Lena was in the doorway, smiling as Del wished her daughter good health—and good manners—while we were gone. In Southron, now, she explained to our drowsy offspring that we would come back to her, back to the life we had built within the confines of a beautiful canyon. Back to our home.
It was Lena’s turn to take her. Sula did not object to being passed from one to another to another. It was true she looked on Lena and Alric as parents almost as much as she did us, to the point of making a wobbly break for next door if Del and I found it necessary to discipline her. She was certain Alric and Lena would rescue her, though they never did. She was ours to chastise. Ours to love.
Del cupped Sula’s head in her hands and gave her a kiss on her forehead. Then she gathered up the botas, slung them over her shoulder, and strode back to our house. I smiled crookedly at Lena, whose expression told me she knew all too well what Del was feeling.
“Go on,” she said. “Sula will be well. Del won’t be for the first couple of days. But it will lessen a little as she’s distracted.” Lena smiled crookedly. “Some of the time.”
I nodded, leaned close to give Sula a quick kiss, then turned my back on them both. I felt a twinge of regret myself and a faint undertone of anxiety. There was so much to live for now. So much more to live for. More than I had ever expected to reside in my heart, my soul.
Then I told myself to get to work. We were burning daylight.
Well, to be completely accurate, we were burning dawn.
Del, Neesha, and I haltered our horses and led them out of the pole corral. Del still had her white horse, but no longer did he wear a wine-girl’s scarlet tassels to shield pale blue eyes against the sun. She had made a headpiece out of soft indigo-dyed leather strips, quite fine and narrow, almost like long fringe. It also served to keep the flies away from his eyes.
My horse needed no such thing. My horse sported a rather luxuriant black forelock to do that work. He was dun with a dark line running down his back from withers to rump. At the end of that line over his rump was a coarse black tail that just at this moment was being whipped back and forth with some force. The stud, as always, had an opinion. Especially in the mornings.
Blanket, saddle, saddle pouches packed with supplies—he bore all these without complaint as, one by one, I attached them to him. He made no complaint when I swapped out halter for headstall, bit, and reins. Then the halter on top, customary for journeys. One might be glad of his quiet acquiescence, except I knew it did not bode well.
Neesha was already aboard his dark bay horse. He was grinning in anticipation. I shot him a scowl and was rewarded by a wider grin. In fact, he swung his right leg over the saddle pommel in front of him and took his ease, arms crossed, knowing his own exceptionally well-trained horse wouldn’t do anything except stand there quietly, waiting for directions from its human.
Sighing, I led the stud out, away from the house and corral. I swung the left rein up over his neck and stuck a foot into the stirrup then pulled myself up and over, reins gathered short, and steeled myself.
The stud didn’t do anything.
“Oh no,” I said. “You’re not going to lull me into a false sense of security.”
He pulled against gathered rein, stuck his head down, and shook it. Then he shook everything else, including me. I hated that. It hurt to have my head, spine, and neck snapped inside out.
He stood still. I waited. Finally I ventured a question “Are you done?”
Of course not.
He stuck his head up in the air, dropped it, bent his spine upward, tail slashing back and forth, and proceeded to back up rather swiftly. Which was not the direction in which I wished to go. “Quit,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder to see if we were approaching anything, person, or horse—possibly even a house and furniture—that might trip us up. “Quit.”
So he stopped backing up and moved forward, stomping as he went, trying to yank the reins out of my hand. Horses are powerful, and stallions more powerful yet. It was always a fight to control a snuffy stud-horse. Especially this one.
Eventually, as I applied pressure to the bit, he hopped up and down. Stiff-legged. Which caused me to swear most vehemently.
Then Neesha appeared. He leaned down from his saddle, caught one of the stud’s reins to control his head, and quietly asked, “Is this any way for a well-mannered horse to act?”
Well-mannered, my ass.
“We discussed this,” Neesha continued. “This is not the way to treat the man who feeds you. And his bones are old. They’ll break.”
I gritted my teeth. But Neesha had grown up on a horse farm, and he’d conquered the stud the first day he met him. He conquered him now. The stud blew out one tremendous, breathy, damp snort, and settled. All the protest died out of him. I could feel it go.
“My old bones still have a lot of life left in them,” I muttered, “and I had him under control, thank you very much.”
“I know that. He doesn’t.” Neesha released the rein and sat upright in his saddle again. “So, where are we going?”
“This was your idea,” I reminded him sharply, still disgruntled. “Don’t you have a place in mind?”
“Well, no. I didn’t think you’d agree to go.”
I glanced at Del, who’d finger-painted black circles around her horse’s eyes to cut down on the sun glare. Now she was in the saddle, blacking pot tucked away, saying nothing. Her face was expressionless. She just waited to see if I’d settled on her suggestion or ignored it utterly.
I looked back at Neesha. “Let’s go north. Let’s go visit your mother.”
His mouth fell open. “My mother?”
I used Del’s argument. “It’s been two years.”
“Yes, but…” He trailed off and ruminated a moment, frowning faintly, eyes gone blank. Finally he came back to himself and met my eyes. “All right.”
A sudden thought struck me. “She wouldn’t try to beat me up with a shovel, would she? Or hit me over the head with a stool?”
“No.” He was utterly baffled. “Why would she do either of those things?”
“Well, I slept with her one night, then left the next morning. And she’d never been with any man before. I’m sure she had better dreams than that for her first time.”
Neesha made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, no, she understood. She told me about that. She didn’t expect you to stay. Admittedly, she didn’t expect to conceive, but she did, and she said I was worth it.” He paused. “I am.”
“That’s humble,” I said, echoing something he’d said the day before.
Neesha laughed. “Oh, but the Sandtiger’s cub is never humble.”
Del observed, “If we stay here any longer, we may as well go back to bed.”
I made an expansive gesture. “Lead on.”
She rode by me on her white, blue-eyed gelding. The stud reached out to bite him. I smacked him on top of his head. “Don’t be rude.”
The big oasis was a popular stopping place for folk of all kinds, from single families to caravans hauling goods and people, nomadic tribes, merchants, any number of others on business of their own, guides hoping to be hired, and sword-dancers also looking for work as caravan outriders or settlers of disputes. Tanzeers knew to send servants here to find such sword-dancers. It was a place of palm trees weighted with heavy ribbed fronds, dripping dates in season; trees with frothy limbs, wide canopies, thorns, spiked bark; succulent ground vegetation, such as alla plants, growing in the shade; catclaw, creosote, cactus; even tough, webby grasses rooted so deeply that sand didn’t block their growth. Shade was sought and treasured, but the most significant attraction was water. Here, an underground stream bubbled up between a drift of half-buried stone, surrounded by a short man-made wall built of rocks and mudbrick.