The southern interior city, controlling land routes through Iqes's forested heart. Zuko is where the ring-holders maintain their grip on the interior — tax collection, law enforcement, and military garrisons when the elite feel threatened by Ntando restlessness.
Less beautiful than Mjiqa, more fortified, Zuko is the fist inside Iqes's velvet glove. The garrison here is larger than a trading city needs; its purpose is control rather than defense. The Tax Houses process tribute from villages throughout the interior.
Ironically, Zuko also contains the best-organized resistance cells. The city that suppresses dissent is close enough to Ntando to feel its grievances, and not everyone in the garrison is loyal to the ring-holders.
Near Zuko lie the ruins of the largest halfling cave-complex — deliberately destroyed during the consolidation, now a scar on the landscape that halflings visit in quiet pilgrimage.