The stranded Droma soaked the songs up, these pieces of home. I haunted the slave stages, and I took down every Droma song I heard. The way they were sung gave credit to those who first composed them. They start with “Yalivva said to me” or “Vrisini told me that”—that sort of thing. As I collected more and more of them, I developed favorites. The things Shithilat said were quiet and full of stoic courage. The things Binnira said were simple but grandiose in the telling. And the things Halaavi said made me homesick for a world I’d never actually seen.

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

“Do you like poetry, Shayat?”

She propped her chin in her hand and smirked at me. Semadran passersby on the streets cut their eyes at us, and I blushed. She laughed. “Why, professor? Do you have a love poem for me?”

“No.” I sighed at her and stared out at the street. She laughed again. “I just thought…I have heard that poetry and songs help you learn languages quicker.”

“You heard that about me?”

“No. You, like a general you.”

“I know what you meant, professor.”

I sighed again. “You’re so juvenile.”

“Well, you’re prissy. You think poems will work?”

“I think they might work. I can’t say for sure. They might not. But they might work.” I pulled a small volume of Lothic poetry from my pocket and handed it to her. I had searched Dirva’s library specifically for a book that had few love poems in it. She flipped through it and found one anyway. She knew enough Lothic to read the incriminating title. She grinned at me, and I blushed. It was a typical thing between us. She knew, and I knew she knew, and the teasing, somehow, took the sting out of it. “This is purely educational.”

“Oh, is it? You think you can teach me a thing or two?”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know.”

She laughed. She had a brash, loud laugh, the kind that jerked attention to her. I grinned stupidly beside her. “My, my,” she said. She glanced over at me. “My, my. In front of my father’s house.”

“Oh, I-I meant no disrespect, and honestly, Shayat, I…it was a joke, a badly told and ill-timed joke, and…”

She shook her head at me and laughed again, quieter and softer this time. “So, what am I supposed to do with these poems?”

“Well, you read them. And you translate them. And you may want to recite them, because your pronunciation needs work.”

“It’s a stupid language,” she said, but she tucked the book in the pocket of her robe.