Ruha caught her spouse by his sleeve and pulled his ear close to her mouth. "If you don't watch your tongue, my husband," she whispered, "your friend Dawasir is not the only one who won't see how well my father keeps his promises." Her tone was serious enough to make Ajaman heed her words, but also light enough not to sound like an insult or challenge.

Ajaman clutched at his breast, feigning a wound. "Your words have pierced me deeper than a raider's arrow," he responded, his mouth upturned in a roguish smile. "I shall die with your name upon my lips."

Laughing, the bride pressed her mouth to her husband's. "I'd rather you die with my kiss on your lips than my name."

Ruha retrieved Ajaman's amarat from its hook. Before giving it to him, she stopped to run her hand along its hand-carved curves. The horn was already the source of her fondest memory, for when Ajaman had come to claim her as his bride, he had announced his arrival by sounding the amarat a mile outside the Mtair Dhafir's camp. Its brazen tones had been Ruha's first hint that she would like her new husband, for she had not even met him before he came to take her away.

Their marriage had been arranged by fate, or so her father claimed. A waterless summer in the north had driven Ajaman's tribe, the Qahtan, into the sands traveled by the Mtair Dhafir. Instead of chasing the strangers away, Ruha's father had proposed an alliance. In return for the Qahtan's promise to return north at summer's end, the Mtair Dhafir would share their territory for a few months. The bargain had been sealed by Ruha's marriage to Ajaman, the son of the Qahtan's sheikh by his second wife.