TWENTY-SIX

A SPIRE OF stone tore ahole in the sky, punching upward like a fist in challenge to the gods. I poised upon the foremost knuckle of that fist, aware of the breath of those gods caressing naked flesh.

Caress. Keraka. The living embodiment of the gods-descended, sealed by spell or wish into the infant's flesh before it even knew the world, was yet safe in its mother's womb. All the colors of wine, all the shapes of the mind, staining the fragile shell before the sun so much as could warm it.

But there was none on my body. I was free of the blemish also called caress; was nothing more within or of myself than stranger, than foreigner, lacking the knowledge of gods-descended, the gifts of the Stessoi, the birthright of the Eleven.

What was I but a man born of a womb unknown to any save the woman and the man who together made a child, but who could or would not nurture that child; so that he was raised a slave in the hyorts of the Salset?

The spire beneath me shook. Bare feet grasped at stone. Wind beat into my eyes, blinded me with tears.

Skandi, they said, had been smoke made solid, then broken apart again.

If I was not to lose the spire, if I was not to let it shake me off its fist, I would have to sacrifice my own. Not to die, but to survive; not to destroy flesh, but to preserve it.

There was wind enough to do it, if I let it carry me.

There was power enough to fly, if I let myself try.

I stretched, leaned, felt the wind against my palms. Closed my eyes so I could see.

Was lifted-

"Tiger?" A hand came down on bunched, sweat-sheened shoulder. "Tiger-wake up."

The spire fell away, crumbled to dust beneath me, took me down with it –

"Tiger."

–and all the bones shattered, all the flesh split into pulp-

"Tiger-wake up!"

I lurched, twisted, sat up as the fingers closed tightly into muscle taut as wire. I stared into darkness, aware of the noise of my breathing, the protests of my heart.

The metri's heart was ailing. And I might be her grandson.

"What is it?" Del asked.

All around me on the ground the stone of the spire was broken.

She got up then, crawled over me, got out of bed, fumbled around in the darkness, hissed a brief oath as she fumbled again. But I heard the metallic strike-and-scratch, smelled the tang, saw the first flare of spark as she used flint and steel to light the candle in its pottery cup.

She held the cup up high so the light spilled over me. "Gods," she whispered, "what's wrong with you?"

I blinked then, and squinted, then shook my head to banish the visions. "Bad dream."

"You look scared out of your wits," Del said dubiously. "Rather like the stud when he's really spooked: all white of eye, and stiff enough to shatter his bones."

Shattered bones.

"Don't," I said simply, then swung my legs over the edge of the bed so my feet were flat on the floor. I hunched there, elbows set into thighs, the heels of my hands scouring out my eyes. "Just-a bad dream."

Del set the candle-cup down on the linens chest, then came to sit beside me. "What was it?"

I shook my head. "I don't know." I looked up then, still squinting against the flame. "I've had rather a lot to think about, lately."

"Magic," she said grimly.

I began to object-magic was not something I gave much thought to-then refrained. Magic was part of it; Nihkolara was more than priest, and he had proved it. Time and time again, simply by putting his hand on me. Time and time again my body had warned me before he touched me, and I had refused to listen.

Some people, the priest-mage had said, were more sensitive to magic. It made them ill, he said, like certain foods or herbs.

"Magic," I muttered, and closed my hand around the necklet with its weight of sandtiger claws, and one silver ring.

Del was silent a long moment. Then, very quietly, "Do you believe he's right?"

I knew whom she meant. "No."

"In your heart."

The pounding, spasming heart. "No."

"All right-in your soul."

I laughed a little. "Just how many pieces of my anatomy do you want me to consult before you get the answer you want?"

"How about in your earlobe?"

I grinned, leaned into her with a shoulder even as she leaned back. "He has rings in his earlobes, our blue-headed first mate."

She nodded. "You always swear you don't believe in magic-"

"I said I don't like it. There's a difference."

"So, you mean you don't believe in this magic. This specific magic."

"I don't necessarily believe I have it, no."

"But-"

"But," I said, overriding her, "if what Nihko says is true, it doesn't mean I have it. It means I'm sensitive to it."

"But he has called you ioSkandic."

"I suspect Nihko has called me a lot of things."

"Besides all that. You have a history of personal experience with magic. Shall I name all the incidents?"

"Let's not," I suggested; likely it would fill six volumes to do so. "But reacting to magic doesn't mean I have any magic myself."

"Even after hosting Chosa Dei?"

"Hosting a sorcerer does not make the body of itself powerful. Only powerful by proxy." I looked at my fingernails, which had often indicated the state of my body while infested with the sorcerer who considered himself a god. They were whole, normal, not black or curling, or missing. "I can't work any kind of spells, Del. You know that."

"You sang your jivatma to life."

"So did you sing yours to life," I reminded her. "Does that make you a sorceress; or is the tool –in this case, the sword-the embodiment of magic?"

"No," Del said decisively. "I am not a sorceress."

"There you are, bascha. You don't like the idea any more than I do."

"But what if it were true? That you have magic?"

"Then I guess I'd be a sorcerer."

"You say that so lightly."

Because I had to, or admit how much the prospect frightened me. "Do you want me to say it in a hushed whisper? Shall I go out onto the terrace, thrust my right fist and sword into the air and shout 'I have the power!'? like some melodramatic fool?"

"Well," she said, "I suppose being melodramatic is better than being mad."

"Which is the problem," I pointed out. "Here in Skandi, anyone with magic is considered mad, and sent away to this lazaret place."

"Is that what you're afraid of?"

"What, being mad? Oh, hoolies, some people would swear I am even without benefit of Skandic blood-if I have any-"

"Oh, Tiger, of course you're Skandic!"

"-simply because I have the gehetties to suggest I am the messiah who is to change the sand to grass," I finished. "Remember Mehmet? And the old hustapha? That deep-desert tribe more than willing to believe I am the one they worship?"

"And my brother," she said glumly. "Who was, according to Southron belief, the Oracle."

"Meant to announce the coming of the jhihadi." I nodded. "And so he announced me. And look at what it got him. They murdered him."

Del sighed deeply. "Likely they'd murder you, too."

"If we went back South? Oh, absolutely. If the religious zealots didn't get me, if the borjuni didn't kill me for whatever reward there must be on my head, surely the sword-dancers would track me down."

"Abbu Bensir?"

"I have dishonored the codes of Alimat, not to mention betrayed the faith and trust of our shodo," I said. "Abbu would call me out in the blink of an eye, except there'd be no circle drawn, no dance, no rituals of honor. He'd just do his best to execute me as quickly as possible."

"And if he failed?"

I shrugged. "Someone else would step forward."

Her voice was very quiet. "But if you had magic, no one could defeat you."

"I have magic," I declared firmly. "Sword magic. Just give me a blade, and I'll wield it."

"Then why," Del began, "are you so afraid?"

"Am I?"

"You didn't see your face just now when I lighted the candle."

"Bad dreams bring out the worst in anyone, bascha. Remember who it is I sleep with? I could tell you all the times she's had bad dreams. I never suggested she was afraid of anything… likely because she'd have knifed me in the gullet."

Del scoffed. "I'd have done no such thing." She thought it over. "Maybe planted an elbow."

"At the very least. Anyway, the point is I don't believe I have any magic, be it Skandic magic, Southron magic, or even Northern magic-which is buried with my jivatma anyway, back beneath those heaps of rocks in the middle of the Punja."

"You could always dig it up."

"I don't want to dig it up. I don't want any magic. I don't want to be a messiah, or mad, or anything other than what I am, which is a-" And I stopped.

"Sword-dancer," Del finished softly, with something akin to sorrow. Because she understood what it meant, to know myself other than what I had been after laboring so long to become more than a chula. "In Skandi," she said, "you may be a grandson, and heir to wealth, power, position. No magic is necessary, any more than a sword-dance."

"You're telling me to stay. To let the metri name me her heir."

"I'm pointing out potentials."

"Herakleio may have something to say about that."

"Herakleio is a boy."

"Herakleio is-" The door opened abruptly, and there he was. "-here, " I finished. Then, "Knocking would be nice."

"Knocking wastes time," he replied. "Come out onto the terrace. Simonides has set the torches out for us."

"That must be very charming," I said, "but why am I to go out to the terrace, and why has he set torches out there for us?"

"The better to see by," he retorted, "while we dance." The wooden practice blade was in his strong young hand. Green eyes glinted hazel in candlelight. "Come out, Sandtiger. The metri wishes you to make me a man. Perhaps it is time I permitted you to try."

" 'Try'?" I asked dryly. "Are you suggesting you may fail in the attempt?"

He displayed good teeth. "I may already be a man. Shall we go and discover it?"

"It takes more than one dance, you know."

"Of course," he agreed, "as it takes more than one man in her bed for a woman to fully understand what it is to be a woman."

I felt Del stiffen beside me into utter immobility. That kind of comment had gotten me into plenty of trouble during the early days of our relationship. But then she had been the one who hired me, and had the right to disabuse me of such notions as she saw fit; now she was a guest in the metri's house and would not abuse the hospitality by insulting the woman's kin.

There are more ways than verbal of insulting another. I stood up, grabbed my practice blade from where it was propped against the wall. "Fine," I said. "Let's dance."

Imagine a sheet of ice, pearlescent in moonglow. Imagine a rim of rock made over into a wall surrounding the sheet of ice. Imagine a necklet of flames spaced evenly apart like gemstones on a chain, whipped into flaring brilliance by the breeze coming out of the night. Imagine the humped and hollowed angles of domes and arches and angles, demarcations blurred by wind-whipped torches into impression, not substance. Imagine the solidified wave of the world running outward beyond the wall as if upon a shore, then pouring off the invisible edge into the cauldron of the gods.

It was glory. It was beauty. And I walked upon it with a sword in my hand, albeit made of wood instead of beloved steel. But it didn't matter. A blade is a blade. The truth of its power lies in the hand that employs it.

Simonides, either as directed by Herakleio, or intuitively understanding the requirements of the moment, had taken care to set the torches properly. The stakes had been driven into a series of potted plants, so they were anchored against the breeze. The pots themselves had been set at equidistant points atop the curving wall, or tucked into niches formed by the architecture of the dwelling itself. Herakleio and I inhabited the terrace proper, swept clean of sand and grit and other windblown debris. White tile glowed, showing no blemish, no seams.

It was not a dance. Nor was it sparring. Herakleio didn't yet know enough to be capable of either. What he desired was contact, a way of exorcising the demon residing in him, given life by his fear that the metri might die, leaving him alone and perhaps unnamed; leaving him to deal with the only man on the island who might comprise a threat.

I gave him that contact until he was gasping, flooded with sweat even as the wind dried it; until he bent over in a vain attempt to regain a full complement of air within his lungs. Eventually he let the blade fall and stood there, bent, panting, hands grasping thighs to hold himself upright.

At last he looked at me. "Water," he rasped. "There." A flopping hand indicated a jar set atop the wall next to one of the potted torches.

Too weary to walk, was he? Or simply accustomed to giving orders?

Or, possibly, offering it to me because I was sweating as well.

Before I could decide which it might be, someone else took up the jar. I knew those hands; knew the woman who settled the jar against one hip as she stepped over the wall.

Herakleio, looking up at last, saw her and knew her, too.

She had put off the long linen tunic and wore for the first time since leaving the ship the garb I knew best of all: pale leather tunic embroidered with blue-dyed leather laces at the hemline, neckline, and short, capped sleeves. The sheer linen tunics of Skandi left little to imagine, but somehow this tunic, even made of heavier leather, gave the impression of nakedness far more than Skandic garb suggested. For one, the hem hit Del at the midline of her thighs. That left a lot of leg showing, long limbs that were, for all their femininity, sculpted of muscle refined by the circle, by the requirements of a life built upon survival in the harshest dance of all. And though the arms had been bared before by the Skandic tunics, now it was clear they matched the legs. The context had altered.

Del is not elegant, not as it might commonly be described. She is too strong for it, too determined in her movements, which are framed on athleticism and ability, not on how such movements might be perceived by a man and thus refined as a tool to draw the eyes. Del didn't need elegance, nor a tool; she drew the eyes because of the honesty of her body, the purity of a spirit honed by obsession: the brutal need to be better, lest being lesser kill her.

She had braided back her hair into the plait most often worn when she stepped into the circle. The shadows upon her face were made stark in relief by flame and the movement of the light, the contours and angles of strong bone beneath her flesh sharpened beauty into steel. Herakleio, who believed he had seen Del that night in the winehouse, discovered all at once he had never seen her at all.

She took the jar off her hip and handed it to me, eyes locked onto Herakleio. It was a message, though he didn't comprehend it. I smiled, raised the jar to my mouth, took several swallows of cool, sweet water. Then lowered it and looked across at Herakleio, who now stood upright with his shoulders set back, forcibly easing his breathing into something approaching calmness. Beneath Del's cool gaze, being male, there was nothing else he could do.

I drank again, then held out the jar in Herakleio's direction. He would have to come get it. "Here. And I think I'll sit this one out, if you don't mind. The old man needs a rest."

Herakleio, who had taken the steps necessary to reach the jar, looked at me hard as he took it. It was clear to anyone's eyes that I was not in need of a rest; the daily rituals on Prima Rhannet's ship and here on the terrace had restored much of my fitness. "But if you sit this one out, there is no dance."

"This isn't a dance," I explained. "This is an exercise. In futility, perhaps." I grinned, offering the sword. "Del will take my place."

She accepted the blade, looked expectantly at Herakleio. Who still hadn't drunk.

"Her?" he asked.

"Me," she confirmed quietly.

"But-"

"Drink," she said, "or don't. But move. Waste no more time, lest you begin to stiffen. Because then you will be easy to beat, and I prefer a challenge. Nothing is gained otherwise; time is merely lost."

Herakleio's response was to stuff the jar into my arms, to turn on his heel, to stalk out to the center of the terrace.

"Fool," Del murmured, and followed.

Me, I sat down on the wall and drank some more, enjoying the prospect of seeing the Northern bascha beat the hoolies out of a big, strong young Skandic buck who was also an idiot.

Wondering, as I settled, if I had ever been so obnoxious as Herakleio Stessa.