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wasted energy; she had no time for either.
Now that I was older, with aches and stiffness becoming a factor, I needed
every edge. And Del was not a fool.
Nor was she one now. She caught and trapped Nezbet's blade even as the dance
opened, disallowing disengagement, and backed him easily to the thin curving
line of the circle. There she stripped him of his sword, tossed it wheeling
out of the circle, and pinned him at the perimeter with the faintest of
Boreal's kisses.
"How many?" she asked. "Who? And how far away?"
Nezbet's already dark eyes glazed black with shock. Empty hands clutched air;
the mouth gaped inelegantly. But he dared not leave the circle for fear Boreal
would object. Her touch is never sanguine, nor lacking in promises. He knew as
well as I that a single wayward step could result in his death. Del had won
the right.
"A day or two," he rasped, answering the last first. "Sword-dancers and
warriors. The sword-
dancers want the Sandtiger. The warriors want the jhihadi-killer."
"Me," she said tightly. "I killed them both: Aladar and Ajani."
I saw the look in his eyes: masculine disbelief, underscored by a trace of
doubt. The beginnings of comprehension, tempered by the overwhelming power of
Southron beliefs. She would not convince him, not even here and now. But she
had planted the seed of doubt. The seed of possibility.
"The jhihadi isn't dead," I told him, knowing the tribes offered more threat.
Religion makes fools of people. "That man's name was Ajani. He was a
Northerner, and borjuni, riding both sides of the border. He told people he
was the jhihadi, but none of it was true. The tribes are caught up in
prophecy, not in the truth of things... they have only to ask the Oracle." Who
was Del's brother.
Nezbet shrugged carefully. "They want to execute you. They saw you, in the
city... they saw you summon fire from the sky with your sword."
"That's magic," I said, having no time to marvel at my matter-of-factness.
"Not perverted truth, just magic. Ajani was borjuni. Rapist and murderer. He
sold this woman's brother to slavers--he'd have sold her, too, but she got
away from him. And became a sword-dancer." I didn't bother to smile; I didn't
care if he believed me. "He wasn't the jhihadi. I am the jhihadi."
Nezbet managed to spit. "You were a sword-dancer held up as an example. And
now you come to this:
liar and murderer."
"I have lied," I agreed. "And certainly I have murdered, if you count enemies
trying to kill me.
But in this I am neither." I drew in a breath, changing topics. "As for
Aladar's death, all I can say is he deserved it. It was personal. I'll accept
challenges as I have to, even if it was
Del who killed him." I flicked a glance at her, then looked back at Nezbet.
"But no matter what you believe, you are working for a woman. She used a man
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to hire you, knowing how you would feel. Which means she hired you on a
falsehood. The coin you accepted is tainted."
"There is no payment until you are delivered!" he snapped.
"Really?" I arched brows. "Then you're even stupider than I thought."
"Tiger," Del said; her way of asking a question.
I shrugged. "He's lost. The dance is over. And unless he turns borjuni,
sacrificing his status and pride, he won't bother us again." I gestured. "Let
him go. Send him back to the others. He can tell them what we've said." As she
lowered Boreal, I caught his gaze with my own. "Hear me, Nezbet: one
sword-dancer to another. I swear on my shodo's name what they have told you is
false. Tell the warriors that."
Nostrils flared. The mouth, suddenly old, was a grim, flat line. "Then you are
disgraced," he spat, "and your shodo's name dishonored."
I waved dismissal at him. "Get out of here, Punja-mite. You're too stupid to
live, but I won't be the one to kill you. My sword likes the taste of men."
Nezbet scooped up his blade and snapped it back into the diagonal sheath. He
cast me a final
withering stare, then turned and mounted his sand-colored horse. Dust showered
us as he jerked his mount around and rode off at a hard gallop.
I sighed heavily. "Short on water," I said, "and now he runs his horse. He'll
be lucky to reach the others; we may yet be safe."
"No," Del said.
"No," I agreed. "Time we rode on, too."
"Tiger?"
"What?"
"Why didn't you take his horse? The others are coming, he says... they could
have picked him up."
I thought about it. Scowled. Looked at Del. "Guess we're just not cut out to
be thieves, after all."
Del grinned. "Guess not."
It began imperceptibly, as the worst of them usually do. The tiniest of
breezes, lifting a ruffle of sand; a wisp of wind swirling down to ripple
silken burnous; the pressure of air against face, stripping hair from brow and
eyes. Sand kicked up by the stud was caught, trapped, blown free, stinging
ankles and eyes. Del and I, riding double, retreated beneath drawn hoods,
until I yanked mine off my head and reined the stud to a halt.
"Samiel," I said; meaning the wind, not my sword.
It took Del a moment. Then she stiffened against me. "Are you sure?"
"I can smell it." I squinted. The sun still blinded the eye, unobscured by
rising sand, but if the wind grew much stronger the samiel would transform
itself into simoom. A hot wind was bad enough. A sandstorm was worse. "Our
best bet would be to find some sort of shelter, like a sandwall at an oasis--"
I shook my head, blocking sun and sand with a shielding hand.
"We're too far. The best we can do is a sandrill blown against the scrub."
Del shivered. "I recall the simoom. ..." She let it trail off.
I recalled it, too. We'd barely met, and Del was still most distinctly
unobtainable....
I smiled crookedly, recalling those days. And the long, dark nights of
frustration.
Del poked me in the spine. "Do we ride on? Or stay here?"
"One of us needs to walk. Give the stud a rest."
Delicate irony: "Oh, let me be the one...." She slid off, patting the stud's
brown rump, and moved to his head. "There are bushes just ahead."
I shrugged. "Might as well. Much as I hate to stop, with the new hounds of
hoolies on our trail
..." I twisted, squinting back the way we had come. "If they're as close as
Nezbet said they were, it won't take long before they catch up. Some of them.
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