“Tribes,” I said at last. “Too many, and too different.”
“They have as much right here as anyone.”
“I’m not questioning that. I’m wondering where it will lead.”
“If there really is a jhihadi—”
“—he could be dangerous.” I reined the stud around a goat standing in the middle of the track. “Too much power held by a single man.”
Del also passed the goat. “And if he used it for good?”
I make a noise of derision. “Do you know anyone who holds that much power and uses it for good?” I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s possible.”
“Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it can’t exist. Maybe that’s why he’s coming.”
“If he’s coming,” I muttered.
Hyorts lined either side of the track. I smelled the pungent aroma of danjac urine. The tang of goat’s milk and cheese. The almost overwhelming stench of too many people—of too many customs—living too close to one another.
And this was outside of the city.
Del and I were hardly noticed. I didn’t know how long some of the tribes had been camped here, but obviously long enough so that the sight of two strangers was no longer worth comment. In the Punja, half a dozen of the tribes gathered would have killed us on the spot, or taken us prisoner. But no one bothered us. They looked, then looked away.
Looked away from Del.
I frowned. “There must be Northerners here.”
“Why do you—oh. Oh, I see.” Del glanced around. “If any are here, they must be inside the city.”
“It’s where we’re going,” I said. “We’ll know sooner or later, bascha; sooner—we’re almost in.”
And so we were. We passed through the last cluster of hyorts and wagons and entered Iskandar proper. No walls, no gates, no watch. Only open roads, and the city.
The city and her new people.
Southroners, most of them. Fewer Borderers. A handful of towheaded Northerners, head and shoulders above the rest. And goats and sheep and dogs and pigs running loose through the streets of Iskandar.
I couldn’t help grinning. “Doesn’t much look the kind of place a long-awaited jhihadi might come back to.”
“It smells,” Del observed.
“That’s because no one actually lives here. They don’t care. They’re only borrowing it for a while … they’ll leave with the jhihadi.”
“If the jhihadi leaves.”
I guided the stud through a narrow alley. “Wouldn’t make sense for him to stay. Iskandar’s a ruin. He might prefer a livable city.”
“It could be made livable … Tiger, where are we going?”
“Information,” I answered. “Only one place to get it.”
Del’s tone was dry. “I don’t think there is a cantina.”
“There probably is,” I remarked, “but that’s not where we’re going. You’ll see.”
So she did, once we got there. And it wasn’t a cantina, either. It wasn’t one thing at all, but two: the well, and the bazaar.
In every settlement, the well is the center of town. It is where everyone goes, because it is a necessity. Also an equalizer, especially in Iskandar where no tanzeer reigned. It was the only place in the city where all paths would cross.
Thus it becomes the bazaar. Where people go, they buy. Others had things to sell. Even in Iskandar.
“So many,” Del exclaimed.
More than I expected. Stalls filled much of the central square and spilled into adjoining alleys. There were vendors of all kinds, shouting at passersby. The whine of dij-pipes filled the air, keening in ornate Southron style, while street dancers jangled finger-bells and beat taut leather heads of tambor-drums. They wound their way through the crowds, trying to scare up a coin or two, or lead customers back to the stalls of the merchants who’d hired them.
“It is,” Del said. “It’s just like a kymri.”
But this was the South, not the North. We don’t have kymri.
I reined in the stud. Before us lay the choked square. “No sense in riding through there,” I said. “We’d do better to walk—hey!” The shout was to stop a boy trying to squeeze by the stud. “You,” I said more quietly. “Have you been here long?”
“A six-day,” he answered, in Desert.
I nodded. “Long enough to know a little something about the place, then.”
The boy smiled tentatively. Black-haired, dark-skinned, light-eyed. Half-breed, I thought. But I couldn’t name the halves.
“How do we go about finding a place to sleep?” I asked.