Del's single burst of throttled laughter was bitter. 'Oh yes, they would let her come searching for a woman who has no honor, a woman exiled from her homeland. And why would Kalle wish to? She has a mother and father.'
'But they aren't her blood.'
She was silent a moment, then turned over to face me. Her eyes, black in the glow of the moon, were steady. 'Do you believe that matters? Blood? To children whose true mother and father have disavowed them?'
'You didn't disavow Kalle.'
'They will have told her I did.'
I scratched at the stubble I hadn't gotten the chance to shave. 'I think blood matters, yes. I think a child might wish to search for her mother. Hoolies, I went all the way to Skandi, didn't I?'
'And repudiated your family.'
'The metri wanted nothing to do with the son of a disobedient daughter who dishonored her exalted Family by daring to sleep with a man well below her class.'
'Your mother left Skandi to be with the man she loved, below her class or no. Do you really believe she'd have disavowed you if she was willing to go that far?'
'Doesn't matter,' I dismissed. 'I ended up a chula with the Salset anyway. And how in hoolies did we get onto this subject? We were talking about Kalle.'
'You say it matters to children that they know their own blood.'
'I believe that, yes.'
'Does it matter to men or women that they know their own children?'
'You're the one who dragged me all the way into the ice and snow so you could see Kalle again, bascha! I would say yes to that as well, based on your example.'
Del did not answer. When I realized she didn't mean to, I shut my eyes and, when I could slow my thoughts, gave myself over to sleep.
TWENTY-SIX
BREEZE becomes wind. Wind becomes gust. Gust becomes storm: simoom. The sky is heavy with sand, the sun eclipsed, occluded by curtains of it, pale as water, hard as ice. At the edges of the Punja it scours the earth of vegetation; in the Deep Desert, where the tribes take care to protect themselves, it stings but does not strip; to strangers, wholly innocent but thus sweeter victims, it is death. Clothing is torn away. Flesh abraded. Eventually flayed. In the end, long past death, the ivory bones are polished white. And buried, only freed again by yet another fickle, angry simoom, digging up the dead.
White bones in white sand. Fingerbones scattered, the vertebrae, the toes. The skull remains, but lower jaw is lost. Teeth gleam, that once were hidden by lips.
I walk there, find them: pearls of the desert. Out of boredom, I begin to gather them, to arrange them against the flat sand. Not many left. The skull, lacking half its jaw; upper arm, forearm; the ladder of ribs. The knobby-ended thigh. I reassemble the pieces and stare at the puzzle, wondering who and what it might have been, when it wore flesh.
I sit back, studying the forgotten remnants of a living being. Then pick up the curving, fragile short rib. Close my hand upon it.
Over the skull, as I watch, flesh grows. Hollows are filled, angles coated, like moss on a rock. A face stares up at me, though it lacks a lower jaw. Even without eyes, I know her.
'Time runs away,' she says. 'You must be faster, if you choose to catch it.'
Her words are clear despite deformation. 'And if I don't?' I ask.
'It is best to be the hunter, not the prey. The prey perishes.'
'Unless it escapes.'
'But you will not.'
Sobering pronouncement, especially from a woman dead a month, a year, a decade. 'If I'm to find you,' I say, 'how about a hint?'
'The answer is in your bones.'
I hold up the rib. 'Yours are more accessible.'
The upper lip, lacking a lower, achieves only half a smile. 'Your bones know where to find mine.'
I replace the rib in the collection on the sand. 'And if I am to sacrifice flesh in order to hear them? To become like you?' I hold up mutilated hands. 'Why would I wish to? I have already donated two fingers.'
'Count mine,' the woman says, who lacks even hands.
I smile wryly. 'Point taken.'
'The bones know. Listen. Then come and find me.'
And the flesh retreats, and the woman says no more.
'The bones know,' I echoed.
'What?' Del asked.
I blinked into chilly dawn. 'What?'
'What did you mean? The bones know what?'
'What bones?'
She sat up, folding back blankets. 'The bones you were talking about.' Del picked a stray hair out of pale eyelashes. 'I hope you aren't referring to the fingerbone necklet Oziri gave you. Because if you are, it means I'm going to have to kill you.'
I grunted, scrubbing at an itchy, sleep-creased face. The sun was barely up, peering over the blade of the horizon.
'Find me' she had said once. Or twice. Maybe thrice. 'And take up the sword.'
'The bones know,' I declared, though mostly it was distorted by a tremendous yawn. 'Mine, though, not those.' Awareness coalesced. 'Oh, hoolies, not that thrice-cursed dream again!'
Del crawled out of her bedroll, untangling twisted burnous from around her hips. 'If we didn't have so much to do today, I'd tell you to go back to sleep. Maybe next time you woke up you'd make more sense.'
I frowned. 'What do we have to do today?'
Del laced up sandals. 'Rescue Nayyib.'
I watched her walk off, hunting privacy. I grumbled a protest, yawned widely again, contemplated going back to sleep. My bones ached.
My eyes flew open. 'Bones.' I sat up, threw back covers. All I wore was my dhoti, since I'd neglected to grab my burnous back at the bathhouse. That left me with an expanse of flesh tanned a deep coppery-brown, with the fine hairs bleached bronze-gold. I couldn't see any bones. Not naked ones. Just the lines and angles covered by muscle and flesh. I knocked on a kneecap, then inspected an elbow, since they were closer to the surface. 'Is there anything any of you have to tell me? Like, how it is I'm supposed to find this woman?' Or whatever she was, buried in the sand.
For all they supposedly knew the answer, my bones remained stubbornly silent. Muttering, I pulled on my own sandals, cross-gartered them up my calves, then got up and limped off to make my own morning donation even as Del returned from hers.
'Don't take long,' she called. 'I want to get started.'
Not something a man wants to hear first thing in the morning when he's only barely awake. 'It'll take as long as it takes,' I muttered, scowling at the sunrise.
Del had everything packed and the horses loaded by the time I returned, reins in her hands; and no, I had not taken that long. She was clearly impatient to get going.
'Hold your horses,' I said, wondering if she'd get the joke.
She didn't. 'According to you, we could reach Umir's today if we leave early enough.'
