Sword-Maker(116)

“I can claim courtesy. You owe that to anyone. It’s a Salset custom.”

“Don’t tell me what Salset custom is!” The quaver of his voice came from age and anger, not fear. “It was you who revoked custom and sought aid from an unmarried woman.”

My anger rose to meet his. “You know as well as I do that was Sula’s decision. She was free, bound to no man; Salset women take who they will, until they accept a husband. You’re just jealous, old man—she took a chula, not the shukar.”

“You forced her to say you’d killed the beast—”

“I did kill it,” I said flatly. “You know it, too … you just don’t want to admit a chula succeeded where you’d failed.” A glance at the shabbiness of clothing and hyort told me times were no longer easy. Once he’d been a rich man. “Is your magic all used up? Have the gods turned their eyes from you?”

He was old, and probably would not last a year. A part of me suggested I not be so bitter, so harsh, but the greater portion of me remembered what life with the Salset had been like. I owed him no courtesy. I owed him nothing but honesty; I hated the old man.

“You should have died from the poison,” he said. “Another day, and you would have.”

“Thanks to Sula, I didn’t.” My patience was at an end. “Where is her hyort, shukar? Direct me to Sula, as you are required to do in the name of Salset courtesy.”

He peeled back wrinkled lips and showed me his remaining teeth, stained brown by beza nut. Then spat at my feet. “When the jhihadi comes, you and others like you will be stripped from the South forever.”

It confirmed my foreboding, but I said nothing of it to him. “Where’s Sula, old man? I have no time for games.”

“I have no time for you. Find Sula yourself.” Filmed eyes narrowed. “And I hope you like what you find, since you are the cause of it!”

I didn’t waste my time asking futile questions, or trying to decipher his purposely vague pronouncements. I just went to find Sula.

And when I found her, I knew she was dying. Clearly, so did she.

“Sit,” she said weakly, as I lingered in the doorflap.

I sat. I nearly fell. I couldn’t say a word.

Sula’s smile was her own. She hadn’t been robbed of it yet. “I wondered if the gods would grant me the chance to see you again.”

The day was dull and sullen. Fitful light painted a harsh sienna patina against the ocher-orange of her hyort. It washed the interior with sallowness, like aging ivory. To Sula, it was unkind.

This was my third Sula. The first had been in her early twenties, a slim, lovely young woman of classic Salset features: wide, mobile face; dipped bridge of nose; black hair so thick and sunkissed it glowed ruddy in the daylight. At night it was black silk.

The second had been over forty, run to fat; lacking former beauty, but none of her generosity, the kindness I’d come to crave. She had saved Del and me from the ravages of the Punja. And now I’d see her die.

The third Sula was not much older, but the plumpness had melted away. There was nothing of Sula left except hide stretched over bones. The hair was lank and lifeless. The eyes dulled with pain. Lines graven in flaccid flesh bespoke a constant battle. The hyort smelled of death.

All I could manage was her name.

I don’t know what she saw in my face. But it moved her. It made her cry.

I took her hand in mine, then closed the other over it. Brittle, delicate bones beneath too-dry, fragile flesh. The woman of my manhood was a corpse in Salset gauze.

I swallowed heavily. “What sickness is it?”

Sula smiled again. “The old shukar says it’s not. He says it’s a demon put inside to punish me. It lives here, in my breast—eating away my flesh.” She was propped against cushions. With one hand, she touched her left breast.

“Why?” I asked harshly. “What have you ever done?”

Sula raised a finger. “Many years ago, I took in a young chula who was no more a boy, but a man. And when he killed the sandtiger—when he won his freedom—I made certain he was given it. For that, I am being punished. For that, I host a demon.”

“You don’t believe that—”

“Of course not. The old shukar is jealous. He has always wanted me. And he has never forgiven me.” She made a weak gesture. “This is his punishment: he tells people about the demon, so none will give me aid.”

“No one—”

“None,” she said raggedly. “Oh, I am given food and water—no one will starve me to death—but none will aid me, either. Not where the demon can see.”