I sit back, studying the forgotten remnants of a living being. Then pick up the curving, fragile short rib. Close my hand upon it.
Over the skull, as I watch, flesh grows. Hollows are filled, angles coated, like moss on a rock. A face stares up at me, though it lacks a lower jaw. Even without eyes, I know her.
"Time runs away," she says. "You must be faster, if you choose to catch it."
Her words are clear despite deformation. "And if I don't?" I ask.
"It is best to be the hunter, not the prey. The prey perishes."
"Unless it escapes."
"But you will not."
Sobering pronouncement, especially from a woman dead a month, a year, a decade. "If I'm to find you," I say, "how about a hint?"
"The answer is in your bones."
I hold up the rib. "Yours are more accessible."
The upper lip, lacking a lower, achieves only half a smile. "Your bones know where to find mine."
I replace the rib in the collection on the sand. "And if I am to sacrifice flesh in order to hear them? To become like you?" I hold up mutilated hands. "Why would I wish to? I have already donated two fingers."
"Count mine," the woman says, who lacks even hands.
I smile wryly. "Point taken."
"The bones know. Listen. Then come and find me."
And the flesh retreats, and the woman says no more.
"The bones know," I echoed.
"What?" Del asked.
I blinked into chilly dawn. "What?"
"What did you mean? The bones know what?"
"What bones?"
She sat up, folding back blankets. "The bones you were talking about." Del picked a stray hair out of pale eyelashes. "I hope you aren't referring to the fingerbone necklet Oziri gave you. Because if you are, it means I'm going to have to kill you."
I grunted, scrubbing at an itchy, sleep-creased face. The sun was barely up, peering over the blade of the horizon.
"Find me" she had said once. Or twice. Maybe thrice. "And take up the sword."
"The bones know," I declared, though mostly it was distorted by a tremendous yawn. "Mine, though, not those." Awareness coalesced. "Oh, hoolies, not that thrice-cursed dream again!"
Del crawled out of her bedroll, untangling twisted burnous from around her hips. "If we didn't have so much to do today, I'd tell you to go back to sleep. Maybe next time you woke up you'd make more sense."
I frowned. "What do we have to do today?"
Del laced up sandals. "Rescue Nayyib."
I watched her walk off, hunting privacy. I grumbled a protest, yawned widely again, contemplated going back to sleep. My bones ached.
My eyes flew open. "Bones." I sat up, threw back covers. All I wore was my dhoti, since I'd neglected to grab my burnous back at the bathhouse. That left me with an expanse of flesh tanned a deep coppery-brown, with the fine hairs bleached bronze-gold. I couldn't see any bones. Not naked ones. Just the lines and angles covered by muscle and flesh. I knocked on a kneecap, then inspected an elbow, since they were closer to the surface. "Is there anything any of you have to tell me? Like, how it is I'm supposed to find this woman?" Or whatever she was, buried in the sand.
For all they supposedly knew the answer, my bones remained stubbornly silent. Muttering, I pulled on my own sandals, cross-gartered them up my calves, then got up and limped off to make my own morning donation even as Del returned from hers.
"Don't take long," she called. "I want to get started."
Not something a man wants to hear first thing in the morning when he's only barely awake. "It'll take as long as it takes," I muttered, scowling at the sunrise.
Del had everything packed and the horses loaded by the time I returned, reins in her hands; and no, I had not taken that long. She was clearly impatient to get going.
"Hold your horses," I said, wondering if she'd get the joke.
She didn't. "According to you, we could reach Umir's today if we leave early enough."
"And we will reach Umir's today, even if we leave after we eat."
"We can eat on the way." She had packed my things, leaving behind only my harness, sword, and knife. Ready to go.
I wasn't. I picked up the knife, went over to a spike-fronded plant, cut off a flat, wide, thorn-tipped leaf. "You weren't in this much of a hurry last night."
"Last night we couldn't do anything but sleep. This morning we can . . . Tiger, what are you doing?"
Methodically I trimmed the sharp tip from the leaf, then carefully slipped the knife blade into the plump edge and slit the leaf from top to bottom, peeling them apart. I now had two halves, turgid with pale green sap. I turned over one half of the leaf and began to smear the greasy sap over my shoulder. Once worked into skin, it was colorless.
'Tiger-"
"If you want to save time," I interrupted, "you might cut off some leaves and give me a hand."
"What is it, and why are you doing that?"
"Alia oil," I explained. "The same stuff you put on your gelding's pink skin, remember? It protects it from sunburn."
Del, who had only seen alia oil mixed with a paste in cork– or wax-stoppered pots, not in its pure form, was surprised. "Oh. But why are you putting it on?"
"Because I'm fresh out of burnouses, and the last time I made this trek to Umir's, I arrived with at least one layer of skin peeling off. I'd just as soon skip the experience this time." I dropped the depleted half of leaf, began to work with the other. "Gee, bascha, I can think of a lot of women who'd just love to spread oil all over me. Have you grown immune to my charms? I did bathe yesterday." I reconsidered. "Well, half of me got bathed. I'll let you do the clean half. And you might want to put some on your face, even with the hood."
Del shook herself out of her reverie and bent to cut off leaves. I watched her. Clearly the body was present, but the thoughts were not.
"Have you grown immune to my charms?"
With great concentration she slit the leaf open, frowning. "What?"
"You're not listening to a word I say, are you?"
She flicked a glance at me, then walked around behind me and slapped the leaf sap-down on my back. "I want to get going. We can talk on the way." Strong fingers began to rub oil into my skin.
She wanted to eat on the way, talk on the way. I suppose I was lucky she hadn't insisted I piss on the way. "Fine," I said tersely.
After that we worked in silence, which seemed to suit Del. Me, I just got grumpy. It's a sad thing when a dead woman's bones are more talkative than a living woman's mouth.
I insisted we stop briefly at the big oasis at which Alric and I had spent the night. Del clearly wanted to continue, but she'd learned that in the desert one never passes up the chance to refill botas and rest the horses.
She did, however, protest as I pulled up at the outskirts of the oasis, taking time to mark the other travelers present. "What are we waiting for?"
"Oh, I don't know—maybe checking to see if any sword-dancers are here," I remarked pointedly. "We ride straight in without looking and I could end up dead in very short order, and then where would your precious Neesha be?"
Del was annoyed, but she shut her mouth on further protest.
"There's a spring about halfway in. Follow the main path. Keep your eyes open. I'll take the perimeter, then come in from the other side. All right?"
She nodded, giving the gelding a touch of her heels. Sighing, I reined the stud aside and began to reconnointer as I rode the perimeter of the big oasis.
I did not see anyone lying in wait for me, but that didn't mean no one who might challenge me was absent. I aimed the stud down the center path leading toward the spring and remained mounted. Being ahorse gives a man an advantage, usually. Being atop the stud gives me a huge advantage always, as he doesn't take kindly to assailants rushing up at him, even if his rider is the target.