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"You honored the oaths you swore."
"Oaths," she said wearily, "oaths can warp a soul."
I gazed steadily back. "But oaths are what we live by. Oaths are food and
water when the belly cramps on emptiness and the mouth is dry as bone."
Del looked at me. "Eloquent," she murmured. And then, somberly, "We both of us
have known too much of that. And allowed our oaths to consume us."
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I sat very still. She spoke of herself, but of more; of me, also, putting
faith into oaths meant to get me through the night, or through the day beyond.
A chula makes his own future when the truth is too bleak to face.
"It's over," I said. "Ajani is dead. And if you waste your breath on
regrets--"
"No." She cut me off. "No, no regrets--that much I do not acknowledge ... I
have sung my song as I meant to, and the task is at last accomplished. Honor
is satisfied..." Briefly, a glorious smile.
"But I am only just realizing--now, this moment
--that I am truly free at last. Woman or man, I
am completely free for the first time since I was born to be whatever I
choose, instead of having it chosen for me."
"No," I said quietly. "As long as you stay with me while there is a price upon
my head, you are free of nothing."
She sat against the wall holding the sword that had been sweet deliverance as
well as harsh taskmaster. And then she smiled, and reached for the harness,
and put the sword away. "That choice was made long ago."
"Was it?"
"Oh, yes. When you came with me to Staal-Ysta. When, in my obsession, I made
the man into coin to be bartered to the voca."
I
shrugged. "You had your reasons."
"Wrong ones," she said, "as you were at pains to tell me." She rose, began to
gather up pouches and collect scattered gear. "After all you gave to me, in
the midst of my personal song, do you think I could leave you?"
"You." I said clearly, "are eminently capable of doing anything you please."
Del laughed. "That is the best kind of freedom."
"And the kind you couldn't know if you hadn't killed Ajani."
She paused. Turned to look at me. "Are you making excuses for me?"
I shrugged negligently. "If I started doing that, I'd have no time for
anything else."
"Hah, " Del retorted. But accepted the bone with grace. She, as well as I, is
uncomfortable with truths when they border on the soul.
The problem arose when I suggested it was a good idea if I kept Del's sword
with me.
"Why?" she asked sharply.
"Because you said it yourself: you're a Borderer woman who's hired a
sword-dancer to escort her to Julah."
"That doesn't mean you need to carry my jivatma."
"It means someone other than you should; who in hoolies else is there?"
We stood outside in the morning sunlight, saddled horses at hand, pouches
secured. All that wanted doing was us to mount and ride--only Del wasn't about
to.
"No," she declared.
I glared. "You don't trust me."
"I trust you. I don't trust your sword."
"It's my sword... don't you think I can control it?"
"No."
I bit back an expletive, kicked out at a stone, sucked teeth violently as I
stared at the ground, the horses, the horizon; at everything but Del. Finally
I nodded tightly. "Then you may as well wash out the dye and the stain."
"Why?"
"Because you toting around that sword will draw all sorts of attention,
regardless of your color."
"I'll carry it on my horse," she said. "Here--I'll wrap it in a blanket, tie
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it onto the saddle ... no one will know what it is."
I watched her strip a rolled blanket off the mare, spread it on the ground,
then place harnessed jivatma in its folds. She tucked ends, rolled up the
blanket, tied the bundle onto the back of her saddle.
"Can't get at it," I observed.
"You're supposed to protect me."
"And when have you ever allowed it?"
Del's smile was fleeting: white teeth flashed in a muddy face. "Then I guess
we'll both have to learn something new." I grunted. "Guess so." And climbed up
onto the stud.
The Punja thinned as we neared the Southron Mountains jutting up beyond Julah.
The sand was now pocked with the rib cage of the South's skeleton, the knobs
of a spine all broken and crumbly and dark. Wispy vegetation broke through to
wave spindly stems, and spiky, twisted sword-trees began to march against the
horizon, interspersed with tigerclaw brush. Even the smell began to change,
from the acrid dust-and-sand of the Punja to the bitter tang of vegetation and
the metallic taste of porous smokerock, lighter by far than it looked. The
colors, too, were different. Instead of the pale, crystalline sands in shades
of ivory, saffron and silver, there were deeper, richer hues: umber, sienna,
tawny gold, mixed with the raisin-black of crumbly smokerock and the olive-ash
of vegetation. It made the world seem cooler, even if it wasn't.
"So," Del said, "what do we do once we reach Julah?"
I didn't answer at once.
She waited, glanced over, lifted brows. "Well?"
"I don't know," I muttered.
"You--don't know?" She slowed the mare a pace. "I thought you said we had to
go to Julah."
"We do."
"But..." She frowned. "Do you have a reason? Or was this arbitrary?"
"It's where we're supposed to go."
"Is Shaka Obre somewhere in Julah?"
"I don't know."
She let a long moment go by. "I do not mean to criticize--"
"Yes, you do."
"--but if we are to go into the dragon's maw once again, don't you think there
should be a purpose?"
"There is a purpose." I slapped at a bothersome fly trying to feast upon the
stud's neck. "The purpose is to find Shaka Obre."
"But you don't know--"
"I will." Definitively."
"How do you know you'll know?"
"I just will."
"Tiger--"
"Don't ask why, Del. I don't have an answer. I--just know this is what we have
to do."
"In spite of the danger."
"Maybe because of the danger; how should I know?"
"You don't think it's odd that you've brought us down here with no certainty
of our task?"
"I think everything's odd, bascha. I think everything we've done in the past
two years is odd. I
don't even know why we've done it, or are still doing it ... I just know we
have to." I paused. "
I
have to."
She digested that a moment. "Is this all part of the sandcasting the old
hustapha did?"
"Partly." I left it at that.
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