Sword-Bound Page 9

  I shoved Dario behind me, toward Neesha, nearly slamming the child into the wall in an effort to sweep him clear of danger. I wasted a moment more tearing the no-longer-necessary silks from my body.

  Six to three. Not bad odds, when you consider Del and I are worth at least two to one when it comes to sword-dancing, probably more like three to one. Neesha was close. Sword fighting, however, is different, and it showed as the first eunuch pushed past Del to engage me and discovered discounting Del was as good as discounting life. He lost his.

  I heard Dario’s outcry behind me. I spared him a glance. He was fine with Neesha; my son, bless him, had automatically assumed the duty of keeping the boy blocked from the eunuchs. Dario, peering around Neesha, stared gape-mouthed, in shock, at Del. Grimly I smiled as Del engaged another eunuch while the remaining four came at me. It was my duty to keep them from reaching Neesha.

  When involved in a fight that may end your life at any moment, you don’t have much time to keep tabs on what anyone else is doing. It is deadly to split your concentration. And yet I found mine split thrice. There was Dario, of course; I was certain the eunuchs wouldn’t hurt him, but it was entirely possible he might not duck a sword swipe meant for me. But there was also Del, and Neesha. I knew better than to worry about Del—she’d proved her worth with a sword already, even as she did again. So I didn’t worry about Del, exactly, but I did keep an eye on her just to make sure she wasn’t in any trouble. I’d learned that was all right in the parlance of our partnership; often enough, and even now, she did the same for me. It’s an equality two sword-dancers must share if they are working together in the circle. Ours was an equality fashioned by shared danger and shared victory, in the circle and out of it. And I’d learned that, in the circle, in the sword-dance, because of Del, gender no longer mattered.

  Simply put: You’re good, or you’re dead.

  Neesha, I worried about—but only for a moment or two. The grim determination in his face told me he was ready for what fate threw at him.

  My blade was already bloodied; I’d pinked one man in the arm and the other in the belly. Neither wound would stop either guard. So I tried again.

  Behind me, I heard Dario speaking to Neesha in a shrill tone. In pain? A quick glance: He seemed to be all right, just shocked and frightened by the violence. Neesha shoved him once again behind his body.

  Beyond the eunuchs, I saw Del in rose-colored robes. I heard the whine and whistle of her sword as she brought it across the corridor in a two-handed sweep intended to relieve her opponent of his head. She is tall. She is strong. I have seen her do it before.

  I saw her do it again, although it was only in a series of disjointed glances; I had my own head to concern myself with at the moment. It remained attached, but only just; one of the eunuchs parried my sword while his partner slashed at my neck. Braced, I jerked my head aside and leaped sideways even as I used the strength of my wrists to smash aside the other sword. My size is often a blessing.

  My shoulder rammed into the corridor wall, sticky, smelling of blood. As I pushed off the wall, I realized I also was sticky and smelled of blood. The beheaded body had drenched me.

  “Son of a dog!” one of the eunuchs shouted at me.

  He’d have done better to save his breath; Del, working contrapuntally against my own sword-song, killed the mouthy man while I took out his fellow guard.

  Six dead, three standing: Del, Neesha, and I.

  And one more slumped against the wall though only in shock, brown eyes nearly as wide open as his mouth: Dario.

  I spat blood. Mine; I’d bitten my lip. But the beheaded man’s blood was splattered across Del’s face as well as mine. Dario, blocked by Neesha, had been missed entirely.

  Del reached out and caught a handful of the silk that enfolded Dario. “Come.” She dragged him toward the open door. When she takes that tone, no one argues with her.

  We stumbled out into the sunlight, blinked, squinted, determined our precise location in relation to the palace entrance, and once determined, we started running. Even Dario.

  Without Del’s help.

  No more fluttering past the gate guards like a clutch of colorful hatchlings. I took one thin arm in my hand and let Neesha take the other; a moment later we were running again, Dario in tow.

  Horses waited for us in the market, but only three. I sheathed my sword and threw Dario up on the rump of Del’s horse even as she sheathed and swung up, then I jumped aboard my stud and headed him through the winding alleyways with Del (and Dario) in the lead, Neesha right behind. Hooves clicked against stall supports. I gritted my teeth and waited for the anticipated result…and heard the shouted curses of an angry merchant as voluminous folds of canvas collapsed into the alley.

  Ahead of me, Dario was an orange bud against Del’s full-blown rosy bloom. Silk snapped and rippled as she took her gelding through the alleys at a dead run, putting him over handcarts, bushel baskets, piles of rolled rugs and water jugs. Dario, clinging, was engulfed in clouds of silk. But somehow, he hung on.

  Hung on to a woman.

  We stopped running our mounts when we left Rez behind and entered the desert between the two domains. We stopped walking them when we reached the oasis.

  “Water stop.” I unhooked foot from stirrup and slid off the stud, unslung the goatskin bota from the saddle and headed for the spring. “Can’t stay for long, Dario. Drink up, now, then we’ll go on to your father.”

  The boy was exhausted. His stay in the dungeon hadn’t done much for his color or spirits, no matter how hard he tried to show us only fierce determination. Del, still in the saddle, offered him a steadying hand as he tried to dismount; he ignored it. And I ignored his startled outcry as he slid off the horse’s rump and landed in the sand on his.

  Del unhooked and jumped down. Sunlight flashed off the hilt of her sword. I saw Dario staring at it as well as at Del. No more shock. No more gaping mouth. Consideration, instead. And doubt. But I didn’t think it was self-doubt.

  Del was at the spring with her own bota. Dario still hunched on the sand: a gleaming pile of orange silk. “You’re burning daylight,” I told him as I levered the bucket up. “Do your share, boy—water the horses.”

  “Woman’s work.” He spat it out between thin lips.

  “Boy’s work, if he wants to drink.”

  Dario got up slowly, tore the offending silks from his bedraggled body and marched across the sand to the well. He snatched the bucket out of Del’s hands. An improvement, I thought, in willingness if not in manners. But as he tipped the bucket up to drink, Neesha stepped close and took it out of his hands.

  My son said firmly, “Horses first.”

  Dario was so angry he wanted to spit. But, desert-born, he knew better; he didn’t waste the moisture. He just marched back to the horses and grabbed reins to lead them to the spring.

  That’s when I saw the blood.

  “Hoolies, the boy’s hurt—” I blurted even as Neesha said something similar. I threw my bota down and made it to Dario in two steps. Startled, he spun as I grabbed a shoulder. He lost the reins, but the horse, smelling water, only went as far as Del and the spring. “Where are you cut?” I asked.

  “But—I’m not—” He twisted, trying to see the blood. “The man she killed spurted all over the corridor—”

  “But not all over you,” I said flatly. “You were behind Neesha—”

  “Tiger, stop. Leave him alone.” Del was at my side. “Turn your backs. Both of you.”

  “What—?” Neesha asked.

  “Turn your back.” But even as we did, she locked her hands in the waistband of Dario’s jodhpurs.

  “No!” Dario screamed it; I spun back around with Del’s name in my mouth as I heard the jodhpurs tear.

  “A girl,” Del said. “A girl—”

  Dario clutched jodhpurs against belly. He—she?—was yelling vicious khemi epithets at Del. Also at me and Neesha.

  “Bascha—” I began.

  “I look
ed, Tiger, and unless the khemi have taken to mutilating their boys, this boy is not a boy at all.” She glared at the quivering Dario. “How in hoolies can you spout that khemi filth, girl? How do you justify it?”

  “Oh, hoolies,” Neesha murmured, closing his eyes.

  “I am khemi,” Dario quavered. “The Hamidaa’n tells us women are abominations, unclean vessels placed upon the earth by demons. They are the excrescence of all our former lives.” Tears spilled over.

  “That is no excuse—” I began.

  “Tiger.” Del cut me off with a sharp gesture. Her expression had altered significantly. Gone was the anger, the shock, the outrage. In its place I saw compassion. “Tiger, it is an excuse—or, at least, a reason for this masquerade. And now I want you both to go away. There is something Dario and I must attend to.”

  “Away—?”

  She glared at both of us. “Away.”

  Neesha and I went to the far side of the spring and sat down to wait. He said, “I don’t understand. He’s a she?”

  “I guess Del would know,” I muttered, “she being a woman.”

  It didn’t take long. I heard the sounds of silk being torn, low-voiced conversation from Del, muted responses from Dario. He—she—had undergone a tremendous change in attitude.

  Well, I might, too, if someone discovered I was a woman. Especially at my age.

  “Water the horses,” Del told Dario, and then came over to the well and motioned us a few steps away.

  We went. “She’s not hurt?” I asked.

  “No. Not hurt.” She was more serious than usual, almost pensive. She hooked sunbleached hair behind one ear. “Dario is not a boy; neither is Dario a girl. Not anymore. Her courses have begun.”

  I opened my mouth. Shut it. “Ah,” Neesha and I said in startled discovery at the same time.

  Del’s jaw was rigid. “When we get to Hafiz, I’m going with you to see Dario’s father.”

  “You can’t, bascha. He doesn’t know you’re a woman.”

  Her head came up, and I looked directly into a pair of angry blue eyes. “Do you think I care? His beloved son is a woman, Tiger!”

  I glanced over at Dario, patiently holding the bucket for two horses in competition for its contents. But I could tell by the rigidity of her posture that she knew full well we were discussing her. It would be hard not to, in view of Del’s shouting.

  I looked back at Del. “You’re sure?”

  “What has been done to Dario transcends the need for Southron modesty or beliefs,” Del said flatly. “At least it does for me.”

  I sighed. “I know, bascha; me, too.”

  Neesha said, “But he—she—seemed willing enough to spout all that nonsense.”

  Del’s smile wasn’t one; not really. “Women do—and are made to do—many strange things to survive in a man’s world,” she said.

  That he understood. “Like you.”

  “Like me.” She unsheathed her sword with a snap of both wrists and automatically I moved back a step. “I want to go with you to see Dario’s father because I intend to put him to the question.”

  I looked at the sword uneasily. “With that?”

  “If necessary. Right now, I intend only to tell Dario how I learned to kill.”

  “Why?” I asked as Del turned away. “So she can learn, too?”

  Del’s answer was whipped over her left shoulder. “No. Because she asked.”

  Chapter 10

  DEL AND NEESHA ACCOMPANIED ME as I took Dario back to her father. I hadn’t bothered to argue the point any longer; Del’s mind was made up. And I was beginning to think she’d made up Dario’s mind for her.

  It wasn’t easy getting in, of course. The palace servants were men, naturally. Neesha they didn’t mind. But the sight of Del’s striding defiantly through their halls was enough to make them choke on their prejudice. I imagine the sight of any woman might have done the trick, but Del—beautiful, deadly Del—was enough to fill their khemi nightmares with visions of fair-haired demons.

  Dario walked between Del and me. In a complete change of gender allegiance, she’d turned away from me on the ride to Dumaan to give Del her exclusive attention. Poor girl: all those years spent in a khemi household with no women—no women—present to answer questions.

  At first I’d wondered if Dario had even known she was female; when I’d asked the question, she told me only that a sympathetic eunuch had admitted the truth after swearing her to eternal secrecy. It was a khemi rite to expose female children at birth, thus removing all excrescence from the Hamidaa faith.

  “But you exist,” I’d protested, “Your father bedded a woman in order to get you!”

  “A son. A son.” She’d answered me very quietly. “Once a year a khemi lies with a woman in order to get a son.” Brown eyes had flicked sidelong to mine. “I am my father’s son.”

  “And if he knew the truth?”

  “I would be taken to the desert. Exposed. Even now.”

  I hadn’t said much after that. Dario’s muted dignity moved me. All those years…

  Now, as the four of us walked down the corridor toward the audience tent, I knew what Del intended to do. She stood before the enthroned khemi tanzeer of Hafiz—the richest man in this finger of the Southron desert—and told him she was taking his daughter from him.

  He flinched. He flinched. And I realized, looking at the expression of abject terror on his face, he’d known all along.

  “Why?” I demanded. “Why in the name of all the gods did you never tell Dario you knew?”

  He was not old, but neither was he young. I watched his face undergo a transformation: from that of a proud Southron prince with an eagle’s beak of a nose, to that of a tired, aging man surrendering to something he had hidden from for too long.

  His hands trembled as he clutched the arms of his throne. “I am khemi,” he said hoarsely. “Hamidaa’n tells us women are abominations, unclean vessels placed upon the earth by demons.” His brown eyes were transfixed by Dario’s ashen face. “They are the excrescence of all our former lives.” His voice was a thread of sound and near to breaking. “I will touch nothing of women, speak to no women, admit nothing of women into my thoughts. I am khemi.” Then he drew himself up and, with an immense dignity, stared directly at Del. “How else am I to cherish a daughter while also remaining constant to my faith?”

  Neesha, behind me, leaned close and murmured, “Does Del mean her to come with us?”

  All I could do was shrug.

  “A faith such as this excrescence does not deserve constancy.” Del’s tone was very cool. “She is a girl, not a boy; a woman, now. No more hiding, tanzeer. No more hiding her. And if you intend to force Dario from her true self, I swear I will take her from you. In the North, we do not give credence to such folly.”

  He thrust himself out of the throne. “You will take her nowhere, Northern whore! Dario is mine!”

  “Is she?” Del countered. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Dario!” The tanzeer descended two of the three dais steps. “Dari—surely you know why I never told you. Why I had to keep it secret.” He spread both hands in a gesture of eloquent helplessness. “I had no choice.”

  Dario’s thin face was pinched. There were circles under her eyes. “Choices,” she said, “are sometimes difficult to make. And, once made, you must live with them.” She sighed and scrubbed at a grimy cheek, suddenly young again. “You made yours. Now I must make mine.” She looked at Del. “Tell him what you told me—how it is for a woman in the North. A woman who is a sword-dancer.”

  Del smiled a little. She faced the tanzeer squarely. Over her left shoulder, rising from her harness, poked the hilt of her sword. “There is freedom,” she said, “and dignity, and the chance to be whatever you wish. I wished to become a sword-dancer, a sword-singer, in order to fulfill a pact I made with the gods. I apprenticed. I studied. I learned. And I discovered that in the circle, in the sword-dance, there was freedom such as no one else can know, an
d also a terrible power. The power of life, and of death.” Again, she smiled a little. “I learned what it is to make a choice; to choose life or death for the man who dances against me. A man such as the Sandtiger.” She cocked her head briefly in my direction. “I don’t kill needlessly. That is a freedom I do not choose to accept. But at least I know the difference.” She paused. “What does Dario know?”

  “What does Dario need to know?” he countered bitterly. “How to kill? Needlessly or otherwise?”

  “In the North, at least she will have a choice. In the South, as a khemi—as a Southron woman—she has no choice at all.”

  Neesha leaned close again. “She means to take her with us.”

  Dario stared at her father. In a whisper, she asked what he could offer.

  He stared at Del for a very long moment, as if he tried to decide what words he had that would best defeat her own. Finally, he turned to Dario. “What you have had,” he told her evenly. “I have nothing else to give.”

  Dario didn’t even hesitate. “I choose my father.”

  I thought surely Del would protest. I nearly did. But I said nothing when Del merely nodded and turned to go out of the tanzeer’s presence.

  “Wait,” he said. “There is the matter of payment.”

  Del swung around. “Dario’s safety is payment enough.”

  “Uh, Del—” I began.

  “Payment.” The tanzeer tossed me a leather pouch heavy with coin. I rattled it: gold. I know the weight. The sound.

  Dario stood between them both but looked at Del. “Choices are difficult,” she said. “You offered me the sort of life many women would prefer. But—you never asked if I thought my father loved me.”

  I saw tears in Del’s blue eyes. Only briefly—Del rarely cries. And then she smiled and put out a callused hand to Dario, who took it. “There is such a thing as freedom in the mind,” Del told her. “Sometimes, it is all a woman has.”

  Dario smiled. And then she threw herself against Del and hugged her, wrapping thin brown arms around a sword-dancer’s silk-swathed body.