Sword-Maker(82)
“New sword, new harness,” I said lightly.
“Poor old Singlestroke …” Abbu shook his head. “It must have been a great blow. After all, it isn’t often a chula wins his freedom, let alone a shodo-blessed sword. And then to have it broken …” Again he shook his head.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Nabir stiffen as he heard the word chula. I lifted a single eloquent shoulder. “The new sword’s better.”
“Is it?” Abbu glanced down at the hilt, exposed above the lip of the danjac hide sheath. “Northern, from the look of it. And here I thought a desert-bred Punja-mite like yourself would never carry a foreign sword.”
“We all change,” I said offhandedly. “We get older, a little wiser … we learn not to judge people and things by homelands, language, gender.”
“Do we?” Abbu grinned. “So we do. Yes, Sandtiger, the woman is much better than I expected. But there is still much I can teach her.”
“Wait till she warms up.” I showed him my teeth. “Better yet, wait until she sings.”
Abbu wasn’t listening. He was staring thoughtfully at my midriff, bared by the shedding of underrobe and burnous. Like Nabir, I wore only a dhoti. It hid nothing at all of the knurls, nicks, and scars gained from nineteen years of dancing. Nothing of the lash marks from sixteen years of slavery. And nothing at all of the stripes earned from a dying sandtiger who had, in that dying, given me my freedom.
But Abbu Bensir had seen all of it before, since a sword-dancer wears only a dhoti in the circle. My story was no secret, nor was the evidence hidden, since I wore it in my skin.
No, he’d seen all that before. What he looked at now was something he hadn’t seen: the ugly, livid scar tissue left behind by Boreal.
He flicked a quick glance at my face. “I see,” he remarked thoughtfully.
“Let me guess,” I said dryly. “Now you plan to invite me into a circle.”
Abbu shook his gray-dusted head. “No. When you and I meet, you will be the man I saw eighteen months ago. I want no unfair advantage because you are recovering from—that.” He frowned, locking black brows together. “I’ve seen men dead of less.”
I arched brows. “Big of you.”
It was Abbu’s turn to display teeth. “Yes.” Then the frown came back. He looked again at the healing wound. “You went north,” he said. “I heard you went north.”
“To the North; yes.” I shrugged. “Why? I don’t know a sword-dancer yet who stays put in one place.”
Abbu flipped a dismissive hand. “No, no, of course not. But I have heard stories about Northern magic … about Northern swords …” He scowled at me in consideration. “Steel cuts,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t burn. It doesn’t blister. It doesn’t eat skin away.”
It hadn’t burned. It had frozen. In a way I’d been very lucky. Boreal’s banshee-bite had eaten away enough outer flesh to leave a depressed knot the size of a man’s fist, but the icy steel had also frozen blood and inner tissue, preventing significant blood loss. The jivatma had missed anything vital, thank valhail. But had Del cut into me with a Southron blade, even missing the vitals, I’d have bled to death in the circle.
“Does it matter?” I asked. “It’s healing.”
“Don’t you understand?” Abbu persisted. “If a sword could do that in the circle—”
“No.” I said it flatly, leaving no room for doubt. “It’s best if the circle is left as we learned it.”
“A sword-dancer with a blade capable of doing that would be worth his weight in gold, gems, silks …” Abbu shrugged. “He could name his price.”
“Maybe found a domain of his own?” I grinned. “Believe me, Abbu, you don’t want to pay the price of lugging around a Northern jivatma.”
He looked down at my belongings once more: at the visible hilt of a foreign sword. At the alien runes looping the sheath from split lip to brass-footed tip.
“Jivatma,” he breathed, pronouncing the syllables oddly. “I heard her say that word. Only once. But once said, it was loud.” Abbu looked away from the sword and back at me with effort. “As one sword-dancer to another—as a student who shared the teachings of your shodo—I ask permission to make the acquaintance of your sword.”
It was stilted, formal phraseology. It was also a ritual performed by every sword-dancer who wanted to touch another sword-dancer’s weapon. Killers we may be, more often than not, but the true dance is founded in elaborate courtesy. A few of us remember.