by Holly Lisle
And then she mimicked his gesture to the piper to pick up the pace yet again, and she danced alone at a speed that left Aaran stunned.
Behind her, other girls her age stood, and as the piper brought the tune around again, they followed the steps at that blazing speed as if they’d been doing that dance their whole lives.
“How have they done that?” he asked.
Hawkspar had been watching with him. “Learn simple dance steps?” she asked. “They’re trained from their earliest days in the monastery how to memorize dances. It’s part of the training that determines who will become an Ossalene, and who will remain a slave. They learn quickly because those who learn slowly have already been weeded out—have been sent back down to the slave market, or sold outright to buyers who have approached the monastery for girls acceptable for work. The sorts of work they might be acceptable for, the monastery never questioned too closely.” She sighed. “We all heard stories. We feared that they might be true. I’ve learned since becoming an oracle that we didn’t even hear the worst of the truth. There’s very little in life that is more dangerous than being unneeded.”
“So.” Aaran felt the darkness of her world seeping into his. He didn’t want it. Not right then. He had no doubt that before he dropped her off in Beyltaak, or whichever harbor the clans were sending captives to by the time he got them home, he would have heard all about the grim lives of the Ossalenes. But this was a day of celebration. He said, “I take it, then, that you dance?”
She turned her face toward him. He felt certain she could see him, though he could not guess what she might see. She grinned, though, and said, “I can dance you through the floor.”
“Can you?”
“Faster than you can breathe.”
“Would you care to wager something on that?”
“What could I have to wager,” she asked, still smiling, “that you might fancy?”
“For my part, that you take dinner with me in my quarters, and tell me the whole of your story when the two of us have the privacy that will let you do it justice.”
“And if I win?”
“I’m not sure what I have that you might fancy.”
Her grin spread wider, in the sort of way that made a man wonder at the security of his coin purse, his back, and his testicles. “I do. Though if I win, I’ll tell you privately.”
He felt something itching down his neck. A little twitch there that suggested he might be making a mistake.
But those who had been eavesdropping on the two of them stopped making any pretense of it when the word wager was mentioned. And in the few instants in which they set the terms of their bargain, the whole of the crew common was listening, with every man, woman and child fallen silent.
“I will not wager my ship,” he said.
“Nor would I ask you to. No, my prize will be small and personal, as yours was.”
Mouth dry, palms sweaty, he raised his left hand to swear out the wage.
She raised her left hand as well, and he saw the mark on it—the impossible mark of a clan long lost, but never forgotten—and for a moment he could not think of a single word to say.
And then, behind him, Ves shouted, “Up on deck, to judge the captain’s wager.” He clapped Aaran on the shoulder, laughed, and led a small stampede that took more folks than Aaran would have dreamed up on the deck to watch his silly wager with the woman he didn’t know, but thought he might want to know.
He shed down to boots and breeches. She handed off a whole string of outer garments to that black-clad obsidian-eyed woman who followed her everywhere, ending up at last in a white tunic that fell to her hips, and that was of a material so thin he could see her breastbinder beneath it, and ankle-tied baggy pants. She stood, her feet bare, her uncovered arms hanging loosely at her sides. Watching her taking her things off had been an education in weaponry. She’d had blades hidden under the sleeves of her robe, fastened to each forearm; a long dagger fastened in a neat sheath between her shoulder blades; the two swords; two boot daggers; and a sort of whip-cord-and-ball arrangement that had fallen out of a hidden pocket somewhere in all those folds of shed cloth, which her assistant, or retainer, or whatever title the black-eyed one bore, scooped up and slipped quickly into one of her own pockets.
He thought it probably wouldn’t be the best of ideas to attack an Ossalene.
And then the fiddlers finished rosining up their bows, and Ves, laughing, declared in ringing tones, “Cap’n and the lady before you have set terms of a dance contest. First to dance the other through the floor—and we’ll be the judge of when that happens, won’t we?” This statement was met with such laughter and applause by the sailors and marines that Ves had to stop, and wait, and hold up a hand at last to silence them. “As I said, first to dance the other through the floor will win. Cap’n chose as his prize a dinner in his cabin with the lady.”
Applause, hoots and cheers, ribald remarks.
“The lady, on Ethebet’s hand, has chosen to declare her prize after she has won. In private.”
Whistles, more cheers, and no end of interested looks.
Aaran felt his cheeks heat up, and knew his face had to have gone red as heartberries. He tried to grin around at the audience, and then looked at Hawkspar standing before him. She was young, elegantly made, finely curved, smooth-skinned and high-breasted. She had her head tipped to one side, and on her face, he could see the faintest ghost of a smile.
“You want to be winning then, Cap’n,” one of the marines said. “They’ll have their prize in some mighty frightening ways, women will.”
“Shall you lead first, or shall I?” he asked her.
“You go first,” she said. “I would not have their fun over for them too fast.”
“You’re so confident, then,” he said.
And she lifted her chin, and that smile of hers spread wider.
“‘Marrying Maadryn,’” he called to the fiddlers. And they began to play. The men clapped in time with the music.
The tune he’d chosen started fast, and got faster. He’d thought to be easy on Hawkspar, until he saw that grin on her face. And then he thought, well, perhaps he’d show her a thing or two right away.
He spun and stamped, jumped into the air and clapped, jumped into the air and kicked his legs out to each side, dropped to the ground in a crouch, then kicked high into the air. He watched her, and she was following along behind him, only one measure behind every move he made, as fast and graceful as if this were a dance she’d done all her life. Well, maybe it was. Not the way he and his clansmen did it, though. He got to the fastest part of it, and then added in the bit that he was sure would throw her. He flipped backward, spun with his heels tucked tight, over his head, and kept spinning, unfolding neatly to land on his feet. Exactly one measure later, she executed the same move flawlessly. And he, who had been in one of the simple, circling moves of the dance, realized that he’d just shot the biggest arrow in his quiver, and she’d caught it in one hand and snapped it in half.
He wasn’t sure what she was going to throw at him, but he had an uncomfortable suspicion that he wasn’t going to make as good a showing as she had.
When the fiddlers stopped, the people on deck applauded and cheered, but Hawkspar just stood there, her face turned toward him, her forehead furrowed in thought. The applause, the laughter, and the banter died down to silence as his men grew curious about what she was doing.
She turned abruptly, and pointed to one of Aaran’s marines. “You,” she said, “come stand in front of him.” She then pointed to the black-clad shadow who followed her everywhere. “Redbird,” she said, and Aaran thought, how did that creature ever get a name as cheerful as Redbird? “Take your place in front of me.” And she turned to him. “You cannot watch my steps a moment ahead in time,” she said. “So to give you an opportunity to win, I will do one step of the dance, and you will watch me. You will then do the step. I and mine will watch you. You do not have to exceed what I do to win. If you ge
t through the routine once without striking your man so hard that he goes down, I will consider that you have won. For the first time I did this dance, my partner toppled on the second move, and I was disqualified.”
“Is it actually a dance?” Aaran asked.
“It is. I will do it for you at full speed, and with music, so that you can see how it goes.”
He nodded.
She stood, her slender body backlit by the morning sun, and took one slow, deep breath. Then she said something in that language most of her people spoke, and the stone-eyed women on the deck, and the tall girls, and the shaven-headed children, began to clap, quickly, and in a complicated rhythm. The older ones began to sing.
And Hawkspar began to dance. She lifted up on one bare foot so that she balanced on her toes—he could not imagine the pain of that, but realized he was going to get the chance to discover it firsthand. She kicked with the other foot, high over the head of the much taller Redbird, and spun as she kicked, and leapt as she spun, so that for a moment she was airborne, twisting through nothing, her arms wrapped tightly around her, one to her chest and one at her back, the other leg then soaring over Redbird’s head, and then she landed lightly, and from that move, which he already knew he would fail at, she came down on both feet with her back to Redbird. Her back arched, she flipped over backward onto her hands toward the unflinching Obsidian, and then from her hands, twisted so she would be facing Redbird, and flipped to her feet, which came so close to the other woman’s face before they landed on the deck that Aaran found his heart in his throat. She immediately leapt straight up, her hands landing on Redbird’s shoulders. She vaulted over the other woman, rolled to standing on the other side, spun-kicked the back of Redbird’s head, missing striking her by what could have only been the breadth of a single hair. The clapping got faster, the singing sharper and more urgent. Hawkspar vaulted front to back over Redbird again, this time landing on her feet and spinning, her right leg out, the heel of her right food going so close to the tip of Redbird’s nose that Aaran could not see light between. Around she went, spinning faster and faster, her heel never striking, never showing air either. And then her hands were on the ground, her feet kicking up into the air, striking at the rock-still woman before her, pulling back. She did some dancelike moves with her hands, which Aaran thought pretty until he realized that they were meant to be done with swords in hand. He swallowed hard, realizing with a sword of any length at all, those blades would have been whipping as close to flesh as her feet had been instants before.
And then, abruptly, she stopped. She called a quick command to the singers and clappers, and the abrupt silence held the audience in thrall for a long, stunned moment, before his men broke the hush with wild cheers and thundering applause.
She smiled only a little at the recognition. When the noise died down, she told him, “It’s a better dance when two dance it, and when both are armed with their two swords. And it can be danced much better than I do it. Any of the Obsidians can dance me to ground.”
Aaran exchanged worried looks with the marine Hawkspar had planted in front of him. “I can’t,” he said, turning to her. “So that I don’t kill one of my men uselessly proving that fact, I concede defeat. I would have either broken myself or him on the first move.” He smiled a little, both awed by her athleticism and entranced by the erotic pictures the physical prowess she’d demonstrated painted in his imagination. He bowed to her. “There is no shame in acknowledging the art of one’s betters.”
She laughed. “I like to win,” she said. “I could have picked an easier dance.”
“Why should you have? I picked the most difficult one I knew. I like to win, too.”
“A favor I will ask of you in the future, and that favor you must grant me. I promise you it will be neither bigger nor more risky than my having dinner with you in your quarters would be.”
“As dangerous as that?” he asked her, and smiled. “I don’t know that I should honor the bet, then.”
Some of his men laughed.
Hawkspar smiled. “To seal our bargain, I agree to have dinner with you in your cabin anyway. That way, when I ask my small favor of you, you will recall that I was a generous winner.”
“Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll accept your terms.”
There was more laughter, some ribald remarks aimed at him, and his own men telling her to be sure to take her swords with her when she went to dinner with him, that she would surely need them.
She laughed, and he casually steered the two of them up to the captain’s lookout at the bow of the ship, where they could be alone.
17
Hawkspar
We stood at the front of his ship, on the high deck just behind and beneath the enormous carved wooden horse head. Below us, the celebration continued, with sailors asking Obsidians to teach them to dance, and a great deal of hilarity at the disastrous efforts and failures that resulted.
“I must ask you something,” the captain—Aaran—said. “I know that not all of the women we rescued were born Tonk, but I believe most were.”
“Yes,” I said. “Most of those who have come on this mission are Tonk.”
“Mission?” he said, and then cleared his throat. “Never mind that. For now, I must tell you that I’m looking for someone. I’ve been looking for her for a very long time. My sister—she was taken by slavers when she was young, and I’ve been trying to find her ever since. I have hope that she might be among the women I rescued. Her name is Aashka. She would have been about your age,” he told me. “Perhaps younger.”
I called Redbird to me. She had been waiting nearby; the Obsidians would not leave me unguarded, and Redbird, my friend for so long, was one of my personal guard by both my choice and her insistence. On duty, she was always near.
“Oracle?” she said, approaching.
“He has a sister named Aashka, who was enslaved. He hoped we might have heard of her, or that she might be among our number. She would be about our age. Have the Obsidians check each of ours who is of the right age. See if she is among us, or if her name is known.”
Redbird hurried off to gather the Obsidians, and I turned to him. “I dare not offer much hope. She might be among ours,” I told him. “She might be among the women who stayed behind. I might be her. We would not know her by her name, though. We have never been permitted to use any names but those the Ossalenes gave us. Many of us no longer remember the names we bore as children.”
“You don’t.”
“No. I have no idea what my mother and father called me, or what my brothers and sisters called me. I cannot remember much at all of that time, or that life.” I turned my face away from him and said, “But in any case, I would hope for her sake that she was never found by the Ossalenes. We were not, as a rule, well treated. I would hope her fate was better.”
Aaran said, “Thank you for asking.”
Below us, Redbird and two other Obsidians took up their posts again. I saw other Obsidians hurrying up to them, then walking away.
And finally Redbird broke away from the other two and approached me. “None knows her name, or remembers if the name Aashka might be her name. At the captain’s convenience, those who are of about the right age who do not remember their names will gather, that the captain might see if he recognizes them.”
“You would do this now?” I asked the captain.
He was quiet for a very long time. “Today is for celebrating,” he said at last. “My men have had nothing but hardship this voyage. Your people, too, deserve a day to rejoice. And I … I could use happiness, too. While I can hope that she is among us, I can still view this day with wonder and joy. If I know for certain that she is not, then for a while hope falters again.”
“Hardships and pain are easy to find,” I agreed. “I would not despise a day of happiness.”
My motives were not pure when I said this. I wanted to touch Aaran. It was a foolish thing, but for me he was layers and gaps and lines of bone and shadows o
f muscle, and in places he blended with the ship, and with the water beneath, and with the enormous sea creatures that coiled and glided beneath even the surface of that. I wanted to feel him, to feel the solidness that the Eyes would not let me see. I wanted to draw some picture in my mind of him, something that did not include the roots of his teeth locked into his jaws and the shapes of the sockets that held eyes that were, to me, almost not there at all. He had a face, but I could not see it. So I wanted to feel it.
He had come for me. I had called to someone, anyone, and at last, after so long, this one, this fine strong man, had heard my plea and had come.
I reached out a hand and let it rest on his arm. He was warm, and beneath my fingers his skin was covered with a soft furring of hair. His skin was smooth, the muscles hard beneath the smoothness. Intriguing.
I longed to touch the rest of him. I wanted to explore him, to discover how a man might be different than a woman. I wanted to slake my endless, boundless curiosity on him. He was a mystery, and I yearned to uncover him. If my mind did not know what to do, my body seemed to have already come to an understanding of the possibilities between us. I moved closer too him, close enough to feel the heat that radiated from his skin.
“I’ve thought of you often,” he said, his voice gruff in my ear. “You haunted my dreams. My waking moments.”
“I waited for you for so long. I had begun to think you would never find me. Never find us.”
“The instant I heard your call, I knew that I would be the one to answer it, no matter what price it would take for that to happen.”
His fingers interlaced themselves with mine. Our palms touched, and I felt as if I might stop breathing right there. As he touched me, the whole of the world changed its complexion. I knew darkness lay in my future. I had seen as much. Darkness lay in everyone’s future; that ceased to matter when he held my hand.
