part of my hand. There simply wasn't a little finger extending from it any more. 'If the sword grip turns in your hand, or is forced back at an angle toward the side of your hand . . .'
'I'll lose leverage. Control. Yes, I know that.'
She was frowning now. She let her own stick fall to the deck. She studied my hand in earnest, taking it into both of hers. She had seen it before, of course; seen them both, and the knurled pinkish scar tissue covering the nub of severed bone. Del was not squeamish; she had patched me up numerous times, as well as herself. She regretted the loss of those fingers—hoolies, so did I!—but she did not quail from their lack. This time, in a methodical and matter-of-fact examination that did not lend itself to innuendo or implication, she studied every inch of my hand. She felt flesh, tendon, the narrow bones beneath both. I have big hands, wide hands, and the heels of them are callused hard with horn.
'What?' I asked finally, when she continued to frown.
'The scars,' she said. 'They're gone.'
I have four deep grooves carved in my cheek, and a crater in the flesh over the ribs of my left side. I raised dubious brows.
'On your hands,' Del clarified. 'All the nicks are gone. And this knuckle here—' She tapped it.—'used to be knobbier than the others. It's not anymore.'
I suppose I might have made some vulgar comment about Del's intimate knowledge of my body, but didn't. There was more at stake just now than verbal foreplay.
I had all manner of nicks and seams and divots in my body. We both did. Mine were from a childhood of slavery, an enforced visit to the mines of a Southron tanzeer by the name of Aladar, and the natural progression of lengthy—and dangerous—sword-dancer training and equally dangerous dances for real. The latter had marred Del in certain characteristic ways, too; she bore her own significant scar on her abdomen as a reminder of a dance years ago in the North, when we both nearly died, as well as various other blade-born blemishes.
I had spent weeks getting used to the stubs of the two missing fingers, though there were times I could have sworn I retained a full complement. Beyond that, I had paid no attention to either hand other than working very hard to strengthen them, as well as my wrists and forearms. It was the interior that mattered, not the exterior. The muscles, the strength, that controlled the hands and thus the grip. Not the exterior scars.
But Del was right. The knuckle, once permanently enlarged, looked of a size with the others again. And the nicks and blemishes I'd earned in forty years were gone. Even the discolored pits from working Aladar's mine had disappeared.
Wholly focused on retraining myself, I had not even noticed. I pulled the hand away, scowling blackly.
'It's not a bad thing,' Del observed, though a trifle warily.
'Skandi,' I muttered. 'Meteiera.' I looked harder at my hands.
'Did they work some magic on you?'
I transferred the scowl from hand to woman. 'No, they didn't work any magic on me. They cut my fingers off!' Not to mention shaving and tattooing my skull and piercing my ears and eyebrows with silver rings. Most of the rings were gone now, thanks to Del's careful removal, though at her behest I had retained two in each earlobe. Don't ask me why. Del said she liked them.
'You do look younger.' Her tone was carefully measured.
Ironic, to look younger when one's lifespan has been shortened.
'Of course, maybe it's the hair,' Del suggested. 'You look very different with it so short.'
'Longer than it was.' I rubbed a hand over my head; and so it was, all of possibly two inches now, temporarily lying close against my skull, though I expected the annoying wave to start showing up any day. Del had said the blue tattoos were invisible, save for a slight rim along the hairline. But that would be hidden, too, once my hair grew out all the way.
'I don't mean you look like a boy,' she clarified. 'You look like you. Just—less used.'
Hoolies, that sounded good. 'Define for me 'less used.' '
'By the sun.' She shrugged. 'By life.'
'That wouldn't be wishful thinking, would it?'
Del blinked. 'What?'
'There are fifteen-plus years between us, after all. Maybe if I didn't look so much older—'
'Oh, Tiger, don't be ridiculous! I've told you I don't care about that.'
I dropped into a squat. The knees didn't pop. I bounced up again. Still no complaints.
Del frowned. 'What was that about?'
'Feeling younger.' I grinned crookedly. 'Or maybe it's just my wishful thinking.'
Del bent and picked up her stick. 'Then let's go again.'
'What, you want to try and wear down the old man? Make him yield on the basis of sheer exhaustion?'
'You never yield to exhaustion,' she pointed out, 'in anything you do.'
'I yielded to your point of view about women having worth in other areas besides bed.'
'Because I was right.'
As usual, with us, the banter covered more intense emotions. I didn't really blame Del for being concerned. Here we were on our way back to the South, where I had been born and lost; where I had been raised a slave; where I had eventually found my calling as a sword-dancer, hired to fight battles for other men as a means of settling disputes—but also where I had eventually voluntarily cut myself off from all the rites, rituals, and honor of the Alimat-trained sword-dancer's closely prescribed system.
I had done it in a way some might describe as cowardly, but at the time it was the right choice. The only choice. I'd made it without thinking twice about it, because I didn't have to; I knew very well what the cost would be. I was an outcast now, a blade without a name. I had declared elaii-ali-ma, rejecting my status as a seventh- level sword-dancer, which meant I was fair game to any honor-bound sword-dancer who wanted to challenge me.
Of course, that challenge wouldn't necessarily come in a circle, where victory is not achieved by killing your opponent—well, usually; there are always exceptions—but by simply winning. By being better.
For years I had been better than everyone else in the South, though a few held out for Abbu Bensir (including Abbu Bensir), but I couldn't claim that any longer. I wasn't a sword-dancer. I was just a man a lot of other men wanted to kill.
And Del figured it would be a whole lot easier to kill me now than before.
She was probably right, too.
So here I was aboard a ship bound for the South, going home, Accompanied by a stubborn stud-horse and an equally stubborn woman, sailing toward what more romantic types, privy to my dream, might describe as my destiny. Me, I just knew it was time, dream or no dream. We'd gone off chasing some cockamamie idea of me being Skandic, a child of an island two week's sail from the South, but that was done now. I was, by all appearances— literally as well as figuratively—Skandic, a child of that island, but things hadn't worked out. Sure, it was the stuff of fantasy to discover I was the long-lost grandson of the island's wealthiest, most powerful matriarch, but this fantasy didn't have a happy ending. It had cost me two fingers, for starters. And nearly erased altogether the man known as the Sandtiger without even killing him.
Meteiera. The Stone Forest. Where Skandic men with a surfeit of magics so vast that much was mostly undiscovered, cloistered themselves upon tall stone spires ostensibly to serve the gods but also, they claimed, to protect their loved ones by turning away from them. Because the magic that made them powerful also made them mad.
Now, anyone who knows me will say I don't—or didn't– think much of magic. In fact, I don't—didn't—really believe in it. But I'll admit something strange was going on in Meteiera, because I had cause to know. I can't swear the priest-mages worked magic on me, as Del suggested, but once there I wasn't precisely me anymore. And I witnessed too many strange things.
Hoolies, I did strange things.
I shied away from that like a spooked horse. But the knowledge, the awareness, crept back. Despite all the outward physical changes, there were plenty of interior ones as well. A comprehension of power, something like the first faint pang of hunger, or the initial itch of desire. In fact, it was very like desire—because that power wanted desperately to be wielded.
