I knew better than to get into that. 'And I'm supposed to believe you?'
'I am a priest-mage,' Nihkolara said with devastating modesty. 'I have a measure of experience with such things.'
'And we have a measure of experience with you, ' I pointed out. 'Why should we believe anything you say?'
'Because of the alternative,' Prima replied.
'What, you'll kill us?'
'No,' she said seriously, 'because in Skandi, being a priest-mage means you are mad-'
I gaped inelegantly. 'What –?'
'-and madness is not tolerated in Skandi.' Her gaze was steady; she avoided looking at her first mate. 'Such people are too feared to be killed outright, so they are sent away. Just as Nihko was.'
'And here I thought he got in trouble over bedding the wrong woman.' Nihko was not amused by my amusement at his expense. 'Sent away where?' I asked, enjoying his expression.
'loSkandi,' the first mate answered with a vast contempt for ignorance.
'loSkandi is a lazaret,' Prima Rhannet explained gently to my incomprehension, as if taking pity on a child. 'It's where madmen are sent to live until they cease to do so.'
I looked at Nihko. 'For someone who's supposed to be mad or dead, you're very calm about all of this.'
Del spoke before he could answer. 'Why?' she asked him intently. 'Why didn't you die?'
Nihkolara said only: 'I am ikepra.'
'I thought you said that meant you were abomination,' I put in sharply. 'Profanation.'
'Those with power are known to be so because they go mad,' he said, 'and are sent to ioSkandi. There they survive to purposely rouse the power, if it may be done, so they may control it for the needs of their own salvation; if they cannot, they die of it. Those who survive learn what the true nature of magic is, and how to cohabit with it.'
'And?'
'Those who reject it, those who leave ioSkandi and the priest brothers, are abominations.'
'Yet you left.'
'And thus I am adjudged apostate by my priest-brothers, the mages. As I am adjudged io –mad-by the people of the island.'
'And feared even more because you are not in your proper place.' Del nodded. 'You do not fit. You live outside, without rules, without rituals.' She glanced at me briefly, using the Southron word. 'Borjuni.'
He shrugged. 'Ikepra.'
But borjuni were simply men without morals. None of them had any magic, any priestly trappings. In Skandi, where eleven specific families were considered gods-descended, what Nihko represented as a member of one of those families-as madman, priest-mage, and ikepra-was far more fearsome than mere Southron bandits.
I understood now the intent of the warding gestures, the whispered comments, the rejection and outright abhorrence of the concept of the brow ring as barter. And yet the solution seemed obvious. 'You could leave, you know. Avoid all kinds of unpleasantness.'
Nihkolara hitched a shoulder. 'And so I do leave. Every time my captain's ship sails.'
'But you come back. I meant leave permanently,' I clarified. 'Only a fool would remain.'
'A fool.' Nihko smiled. 'Or a madman.'
I shook my head. 'So, you'd have us believe you still have this power, even though you're exiled from the brotherhood.' Even as I was exiled from the oaths and rituals of the sword-dance.
'He has power,' Prima said sharply. 'You have experienced it. Exile need not strip one of one's gift.'
Any more than being denied the circle stripped me of my gift.
'But he rejected it,' I maintained, which was entirely different; I'd never reject my sword-skill. Then I looked piercingly at Nihko. 'Or did it reject you?'
Something flared briefly in his eyes, some deep and abiding emotion so complex I could not begin to define the elements that comprised it.
'Tell him,' Del commanded the first mate, as if she had acquired the pieces of an invisible puzzle and put them together even as we stood here. 'You have used this magic on him more than once, and have provided him the means to control his sensitivity to it when in your presence.' She nodded at the brow ring glinting on the deck. 'If you are-or were-a priest in service to the gods, whatever gods they may be, it is your duty to inform those who are at risk what it is they risk.'
Prima Rhannet inhaled a quiet, but hissing breath. 'You see too much.'
'Well, I'm blind,' I said curtly. 'Why not explain it to me?'
Nihkolara did. 'The power, once understood, once acknowledged, once invoked, will never reject its vessel. But that vessel may reject it. '
'And?'
'Tie a string around your finger as tightly as you may, and leave it so,' he said, 'without respite. What is the result?'
Del said, 'It withers.'
Prima said, 'It dies.'
I looked at Nihko. 'And you're not dead.'
'Nor ever will be,' he agreed, 'until such a time as the gods decree I have lived out my allotment.'
'So, if I broke your neck even as we stand here, you wouldn't die?'
The contempt was back in his eyes. 'I am not immortal,' he said. 'But I will not intentionally tie a string around my finger so that it may wither and die.' He paused. 'And you would not be permitted close enough to break my neck.'
'Really?' I grinned toothily at him. 'Is that why I've dumped you on your rump more than once?' I made a show of examining his soaked but drying person. 'And knocked you into the water?'
Del's posture was suddenly such that we all became aware of the sheer power of her presence simultaneously. It was a subtle magic she had in good measure, and a power I understood and admired.
To Nihkolara she said, 'You have relied on magic to defeat this man, always. What are you without it?'
Prima's sun-coppered brows slid up in startlement. 'My, my,' she murmured with elegant implication. 'So the tiger's mate defends her male. He has trained you well.'
'Oh, stop,' Del said coldly. 'You invoke such imagery to provoke, and without cause. You would do precisely the same for Nihkolara, with nothing in it of men and women beyond coincidence of gender. You don't sleep with him. He can't sleep with you. Do you then count the binding between captain and first mate, friend and friend, as the lesser because bedding is not involved?'
Color flared in Prima Rhannet's face, filling in the spaces between freckles, then ebbed away so thoroughly all one could see were freckles, the angry glitter of her eyes. And yet she offered no answer because there was none that gained the victory.
Oh, yes. She would defend Nihkolara with her life, and he her with his.
Nihko recognized challenge no matter the gender. 'But I have the magic,' he said coolly in answer to Del's original question, 'and only a fool refuses to use an advantage.'
'A fool,' I said, 'or a madman.'
Nihko turned on his heel and marched away.
Prima was rigid with surpressed rage. 'Perhaps it is time I had you both declawed.'
I spread my hands. 'In case you've forgotten, captain: None of us has blades with which such a thing might be done.'
Which brought us around all over again to where we'd begun.
Prima's chin rose. It jutted the air. 'You will have swords,' she said, 'as the metri has suggested. But if you press Nihko, you may well discover that a blade is no weapon at all.' She stared hard at us both. 'Now get off my ship.'
We got off her ship. But not before I retrieved the brow ring from the deck. Only a fool refuses to use an
