Sword Maker-Sword Dancer 3 (37 page)

was nutty, flaky, delicious. "Like you, I've got another."

"But yours is a jivatma."

Alric's tone was odd. I glanced at him, glanced at the sheathed sword, then looked back at him. Recalled it was Alric who'd first told me about jivatmas.

About Northern blooding-blades, and how rank in the North was reckoned.

"Jivatma," I agreed. "Del took me to Staal-Ysta."

Blond brows swooped up. Then down. "Since you have a blooding-blade, I'm assuming you are a kaidin."

"I'm Southron," I said. "I'm a seventh-level sword-dancer. I don't need a fancy

name."

"But you carry a jivatma."

Irritably, I swallowed hot bread, then washed it down with aqivi. "Believe me,

Alric, I'd give it to you if I could. But the thrice-cursed thing won't let me."

Alric smiled. "If you enter a circle with a blooding-blade at your beck, no one

will defeat you." He paused thoughtfully. "Except maybe Del."

"No," I blurted.

"But she has a jivatma, too--"

I shook my head. "That's not what I meant. I meant, Del and I have done it once.

We'll never do it again."

Alric grinned. "You lost."

It stung, but only a little. "Nobody lost. Nobody won. Both of us nearly died."

I drank, then continued before he could ask any questions. "And as for taking my

sword into a circle--no. Not here at any rate--this is exhibition. I just don't

think it's fair."

Alric shrugged. "Then don't sing. An unkeyed jvatma isn't much more than a sword."

"It isn't like that." I accepted a second loaf. "You don't understand. This sword wasn't quenched properly, the first or second time."

"Second!" Alric's eyes widened. "You requenched your blade?"

"No choice," I muttered, biting into the second loaf. "The thing's a pain in the

rump, and I plan to replace it. I'll put this one away and use a Southron sword."

"There's a swordsmith here," he said. "With so many sword-dancers present, a smith would be a fool to ignore such a windfall. His name is Sarad, and he's set

up a smithy out by the circles."

"I'll see him tomorrow," I said, as Del came back with the girls.

A faint frown puckered her brow, though she gave nothing away in behavior.

The

girls joined their mother in preparing the meal, and Del came over to sit near

Alric and me.

"What's up?" I asked.

The puckered brow didn't smooth. "Can't you feel it? The weather is changing.

It

doesn't feel right."

Alric and I both glanced around, assessing daylight and temperature. The way the

day tasted, odd as it sounds.

"Cooler," Alric remarked. "Well, I won't complain. After living so long in the

South, I could use some Northern weather."

"This is the border." I shrugged. "Sometimes it's cool, sometimes hot."

"It was hot," Del said, "all of an hour ago. But now it's cooler.

Significantly

cooler; it just doesn't feel right."

I glanced up at the roof, which wasn't really a roof. A few spindly timber rafters remained, but most had rotted and fallen in, supplying wood for Lena's

cookfire. All four rooms were in similar shape, which left them mostly open to

the elements. No proper shade, but no cover, either. Alric had strung up a couple of blankets to provide a makeshift roof, but it wouldn't do much if the

weather did turn chancy.

Del just shook her head. "I feel something in my bones."

I arched unsubtle brows. "Getting along in years?"

She slanted me a glance. "One of us certainly is."

"Here." Lena handed clay bowls around with bread and mutton stew. "With the tribes coming in, we should have mutton enough to spare. And all the merchants,

too; we could live here for months."

I thought it unlikely they'd have to.

"I could set snares," Del offered, and instantly Felka and Fabiola wanted to accompany her.

It reminded me of something. For a moment I was swept away somewhere familiar,

and yet unknown; abruptly the feeling died, and I realized what I remembered.

Del offering to set snares while a tow-headed Borderer boy asked to help her.

Massou, Adara's son, who had hosted a Northern demon and nearly destroyed us all.

Loki. It was enough to make me shiver. Thank the gods for the Canteada, who had

sung them into a trap-circle and freed the Borderers.

"Later," Del promised the girls. "We'll see first if it's going to storm."

Lena cuddled the baby against her breasts. "At least this little one need not concern herself with where her meals are coming from."

Alric's eyes glinted. "Nor I, if it comes to it."

A gust of wind blew into the room, scattering handfuls of dust. A cool, damp-tasting wind, hinting at coming change. After months spent in the North, I

knew the promise well.

Del looked at me. "Rain."

Well, it was the border. A day's ride south of here and rain was almost an unknown thing.

"Maybe." I drank amnit.

"Rain," she said again, mostly to herself.

Alric looked overhead. Two blankets tied to rotting timbers, and the weather tasted of rain.

Lena shifted uneasily. Southron-born and bred, rain was not to be trusted, or understood very well. "Maybe we should look for a house with a roof."

Alric's blond hair swung against shoulder blades as he shook his head, still staring into the sky. "No roofs for people like us... the tanzeers have claimed

them all."

"All?" I asked. "There aren't that many people here--and there can't be that many tanzeers. Not yet."

Alric shrugged. "I looked. All the decent dwellings were claimed. We took the best we could find."

I set the bota aside. "Tell you what... I want to take a little walk anyway, just to check things out. I'll see what I can find in the way of better shelter.

If there is to be a storm, we might as well be prepared."

Alric rose. "I'll go to the merchants and buy more blankets, some skins... we can put up a makeshift roof."

Del shook her head as I glanced her way. "I'll stay and help Lena."

It surprised me a little. Del is not a woman for women's things, as she has so

often been at such pains to tell me. But neither is she a woman to ignore the needs of others; Lena had her hands--and belly--f with four children. Del never shirks assistance if she can offer any.

Well, it was fine with me. I didn't think Del would approve of me talking to a

swordsmith about another blade.

I left them all behind and headed out toward the circles. More wind kicked up as

I walked, gusting down through narrow alleyways and curling around corners to snatch at my burnous. Grit stung my face; I blinked to clear my eyes.

"Sandtiger? Tigerr."

I stopped, squinting, and turned. From out of a broken doorway stepped a Northerner, blond braids hanging to his waist. And a scar across his top lip.

"Garrod," I said, on a note of disbelief.

He grinned as he approached, blue eyes bright. "I never thought to see you again, once you and Del left the Canteada and went north." He sobered, recalling

the reasons. "Did Del settle her trouble?"

"Yes and no," I answered. "What are you doing here? Iskandar isn't exactly Kisiri."

He shrugged, hooking thumbs into a wide belt. His braids swung; dangling colored

beads rattled in the wind. "We started for Kisiri. Got about halfway there--but

then we heard about Iskandar; that people were coming here. I didn't know anything about any Oracle, or this promised messiah--at least, not right away--but I'd picked up a string of horses along the way. Since trading is my business, I wanted to go where I could buy or sell. Only a fool would ignore such an opportunity, and I've never been a fool."

Not lately, maybe. I hadn't been so sure before, when we'd briefly ridden together. Garrod was a horse-speaker, a man who had a knack with horses. He called it a kind of magic. He claimed he could talk to them, understand them, the way a man understands a man. I wasn't so certain that was true, but he did

have a way with them. I'd seen it in the stud.

"So, you didn't go on with Adara and her children after all." It surprised me a

little. Garrod had sworn he'd take them to Kisiri, but a man can change his mind.

Garrod grinned. "Oh, I went with them... by then I had no choice. The girl didn't give me any." And he shouted for Cipriana.

She came. So did Adara, her mother. And so did her brother, Massou.

I blinked in dull surprise, surrounded on the instant. They were clearly as startled, and certainly more pleased. I felt a little awkward: the last time I'd

spent any time with them, they'd been hosting hostile demons.

Bronze-haired, green-eyed Adara was flushed with color, which didn't quite agree

with her hair, but set her eyes aglint. She was oddly reserved, almost shy; I recalled, with a twinge of discomfort, she had hoped for affection from me.

But

it was Del who had it all; Adara had surrendered the field, but obviously recalled it.

Massou, blond and blue-eyed like his sister, was taller than I remembered.

Now

eleven, in place of ten; Cipriana was sixteen.

Cipriana was also pregnant.

Now I knew what Garrod meant about not having any choice. Women can do that to

you.

Like her mother, she was red-faced, but for a different reason. It didn't take

much to figure it out, either; she stepped up next to Garrod and twined fingers

into his belt. Pale hair was tied back from a face delicately rounded from pregancy., I saw again the Northern features that had reminded me of Del. A younger, softer Del. The Del before Ajani.

Garrod dropped an arm around her shoulder. "We're kinfolk now."

"So I can see," I said dryly.

"Is Del here?" Massou demanded.

"Del's here," I agreed. "We're a couple of streets over."

The boy's eyes lighted. "You could come here," he asserted.

Adara nodded. "You could. We have enough room. See?" She gestured toward the building.

"We're with friends," I explained.

Garrod shrugged. "Bring them."

"They have three small girls, and another on the way."

The horse-speaker grinned again. "We have one on the way." Which made Cipriana

blush.

"There is room," Adara said quietly. "I understand if you have no wish to share,

but there is room for you all."

Her manner was a mixture of emotions. Clearly she recalled how I had proved uninterested in her availability: a widow whose husband had been unable because

of bad health. It had taken courage for her to speak at all; I'd let her down gently, but no doubt it had been difficult. And then the loki had invaded her body, and her children, forcing them all into bizarre behavior.

She recalled it all, was embarrassed, and yet wanted my company, which embarrassed her yet again.

I looked past her at the building, thinking of the others. "Do you have a roof?"

Garrod shook his head. "The tanzeers have all the buildings with proper roofs."

"So I keep hearing." I glanced up at the graying sky. "I think there's a storm

brewing."

"But it's warm," Cipriana protested.

Massou disagreed. "Cool."

Garrod sniffed the wind, and frowned. "It smells almost like snow."

"Snow!" Adara was astonished. "Are you forgetting we come from a place not far

from here? We know the weather. It never snows on the border."

"It smells like something," I said. But nothing like the hounds.

Garrod still frowned. "I think I will see to the horses."

Cipriana lingered. "Do you still have the stud?"

"Of course."

"Oh." Her expression changed. The stud hadn't liked her much. Hadn't liked any

of them, once the loki had climbed inside.

"He'd be different, now," I told her.

"He bit me," Massou said.

"Yes, well, he had his reasons. He's bitten me, too, and I was never a loki."

Adara's color deepened. "I wish we could forget that."

"It wasn't you," I told her. "I know that, and so does Del. We don't blame you

for any of it."

"We could have killed you."

Or worse. But I didn't say it. "Let it go," I said quietly. "Don't let it eat at

you."

"Can I see Del?" Massou asked.

As always, I looked to Adara. There had been a time when she'd wanted her children to avoid us.

Adara, comprehending my hesitation, nodded at once, as if to dispell any hint of

her former reluctance. "Of course you may go, but only if invited."

"Del won't mind," I said. "I'm sure she'll be glad to see him."

"I want to go," the boy declared.

I gestured. "Two streets over, third house on the left."

Massou darted away.

Cipriana murmured something about finding Garrod and went away. Adara smiled at

me and stripped wind-teased hair out of eyes. "You look a little tired. Would you care for something to drink? Eat?"

"Just ate." I was oddly ill at ease. "How long will you be staying?"

"Until Garrod is ready to leave." She shrugged a little, hearing how dependent

it sounded. "He is a good man and treats Cipriana well. They care for one another. And it's easier for Massou and me to stay with them. I can help with the baby."

I smiled. "First grandchild."

Her eyes glowed. "Yes. Kesar's blood will be carried on."

She had buried her husband on the road from the border to Kisiri. A strong woman, Adara; as strong, in her own way, as Del. Borderers have to be.

Wind blew grit in our faces. It gave me an excuse. "Best go inside," I said.

Adara nodded absently, looking into my face intently. As if she sought an answer. I don't know what she saw. I don't know what she wanted. All I could do

was wait.

She smiled a little eventually, sensing my unease. She put a hand on my forearm.