There were others after Fallinal. There was the bartender from the bar downstairs. There was a guard at court. There was a musician friend of Sorcha’s, a guitarist with perfect hands. They were each so utterly unique, each woman a private little world, but it always happened the same as it had with Fallinal. They came to me. They coaxed me through it. I gave, and they took, and I delighted in the giving. Afterward, invariably, I offered to cook for them. I don’t mean to imply that this was a frequent thing, because it wasn’t, but it did happen. And each time it happened, I felt that much more settled outside the Empire. I felt that much more comfortable in the life in which I’d landed. And I always returned to Sorcha. No matter how late it was, I always made the walk home to him. It felt like the day hadn’t really ended until we were tucked against each other in the shared bed. Those nights I wondered about him and me, about what we were, about if I wanted from him what he wanted from me. I never found an answer. I could feel myself approach one, make slow inexorable progress towards it, but life intervened before I reached it. Life has a way of doing that.

Given the single entrance to the apartment, I passed through the bar every morning. This had its perks, as sometimes the bartender would pass me a slice of bread on my way out if I looked harried and ill-slept and generally like I might have skipped breakfast. One morning in high summer, about two years into my stay there, Sorcha and I passed the bar. Pannali was already there. She grinned at me, and I blushed. I shot her a shy, hopeful smile. Sorcha laughed and pushed me past the bar. “You’ll be late, you silly git!”

“Wait!” Pan called after us.

“He ate,” Sorcha said.

“No, there’s this…well, shit, I don’t know what it is, but it looks Semadran.”

I half-turned and glanced over my shoulder. Sorcha crashed into me. “What do you mean?”

She waved me over. “I mean this,” she said. She placed a small, lifeless clockwork bird on the bar. “Came in the back window. Hit the kitchen wall and just stopped flying. I don’t what it is or what it’s here for, but I bet it’s to do with you.”