The sifter was hidden away once more. The pouch was closed and set aside. The hustapha, no longer blind, leaned forward over the rectangular window of randomly cast sands.
He blew. A single whuffing exhalation that barely ruffled the crystals, not much more than a baby’s breath. Then he drew back and gestured for me to do the same.
I choked on the stench of magic. The contents of my belly crawled halfway up my gullet.
The old hustapha waited.
I gritted teeth. Bent. Blew a single perfunctory breath, getting the silliness over with.
Black eyes glittered. He lifted palsied hands, clapped them together once, then crossed one over the other and flattened palms against thin chest.
Torches whispered of wind.
A breeze only. It caressed eyelids, brushed lips, teased at sweaty flesh. Then settled on the palette of crystal-clothed colored sands.
I watched it. The breeze tugged at Punja crystals, shifted some, stole others, teased away grain by grain. As each gauzy layer was lifted, a new color was born. The random casts of sands began to form a pattern. And a pattern within the pattern.
“Behold,” the hustapha invited.
The breeze died, allowing the sands to still. The hustapha waited patiently, letting me look upon the casting. The aketni behind him said nothing, nor made any movement. Beside me, Del was as still.
I was, abruptly, alone. I looked, as I was meant to. Read what was written there, in sand-conjured images still writhing like knots of worms. Bronze, ocher, ash. Others. All the colors of magicked casting, dependent upon the subject.
I stared at the threefold future wind- and breathscribed in the sands.
What could be. Might be. Would be.
What I did not want to be.
Del’s voice was soft in the star-glimmered darkness. “You’re not asleep.”
Sleep? How could I sleep?
“What’s the matter?” she asked. Her breath stirred the sweat-stiffened hair on the back of my neck.
I sat bolt upright, scrubbing frenziedly at my nape. “Don’t do that!”
She levered herself up on one elbow. We slept apart from the wagons, well-distanced from the aketni, but it was still much too close as far as my comfort was concerned. She brushed hair out of her face. “Why are you so jumpy?”
I stared hard through the darkness. I knew the hustapha and the others had raked the sandcast patterns into nothingness, dispersing the magic, but still I looked for them. Still I smelled the odor. Still I searched for images squirming in the sand, hoping they might change.
I drew in a deep, uneven breath. “I. Hate. Magic.”
Del’s soft laugh was inoffensive. If anything, it was relieved. “Then you may as well hate yourself. You have your own share of it.”
Ice caressed my spine. “Not like that,” I blurted. “Not like that old man.”
Del said nothing.
I twisted my head, looking at her. Asking it at last. “You saw, didn’t you? What the sands foretold?”
A muscle twitched in her jaw.
“You saw,” I said.
“No.”
It stopped me. “No?”
“No, Tiger. It was a private thing.”
I frowned. “Are you saying you saw nothing? Or that by saying nothing about it, you create that privacy?”
“I saw nothing.” She tucked hair behind an ear. “Nothing but sand, Tiger. Little drifts of wind-blown sand.”
“Then—you didn’t see… ?” But I let it go. As I unclenched my fists, another fingernail peeled off. “Then if no one else saw, maybe it won’t happen. Maybe I can make it not happen.”
Del’s face was pale in starlight. Her voice was a thready whisper. “Was it so very bad?”
I frowned into darkness. “I’m not sure.”
She thrust herself upright, sitting atop her blanket. “Then if you’re not sure, how can it be so bad?”
I stared into the night.
“Tiger?”
I twitched. Traced the sandtiger scars. “I’m not sure,” I repeated. Then I looked at her. “We have to go to Julah.”
Del frowned. “You said something of that before. You gave no reason, just said we had to go. Why? That is Sabra’s domain. She won’t remain in Iskandar forever. It is not the destination I would choose.”
“If you had a choice.”
Del narrowed blue eyes. “Have you no choice?”
“We.”
“We?”
“Have we no choice.”
Pale brows hooked together. “What are you saying?”
“That of all the futures I saw, yours was the most potent.”
“My future!” Del’s spine snapped straight. “You saw my future in the casting?”
I reached out and caught a lock of white-silk hair. Wound it around a callused finger, wishing I could feel it. Then slipped the hand behind her neck and pulled her close, so very close, holding her very tightly against my left shoulder. Losing the threefold future in the curtain of her hair.
Wanting to hold her so hard I cracked all her bones.
Before Chosa Dei did it for me.
Twenty-three
My eyes snapped open. I roused instantly and without fanfare: one moment asleep, the next completely awake, with no residual grogginess, or a desire to curse the inner sense that jerked me out of oblivion.
I lay perfectly still in my blanket, rolled up in a sausage casing of Southron-loomed, nubby weaving dyed gray and bloody and brown. Del slept beside me, pale hair hooded by blanket, except where one stray lock had escaped the others and ribboned across the skyward shoulder.
Something crawled from the pit of my belly. Trembling beset my limbs.
Fear? No. Just—trembling. Tingling. A quake of bone and muscle no longer willing to be quiescent.
I gritted teeth. Squeezed shut eyes. Willed myself back to sleep. But the tingling increased.
Feet twitched. A knee jumped. A palsy swallowed my hands, then spat them out again. From head to toe, my skin itched. But scratching didn’t help.
I peeled back the blanket. Thrust myself up. Gathered scabbarded sword and walked deliberately away from Del, danjacs, wagons, aketni. But not away from the stud. I went straight to him, untied hempen hobbles, threw reins onto his neck. I didn’t take time for saddle or pad, just swung up bareback, clamping legs around silk-smooth barrel; hooking bare heels into the hollows behind the border of shoulder and foreleg.
He snorted. Pawed. Stomped twice, raising dust. And then settled, waiting alertly.
“Toward the sun,” I told him, doing nothing to give him guidance.
He turned at once, eastward, and walked away from the wagons. No saddle, stirrups, pad. Just the suede dhoti between us, allowing flesh and muscle to speak in the language of horse and rider.
He walked until I stopped him, speaking a single word. I swung a leg across sloping withers, dropped off, walked four steps away. Unsheathed the discolored jivatma and let the dawn inspect its taint.
A question occurred: Why am I here?
Was washed away in a shudder.
I set the tip into the sand and drew a perfect circle, slicing through the top layer of dust and sand to the lifeblood beneath, glinting with crystallized ice.
Yet another question: What am I doing?
A twitch of shoulders dismissed it.
When the circle was finished, I stepped across it, entered, sat down. Set the sword across my lap, resting blade and hilt on crossed legs. Steel was cool and sweet against the Southron (Southron?) flesh too light in color for many tribes, too dark for a Northernerborn.
Something in between. Something not of either. Something that didn’t fit. Something—someone—different. Shaped by an alien song he didn’t know how to hear.
I placed my palms across the blade. Shut my eyes to shut out the day. Shut out everything save the bone-deep, irritant itch that set muscles and flesh to twitching.
And a third: What is happen—
Unfin
ished.
The inner eye opened. It Saw far too much.
Would he unmake me? I wondered. Or did he need me too much?
The blade grew warm in my palms.
Eyes snapped open. I lurched up, spilling sword, staggered two steps toward the perimeter of the circle, then fell to my knees. Belly writhed as gorge rose. But there was nothing to spew.
I gagged. Coughed. Poured sweat.
Hoolies, what have I—
Limbs abruptly buckled. I sprawled facedown in the sand, laboring to breathe.
Digging fruitlessly with fingers that had shed each blackened nail. And was now replaced with new.
The urge that had brought me here died away into nothingness. The inner eye closed.
I rolled over onto my back, arms and legs awry. Breathed air unclogged with sand. Stared up at the changing sky as stars were swallowed by light. Heard the stud whicker softly, unsettled by the workings of a power he didn’t know, and couldn’t understand.
He hates magic as much as I do.
But he doesn’t know the need seeping out of the darkened places into the light of day, lapping at a soul. He doesn’t know what it can do. He doesn’t know what it is.
He doesn’t know what I know: there is bliss in ignorance.
I stared at the sky and laughed, because laughing is better than crying.
Hoolies, but I’m a fool.
Hoolies, but I’m scared.
Danjacs were hitched to wagons. The aketni sat on the seats. Del waited quietly atop her bay mare. Her face was taut and pale.
I halted, slid off, bent to gather gear and saddled the stud quickly, arranging botas and pouches. Grabbed one squirt of water, then remounted the stud. The language now was muted; saddle and pad interfered.
“Let’s go,” I said briefly.
Mehmet, driving the lead wagon, called out the departure order to the dun-colored danjac hitched to his wagon. Then lifted the stick from his lap and tapped the bristled rump. The danjac moved out, jingling harness brasses and gear. The wagon jolted into motion. Others followed suit.
Del brought her mare in close as I tapped heels to the stud, urging him to move, and planted herself in my way. I swore, reeled in rein, jerked the stud’s head aside before he could bite Del, or go after the mare. “What in hoolies—”
“Where were you?” she asked curtly, cutting through my irritation.
“Out there.” I thought it enough.
“Doing what?”
“Whatever I felt like,” I snapped. “Hoolies, bascha—how many times have you gone off by yourself to sing your little songs?”
It opened the door to doubt. Del frowned faintly. “Is that what you were doing?”
“What I was doing is none of your business.”
“You took that.” “That” was my sword.
“And you take that.” This “that” meant her sword.
More doubt. A deeper frown. A twitch of jaw muscle. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, then turned the mare after the wagons.
I followed. Feeling guilty.
We might have made Quumi in a day and a half. With the wagons, it took two. At sundown on the second day we reached the gray-beige settlement, and Mehmet called me over.
“There is the toll,” he said.
I nodded.
The dark face grew darker. “The others took our coin.”
Yes. So they had. “Do you want me to find them? Get the money back?” I paused, seeing his startled expression. “They’re probably here, Mehmet. Quumi’s the only settlement in these parts where a man can buy food, liquor, women… where else would they go after stealing all your coin?”
Mehmet glanced toward the last wagon, where Del brought up the rear. The hustapha rode inside. Then doubt turned to decision. “No.” He shook his head. “We have no business hiring a sword-dancer to right a wrong done us. It makes us no better.”
“But it’s your money.”
He shrugged. “Let them keep it. There will be other coin, once the city knows we have a sandcaster with us.”
I twitched. Then shrugged it away. “And how do you know they won’t steal your coin again?”
“The hustapha has cast their futures.”
Deep in my belly, something clutched. “He doesn’t…” I let it trail off, intending to dismiss it, but the idea wouldn’t die. “I mean, he can’t, can he? Shape his casting to suit a whim?”
Dark arched brows knitted themselves above a Punja nose. “Do you mean purposely shape a future? For personal pleasure, or retribution?”
“If he thought it was necessary.”
Brows unraveled. Mehmet smiled faintly. “You cast your future in the sands last night. The hustapha cast possibilities.”
“I cast…” I glanced back at the last wagon. “You mean, all of that rigmarole we went through—”
“Ritual. Ritual is required.”
I waved it away. “Yes, yes, the ritual… Mehmet, why is it necessary if I’m responsible? Why all the sacred secrecy?”
“He is holy,” Mehmet said simply. “Holy men are different. The hustapha is a seer. Father of the aketni, which waits for the jhihadi.”
I forbore to consider the jhihadi, even though that more than anything convinced me this was all foolishness. My mind was on the hustapha. “He’s a wizard,” I snapped. “I could smell the stink of it, with or without the wind and a contrived future-casting.”
Mehmet’s dark eyes focused on the sword hilt peeking above my left shoulder. “All men with power are power: the name doesn’t matter.”
Obscure, I thought. And out of character for Mehmet. It made me wonder how much had been divulged in the casting the night before. Del said she’d seen nothing. But that was Del, not the others, who understood better than I what a casting was all about. “Are you trying to say something, Mehmet? Something about me?”
The young man smiled. “A man with a knife has power. A man with a sword has power. A man with knife and sword has more power yet.”
“I’m not talking about knives and swords.”
“Neither was the hustapha.”
I gritted teeth. “That’s not what—” But I broke it off, disgusted. “Oh, hoolies, I’ve had enough.…” I rode on ahead of the caravan to the broken gates of Quumi, and paid the aketni’s toll. Which is all Mehmet had asked in the first place.
It was me who’d wanted more.
It was me who needed more, to learn what I could do to avoid the threefold future.
Because it might be true.
The threefold future: Could be. Might be. Would be.
Up to me to choose.
Twenty-four
Dust from the caravan drifted, working its way toward the street. Del and I sat on horseback at Quumi’s battered gate. Sunset stained gray-beige adobe a sickly, washed out copper, tinged with lavender.
“Why did you come?” she asked.
“Why did I come?” I scowled. “I was under the impression I was helping the aketni. Which was your suggestion.”
My sarcasm had no effect. “You might have stopped once Quumi was in sight. There was no need to come in all the way.”
I arched brows. “Little thing called water.”
Del raised one shoulder in an eloquent, negligent shrug. “You could have asked Mehmet to bring the water out.”
“Could have,” I agreed. “But why? Since we’re this close, we may as well spend the night under a roof again.”
Her gaze was steady. “You said you were concerned about sword-dancers and borjuni. That they could be here by now, to try and catch us both.”
“Could be. Might be—” I bit it off abruptly, suppressing the sudden shiver prompted by unexpectedly familiar words. “Let’s just go, bascha. We can take care of ourselves.”
We made our way to Akbar’s cantina as the sun fell behind the horizon. A crescent moon hung in the sky, urging the stars from hiding. They glittered like Punja crystals on a sandcaster’s raked rectangle.
Feeling twitchy
, surly, grouchy, I took the stud around the back and put him in the stable, in one of the tiny partitioned slots masquerading as a stall. Del wisely put the mare in one at the other end of Akbar’s shabby stable, and pulled off gear and supplies. Bridle brasses clattered. I heard her speaking softly in uplander to the mare.
The language was still strange on my own tongue, but I spoke enough of it to survive, and understood a bit more. Yet it wasn’t the words that spoke, but the tone underlying them. Del was worried about something.
I tended the stud, stripping him of tack and supplies as Del had stripped the mare, gave him fodder and water, walked back up the way to Del. Both of us carried pouches and botas, not risking them to others.
“Hungry?” I asked brightly, in an attempt to lighten the air.
Del shook her head.
“Thirsty, then.”
All I got was a shrug.
“Maybe a bath, in the morning?”
A crooked twist of Northern mouth, indicating nothing.
Patience fled entirely. “Then what do you want?”
In the gloom, blue eyes were pale. “That discharged.”
“That” again. My sword. “Hoolies, bascha—you’re making too much of it. I admit it’s not comfortable, and I’d as soon dump it here as carry it to Julah, but I don’t seem to have much choice.” I walked past her and out of the stable. “Let’s get rid of this stuff. I want food and aqivi.”
Del followed, sighing. “That, at least, is unchanged.”
We divested ourselves of burdens in short order, buying ourselves a bed, and retired to the taproom, already full of patrons. Huva weed drifted in beam-work. Spilled wine made the floor sticky. Rancid candles shed sickly light. The place reeked of young liquor, old food, older whores, and unbathed, sweaty bodies.
The way a cantina should smell.
If you have no nose, that is.
Del muttered something beneath her breath. I indicated a tiny lopsided table in a corner of the room, headed through the human stockyard, hooked a toe around a stool leg and dragged it from under the table.
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