simply what I did. And there were always women who wanted me to do it.
She saw the answer in my face and smiled. 'So, you see. We are not so very different.'
But I was. Now. Yet there was no possible way to explain it to her. 'Thank you for bringing breakfast,' I said, 'but I'll eat alone.'
She was smiling, certain of me. 'And afterwards?'
'Afterwards, I will also be alone.'
That surprised her. 'You don't wish my company?'
It was undoubtedly an insult, but I tried to soften it. 'I choose my own companions.'
A wave of color rose in her face. 'Umir believed I would please you.'
'What would please me, and Umir knows this, is to be given my freedom.'
She studied me a moment longer, as if expecting me to change my mind. When I said nothing else, merely waited quietly, she finally accepted it for the truth. She turned at once to the door, rapped on it sharply, and slipped out without a backward glance when the guard opened it.
I listened to the latch being locked behind her. Then I walked to the nearest wall, turned, slid down with my back planted against it. Once upon a time . . .
But I regretted no part of my decision.
I sighed, thumped my head against the wall, shut my eyes. I could hear Umir's sword-dancers. But all I could think about was Del as I had last seen her, left to the ministrations of a stranger while I was here, waiting to meet a man who would do his best to kill me.
Nine days, or eight. I should have asked Umir.
Bascha, where are you? Still in the lean-to, or didNayyib get you to Julah?
This was not how I had envisioned it. For several years I'd seen Del and me dying together, fighting any number of enemies. I had never envisioned us as old people, but as we were now. Certainly I had never considered Del might die of sandtiger wounds or poison, and me sentenced to die in a circle I was no longer allowed to enter.
Never in a thousand thousand years had I ever expected to declare elaii-ali-ma. Despite my time as a chula among the Salset, I considered myself truly born the day Alimat's shodo had accepted me for instruction. The day I had taken my name. The day I had defeated Abbu Bensir in an impromptu practice match with wooden swords.
That image, unexpectedly, was abruptly clear and immediate. I had been seventeen, or as close as I could reckon my age. Abbu was a good ten or more years older, the acknowledged sword-dancer of sword-dancers. He wasn't taking lessons anymore; he had made his living hiring out for years. But he had come back to Alimat to visit the shodo. Where he had heard of a tall, gangly kid who promised, with proper instruction, to be as good—or better—one day.
I smiled crookedly. Abbu had intended to laugh at me, albeit quietly, noting all of my bad habits for the benefit of others. And when he had tossed the wooden sparring blade to me, he had anticipated demonstrating to all the other wide-eyed students how my height and gangliness would hurt me in a circle.
Instead, my greater reach and speed, despite my awkwardness, had landed a blow to his throat. To this day he spoke in a husky rasp.
I had eventually grown into my gangliness, adding flesh and muscle. Strength had been trained, quickness refined. I was unlike Abbu or any other Southroner, and I could not apply all of the lessons to my particular body. Instead, the shodo had adapted to me by developing other forms. In a matter of a few years, more quickly than any prior student—including Abbu—I had attained the seventh level.
Then, and only then, had I departed Alimat to make my own way.
The way that brought me here so many years later.
I got up and stripped off the robe, tossed it on the bed, and knelt to retrieve the broken leg. Once again I opened myself to the power that wasn't magic but that might allow me to live. The rites and rituals of honing the body, controlling the reflexes, taught me by the shodo; and the discipline of honing the mind, controlling that power, trained into me by the blue-headed priest-mages of ioSkandi.
The woman was long-limbed and agile, winding her legs around mine in comfortable abandon. She wore no clothes and had teased me out of my own. The initial passion was spent; now we lay very close, almost as one. Smiling, I twined my fingers into the silk of her hair, wrapping each: thumb, forefinger, next finger, next, and eventually the little finger. I felt the binding, tested it, tugged, then let the hair side through. Fair hair, nearly white; and skin lightly gilded from the blaze of the sun. I ran hands across that skin, stroked it with fingers —
–and sat bolt upright on the pallet I'd pulled from the three-legged bed and put on the floor.
I could see nothing in the night but raised my hands regardless. I counted, tucking fingers down as I named them off in my head.
Right hand: Thumb. Four fingers.
Left: Thumb. Four fingers.
And again, and again. The woman was gone—Del was gone– but the fingers remained. I could feel them.
I stayed awake the rest of the night, arguing with myself.
When dawn finally crept slowly into the room, segmented by air-holes, I was able to see truth at last.
Thumb. Three fingers. And a stub.
I lay down again, making fists of my hands. With two thumbs and six fingers.
Thinking: No Del, either.
Dreams, I decided bitterly, conjured pain as well as pleasure.
THIRTEEN
IN THE MORNING of the tenth day, I awoke not long after dawn. As always, the room I inhabited was quiet, dim, isolated, cut off from the ordinary noises of Umir's rousing household. But this time my body was poised and alert, my mind calm and prepared. Even without counting the days, I knew.
I lay on my back on the pallet and extended arms into the air. Examined hands, front and back. I had not dreamed again of having all my fingers. What I saw now was what I expected to see: that which had been left to me atop the stone spire after Sahdri had amputated two fingers in an attempt to also amputate my identity, the awareness that I was sword-dancer before anything else. Because he knew very well I would not become what he believed I should be, and could be, unless my past was extinguished.
The weeks thereafter had been a true battle as I fought an enemy such as I'd never met, to retain my sense of self. I had very nearly lost. But eventually I had rediscovered what and who I was and had managed to tap into ioSkandi's power. There atop the spire I'd been mage, if never priest, but also sword-dancer. And that, I knew, was all that would serve me now.
Sword-dancer.
Sandtiger.
Both—or either—would be enough.
I pressed myself up from the pallet. Used the crock. Spent time stretching myself into flexibility, cracked my joints, put my body through forms I could do in my sleep until every portion of me was loose. Took up a position in front of the door in the center of the room, composed myself, closed my eyes, and let myself go as I had in Meteiera, soaring without wings over the fertile valley at the foot of massive spires.
Far below I saw a circle made of white stones set into the ground with expert precision. I soared lower, lower, and saw there a man, dhoti-clad; a man born of Skandi, with the height, breadth, power, and quickness characteristic of the Eleven Families who claimed themselves gods-descended. Both hands grasped a sword, a full complement of eight fingers and two thumbs wrapping hilt. It was a weapon, but also an extension of the man. Steel became flesh.
He was alone and oblivious to the world at large. He danced there, he and the sword-his-partner,
