"Not yet," I answered slowly.
"You?"
We both knew the answer to that. "You're saying if I employed it now, she would hand me the household and the future of the Stessoi."
"She would expect you to take them."
"And Herakleio?"
Del lay very still beside me. "The first ten times you and he spar with live steel, be very careful."
"And the eleventh?"
"By the eleventh, either he will have acknowledged that you will always defeat him …"
"Or?"
"Or you will be dead."
In a matter of ten days, Herakleio had learned he had the body, the reflexes, the power, to be what I was. In a matter of moments, in the face of the metri's announcement that I was her grandson, he had learned he needed the mind and determination as well as the body. Because he believed now the metri favored me, and the only way he might regain that favor was not to replace me, but to become me.
The implications of this conviction astonished me. Not the motivation-the metri played us all like counters on a board; not the impetus-she had moved him to precisely this position on that board. But that he understood and acknowledged what it was she wanted of the game, and that she justified her approach because she believed it required.
And it astonished me also that he accepted it instead of railing against it as a spoiled godling might.
Herakleio may not have believed in her certainty for himself. But clearly he had done more than merely exist in the metri's household; he had learned her mind. Until now, apparently, he had never attempted to invoke and employ that knowledge. Until now, apparently, he had never felt the need.
Beyond the mechanics of technique, a sword-dancer is not required to know why an opponent moves the way he moves. Only that he does move, only when he will move, so he may anticipate and counter that move, or remove the potential for it before the idea of the move exists within the opponent's mind.
Herakleio asked for Del. He did it with premeditation, and with a deliberate shrewdness I hadn't anticipated. My opponent had won the initial pass; my first move was countered before it occurred to me I might need to make it.
He asked for Del not because he believed it would hurt me if he believed she was better-he was, surprisingly, less petty than he was clever-but because Del of anyone in the world knew best how to fight me. Knew best how to defeat me.
This move made him better than clever, and therefore dangerous.
I'd made the mistake of not judging Herakleio shrewd enough to see the option. I did not make the mistake of assuming he'd offer no contest if it came to a dance with the Stessa legacy on the line, nor did I make the assumption he could not win. Because on any day, in any circle, any man might win.
Or woman.
Abbu Bensir, on our first day in the training circle beneath the implacable eye of the shodo of Alimat, had made such assumptions about a boy with fewer than twenty years to his twenty-five; with weeks at Alimat when Abbu boasted years; with a wooden blade in a hand that had not yet wielded steel.
Abbu Bensir had lost that dance and nearly his life.
While I, in disbelief as the man lay choking from a partially crushed throat, asked what manner of magic had stood in my place, because surely there was no other way I might have defeated Abbu.
The shodo, an immensely patient and practical man, had upon the instant lost all patience and told me in no uncertain terms the only magic any man needed was that of his mind and heart; that no other existed, lest he weaken that mind and heart by setting crutches beneath them.
From that day forward the only magic in my life had been pure skill, determination, and the technique to employ both using the context I understood: I was born to and of the sword, and no other power would ever control me beyond my ability to use the sword.
I didn't believe Herakleio could defeat me. But neither had Abbu believed I could defeat him.
And so I won the second pass, because I accepted as truth what another might, in disbelief, name falsehood. I would not be defeated by an accident of misassumption, but by carefully constructed design, correct execution-and luck.
Technique, timing, talent. Two could be taught, refined. One could only be born. But talent without focus, without determination, without obsessive need, is wild, unchanneled, and therefore diluted. Easier to be defeated. Easier to succumb to the ravages of emotion, of excess passion, instead of controlling and using the power that could fuel technique and timing.
Del, who had more insight about people than anyone I knew, was training Herakleio. Del, who had an even greater insight into the workings of my technique, timing, and talent, was teaching Herakleio how to comprehend and counter all three.
And unlike anyone else, he had the physical tools to do it.
Unlike anyone else save Del. Who had done it once in a circle on Staal-Ysta, even as I had done it to her in the self-same circle.
We were a long time removed from that circle and the circumstances that put us into it. But the bones remembered. The flesh recalled. The mind retreated from the brutal honesty of that dance, because in its unyielding purity it had nearly killed us both.
And each day, as Herakleio learned from Del, he also learned from me. It was a task set before me by the woman who was, she said, my grandmother; who wanted to put into her place the man best suited to it; who believed the acceptance and execution of the task marked a boy's passage into manhood. Herakleio and I, nearly two decades apart in age, were nonetheless children in the eyes of the woman who was agelessness incarnate. And in the completion of the task, we each of us would have embraced her convictions if for differing reasons: Herakleio to prove he was worthy of her place; and me to prove he was worthy of her place.
It wasn't me she wanted. It wasn't me she needed. Herakleio was and always would be both. And therefore Del taught him, and therefore I taught him, so that on the day we met in the circle it would be a proper dance according to the honor codes that lived in our own souls.
I knew of men who would swear I was mad to teach my opponent. But if I didn't, if I merely watched him learn, I learned his abilities without offering him the same opportunity in return. That was dishonest. If I taught him with intent to sabotage his efforts, that was dishonest. Because I was already better. And the shodo had taught me to be honest in all things to do with the dance.
I knew of men who would blister Del with oaths and suggest she depart at once. But I didn't do either, because that, too, was dishonest. Del made her own decisions. Her honor was unassailable; it was one of the things I most admired and respected about her. And my honor-as elaii-ali-ma, as borjuni, as a Southron ikepra-was nonexistent.
In the circle, the sword-dancer with the mind that sees and creates potentials, that manufactures opportunity, is the one who wins. Anyone may kill another by stealth, by deception. But only one who invokes the honesty of the circle may call himself a sword-dancer. Because it was the circle and its inherent codes that bound our souls. No one who stepped inside could deny that, because the circle was the arbiter of our survival.
The dance Herakleio and I undertook would be honest in the extreme, because though I had the advantage of years of training and experience, he had the advantage of a peculiarly dangerous truth.
If Herakleio won, he won. If Herakleio lost, he won.
If I lost, I died.
Because I wouldn't kill Herakleio, but I believed he would kill me. And so my next move was obvious.
I stood up from the terrace wall and asked Del to halt their current exercise. It was afternoon, we were slick with sweat. Del had bound her hair back into its habitual braid, and Herakleio had tied a length of leather around his brow so wind-blown locks would not obscure his vision.
I nodded at Del, smiling, and offered a blade to Herakleio. A steel blade.
Once he'd have shut his hand on the hilt immediately. Now he waited. "Why?" he asked warily.
I hitched a shoulder lazily. "Only so much you can learn with wood. After a while you get complacent. Bruises sting, but they don't kill."