That image, unexpectedly, was abruptly clear and immediate. I had been seventeen, or as close as I could reckon my age. Abbu was a good ten or more years older, the acknowledged sword-dancer of sword-dancers. He wasn't taking lessons anymore; he had made his living hiring out for years. But he had come back to Alimat to visit the shodo. Where he had heard of a tall, gangly kid who promised, with proper instruction, to be as good—or better—one day.
I smiled crookedly. Abbu had intended to laugh at me, albeit quietly, noting all of my bad habits for the benefit of others. And when he had tossed the wooden sparring blade to me, he had anticipated demonstrating to all the other wide-eyed students how my height and gangliness would hurt me in a circle.
Instead, my greater reach and speed, despite my awkwardness, had landed a blow to his throat. To this day he spoke in a husky rasp.
I had eventually grown into my gangliness, adding flesh and muscle. Strength had been trained, quickness refined. I was unlike Abbu or any other Southroner, and I could not apply all of the lessons to my particular body. Instead, the shodo had adapted to me by developing other forms. In a matter of a few years, more quickly than any prior student—including Abbu—I had attained the seventh level.
Then, and only then, had I departed Alimat to make my own way.
The way that brought me here so many years later.
I got up and stripped off the robe, tossed it on the bed, and knelt to retrieve the broken leg. Once again I opened myself to the power that wasn't magic but that might allow me to live. The rites and rituals of honing the body, controlling the reflexes, taught me by the shodo; and the discipline of honing the mind, controlling that power, trained into me by the blue-headed priest-mages of ioSkandi.
The woman was long-limbed and agile, winding her legs around mine in comfortable abandon. She wore no clothes and had teased me out of my own. The initial passion was spent; now we lay very close, almost as one. Smiling, I twined my fingers into the silk of her hair, wrapping each: thumb, forefinger, next finger, next, and eventually the little finger. I felt the binding, tested it, tugged, then let the hair side through. Fair hair, nearly white; and skin lightly gilded from the blaze of the sun. I ran hands across that skin, stroked it with fingers —
–and sat bolt upright on the pallet I'd pulled from the three-legged bed and put on the floor.
I could see nothing in the night but raised my hands regardless. I counted, tucking fingers down as I named them off in my head.
Right hand: Thumb. Four fingers.
Left: Thumb. Four fingers.
And again, and again. The woman was gone—Del was gone– but the fingers remained. I could feel them.
I stayed awake the rest of the night, arguing with myself.
When dawn finally crept slowly into the room, segmented by air-holes, I was able to see truth at last.
Thumb. Three fingers. And a stub.
I lay down again, making fists of my hands. With two thumbs and six fingers.
Thinking: No Del, either.
Dreams, I decided bitterly, conjured pain as well as pleasure.
THIRTEEN
IN THE MORNING of the tenth day, I awoke not long after dawn. As always, the room I inhabited was quiet, dim, isolated, cut off from the ordinary noises of Umir's rousing household. But this time my body was poised and alert, my mind calm and prepared. Even without counting the days, I knew.
I lay on my back on the pallet and extended arms into the air. Examined hands, front and back. I had not dreamed again of having all my fingers. What I saw now was what I expected to see: that which had been left to me atop the stone spire after Sahdri had amputated two fingers in an attempt to also amputate my identity, the awareness that I was sword-dancer before anything else. Because he knew very well I would not become what he believed I should be, and could be, unless my past was extinguished.
The weeks thereafter had been a true battle as I fought an enemy such as I'd never met, to retain my sense of self. I had very nearly lost. But eventually I had rediscovered what and who I was and had managed to tap into ioSkandi's power. There atop the spire I'd been mage, if never priest, but also sword-dancer. And that, I knew, was all that would serve me now.
Sword-dancer.
Sandtiger.
Both—or either—would be enough.
I pressed myself up from the pallet. Used the crock. Spent time stretching myself into flexibility, cracked my joints, put my body through forms I could do in my sleep until every portion of me was loose. Took up a position in front of the door in the center of the room, composed myself, closed my eyes, and let myself go as I had in Meteiera, soaring without wings over the fertile valley at the foot of massive spires.
Far below I saw a circle made of white stones set into the ground with expert precision. I soared lower, lower, and saw there a man, dhoti-clad; a man born of Skandi, with the height, breadth, power, and quickness characteristic of the Eleven Families who claimed themselves gods-descended. Both hands grasped a sword, a full complement of eight fingers and two thumbs wrapping hilt. It was a weapon, but also an extension of the man. Steel became flesh.
He was alone and oblivious to the world at large. He danced there, he and the sword-his-partner, transforming the initial fundamental forms into a series of linked, liquid movements shaped, despite his size, of grace mixed with strength, a tapestry of motion on the frame of his will and spirit. Sweat sheened his body, slicking sun-browned flesh into a copper-bronze human sculpture of ridged sinews, tendons, and delineated muscle: the hard, ungentle beauty of a mature male trained beyond all others, fit beyond expectation, in body and mind. And then the first routines gave way to those known only by the best, known only of the best, kindling from the coals of talent into the intangible flame of rare gift.
He was alone no longer. A woman came into the circle. She too carried a sword. She too was tall, long of limb and torso, powerful but inherently graceful, manifestly and splendidly female despite her size and strength. Blonde, pale, wearing only a leather tunic, she challenged him to a dance.
When it was done, neither had lost. Neither had won. They had merely proven how perfectly matched they were, how exacting their precision, and how neither could be defeated.
Smiling, sated on self-awareness, I wheeled away on the wind, soaring back toward the spire. I descended; and cool stone lay under my feet. Power thrummed in my bones, threaded itself through muscle, tingled in my scalp. I spread my arms and gazed open-eyed but blindly into the heavens, calling on all the skills of Alimat, the courage of a slave become a man, and the fierce determination of a Northern bascha.
"Fill me," I invited.
That moment faded. I inhabited another. When I opened my eyes, I found Umir standing in the open door, staring at me oddly.
Eventually he bestirred himself and spoke. "Dress yourself. My servants will prepare you, then escort you to the circle."
The tanzeer departed. His servants held a fresh leather dhoti, a flask of oil, new sandals, and an overrobe woven of gleaming bronze samite, the finest silk in the world. Once Del had worn one similar at Umir's request, albeit white; and the interior had been lined with priceless beads, glass, and feathers. Mine, fortunately, was unadorned silk.
Mute, detached, I stripped out of linen dhoti, pulled on the soft suede. The servants poured oil into their hands and began to work it into my flesh. Once I might have wondered if the oil was tampered with in some way, but I knew Umir would not do such a thing for this match. He wanted a true dance. He wanted no one to say the Sandtiger lost because Umir had cheated.
The servants shaved me, then attempted to help me put on the rest of the clothing. I refused both overrobe and sandals. Wearing only the dhoti, I was escorted out of the room in which I had been imprisoned for ten days, and taken out to Umir's white-walled circle.