“A day on horseback. Longer with a caravan.”
Mahmood pushed himself up, nodding. “I’ll wake my drivers.”
“Any sign of the borjuni?” Neesha asked.
I dug out the flattened bucket from a saddle pouch, scenting the air with cinnamon and saffron, punched it open and filled it at Mahmood’s water barrel. I set it down so the stud could drink. “No one’s been there for a few days.”
Del told Neesha, “Why don’t you bring the horses around?”
He nodded, rose easily, and walked toward the back of the wagon.
She came up to me, smoothed a hand down the stud’s shoulder as he drank. “What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“You’re bleeding.” She set fingers on my side, pressing burnous against skin. “Right here.”
I winced. “No, that’s from the raiders yesterday.”
“Ah,” Del said. “It must have migrated from the other side.”
I scowled at her.
She turned from the stud and met my eyes. “A sword-dancer.”
“Yes.”
“You won.”
“Well, yes. Or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Ah,” she said again. “A death-dance.”
Neesha came around the other side of the wagon with his mount and Del’s. He hadn’t heard everything. “You danced?”
I shrugged. “I do try to be accommodating when people ask me to do certain things.”
Neesha wasn’t smiling. His eyes were serious, as was his tone. “You killed him. Didn’t you?”
Grimly, I said, “He insisted on it.”
Del’s hands were on my burnous, lifting the sheath slit up and over the hilt of my sword. “Let’s get this off. I want to see how badly you’ve been cut.”
“Not badly. Honest, bascha. I know better than to try to mislead you. You always find out.”
“No, you don’t.” She tugged emphatically at fabric. “And yes, I do. Now, take this off, or I’ll cut it off.”
“Don’t cut it! It’s my only burnous!”
“That’s the point, Tiger.”
“All right, all right.” I unbuckled my belt and dropped it, shrugged out of the burnous, which landed in a pile of cloth. “I told you it’s not bad.”
Del examined it with careful hands. She was frowning.
“It’s not,” I said.
Mahmood came up. “Sweet gods!” he cried.
I looked at him, baffled, and saw he was staring at me. I was in dhoti, harness, sandals, doubled silver earrings, and nothing else. It left visible lots of browned skin and multiple scars. The one that caught his interest, as it always does, was the concavity below my left ribs and the gnarled flesh around it.
He looked me in the eyes, clearly stunned. “They say you’re the best. Everyone does. But if you have survived such dances as this…” He shook his head. “I apologize for doubting you.”
I smiled crookedly. “Just a love tap, Mahmood.”
Del said, with a slight shrug and delicate irony, “Courting ritual.”
Mahmood stared at her blankly.
“Courting,” Neesha repeated for her. “You know—man and woman.”
Mahmood’s look was alarmed. “She did this to you?” he asked me. Then, to Del, “You did this to him?”
“Well,” Del said, “he did it to me, first. But I won’t show you my scar because I’m modest.” So said the woman who showed a lot of naked arm and leg when she danced. And who thought nothing of walking through our little house wearing nothing but skin.
“Sweet gods,” Mahmood said weakly.
Del’s attention was back on me. “It isn’t bad, as you said.”
“As I said,” I echoed pointedly.
“So get back into your burnous and let’s go. I’ll put salve on it later.” She slapped me lightly across the cut, inducing precisely the wince she wanted, and reached to take the gelding’s reins from Neesha. “We’re burning daylight.”
When we arrived at the well, the only living thing in sight was Kirit’s blue roan. I had untacked her, tied her to the tree on a long halter rope so she could graze freely, put down water and grain, and left her alone with the dead man’s belongings. I’d seen no reason to take her all the way to the caravan only to bring her all the way back.
Her presence, alone and riderless, brought home to Neesha and Mahmood just how serious were the challenges of an outcast. Dead bodies. Living horses. Belongings that no longer belonged to anyone.
Mahmood directed his drivers where to park the wagons and to begin dinner. The tree had a very wide canopy and broad leaves, so there was shade for the stud, Del’s gelding, and Neesha’s bay if we were careful about the roan. The mare was as yet an unknown entity; not possible to determine how she would behave around other horses.
It was Neesha, of course, who went right to her once his bay was picketed in shade, untacked, watered. He spoke quietly as he approached from the front, cupped his hands under her nostrils so she could inhale his scent, then ran a hand down her white-blazed face.
He turned to look at me. “She belonged to the sword-dancer?”
“She did.”
“So she’s ours now?”
“She is.” I nodded toward the pile of tack and saddle pouches. “So is everything else of his.”
Neesha nodded, his mind on one thing. “If it’s all right, I’ll take the mare to my father. He’ll decide whether to breed her or not.” He glanced around the immediate area. “The sword-dancer…where is his body?”
“Out there.” I gestured in an easterly direction. “No reason to bring predators to the well.”
“No,” Neesha said thoughtfully. “I guess not.” He slid a hand over the mare’s shoulder, bent to run it down a front leg. Then he moved to the rear carefully, keeping a hand on her rump. The mare blinked lazily, swung her head back to look at him briefly, as if to check out the stranger touching her, but swung it back again. She offered no protest whatsoever. When he closed a hand around her hind leg and used pressure to suggest she lift it, she did so. “Well taught,” he murmured. “And well put together. All that’s left is to see if she’s sound and how she goes.”
“Take her out now,” I suggested. “We’ve things to do before we can eat.”
It took no time for him to decide. She wore a halter over her bridle. He untied the lead-rope, led her from under the tree and away from the other horses, then eased the rope up over her withers as he picked up the reins. I thought he’d saddle her; he did not.
“Forget something?” I asked.
Neesha shook his head. “I suspect she’s dead broke. If she tosses me off bareback, then I’ll know for sure.” He smiled at me. “And I will have deserved it.”
I watched my son talk to the mare, then seemingly levitate from the ground up onto her back. He gathered reins and the lead-rope, settled his buttocks right where he wanted them, let her stand quietly with a stranger on her back. He never once stopped talking to her in a low, conversational tone, quietly explaining that she would be his now, and then his father’s.
He never said stepfather anymore. Well, the man had been considerably more of a father than I had ever been.
Del came up beside me, watching as Neesha urged the mare into a walk. “You’re worried.”
I didn’t prevaricate. “I don’t want him to go. Oh, I know he’ll go out into the world as a sword-dancer. But I don’t want to lose him to that other man. And yes, I know exactly what you’ll say: that other man raised him. Offered him a life, a trade.”
“Even as you offer him the same.”
“But is it right for him?”