Discipline.

I climbed the treacherous track to the top of the cliff, where basin-men, molah-men, women, wives, children, and merchants made ward-signs against the ikepra.

The ikepra, who by now was exhausted enough to want nothing better than to tumble into bedding and sleep for two tendays, ignored it all and walked.

In truth, the ikepra did more wobbling than walking, but the end result was the same: I reached Akritara. By sundown.

Simonides came out of the house to tell the ikepra to leave. Then blanched white as he truly saw the ikepra. "Alive!"

I wasted no time. "Where's Del?"

He swallowed, closed his eyes, stared at me again. Said, in Skandic, "Praise all the gods of the sky!"

"Where's Del?"

He set a trembling hand to the wall, as if he might fall without the support. "Gone. Both of them. They sailed."

I had expected it. Had prepared for it. But the despair was profound.

The ikepra showed none of it. Only cold control. "When?"

Simonides took his hand from the wall and gathered himself. "A threeday ago."

"At whose behest?"

His face was strained. "Mine."

He meant the metri's. "I was dead, so why extend the guest-right to unnecessary people?"

"There was no place …" He attempted to regain self-control, began again. "There was no place here for the renegada woman."

"Del?"

"She said-she said this was not her home. Nor yours." His expression was anguished. "She would not stay in the place that had killed you."

"Well," I said, "that's settled for the moment. Time I saw the metri."

"Wait!" His hand extended to stop me, fell away limply. "She is unwell. The shock…"

I offered neither diplomacy nor compassion. "Too bad."

His eyes sought my face, examined the ring-pierced brows, the tattooed patterns on my skull. Had the grace to comprehend some small measure of the shock I had been subjected to.

"Of course," he murmured, turning to escort me into her presence.

The metri stood in the center of an arch-roofed room, surrounded by pools of rich fabric-tunics-draped over the bed, the chair, the chest, puddled on the floor; a scattering of jewelry glinting of gold and glass in the lamplight; a handful of old flowers, dulled by years into brittle, pale, dusty semblances of what once had been bright and lively, and fresh.

As I came into the room she looked up from the flowers. Saw me. And the blooms were crumbled into dust and ash by the spasming of her fingers closing into trembling fists.

Even her lips were white. "Alive. "

"Despite every effort to insure otherwise," I said, "and somewhat more and certainly less than I was"-I held out my hands, palms up-"but incontestably alive. "

She was transfixed by my hands, by the evidence of mutilation. The stumps had healed, but were pink-and-purple against the tanned flesh. I have big hands, wide palms, long fingers; anyone, looking at my hands, would see at once something was missing.

Her pupils swelled to black as she stared into my face.

"A man born to the sword," I said, "is somewhat hampered by an-injury –such as this." I watched the flinching in her eyes. "Is this what you intended?"

She exhaled it. "I?"

In some distant, detached way, I appreciated the delicacy of her tone, the reaction honed to just the right degree of shock and denial. "Your boy," I said, "was feeling threatened. Your boy was truly afraid you might name me in his place. Your boy was on the verge of stepping outside your control. So you removed a piece from the board. A piece that had served a very important, if temporary, function, and was now viewed as unnecessary. Possibly even dangerous to the overall intent of the game." I paused. "Could you not have told him the truth from the beginning?"

The metri said, "He would not have played his part properly."

"Ah." I nodded. "And when will you teach him the rules?"

"There are none. Only an object: to win."

"Whose body was it that came in so handy?"

The tilt of her head shifted minutely. "I believed it was yours."

I laughed sharply, a brief blurt of sound. And in pure, unaccented, formal Skandic, the kind spoken only among the Eleven Families, I told her she was a liar.

The Stessa metri began to tremble.

"What did you think would happen?" I asked. "Did you think I would merge, thus removing all possibility I might return to complicate your life? Did you think I would forget everything I knew of my life before I was put atop the spire? Did you think I would be unchanged, and therefore not even due a momentary memory of my presence in your world?" I shook my head slowly. "I am as I always was. A sword-dancer. The Sandtiger. But with a little extra thrown into the pot. A pinch more seasoning than I had before."

Simonides, behind me, said very quietly, "Mage."

The metri met my eyes. "Mad."

"If I am either, or if I am both," I said, smiling, "perhaps you should be afraid."

The metri gazed down at her hands, still doubled into fists. Slowly she opened them, saw the crushed remains of ancient flowers. After a moment she turned her hands palm down and began to shed those remains. Dust, and bits of stem and petal. Drifting to the floor.

Tears shone in her eyes as she looked at me. "This was my daughter's room."

Tunics, jewelry, the keepsakes of a woman's life. Surrounding the woman who had borne her.

Who had banished her.

"My daughter," she said, "has been dead for forty-two years."

And I was forty.

"Go," the metri commanded.

The ikepra went.

I stepped out of the house into the courtyard, bathed in moon– and starlight, and the sword arced out of the darkness.

I caught the hilt one-handed. Hissed as pain kindled into a bonfire in that hand.

"Alive?" Herakleio stepped from shadows into moonlight. "Well then, perhaps we should remedy that." And brought his own blade up.

I thought of laughing at him. I thought of saying no. I thought of pleading fatigue. Pain. Inability to even grip the sword properly.

But all of that was what Herakleio wished to hear.

He came at me then, as I had gone at him the evening Sahdri arrived in our midst, floating atop the wall. This was no circle, no dance, no sparring, but engagement with intent. No rules, no codes, no vows, no honor.

I had meant to intimidate, because I knew the difference. Herakleio meant to take all of his anger and frustration out on me. To punish me. Put me in my place. Render me defeated.

Kill me? No. Unless he got lucky.

Of course, I had two fingers fewer than before, and all wagers were off.

I heard Simonides' blurt of shocked denial from the doorway. But Herakleio was on me, and I had no time for servants, metris, or magic. All I had was myself.

A sword.

And the dance of the mind, contained within its circle.

Discipline.

When I was done, Herakleio lay sprawled upon the courtyard tiles. He bled from a dozen cuts. His blade had been flung well out of reach against a wall, hidden by shadow; he had only himself now, winded, wounded, humiliated, and that was not enough.

Not for me. Not for himself. Possibly not for the metri.

But she had no one else.

I tossed my sword aside, so he would not see me shaking. "We're done," I said. "I bequeath to you all of the things you believed I had taken from you, or would. I want none of them. None of you, none of her, none of this place. I am due nothing as a son or a grandson; I am neither. I am a seventh-level sword-dancer, trained by the shodo of Alimat and sworn to the rites and rituals of the circle. That is all. And that is more than ever I dreamed of."

Because all I had ever dreamed of was freedom.

And, one night, a sandtiger.

I turned from him then, and walked. Out of the courtyard. Away from the household. Down the track toward the city, the cliff, the caldera.