Del extended a hand, indicating the plateau. “There is a place to stay.”
“I kind of thought we might go find a room. It might not have a roof, but then neither of us is a tanzeer. And it doesn’t look like rain.”
Automatically, Del glanced up at the sky. It was a clear, brilliant blue, without a cloud apparent. But this was border country. This was odd country; it just didn’t feel right. Too many bits mixed together: vegetation, temperature, people.
“Sandtiger! Tiger! Del!”
I glanced around. Frowned. Peered at the circles, but saw no one I knew. Only men in the circles with swords in their hands.
“There.” Del pointed in the other direction. “Isn’t that—Alric?”
Alric? “Oh—Alric.” The Northerner who’d helped us in Rusali, the domain just before Julah. I squinted. “Yes, I think it is.”
Alric approached, waving. With him walked a short, fat woman. Two little girls preceded them; in one arm he carried a third. At least, I think it was a girl; sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Del slid out of her saddle. “Lena had her baby.”
I stayed in mine. “And, from the look of it, is expecting yet another.”
The little girls, upon arrival, hurled themselves at Del, who bent down to receive them. I was privately astonished they even remembered her; they were all of three and four—or maybe four and five; at this age, who can tell?—and they’d only spent a week or so around us when Alric had taken us into his home after I’d gotten myself wounded. But Del is very good with children, and the girls had adored her. Obviously their opinions hadn’t changed.
I watched her as the girls competed for her hugs. She was smiling, laughing with them, exchanging Southron greetings. I almost expected pain, expecting Del to see Kalle in their faces, but there was only happiness. I saw no trace of anguish.
About then Alric arrived with his heavily pregnant wife. The last time I’d seen her she’d also been heavily pregnant. And since the older girls were but a year apart, I began to suspect Lena and Alric enjoyed active nights together.
Lena was Southron, and looked it; he was clearly Northern. The girls were a little of both. They had their mother’s black hair and dark skin, but their father’s bright blue eyes and high-arched cheekbones. They’d be beauties when they were grown.
Alric was grinning. “I thought so!” he said. “I told Lena it was you, but she said no. She said by now Del would have come to her senses and looked for a Northern man instead of a Southron danjac.”
“Oh?” I looked down at Lena, who showed white teeth at me. “I suppose you think she’d be better off with another Alric.”
Lena patted her swollen belly. “A strong, lusty Northerner is good for a woman’s soul.” Black eyes glinted. “And other things as well.”
Alric laughed aloud. “Although so far all this lusty Northerner makes is girls.” He patted Lena’s belly. “Maybe this one will be a boy.”
“And if not?” I asked.
Alric’s grin widened. “We’ll keep trying until we get one.”
I waited for Del’s comment; surely she had one. But the girls were chattering at her and she had no chance to speak.
Lena waved welcoming hands. “Come, come … we have a house in the city not far from here. You will come and stay with us; there are plenty of rooms. We can wait for the jhihadi together.”
I glanced at Alric. “Is that why you came?”
He shifted the baby in his arms. “Everyone else was coming to Iskandar. Even the tanzeers. I thought it might be worthwhile to come up myself and see how the dancing was.” He gestured with his head in the direction of the circles. “And, as you can see, there are sword-dancers aplenty. There will be coin as well. Or a tanzeer who’ll hire me. With all these little mouths to feed, extra coin would be welcome.”
Three little mouths to feed, and a fourth on the way. No wonder he’d come to Iskandar, but I thought it odd for Lena. She couldn’t be far from delivering.
Lena sensed my thought. “A child born in the presence of a jhihadi will be blessed throughout his life.”
“Or hers,” Alric said affably; the possibility of yet another daughter did not appear to trouble him.
He hadn’t changed much. Still big. Still Northern. Still a sword-dancer. But it seemed odd to look at him now—smiling, cheerful, openly friendly—and recall how I had felt when I’d first met him. How I’d thought he was after Del. I hadn’t trusted him at all until we’d sparred in an alley circle. You learn a man that way. Learn what he is made of.