Sword-Maker(56)

And also felt Samiel trying to reabsorb the magic the sorcerer had borrowed.

How long? I wondered wearily. How long will this go on?

Power hesitated, then abruptly ran out again, leaving my arms numb. Slowly I unlocked my hands from around the grip and set the sword down again. I trembled with reaction; sweat bathed face and ribs.

Chill came rushing in, the kind that eats at bones. Shakily I crawled beneath pelts again, seeking leftover warmth. I snugged fur around my chin, then tried to relax arms and hands. When the shaking wouldn’t stop, I thrust my hands between drawn-up knees and held them tightly in place. Waiting for the reaction to diminish.

A hand touched my rigid left shoulder, though I could only just feel it through the pelts. “Tiger—are you all right?”

I sucked in a gut-deep breath, then blew it out again. Trying to steady my voice. “I thought you were still out with Halvar and all the others.”

“It’s very late. Nearly dawn. I’ve been in bed for hours.”

Hours. Then she’d seen what had happened.

“Are you all right?” she repeated.

“Just leave me alone,” I told her. “Let me go back to sleep.”

“You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

“Go back to bed, Del. You’re keeping me awake.”

Shock reverberated. The hand went away. In a moment so did Del, crawling back beneath her pelts all of three feet away from my own.

I lay there sweating, shaking, trying to still my hands while my arms threatened to cramp. I felt the strain in shoulder blades, traveling down to tie up my back. I didn’t want to cramp; hoolies, don’t let me cramp … I’d almost rather be knifed. At least the pain is cleaner.

Concentrate—concentrate … slowly, the trembling subsided. I took my hands from between my knees and felt the tendons slacken. The ghost pain of threatened cramp flowed slowly out of back and shoulders; at last I could fully relax. The relief was overwhelming.

I let out a rushing breath of gratitude. Then rolled over onto my left side, resettling pelts, and saw Del watching me.

She sat cross-legged on her bedding, one pelt wrapped around her body. There was not much light in the lodge, only a little from the coals. But pale hair and paler face caught the light and magnified it; I could see her face fairly well. I could see the expression on it.

“What?” I croaked.

She didn’t answer at first, as if caught in some faraway place. She just stared at me fixedly, focused solely on my face.

With more emphasis: “What?”

Something glistened in her eyes. “I was wrong,” she said.

I stared back, speechless.

“I was wrong,” she repeated.

I watched the tears spill over.

“Wrong,” she said huskily. “All the reasons: wrong. All the excuses: wrong. For nothing other than selfishness, I betrayed your trust.”

Finally I could force something past my tight throat. “There was Kalle—”

“Wrong,” Del declared. “A daughter is a daughter, and worth many sacrifices, but to use you as I did—to make you coin with which to barter—” Her voice failed her abruptly. She swallowed painfully. “What I did was no different, in its own way, than what Ajani did to me. He took away my freedom … I tried to take away yours.”

Any number of responses jumped into my mouth. Each and every one of them was meant to diminish the truth of what she said, to somehow dismiss what she had done. So she would feel better. So she wouldn’t cry any more. So I wouldn’t feel guilty, even though I wasn’t to blame.

I choked all of them back. To give in to the impulse was to dilute the power of her admission.

I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I agreed. “What you did was wrong.”

Del’s tone was oddly empty. “I have done nothing I am ashamed of, save that. I have killed men. Many men. Men who got in my way, in the circle and out. I excuse none of those deaths; all were necessary. But what I offered Staal-Ysta, even for only a year, was not necessary. It was not my right to offer. It was not my life to give.”

“No,” I said softly.

Del drew in a noisy breath. “If you want me to go, I will. You have finished the task you set out to do. You have fulfilled your promise. It is left to me to finish mine; to end my song. Ajani is not your responsibility.”

No. He never had been. But I know I hated the man at least half as much as Del, for what he’d done to her.

I thought about riding alone again. Just the stud and me. No female complications. No mission of vengeance. No obsession. Just riding through the South trying to scare up work. Trying to make a living. Growing older by the day, with nothing to show for it.