Her expression made an eloquent statement: she did not consider my explanation good enough.

"Come on, Del, we've been through this. We leave in the morning. After we've had a chance to sleep in a real bed."

"You could have slept in a real bed this afternoon."

"I was, in case you haven't noticed, being a considerate individual. I let you have the whole bed all to yourself."

"Considerate?" Del eyed my jug. "How much of that have you had?"

I brightened. "Enough that I wouldn't trust myself to stay ahorse."

"Hah," she retorted. "You wouldn't admit to being too drunk to sit a horse if you were lying face-down in a puddle of piss."

"I dunno," I slurred, blinking owlishly. "I might need you to help me to bed. You know, hold me up, take my sandals off, undress me …" I waggled suggestive eyebrows at her.

Del's face was perfectly bland, but I saw the faintest hint of a twitch at one corner of her mouth. "Dream on."

I stiffened on my bench. "That's cruel. I told you how I feel about dreams."

She was laughing at me unrepentantly even as she rose. "I will leave you to your reading, then."

"Wait—where are you going?" I started to reach for the book and my sword. "Back to bed?"

She paused. "Don't look so hopeful, Tiger. No, not to bed. I have it in mind to purchase some new clothing. Something– different."

"Why? What kind of clothing? How different?"

"Something suitable for serving liquor."

I stood up so fast I overset the bench. "You're not—you can't mean—tell me you don't …" I stopped, untangled my brain, started over from an entirely different direction, a more positive direction in view of Del's tendancy to disapprove of what she described as my tendancy toward possessiveness. With immense courtesy, I queried, "What is it you intend to do, pray tell?"

"Learn how to run a cantina."

Alarm reasserted itself. "By being a wine-girl?"

Del took note of the fact my raised voice, carrying, had stopped all other conversations throughout the common room, focusing abrupt attention on ours. With a glint in her eye she inquired, equally loudly, "What's wrong with being a wine-girl?"

I had committed a slight tactical error in the rules of war: I had taken the battle to the enemy's home. I could continue the fight valiantly if foolishly, or retire from the field with honor intact.

Not that Del ever allowed me any when she owned the ground.

"Why, nothing," I replied guilelessly. "I'm sure you'd make the very best wine-girl this cantina's ever seen."

Which, of course, did nothing at all to endear me to the wine-girls currently present, who already resented Del; yet another tactical error. Retreating with as much dignity as possible, I righted the bench and resumed my seat, whereupon I rescued the book, then promptly buried my face in a cup of aqivi.

Del said calmly, "A good proprietor understands all facets of a business."

I wanted very badly to ask if those facets included selling her favors, but I decided I'd said quite enough for the moment.

But later . . . well, later was a different issue altogether.

I gulped more aqivi as Del departed, thinking maybe it was best if I got drunk before she started serving liquor to men who were entirely too free with their hands.

Of course, Del was more likely to chop off a wandering hand than slap it playfully.

I reconsidered getting drunk, if only to bear sober witness to the justifiable murder of several men.

Then again, they were customers. It's tough to make any profits if you kill or maim the customers.

I went back to the aqivi.

Sometime later, as the girls took to setting out and lighting table candles, I gathered up book and sword and made my way back to the room that was now ours. It was kind of a nice feeling knowing we had a place to leave things as needed on a regular basis as well as to sleep. I'd bunked often enough at Fouad's in earlier days but almost never alone . . . well, come to think of it, I wouldn't be alone now, either, but back then I'd ridden alone, too.

I wondered as I slid aside the door curtain if this was a sign of getting soft or of advancing age, this appreciation of property. I'd never had a place of my own, nor needed one. With the Salset, as a chula, I slept on a ratty goatskin, but even that hadn't been mine; at Alimat, learning to sword-dance, I'd had a bedroll and a spot on the sand to throw it, but neither qualified as a home. A room in the cantina wasn't a home, either, but it was more than anything I'd claimed before.

I grinned wryly as I returned the book to a saddlepouch and slid them under the bed. For a while there, in Skandi, it had looked as though I might be heir to a vast trading empire, due to inherit wealth, vineyards, ships, and a chunk of property containing an immense and beautiful house. But that was when the metri had a use for a long-lost grandson; that use had changed, and so had her attitude. She had, in fact, eventually denied altogether I was her grandson, claiming her daughter had died before I was born– But Del made a surprising discovery on the way back home: I bore the keraka, the birthing mark that proved me a Stessa, one of the Eleven Families of Skandi. They claimed to be gods-descended, those families, but unless the gods they worshipped were petty and avaricious, I hadn't noted any resemblance or advantage.

Still, I couldn't help the hand that stole up to my head, fingers parting hair to feel behind my left ear. Had the priest-mages of ioSkandi not shaved my head, we'd never have known the truth. Del had once asked if I now considered the possibility of returning to Skandi and presenting my case to the ten other Families, but I wasn't interested. The metri had her heir in Herakleio, a cousin of sorts. He was Skandic-born, bred into island customs and convictions, one of them. I was Southron-born and –reared despite my Skandic ancestry; I belonged here.

Of course, only if I survived the current minor problems of sword-dancers out to kill me, and Umir the Ruthless.

My eyes were gritty from reading all day. For that matter, all of me was gritty; I hadn't bathed in days. It crossed my mind to ask Fouad to have the girls bring in a half-cask and fill it, but I decided not to push my luck. I was in their bad graces after my comment to Del. So I opted for the public bathhouse down the street a way. A hot bath, a filling meal, a drink or two, and a good night's sleep in a real bed. I felt my jaw: and a shave. Because come morning, we'd be back on the sand, sweating under burnouses, hunting one of Del's strays.

Of whom I was decidedly not jealous, thank you very much.

I donned harness, did up buckles, made sure the blade exited the sheath without catching, and took myself off to the bathhouse.

Del, who had explained that the scent of an unbathed, hot, active, liquor-imbibing male was not necessarily arousing in intimate moments, would undoubtedly appreciate it.

Me, I'd never noticed. But sometimes you just have to cater to a woman's wishes if you want her to yield to yours. It's the way of the world.