Del began to laugh.

"What?" I asked irritably, trying to point the stud back into a straight line as we exchanged alley for street.

"I think he's afraid of him!"

"A lot of horses are afraid of the stud—"

"No! I mean the stud's afraid of my horse!"

"Now, bascha, do you really think—" But I broke off because the stud, now freed of the confines of the narrow alley, took three lunging steps sideways into the center of the street and stopped dead, stiff-legged, snorting wetly and loudly through widened nostrils. Fortunately it was early enough that the street was not yet crowded, and no one was in his way.

Del was still laughing.

"Maybe you should have gotten a mare after all," I muttered. "Look, bascha, just go ahead. I'll bring up the rear."

Grinning, she took my advice. The stud eased after a moment, ears flicking forward as Del departed. "What, you like the view from behind better?" I asked him. "Fine. Can we go now?"

And indeed we might have gone beyond the first two strides, except someone stopped dead in front of us. On foot. It was either ride over the top of him, or halt yet again.

I reined in sharply, swearing, and looked down upon the interruption. A young man in an russet-gold burnous, a Southroner, with smooth dark skin, longish dark hair, strong but striking features, and the kind of liquid, thick-lashed, honey-brown eyes that can melt a woman's heart. It might have been happenstance that he stepped in front of the stud, impeding my way, except that one hand was on a rein, holding the stud in place—and the other held a sheathed sword.

"You are the Sandtiger," he declared, raising his voice. Plainly he wanted an audience.

I might have denied his opening salvo in the interests of saving time, except I'd nearly lost myself in Meteiera and would never hide from my name again. I merely stared down at him.

Expressive eyes challenged me. "Will you dance? Will you step into the circle?"

I opened my mouth to explain I couldn't dance, not the way he so clearly wanted, with a circle drawn in sand and all the honor codes. Instead I said, "Not today," and jammed heels into the stud's ribs.

Startled, he jumped forward. The young man, equally startled, lost his grip on the rein. With agile alacrity he leaped aside so as not to be ridden over, and I heard his fading curses as I struck a crisp long-trot to the end of the street.

Del waited there atop her quiet gelding. The stud took one look at him, considered spooking again, but was convinced otherwise when I cracked the long reins across his broad rump. There was no further dissent as Del fell in beside us.

"So," she said calmly, "the secret of your return is out."

"Yes and no."

She frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"He isn't a sword-dancer. Just a kid trying to make a reputation."

"How do you know?"

"He invited me to dance. A sword-dancer won't. They all know what elaii-ali-ma means: that there is no dance, no circle, merely a fight to the death. There's a huge difference."

"And every sword-dancer in the South will know this?"

"Everyone sworn to the honor codes, yes."

"But he recognized you."

"That," I said, "is likely more a result of the swordsmith spreading gossip."

"You think he recognized you?"

"Probably not. As I said, Haziz isn't a place many sword-dances go, unless specifically hired. But as you pointed out before, we don't exactly fit in with the rest of the crowd. All it would take is a description, and anyone who'd seen or heard about us would know."

"So. It begins."

"It begins." I glanced sideways at the long equine face with its black-painted eye circles, the wine girl's dangling golden fringe—I wondered briefly if Del had told her what she intended to do with it—and mournful blue eyes. "That horse is a disgrace to his kind."

Del put up her brows. "Just because your horse is afraid of him is no cause to insult him."

"He looks ridiculous!"

"No more than yours did when he stood rooted to the ground, trembling like a leaf."

Probably not. Scowling, I said, "Let's go, bascha. It's a long ride to Julah—"

"—and we're burning daylight."

Well. We were.

Del and I stopped burning daylight when the sun went down. Then it lost itself in its own conflagration, a panoply of color so vivid as to nearly blind you. Desert orange, blazing red, yellow, vermillion, raisin purple, lavender, the faint burnished shadow of blue fading to silver-gilt. Out here twilight dies gently, shading slowly into darkness.

We were beyond the last oasis between Haziz and Julah, so there was no place in particular we wanted to bed down. We ended up settling for a series of conjoined hummocks carpeted in a fibrous, red-throated groundcover bearing tiny white blossoms, and the threadbare shelter of a thin grove of low, scrubby trees boasting a bouquet of woody limbs bearing dusty green leaves. Within weeks the leaves would dry out, curl up, and drop off, when summer seared them to death, but for now there was yet enough moisture in the mornings for the leaves to remain turgid. Mixed in with the groundcover were taller-growing desert grasses with frizzy, curled topknots.

"This'll do," I said, reining in even as Del dismounted.

Since the stud was not always trustworthy when picketed close to other horses, I led him to a tree eight paces away and had a brief discussion about staying put as I hobbled him. Del and I busied ourselves with untacking and grooming both mounts, swapping out bridles and bits for halters, pouring water into the squashable, flat-bottomed oiled canvas bags doubling as buckets, and offering them grain as a complement to the grasses. It wasn't particularly good grazing, but it would do; and the next night we'd be in Julah where they'd eat well.

Our dinner consisted of dried cumfa meat, purple-skinned tubers, and flat, tough-crusted journey-bread. Del drank water, I had a few mouthfuls of aqivi from the goatskin bota. Sated, we sprawled loose-limbed on our bedrolls and digested, blinking sleepily up into the deeping sky as the first stars kindled to life.

"That," Del observed after amoment, "was one huge sigh."

I hadn't noticed.

"Of contentment," she added.

I considered it. Maybe so. For all there were risks attendant to returning South, it was home. I'd been North with Del once, learning what real forests were, and true mountains, and even snow; had sailed to Skandi and met my grandmother on a wind-bathed, temperate island in the midst of brilliant azure seas, but it was here I was most at ease. Out in the desert beneath the open skies with nothing on the horizon but more horizon. Where a man owed nothing to no one, unless he wished to owe it.

Unless he was a slave.

Del lay very close. She set her head and one shoulder against mine, hooking ankle over ankle. And I recalled that I was man, not child; free, not slave. That'd I'd been neither child nor chula for years.

I remembered once telling Del, as we prepared to take ship out of Haziz, that there was nothing left for me in the South. In some ways, that was truth. In others, falsehood. There were things about the South I didn't care for, things I might not be cognizant of had Del not come along, but there were other things that meant more than I expected. Maybe it was merely a matter of being familiar with such things, of finding ease in dealing with what I knew rather than challenging the unexpected; or maybe it was that I'd met and overcome the challenges I'd faced and did not wish to relegate them to insignificance.

Then again, maybe it was merely relief that I was alive to return home, after nearly dying in a foreign land.

I grinned abruptly. "You know, there is one thing I really miss about Skandi."

Del sounded drowsy. "Hmmmm?"

"The metri's tiled bathing pool. And what we did in it."