Sword-Maker(75)

“The lady was here first. Why don’t we ask her?”

Del made an impatient gesture; she has no tolerance for such things.

I hooked a stool over, sat down, smiled disarmingly at Abbu. “Have you told her your scheme yet?”

“Scheme?” he echoed blankly.

I glanced at Del. “He plans on flattering your skill, since women are gullible creatures … he’ll tell you what he thinks you want to hear, even if he doesn’t agree … and then he’ll take you into the circle, just to keep you interested—” I grinned, “—and then take you straight to bed.”

Abbu’s pale eyes glittered.

“It won’t work,” I told him. “I already tried.”

“And failed,” Del declared.

Abbu, who is not stupid, frowned. He looked at Del. At me. Then demanded his nose-ring back.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it was won under false pretenses. You and the woman know one another.”

I shrugged. “I never said we didn’t. It didn’t come up, Abbu. I offered a wager. You accepted a wager. The nose-ring was fairly won.” I smiled. “And I need it to pay my debts.”

Del was staring at me. “You bet on the dance?”

“I bet on you.”

“To win.”

“Of course to win; do you think I’m a fool?”

Abbu swore under his breath. “I am the fool.”

“For wanting to teach a woman?” Del’s tone was cool again. “Or for betting on the wrong person?”

Kima arrived with a jug. “Aqivi,” she announced, and smacked it down on the table.

Abbu Bensir stared across the lip of the jug at Del in obvious challenge. I have seen it before—Abbu, much as I hate to admit it, has success with women—but I didn’t consider it much of a risk. He wasn’t the type of man who would interest Del. He was too arrogant, too abrupt, too certain of superiority based solely on his gender.

He was, most of all, too Southron.

“What can you teach me?” Del asked.

I kicked her under the table.

Abbu considered it. “You are tall,” he said, “and strong. You have as good a reach as any Southroner—except perhaps the Sandtiger. But you would do better to make your patterns smaller. More subtle.” He reached across the table, tapped Del’s left wrist. “You have the necessary strength here—I saw it—to support the smaller patterns, but you don’t use it. You were much too open earlier. It slowed your response time and left opportunities to defeat you. That you won had less to do with your better skill than with the boy’s inexperience.” He smiled briefly. “I would not do the same.”

It was an accurate summation of Del’s dance. That he also suggested smaller blade patterns did not please me, because it showed me he’d judged her very well. Del usually does employ smaller, tighter patterns, but she was out of condition and hadn’t employed her usual techniques.

And if anything would impress Del, it was a man judging her on her merits instead of by her gender.

“Here,” I said abruptly, “no need to let good aqivi go to waste.” I grabbed the jug, started splashing liquor into the cups Kima put down.

Abbu watched me sidelong. In profile, his nose was a travesty—but it lent him the cachet of hard-edged experience. Unlike Nabir, he was not a boy on the threshold of manhood; Abbu Bensir had stepped across many years before. He had the lean, lethal look of a borjuni, though he was sword-dancer instead of bandit.

What he thought of me, I couldn’t say. I was considerably taller and heavier, also younger—but Abbu Bensir was right. I hadn’t quite recovered strength, stamina, or health from the wound Del had given me, and it showed. Certainly it showed to an experienced sword-dancer who knew very well how to judge what counted.

He eased himself back on his stool and tipped aqivi down his throat. “So,” he said idly to Del, “has this big desert cat told you of our adventures?”

“Adventures?” I echoed blankly; Abbu and I had not, to my knowledge, ever shared much more than a cantina.

Predictably, Del said no.

Of course it was what he wanted. With an adroit flick of fingers, Abbu slipped the neck of his underrobe and let it fall open. His throat was now bared, showing the pale scar left by the shodo’s knife. “My badge of honor,” he said. “Bestowed on me by none other than the Sandtiger.”

Del’s brows rose.

Abbu’s tone was expansive. “It was quite early in his career, but it was a dramatic signal to the South that a new sword-dancer was about to be born.”

“There was nothing ‘about to be’ about it,” I said sourly. “It took me seven more years.”