In the distance, the stud neighed ringingly. I blessed him for his timing, though he wouldn't have much luck finding the mare he wanted. 'Get the 'sword,' Del.'
She held her ground. 'If I win this dance, will you stop?'
'If you win this dance, I'll just have to practice harder.'
'Then you still mean to go back to the South.'
'I told you that. Yes.' I studied her. 'What, did you think I meant to live out my life here on this benighted island?' Which had nonetheless,. saved our lives in more ways than one.
'I don't know.' Her tone was a mixture of frustration, annoyance, and helplessness. 'I have no inkling as to what you will or will not do, Tiger. You're not predictable any more.'
Any more. Which implied that once I had been.
I bared my teeth at her. 'Well, good. Then I'm not boring.' Once again I waved my stick. 'The sooner we get to it, the sooner we'll know.'
Her expression suggested she already knew. Or thought she did.
'Not predictable,' I reminded her. 'Your own words, too.'
Del turned on her heel and stalked over to the tree limbs I'd groomed into smooth shafts. There was no point, no edge, no crosspiece, no grip, no proper pommel. They were not swords. They were sticks. But whichever one she chose would do.
'Hurry up,' I said. 'We're burning daylight, bascha.'
The world, through glass, is magnified. Small made large. Unseen made visible. Dreams, bound by ungovernable temperaments and unpredictabilities, may do the same, altering one's vision. One's comprehension. The known made unknowable.
Grains of sand, slightly displaced. Gently jostled one against another. Gathered. Tumbled. Herded.
I blink. The world draws back. Large is made small; immense becomes insignificant. And I see what moves the sand.
Not water. Not wind.
Blood.
First, they rape her. Then slash open her throat. Twice, possibly thrice. The bones of her spine, left naked to the day in the ruin of her flesh, gleam whitely in the sun.
Blood flows. Gathers sand. Makes mud of malnourished dust. Is transformed by the sun into nothingness.
Even blood, in the desert, cannot withstand the ceaseless heat.
It will take longer for the body, for flesh and bone are not so easily consumed. But the desert will win. Its victories are boundless.
They might have left her alive, to die of thirst. It was their mercy to kill her swiftly. Their laughter was her dirge. Their jest was to leave a sword within reach, but she lacked the strength to use it against herself.
As the sun sucks her dry, withering flesh on bone, she turns her head upon the sand and looks at me out of eyes I recognize.
'Take up the sword,' she says.
I jerk, gasping out of sleep into trembling wakefulness, tasting sand in my mouth. Salt. And blood.
'It's time,' she says.
Her breath, her death, is mine.
'Find me,' she says, 'and take up the sword.'
Del felt me spasm into actual wakefulness. She turned toward me and sleepily inquired, 'What is it?'
I offered no answer. I couldn't.
'Tiger?' She propped herself up on an elbow. 'What is it?'
I stared up at the dark skies. Something was in me, something demanding I answer. I felt very distant. I felt very small. 'It's time.' Echoing the dream.
'Time?'
The words left my mouth without conscious volition. 'To go home.' To go home. To take up the sword.
After a moment she asked, 'Are you all right? You don't sound like yourself.'
I didn't feel like myself.
She placed a hand upon my chest, feeling my heart beat. 'Tiger?'
'I just—I know. It's time.' No more than that. It seemed sufficient.
Find me.
'Are you sure?'
Take up the sword.
'I'm sure.'
'All right.' She lay down again. 'Then we'll go.'
I could feel her tension. She didn't think it was a good idea. But that didn't matter. What mattered is that it was time.
ONE
having sailed at last from the island, we now were bound for Haziz, the South's port city. We had departed it months before, heading for Skandi; but that voyage was finished. Now we embarked on an even more dangerous journey: returning to the South, where I carried a death sentence on my head.
Meanwhile, Del and I passed the time by sparring. She didn't win the matches. Neither did I. The point wasn't to win, but to retrain my body and mind. Tension was in me, tension to do better, do more, be better.
'You're holding back,' I accused, accustomed now—again– to the creak of wood and rigging, the crack of canvas.
Del opened her mouth to refute that; holding back in the circle was a thing she never did. But she shut her mouth and contemplated me, though her expression suggested she was weighing herself every bit as much.
'Well?' I challenged, planting bare feet more firmly against wood planking.
'Maybe,' she said at length.
'If you truly believe I'm incapable—'
'I didn't say that!'
'then you should simply knock me out of the circle.' We didn't really have a proper circle, because the captain had vociferously objected to me carving one into his deck, but our minds knew where the boundaries lay.
Del, who had set one end of the stick against the deck, now made it into a cane and leaned upon it idly with the free hand perched on her hip and elbow outthrust. 'I don't think anyone could knock you out of the circle even if you were missing two hands.'
Not a pretty picture. 'Thanks.' I grimaced. 'I think.'
Blue eyes opened wide. 'That's a compliment!'
I supposed it was.
Now those eyes narrowed. 'You are using a different grip.'
'I said I would.' I'd also said I'd have to. Circumstances demanded it.
She unbent and put out the arm. Her tone was brusque, commanding. 'Close on my wrist.'
I clamped one big hand around her wrist, feeling the knob of bone on the left side, the pronounced tendons on the underside. A strong woman, was Delilah.
Her pale brows knit. 'There is a difference in the pressure.'
'Of course there is.' I was not altogether unhappy to be holding her wrist. 'I have three fingers and a thumb, not four.'
'Your grip will be weaker, here.' She touched the outside edge of my palm. Nothing was wrong with that
