Her smile vanished. But before she could answer, Del cut her off. 'We're not on board your ship anymore. You can't tell us to leave the household of the woman who has now announced before witnesses she is his grandmother.'
'That's right,' I said brightly. 'I guess I'm the one who can tell you to leave.'
'It is not your household yet,' Prima shot back.
Nihko's voice was cool. 'And who says you will survive to inherit?'
With one deft move, Del tossed her sword to the first mate. Steel flashed, arced; he caught it without thought, hissed startlement, then stared at her. 'Settle it,' she suggested. 'Man to man, here and now. In this circle.'
Oh, thanks is what I wanted to say; my wrenched thumb ached dully. But I knew better. I just waited for Nihko's answer.
'I will not dishonor the metri,' he said. 'But, of course, I merely referred to the illness of her heart. Who is to say her grandson has not inherited its weakness?'
Double-edged blade, that. And we all of us knew it.
Prima took the sword from him, shoved its hilt toward Del. 'The metri bought it for you. I suggest none of us dishonor her.'
'Ah,' I said sagely, 'there must be some form of terrible punishment if you kill the heir of a metri.'
'Sometimes,' Nihko said gently, 'one need not be killed to suffer the worst punishment.'
Ikepra. Borjuni. We both knew the truth in his statement.
For the second time in the space of one evening, I saluted him with my sword.
Prima made a sound of disgust. 'Men,' she said, her sidelong glance aimed at Del. 'Why is it they can fight, and then immediately be friends again? They waste a perfectly good grudge that way.'
Del's eyes glinted even as her mouth twitched, and I knew none of us was going to kill one another.
Tonight.
TWENTY-NINE
FROM BESIDE me in bed, Del spoke quietly into the darkness. 'You're awake.'
'So are you.'
'But I was asleep. I don't think you've slept since we came to bed.'
'Long night.'
'Full night,' she emphasized dryly. Then, 'Is this what you dreamed of?'
From my back, I stared hard at the ceiling I could not see. 'I dreamed of no such thing in the hyorts, or even when I slept beneath the stars after a beating.'
'A sandtiger,' she said softly. 'And freedom.'
'Never beyond that. Never beyond the moment of freedom, when I could walk away and know myself able to make my own choices about my life.'
'And now?'
'Now I'm no more free … no, it's not the same and I don't mean it to be, but she said something, something about responsibility, and the acceptance of it marking adulthood.'
For a moment Del was silent. Then, softly, 'The metri is a strong woman.'
'But is she right?'
'About responsibility and adulthood?' Del sighed, shifted onto her back so that we lay side by side and flat, shoulders touching. 'Taken of itself, I believe she is. Children live for their freedom, for the moment their tasks are done-if they have any-so that they may make choices about their lives. Of course, those 'lives' comprise the next few moments, little more… but the impulse is the same. To be finished, so they may be free.'
When she fell silent, I prompted her. 'And?'
'Adults understand that freedom must be earned, not given by someone else.'
'No?'
'No. We set ourselves the tasks, we execute them, and we are free then to accept other tasks.'
'What has this to do with the metri?'
'The metri decides for others what she believes are the tasks that must be completed. For the benefit of her house.'
'In other words, she doesn't permit anyone of her household-or in her family-to seek out their own tasks. And thus no one of the-Stessoi?-is truly free.'
Del tilted her head toward me. 'I think the metri believes no one is strong enough to hold her place unless he be as she is.'
'Ruthless. Cold. Hard.'
'Is she?'
'Ruthless? Yes. Hard? Absolutely. Cold?' I fell silent. Then, 'I can't say so. Because passion drives her. Her ruthlessness and hardness is framed on a passion for her household and the future of the Stessoi.'
'Does Herakleio have it?'
'From the sound of it, Herakleio has enough to illuminate the island!'
'That's lust,' Del countered. 'Youthful passions, yes; he has never been permitted to grow beyond them. But the passion requiring coldness and ruthlessness?'
'Not yet,' I answered slowly.
'You?'
We both knew the answer to that. 'You're saying if I employed it now, she would hand me the household and the future of the Stessoi.'
'She would expect you to take them.'
'And Herakleio?'
Del lay very still beside me. 'The first ten times you and he spar with live steel, be very careful.'
'And the eleventh?'
'By the eleventh, either he will have acknowledged that you will always defeat him …'
'Or?'
'Or you will be dead.'
In a matter of ten days, Herakleio had learned he had the body, the reflexes, the power, to be what I was. In a matter of moments, in the face of the metri's announcement that I was her grandson, he had learned he needed the mind and determination as well as the body. Because he believed now the metri favored me, and the only way he might regain that favor was not to replace me, but to become me.
The implications of this conviction astonished me. Not the motivation-the metri played us all like counters on a board; not the impetus-she had moved him to precisely this position on that board. But that he understood and acknowledged what it was she wanted of the game, and that she justified her approach because she believed it required.
And it astonished me also that he accepted it instead of railing against it as a spoiled godling might.
Herakleio may not have believed in her certainty for himself. But clearly he had done more than merely exist in the metri's household; he had learned her mind. Until now, apparently, he had never attempted to invoke and employ that knowledge. Until now, apparently, he had never felt the need.
Beyond the mechanics of technique, a sword-dancer is not required to know why an opponent moves the way he moves. Only that he does move, only when he will move, so he may anticipate and counter that move, or remove the potential for it before the idea of the move exists within the opponent's mind.
Herakleio asked for Del. He did it with premeditation, and with a deliberate shrewdness I hadn't anticipated. My opponent had won the initial pass; my first move was countered before it occurred to me I might need to make it.
He asked for Del not because he believed it would hurt me if he believed she was better-he was,
