This did not particularly endear my host to me.

After a moment he released them. Umir debated something internally. Then he nodded.

"The plans are unchanged." And he turned and strode out of the room.

When I was locked in again, I loosed a lengthy volley of curses in every language I spoke, which was significant after my sojourn at Meteiera, and wished I had numerous breakable items I could hurl at the door and walls as I paced furiously, waiting for the pain to fade.

Of course such actions would merely trigger even more pain in my Umir-abused hands, so it was just as well I didn't have that recourse. And I wasn't about to use the slops jar to vent my frustration, because then I'd have to live with the rather messy results.

Eventually I ran out of curses. The pain diminished. I threw myself onto the bed, hands resting on my chest, and contemplated the blank ceiling overhead, thinking fiercely focused thoughts of such things as sword-dances and sword-dancers, broken oaths, missing fingers, idiots like Umir, absent baschas. And the discipline I'd learned atop the Stone Forest.

Outside, in Umir's circle, sword blades rang. I heard voices raised in cheerful insults, vulgar suggestions, the occasional compliment.

I frowned. There was one voice that sounded familiar.

I heard it again. The frown dissipated. I recalled sparring matches in one of Rusali's dusty alleys. With swords and without.

Inspiration. Motivation. I swung out of bed, pulled it away from the wall, turned it on edge, studied the legs. With care I sat on one, my own legs gathered under me. I bounced slightly, and felt the answering crack. Smiling, I stood up, smashed a foot against the leg, and was pleased to see it break off from the frame in one piece. I was left with approximately three feet of wood. One end was slightly jagged, but that didn't matter. The other end, adzed smooth at the bottom, afforded me a functional grip.

I set the bed upright again, swinging it around so the legless corner was not obvious to the eye of a visitor, and pushed it once again against the wall. Then I stripped out of house-robe to the linen dhoti. Took up the broken bed leg. Closed my hands upon it. Then, courting patience and self-control, I began the practice forms I had first learned twenty-three years before at Alimat.

I had worked up a good sweat when I heard the latch rattle. Hastily I slung the leg under the bed and donned the house-robe again, though I didn't have time to tie the sash. I thought it best not to sit on the bed with only three legs, so I stood in front of it as if I'd just risen. By the time the door opened, I wore a suitably expectant expression. Especially since I wondered if Umir was coming to inspect any other portions of my anatomy.

A woman entered with breakfast. Even as she set the tray on the floor, they locked her in.

Rather than seeming startled or dismayed by her predicatment, she merely stepped aside from the tray and made a graceful gesture inviting me to eat.

She was beautiful in the way of the loveliest of Southron women, small in stature and delicately made, with huge dark eyes, expressive face and hands, and dusky skin set off by blue-black hair hanging loose to her waist. She wore luxurious silks of a brilliant blue-green, and gilded sandals. That she was here for my pleasure was obvious; she wore neither headress or veil, and did not affect the extreme modesty of other Southron women. But neither was she overt in any way. Umir's taste in all things ran to elegance and understatement. Rumor claimed the tanzeer did not like to bed women or men, but took his pleasure in acquiring and owning those things he found intriguing and unique. Sometimes this included people. This woman was definitely unique.

Once upon a time I would not have questioned her presence in his house or her role. I would merely have enjoyed her. Traveling with Del had made me aware of certain Southron customs that were not judged acceptable by other cultures. Traveling with Del had also filled a place in my soul I hadn't known existed; I certainly wasn't blind to other women, nor was I gelded or dead, but appreciation now found outlets other than taking attractive women to bed, be it in my mind or in reality.

Thus I gazed upon this lovely Southron woman and asked, "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Startled out of her poised serenity, she blinked. The faintest of blushes rose in her cheeks.

She gestured again, more insistently, to the tray containing breakfast.

"Later," I said. "Umir sent you?"

She nodded, lids lowering long enough to display long dark lashes against her cheeks.

"Were instructions given?"

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. Her voice was low and perfectly modulated. "I am to do what you wish and be what you wish."

"Is being here in Umir's house what you wish?" The dark brows arched. "But of course. How not? It is better by far than it might be."

That was likely true. But still I heard Del's voice in my head, arguing the point. "Given a choice, would you leave?"

She was clearly baffled by my line of questioning. "My family was well paid. They live in comfort now. But I live in even greater comfort. Why would I wish to leave?"

"And when you are instructed to do what a man wishes, and be what that man wishes, don't you ever ask yourself if it's worth it?"

Unexpectedly, she laughed. "Do you?"

My turn to be baffled. "What?"

"When you hire a woman for the night, do you ever ask yourself if it's worth it?"

I hadn't hired a woman since meeting Del. But even before that, when I'd celebrated victories with women and liquor, or with women and no liquor, it had never once occured to me to ask myself if it was worth it. It was simply what I did. And there were always women who wanted me to do it.

She saw the answer in my face and smiled. "So, you see. We are not so very different."

But I was. Now. Yet there was no possible way to explain it to her. "Thank you for bringing breakfast," I said, "but I'll eat alone."

She was smiling, certain of me. "And afterwards?"

"Afterwards, I will also be alone."

That surprised her. "You don't wish my company?"

It was undoubtedly an insult, but I tried to soften it. "I choose my own companions."

A wave of color rose in her face. "Umir believed I would please you."

"What would please me, and Umir knows this, is to be given my freedom."

She studied me a moment longer, as if expecting me to change my mind. When I said nothing else, merely waited quietly, she finally accepted it for the truth. She turned at once to the door, rapped on it sharply, and slipped out without a backward glance when the guard opened it.

I listened to the latch being locked behind her. Then I walked to the nearest wall, turned, slid down with my back planted against it. Once upon a time . . .

But I regretted no part of my decision.

I sighed, thumped my head against the wall, shut my eyes. I could hear Umir's sword-dancers. But all I could think about was Del as I had last seen her, left to the ministrations of a stranger while I was here, waiting to meet a man who would do his best to kill me.

Nine days, or eight. I should have asked Umir.

Bascha, where are you? Still in the lean-to, or did Nayyib get you to Julah?

This was not how I had envisioned it. For several years I'd seen Del and me dying together, fighting any number of enemies. I had never envisioned us as old people, but as we were now.

Certainly I had never considered Del might die of sandtiger wounds or poison, and me sentenced to die in a circle I was no longer allowed to enter.

Never in a thousand thousand years had I ever expected to declare elaii-ali-ma. Despite my time as a chula among the Salset, I considered myself truly born the day Alimat's shodo had accepted me for instruction. The day I had taken my name. The day I had defeated Abbu Bensir in an impromptu practice match with wooden swords.

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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sion 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 ident.i.ty, 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 ma.s.sive 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 G.o.ds-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, gla.s.s, 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.

My host had, as I had expected, a.s.sembled all of his guests along the curving, white-painted wall off the back of his house. Having been present at Iskandar, I could see Umir had not been successful in luring all sword-dancers to his contest. But the number was decent.

They were most of them Southroners, but there was a fair proportion of foreigners. They were taller men, heavier; brown-haired, blond, even red-heads, and everything in between with eyes of every color. Skin was tanned, freckled, or burned a permanent red from exposure to the harsh Southron sun. Though Southroners all resemble one another because of similar coloring and builds, the only likeness among the foreigners was a hardness in their eyes and the swords at hips and shoulders. There is a marked difference between men who wear swords for protection or impression, and men who make a living with a blade. An ease exists among the latter, a casual confidence in carriage, in self-knowledge. A sword is more than a sword. It is a part of their souls.

Sabra, the first, if short-lived, female tanzeer, had made her exhibition garish and overly dramatic. Umir's tastes and intentions were different. He neither announced my arrival nor my name; he knew, and I knew, there was no need. The Sandtiger had been promised to the winner.

Some of these men had never seen me. Some likely hadn't been born when I first left Alimat. These men gazed at me with a quiet avidity, marking how the man matched legend and rumor. Undoubtedly some found me larger than expected, others thought me smaller. If what Del had said of Meteiera's magic lifting a measure of harsh usage from me were true, then perhaps I looked younger than many antic.i.p.ated. But there was no doubt in any of the eyes that I was who I was. It was why I could go nowhere truly disguised. Nothing can hide facial scars left by a sandtiger's claws.

Something inside me kindled abruptly into memory, and regret. Now Del would bear her share, though fortunately her face was spared.

If she had survived.

The sword-dancers, as expected, took the measure of me: noted stature, the way I moved, the length of legs and arms, the depth and spring of my ribs-and the ma.s.sive scar left there by Del's jivatma-the architecture of bones and muscle, the fit of flesh over both. In the circle, everything counts. Particularly in a death-dance.

They also, every one of them, looked at my hands.

The pale sand was warm beneath bare feet, but Umir had selected a good time of day.

Since it was Punja sand, the sun would eventually heat the intermixed crystals beyond endurance. But it was early summer and mid-morning, bright enough to see without squinting, not so warm as to burn the callused soles of a sword-dancer's feet.

I noted a few frowns, an occasional puzzled expression. After a moment's detached reflection, I realized it was likely I resembled nothing of what those who knew me by sight antic.i.p.ated. Skandi had changed me. But none of them knew about Skandi. I had simply disappeared after Sabra's aborted sword-dance, after declaring elaii-ali-ma. All they knew was the here and now: an aging man who somehow looked younger, wearing double rings of silver in his ears, with hair cropped shorter than was his wont. The build was the same, the features the same; but the man, somehow, was not.