'So you say.'
'So I mean.'
She nodded. 'Then go. This ikepra cannot prevent you. I give you your freedom. Go.'
I shook my head. 'Can't do that.'
'Because of the woman?'
'Yes.'
'There are other women.'
I laughed softly. 'There is no other woman like this one,' I said simply, 'any more than there is anyone else like you.'
She studied me again. 'Well,' she said finally, with exquisite matter-of-factness, 'of course that alters everything.' A hand flicked in Nihko's direction. 'Rise.'
He rose.
'Do you know why I beat him?' she asked me.
I shrugged. 'You don't like him?'
A spark of amusement leaped briefly in her eyes, was extinguished. 'He insulted my house.'
'I assumed something of the sort.'
'He insulted you.'
'Me?' I blinked. 'Why in hoolies would anything he said of a foreigner matter to you?' Enough that she would strike him blow after blow with her own hand.
'Do you know what he is?'
I thought of any number of explicitly vulgar things I could say Nihko was, but restrained the impulse. She probably knew anyway, judging by her contempt. 'Not as you mean it, no.'
'Ikepra.'
I shook my head. 'You've said that before. I don't speak or understand the language. I have no idea what you're talking about.'
'Profanation,' Nihko said, hushed but not hesitant.
Startled, I looked at him. His eyes glittered, but the tears were gone. He was-ashamed. In that moment, before this woman, he detested himself.
'Well,' I said, 'there are a lot of things I could call you, but that's not one of them.' I paused. 'Why? Who are you? What did you do?' Another pause. 'Besides sailing away with a slaver's daughter to rob and capture harmless Southroners like me, that is.'
'Harmless?' Nihko's smile was ghastly. 'A blind man sees neither power, promise, nor danger.'
'And this blind man isn't hearing much either,' I retorted. 'Fine. You brought me here, told this woman I'm her long-lost heir. We're done. You can turn Del loose now, and we'll get on about our business.'
'Nihkolara will not do so,' the woman said, 'until he has been rewarded. That is why he came.'
'Not for me,' he said sharply. A wave of color suffused his face, then faded; had he insulted the house again? 'I serve Prima Rhannet.'
'Oh, yes.' Smoky eyes glittered coldly. 'You would have me receive her. Here.'
'She would have it. Yes.'
'Is there a problem with that?' I asked cautiously, wondering what in hoolies I'd do if this woman refused to cooperate and Prima Rhannet decided to keep Del.
The metri was displeased. 'That would seal her acceptable to the Eleven Families.'
'That doesn't mean you have to like her, does it?'
She ignored me and spoke to Nihko, whom she'd called Nihkolara. He had never named himself in any of the words he'd said to her, or to the kilted servant. But she knew who he was. 'There must be proofs.'
'Name them, metri.'
I frowned. The balance of control had shifted. He was ikepra, whatever that meant, self-proclaimed profanation, but the tension in the room was all hers now. He knew what he was, knew his place, and for the moment he ruled it.
She shook her head. 'He is scarred all over. Had the keraka ever existed, it is banished now.'
The-what?
'There are things from within the body,' the first mate offered, 'far more convincing than marks upon the flesh.'
She shook her head again. Gold chimed faintly. 'There are others in this world who appear to be Skandic, even those with real or falsified keraka. And many of them have been presented to me as you have presented him. Pretenders, all of them.' She smiled. 'I am old. I am dying. I need an heir of the house. Were I a malleable woman, I would have ten times ten the number of men standing in this room, this moment, vowing with utter conviction that they are my one true heir.'
'Look,' I said, exasperated, 'I don't even care if I'm Skandic, let alone your long-lost heir. I mean, yes, I suspect I am Skandic-it's why we set out in the first place, to see-but I'm not vowing to be your heir or anything else supposedly special. I don't care about your wealth, your influence, your legacy, whatever it is that all these other men want, what Prima Rhannet wants. I just want my freedom.' I looked at Nihko pointedly. 'And Del's.'
She remained unconvinced. 'A clever man will deny a birthright in order to win it.'
'A clever woman, an old, dying, desperate woman'-I made it an irony between us-'would discern the attempt and discount it.'
'Metri,' Nihko said, and then added more in Skandic.
When he was done, her face was taut and pale. She looked at me, hard, and was old abruptly, older than her age.
'What did you say?' I asked sharply. 'What did you tell her?'
'About sickness,' he said. 'About the weeping of your wrist'-he touched his throat-'and the burning of your flesh.'
She gestured then, cutting us off. I saw the minute trembling in her hand as she stretched it toward the kilted man and spoke a single word.
He placed a small knife in her palm.
I stiffened. 'Wait a moment-'
'You will see,' Nihko said quietly, 'and so shall she.'
The woman rose. Her steps now were not so steady, though there was no less purpose in them. She walked to me, touched me briefly on the wrist as if in supplication-or apology-then raised both hands to my neck. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Del. I felt her touch, the coolness of her fingers, the trembling in her hands. There was no pain, only a deft cut in something I thought was hair, until she lowered her hands and I saw a strip of braided twine with a single ornament attached, a thin silver ring worked into the weave.
'What-?' I put my hand to my throat, curling fingers around the leather thong with its weight of sandtiger claws. 'Where did that come from?'
'Here.' Nihko brushed a finger against his left eyebrow. 'When you lay on the deck after I dragged you out of the water, vomiting up the ocean, I attached it to your necklet.'
'What in hoolies for?'
A single long step and he put a hand on my chest. 'This,' he answered gently.
I didn't get sick. I didn't vomit up the ocean, or the contents of my belly. I simply lost control of every working part in my body: of the eyes, the ears, the voice, the movements of my limbs, the in– and exhalation of my lungs, the beating of my heart.
And died.
ELEVEN
