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downwind from Khamsin; several of the mares were ready to be bred.
    â€œPerhaps if your stallion requires exercise, you can do as we do—run him at the end of a long rope.”
    Khamsin wouldn’t like it—he’d graduated from that training exercise years ago—but it was better than nothing. The rest of the morning was spent thus, with Khamsin galloping in circles and every so often testing the rope’s strength with a lunge. At the end of the exercise session the muscles of Azzad’s back were stretched to breaking, and his arms felt ready to pop out of their shoulder sockets. But he walked Khamsin until the horse cooled, then rubbed him down with handfuls of dry fodder.
    On the way back to the dawa’an sheymma, they passed a tent where a very young man dressed for travel stood among a knot of women. Some of them were crying as the youth embraced and kissed them.
    Recalling his own spurious excuse for the welts left by the sand-tiger—completely healed now by the Shagara—Azzad asked, “Is he off to prove his manhood?”
    â€œTo do what ?” Fadhil blinked.
    â€œWith a dangerous hunt, or a journey through perilous territory, or something of the sort,” Azzad explained, wondering why he had to clarify. All the wilderness tribes he’d ever heard tales of required some sort of test to initiate a boy into full male status within the group. All the northern tribes, anyway. “Proving his courage and resourcefulness, his ability to survive.”
    â€œWe need no such proof that a boy has become a man. Except,” Fadhil added with a shrug, “fathering a child. No, he will marry next month, and today goes to join his wife’s tribe. We keep our women here.”
    â€œAnd bring husbands from other tribes into the Shagara?” No wonder these people were so poor. With no competition for the smartest, cleverest young girls to marry into a family and become designers and guardians of its wealth—but perhaps such competition occurred over the men instead. In Rimmal Madar, the best of the sons were kept in the family to attract the best of the daughters from other families. One of Za’avedra al-Ibrafidia’s main complaints about Azzad had been his spectacular unwillingness to use his looks and his charm to secure in marriage a brilliant girl who might eventually take her place. The Shagara did things backward, it seemed to Azzad. He worked his mind around this new eccentricity, and at length he asked, “Will you be married outside the Shagara one day?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?” He paused, then added, “If I may ask.”
    â€œA student of Chal Kabir is of more value than he would bring in a husband-price.”
    At least this began to make sense. Of a Shagara kind, anyway. “The other tribes pay to marry your men?”
    â€œOf course. We are Shagara.” As if that explained everything.
    The midday meal was waiting. Azzad fell on the food, and when his hunger was satisfied, he returned to his questioning. Fadhil sighed quietly and answered as best he could.
    â€œWill that young man go to his wife’s tribe alone? No servants, no friends?”
    â€œHe will go with one of his brothers, who will stay until the wedding—and perhaps longer, if one of the maidens finds him pleasing. There are few tribes who can boast Shagara husbands. The Tallib, the Tariq, the Azwadh, the Tabbor, the Harirri, the Ammal—these are the Za’aba Izim, the Seven Names, the people we marry. There are other tribes—the al-Kassira, who rule that city, for instance—but we do not marry them. They are not allied to us in peace and war.”
    â€œWar? Over what?” He gestured to the stony desert beyond the open tent flap.
    Fadhil mimicked his outswept arm. “Water.”
    â€œOf course. That was stupid of me. My people make war over other things.” He considered Sheyqa Nizzira. “Power. Envy.