Sword-Maker(140)
Bellin’s tone was soft. “His burning is very bright.”
Silence was loud. Then I stated the obvious: “This changes things.”
Del shook her head. “I still intend to kill him.”
Dryly, I suggested, “Then you’d better do it in secret.”
It stung. “I am not an assassin, Tiger. What I do, I do in the daylight, where everyone can see.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Go ahead, bascha, but you’ll start a holy war.”
Del made a sharp gesture. “But there is no messiah! There is no jhihadi. All of it is a lie!”
“Didn’t you listen to Bellin? Didn’t you hear what he said?” I jabbed a thumb in his direction. “It doesn’t matter what we know or what we think … only what they believe. If you kill the jhihadi, they’ll be after your blood. They’ll be after everyone’s blood.”
“Tiger—”
“Do you want that on your head?”
“Do you want me not to kill him?”
“After swearing all those oaths?” I shook my head. “I only want you to think.”
“I’ve thought.” She looked at Bellin. “Where is Ajani?”
The boy didn’t hesitate. “Somewhere in the foothills. I don’t know where.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And yet you are working for him.”
Bellin shrugged. “All I was hired to do was ride into Iskandar and help spread rumors. He met with us near Harquhal and told us what to do. Then he went to ground to prepare for his divine arrival.”
“Can you find out where he is?”
“He’ll be here in a day or two.”
“You heard Tiger,” she said. “For once he’s making sense.”
How nice of her to say so.
Bellin stood up, tucking axes underneath his robe. He snugged them into a belt at the small of his back, where they didn’t show at all beneath the billowy fabric. “I can try,” he said. “But Ajani went to ground on purpose. He doesn’t want to be found. He wants to remain hidden until the jhihadi can appear.”
I thought about the warriors, gathered in the foothills. Likely they knew where he was; possibly he was with them.
Then I thought about dead Morab, lacking so much of his skin and all of his genitals.
Not worth the risk.
“We’ll think of something,” I muttered.
Bellin grinned at me. “So will the Sandtiger’s son.”
Fourteen
Del was silent all the way back to the dwelling we shared with Alric. There wasn’t much I could think of to say, to shake her out of the silence; and anyway, I was too busy thinking myself.
Ajani. The jhihadi? It just wasn’t possible.
And yet Bellin’s explanation made perfect sense. Made too much sense; if all of it were true, Del’s oaths were in serious trouble.
Clearly, she knew it.
We did not go into the dwelling because Del stopped short of the door. Then twisted aside and half collapsed against the crumbling wall, arms folded tightly beneath her breasts as she leaned.
“Six years,” she said tightly. “Six years they’ve been dead—six years I’ve been dead….” She rolled her head against the wall in futile, painful denial. “A messiah—a messiah … how can he do such a thing?”
“Del—”
“He’s mine. Always mine. It’s what I stayed alive for. It’s how I stayed alive. It’s why I didn’t give up.”
“I know. Del—”
She wasn’t listening. “All the way to Staal-Ysta, I fed myself on hatred … on revenge promised to me in the name of Northern gods. When I had no food, I had no hunger, because there was the hate … when I had no water, I had no thirst, because there was always the hate—” She broke it off sharply, as if hearing herself and the lack of control; Del dreads loss of control.
More quietly, she went on. “And when I knew there would be a child, I feasted on the hatred … it gave me a means to live. It wouldn’t let me die. I wasn’t allowed to die, because I had sworn my oaths. The child would bear witness, even inside my womb.”
I said nothing.
Del looked at me. “You understand hatred. You lived on it, as I did … you ate and drank and slept it … but you didn’t let it consume you. You didn’t let it become you.” She put both hands to her face. “I am—warped. I am wrong. I am not a woman, not a person, not even a sword-dancer. I am only hatred—with nothing left to eat.”
The echo of Chosa Dei: “Obsession is necessary when compassion undermines.”
Del raked splayed fingers through her hair, stripping it from her brow. The moonlight bared her despair in the travesty of her face. “If Ajani is taken from me, there is no more ‘me’ left.”