Two days later, she sat in the center of the first row. She started the first class half-conciliatory, but by the time the second class rolled around, it had hardened into a mocking irritation. She continued to sit right there, right in front of me, and the crackling tension between us made me remote and cold during the classes. I took no questions from students. I lectured until I was hoarse, wrote endless lines of text, and took refuge in the patterns of foreign languages. I didn’t even bother coming up with notes; I simply showed up and started talking. The lectures were elaborate academic cold shoulders. The Saturday tutoring sessions were strained, awkward affairs. She met me downstairs in her father’s shop, though occasionally he would have a customer and we’d be forced out. She always took us outside rather than back up to the privacy of her room. I took a vindictive pleasure in knowing I’d struck a nerve with her. She was not young, after all. I wondered if she’d seen a matchmaker. There was probably gossip about it, which more than once I resolved to ferret out but somehow never got around to.

One Saturday, about two months into the class, Parvi forced us out. He had, by then, finished one set of clothes for me, which I was wearing that day. He was then working on a second set of impeccable City-style clothes for me, on the house—I suspect to make up for the inherent rudeness of his daughter. Shayat and I stood on the stoop of her father’s shop, glaring at each other. “Well?” I asked. “Are we done for the day?”

“No. We’re not. I need more work on counting in Lothic,” she said. I could have wrung her neck. “Are you hungry?” she asked. I looked at her like it was a trick. “I am hungry, professor. I can’t deal with this on an empty stomach. Let’s go to the markets.”

“Deal with what?”

“With you!” she said. “With this stupid language! With any of it.” She sighed and dropped her hands to her hips. “Look, can we call a truce? I don’t care where you’re from or who you are or whatever it is you think you’re hiding. I don’t. I’m curious, but who isn’t? I just want you to teach me these awful languages so I can get out of this place. All right? I’ll buy you something to eat.”

And I laughed. I laughed so hard, delirious in it, drunk in it. Gales of laughter shook me so hard I was sore the next day. Tears squeezed out of my eyes and blurred my vision. Distantly, I heard Shayat badgering me.

“What? What?” she demanded.