Sword Breaker-Sword Dancer 4 (44 page)

Frowning, I nodded. "That's something, I guess. But--why are you here?"

"The old hustapha is dead."

Which baffled me even more. "I--uh--I'm sorry. I mean--" I gestured helplessness. "He was a nice old man... I'm sorry."

"He was old, and his time was done." Mehmet climbed up the slope that lipped over onto the flat. "I have left the aketni below."

"You brought them here, too?"

"The hustapha said I must. It's here it all begins."

"What begins?"

He grinned. "You are to give me a message."

I touched my breastbone. "Me?"

Mehmet nodded. "The hustapha said: the jhihadi."

"But--" I stopped. Glanced upslope at Del, who continued picking feathers as if there was nothing else as important. Frowning, I looked back at Mehmet. "I have no message for you."

He was perfectly serene. "The hustapha cast the sand. He saw it would be this way. He sent us here to find you, so you could give us the message."

"I don't have a message--ah, hoolies, horse--do you have to do that here?"

The stud spread back legs and began to water the dirt. I moved quickly, avoiding the deluge; found myself stepping this way and that as he splattered. We stood on the lip of the slope--Mehmet, the stud, and I--and water runs downhill ... so do other things.

"How much do you have?" I asked crossly, as the stud continued to flow.

"The message," Mehmet mentioned.

"I told you. I don't have any--" I stared at the urine as it ran down the slope. I watched the flow split, diminish; watched it channeled by dip and pocket; saw it diverted by bits of smokerock too big to dislodge on its own.

Patterns in the dirt. Channels and runnels and funnels. Lines filled, and overflowing; diverted in other directions.

"Water," I said blankly.

Mehmet waited politely.

"Water," I repeated. Then looked around intently, found the proper twig, bent down to draw in the dirt.

"Tiger." Del, from upslope. "What are you doing?"

I heard her come down, scraping dirt and pebbles as she moved. But I didn't give her an answer, too busy with the task. Consumed by the pattern.

She stopped next to me. Didn't say a word.

Eventually I looked up. Saw two pairs of eyes staring: one pair blue, one black.

I laughed up at them both. "Don't you understand?"

In unison: "No."

"Because you're both blind. We've all been blind," I stood up, tossing the twig aside.

"Look at that. Look at that. What do you see?"

"Piss in dirt," Del said.

"I said you were blind. What else?"

"Lines."

"And piss in the lines. Don't you see?" I stared at them both intently. "All you have to do is put water in the lines. Only make the lines big. Make the lines deep. Put pullies at the cisterns. Dig channels in the dirt. There's water in the North--just bring it down from there!"

Del was astonished. "Bring water from the North?"

"Bit by bit. Divert the rivers, the streams... build patterns to bring it here." I grinned, shrugging scraped shoulders. "And turn the sand to grass."

Mehmet fell to his knees. He spat into his hand, slapped it flat against the ground, then striped a line across his brow. "Jhihadi," he croaked.

I shrugged. "It's all a matter of viewpoint."

Del looked at me. Then she looked at the stud. Then picked another feather from her hair--this one was red--and blew it into the air. "I think you're sandsick," she said.

"Jhihadi," Mehmet repeated.

I grinned hugely at Del. "That wasn't so hard, after all."

She arched a skeptical brow. "If you are so wise, O Jhihadi, tell us what we should do now?"

My grin died away. "We'll have to think of something."

Mehmet scrambled up. "Come with us!" he cried. "Come with the aketni. If we are to go North, to bring the water down--"

I put up a silencing hand. "Wait. First of all, it won't be that easy. You can't do it by yourselves. You'll need people. Lots of people. You'll need to dig more cisterns, find more water... build ditches to channel the water... but you'll mostly need to convince the tribes, tanzeers, and everyone else that this is the way to do it."

Mehmet nodded. "It begins with a single person. It has begun with the jhihadi. There will be more who believe."

Del was dubious. "It would take a very long time."

"We have time. And now we have a future." Mehmet touched his heart. "May the sun shine on your head."

"Second," I said, "we can't come with you. Del and I have a little--problem. We have to leave the South."

"Leave?" Del echoed.

I kept talking to Mehmet. "So we can't go with you."

Del wasn't finished. "Where are we going, then? We can't go to the North. Where are we supposed to go?"

I kept talking to Mehmet. "So you'll just have to take your aketni and do the best you can. Talk to some people. Go to other tribes. Tell them what I told you." I paused.

"What the jhihadi said."

"Tiger--" Rather more insistently, "--where in hoolies do we go?"

I clapped Mehmet on the arm. "He wasn't such a bad old man. I'm glad I got to know him." I turned to the stud, untied him. "Give greeting to the aketni."

"Tiger!"

I climbed aboard the stud. "Are you coming? Have a stirrup."

Del stared up at me from the ground, hands on hips. "When you tell me where we're going."

"Right now, over-mountain. South to the ocean-sea. There's a city called Haziz." I reached down to catch a hand. "Come on up, bascha. We're burning daylight, here."

Forty-seven

In my line of work, I've seen all kinds of women. Some beautiful. Some ugly. Some just plain in between. But when she walked into the hot, dusty cantina and slipped the hood of her white burnous, I knew nothing I'd ever seen could touch her.

Everyone else in the common room stopped talking. Stopped moving. They all just stared.

The vision in the white burnous looked across the room directly at me with eyes as blue as Northern lakes. This time, I knew what a Northern lake was.

I stretched legs. Grinned. Sighed in appreciation as she crossed the cantina to my table.

"I sold the mare," she said. "I have booked passage on a ship. And laid in provisions."

She looked at the plump botas piled on the table. "I will let you bring the aqivi."

"I'd planned on it." I stood up, hooked thongs over shoulders, motioned for her to precede me out of the cantina. "Where are we going?"

"To the ship."

"No--I mean, where are we sailing?"

"Oh." Del made her way through the throng of fisherfolk. "You said you didn't care."

"I don't care ... I was just curious."

"The only ship sailing tomorrow is one bound for a place called Skandi."

"Where?"

"Skandi."

"Never heard of it."

"Neither have I."

I bumped shoulders with a man, apologized, moved around a crippled woman. "Skandi?

"

"Yes."

"The word sounds familiar." I took two long steps, caught up and fell in next to her.

"Isn't that what the man called me in Julah? The one you said looked like me?"

"He said Skandic. He asked if you were Skandie." Del stopped and looked at me. "We thought he meant a person ... do you suppose he meant a place? That he thought you were from his homeland?"

I stared back at her a long moment, examining possibilities. There were too many to consider, so I gave up. Shrugged. "Oh, well. I guess we'll find out, if it's where we're going anyway." I peered over her shoulder to the docks and the mass of sail. "Is that our ship?"

She looked. "No. The one next to it."

I scowled, chewing a lip. I wasn't sure about any of this.

"Come on," she said. "It will be all right."

At sundown, we stood side by side on the dock, contemplating our future as it floated in black water. Del's voice was muted. "Are we doing the right thing?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Seems like we don't have much choice."

She sighed. "I suppose not."

I summoned false gaiety. "Besides, think of all the places we'll see. People we'll meet.

Adventures we'll have."

She looked sidelong at me. "It's the last one you're interested in."

I put a hand on my heart. "That hurts my feelings," I told her. "You just assume things about me without giving me the benefit of doubt."

Del snickered. "I know better."

Having gotten that far out of nerves, we fell into uneasy silence. The ship was tied up at the dock, creaking and rocking and rubbing. A tongue of wood connected it to the dock, waiting for dawn; for Del and me to climb it to the ship.

I scratched idly at my cheek, rubbing a blackened thumbnail against claw marks. "Look at it this way--it'll be a chance to start over."

"You won't like it," she declared.

I arched an imperious brow. "How do you know?"

"I know. You've been 'the Sandtiger' for too long--how will you deal with anonymity?"

"Ano-what?"

Del smiled. "No one knowing who you are."

"Oh, hoolies, who cares about that? I've been a panjandrum and a jhihadi. Neither one got me much, except to make me a target." And now a borjuni, but I didn't say that.

Del looked into my face, then gripped my elbow a moment. "I'm sorry, Tiger. I wish it might have been different."

I shrugged dismissively. "The aqivi's been spilled... and anyway, it was my choice. No one stuck a knife in my back and told me to break the circle. I did it on my own. And no one can deny it didn't do the trick."

She looked away. "No."

"And besides--" I broke it off.

She waited. Then, gently, "What?"

"This isn't--home. Not anymore. It's not the same, the South ..." Something occurred.

"Or maybe it is, and I can't live with it anymore. I just know that when we came down from the North, before Iskandar, I felt good. I was home. And then Iskandar happened, and the old hustapha and his sandcasting, and then Abbu and Sabra and everything else.

..." I sighed. "I'm no messiah. I just had an idea. Maybe it'll work, and maybe it won't, this channeling of the water--but that's all it is. An idea. Anyone could have had it. It just happened to be me." I shrugged. "And now it's over. The jhihadi isn't anything special, or holy... just a beat-up, battered sword-dancer who no longer can enter a true circle--" I cut it off abruptly, staring at the creaking ship for a long, intense moment. Until the topic was bearable. "Besides, you lost more," I told her finally. "You lost Jamail again."

Her jaw tautened. "Yes."

"And also a jivatma."

She ducked it. "So did you."

I shook my head. "You know that sword never meant as much to me as yours did to you. You know that, bascha."

She gazed blindly at the ship. Didn't say a word. Just turned and walked away.

I let her go without protest, because sometimes it's for the best.

In the darkness, in the silence, I heard the indrawn breath. It caught itself, soft and fleeting: a self-stifled, private moment. She'd turned as I lay sleeping, so we touched at rumps and shoulders.

I twisted, turned over. Snaked an arm beneath her loose one and scooped her against my chest, hugging powerfully.

"It's stupid," she whispered.

"No."

"It's only a sword."

"That's not what you're crying about."

She gulped a choked laugh. "What, then? I sang my song for Jamail; that part is done.

That part I understand. I've given him his passing." She swallowed noisily. "Why do I cry for the sword?"

"I told you: you aren't. Not for Boreal. You're crying for Delilah ... for the loss of what you knew." I shifted a trifle closer, stroking a lock of hair from her face. "All your oaths are complete. Your vows are executed. Your songs have all been sung."

"I don't understand."

"You're crying for Delilah, because you don't know who she is."

In poignant vulnerability, she hitched a single shoulder. "I'm just--me."

"You don't know what that is. Trust me, bascha--I've felt that way myself."

"But..." She thought about it. "Who am I, then?"

I spoke gently into her ear. "An honorable woman."

Half-sob, half-laugh. "What is that worth in the place we're going?"

"I don't know. Something. We'll let them decide a price."

"Them," she murmured reflectively. Then, very softly, "It's all I've been for seven years of my life. A vengeful, obsessed woman, bent on killing men. Now all those men are dead. All the blood is spilled. What honor is there in that?"

"The honor is in the oaths, and your commitment to them."

Del twisted abruptly, turning to face me. I could see the shine of her eyes. "What about you?"

I shrugged easily. "It never meant the same to me. That sword--or the honor."

"Don't lie." Vehemently. "I know you better than that."

I smiled. "Maybe. But if honor meant as much to me as it does to you, I'd never have broken my oaths."

"And you'd be dead."

I grinned into her face, all of inches from my own. "You're that certain Abbu would have won?"

She didn't answer at first. Then, "That's not fair."

"Of course it's fair. If you really think he'd have won, you can tell me."

Silence. Then, "No, I can't."

"Do you think he'd have won?"

"See?"

"Do you?"

Del laughed. "We'll never know, will we?"

"That's not fair."

"Life often isn't." She lay quietly a long moment. "She was everything I was. My blooding-blade. Everything. She was my talisman, my surety ... as long as I had Boreal, I could be anyone. I could survive the worst."

"You'll survive the worst now, no matter what happens."

Del sighed. "I don't know."

I poked her in the breastbone. "You sound just like a woman."

She stiffened. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to get a rise."

She relaxed. The teasing had done its job. "We'll need to buy swords."

"Tomorrow. When we get a chance, we'll have new ones made. Properly made; none of this Northern fol-de-rol that sucks souls out of people into steel. I want an old-fashioned sword, like Singlestroke was."