Ve nodded. “Magic, yes,” and this time it sounded Vahnan. “If you are not an echo, how do you speak Droma?”

“I learned it. From slaves’ songs. I learned it with a different kind of magic,” I said. I’d switched to Droma to say it, and I caught vim staring at my mouth, looking for the telltale echo’s disconnect between what I said and what I spoke.

Ve raised vis eyebrows. “Strange.” Ve gestured at my campsite. “How long have you been here?”

“A week.”

“Where were you before?”

I pointed west. “Down the river.”

“You have no livestock. You have no weapons. You have no clan. And you wander?”

I took a chance. “I would rather wander with a clan.”

“Kisi says you have one in the west.”

I looked away, out at the swaying grass. It was a simple statement, simple like a knife is simple, and it cut me deep. “I do,” I said softly. “I do, but I have no way back to them.”

The older Droma looked at me closely. I felt vis curiosity, vis fascination. I felt the way the thought took slow, improbable formation in vis mind. “You were taken. I have siblings who were taken. Lost to us.”

“I…yes.”

The Droma were silent for some time. The little goatherd shifted nervously from foot to foot, but the other stood very straight, arms crossed, lost in thought. “Kisi says you sang a Hradata song.”

“I didn’t know it was Hradata. Is Hradata a clan?” The Droma nodded. “Not your clan?”

“Not our clan, no, but we know them. The Hradata paths take them close to the edge, and they’ve had many taken. Like us. But they won’t change their paths like we have. How did you learn the songs?”

“They sing them. The ones taken sing them when they are sold off. They sing to each other, and I listened.”

“Listened,” ve said, “and understood.”

“Yes.”

“Sing me one of your stolen songs.”

I blinked at vim. Ve waved at me to get on with it. I picked one of my favorites, something like a love song. As I sang it, both the Droma stared at me, wide-eyed. When I finished, the older Droma swallowed, fighting back emotion. I stared down at my feet to give vim some privacy. “That is…that is a thing Halaavi said,” ve said in a quiet, hollow voice.

“It is, yes.”

“I am Halaavi.” I looked up and found vim crying. Tears glistened in the sunlight. Ve cried stoically, regally, and with no shame. “There’s only one I said that to. And ve was taken, and now I know. Ve was sold.”

“I’m sorry.”