“What does Dario need to know?” he countered bitterly. “How to kill? Needlessly or otherwise?”
“In the North, at least she will have a choice. In the South, as a khemi—as a Southron woman—she has no choice at all.”
Neesha leaned close again. “She means to take her with us.”
Dario stared at her father. In a whisper, she asked what he could offer.
He stared at Del for a very long moment, as if he tried to decide what words he had that would best defeat her own. Finally, he turned to Dario. “What you have had,” he told her evenly. “I have nothing else to give.”
Dario didn’t even hesitate. “I choose my father.”
I thought surely Del would protest. I nearly did. But I said nothing when Del merely nodded and turned to go out of the tanzeer’s presence.
“Wait,” he said. “There is the matter of payment.”
Del swung around. “Dario’s safety is payment enough.”
“Uh, Del—” I began.
“Payment.” The tanzeer tossed me a leather pouch heavy with coin. I rattled it: gold. I know the weight. The sound.
Dario stood between them both but looked at Del. “Choices are difficult,” she said. “You offered me the sort of life many women would prefer. But—you never asked if I thought my father loved me.”
I saw tears in Del’s blue eyes. Only briefly—Del rarely cries. And then she smiled and put out a callused hand to Dario, who took it. “There is such a thing as freedom in the mind,” Del told her. “Sometimes, it is all a woman has.”
Dario smiled. And then she threw herself against Del and hugged her, wrapping thin brown arms around a sword-dancer’s silk-swathed body.
When the girl came to me, I tousled her matted hair. “Take a bath, Dari…for all I know you’re a Northerner underneath the dirt.”
We left father and daughter together as Del, Neesha, and I walked out into the Southron sunlight. I untied the stud and swung up. “Aren’t you even a little upset?” I asked, seeing Del’s satisfied smile.
Neesha didn’t understand either “She made the wrong choice.”
“Did she?” Del mounted her white gelding. “Dario told me I’d never asked her if I thought her father loved her. I didn’t need to. The answer is obvious.”
It was so obvious, I waited for it.
Del laughed and yanked yards of silk into place as she hooked feet into Southron stirrups. “Her father knew she was a girl from the moment she was born. But he never had her exposed.” She laughed out loud in jubilation. “The proud khemi tanzeer kept his abomination!”
The stud settled in next to her gelding. “As a khemi,” I pointed out, “what he did was sacrilegious. The Hamidaa could very well convict him of apostasy and have him killed, if they knew.”
Del glanced at Neesha, then looked back at me. “Choices are sometimes difficult to make,” she quoted. “But sometimes easy.”
This time, Neesha understood.
We were not offered guest quarters at the tanzeer’s, so it was back to the big oasis once again. I was beginning to think of it as a second home. Our former tree was taken, but while Del and I watered our horses and ourselves, Neesha once again went off to see what he could find.
This time no Khalid interrupted us. “Maybe he finally got the message.” After the stud drank, I scooped water for myself. “Obviously he wasn’t impressed by me, but he certainly was by you!”
Del shrugged. “He has talent. But he’s wild. He loses focus.”
“You tend to do that to a lot of men.” I expected some kind of reaction, but there was none. “Well, one of these days he’ll meet a sword-dancer who won’t put up with him.”
Del shrugged again. She drank a little then turned her horse away from the spring. I watched her walk him down the path in the way Neesha had gone. I hesitated, chewing at my bottom lip. She had exulted in Dario’s choice to stay with her father. Now she seemed disconnected from it. From me.
I followed and discovered Neesha had found us a very hospitable tree with spreading limbs and well-clothed branches. It was late afternoon and hot. Few people were moving; most slept the worst of the heat away. I thought it was a very good idea. I tended the stud first, untacking and picketing him where webby scrub grass grew in filtered shade at the edge of the tree canopy. Then I spread my blankets and flipped the saddle upside down for use as a backrest. Neesha had done the same but worked mending his bay’s fraying rope halter. Del untacked and picketed her gelding, then walked away from us, probably looking for a place to relieve herself.
I stretched out on my back, slumped against the saddle. I was tired. “Was that enough adventure for you?”
Neesha snickered as he spliced rope together. “It’s a start.”
“We’ll try to find you more before we head back home.” I watched Del as she walked back. Something about her expression prompted concern. “Bascha, are you all right?”
Del nodded as she knelt beside me and unrolled her bedding blankets.
“You don’t look it.”
She glanced at me, then concentrated on settling her bed just the way she wanted it. When we washed at the tanzeer’s, she had left her hair loose to dry. It fell in a shining curtain, hiding the side of her face as she settled down. She swung it aside, crossed her arms under her head, and stared up through leaves and branches into sky.
I remembered Lena’s words. “It’s Sula, isn’t it?”
Del sighed deeply. “I miss her.”
“So do I, bascha.” And I didn’t say it just to make her feel that she wasn’t alone. I did miss the little monkey. “How about we go up to the horse farm, then go back home.” I said to Neesha, who was finishing repairs. “You could always go off on your own if we head back sooner than you’d like.”
He stood up and went to swap out the bridle and reins for the halter and lead-rope. Returning, he said, “Well, we don’t know what lies between here and there. I may be sick of adventuring once we reach the farm.” He threw himself down on his blankets, stretching elaborately. “You took him apart, Del,” he began. “I’d never truly seen you dance before. That was most impressive. And then when you took that eunuch’s head…” He shook his. “The North must be a hard place, to train you for such as that.”
I winced, wishing his words had been a bit less blunt.
Whether that was the reason, or something else, Del’s tone was flinty. “Not as hard as the South, where women are not allowed to do and be what they wish.” Then, abruptly, she pressed the heels of her hands against eye sockets. “Oh, don’t listen to me. That tanzeer has put me in a mood with all this talk about women as abominations. Unclean vessels. To make a religion out of it! He is the excrescence.” She turned onto one hip to face us, propping herself up on an elbow. “Tell me, Neesha, were you raised to believe women have no value except to look after the man’s wishes? To make him sons? You’re a Southroner.”
Neesha froze, eyes widening. He flicked a glance at me, asking for help; he got none, so he looked back at her. Carefully he said, “My father gave her more freedom than most men give their wives.”
“He gave her more freedom,” Del said pointedly. “Do you see what I mean? It wasn’t something she was raised with. A man had to give it to her.”