This time I didn't fight them as Alric and Neesha gathered me up, kept me on my feet, aimed me toward the house. We were nearly there when I saw Del in the doorway. Hollows lay like bruises under her eyes, and her lips were pale. One hand clutched the doorjamb; the other lay across her mouth, as if to physically restrain the fear that she would not confess.
But a smile of relief began behind the hand, and she lifted her fingers away. She reached out, closed that hand on the back of my neck, shakily pulled me close. Her robes were immediately soaked with my blood. 'Come inside.'
Alric and Neesha got me there. Del directed them to the bed in the other room. I protested weakly. 'What about the baby?'
'She's in the cradle,' Del told me. 'She missed her father proving once and for all that he is the greatest sword-dancer in the South.'
'Well,' I gasped, 'she'll probably see it again.'
Alric and Neesha helped me to sit on the bed. Unconsciousness crowded in. I was aware of people moving around, bandaging me, of words exchanged about a heating knife; but none of it made any sense. Everything felt distant.
'What about you?' I asked Del, even as they made me lie down.
She had moved around to the other side of the bed. She sat down, caught her breath, then took my right hand. 'I'm here.'
I wanted to tell her she had no business sitting up in bed hanging onto me so I could hang onto her, but then Alric thrust a twist of cloth between my teeth, told Neesha to hold my arm, and pressed the red-hot knife blade against the wound in my upper arm.
I woke the baby up. Del said something about having two screaming infants in her house, and then she very suddenly lay down next to me.
Ridding my mouth of cloth, I croaked, 'You all right?'
Her head moved against mine in a weak nod.
I glanced at Alric, who was dropping the knife into a wooden bowl. 'You enjoyed that. Making me yell.'
He grinned. 'So I did.'
Now I looked at Neesha. 'Still want to be a sword-dancer, after seeing that?'
He drew in a breath. 'After seeing that, I want to be nothing else.'
Guess it was in the kid's blood after all. I smiled faintly to tell him I approved, then rolled my head toward Del. I heard the sounds of Neesha and Alric leaving. The baby had gone back to sleep. I thought her mother was on the verge herself. 'You awake?'
Her voice was a breath of sound. 'Barely.'
'I have a question.'
She was fading fast. So was I. 'What?'
'Who's really the best? You or me?'
Del lifted her head enough to stare at me in wide-eyed, rigid disbelief. Then dropped it back down again. 'I guess we'll just have to have a dance to find out.'
'All right. Tomorrow?'
'Fine,' she murmured.
I turned my head enough to feel her hair against my face. Opened my mouth to tell her we'd have to be vigilant about the men who lusted after our daughter—and then exhaustion hit me over the head with a cantina stool.
A woman. A son. A daughter.
Was this what I had expected?
No.
But it was what I had dared to dream, at night among the Salset.
