Sword-Born by Jennifer Roberson

Author:Jennifer Roberson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

NINETEEN

SUNSET WAS glorious. Even as I prepared to go through the conditioning rituals, I paused to look. From deep in the caldera rose the plume of smoke issued of living islands, the faintest of drifting veils. Wind lifted, bore it, dissipated it with the dying of the day. I felt the sighing against my face, the prickle of it in the hair of my forearms and naked torso. Only the scar from Del's blooding-blade was unaware of its touch.

Born and bred of the South, of the desert and its sands, of relentless heat and merciless sun ... and yet something in me answered to this place. To the wind of the afternoon, dying now into night. To the lushness of vegetation fed by ocean moisture, not sucked dry into dessication. To the smell of the soil, the sea, the blossoms; the blinding white of painted dwellings and the brilliance of blue domes, the endless clean horizons that stretched beyond the island to places unknown to me.

I smiled into the sunset, watching the colors change, then bent my mind and focus upon the slow, graceful, meticulous positioning of flesh and bone and muscle, answering with a contentment verging on bliss the blessed familiarity of ritualized movements I'd learned so many years before from the shodo of Alimat, who understood the needs of the soul as well as of the body.

The metri's servant found me there some while later. Sweat sheened me, but did not run my flesh; the breath moved freely in my lungs and did not catch; the protest of muscles left too long to ships and happenstance was fading. It would require dedicated daily practice before true fitness returned, but I was already looser than I had been since we'd left the South.

Simonides waited until I broke the pattern of the ritual. Diffidently he took up the cloth I'd draped over the courtyard wall and handed it to me. I patted myself dry even as he spoke. "The metri sends to say Herakleio has gone into the city."

It was the longest sentence I'd heard from him. His words were heavily accented, but decipherable. Still, the topic baffled me. "And?" I prompted.

"The metri sends to say this is your responsibility."

"Is it?"

"The metri sends to say you will find him in a wine-house with other young men of his age, consorting with women."

"Ah." Of course.

"The metri sends to say this is your responsibility."

"That he drinks and consorts with women?"

"The metri sends to say--"

I cut him off with a gesture. "And what do you say?"

It startled him. He blinked. "I?"

"You."

"I say?"

"You say."

He opened his mouth. Shut it. Thought thoughts. Eventually opened his mouth again. "I say the metri expects you to bring him home."

"That's obvious, Simonides. What I'm wondering is, why?"

"Your debt."

"My debt doesn't include playing nursemaid."

For the briefest of moments a hint of amusement seasoned the quiet courtesy of his eyes. "The metri sends to say it does."

"How can the metri send to say something in answer to a statement she hasn't heard me make?"

"The metri sends to say I am, in her absence, her eyes and ears.

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