Jennifer Roberson Sword Dancer 2 Swordsinger

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More than ever I missed the South.
"Kalle," Del said quietly.
No one answered. No one moved. And then one of the women bent, whispered
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something to a small girl, sent her forward to greet Del.
Sent her forward to meet her mother.
A single glance told me. There was no need for an explanation. And Del offered
me none. She simply turned the girl to face me, turned to face me herself, let
flesh and bones tell the story.
"Kalle," she said simply. "The result of Ajani's lust."
Oh. Hoolies. Bascha.
"Well," I said inanely, "at least she takes after her mother."
Slowly, Del shook her head. "Mother and father. Ajani's a Northerner."
Thirty-six
She was five years old, and magnificent. Small, delicate, shyly beautiful,
like a fragile, pristine blossom. But she was also clearly a child: active,
awkward, blunt. Plainly she stated her preference, which was to be with her
mother, not
Del.
Del let her go, binding her to nothing. She made no claims on the girl's
loyalty, since there was no foundation for it. She made no claims on courtesy,
either, understanding a child's thinking. She simply let Kalle go outside with
the woman she knew as her mother, in name if not in blood, and sat down in a
corner compartment the rest left conspicuously empty for the blade without a
name.
She knelt. Unbuckled harness and jivatma, set both aside in silence. Then
pulled a blue-speckled pelt over her legs and looked up at me, still standing,
too full of thinking to sit.
Del pulled up legs, clasped her arms around pelted knees, sighed a little,
wearily. "When I escaped from Ajani and his men, I had nowhere to go. All of
my kin were dead, except for Jamail, and him they took south almost at once. I
knew better than to try and rescue him without weapons, without proper
training...
I'd have failed. He'd have been sold anyway, and probably me as well... so I
went north. North to the Place of Swords."
"A difficult journey, alone."
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Del scooped tangled hair back from her face. "By the time I arrived, I was
heavily pregnant. But I had made up my mind, and nothing would turn me from my
course. I didn't want the child, I couldn't love the child; it was nothing
more than the result of casual seed spilled by a wolf's-head Northerner... why
should
I want his byblow?"
Why, indeed; the question made sense. Yet it sounded so horribly cold.
"The voca refused to turn me away, offering succor to someone in need, but
neither would they admit me as ishtoya. It was only once I swore to prove
myself after the birth of the child that they agreed to even consider
admitting me as a probationer. And so I bore Kalle in the dead of winter, and
when I was physically able I showed the voca I knew how to handle a sword."
She sighed.
"Not as well as I needed to, for my purposes, but enough to convince them of
my worth. And so they admitted me."
Del and I had been together nearly a year. Prior to that she'd been in
Staal-Ysta for five. But she'd also borne a child; it meant she'd had, at
most, four and a half years of training.
I sat down across from her, leaning against the divider. "So very good," I
said quietly, "in so very short a time."
She didn't avoid my gaze. "I had a need," she said. "A great and terrible
need.
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You have seen the result."
"Revenge."
"Rescue," she countered, "that first, always. Revenge later, yes. I want to
collect the blood-debt Ajani owes me."
"As the voca wants to collect the one you owe Staal-Ysta."
"Once again, a choice," Del said. "In killing Theron, you gave me the rest of
the year to live in freedom from the blood-guilt. Even then, I might have
ignored the summons and remained in the South, free of the voca, declared a
blade without a name." Fingers smoothed the pelts stretched over her knees.
"But
I have a name, a true name, and I won't let them strip it from me."
"And if death strips it from you?"
Slowly, she shook her head. "I will be buried in Staal-Kithra, with Bron and
others like him. An honorable death; my name will be carved into the dolmens
and sung in all the songs."
My mouth twisted wryly. "Immortality, such as it is."
Del sighed. "A Southroner wouldn't understand--"
"I understand death," curtly, I interrupted. "I understand permanence. Your
name might live on forever, but I'd rather you did, too."
Too abruptly, she changed the subject. "There is amnit," she said, "if you
want it. And food. We're not prisoners, as Stigand said; we have the freedom
to do and say what we want, so long as it is in here."
"Stigand being the old man?"
"Yes. The other, the youngest, was Telek." She smiled, but only briefly, as if
too weary to hold it. "When I left, he was but newly made an-kaidin. At least
it hasn't ruined him; he always was a fair man."
"And Stigand isn't?"
"Not unfair. Just hard. Demanding. Difficult to know. He is of the old school,
as Baldur was... and Baldur's best friend." She sighed. "It was Stigand
himself who gave me the choice between being sword-dancer or kaidin... I
insulted him when I left Staal-Ysta. He expected me to stay. And then, of
course, I killed
Baldur. He has hated me for that."
I could see why. But I didn't say it to her. "Telek seemed reasonable."
"Telek is a good man. He and his woman took Kalle as their own and have given
her a fine home."
"But she isn't their own," I said. "Kalle is your daughter."
Del's expression wasn't one, being masked again. This time I couldn't read it.
"I may not live beyond tomorrow, depending on the verdict. What good would it
do
Kalle to lose a mother she doesn't know? A mother she never had?"
I had no answer for her, because she wasn't arguing with me. She was arguing
with herself.
Lines dented her brow. "Why should a child be taken from the only parents she
has known, given to a stranger, and told to love her as a mother?"
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