Rafiq was still grinning atop his palomino horse. "He said you were sick. Sandtiger, was it?" He laughed. "Appropriate."
I shot a glance at Nayyib. He sat his mount stiffly, not even looking at me. I wondered if they'd paid him to lead them back here. Or promised him a dance in a circle. Or lessons in being a sword-dancer.
"Sick," I agreed. "Probably even dying, and therefore not worth killing. So why don't you just ride on out of here and let me die in peace?"
Rafiq jumped off his horse, pulling something from the saddle. "Because," he said, approaching, "we have every intention of not letting you die. At least, not like this. If you're up and moving now, the poison's mostly out of your system."
"What's the plan?" I asked.
Rafiq had a loop of thin braided leather in his hands. "You're coming with us."
He intended to tie my hands. I debated avoiding it, even tensed to do so.
Rafiq saw it and laughed. "I can tie you standing here before me with some measure of dignity, or I can tie you with your rump planted in the dirt. Which do you prefer?"
I said nothing. He slipped the loop over my wrists and snugged it tight, preparing to knot it.
Then I moved.
TEN
WHEN I came to, my rump was not planted in the dirt. All of me was. Rafiq had one knee on my chest and was scowling into my face. I expected him to apply inventive curses to my aborted attempt to escape, but instead he asked, "What happened to your fingers?
I scowled back. "I got hungry."
Rafiq claimed a good share of Borderer blood and thus was larger than most men in the South. It wasn't an impossibility for him to jerk me to my feet, especially with me wobbly from venom residue and being knocked out. Especially with his two friends on either side of me, waiting to help. He lifted his knee, they grabbed my arms, and he yanked me up by dint of tied wrists. Which hurt. Which he knew.
His expression was odd. "What happened to your fingers?"
I blinked away dizziness, aware of how tightly the others gripped my arms. Surely they didn't believe I could offer much of a fight, after that brief travesty of a protest. "I was kidnapped by bald, blue-headed priest-mages, and they cut them off."
Rafiq accepted the truth no easier than falsehood. He studied my stumps with every evidence of fascination. "This isn't new."
Well, it wasn't that old, either, but I didn't say anything.
He thought about it. "At least I know you didn't lose them in the last couple of days."
I glared at him. "What does it matter?"
He looked at my face, searching for something. "You killed Khashi four days ago."
Actually, I'd lost count. Apparently I'd missed the night before and much of another day. Being poisoned will do that to you. "If you say so."
"You killed Khashi with two missing fingers."
"And easily," Nayyib put in.
Moral support. How nice.
Rafiq's eyes flickered. He looked again at the stumps, thoughts hidden. Then his face cleared. "Well, we'll let Umir decide. It's his business if he wants damaged goods."
"Umir?" I blurted. "Umir the Ruthless? What in hoolies does he want?"
"You."
"Me? Umir? What for? He never wanted me before." It was Del he'd wanted, and gotten, even if only briefly.
"He does now." Rafiq smiled. "You've apparently become a collector's item. A seventh-level sword-dancer who's declared elaii-ali-ma. It's never happened before. That makes you unique. And you know how Umir is about things—and people—he considers unique."
I shook my head, slow to grasp the essentials. They were simply too preposterous. "What does he want, to put me on display?"
Rafiq's brows arched. His hair was darker than mine, but not quite black. "You haven't heard about his contest?"
"Umir's holding a contest?"
The Borderer, who knew very well how fast news traveled among the sword-dancer grapevine, stared at me. "Where in hoolies have you been?"
Blandly I replied, "Trying to convince bald, blue-headed priest-mages I didn't want to join them."
"Ah. The same ones who cut off your fingers?"
"The very same."
Rafiq snickered, shaking his head. "You always did have a vivid imagination."
I gifted him with a level stare. "So did Khashi. He believed he could defeat me."
That banished the humor. Rafiq nodded at his friends. I realized abruptly that while I'd been briefly unconscious they had slipped leather nooses over my head, now circling my neck. I was cross-tied like a recalcitrant horse, one man on either side of me holding a long leather leash. And currently tightening it just to demonstrate how well the system worked.
When, having made their point, they loosened the nooses, I asked, "Leashing me like a dog these days, Rafiq?"
"A cat," he answered easily. "A big, dangerous cat. Umir gets what he pays for. Fingers or no fingers, I'm not underestimating you."
"Khashi did," Nayyib said.
Very helpful, he was. And it served to bring the image back, and the knowledge, that a man lacking two fingers might still kill an Alimat-trained fifth-level sword-dancer.
Maybe even Rafiq.
Rafiq looked at me again. Assessed me. "Then Khashi was a fool. You may have broken all your oaths, but that doesn't mean you've forgotten how to kill a man. You always were good at that, Tiger."
I suppose it could be taken as a compliment. But my mind was on other things. "I'm not going anywhere without Del."
The Borderer was blank a moment. "Del?—oh, you mean the Northern bascha I've heard so much about?" Rather abruptly, tension seeped into his body. He glanced around sharply. A subtle signal had his two sword-dancer friends tightening the nooses again. "Where is she?"
Ordinarily this would be the signal for Del to sing out, offering to show them where she was, to describe what she would do to them, and how she would do it. Ordinarily it would be amusing to witness Rafiq's anxiety.
But this time it wasn't, because she wouldn't be doing any of it, and now was no time for prevarication. "In the shelter," I told him. "I'm not leaving without her."
Nayyib, still mounted, flicked a glance at me, then away. "I wanted the healer for her," he told Rafiq, "not for him."
Rafiq looked at me. Then he told his sandtiger-tamers to keep an eye on their charge and strode over to the lean-to.
If going with them got Del to help, it was worth as many leashes as they wished to put on me. It wasn't the best of situations, but some improvement in this one was worth a great deal if it helped Del.
I watched Rafiq duck down inside the shelter. In a moment he came back and glanced at his men. "Put him on his horse. We're leaving."
They shut hands on my arms again, started to turn me. "Wait," I said sharply. "We've got to make arrangements for Del. A litter—"
"We're leaving her."
"You can't do that!"
"I can." He nodded at his men. "Do it."
The gelding had been saddled. They shoved me toward him. I planted my feet, not that it did me much good. My feet weren't cooperating, and neither were Rafiq's friends. Rafiq himself turned away to his own mount, gathering reins.
"Wait," I said again. "If you want me to come peaceably—"
Rafiq cut me off. "I don't care if you come peaceably or not. The woman's too much trouble. She'll be dead by tomorrow." He swung up onto his palomino. "Get on your horse, Tiger. If you don't, you can walk all the way to Umir's place at whatever pace our horses set. Of course if you fall, we'll simply drag you."
Rafiq and I had never been friends. But cordial rivals, yes, in the brotherhood of the trade. Now, clearly, cordiality was banished, and rivalry had been transmuted to something far more deadly.