Sword Dancer - Sword Sworn Part 30

"Ah." She was silent a moment. "No. It didn't happen. But- are you saying you dreamed about a dream?"

"I didn't think it was a dream at the time. In which case I'd be dreaming about something that did happen. But it didn't, so I guess I was dreaming about a dream."

Her tone was amused. "This is getting very complicated, Tiger."

"Then there's the dream about the dead woman . . ." Oh, argh. I hadn't meant to tell her.

Del's voice sharpened. "Dead woman?"

I tried to dismiss it as inconsequential. "Just-a skeleton. Out in the Punja."

"It's a skeleton, but you know it's a woman?"

"It's a woman's voice."

"This skeleton speaks?"

Now she'd really think I was sandsick. "It's not the kind of dreams I had with Oziri. This is just a dream. A dream dream. You know. The kind anyone has."

"I don't dream of skeletons who speak with a woman's voice."

I put a smile into my voice. "Of course not. You dream of me."

"Oh, indeed," she murmured dryly. "What else would a woman dream about but a man? It is her only goal in life, to find a man to fill her thoughts during the day and her dreams during the night."

I rolled over to face her, hitching myself up on one elbow. "So. What kind of man did you think you'd end up with?" It wasn't the sort of thing I'd ever asked before. Nor had I ever heard a man, even dead drunk, mention curiosity about it. But that didn't mean we weren't curious.

"I didn't."

"Didn't? Not at all?" I paused. "Ever?"

"When I was a girl, yes."

"A Northerner."

"Of course. I lived in the North."

"And when you got a little older?"

"I stopped thinking about what kind of man I might end up with."

"Why?"

"Ajani," she said simply.

One word. One name. Explanation. And it came rus.h.i.+ng back to me, the knowledge. A fifteen-year-old girl, witness to the ma.s.sacre of her family. The sole survivor save for her brother, and subject to the brutality so many women suffered at the hands of borjuni. No, I didn't imagine Del had ever dreamed of a man again, except perhaps of the one she'd sworn to kill.

By the time she'd done it, we'd been partners for two years. Sword-mates. Bed-mates. I'd known the minute I laid eyes on her in the dusty, drag-tail cantina that I wanted her in my bed.

I don't know when the idea occured to Del.

"What?" she asked.

I raised my eyebrows at her in a silent query.

Del frowned faintly. "You're staring at me."

"You're worth staring at." I reached out, hooked two fingers into the sandtiger necklet around her neck, pulled her toward me. "I think I know of a way to turn bad dreams into good ones."

"Ah," she said as our foreheads met gently. "But will you remember my name in the morning?"

I s.h.i.+fted closer, sinking a hand into the hair against the back of her head. "Who needs names? 'Woman' will do."

Stiffened fingers jabbed me warningly beneath the short ribs. "What was that again?"

"Delilah," I murmured against her mouth.

The mouth curved into a smile, then parted. The tongue flicked briefly against my own with the first word. "That will do." So would a lot of things, with this woman.

In the morning I fought the muzzy residue of too many dreams crowded together inside my skull as I grained and watered the horses. The morning promised to bleed into a typical desert day: very bright, very warm, no moisture. Which is good for the bones, but bad for the skin. It wasn't high summer yet, nor were we in the Punja, but no part of the South lacks for heat. I could taste it on my tongue, an acrid trace of dry soil and sand; I could smell the tang of creosote and what was left of our fire, burned away to a thin scattering of coals amid the ash.

Del, squatting beside it, raked the coals apart to expose all of them, then took care to blanket them in a layer of sandy soil so there was no threat of sparks that might kindle a conflagration.

I patted the stud as he nosed his morning grain, then turned back to Del. She looked tired; and it had nothing to do with our activities of the night before, which had been slow and undemanding, but satisfying nonetheless. She simply hadn't entirely recovered her strength following the sandtiger attack. "We'll make Julah in two or three hours, then spend the night before going on."

She glanced up, rising. "We'd make better time if we headed out this afternoon, after a good meal."

I hitched a shrug, turning back to gather up and pack canvas buckets away. "We'll see how we feel later today. No sense in wasting a decent bed, though, now that we own one." Or several.

"Parts of one," Del clarified. "Do you suppose Fouad will charge us rent on the other third?"

"Not if he wants to live."

She'd knelt and now was working on her bedroll. "Nayyib deserves better, after all he did for us."

"We'll go after him, Del. But we won't do him much good if we're both too tired to put up a decent fight. Besides, we don't even know if he got to Umir's place. Just because he said he'd go-"

"If he said it, he meant it." Del looped thongs around the bedding and knotted them. "I trust him."

It baffled me that she would. "We hardly know him, bascha."

"I spent nearly two weeks in his company." Her tone was clipped. "I would have died, had he not tended me. Hour after hour, day after day, at the shelter and then at the Vashni encampment. You can learn a great deal about a man in such circ.u.mstances."

"Look, I'm not saying he's a liar, just that-"

Del cut me off. "He went to look for you."

"I know that, but-"

"And likely he's risking his life for you, to walk into Umir's presence among all those sword-dancers. Look what happened with Rafiq."

"Which is precisely the point I tried to make once before: that he ran too high a risk going after me. Did he think to win Umir's little contest, then join forces with me?" I shook my head.

"He's not good enough. They'd have eaten him alive in that circle."

"Which is why he came looking for you originally. To learn from you."

I placed blankets across the stud's back, then swung the saddle up. "No, originally he came looking for me to challenge me, until he saw me kill Khas.h.i.+. Then he decided to ask me to teach him."

"We owe him, Tiger."

I wanted to growl aloud in exasperation. "We'll go, Del. I'm not saying we won't. I'm just saying we can afford a night in Julah." "Neesha may not be able to afford-"

"Del." I turned toward her. "You need the rest. End of discussion."

She stood her ground, scowling at me ferociously. "Why is it you're so opposed to helping Nayyib?"

"I'm not opposed to helping Nayyib. I just think-"

"You try to argue me out of it every time I bring it up. Despite the fact he saved your life-"

"I wasn't in any danger of dying, bascha."

Her voice rose. "-as well as saving mine; and I was in danger of dying, Tiger! Not to mention he went for help in Julah and got himself abducted by Rafiq and his friends-"

"I don't think they actually abducted him-"

"-and risked being killed by Vashni-"

"I'm not sure the Vashni-"

"-and now may have been taken prisoner by Umir. How many times has he put himself out, or put himself in danger, to help us, yet you insist on denigrating those efforts and refuse to help him when he may need it?"

"I'm not denigrating those efforts, Del, and I'm not refusing to help him. I'm merely saying we should spend the night in Julah before we head off for Umir's. Where he may not even be."

"See? There it is, Tiger! Denigration. Is it because he's younger than you-my age, in fact-and handsome? Because I spent two weeks alone with him, mostly undressed, while you were elsewhere? Because we slept in the same tent? Because I came to know him, to trust him?

Are you afraid I might be taken with him?"

I stared at her, mouth open. "You're saying I'm jealous!"

"Well? Are you?"

"No!"

"Are you sure, Tiger?"

"Yes!"

Clearly she was dubious. "You exhibited behavior somewhat similar to this in Skandi, when we met Herakleio. Young, strong, handsome, well-set-up Herakleio."

I glared. "I wasn't jealous of Herakleio, and I'm not jealous of Nayyib."

She glared back. "You have remarked many times on the years between us. No doubt some might even whisper I'm young enough to be your daughter."

I gritted teeth. "I don't care what anybody else thinks. Or what they whisper, either."

Though I'd heard it mentioned aloud a time or two.

Pale brows arched.

"I don't," I said crisply. "As for staying in Julah, it's one night. One night at Fouad's. That's all, bascha. Then we go."

"In one night a man could die."

"Hoolies, a man can die in one moment, Del! Between one breath and the next. But I find it very unlikely Umir will kill him-or that anyone else would-because there's still a price on my head, and by now they probably all know Nayyib has a better idea than they do where I might go. Plus Umir wants his book back. He won't kill Nayyib if he thinks he can trade him for the book."

Del held her bedroll in the crook of an elbow. "What book?" In my zeal to change the subject, I'd forgotten she knew nothing about Umir's book of magic. I sighed, turning back to continue tacking out the stud. "I'll tell you on the trail."

Fouad seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that Del and I were now equal partners in his cantina. He was not in the least surprised to see us, nor that we expected to have private quarters. In fact, he led us rather dolefully down the hallway giving access to the rooms rented-along with the wine-girls-to men with coin. I fully expected Del to make some icy comment about women accepting the necessity of selling their bodies, but she held her tongue.

Fouad took us to the very back of the building, then waved us inside a curtained door.

Plaster dust still lay on the floor. Raw wood and nail holes were obvious against the weathered walls. "I had a wall knocked down between two rooms," Fouad said, "and a wider bed put in." He glowered. "It's reduced the cantina by two rooms, you realize. And the income.

Plus the cost of the changes will come out of your shares."

Two tiny rooms made into one slightly larger one by the deletion of a thin lath-and-plaster wall didn't leave us with much added s.p.a.ce, but it was something. And the bed was noticeably wider. There were also two rickety tables, one battered, bra.s.s-hinged trunk, and a small, square window cut into one exterior adobe wall. I wondered inanely if Del would want to put up curtains.

"You can rent it out when we're not here," I told him, "and charge more for it because it's the best room in the house. Which reminds me-we'll need to sit down and have a good talk about how the place is run, so Del and I have an idea what to expect as partners." I caught her narrowed glance and added, "When we get back."

Perhaps he hadn't expected me to hit upon what was undoubtedly his plan. "You know where the kitchen is," Fouad said gloomily. "If you want food and drink, just ask."

I started undoing harness buckles. "I'm asking."

He sighed and nodded. "I thought so. I'll send one of the girls back with a tray."

Del stared after him as Fouad departed. I set harness, sword, and knife down on the trunk, then a.s.signed myself the task of testing the feel of the mattress by sprawling across it, slack-limbed. I couldn't help the blooming of a lopsided smile. I was a Man of Property. I now owned one-third of a modestly successful cantina in a thriving town. But even better, I had a bed and a room to call my own for the very first time in forty years.

Well. Our own.

I smacked the bed lightly. "Room for two."

Del's gaze transferred itself from the curtained doorway to the bed. While I was pleased, she seemed stunned by events. Or maybe just too tired to take it all in.

"It doesn't bite," I said. "And I only do when invited."

Slender fingers worked at harness buckles. But she stopped before slipping out of it. "We should go after Nayyib."