One boy pointed immediately: to the right. Three other faces fell. I flipped the boy the copper with a quick word of thanks and went after the big foreigner Del thought looked like me.
I felt—odd. I had spent most of my life despairing of ever knowing anything about myself except for what I had won in the circle, or stolen from the dreams I’d dreamed as a child, chula to the Salset. But two or three weeks before there had been a chance, a slight chance, that I could learn the truth. That chance had died with Sula, who said she didn’t know. I had castigated myself for even hoping, charging myself with the task of setting such hopes aside.
But hopes die hard, even in adulthood.
Now there was another chance. It was almost non-existent, but worth a question or two. Julah was the first domain and city of any size beyond the Southron Mountains if you came up from the ocean-sea; it was not impossible that the stranger who looked like me could be from a neighboring land, coming inland from the seaport city, Haziz.
Yet I wondered. There were enough Borderers, mostly halfbloods, who resembled me. Cross big-boned, fair-haired Northerners with smaller, darker Southroners, and people like me result.
Still.
“Stupid,” I muttered, making my way through the throng. “You’ll never find him in the city, and even if you do, chances are he can’t tell you anything. Just because he mistook you for someone else…”
Hope flared, then died, tempered by caution and contempt.
“Stupid,” I repeated. And stumbled into a one-eyed man standing guard over a basket of melons.
I apologized for my clumsiness, patted him once on the arm, then turned to continue my search. And realized, as I turned, my limbs felt sluggish and cold.
I stopped. Sweated. Shivered. Blinked as vision blurred.
Chosa?
No. He didn’t work this way. Chosa was not so subtle. Besides, I’d grown accustomed to anticipating his attempts to exert more power. This was not one of them.
Then what—?
Hoolies, the aqivi—which both of us had drunk.
I swore, swung around, staggered three steps and fell to one knee as numb legs failed. Pulled myself up and staggered again, tripping over a cat as it ran between a dozing danjac’s legs. The danjac woke up as I fell against its ribs, grabbing handfuls of scraggly mane to hold myself upright.
A female. She shifted, turned her head, spat a glob of pungent cud. It landed on my thigh, but by then I didn’t care. By then I wanted my sword, Chosa Dei or no.
I slapped weakly at the danjac’s mouth as she bared teeth in my direction, trying to unsheath the jivatma with a hand nearly dead on the end of my arm. I staggered as the danjac turned her hip out from under me, but caught my balance spread-legged as the sword at last came free.
“Bascha—” I mumbled. “Hoolies, Del—it’s a trap—”
Eyes. They stared, shocked and fearful and wary: a man in obvious straits swayed off-balance in the street, holding a black-charred blade with perilous control. I didn’t really blame them. Sword-dancer or no, at the moment I was a danger to anyone who came near. Even if I didn’t mean it.
“—bascha—” But even my mouth was numb.
Vision wheeled. The street fell out from under me; hip and elbow dug dirt. I managed, as I landed, to thrust the sword to arm’s length, so I wouldn’t cut myself.
Up. Blade chimed dully as I dragged it along the ground, thrusting myself to unsteady knees. Everyone hugged the walls, or went in and shut their doors.
Except for the men with swords, all swathed in dark burnouses rippling as they walked out of shadows into sunlight.
So. Now I would know.
To my knowledge, I have never employed a sword in any method save the one for which it was intended. But now I did. I dug the tip into the ground, leaned my weight upon it, levered myself to my feet.
The men stopped approaching.
I smiled. Laughed a little. Heaved the sword upright into position and balanced very delicately with feet spread too far apart. If someone spat, I’d fall down. But a reputation comes in handy.
That, and Samiel.
The danjac was still beside me, whuffling discontent. Then a dark-clad, quick-moving body slipped beneath the belly, came up from under it with a knife; smoothly and efficiently sliced into the softer flesh of the underside of my forearm.
I dropped the sword, of course. Which was exactly what he intended.
And then he dropped me with a hook of agile ankle around one of my wobbly ones.
I landed painfully, flat on my back, banging a lolling head against hard-packed dirt. I bit my lip, swallowed blood; felt more flowing out of my arm.
But only for a moment. Everything went numb.
He gestured to the others. They came, putting away their swords. One man moved closer, then leaned forward to inspect me. I saw, through fading vision, the notched Southron nose. Heard, in thundering ears, the familiar broken voice.
“Why is it,” Abbu began, “that every time I see you, you’re wallowing in the dirt?”
Weakly, I spat blood. “So much for your oaths.”
Dark brows rose. “But I have honored my oath. With Sabra as my witness.”
Sabra. I looked. No woman. Only men, in Southron silks and turbans.
And then I saw her. The small, quick body which had slid beneath a danjac to cut the sword from me. The one I’d thought was a man.
She stripped the sandshield from the lower half of her face, letting the cloth hang free to dangle from the turban. I saw the small, dark face, infinitely Southron; the black, expressive eyes, infinitely elated; the dusky flush of her cheeks and the parted curve of a lovely mouth. Infinitely aroused.
Sabra knelt. She was tiny, slender, sloe-eyed: an exquisite Southron beauty. Mutely she reached for my wounded arm, closing fingers around the flesh. Blood still flowed freely, staining her palm. She let go of my arm, stared intently at her bloodied hand, then looked into my eyes.
Her voice was very soft. “I gave the woman to Umir.”
I twitched once. It was all I could manage. “Hoolies take you,” I croaked, “and your broken-nosed bed-partner, too.”
The bloodied hand flashed out and caught me full across the face, leaving sticky residue. Vision winked.
Went out.
—a fissure in the ground… a cracked opening that splits the ground apart, all blackened and curled awry like a mouth opened to scream. Inside, something glitters, ablaze like Punja crystals, only it isn’t Punja crystals, but something else instead. Something white and bright and cold—
Deep inside me, Chosa rustled.
The mountains are familiar, tumbled ruins of sorcerous warfare; brother pitched against brother in a waste of strength and power. Shaka Obre means to protect, but Chosa Dei is determined to destroy whatever he can.
The warfare escalates until even the land protests, rising up to defy them both. Flesh falls away, but it isn’t flesh of man; the flesh is the flesh of the land. Grasslands peel away, leaving bare rock and wasted earth.
Inside me, Chosa laughed.
“I can unmake it all, merely to make it again—”
The mountains tremble, and fall, forming new chains of peaks and hillocks.
Chosa raises his arms. The words he chants are strange, unknown even to Shaka. Meadows become a desert. A necklace of freshwater lakes becomes an ocean of sand.
Shaka Obre screams, to see his creation destroyed.
His brother merely laughs. “I TOLD you I could do it!”
“Then I’ll hurt YOU!” Shaka shouts.
Deep inside the mountains, the last bastion of Shaka’s making is warded against permanent summer, and the unyielding eye of the sun.
“I’ll show YOU!” Shaka mutters.
But by then it is too late. Chosa has made a prison.
“Begone!” Chosa shouts, and points imperatively to the nearest hunch-shouldered mountain.
A rent appears in it: gaping mouth curls awry. Deep inside, it glitters
.
“Go there,” Chosa commands. “Go there and live your life without sun or sand or stars.”
“Go THERE!” Shaka points: north, away from himself. A thin ruby haze issues from his fingers and encapsulates Chosa Dei. “There!” Shaka repeats. “Inside his own new-made mountain—”
And Shaka Obre is gone, sucked through the gaping mouth into the fastness inside the mountain, a necklet of pockets and hollows riddling the new-made mountain.
“You see?” Chosa says. “You don’t have the proper magic.”
And then he also is gone, escorted by brilliant wards to the far fastness of the new north, so different from the south.
That once was a single land, lush and green and fertile.
I twitched, then slackened again. Saw the patterns and whorls and grids, and the hustapha’s gnarled hand slapping flat against spit-dampened sand.
Inside me, Chosa stirred.
Lines drawn in the sand—
The hand thrust itself into my groin and closed. I bucked, tried to shout; realized I was gagged. Realized I was stretched spine-down on a splintery wooden bench in a small, slant-shadowed room that boasted a single slot of a window, with arms and legs pulled taut to the floor, chained to rings. All I wore was a dhoti; little shield against Sabra’s hand. I twisted away as best I could even as she laughed.
“Do you want to keep them?” she asked. And squeezed a little harder. “What should I do with you, to repay you for his death?”
I could make no answer through the gag. It was leather, once dampened, now dried into painful stiffness. There was more in my mouth: a hard, smooth roundness that threatened to make me retch.
Sabra let go. Black eyes were pitiless. “I could do much worse.”
Undoubtedly she could. Undoubtedly she would.
Del. With Umir.
Sabra laughed as I tensed. Iron rattled dully, sweeping me back to Aladar’s mine. Sweat bathed my face. This was Aladar’s daughter.
“I had a brother,” she said lightly. “He would have inherited. But when he was nine—and I was ten—I had him murdered. It was done with perfect skill, and no one ever knew. But none of the harem girls ever bore a boy again… or else they gave them away, so no more accidents would occur.”
She had put off the black burnous and turban and wore a long-sleeved, calf-length white linen tunic instead, draped over baggy carnelian trousers. Tiny feet were leather-shod; the toes were tipped in gold. Sleek black hair hung unbound to her knees, rippling as she moved. On the bench, I tensed.
She was dusky Southron perfection, exquisite elegance. No wasted motion. No wasted thought. A lock of hair brushed my ribs, then slid downward toward abdomen. I nearly choked on the gag.
“He expected to live longer,” she said. “He expected to have other sons. But all he had were girls, and I the oldest of all. The others were unworthy.”
A small hand touched the fissure Del’s sword had left in my ribs. Paused. Traced the scar, much as Del herself had so many times before. But the gesture now was obscene. I wanted to spit at her.
Reflectively, Sabra said, “You must be hard to kill.”
I swallowed convulsively. Then wished I hadn’t, as the gag tickled my throat.
Wished I had my sword.
My—sword?
Sabra’s hand lingered, still tracing the scar. Then drifted to the others, including the ones on my face. “Very hard to kill.”
What had happened to Samiel? I recalled with clarity what had become of Umir’s men when they had tried to touch him before. Had Sabra left the jivatma lying in the street?
“I hated him,” she said. “I was glad you killed him. But I can’t tell anyone that. There are appearances… I should thank you, but I can’t. It would be a weakness. I dare not afford a weakness. I am a woman tanzeer—the men would pull me down. They would rape me to death.” The hand moved away from my face to my ribs once more, finger-walked each one, then crawled to the edge of my dhoti. Nails stirred coppery hair, slipping beneath the leather. “Would you rape me, Sandtiger?”
Is that what Abbu did?
Small teeth were displayed oh so briefly. “Should I castrate you, so you can’t?”
Hoolies, the woman was sandsick.
Fingers found the thong drawstring. “He bought you for me, you know. That silly Esnat of Sasqaat. He wanted to impress me, so I would consider his suit. So I would marry him.” Quietly, Sabra laughed. “As if I would marry a man when I have a domain of my own.”
The memory awoke. Esnat of Sasqaat, Hashi’s heir, hiring me to dance so he could impress a woman. He’d told me her name: Sabra. But I hadn’t known her, then. I’d known nothing at all about her.
Esnat, you don’t want her. The woman would eat you alive.
Sabra undid the thong, loosened it. Yanked the dhoti aside, unheeding of my flinch. “It would interest Abbu,” she said thoughtfully, “to see how you compare.”
Hoolies, she was sandsick!
Sabra laughed softly. “In the circle, you fool; is this all you think about? Like every other man?” She flipped the dhoti back over my loins contemptuously. “Men are predictable. Umir. Abbu. You. Even my own father. They think with this, instead of with their heads. It is so easy to make a man do whatever I want him to do… when one doesn’t care about these—” she touched genitals once more “—or these—” now she caressed her own breasts “—it’s so easy to get what you want. Because you have no stake in the flesh.” Black eyes shone brightly. “Sleeping with a man is such a small matter. But it binds him more certainly than anything else could—and then he does what I tell him.”
I wondered about Abbu.
Sabra thrust fingers into her hair and scooped it back from her face, unconsciously seductive for a woman who didn’t care what a man’s response might be. Or maybe she knew, and did care; the woman was unpredictable, even as she claimed men otherwise.
She let the hair fall, sheeting down her back. “I don’t care about the jhihadi,” she continued calmly. “He meant nothing to me, nor his Oracle. But it was useful, that death. And the Oracle’s. It inflamed all the tribes and made you easier prey.” She smiled, stroking her bottom lip with a long fingernail. “Once my people killed the Oracle, they whispered it came of you and the woman, using blackest sorcery. So the Oracle couldn’t unmask you; you destroyed him to keep him from it. So now you are hated for that, too.” Sabra laughed throatily. “Clever, am I not? It made them all angrier. It made it all very easy.”
The Oracle. Dead. Del’s brother. Dead again?
“Jhihadi-killer,” she said. “Murderer of my father.”
I had killed neither man. But now it didn’t matter.
Sabra shrugged. Silken hair rippled. “Eventually, I would have had him assassinated so I could have the domain. You saved me some trouble. If I could reward you, I would. But there are appearances.” She tossed a curtain of hair behind a slender shoulder. “Rest the night, Sandtiger. In the morning you will dance.”
Sweat trickled from temples.
She moved close again, dragging fingernails across my bare chest. Beneath it, flesh rippled. It wasn’t from desire, but increasing trepidation. The woman unsettled me. “Abbu wants you,” she told me. “He said he always has. When I asked him what he wanted as payment for his assistance, he said he wanted the dance. The final dance, he said. The true and binding test of the shodo’s training.”
A tiny spark lighted. Abbu and I were rivals, but never enemies.
“I agreed,” Sabra said. “But there must be provisions.”
The newborn spark went out.
Aladar’s daughter left.
Thirty-eight
Near dawn, men came. One of them was Abbu Bensir, who had put off his sword. He waited silently just inside the door as the others unlocked the manacles, took away the gag, bound up the crusted knife slice in my right arm, left me food and drink.
They departed, closing the door. Abbu remained behind, leaning against the wall. He wore a bronze-brown
burnous, a weave of heavyweight silk and linen that shone oddly metallic, even in poor illumination. It was far better than his usual garb, which was generally understated; I knew it had to be Sabra.
Light from the narrow slot of a window slanted across the room. He shifted out of its path so he wouldn’t have to squint. “For the dance,” he said, nodding toward the food.
I sat on the splintery bench, retying the dhoti thong, and didn’t say a word.
“She has your sword, too. I told her what it was… she wanted it, of course. So she had Umir bring Del. The bascha didn’t like it much, but she sheathed it for us. She said something about it was better for us to have it than some innocent child in the street.”
I made no answer.
The husky voice was calm. “You know it has to be settled, one way or another.”
I flexed the forearm, tightening and relaxing a fist to test flesh and muscle. The wound stung, as expected, but the bleeding had stopped, and the binding would protect it. It wouldn’t interfere.
“It’s how legends are made, Sandtiger. You know that. To all the young sword-dancers, it’s what you are.”
I lifted my head finally and looked at him directly. My voice croaked from disuse; my mouth hurt from the gag. “Does it matter so much to you?”
Abbu’s shoulders moved in a shrug beneath the burnous. “What is there, save the legend? It’s what people buy when they hire a sword-dancer. The man, the skill, the legend.”
“You could have asked,” I told him. “We could have had our own private dance, just the two of us, and settled it once and for all. No need for all of this.”
He smiled, creasing a Southron face nearly ten years older than my own. Light glinted briefly on threads of silver in dark hair. Older, harder, wiser. Legend in the flesh, much more so than I. “What benefit in asking, Sandtiger? I meant to once, and found you beset by what Del claimed was Chosa Dei. Could I ask then?” He made a dismissive gesture. “And when you were recovered, you had no time for a true dance, according to the codes. There was Sabra, and all the others, hunting the murderer. And I knew you would never stop, never enter a circle against me, unless I forced your hand.”
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