But not what I might yet do.
My walls were down now, shattered upon the sand. Del, who realized it, released a long breath of eloquent relief and set down her sword. Knelt beside me. Put one hand on my own where they viciously gripped my hair.
I closed my eyes. I closed them very tightly. I thought my teeth might crumble.
The hand closed, offering comfort. Her tone was meditative; as a Northerner, she had never feared or denied magic. Nor refused to employ it herself. "From when I met you, I knew. There were signs of it… but you denied it. Refused to believe, despite evidence. Even when I showed you Northern magic. Even when you worked it."
I said nothing.
"I learned my magic," she said. "It’s part of being a sword-singer, part of Staal-Ysta. That’s what jivatmas are. We sing the power into being, to wield the blade."
She had told me this before. I wanted her to stop. Wanted not to listen.
"I have no magic," she said. "Only the sword. Only the song." Her fingers traced the back of one hand. "But you… you need nothing but yourself."
I shook my head.
"It’s a part of you, Tiger. Just like your sword skill. Don’t deny it."
Eventually I untangled fingers and looked at her. "I have to."
"No."
If I don’t…" But I let it go. I shook my head again, releasing pent breath. "It’s too late for that, isn’t it?"
"I think so, yes."
I sighed heavily, scrubbed wearily at my face. My eyes felt gritty. The beginnings of a headache throbbed at the base of my neck. "Did you really bury the necklet?"
’I cut the wire into pieces with my knife, then buried each bone in a different place."
Relief was palpable. Then comprehension followed, and amusement. No wonder it had taken her so long to find the appropriate bush. I wasn’t certain anything in the necklet had controlled me or was meant to control me, but self-awareness had returned only with distance from Oziri and separation from the necklet.
"Good." I could not meet her eyes, so I stared hard at the stars for a long time. I heard the coals settling, the faintest of breezes skimming the surface of the soil, the restless shiftings of the stud and Del’s gelding. "Four weeks," I said. "Give or take a day."
Del was puzzled. "What?"
"Since the sandtiger attack." I was certain of it, as much as I could be. It felt — right.
Del smiled. "Yes."
"There’s something I have to tell you. Something you must understand." I swallowed heavily, aware of pain in my throat, the fear she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, accept it. "Bascha — you really were there. Atop the spire in the Stone Forest. With me."
Her tone frayed. "Tiger —"
"In my dreams," I told her. "And that’s what saved me. That’s what kept me sane. So long as I could hold onto the memory of you, could conjure you in dreams, I knew I would survive. I lost myself for a while, even lost two fingers — but I came back from ioSkandi, came back from the spires." I took a deep breath. "I’ll come back from this."
It was Del’s turn for silence.
"I don’t — I don’t remember what Oziri did. What he told me, or taught me. Enough, obviously, to find and refine whatever was born in me, what bubbled up from time to time before going dormant again, until Meteiera. Apparently he brought it back into the open." I laughed sharply. "If I couldn’t remember what day it was, how can I be expected to remember what he did? But what I don’t understand is why."
Del pondered it. "Perhaps he realized what was in you, and wanted it for himself," she said. "I think as long as you denied what you were, he could use you. Perhaps he felt your magic might augment his, make him something more than he was. But if you knew what he wanted, you would have resisted."
"Would I?"
"Oh, yes. You let no man use you, Tiger. Not Nihko, not Sah-dri, not Oziri."
"But they have. Each of them." Others as well, over the long years. "For a time."
"And you have walked away from them all."
Or been dragged away by a very determined woman. I sighed. "So, you think if I admit what I am, I’ll be safe from manipulation?"
"Maybe."
I scowled. "That’s not much of a guarantee."
Del’s brows arched. "With the kind of lives we lead, that’s the best I can offer."
True enough. I ran a hand through my hair, scrubbing at the chill that crept over my scalp. "Dangerous."
"What is?"
"A man with a sword who lacks proper training." I grimaced, said what I meant: "A man with magic who lacks proper training."
Sahdri had said it, atop the spires. Umir’s book set it into print. Oziri had proved it.
"Unless he is strong enough to find his own way."
I grunted. "Maybe."
Del smiled. "I will offer a guarantee."
I laughed, then let it spill away. "I can’t believe that all dreams are bad, bascha. Everyone dreams. You dream."
"But I am not a mage."
She had said it was born in me. So had Nihkolara, and Sahdri. Oziri. Even Umir’s book. Dormancy until Skandi, from birth until age forty — except for a sensitivity to magic so strong it made me ill; until ioSkandi, when Nihko took me against my will to Met-eiera, to the Stone Forest; to others like him, like me. Where, atop a spire, a full-blown mage was born.
Denial bloomed again, faded. Was followed by the only logical question there could be.
What comes next?
TWENTY-THREE
I awoke with a start, staring up into darkness lighted only by stars and the faintest sliver of moon. Sweat bathed my body. I swore under my breath and rubbed an unsympathetic hand over my face, mashing it out of shape.
"What is it?" Del’s voice was shaded by only a trace of sleepiness.
We lay side-by-side in our bedrolls with the dying fire at our feet. Desert nights are cool; I yanked the blanket up to my shoulders. Muttering additional expletives, I shut my eyes and draped an elbow over my face. "I was dreaming, curse it."
After a moment, with careful neutrality, she queried, "Yes?"
"I’d just as soon not, after my recent experiences." I removed the arm and looked again at the stars, shoving both forearms under my head. "How in hoolies am I supposed to go through life without dreaming?"
"I don’t think you can not dream," Del observed, shifting beneath her blanket. "You’ll just have to get used to it."
I grunted sourly.
"Well — unless you can learn to control them. Make them stop." She was silent a moment. "And perhaps you can. Being you."
I chewed on that for a moment, then shied away from the concept. That "being you" part carried an entirely new connotation, now.
"What was this dream about?"
I scowled up at darkness. "Actually, it was a piece of one I had before. At least, I’m assuming it was a dream. Before, that is. You swore up and down it didn’t happen."
"I did?"
"The dance," I said. "The dance where you walked away."
"Ah." She was silent a moment. "No. It didn’t happen. But — are you saying you dreamed about a dream?"
"I didn’t think it was a dream at the time. In which case I’d be dreaming about something that did happen. But it didn’t, so I guess I was dreaming about a dream."
Her tone was amused. "This is getting very complicated, Tiger."
"Then there’s the dream about the dead woman…" Oh, argh. I hadn’t meant to tell her.
Del’s voice sharpened. "Dead woman?"
I tried to dismiss it as inconsequential. "Just — a skeleton. Out in the Punja."
"It’s a skeleton, but you know it’s a woman?"
"It’s a woman’s voice."
"This skeleton speaks?"
Now she’d really think I was sandsick. "It’s not the kind of dreams I had with Oziri. This is just a dream. A dream dream. You know. The kind anyone has."
"I don’t dream of skeletons who speak with a woman’s voice."
I put
a smile into my voice. "Of course not. You dream of me."
"Oh, indeed," she murmured dryly. "What else would a woman dream about but a man? It is her only goal in life, to find a man to fill her thoughts during the day and her dreams during the night."
I rolled over to face her, hitching myself up on one elbow. "So. What kind of man did you think you’d end up with?" It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever asked before. Nor had I ever heard a man, even dead drunk, mention curiosity about it. But that didn’t mean we weren’t curious.
"I didn’t."
"Didn’t? Not at all?" I paused. "Ever?"
"When I was a girl, yes."
"A Northerner."
"Of course. I lived in the North."
"And when you got a little older?"
"I stopped thinking about what kind of man I might end up with."
"Why?"
"Ajani," she said simply.
One word. One name. Explanation. And it came rushing back to me, the knowledge. A fifteen-year-old girl, witness to the massacre of her family. The sole survivor save for her brother, and subject to the brutality so many women suffered at the hands of borjuni. No, I didn’t imagine Del had ever dreamed of a man again, except perhaps of the one she’d sworn to kill.
By the time she’d done it, we’d been partners for two years. Sword-mates. Bed-mates. I’d known the minute I laid eyes on her in the dusty, drag-tail cantina that I wanted her in my bed. I don’t know when the idea occured to Del.
"What?" she asked.
I raised my eyebrows at her in a silent query.
Del frowned faintly. "You’re staring at me."
"You’re worth staring at." I reached out, hooked two fingers into the sandtiger necklet around her neck, pulled her toward me. "I think I know of a way to turn bad dreams into good ones."
"Ah," she said as our foreheads met gently. "But will you remember my name in the morning?"
I shifted closer, sinking a hand into the hair against the back of her head. "Who needs names? ’Woman’ will do."
Stiffened fingers jabbed me warningly beneath the short ribs. "What was that again?"
"Delilah," I murmured against her mouth.
The mouth curved into a smile, then parted. The tongue flicked briefly against my own with the first word. "That will do." So would a lot of things, with this woman.
In the morning I fought the muzzy residue of too many dreams crowded together inside my skull as I grained and watered the horses. The morning promised to bleed into a typical desert day: very bright, very warm, no moisture. Which is good for the bones, but bad for the skin. It wasn’t high summer yet, nor were we in the Punja, but no part of the South lacks for heat. I could taste it on my tongue, an acrid trace of dry soil and sand; I could smell the tang of creosote and what was left of our fire, burned away to a thin scattering of coals amid the ash. Del, squatting beside it, raked the coals apart to expose all of them, then took care to blanket them in a layer of sandy soil so there was no threat of sparks that might kindle a conflagration.
I patted the stud as he nosed his morning grain, then turned back to Del. She looked tired; and it had nothing to do with our activities of the night before, which had been slow and undemanding, but satisfying nonetheless. She simply hadn’t entirely recovered her strength following the sandtiger attack. "We’ll make Julah in two or three hours, then spend the night before going on."
She glanced up, rising. "We’d make better time if we headed out this afternoon, after a good meal."
I hitched a shrug, turning back to gather up and pack canvas buckets away. "We’ll see how we feel later today. No sense in wasting a decent bed, though, now that we own one." Or several.
"Parts of one," Del clarified. "Do you suppose Fouad will charge us rent on the other third?"
"Not if he wants to live."
She’d knelt and now was working on her bedroll. "Nayyib deserves better, after all he did for us."
"We’ll go after him, Del. But we won’t do him much good if we’re both too tired to put up a decent fight. Besides, we don’t even know if he got to Umir’s place. Just because he said he’d go-"
"If he said it, he meant it." Del looped thongs around the bedding and knotted them. "I trust him."
It baffled me that she would. "We hardly know him, bascha."
"I spent nearly two weeks in his company." Her tone was clipped. "I would have died, had he not tended me. Hour after hour, day after day, at the shelter and then at the Vashni encampment. You can learn a great deal about a man in such circumstances."
"Look, I’m not saying he’s a liar, just that —"
Del cut me off. "He went to look for you."
"I know that, but —"
"And likely he’s risking his life for you, to walk into Umir’s presence among all those sword-dancers. Look what happened with Rafiq."
"Which is precisely the point I tried to make once before: that he ran too high a risk going after me. Did he think to win Umir’s little contest, then join forces with me?" I shook my head. "He’s not good enough. They’d have eaten him alive in that circle."
"Which is why he came looking for you originally. To learn from you."
I placed blankets across the stud’s back, then swung the saddle up. "No, originally he came looking for me to challenge me, until he saw me kill Khashi. Then he decided to ask me to teach him."
"We owe him, Tiger."
I wanted to growl aloud in exasperation. "We’ll go, Del. I’m not saying we won’t. I’m just saying we can afford a night in Julah."
"Neesha may not be able to afford —"
"Del." I turned toward her. "You need the rest. End of discussion."
She stood her ground, scowling at me ferociously. "Why is it you’re so opposed to helping Nayyib?"
"I’m not opposed to helping Nayyib. I just think —"
"You try to argue me out of it every time I bring it up. Despite the fact he saved your life —"
"I wasn’t in any danger of dying, bascha."
Her voice rose. "— as well as saving mine; and I was in danger of dying, Tiger! Not to mention he went for help in Julah and got himself abducted by Rafiq and his friends —"
"I don’t think they actually abducted him —"
"— and risked being killed by Vashni —"
"I’m not sure the Vashni —"
"— and now may have been taken prisoner by Umir. How many times has he put himself out, or put himself in danger, to help us, yet you insist on denigrating those efforts and refuse to help him when he may need it?"
"I’m not denigrating those efforts, Del, and I’m not refusing to help him. I’m merely saying we should spend the night in Julah before we head off for Umir’s. Where he may not even be."
"See? There it is, Tiger! Denigration. Is it because he’s younger than you — my age, in fact — and handsome? Because I spent two weeks alone with him, mostly undressed, while you were elsewhere? Because we slept in the same tent? Because I came to know him, to trust him? Are you afraid I might be taken with him?"
I stared at her, mouth open. "You’re saying I’m jealous!"
"Well? Are you?"
"No!"
"Are you sure, Tiger?"
"Yes!"
Clearly she was dubious. "You exhibited behavior somewhat similar to this in Skandi, when we met Herakleio. Young, strong, handsome, well-set-up Herakleio."
I glared. "I wasn’t jealous of Herakleio, and I’m not jealous of Nayyib."
She glared back. "You have remarked many times on the years between us. No doubt some might even whisper I’m young enough to be your daughter."
I gritted teeth. "I don’t care what anybody else thinks. Or what they whisper, either." Though I’d heard it mentioned aloud a time or two.
Pale brows arched.
"I don’t," I said crisply. "As for staying in Julah, it’s one night. One night at Fouad’s. That’s all, bascha. Then we go."
"In one night a man could die."
"Hoolies, a man can die in one moment, Del! Between one breath and the next. But I find it very unlikely Umir will kill him — or that anyone else would — because there’s still a price on my head, and by now they probably all know Nayyib has a better idea than they do where I might go. Plus Umir wants his book back. He won’t kill Nayyib if he thinks he can trade him for the book."
Del held her bedroll in the crook of an elbow. "What book?"
In my zeal to change the subject, I’d forgotten she knew nothing about Umir’s book of magic. I sighed, turning back to continue tacking out the stud. "I’ll tell you on the trail."
Fouad seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that Del and I were now equal partners in his cantina. He was not in the least surprised to see us, nor that we expected to have private quarters. In fact, he led us rather dolefully down the hallway giving access to the rooms rented — along with the wine-girls — to men with coin. I fully expected Del to make some icy comment about women accepting the necessity of selling their bodies, but she held her tongue. Fouad took us to the very back of the building, then waved us inside a curtained door.
Plaster dust still lay on the floor. Raw wood and nail holes were obvious against the weathered walls. "I had a wall knocked down between two rooms," Fouad said, "and a wider bed put in." He glowered. "It’s reduced the cantina by two rooms, you realize. And the income. Plus the cost of the changes will come out of your shares."
Two tiny rooms made into one slightly larger one by the deletion of a thin lath-and-plaster wall didn’t leave us with much added space, but it was something. And the bed was noticeably wider. There were also two rickety tables, one battered, brass-hinged trunk, and a small, square window cut into one exterior adobe wall. I wondered inanely if Del would want to put up curtains.
"You can rent it out when we’re not here," I told him, "and charge more for it because it’s the best room in the house. Which reminds me — we’ll need to sit down and have a good talk about how the place is run, so Del and I have an idea what to expect as partners." I caught her narrowed glance and added, "When we get back."
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