Del had wandered to the far side of the wagon remnants. I saw her stop, roll something over with the toe of her sandal, then drop to her knees. She picked up something, examined it, blew a feathering of sand from it, then set it aside. Hastily she began brushing sand away with her hands, but carefully, as if whatever she'd found was fragile.
Curious, I went to see what had caught her attention. Nayyib was still playing with the exposed wood, digging up fragments and sections of boards, stacking them like cordwood.
I stopped next to Del. "What did you find?"
She set it into my hand. Said nothing.
It lay in my palm. Grains of sand remained caught against my flesh, flecks of mineral, a tracery of Punja crystal. The wind– and sand-polished fragment lay atop it, with a faint oily sheen of pearl. It had three worn protrustions, and a hole through the middle.
My hand clamped shut.
"Bone," Del said.
Human bone.
Find me, the woman had begged.
I looked down at Del's excavations. I didn't recognize the hoarse timbre of my voice. "What else is there?"
She bent close to the sand, blew it away from the suggestion of a shape. She picked it out of the sand, smoothed and blew it free of dust and crystal, then offered it to me.
Time-weathered, sand-polished bone. A slender piece perhaps five inches long. Curved.
In one hand: vertebra. In the other: rib.
I fell down to my knees. "She's here. She's here. We've found her."
Del asked, "Who?" Then she stilled. "You think—the woman you dreamed about? The skeleton?"
I displayed both palms. "Bone."
Del's eyes were full of wonder as she lightly touched the rib in my right hand. "This is what brought you here?"
"I think so."
Her eyes lifted to mine. "Who do you think she was? A mage?"
"I don't know," I said. I locked eyes with Del. "But I can find out."
"How can you—?" She broke it off. "Oh, Tiger. No."
"I did it back at the Vashni encampment."
Her face was pale. "It's dangerous. Remember what Oziri did to you?"
I closed my hands. The bones were warm. "This is the woman in my dreams. The one who told me to find her. Now I have, and I have to know who—and what—she was."
"Tiger," she begged, "don't do it. You worked magic only a matter of moments ago. You're weak—you said so yourself. You have a 'hoolies of a headache.' "
I sat down on the sand. Opened my hands. Gazed at the pearls of the desert. "I have to do this."
So I shut my eyes, and did it.
THIRTY
THE VOICE was the voice of a stranger, yet also mine. I heard it inside my head; heard it in my ears. In fits and starts, stumbling to find its way, it told the story the bone had guarded for years.
"The caravan was small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season. Its master was not well respected, and those with enough experience or money hired others to get them across the deadly Punja. But those who lacked both, those unaccustomed to the South, to the desert, and certainly to the Punja, knew nothing more than that the man promised to take them where they wished to go: from Haziz through Julah and then across the Punja to where South met North and formed the borderlands, cooler than the desert, warmer than the mountains. The most temperate of all locales but dangerous because of its raiders, both Southron and Northern."
I sat on sand, cross-legged, left hand hanging limply in my tap, right hand holding bone. My eyes were open, but blind.
'The caravan, being small, short-handed, traveling too late in the season, and led by a man who prized coin over lives, was caught by a storm. The simoom was but an immature version of its larger relatives, but it was enough. The beasts were made to lie down, and the people took shelter in their wagons, trying to save the canvas that formed their roofs. Eventually the simoom blew itself out, and it was discovered by th e folk, as they dug themselves free, that no lives were lost.
"Theroad, however, was."
I choked, coughed, drew in breath. I felt shivers course my body, but I could not stop. It needed to be told.
"The caravan master and his guide, trusting to their questionable instincts to find the right way, led the caravan on, and into disaster. A party of borjuni, taking advantage of the storm and its aftereffects, swept down upon the wagons. Men and children, being worth nothing, were killed outright. The women were taken to be sold as slaves or kept as camp whores. The horses, mules, and danjacs were rounded up. Everything of value easily carried was taken; everything requiring too much effort, or beasts to haul it, was left."
I was dimly aware of being wet with sweat, but cold. Shivers coursed my flesh. Someone's hand was on my knee, urging me to stop. But I could not.
"And also left was the foreign woman big with child, deemed too much trouble to take with them but worth some sport. That sport left her half-dead and in labor. The borjuni, finding it amusing, deserted her as she bled into the sand, deserting also the body of her husband, who had brought her out of Skandi to find a new life where a man and a woman, despite differences in birth, might settle and be content. Alone, beaten, raped, the woman who had been raised the privileged daughter of the Stessoi, one of Skandi's Eleven Families, found her dead husband, wept for him, then crawled under their wagon and, in a river of blood, bore him a son. She managed to take that son to her breast, to suckle him, to cover him with the scraps of her torn clothing. And died before she could name him aloud to the gods that had surely forsaken him.
"The child lived. He grew hungry, emitting wailing cries, and grew weak when the cries were not answered. But there was strength in him yet, and when the desert tribe that named itself Salset came across the caravan, he cried again. Was found. Was taken."
I swallowed, aware of pain in my throat, of exhaustion, of fever.
"The child, when judged old enough, was made a slave. His name was chula."
"Tiger . . . Tiger, stop now. Please. Please stop."
I stopped, because I could. Because the tale was told. The truth was known.
I opened eyes that had, at some point, closed. No longer did I sit on the sand, cross-legged. Now I lay on the sand with my head in a woman's lap. Her hands were on my forehead, fingers stroking.
"Tiger, come back. It's done. It's over. It happened a long time ago."
"Forty years," I rasped.
Del took the rib bone from my hand. "Enough. Enough."
"She didn't abandon me." A hollow, hoarse voice. "Neither did he."
"No one abandoned you," she said. "Never. They wanted you. You would have brought them great joy."
"The Salset told me I was abandoned."
"They would never say, even had they known, that you were the grandson of the Stessa metri, of one of the most powerful of Skandi's Eleven Families."
"I was a chula."
"But not anymore. Not for many years." Del's fingers stroked. "You should be happy, Tiger. I have crooned to you, soothed your tender temples. After I said I would not."
I grinned weakly. "You never could keep your hands off me."
She smiled. Laughed. Her eyes were the blue of Northern lakes, glistening with unshed tears, her hair pale as Punja sand.
I shivered. Realized the sun was down. Someone had thrown a blanket over me as I lay with my head in Del's lap. I turned my head, saw a fire. "Where'd that come from?" We were in the Punja, in a sea of sand; there were no trees.
"Neesha made a fire with the wood from the wagon."
It felt odd to think that the wagon might even be the one my mother and father had bought in Haziz. Now set on fire to warm the son neither had ever known.