“I know,” I told him. “Just a moment or two more … you can wait that long, even if you don’t like it.”
He shook his head, clattered bit shanks, slashed his tail audibly. It needed cutting badly; I knew almost instantly because the ends of coarse horsehair stung me across one thigh.
“Keep it up,” I suggested. “I’ll cut your gehetties off, too, and then where would you be?”
Del came back down to the blue roan and pulled reins free of the rock, leading him toward me. She still carried a naked blade, and showed no signs of putting it away.
I frowned. Reined in the stud as he seriously considered greeting the roan with a nip. Tried to ask a question, but was overridden by Del.
“It’s time,” she said simply.
Eyebrows rose. “Time?”
Sunlight glinted off Boreal. “Time,” Del agreed, “to face one another in a circle.”
It had been three weeks since the last time the subject had come up, just before reaching Ysaa-den. Del said nothing about sparring, and I’d been content to let the matter rest. I’d hoped it could rest forever.
I glanced down at the hilt of my own jivatma, riding quietly next to my left knee in a borrowed sheath buckled onto my saddle. Halvar had been generous enough to give me the sheath he’d used for his old bronze sword; it didn’t really suit me, since it was only a scabbard and not the sheath-and-harness as I preferred, but I’d needed something to carry the weapon in. I couldn’t lug it around bare-bladed.
“I don’t think so,” I told her.
Del’s brow furrowed. “Are you still afr—”
“You don’t know this sword.”
She looked at the hilt. Considered what I’d said. Sighed a little and tried valiantly to hang onto waning patience. “I need to practice, Tiger. So do you. If we’re to earn a living while we try to track down Ajani, we’ve got to get fit again. We’ve got to spar against one another to recover timing, strength, stamina—”
“I know all that,” I said, “and you’re absolutely right. But I’m not stepping into a circle against you so long as Chosa Dei’s in this sword.”
“But you can control it. You can control him; I’ve seen you. Not just that night in Halvar’s lodge, but all the other times on the way here—”
“—and it’s all those other times that make me refuse now,” I told her plainly. “This sword wasn’t exactly easy to control before I requenched it in Chosa Dei … do you think I really want to risk losing whatever control I’ve learned while you and I spar?” I shook my head. “Chosa Dei wanted your sword. He wanted to drain the magic, to reshape it—remake it—for his own specific needs. As far as I can tell, I think he still does.”
Del was plainly startled. “How can he still—?” She shook her head, breaking it off. “He’s in a sword, Tiger.”
“And do you, not knowing what he’s capable of, really want to risk letting him make contact with Boreal?”
“I don’t think—” She stopped. Frowned. Stared pensively at Samiel’s hilt poking up beside my knee. Then made a gesture of acknowledgment. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe if your sword and mine ever met, he’d steal my jivatma’s magic. And then—” She broke off again, staring at me in realization. “If he bound your magic and mine together, what would that make him? What kind of man would he be?”
I shook my head. “There’s no way of knowing what could happen. Your jivatma is different from others, bascha. You’ve known that all along, though you say little about it. But it’s become obvious even to me, now that I’ve seen a few others. Now that I know how they’re made, and what goes into them.” I shrugged. “You blooded her in Baldur and completed your rituals, sealing all your pacts with those gods you revere so much, and then you sang your own personal song of need and revenge.” I looked down at her steadily. “I think it gave your jivatma a more intense kind of power.”
Del said nothing; silence was eloquent.
I spread both hands, reins threaded through fingers. “When I requenched—when I keyed the way you’re supposed to, finally—I sang of specific, personal things, just like you did. And my sword, like yours, is different, only it’s because of Chosa Dei, not any special pacts.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand it yet. Maybe I never will. But I do know that heat and cold don’t mix. One always has to win. And I think it’s the same with our swords.”
Del was clearly troubled. “It was a mistake … it never should have happened … in Staal-Ysta, we are taught never to requench—”