I sighed, hung onto my patience, went about my business. Del and I settled our horses in the guest pen behind the lodge—the stud didn’t like it much, threatening the sapling fence with iron-shod hind hooves until I told him to mind his manners—then joined the headman inside, where I tried to bring up the hounds. But he waved them off like so much unnecessary baggage. What he wanted to talk about was the dragon.
I listened for a moment or two, knowing better than to cut him off too soon—you always have to humor people impressed by their own authority—then mentioned something about a long journey. He took the hint; he bowed himself out of the lodge, leaving us alone. To rest and refresh ourselves.
At least the empty lodge was quiet. The thought of living with multitudinous people and animals was not something I cared to consider.
The headman’s dwelling, like the lodges on Staal-Ysta, was built of wood with mud, twigs, and cloth stuffed into the cracks between the logs. It provided shelter from the worst of the cold and wind, but nonetheless remained a bit chilly on the inside despite the fire laid at one end of the lodge, beneath the open smoke hole, which let air in as well as letting smoke out. An open corridor ran the length of the rectangle, lined on either side by wooden roof supports evenly spaced about ten feet apart. Beyond the supports were the compartments the inhabitants called their own; small, cramped spaces more like stalls than rooms. It was a place of enforced closeness. Del had spoken of kin ties and blood loyalties strengthened by living customs; I could see why. If they didn’t learn to live with one another, they’d end up killing each other.
Del went into the first empty compartment she came to. No doubt the headman expected us to use another—his own well-appointed one, I’m sure, down at the far end—but Del has never been one for unnecessary ceremony. She untied her bedding, spread pelts over hard-packed earth, sat down. And took out her jivatma.
It was a ritual I had witnessed many times. For anyone who lives by the sword, the care of a blade is an important part of survival. Del and I had spent many an evening beneath the moon, cleaning, honing and oiling our swords, tending the little nicks, or inspecting and repairing harness and sheaths. But now, here, in this place, it seemed odd to watch her yet again tending her sword. I don’t know why. It just did.
In the distance, beasts bayed. I heard the mournful howls, echoing in rocky canyons; the eerie keening of magic-made hounds drifting down from the dragon to thread its way throughout Ysaa-den, sliding through chinks in the lodges and ghosting down the smoke hole. I shivered.
“Hoolies,” I blurted irritably. “How can you people live in a place this cold? I have yet to see a truly warm day, or a piece of ground without some kind of snow on it. How can you stand it, Del? All this cold and snow and drab, gray-white days? There’s no color here!”
Her head was bent over her work. The laced braid swung, back and forth, gently, as she tended the blade. With abrupt discomfort, I recalled the wager we’d made regarding solitary nights in different beds.
And then recalled other things. Behavior I couldn’t condone. Explanations I couldn’t accept.
Del didn’t even look up. “There is color,” she said at last. “Even in winter. There are the subtle colors of snow—white, gray, blue, pink, all dependent upon sun and shade and time of day—and the richness of the mountains, the lakes, the trees. Even the clothing of the children.” She flicked a glance at me. “There is color, Tiger. You have only to look for it.”
I grunted. “I prefer the South. The deserts. Even the Punja. At least there I know what’s what.”
“Because there are no dragons?” Del didn’t smile, just ran her whetstone the length of the blade. “But there are cumfa, and danjacs, and sandtigers … not to mention lustful tanzeers, murderous borjuni, and warrior tribes like the Vashni.”
Standing wasn’t accomplishing much except sore knees and tired back; I dropped my roll of bedding and perched my rump upon it, addressing her final comment. “They gave your brother a home.”
“The remains of him,” she said. The whetstone rang out more loudly than usual. “You saw what he was to that old man.”
So I had. I am a man for women, having no desire for men in my bed, but I’d seen clearly what there was between Del’s brother and the old Vashni chieftain who’d taken him in.
And had thought, at the time, that at least the boy had found someone to love after being stripped of manhood and tongue. Someone to love him.
“But you would have brought him back anyway,” I said. “Isn’t that what you intended, to get him out of the South?”