Sword Dancer - Sword Sworn Part 46

"Strip out of your dhoti and use that."

I heard the ghost of laughter. "I don't much favor coming back through that slot naked, thank you. There are parts of my body I don't want to sc.r.a.pe off against stone!"

"Then push the sword through first. You can cover up your precious parts afterwards."

He was silent. I waited impatiently.

Finally I gave up holding my silence. "Anything?"

After a moment his voice came back. "Lots of cracks and crevices. I'm checking them all."

"It wasn't in a crack or crevice."

"Then," he agreed, sounding irritated. "It may be now."

Well, that was true. I subsided again into silence, wis.h.i.+ng I could pace. Wis.h.i.+ng I could leave.

Then I heard a choked-off expletive make its way through the slot.

"What? What happened?"

"Is your sword broken?"

"No. It's whole. Why? Did you find a broken sword?" Hoolies, he'd found Del's broken jivatma. "Don't touch it!"

"I didn't intend to!" he called back. "But when you're barefoot and you stumble over it, it's hard not to."

"Why are you barefoot?"

"I took my sandals off."

"What for?"

"So I could feel the sand with my feet."

"You stepped on the sword?"

No answer.

"Nayyib?"

Nothing.

"Neesha?"

His voice sounded m.u.f.fled. I couldn't understand.

"What are you doing?" I called.

Now he sounded cross. "Taking off my dhoti."

Was he bringing Del's jivatma out? Was that what Del had asked him to tell me, that he bring Boreal out if we found her? "Neesha?"

"Here." His voice sounded closer, but pinched off. "Here, take the sword . . ." The hilt appeared through the slot.

Not Del's. Mine.

Samiel.

Mine.

I closed one hand around the hilt. Felt the familiar warmth, the welcome of Northern named-blade to wielder.

Mine. Mine.

Samiel.

Something deep in my soul surged up. I had forgotten what it felt like to hold a keyed jivatma bound to me. I couldn't restrain the fatuous smile that split my face.

Mine.

I heard grunts and mutters. Nayyib, dressed again, was working his way back through the slot. I saw a hand and arm reaching, a sandaled foot sliding through; heard the hiss of indrawn breath.

In a moment he was free, pressing a hand against his abdomen. "There went a few more layers."

"Let's get out of here." I turned, stepped back into the darkness of the tunnel.

"Wait," Nayyib said. "Tiger-wait."

I didn't want to wait. "I don't want to wait."

"Please."

"It's dark in here."

"That's why I want you to wait. It might be easier."

The pleasure in finding the sword spilled away. For a moment I had been able to forget.

"What might be easier?"

"To tell you."

I said nothing. I couldn't. There was only pain and acknowledgment. An understanding that had everything to do with practicality and none whatsoever with the feelings of the heart.

Oh, bascha.

But I could be alone. I'd been alone all of my life, until she had come.

And now she wanted to go.

"Del said I shouldn't put it off any any longer. That if I didn't tell you, she would."

Suddenly I was grateful we were in darkness. I didn't want him to see my face; didn't want to see his.

More silence.

Then, "I don't know how to say it."

I wasn't about to be patient as he tried to find the right words to tell me what I didn't want to hear. "I'm done in here." I turned, took a step.

"Tiger, wait-"

I swung back, filled to bursting with dread and anger. "Spit it out!" I bellowed. "Get it over with! Tell me what you've come to say!"

"All right!" he bellowed back. "You're my father!"

THIRTY-FIVE.

No.

No.

Of course not!

Of course not.

Not possible.

He had come to tell me something else entirely. Something to do with Del.

Hadn't he?

Not possible.

"It's true," he said, when I did not respond.

Because I couldn't. I could not make a sound. I wasn't even certain I was breathing. I had prepared myself to hear something entirely different. This was . . . this was wholly alien, like an unknown language that sounds familiar but you can't make out the words.

"It's true," he repeated.

I was numb all over. The hairs stirred on the back of my neck. It took everything I had to force halting words past a throat tight with shock. "You said your father has a horse farm."

"He does. That is, the man who raised me does. He married my mother when I was a boy.

He is my father in all ways-except blood and bone. He raised me. You made me."

My chest constricted. I felt the banging of my heart against ribcage. I didn't know how much of that had to do with his words and how much with my hatred of small, enclosed places.

Breath rasped noisily through my throat.

"It's true," Nayyib said.

Couldn't be.

Wasn't.

Couldn't be.

My voice came out sounding very hoa.r.s.e. "I don't have any children."

"That you know of. Del said."

Del had said a great deal.

My bones felt oddly hollow. "Why should I believe you?"

He released a long, resigned breath, as if I had finally said something he'd antic.i.p.ated.

"You were seventeen. Newly freed from the Salset. You wanted to be a sword-dancer. You stopped at a tiny village on the way to Alimat and spent the night with the headman's daughter."

I went on the offensive. "Not to brag, but I've spent the night with a lot of women over the years."

"She was, you told her, your first as a free man. And you intended to take a name-a true name-to mark that freedom."

"So? A lot of women know my name."

"You told her Sula had named you, when you lay sick from the sandtiger poison."

Only Del knew that. And Sula, who was dead.

Seventeen then, barely. Forty now.

Twenty-three years.

Del was twenty-three. So was Nayyib. He'd said so; she had. Not a kid, she'd said. Not a boy.

I had said I was old enough to be her father. And thus his.

"And you told Del this?"

"Del and I talked about many things when she was ill."