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  I had been here countless times on my own, and occasionally with Del; with Neesha, once, when we rescued him from Umir by trading him for the Book of Udre-Natha—part of Umir’s eclectic collection of things for which he conceived a desire, though perhaps obsession was a better word. Once, that had been Del. I, on the other hand, he merely wanted to kill.

  It was near sundown, which meant that sites beneath almost all of the trees had been claimed already by various travelers. The smell of roasting meat, yeasty bread, spices, and pungent liquor blocked other smells. We rode the path through the oasis and fetched up at the spring. All three of us swung off our horses, but Neesha held back as Del and I led our mounts to the spring. There wasn’t enough room for all of our horses; another burnous-clad man watered two oxen on the other side. He marked the swords jutting up behind our shoulders, saw clearly that Del was a woman, and immediately goaded his oxen from the spring.

  I turned to tell Neesha there was room to water his horse, but he had disappeared. Likely looking for an acceptable area to bed down. We wouldn’t need shade at night, but it would nonetheless be nice to have a tree of our own.

  “I wonder,” I commented, “if our friend with the oxen departed because we are sword-dancers or because you’re a woman.”

  Del shrugged as she allowed the gelding to dip his head down into the water. “Probably because of me. I’m foreign to Southroners still, and I wear a sword-dancer’s harness. How dare I? How dare I go against everything they’ve ever been taught? How dare I take on a man’s role by stepping into the circle?”

  No longer was there bitterness is her tone when she spoke of such things. Del had not—and would not—accept that every woman in the South was expected to serve men, but she also had learned to pick her battles. One woman at a time.

  I brought the stud in next to the gelding, and leaned down with a gourd scoop to bring water to my mouth. “Of course it could be me. People do recognize me.”

  “It’s the scars,” a male voice said. “And missing fingers. And the Northern woman who rides with you.”

  I looked up, then violently dashed the contents of the gourd back into the water. “No,” I said. “Oh, no. Not again. Didn’t you learn anything? Don’t you recall what I said?”

  Khalid’s jaw was tight. “That I wasn’t good enough to even step into a circle with you.”

  “Yes,” I declared, seriously exasperated. “That’s exactly what I said. I meant you to heed it.”

  Though the sun was going down, I could still see his face and his expression. He glared at me. “I don’t want to step into a circle with you.”

  I blurted a rough laugh. “Well, that’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say. But why in hoolies are you here?”

  With some belligerence, he said, “It’s an oasis. Anyone can come here. And I told you I’d go wherever I wanted.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “What did you do, run your horse all the way to get here before us?”

  Del’s voice was very quiet. “Who is this fool?”

  And I remembered that she had never seen Khalid. Only I had, and Neesha. “This fool,” I said, “challenged Neesha to a dance. And he cheated. He—”

  “I didn’t cheat!” Khalid, stung, raised his voice over mine. “I tricked him, yes, but that is something all of us can do, who dance. He was the fool for not examining the circle before we began.”

  “Well,” Del observed, “then it’s not entirely accurate to accuse him of cheating, Tiger.”

  Khalid looked at her warily, not certain if or why she was agreeing with him.

  Neesha appeared out of the setting sun, leading his unsaddled, unpacked horse. His tone was exquisitely dry. “Are we inviting him to dinner?”

  Khalid sneered. “I wouldn’t eat with you.”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked. “Neither of us will dance with you, so it makes no sense for you to follow us.”

  “I’ve danced with him.” He meant Neesha. “And I’ve danced with you.” Now Khalid looked at Del. “This time, I challenge her.”

  “No,” Neesha and I said simultaneously.

  “Excuse me,” Del said pointedly. “I accept or reject my own dances.”

  “He’s a fool,” Neesha blurted.

  “Sandsick,” I said.

  “A fool, sandsick; neither matters.” Del met Khalid’s eyes. “Tomorrow.

  Khalid inclined his head. “Tomorrow.” And then he stalked away.

  “Well,” Del observed, “at least one Southroner doesn’t care if I’m a woman, only if I can dance. Progress.”

  I scowled at her as I backed the stud away, leaving room for Neesha’s horse. “Beat his ass, bascha.”

  “Of course,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Neesha had found us a tree. There was even a fire ring beneath it, but it wasn’t lighted since there were no coals, and we didn’t feel like kindling a flame for cooking. We had perfectly good food in our saddle pouches. We ate the fresh meat first, rather than the dried and salted supply from the house stores. All of us were greasy-fingered within moments. Del used a rag to wipe her mouth. Neesha and I resorted to the backs of our hands.

  “How far do we have to go to reach your mother’s place?” I asked around a finger as I sucked fat from it. And its neighbor.

  “Two days, unless the weather stops us,” Neesha answered, wiping his chin. “There’s another stopping place, though much smaller. We can reach it tomorrow night, if we push.”

  I gnawed on the joint bone, then leaned over to spit out gristle. “Well, it depends on how quickly or how slowly Del defeats our friend tomorrow.”

  “I won’t waste time.”

  I’d told her, in great detail, how things had gone, first with Neesha then with me.

  “We’ll make Neesha’s stopping place,” she said.

  “It’s much smaller,” Neesha noted. “There won’t be as many people, if any. But there’s good water.”

  “And I take it you’ve got water at the horse farm.”

  He nodded. “It’s close to the border. More water, lusher vegetation, good grass. My stepfather raises horses of a quality many people travel to see. And if they’ve got the price, they buy.”

  “If they’re anything like the one you ride, indeed the quality is good,” Del told him.

  Neesha smiled proudly. “I raised this one from a colt. He’s eight now and ready to be serious. My father—” he caught himself, “my stepfather said I should not grow too attached, because the colt would likely be sold. But when a buyer asked for him, my mother said he wasn’t for sale. My stepfather wanted to argue, but of course you don’t do that in front of a buyer. Afterward, when the buyer had taken a different horse and my fa—stepfather addressed the topic with my mother, he lost the argument. And so the horse was mine.” Neesha glanced over at the hobbled bay, who nosed contentedly at grain and grass.

  “That man raised you,” I said briefly. “And if you called him ‘father’ for all of your life prior to finding me, you should continue to call him that.”

  My son stared down at the bota in his lap, giving away nothing in his expression. Then he looked up to meet my eyes and dipped his head in a nod.

  “Good.” I washed down the meat with a slug of bota water, then said I was turning in. I mentioned that Del might want to as well, considering she had a dance in the morning. She was willing, and Neesha said he’d check on the horses.

  It wasn’t necessary, but Del and I both knew why he did it. We unrolled our blankets, flattened folds, and lay down, burrowing together for warmth. In the distance I heard the scream of a sandtiger, the yips of desert dogs.

  “That was well done,” she said very quietly; the horses were not picketed particularly far away.

  “What?—oh.” I spoke as quietly. “Well, the man is more his father than I am.”

  “Neesha has much to think about. He has found you, found his dream of wishing to be a sword-dancer.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. It was far
safer living on a horse farm than dancing, but being safe was not what aspiring sword-dancers desired. Neesha might well have sought the life even if he weren’t my son, but he was, and he had tracked me down. He’d taken a handful of lessons from Abbu Bensir, when Abbu stopped over at the horse farm, and had spent much of his life practicing the forms; first those he made up, then those Abbu taught him. But I had beaten him in the circle, my son. Beaten him badly.

  Which put me in mind of another young man who’d danced with me and lost. I shifted closer to Del, speaking very softly. “You don’t think he’s my son, do you?”

  It startled Del, though she spoke as softly. “Neesha’s your son!”

  “No, no—not Neesha. The fool. Khalid.”

  “Why would you think he’s your son?”

  “Because he’s doing very much what Neesha did, insisting on dancing against me. And now that I know Neesha’s in the world, there could be more offspring scattered throughout the South.”

  “Don’t brag, Tiger.”

  “Hoolies, Del, you know as well as I do that before I met you, I wasn’t exactly chaste.”

  “You weren’t chaste even after you met me. I remember the caravan and Elamain.”

  “Who?”

  “Elamain. The woman we guarded on the way to her wedding.”

  It took me a moment. It had been about six years since Del and I met. “Oh. Her.”

  “Yes. Her.”

  “I was a fool, bascha. And then I wasn’t anymore.”

  “No. You gained wisdom, once I beat it into your head.”

  I grinned into darkness.

  “Go to sleep,” she whispered. “Neesha’s coming back.”

  I wished her goodnight and allowed myself to fall off the precipice. Sleep is a good thing.

  Chapter 7

  DEL WAS UP AT DAWN. I woke up when she threw her covers back, but did not immediately join her. I knew what she was about.

  The forms. The sheer grace of preparing a body to dance. Muscles warmed, loosened; the body’s agreement that it would do what it was told. When she was done, Del smiled. A sidelong glance told me she knew I was watching. She raised her brows in a question.

  “Yes,” I said. “All right. You approve or reject your own dances. Point taken. And, I daresay, you will put that boy on his butt.”

  “I’ve decided to teach him a lesson,” she said. “Nothing done too quickly. Nothing done so hastily that he can’t understand what’s being done to him. He needs to learn what it is he needs to learn.”

  Before I untangled that, Neesha poked his head out from under blankets. He rubbed one eye. “What did I miss?”

  Del smiled.

  “Everything.” I flipped the blankets all the way back and stood up from my bedding. “I assume the idiot will be here soon. I’m going to go visit a bush now, so I don’t miss anything.”

  “Oh,” Neesha said. “Me also.”

  And as we moved with alacrity around the wide-canopied tree, the stud let loose a river to remind us of what we were about.

  She moved beautifully, did my bascha. Her feet sluffed through the sand with the soft, seductive sibilance of bare flesh against fine-grained dust. Wisps rose, drifted; layered our bodies in dull, gritty shrouds: pale umber, ocher-bronze, taupe-gray.

  Dawn had passed. All was clear now, in the newborn sunlight. As I drew the circle, the news was passed: a woman danced against a man. Some men, Southroners, laughed, disbelieving it. Khalid had walked over naked except for dhoti. And he carried an unsheathed sword.

  The dance began as all dances do: two swords in the center of the circle, a sword-dancer on either side. This time, I was given the task of telling them to begin.

  I watched her move. I watched the others watch her move. All men. No women here, at this moment, under such circumstances; never a woman.

  Except for Del.

  Admiration, as always. And pride. Two-edged pride. One, that the woman brought honor to the ritual of the dance within the circle, and two, that she was my right hand, my left hand; companion, swordmate, bedmate. Pride is always a two-edged blade. When it concerns Del, the second edge is the sharpest of all for me, because for the Sandtiger to speak of pride in Del is to speak also of possessiveness. She’d told me once that a man proud of a woman is too often prouder of his possession of her, and not of the woman for herself.

  I saw her point, but…well, Del and I don’t always agree. But then, if we did, life would be truly boring.

  “Gods,” Neesha said in wonder. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

  I nodded. “You’ve seen her spar in order to teach. This is Del dancing.”

  I watched the man she faced in the circle. Khalid showed more skill than he had before, and Southron-style: dip here, feint there, slash, lunge, cut, thrust…and always trying to throw the flashes and glints into her eyes; ordinarily, a shrewd ploy. Khalid displayed some experience. But while another opponent might have winced or squinted against the blinding light, giving over the advantage, Del didn’t.

  I knew she could kill him if she wished, though Khalid didn’t. He hadn’t realized it yet.

  Few men realize it when they enter the circle with Del. They see only the tall Northern woman with thick white-blond hair braided back, and blue, blue eyes; her perfect face with its sun-gilded flesh stretched taut across flawless bones. They see all of that, and her magnificent body, and they hardly notice the sword in her hands. Instead, they smile. They feel tolerant and magnanimous, because they face a woman, and a beautiful woman. And because she is beautiful they will give her anything, if only to share a moment of her time, and so they give her their lives.

  But she wasn’t here to kill Khalid.

  She danced. Long legs, long arms, bared to the Southron sun. Step. Step. Slide. Skip. Miniscule shifting of balance from one hip to the other. Sinews sliding beneath the flesh of her arms as she parried and riposted. All in the wrists with Del. A delicate tracery of blade tip against the afternoon sky, blocking Khalid’s weapon with a latticework of steel.

  “Hoolies,” Neesha whispered. “She’s playing with him.”

  “She’s not,” I told him. “This is a lesson. Whether he will heed it is up to him.”

  Neesha shook his head, spellbound.

  “You did wager on her, didn’t you?”

  Neesha’s mouth twisted. “I thought it might not be polite.”

  “To wager on Del while everyone else—except me, of course—is wagering on Khalid? Hoolies, kid, Del and I made a living for nearly a year doing this. I thought you were smarter than that!”

  Neesha scowled. “Apparently not.”

  I agreed wholeheartedly. “Apparently not.”

  “Sword-dancer?” The question came from a man who stepped up next to me, slipping out of the crowd to stand closer to me than I liked. “Sandtiger?”

  I glanced briefly. Young man. Copper-skinned. Swathed in a rich silk burnous of melon orange, sashed with a belt of gold-freighted bronze. A small turban hid most of his dark hair, but not the fringe of dark brown lashes surrounding hazel eyes.

  “Sandtiger?” he asked again, hands tucked into voluminous sleeves.

  “Sandtiger,” I agreed, still watching the dance.

  He sighed a little and smiled. The smile faded; he realized my attention was mostly on the circle, not on him. For just an instant, anxiety flickered in his eyes. “My master offers gold to the sword-dancer called the Sandtiger.”

  There was a time I’d have given him my full attention at once. But now Del and I owned two-thirds of a cantina, and earning coin by dancing wasn’t quiet as vital as it had been. “Can we talk later? I’m a little busy.”

  “Of great urgency, my lord Sandtiger. My master waits to speak with you.”

  I didn’t answer at once. Too much noise. All the indrawn breaths of the onlookers reverberated as one tremendous hiss of shock and disbelief. Well, I could have warned them…I glanced at Del, automatically evaluating her condition. Her face bore a faint sheen
of sweat. She was sun-flushed, lips only slightly parted. Her breathing was even. Khalid hadn’t offered her much at all. He lay sprawled in the sand, dust sticking to every inch of bared flesh. His chest heaved as he sucked air.

  “He’ll never live this down,” Neesha observed. He looked at the robed, turbanned man. “What business have you?”

  “With my lord Sandtiger.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at the expression on Neesha’s face as he was dismissed so swiftly.

  Del turned and looked at me. The sword hung loosely in her hand. She hunched one shoulder almost imperceptibly—a comment; an answer to my unspoken question on whether she was all right—and then she nodded, only once; an equally private exchange.

  I turned back to the messenger. A servant, I was certain, but not just any servant. Whoever his master was, his wealth was manifest. And in the South, wealth is synonymous with power.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  The hazel eyes were fixed on Del as she cleaned her sword. Onlookers huddled and muttered among themselves, settling bets. None were winners, I knew—not even my foolish son. Only the one wise man who knew her better than most. Many drifted away from the circle entirely, away from the woman who had defeated a man in a supremely masculine occupation with supremely “masculine” skill.

  Khalid got up, shook sand out of his hair and, red-faced, inclined his head. Del nodded back, accepting his retirement from the circle.

  I smiled a little. The servant looked back at me. He didn’t smile at all. “A woman,” he said. Two words full of disbelief, shock, a trace of anger as well. Underlying hostility: a woman had beaten a man.

  “A woman,” I agreed blandly. “And what is it you wish to speak to me about?”