Nayyib came close, squatted down next to me. His color seemed pale, though it was difficult to tell in shadows and firelight. "What you saw—what you said you saw . . . your mother?"
"Mother. Father."
"Did the bone take you there?"
A smile twitched my lips, but I was too weary to hold it. "Memories, Neesha. The bones know what happened. I can conjure up the memories if I hold a bone. I can walk my dreams to find out what they mean."
I had said too much. Nayyib's gaze slid away, avoiding mine; talk of magic bothered him. Then his eyes returned. "Was she a mage, then? Your mother?"
"No. Well, not that I know of. There is magery in some of the Eleven Families of Skandi, and apparently in the Stessoi, if I'm any indication . . . but in males, not females." And it drove them mad. But that I wouldn't say. Not to him. Not to Del.
"Then it could have come through your father."
"No. He wasn't one of the Eleven Families. It had to have come through my mother." I remembered the metri, my grandmother, dismissing me out of hand when she was done with me, swearing her daughter had died before I was born. I swallowed heavily against the dryness in my throat. "Is there water?"
"Here." Del picked up the bota by her knee. "Don't drink too much at once."
I drank as much as I could, until she took it away. I sighed, closed my eyes. ". . . tired."
"Sleep," she said. "You went far away, and came back the long road."
I let go a trembling breath. Felt her take the bone from my slack hand. "I still have to find the sword."
"But not tonight."
Ah. Good.
I faded then, slipping bit by bit out of reality, out of consciousness, as Del, with gentle fingers, smoothed the lines from my forehead.
"Will he die?" Nayyib asked.
"Oh, no." Her voice seemed to smile. "Not for a long, long time."
Ten years. Twelve. Then darkness took me.
I awoke sometime later, feeling limp as shredded rags, still covered by the blanket. I lay on bedding; wondered if Nayyib and Del had simply rolled me onto it. I had no memory of waking to put myself there. Not good for a sword-dancer. But obviously something in my mind believed I was safe in their care, not to stir at all when they moved me.
I stared up at the sky. Still night, still dark, wreathed in brilliant stars. The fire had died to embers. It was very quiet; even the horses slept.
Del was close beside me. I sensed her there even without looking, as if every part of my awareness was attuned to her presence. She slept as she often did, coiled on her left side with a fold of blanket pulled over her ear. Loosened hair fell across her face and strayed onto bedding.
I wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the silk. But it felt good just to lie here unmoving, letting the night bathe me.
Ohbascha, I don't want to die in ten or twelve years. I don't want to lose you. I want to be with you, to see you grow old even as I do.
Nayyib slept on the other side of the fire. I knew he was attracted to Del; I wondered if he thought he might win her from me. If maybe he considered me too old for her, wondering what she saw in a forty-year-old man. He was her age: young, strong, athletic, undeniably attractive. He had a gentleness about him coupled with strength of mind, a quiet confidence that set him apart from other young men. Maybe it came from working with horses, from understanding their needs and fears, their moments of inexplicable recalcitrance. Or maybe it was just him.
What would Del do when I was gone? Find another?
Find Neesha?
I had no way of knowing what to expect when my time approached. Nihko and Sahdri had said nothing of that, merely that a Skandi-born mage went mad if he didn't learn to control his magic, and that the magic would eventually burn him out merely by its presence. If I refused to use it, I might die that much sooner.
Well, I had used it. With Oziri, learning to dream-walk; spell-ing Umir's book; dividing the sandstorm; reading the bones of the woman who was my mother.
Had used it even in childhood, conjuring the living sandtiger out of a carved one, in order to find freedom.
I wanted none of it.
It appeared to want me.
I sat up, suppressing a groan. Everything ached, even my skin. I didn't feel forty; I felt sixty. An age I would never reach.
Slowly I pushed myself to my feet, wavered a moment, steadied, then picked my way across the sand to the dozing horses. The stud roused as I touched him, whickering softly. I felt his warm breath against my hand. Then I turned, went a few steps away and attended to my business, aware of a clenching deep in my kidneys. Maybe mages died early because they used themselves up, aging their organs ahead of time.
I turned, took three steps, found Del waiting at the stud's head. Maybe she'd heard my joints grinding as I walked across the sand.
I saw the question in her eyes. Smiling faintly, I hooked an arm around her neck and stood next to her. "I'm fine."
I heard the pent breath expelled. For a moment we just stood there side by side, staring across the Punja glowing faintly in moon– and starlight.
She spoke very quietly. "I don't want to lose you."
I kept my voice as low, not wanting to wake Nayyib. "What? You mean Neesha hasn't won you from me with a glance of those eloquent eyes?"
"Neesha's eyes may indeed work wonders on other women, but not on me."
"Are you immune?"
"Oh, no. He is a beautiful young man."
"Beautiful?"
"As a man may be," she clarified. "Not like a woman. He isn't pretty. But the bones of his face are well suited to one another, and he moves very well. He understands his body."
I hadn't really asked for that much explanation. But I'd never thought about how women view men, other than appreciating that many of them seemed to view me with favor. "What do you look at in a man? Women, I mean. Not just you."
Del's breath of laughter was a quiet expulsion of air. "We don't all necessarily see or want the same thing. There are pretty men, and handsome men, and men who lack the features that most would name attractive but claim a sense of presence that makes looks unimportant. There is no describing that. It simply is. Tall, short, heavy, thin … it doesn't matter."
I thought of brutal Ajani, long dead. Handsome, huge, filled with undeniable presence. Yet he had used the power to rape and kill, to alter forever the life of the woman next to me. "But there are handsome men who have it."
"Yes. And those are the men that turn a woman's knees to water and her brain to mush."
"I, of course, exude it."
"There are also men who are too confident, too certain of themselves and their appeal, and who believe they may blind women to their faults."
"Thanks very much for that."
"But I, however, am not so easily blinded."
"I sort of figured that."
"Some men may begin that way but are trainable when in the hands of the right woman. Other men are hopeless."
I wasn't certain either of those attributes was something I aspired to.
"And age doesn't matter," Del said. "Not when a woman meets the right man."
"Even if she's young enough to be his daughter?"
"Lo, even then."
I had been curious a long time. Now I asked her. "When did you know you wanted to sleep with me?"
"Oh, within days. But you were such a pig-headed, insufferably male Southroner that I was appalled by my response."
"Thank you very much!"
"I argued with myself for weeks."
"As I recall, it was months before we finally did the deed." Months and months, in fact; it had been very hard on me.
"I intended it to be never. But one day I realized that ignorance could be changed, even in a Southroner. Besides, by then you knew I would never be the kind of women Southron men prefer: soft, quiet, deferential little mice who keep their houses and bear their children."