Sword Born

Prima's tone was startled. "Don't you want to practice first? To test the blades?"

Del walked deliberately to the center, bent, set her sword alongside mine. Rising, she asked, "Why? If they are meant to break, they will. But I doubt that's what you want."

"Indeed not," the metri said testily. "This is to be an honorable engagement."

Herakleio grinned widely. "Then perhaps you would do better to excuse the Sandtiger. He has none."

"Enough," Del said sharply, taking position across from me.

I didn't look at Herakleio, but he knew whom I meant. "Say it."

But it wasn't Herakleio. Nihko said, "Dance."

Feet pounded, gripped, slid against tile; bodies bent; hands snatched, closed; blades came up from the ground. They met, rang, clashed, scraped apart, clashed again as we engaged. The blows were measured, but not so restrained that no damage would be done if one of us broke through. There is no sense in pulling back when one intends to win, or if one intends to learn. To do so alters the dance into travesty, with nothing learned and thus nothing gained even in victory.

We tested one another carefully. Last time we'd met it hadn't been sparring, hadn't been a contest to settle a complaint, but a dance against the magic that had infested my sword, that had wanted me as well. I had lost that dance, but in the losing I won. Del lured Chosa Dei out of my blade into hers, then purposefully broke her jivatma. We had not since then set foot in any kind of circle, being more concerned with surviving a journey by ship.

Now here we were, off that ship at last and on the soil of what I'd begun to believe actually was my homeland, dancing for real at the behest of a woman who had no idea what it meant to be what we were.

Or else she knew very well and used this dance to prove it.

The night was loud with sound, the clangor and screech of steel. As always, with Del and me, there was another element to the object, an aspect of the dance that elevated it above the common. We were that good together. In the circle. In bed.

–step –thrust –spin –

–catch blades –catch again –

–slide –step –thrust –

–parry –again –slash –

It was a long dance, one that leached from us all thoughts of the metri, her intentions, of Prima and her first mate, of Herakleio and his attitude. As always, everything else in the world became as water against oilcloth: shed off to pool elsewhere, while inside the circle, our dwelling, we stayed dry, and warm, and so focused as to be deaf and blind. But we were neither of us deaf or blind; we marked movement, responses, the slight flexing of muscle beneath taut flesh; heard the symphony of the steel, the rhythm of our breathing, the subtle sibilance of bare soles moving against stone.

–slash –catch –scrape –

–the shriek of steel on steel –

Walls of air, the metri had called it. My home was built of walls I fashioned in the circle, because only here could I define myself, could I find my worth in the world. Only here had I become a man. Not in the use of my genitals, a use once copious and indiscriminatory; nor in the language of my mouth, sometimes vulgar, always ready, but inside the heart, the soul. Inside the circle I was whatever I wished to be, and no one at all could alter that.

Except me.

And I had.

One day at Aladar's palace, when I had broken all the oaths.

"No-" Del said.

I grinned.

"Tiger-"

I laughed.

With an expression of determination, Del tried the move I'd chastised her for.

"Oh, Del-" Disgust. I couldn't help it. Because now I had no choice. I broke her guard, went in, tore the hilt from her hand. "What did I tell you?" I roared. "Did you think I was joking? That kind of move could get you killed!"

Furious, she bent and retrieved the sword. "Again."

"Del-"

"Again, curse you!"

Again. As she insisted.

I stepped back, renewed the assault. Saw Del begin the maneuver again. I moved to block it, break it, destroy it-and this time something entirely different happened. This time it was my sword that went crashing to the tile. And I was left nursing a wrenched thumb.

"What in hoolies was that?" I asked.

"The reason I created that maneuver."

"But I defeated it the first time."

"Not the second."

"You'd have been dead the first time. There wouldn't have been a second."

"Maybe," Del said, "maybe not. Not everyone fights like you."

"No one fights like me," I corrected with laborious dignity, then shook out my thumb.

"Shall I kiss it?" The irony was heavy.

I bared my teeth at her. "Not in front of witnesses."

"Stop," the metri said.

I turned toward her, startled by the hostility in her tone.

"You must begin again," she declared.

"Why?" I asked.

"One of you must win. Decisively."

"I did win," I explained. "I disarmed her."

"Then she disarmed you. "

I shook my head. "That doesn't count."

"Why not?" Del asked.

I shot her a disbelieving glance. "Because I'd have killed you. I broke your pattern. You'd be dead."

"But I broke your pattern the second time."

"Finish it," the metri commanded. "One of you must win decisively."

I displayed my thumb. "I have a slight disadvantage."

"Poor baby," Prima cooed.

The metri was relentless. "Is it not true that such impasses are settled in the circle?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then settle it. Now."

I glanced at Nihko. "I suppose you'll make me if I don't agree." A thought. "Or will your little ring protect me from your power, and therefore this threat is nothing but a bluff?"

But Nihko made no response. He wasn't even looking at me. He looked beyond me, beyond the wall, beyond the torchlight that bathed the terrace in gilt flickering swaths of ocher and ivory and bronze. I saw the whites of his eyes, the pallor of his face; saw with disbelief as he began to tremble.

"Sahdri, " he whispered, as if the word took all his breath.

The metri stood up abruptly from her chair. "You are not to be here! You and your kind are not to be here!"

I spun then, even as Del did, and we saw beyond the torches, walking softly upon the wall, a barefoot man in night-black linen.

And then I realized his feet were not touching the stone.

TWENTY-EIGHT

"YOU ARE not to be here!" the metri cried. "This ground is mine; you profane it! You soil it! You are not to be here!"

The man atop the wall-no, the man floating above the wall-paused, smiled, lifted a hand as if in benediction. Rings glinted on fingers, in brows, in ears, depended from his nostrils, pierced the flesh of his lower lip. In guttering torchlight, his shaven head writhed with blue tattoos.

Ah. One of those.

His tone was immensely conversational, lacking insult, offering no confrontation beyond the fact of his presence. "But I am here, because I choose to be here. And your tame ikepra can wield no power against me, even if I permitted." His dark eyes were rimmed in light borrowed from the flame. "Nihkolara Andros, you have been gone much too long. We have missed you. You must come back to us." For all the world like a doting relative.

A shudder wracked the first mate from head to toe. And then he dropped to his knees, bent at the waist, set his brow upon the ground. In clear tones, he said, "I cannot. I am ikepra."

The multitude of rings glinted in torchlight. "Forgiveness is possible."

Nihko shuddered again, hands digging into the soil. "I am ikepra."

"Forgiveness is possible," the man-Sahdri-repeated. His language was accented, but comprehensible. "You need only come with me now and begin the Rituals of Unsoiling."