Sword-Maker(15)

Only to give her a choice.

Del always makes her own choices, no matter how painful they are. No matter how demanding. She shirks nothing I am aware of, counting the finished task more important than the doing. For my angry, obsessed Delilah, the end was always more important than how it was accomplished.

Which meant she might well have left, since I’d given her my answer.

Had I? I didn’t recall refusing to dance with her, so long as she admitted her wrongdoing.

She’d conducted an atonement ritual. Begged my forgiveness. Spoken freely of dishonor, and how hers had tainted me. But not once, not once, had she admitted she was wrong.

Hoolies, she is stubborn!

Cursing softly, I untangled blankets and pelts from legs, stood stiffly, cursed some more. Then heard the roan gelding blowing in the darkness and realized Del wasn’t really gone, she simply wasn’t present.

Well, a woman is due her privacy.

And then I saw the light.

Oh, hoolies, bascha, what are you doing now?

Boreal, of course. Del went nowhere without her. She didn’t always use her, being disinclined to show off, but when she did it showed. Like now, with the light.

Del was up to something.

I am big, but I can move quietly. I learned in childhood, in slavery, how to stay motionless for long periods of time. How to be invisible, so no one notices you. It saved me from extra whippings, from cuffs and slaps and blows. It was something I cultivated out of a need for self-preservation, and it served me even in freedom. It served me even now.

Silently I moved, muffling myself in my cloak, and slipped easily through the shadows. Pausing now and then, emulating trees; some say I am tall enough. And at last I found Delilah kneeling in the darkness. Singing softly to her sword.

Regardless of what had happened with my sword while killing the cat, music is still alien to me. I don’t understand it. And I didn’t, really, now, though the words were clear enough, if sung in Northern instead of Southron. But the song was a private song, composed solely for Boreal.

Del sings to her sword a lot. Northerners do that; don’t ask me why. In the South, we merely dance, letting movement speak for itself. But on Staal-Ysta I’d learned it was customary—no, necessary—for a sword-dancer to sing. A variation of the dance. Music for the circle.

For Del, it was more than that. It was music for the sword. With it she keyed the power and used it, depending on the song to harness Boreal’s magic.

Del sang softly, and Boreal came alive.

I’ve seen it before. Drop by drop, bead by bead, running the length of the blade from tip to hilt until the steel is aflame. But this time the light was dull, private, as if she purposely damped it down. Her song was barely a whisper, and the answer that came the same.

Guilt flickered. Clearly this was a private, personal ritual, meant for Del alone. But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. Magic I’ve always distrusted; now I distrusted Del.

Deep inside, something spasmed. Something that spoke of unease. Something that spoke of fear.

Would it ever be the same? Or had we gone too far?

Del sang her song and the sword came alive.

“Help me,” she whispered. “Oh, help me—”

It was Northern speech, not Southron, but I’ve learned enough to understand. Necessity had made me; this moment was no different.

Del drew in a breath. “Make me strong. I need to be strong. Make me hard. I need to be hard. Don’t let me be so soft. Don’t let me be so weak.”

She was the strongest woman I knew.

“I have a need,” she whispered, “a great and powerful need. A task that must be finished. A song that must be ended. But now I am afraid.”

Light shirred up the sword. It pulsed as if it answered.

“Make me strong,” she asked. “Make me hard again. Make me what I must be, if I am to end my song.”

Easy enough to ask. Harder, I thought, to live with.

Lastly, softly, she begged: “Make me not care what he thinks.”

Oh, hoolies, bascha. Don’t do this to yourself.

But it was already done. Boreal was quiescent. Delilah had her answer.

And I had a sword to hate.





Seven




Something bad woke me. Something snatched me out of a dreamless sleep and forced me into wakefulness. Into an abrupt, unpleasant awareness.

Something bad that smelled. Something in my face—

I don’t know what I shouted. Something loud. Something angry. And, I’ll admit, something frightened. But then I don’t know a man alive who wouldn’t feel afraid if he woke up from a sound sleep to discover a beast standing over his head.

Even as I exploded out of my bedding, the hound lunged at my throat. I smelled its stench, felt its breath, saw the white glint of shining eyes. Flailed out with both arms as I tried to thrust it away.