The kilted man glided quietly from the room. I expected Nihko to speak to me now, but he didn't. He simply sat there, head bowed, eyes closed. Praying? Maybe. But I wasn't certain I wanted to know anything about his gods or his priesthood, or the content of his convictions.
I walked. I paced the length of the rectangular room with its arching, airy ceiling and counted my steps. Back again to the other end of the room, where the low doorway led into the entry chamber containing no more than shelves and shoes.
Beneath my bare feet lay stone, cool stone composed of tiny square tiles of similar but subtly different hues. My soles were callused from years of fighting barefoot in the Southron sand, so my flesh wasn't sensitive enough to mark pits and seams and hollows. Merely stone to me: tiles carefully cut, shaped, and laid with precise attention, grouted and fitted together into quiet, soothing patterns. The walls and ceilings, the doors and the floors formed a subtle variety of shape, and shadow, and structure. My body knew this place, knew the appeal of purity, answered seductive symmetry. It knew without knowing; there was no way it could know, any more than my mind could embrace the comforting familiarity of a place I had never been.
I walked. I paced. I stopped only, and at last, when the woman came into the room.
Nihko rose at once. He caught her eye briefly, then instantly fixed his gaze on the patterned floor. I, on the other hand, merely waited. I folded my arms, set a shoulder against the wall, hooked one ankle casually over the other as I leaned, and waited.
Now I could be patient. Now it mattered.
Nihko said a single word. The one I knew. Not precisely what it meant, not the infinite possibilities of semantic subtleties, but I knew as much as I needed to know.
'Metri,' he said.
This, then, was the Stessa metri, the woman who would be so desperately grateful for the return of the long-lost heir that she would grant Nihko Blue-head and his impulsive, slaver-reared female captain the welcome, the status, the wealth both desired.
I looked at the woman. I marked her stature, her posture, the cool and calm smoky gray-green eyes, darker than my own, and I realized what a fool Nihko was, and Prima Rhannet, and even Del, who had told them enough of me to make them plan this plan.
She wore sheer, sleeveless linen that fell to the floor, bleached nearly white. It made her skin seem darker than the warm copper-bronze it was. Around her waist was doubled a bright green sash, and over it a soft-worked leather belt chiming with golden circlets and brilliant blue beads. Larger circlets rang softly against both arms, depended from her ears, encircled her throat. Her hair, swept back from her face and fastened into a thick tail by a series of gold-and-enamel clasps, was darker than mine. There was silver and white in it just as there were threadings of age in her face, her throat, her hands, but nothing about this woman suggested she was old. Not in body, not in bearing, nor in the clarity of expression.
'Metri,' he said again.
She seated herself in the single chair. The kilted man glided silently into the room and set down upon the small table beside her a delicate crockery jar and one cup. He poured, he lifted, he offered; she accepted. And all the while she looked only at Nihko. There was no indication she was aware of me at all.
So much for desperation. So much for a dying, weak old woman badly in need of an heir. I doubted the Stessa metri would allow anything so insignificant as death to defeat her will and purpose.
The woman set down the cup, then flicked a finger in Nihko's direction. He began speaking quietly and steadily, putting little emphasis in his words. I knew nothing of what he said, what lies or truths he told, but his tone did not suggest coercion or contrived charm. Perhaps he was, after all, as aware of her strength as I.
When he was done at last, the woman retrieved the cup and drank again. Still she did not look at me. Her expression was unmoved. I've been in the circle with men less suited to hiding their thoughts. Serenity was not her gift, but she knew how to be quiet. She knew how to still her mind so her judgments were sound-and absolutely unpredictable until she declared them.
Eventually, the woman looked at me. She spoke a single accented word, and this one I knew. 'Undress.'
I blinked. Then bestowed upon her my most charming smile. 'You first.'
Nihko was on his feet instantly. Even as I came off the wall onto the balls of my feet, he struck, spewing anger and invective in a tone thick with shock. It was a blow with the flat of his hand designed to catch me across the face, the way a man strikes a slave, but I moved quickly enough to avoid the power of it. I clamped one hand around his wrist and held it.
Before I could do anything more than stop him, before I could even phrase a response, the woman rose from her chair. In three long strides she reached Nihko, and her blow, unexpected and powerful, rocked him on his feet. Shocked, he staggered back, one hand to his face. I released his wrist, wondering warily if I might be her next target.
But I was not. It was Nihko.
With timed, meticulous blows, using the flat of her rigid hand, she drove him to the ground. He knelt there, shoulders rounded in submission, tattooed head bowed before her as she spoke with quiet, vicious emphasis. When she stopped speaking, stopped striking him, when he raised his head at last, I saw the blood. The tears.
The palm of her hand was reddened from the blows. She turned to me again, and again said, 'Undress.'
I stared back at her, matching determination, then grinned slowly. 'Hoolies, woman, all you had to do was ask. '
She waited.
I untied the sash, dropped it; stripped off the tunic, dropped it; undid the drawstring and let the baggy trousers fall. I stepped out of them, kicked them aside, offered a cheery smile. 'I detest red anyway.'
From a distance of two paces, she studied me. I've been examined before: by slavers, by sword-dancers, by enemies, by sorcerers, even by friends. Certainly by women. But her perusal of my nudity was uncannily different. There was no sense of ownership or impending purchase; no sexual hunger, no arousal, no predatory promise; no assessment to weigh my worth as a man or a sword-dancer hired to do a task. She simply looked, so intent as to be unaware of surroundings, the way an artist might study the line of bone and shadow, the play of light on flesh, the fit and function of form. To see how the body was made, how it worked, in order to recreate it-or to recognize it.
I expected her to gesture me to turn, or to demand it with a curt command. She did neither. She walked beyond me with smooth, measured strides and stood at my back.
Nihko remained on the floor. He was watching her, not me, making no effort to wipe the blood from his split lip, to erase the drying tears. He knelt there, knees doubled up beneath him, green eyes transfixed by the woman's actions.
'Getting an eyeful?' I asked lightly.
She caught a handful of hair and lifted it briefly from the back of my neck. Then let it fall as she moved from behind me. She returned to the chair and seated herself quietly. 'What have you been,' she asked in a cool, accented voice, 'to deserve such punishment?'
'What have I been?' I hitched a shoulder, wondering what Nihko had told her. What he expected me to tell her. What she expected me to tell her.
I gave her the truth. Briefly, explicitly, without embellishment. Naming off the names of the tasks I had done, the dances I had won, the enemies defeated. All the truths of my past, despite the ugliness, the brutality that had driven a terrified boychild into tenacious manhood.
Her voice was uninflected. 'How many years have you?'
I shook my head. 'No idea.' Still the truth.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. 'Guess.'
I laughed then, genuinely amused. 'Better to throw the oracle bones. The odds are better.'
She flicked a glance at Nihko, then returned it to me. 'Has he told you, this man, this renegada, this ikepra, what you would gain if I accepted you?'
'Yes,' I answered bluntly. 'My freedom, and the freedom of the woman who travels with me.'
'No more than that?'
'That's enough.'
