"You do look younger." Her tone was carefully measured.

Ironic, to look younger when one's lifespan has been shortened.

"Of course, maybe it's the hair," Del suggested. "You look very different with it so short."

"Longer than it was." I rubbed a hand over my head; and so it was, all of possibly two inches now, temporarily lying close against my skull, though I expected the annoying wave to start showing up any day. Del had said the blue tattoos were invisible, save for a slight rim along the hairline. But that would be hidden, too, once my hair grew out all the way.

"I don't mean you look like a boy," she clarified. "You look like you. Just—less used."

Hoolies, that sounded good. "Define for me 'less used.' "

"By the sun." She shrugged. "By life."

"That wouldn't be wishful thinking, would it?"

Del blinked. "What?"

"There are fifteen-plus years between us, after all. Maybe if I didn't look so much older—"

"Oh, Tiger, don't be ridiculous! I've told you I don't care about that."

I dropped into a squat. The knees didn't pop. I bounced up again. Still no complaints.

Del frowned. "What was that about?"

"Feeling younger." I grinned crookedly. "Or maybe it's just my wishful thinking."

Del bent and picked up her stick. "Then let's go again."

"What, you want to try and wear down the old man? Make him yield on the basis of sheer exhaustion?"

"You never yield to exhaustion," she pointed out, "in anything you do."

"I yielded to your point of view about women having worth in other areas besides bed."

"Because I was right."

As usual, with us, the banter covered more intense emotions. I didn't really blame Del for being concerned. Here we were on our way back to the South, where I had been born and lost; where I had been raised a slave; where I had eventually found my calling as a sword-dancer, hired to fight battles for other men as a means of settling disputes—but also where I had eventually voluntarily cut myself off from all the rites, rituals, and honor of the Alimat-trained sword-dancer's closely prescribed system.

I had done it in a way some might describe as cowardly, but at the time it was the right choice. The only choice. I'd made it without thinking twice about it, because I didn't have to; I knew very well what the cost would be. I was an outcast now, a blade without a name. I had declared elaii-ali-ma, rejecting my status as a seventh-level sword-dancer, which meant I was fair game to any honor-bound sword-dancer who wanted to challenge me.

Of course, that challenge wouldn't necessarily come in a circle, where victory is not achieved by killing your opponent—well, usually; there are always exceptions—but by simply winning. By being better.

For years I had been better than everyone else in the South, though a few held out for Abbu Bensir (including Abbu Bensir), but I couldn't claim that any longer. I wasn't a sword-dancer. I was just a man a lot of other men wanted to kill.

And Del figured it would be a whole lot easier to kill me now than before.

She was probably right, too.

So here I was aboard a ship bound for the South, going home, Accompanied by a stubborn stud-horse and an equally stubborn woman, sailing toward what more romantic types, privy to my dream, might describe as my destiny. Me, I just knew it was time, dream or no dream. We'd gone off chasing some cockamamie idea of me being Skandic, a child of an island two week's sail from the South, but that was done now. I was, by all appearances—literally as well as figuratively—Skandic, a child of that island, but things hadn't worked out. Sure, it was the stuff of fantasy to discover I was the long-lost grandson of the island's wealthiest, most powerful matriarch, but this fantasy didn't have a happy ending. It had cost me two fingers, for starters. And nearly erased altogether the man known as the Sandtiger without even killing him.

Meteiera. The Stone Forest. Where Skandic men with a surfeit of magics so vast that much was mostly undiscovered, cloistered themselves upon tall stone spires ostensibly to serve the gods but also, they claimed, to protect their loved ones by turning away from them. Because the magic that made them powerful also made them mad.

Now, anyone who knows me will say I don't—or didn't– think much of magic. In fact, I don't—didn't—really believe in it. But I'll admit something strange was going on in Meteiera, because I had cause to know. I can't swear the priest-mages worked magic on me, as Del suggested, but once there I wasn't precisely me anymore. And I witnessed too many strange things.

Hoolies, I did strange things.

I shied away from that like a spooked horse. But the knowledge, the awareness, crept back. Despite all the outward physical changes, there were plenty of interior ones as well. A comprehension of power, something like the first faint pang of hunger, or the initial itch of desire. In fact, it was very like desire—because that power wanted desperately to be wielded.

I shivered. If Del had asked what the problem was, I'd have told her it was a bit chill in the morning, and after all I was wearing only a leather dhoti for ease of movement as I went through the repetitive rituals that honed the body and mind. But it wasn't the chill of morning that kindled the response. It was the awareness again of the battle I faced. Or, more accurately, battles.

And none of them had anything to do with sword-dancing, or even sword fighting. Only with refusing to become what I'd been told, on Meteiera, I must become: a mage.

Actually, they'd said I was to become a priest-mage, but I'm even less inclined to put faith in, well, faith, than in the existence of magic.

And, of course, it was becoming harder to deny the existence of magic since I had managed to work some. And even harder to deny my own willingness to work it; I had tried to work it. Purposely. I had a vague recollection that those first days after escaping the Stone Forest were filled with desperation, and a desperate man undertakes many strange things to achieve certain goals. My goal had been vital: to get back to Skandi and find Del, and to settle things permanently with the metri, my grandmother.

I got back to Skandi by boat, which is certainly not a remarkable thing when attempting to reach an island. Except the boat hadn't existed before I made it exist, conjured of seawrack and something more I'd learned on Meteiera.

Discipline.

Magic is merely the tool. Discipline is the power.

Now I stood at the rail staring across the ocean, knowing that everything I'd ever been in my life was turned inside out. Upside down. Every which way you can think of.

Take up the sword.

I lived with and for the sword. I didn't understand why I needed to be told. No; commanded.

"You're still you," Del said, with such explicit firmness that I realized she was worried that I was worried, not knowing my thoughts had gone elsewhere.

I smiled out at the seaspray.

"You are." She came up beside me. She had washed her hair in the small amount of fresh water the captain allowed for such ablutions, and now the breeze dried it. The mix of salt, spray, and sun had bleached her blonder. Strands were lifted away from her face, streaming back across her shoulders.

I have been less in my life, dependent on circumstances. But now, indisputably, I was more.

I was, I had been told, messiah. Now mage. I had believed neither, claiming—and knowing—I was merely a man. It was enough. It was all I had wanted to be, in the years of slavery when I was chula, not boy. Slave, not human.

I glanced at Del, still smiling. "Keep saying that, bascha."

"You are."

"No," I said, "I'm not. And you know it as well as I do."

Her face went blank.

"Nice try," I told her, "but I read you too well, now."