She nodded. "Because you were good."

"No. Because I might become good. Might. If I worked very hard at it."

"You are the single most physically gifted man I have ever seen," she argued vehemently, who had trained as rigorously on Staal-Ysta. "You are completely at ease in your body, and with your body; I think there is nothing you could not accomplish if you wished to."

"Sheer physical ability is one thing," I said, then tapped my skull. "There is the dance up here as well."

"That is what Alimat and the shodo taught you," Del said. "You had the body: quickness, stamina, size, power-"

"But no discipline. No patience. No comprehension of what the rituals meant, and were meant to instill. What I wanted most was to prove I was free, was no man's chula, no matter what was said, or implied, or rumored, or believed about me …" I let it go with a hitch of one shoulder. "Let's just say I wasn't the most popular student."

"You bested Abbu Bensir." She touched her throat. "You gave him the broken voice he has even to this day."

"I got lucky."

"He underestimated you."

"That's what I mean: I got lucky."

She smiled. "But did you believe so then?"

"Of course not. I felt it was my due; how could I not best a man older, smaller, and slower than I?"

"And now it is your due."

"But look how many years it took me to get here."

"And here we are," Del said quietly. "On Skandi, without encumbrances. No brother to find, no sword-dancers to defeat, no sorcerers after our swords or our bodies. No prophecies to fulfill."

"I'm pretty sick of prophecies, myself. They come in handy now and again, I suppose, to keep things from getting too boring, but mostly they just stir up trouble."

Her smile was hooked down, ironic. "But you are the jhihadi."

"Maybe." I knew she didn't believe it. Me, a messiah? The deliverer of the desert? Right. As for me, well, I'd decided it depended on interpretation; I had come up with an idea that could eventually change the sand to grass, albeit it had nothing to do with magic, and thus lent an infinitely banal culmination to a mysterious and mythic prophecy. Which many found disappointing for its utter lack of drama; but then, real life is comprised of such banalities. "Or maybe I just got lucky. Whatever the answer, I think this jhihadi's job is done."

"Leaving him with the balance of his life to live."

"With and without encumbrances."

"What encumbrances do you have now? The metri? Herakleio?"

"Oh, I was thinking more along the lines of you."

"Me!"

"What am I to do with you?"

"Do with me? What do you mean, do with me? What is there to do with me?"

I couldn't help myself: I had to laugh out loud. Which resulted in Del swinging around in front of me and stopping dead in her tracks, which also were mine, so I stopped, too. As she intended.

She poked me hard in the breastbone. "Tell me."

"Oh, bascha, here you say you've changed me over the past three years, but what you don't realize is I've changed you every bit as much."

"You have! Me?" Her chin went up. "What do you mean?"

"You argue like me, now."

"Like you? In what way? How do I argue with you?"

"You slather a poor soul with questions. The kind of questions that are phrased as challenges."

She opened her mouth, shut it. Then opened it again. "In what way," she began with deceptive quietude, "do I do this?"

"That's better," I soothed. "That's more like the old Delilah."

"And that is?"

"You as you are just now. Cool and calm." I dropped into a dramatic whisper. "Dangerous."

She thought about it.

"It's not the end of the world if you lose a little of that icy demeanor and loosen up, you know," I consoled. "I was just making an observation, is all."

She thought about it more, frowning fiercely. "But you're right."

"It's not necessarily a bad thing, Del." I paused. "Loosening up, I mean, not me being right. Though that isn't a bad thing either."

"By acquiring some of your mannerisms, your sayings?" She twisted her mouth. "Perhaps not; I suppose that is bound to happen. But…"

"But?"

"But I am not pleased to be told my self-control has frayed so much."

"What self-control? Self-control in that you sound like me? Self-control in that I don't have any? Is that what you mean?"

Del abruptly shed the icy demeanor and grinned triumphantly. "Got you."

"You did not."

"I did."

"You can't 'get' somebody if they know what you're doing."

"You're saying you knew?"

"I did know. That's why I answered the way I did."

"Slathering a poor soul-in this case, me-with questions? The kind of questions phrased as challenges?"

"Now you're doing it again."

"Tiger-"

I caught her arm in mine, swung her around. "Let's just go," I suggested. "We can continue this argument as we walk. Otherwise we'll never reach the harbor by sundown."

"I don't think I'm anything like you."

"I believe there are a whole lot of men who would agree, and be joyously thankful for it unto whatever gods they worship."

"You were such a pig when I met you!"

Our strides matched again as we moved smoothly down the cart-road leading to the city. "Why, because I thought you were attractive? Desirable? All woman? And let you know about it?"

"You let the whole world know about it, Tiger."

"Nobody disagreed, did they?"

"But it was the way you did it."

"Where I come from, leering at a woman suggests the man finds her attractive. Is that bad?"

"That's the point," she said. "Where you come from … every male in the South leers at women."

"Not all women."

"Some women," she amended. "Which really isn't fair either, Tiger; if you're going to be rude to women, you ought to be rude to all women, not just the ones you'd like in your bed. Or the ones you think you'd like in your bed. Or the ones you think would like to be in your bed."

"Leer indiscriminately?"

"If you're going to, yes."

"This may come as a surprise, bascha, but I don't want to sleep with all women."

"We're not discussing sleeping with. We're discussing leering at."

"What, and have every woman alive mad at me?"

"But there are less vulgar ways of indicating interest and appreciation."

"Of course there are."

She blinked. "You agree with me?"

"Sure I agree with you. I'm not arguing that point. I'm trying to explain the code of men, here."

That startled as well as made her suspicious. "Code of men?"

"When a man leers at a woman, or whistles, or shouts-"

"Or invites her into his bed?"

"-or invites her into his bed-"

"-with very vulgar language?"

"-with or without very vulgar language-"

"Insulting and vulgar language!"

"-it's because of two things," I finished at last.

"What two things?"

"One, it lets all the other men know you've got first dibs-"

"First dibs!"

"-which is what I meant about the code of men; first dibs and rite-and right-of ownership-"

"What? "

"Well, so to speak."

"It shouldn't be part of what anyone speaks."

"Look, I've already told you about the code of men, which is never to be divulged-"

"And do you believe in this code?"

I hesitated.

"Well?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

I chewed at my lip. "The code."

"The code won't let you tell me about the code?"

"That's about it."

"Then why did you?"

"Because I tell you everything. That's a code, too."

"It is? What's this one called?"

"The code of survival."

Del shot me a look that said she'd punish me for all of this one day. "Getting back to this 'because of two things' issue …"

"What two things?"

"First was first dibs. You know, the reason men leer and say vulgar things to women."