe I was getting old. (Well, older.) But at that moment I was content merely to hold her, to share the warmth of this woman in my bed, and slide gently over the edge of sleep undisturbed by self-doubts or complex questions.
SEVENTEEN
I stood there on the summit, poised to fall. Except I wouldn’t, couldn’t fall, because I could fly. Was expected to fly.
Needed to fly.
The wind beat at me. It whipped moisture from my eyes and sucked them dry. Stripped hair back from my face. Threatened the breath in my nostrils and thus the breath in my lungs. Plucked at my clothes like a woman desiring intimacy, until the fabric tore, shredded; was ripped from my body. And I stood naked upon the precipice, bound to fly. Or die.
Toes curled into stone. Calluses opened and bled. I lifted my arms, stretched out my arms, extended them as wings, fingers spread and rigid. Wind buffeted palms, curled into armpits. I swayed against it, fragile upon the mountain. Poised atop the pillar of the gods.
&nb
sp; "I can," I said. "I will."
Wind wailed around me. Caressed me. Caught me.
"I can. I must. I will."
Wind filled me, broke through my lips and came into my mouth, into my throat, into my body. It was no gentle lover, no kind and thoughtful woman, but a force that threatened, that promised release and relief like none other known to man.
Arms spread, I leaned. And then the wind abated. Died away, departed the mountain, left me free to choose.
I leaned, seeking the wind. Waiting for it to lift me.
Soared.
Plummeted —
— and crashed into the ground.
"Tiger?" Del sat up, leaned over the side of the bed. "Are you all right?"
I lay in a heap on the stone floor. Groggily I asked, "What happened?"
"You fell out of bed."
Groaning, I sat up. Felt elbows, knees. Peered through the darkness. "Did you push me?"
"No, I did not push you! You woke me up trying to shout something, then lunged over the edge."
"Lunged."
"Lunged," she repeated firmly.
I felt at my forehead, aware of a sore spot. Likely a lump would sprout by morning. "Why would I lunge over the side of my bed?"
"I don’t know," Del said. "I have no idea what makes you do anything. Including drinking too much."
Back to that, were we? I stood up, tugged tunic straight, twisted one way, then the other to pop my spine. The noise was loud in the darkness.
"A dream?" she asked.
I thought about it. "I don’t remember one. I don’t remember dreaming at all." I rubbed briefly at stubbled jaw. "Probably because I feel so helpless without a sword. Kind of — itchy."
"Itchy?"
"Like something bad is going to happen."
Del made a sound of dismissal. "Too much wine." And lay back down again.
"Here," I said, "at least let me get between you and the wall. That way if I lunge out of bed again, I’ll have you to land on."
Del moved over. To the wall. Leaving me the open edge, and below it the stone floor.
"Thanks, bascha."
"You’re welcome."
I climbed back into bed, examined the side with a careful hand, found nothing to suggest a structural weakness. Likely I’d rolled too far, overbalanced, and just tipped over the edge. No matter what Del said about lunging-
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