“I heard he was still here. Is he staying out of trouble?”

“No, Shayat, I am with him. We’re…we’re lovers.” The word felt strange. Before that moment, I hadn’t named it.

Shayat blinked at me. She let out a strangled laugh and stole a glance out at the street. “I’d heard rumors.”

“The rumors are true.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Ariah, what the hell? You’re fucking Sorcha, and you come here asking me what I’m doing? Why have you allowed the match to go on like this if you’re with him?”

“No, you answer me first,” I said. “It’s been years, and you just turn up in town and want to marry me, just like that? It makes no sense.”

“Well, it does to me,” she said.

“I will marry you, Shayat, if you need me to. Maybe in Iyairo or at the embassies in Vilahna a marriage mark on your papers will help you move easier. But marrying me? I’m on a factory line, Shayat, a fucking factory line. Everyone in the borough knows it. Marrying me will sink you here. Marry someone else—anyone else—unless you’re thinking about unloading your goods in Shangri or Tarquintia or someplace else. But you owe me an explanation.”

She leaned back away from me like she’d been slapped. “You think this is about the route?”

“What else would it be about?”

“It’s about you!”

“What?”

She gestured at me, flustered, irritated. “You! It’s easy with you. It’s not easy with anyone else. I thought…this is stupid. Fine. I’m refusing the match. Fine.”

I caught her arm as she shoved past me. “Wait.”

“For what?”

“I just don’t understand. A matchmaker? You could have just come to see me.”

She shrugged herself out of my grasp. “I wanted it official.”

“But why?”

“Because I’m done looking. I’m done. You’re the only one who has not been more trouble than he was worth, and even then you dragged me through the desert for no profit and got my camel confiscated right out from under me. I have long nights, and I think about you. I’m with another man, and I think about you. Everything gets measured against you. I’m done measuring.” She sighed and glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “I hate this. This is ridiculous. And that damned shaper. I hate her.”

“Oh, me too.”

Shayat grinned. “She is so…”

“Judgmental,” I said.

Shayat laughed. “Yes. Exactly.” She leaned against the decrepit fence. She sighed again. “So, you and Sorcha finally crossed that line?”

“We did.”

“You’re happy?”

“With him, yes. With everything else, less so. I’m on a factory line, Shayat.”

She took my hand and turned it palm up. “You’ve got a line worker’s hands, now. They were soft before. How long have you been on it?”

“A year.”