After a moment of silence, "Tiger?"
"Hmm?"
"Did every sword-dancer at Umir's wish to kill you? Weren't some of them your friends?"
Beneath my blanket, I shrugged. "Friends. Rivals. Enemies. That was the way of Alimat. And there's the matter of elaii-ali-ma • . . I was as sworn to execute an outcast as they are; that was understood from the beginning. But no—not everyone wished to kill me. One man didn't." I smiled, remembering. "Alric. In fact, he helped me escape."
Her tone was sharp as she hitched herself up on an elbow. "Alric was there? And you didn't tell me?"
"We've been a little busy, bascha."
"But if he helped you, isn't he an outcast now?"
"Alric was never an in cast. He's a Northerner. He didn't make any friends by helping me, and he probably lost some—or all—of those who were there, but he didn't break any Southron vows. And it's only Alimat where the codes were so binding." I shrugged. "It was the shodo's way of fashioning true men out of worthless meat."
"A very rigorous binding."
"Are the Northern vows made on Staal-Ysta any less binding?"
No, they were not. Del's silence made that clear.
She changed the subject. "Did Alric say how Lena and the girls are?"
"Fine. Lena's expecting again." I made an indeterminate sound of derision. "You know, you'd think three daughters would be enough!"
Del settled down again. "Some men insist on sons, and their poor wives keep having babies until they get one. Even if it kills them."
"You've met Lena. You know she loves children. She likely wants a dozen."
"Well, yes," Del conceded.
"And it's Alric who'll have to support them. See, bascha? There are always two sides. The woman has them, which, mind you, I don't suggest is easy or without risk, but the man pays for them. That, too, isn't easy or without risk."
"Maybe."
"Fools," I muttered, trying to get comfortable against hard ground, "both of them."
"If it's what they want, then they aren't truly foolish."
"It's one thing if you're a farmer, bascha. Or a tradesman. But a sword-dancer? If something happens to Alric—and he's not exactly in a safe line of work—Lena's stuck with raising the children on her own." I shrugged. "Though she'd probably marry again as soon as possible."
"You mean, once she found a man to provide for her and the girls?"
"Well . . . yes." I was wary of where the conversation might be heading; you never know, with Del. "I mean, it is what many women do."
"It is what most women do," she said curtly. "They have no other choice."
Not being up for the verbal sword-dance, I kept my mouth shut.
"Or they could do what I did, and give their child away." After that comment, I wasn't going to sleep any time soon. I contemplated holding my silence in case that was what Del preferred, but I just couldn't let it go. "You mean Kalle."
"Of course I mean Kalle." Del sighed, staring up at the stars. "She has a good home. Better parents than I could ever be—or you."
The defense was automatic. "I might be a superb father, for all you know—I just don't particularly care to find out."
"You can't be a superb father if you have no children," Del declared. Then amended it almost immediately. "That is, if you know you have children and don't stay around to raise them. Otherwise you're not a father at all. Just the means for making them."
Did the same apply to a woman? I decided not to bring it up for fear it was a sore spot; pointed debate is one thing, but engaging in it to hurt someone is another thing altogether. I wondered how often Del's daughter crossed her mind. She never spoke about her. "You miss her, don't you?"
Del turned over, putting her back to me. "I don't even know her, Tiger."
"I mean, you miss what you might have had."
"I made my choice before Kalle was even born. There was nothing to miss."
And yet Del had once insisted on going North to see Kalle against my preferences, though I didn't know the girl existed then; she had been driven to see her daughter six years after her birth, as if it were some kind of geas. The journey had tested us both in many different ways, had taught us about strength of will, determination, the power of the binding between us; had nearly ended in both our deaths. Kalle was around eight now, I thought. Old enough to understand her mother had given her up in a quest to execute the men who'd robbed Del of a family. And Kalle as well.
"Maybe someday," I said, purposely not mentioning that Del, by breaking her vows, was exiled from the North and thus from her daughter.
"What?"
"Maybe someday you'll see her again."
The tone was frigid. "And how would that come to be, do you think?"
"If Kalle came looking for you."
Del's single burst of throttled laughter was bitter. "Oh yes, they would let her come searching for a woman who has no honor, a woman exiled from her homeland. And why would Kalle wish to? She has a mother and father."
"But they aren't her blood."
She was silent a moment, then turned over to face me. Her eyes, black in the glow of the moon, were steady. "Do you believe that matters? Blood? To children whose true mother and father have disavowed them?"
"You didn't disavow Kalle."
"They will have told her I did."
I scratched at the stubble I hadn't gotten the chance to shave. "I think blood matters, yes. I think a child might wish to search for her mother. Hoolies, I went all the way to Skandi, didn't I?"
"And repudiated your family."
"The metri wanted nothing to do with the son of a disobedient daughter who dishonored her exalted Family by daring to sleep with a man well below her class."
"Your mother left Skandi to be with the man she loved, below her class or no. Do you really believe she'd have disavowed you if she was willing to go that far?"
"Doesn't matter," I dismissed. "I ended up a chula with the Salset anyway. And how in hoolies did we get onto this subject? We were talking about Kalle."
"You say it matters to children that they know their own blood."
"I believe that, yes."
"Does it matter to men or women that they know their own children?"
"You're the one who dragged me all the way into the ice and snow so you could see Kalle again, bascha! I would say yes to that as well, based on your example."
Del did not answer. When I realized she didn't mean to, I shut my eyes and, when I could slow my thoughts, gave myself over to sleep.
TWENTY-SIX
BREEZE becomes wind. Wind becomes gust. Gust becomes storm: simoom. The sky is heavy with sand, the sun eclipsed, occluded by curtains of it, pale as water, hard as ice. At the edges of the Punja it scours the earth of vegetation; in the Deep Desert, where the tribes take care to protect themselves, it stings but does not strip; to strangers, wholly innocent but thus sweeter victims, it is death. Clothing is torn away. Flesh abraded. Eventually flayed. In the end, long past death, the ivory bones are polished white. And buried, only freed again by yet another fickle, angry simoom, digging up the dead.
White bones in white sand. Fingerbones scattered, the vertebrae, the toes. The skull remains, but lower jaw is lost. Teeth gleam, that once were hidden by lips.
I walk there, find them: pearls of the desert. Out of boredom, I begin to gather them, to arrange them against the flat sand. Not many left. The skull, lacking half its jaw; upper arm, forearm; the ladder of ribs. The knobby-ended thigh. I reassemble the pieces and stare at the puzzle, wondering who and what it might have been, when it wore flesh.