Sword-Maker(76)

“Yes, but it served notice to those of us able to judge such things as talent and potential.” He paused. “To those few of us.”

“Did it?” Del asked coolly.

“Oh, yes,” Abbu said. “He was a clumsy seventeen-year-old boy with hands and feet too big for his body—and his brain—but the potential was there. I knew what he would become … so long as his inborn submissiveness and all his years as a chula didn’t destroy him before he truly began.”

Del’s lids didn’t flicker. “Abbu Bensir,” she said softly, “be careful where you walk.”

He is not a stupid man; he changed tactics instantly. “But I am not here to talk about the Sandtiger, whom you undoubtedly know much better than I do.” There was a glint in his eyes. “I came to offer my services as a shodo, even briefly. I think you could benefit.”

“Perhaps I could,” Del said. And then looked me dead in the eye. “If you kick me one more time—”

I overrode her by raising my voice and talking to Abbu. “Won’t you be going to Iskandar like everyone else?”

“Eventually. Although I think it is nonsense, this talk of a jhihadi.” Abbu shrugged, swallowed aqivi. “Iskandar himself, the stories say, promised he would return to bring prosperity to the South, to turn the sand to grass. I see no signs of that.” He shook his head. “I think it is nothing more than a foolish man who fancies himself an oracle … a zealot who requires attention before he dies. He will rouse the tribes, undoubtedly—that, I hear, is begun—but no one with any sense will pay mind to it.”

“Except the tanzeers.” I shrugged as Abbu frowned over his tankard. “They won’t believe the Oracle’s foretellings, but if they have any intelligence at all they’ll recognize that this Oracle—and the proclaimed jhihadi, if one ever appears—could siphon off some of their power.”

“An uprising,” Abbu said thoughtfully, “couched in the name of religion.”

“People will do amazing things in the name of faith,” I remarked. “Wrap it in the trappings of holy edict, and even assassination is revered.”

“I don’t understand,” Del interjected. “What you say of religion, yes—that I have seen myself—but how would it affect the South?”

I shrugged. “The South is made up of hundreds of desert domains ruled by any man strong enough to hold it. He comes in, establishes his dominance, names himself tanzeer to gain a little glitter—and rules.”

She blinked. “So easily?”

“So easily,” Abbu confirmed in his broken voice. “Of course, any man who decided to do it would require a large force of loyal men … or a large force of hired men loyal to his coin.” He grinned. “I myself have engaged in establishing several such new reigns.”

Del’s tone was bland. “But you yourself have never attempted to set up your own domain.”

He shrugged. “Easier to take the money and leave, then move on to the next desert bandit who has notions of naming himself tanzeer.”

Del glanced at me. “Have you done it as well?”

“Never from the beginning,” I told her. “I have hired on to protect the tanzeer already in place, but I’ve never gone in and set up a brand-new domain.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “So a tanzeer is not born … he becomes a prince only through force of arms.”

I shook my head. “A tanzeer is born if his family has held the domain long enough. And some of these desert ‘princedoms’ have been in existence for centuries, handed down to each heir—”

“—who must himself be strong enough to hold it,” Del finished.

“Of course,” Abbu rasped. “There have been many newly proclaimed tanzeers, inheriting at an untimely age, who simply could not muster the forces needed to defend against usurpers.” He smiled. “That is the easiest way of enlarging a domain.”

“Stealing from someone else,” she said.

“All of the domains were stolen,” Abbu countered. “Once, surely, the South belonged to no one, it simply was—and then men strong enough to do so selected for themselves the domains they wanted … and so on and so on until the land was sectioned off from the sea to the Northern border, and to the east and west as well.”

“Sectioned off,” she echoed. “Is there no free land left at all?”

Abbu shrugged. “Domains exist where the land is worth having. There is water, or a city, or an oasis, or mountains—a place worth having becomes a domain. What no one wants is free.”