“Me and him, we’ve got to get to Rabatha. Are you heading back there soon?” Sorcha asked.

One corner of Shayat’s mouth hitched up. She looked me right in the eyes. “You’re going back to Rabatha?”

“I am.”

“And he is going with you?”

“Sorcha is, yes.”

“May I ask why you’re going back?”

“Personal reasons.”

“Personal reasons,” she said. “Personal reasons are the only reasons you ever have for anything, professor.”

“So, can we tag along with you or not?” Sorcha asked.

“How soon?”

Sorcha elbowed me in the ribs. “Soon,” I said.

Shayat looked over her shoulder at her crew. There were five of them, all men but her. They were expressive, free with laughter. One leaned against the caravan’s single wagon and flirted with a Vilahnan girl half his age. “The crew gets two months here.”

“Shayat, you’ve come to Alamadour two, three times? And every time you’ve stayed for months?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been here this whole time!”

“Well,” she said. She dropped her hands to her hips and smiled. It was a guileless, unadorned smile. My heart skipped a beat. “I did think about tracking you down.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Personal reasons.”

* * *

Three days later, Shayat appeared at my door. It was quite late; had we already been back in Rabatha, it would have been well after curfew. I was stoned and shirtless, already half-asleep. Sorcha was deep into a bottle of Vilahnan wine all by himself. He sat against the side of the fireplace, idly poking at the burning log. The summer night was warm, but he had built the fire anyway. I answered the door thinking, perhaps, it was the bartender. But it wasn’t.

Shayat grinned like a cat when I opened the door. She drank in the sight of me, bold, unfazed by my half-naked state. “Is this a bad time, professor?”

I leapt behind the door. “Oh! Oh, I…no, I just, uh…I’ll find a shirt.” I let her in and ducked into the bedroom.

“If you insist,” she said.

I stuck my head through the door. “I’m sorry, what?”

Shayat, still grinning, still self-possessed, shrugged. Sorcha caught my eye and shot me a curious look. I stumbled around ineptly until I found one of his shirts. When I came back into the room, I found Shayat and Sorcha eyeing each other like territorial predators. There was an odd tension in the air, one that pulled at me, but I’d smoked the gift into submission, and I couldn’t parse it. “How did you know where to find me?”

“It didn’t take much,” she said. “You two are the only silver-skinned men who live anywhere but the markets.”

“Why are you here?”

“I have a proposition for you. Have you secured transport back yet?”

“We haven’t, no.”