Sword-Maker(18)

Silence, while I sat there waiting for her to say something about my cowardice. My lack of empathy. My willingness to leave her on Staal-Ysta before her fate was known. I’d made her ask my forgiveness; now I needed hers.

And then, at last, a response. But her tone was oddly detached. “You should have killed me. You should have finished it. Blooding and Keying in me would have made you invincible.” Del sighed a little. “The magic of the North and all the power of the South. Invincibility, Sandtiger. A man to be reckoned with.”

I drew in a steadying breath. The worst, for me, was over. I think. “I’m already that,” I said dryly. “I’m everything I want to be right now, this minute, here. I don’t need magic for that. Certainly not the kind of magic that comes from killing people.”

Del tightened wrappings, locking the cold away. Locking herself inside, as she did so very often. “You should have killed me,” she said. “Now I have no name. A blade without a name.”

There was grief. Anguish. Bitterness. The painful yearning of an exile for a land no longer hers. For a world forever denied, except in memories.

I stared blindly into the dark. “And a song that never ends?”

Clearly, it stung. “I will end it,” she declared. “I will end my song. Ajani will die by my hand.”

I let a moment go by. “What then, Delilah?”

“There is Ajani. Only Ajani.”

She was cold, hard, relentless. Focused on her task. Her sword had answered her plea.

But how much of it was the sword? How much merely Del? How responsible are any of us for what we do to survive, to make our way in the world?

How hard do we make ourselves to accomplish the hardest goal?

Quietly, I said, “I’m not going South.”

Huddled in bedding, Del was little more than an indistinguishable lump of shadow against the ground. But now she sat up.

The moonlight set her aglow as blankets fell back from her shoulders: pristine white against dappled darkness. Her hair, unbraided, was tousled, tumbling over her shoulders. Curtaining the sides of her face.

She stared at me, frowning. “I did wonder why they told me you were going to Ysaa-den. I thought at first perhaps they lied, merely to trouble me—it was far out of my way, and yours, if I was to go to the South—but then I found your tracks, and it was true.” She shook her head. “But I don’t understand why. You’ve been complaining about the snow and the cold ever since we crossed the border.”

I listened to her tone, hearing echoes and nuances; her fight to maintain balance. “I don’t like it,” I agreed. “I didn’t like it before we crossed the border. But there’s something I have to do.”

I also didn’t like the look of her. The intensity. She was too thin, too drawn, too obsessed with Ajani. The sword had cut her flesh, but the man had hurt her more.

Del’s tone was carefully modulated so as not to show too much. All the same, it showed enough. “I thought you’d go south at once.”

“No. Not this time.”

“I thought the Sandtiger roamed wherever he wanted, unbound by other desires.” She paused. “At least, he used to.”

I shut my eyes, waited a beat, answered her quietly. “It won’t work, Del. You’ve pushed me this way and that way like an oracle bone for months, now. No more. There are things I have to do.”

“I have to go south.”

“Who’s stopping you? Weren’t you the one who spent five years apprenticing on Staal-Ysta just so you could go south all by yourself? Weren’t you the one who went hunting the Sandtiger with only a storm-born sword for companionship? Weren’t you—”

“Enough, Tiger. Yes, I did all those things. And I have done this thing: I have come to you asking your help in making me fit again. But if you are unwilling to give it—”

“I’ll give it,” I interrupted. “I said that already, after you did your little ritual. But I can’t go south right away, which means if you really want my help, you’ll have to come along.”

“Something has happened,” she said suspiciously. “Did Telek and Stigand force you to swear oaths? Did they give you a task? Did you make promises to the voca in exchange for tending me?”

“No. I have every intention of going home as soon as I’ve tracked them to their lair. It has nothing to do with oaths to Telek and Stigand, or promises to the voca. It’s just something I want to do.” I paused. “And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.”

“Tracked who—?” She broke it off. “Those beasts? The hounds? Oh, Tiger, you don’t mean—”