I grunted. “‘Old man’ could take you any day.”
Neesha hooted a laugh. “Not today!”
“No help necessary.” I levered myself up on an elbow. “‘Young man’ can go get the horses.”
Del waited until Neesha was gone. “Do you want help?”
“I’m not getting up without it,” I said.
Grinning, Del bent down, heaved me up as I pushed off from the ground. I blessed her size and strength; a smaller, lighter woman couldn’t have done that. As I caught my balance, she said, “The ride will loosen you.”
“Or kill me,” I said in a strangled tone.
Del’s amusement faded. “Tiger—he’s young. Younger than his years.”
I attempted to move muscles that had no inclination to do so. “I know that.”
“He grew up on a horse farm where likely the only violence he saw or experienced was breaking horses to the saddle.”
Tried another set of muscles. “I know that, too.”
“He said himself that his primary sparring partner was his sister.”
I examined the bandaging Del had done, noting a few spots of dried blood. “Bascha, what are you trying to say?”
Del sighed. “He’s not you. He’s not me. We are who we are, you and I, because of what happened to us when we were young.”
I stopped doing anything except to look at her. “I understand everything you’re telling me. I don’t fault him for it. The life he led prior to meeting us was the kind of life you and I should have had…hoolies, the life you did have until Ajani and his raiders attacked your family’s caravan. He’s cheerful and happy and full of life. Naive, even. But he learns quickly. And he’s steadfast about the things he feels are right. He’s an honorable young man.” I shrugged. “But that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll drive us sandsick sometimes, or make us wonder if he’s a fool.”
Del nodded. “I wish he knew you better. I wish he understood you better.”
I grinned. “Just what I said in relation to you on that first journey together across the Punja.”
“Oh, you did not!”
I let the grin fade. “Listen, bascha…I’m not a father to him. I’m not even a man to him. I’m a name. He thinks only of the legend, and sometimes he comes up against the truth without actually understanding it: that I am just a man, like he is.”
“Hunh.” Del looked beyond me. “He’s coming now. I’ll go help him bring the horses in.” But before she left to do so, she said with a furrowed brow and deep consideration, “Maybe I should sleep with him to find out if he’s just a man, like you are.”
As she walked away, I shouted after her, “That’s not funny!”
This time around, we were able to ride out of Istamir without being stopped by sword-dancers, angry husbands, or anyone else. We even rode down the center of the main street, shod hooves clopping, instead of avoiding it. When we rode into Istamir people glanced at us with only passing interest, but now many of them stared as we rode out. The three of us had managed to make ourselves famous. And we couldn’t even blame the husband, or Darrion, Eddrith, or Rafa. Del was Del, and I was me. Neesha had gained perhaps a smidgen of notoriety, but it was at Del and me they stared—though that was nothing new, after a sword-dance.
The stud, for a wonder, was in a quiet mood. He had never been one to respect my physical condition, being completely self-centered when it came to expressing his mood. But whatever his reason to walk smoothly this morning, I was grateful for it.
Kindness in the skies, kindness to the eyes. Beneath a bright but softer sun, rounded hills rose to our right, preface to mountain flanks. Grasslands were deep green, almost glowing in the light. Trees were more profuse. In the North, scents were different, far different from the South. Here, shrubbery bloomed, and trees rustled in an infant breeze. Foremost, the smells were of rich earth, of new blossoms stolen from branches and lofted on the wind.
A glance at Neesha presented a young man riding with a smile, a looseness in his body. Nayyib was nearly home. And Del…her eyes drank in the views, her soul drank in the knowledge that she, too, was home. We had come to the North before, she and I, but in the unkindness of winter, when snow blew bitter-hard and the wind was a bone-deep cold. Not here; farther north, in the frozen fastness of sharp and ragged mountains. Dark, all of them, verging on black, built of bleakness. And if one rode far enough, high enough, a village on the shore, and Staal-Ysta on the island, afloat on freezing water.
The faintest track here, nearly hidden among grasses. Neesha had taken the lead. He rode easily, hips absorbing the rhythm of his mount. The roan mare was again tied off to his saddle. From time to time he closed a hand on the lead-rope and urged her closer to him, clicking with his tongue, speaking quietly. She trotted abreast of him or slowed to a walk. Occasionally she snaked her head out to grab at grass, ripping it, soil clinging, from the earth. The stud did the same, and Del’s gelding. Rich grazing here, as my son had said.
I raised my voice. “How far, Neesha?”
He twisted in the saddle to look at me, one hand spread upon his bay’s rump as he leaned. “Not long. By midday. Probably just in time for your old bones.” I saw the flash of white teeth in his tanned face. “It will be most interesting to watch you and my mother meet for the first time since I was conceived.”
Interesting. Hunh. I could think of other words. “Awkward” was foremost, with “uncomfortable” right behind it. But at least I knew that we would meet; she had no idea. “Your stepfather knows about me?”
“Well,” Neesha said dryly, “he knows that someone lay with her.”
That deserved a glare, except I wasn’t sure he could see it. “But not me precisely. I mean, he won’t know I’m your father. That it’s me in his house.”
“Oh, he will know you’re my father. My mother never kept it a secret. I think she was proud of you.”
That, I could not grasp. “Why in hoolies would she be proud of me? We spent but a single night together. What woman wants to be left like that, who isn’t a wine-girl?”
“But you told her, she said. You told her of your life among the Salset. You told her what you wanted, what you dreamed of. She was the first to know…maybe even the only one to know, once you were free, before you rode away from Alimat as a seventh-level sword-dancer.”
Apparently I’d told her far too much. Among the Salset, I was only rarely allowed to say anything. It was only to Sula, an older and wiser woman, that I could speak of my hopes for freedom. She’d told me any number of times she had faith in me. And it was Sula, for whom our Sula was named, who had nursed me back to health after I’d killed the sandtiger, when poison burned my blood.
But freedom…freedom was intoxicating. Neesha’s mother was my first woman as a free man. She had consented. She had wanted it. And afterward, there were no regrets from her. She had been a virgin but saw a man who warmed her. A man who answered curiosity.
Neesha, still twisted in the saddle, said, “Her name is Danika.”
Then he turned back. It was privacy he gave me; once again, more insightful than expected.
Danika. I had not remembered her name. She said it only once, naming herself as we learned one another’s bodies. As we made ourselves a son beneath a half-faced moon.
Chapter 22
A TASTE OF SMOKE UPON THE AIR, the scent of burning wood. Before us, a deep gray-black column wound up to the skies, rising from the horizon.