It happened every few nights. Sex always ended up that way: raucous, orgiastic. Decidedly lacking the intimacy I’d grown used to with Sorcha and Shayat. There was no shroud of privacy or tight-knit emotional afterglow. They collapsed in friendly heaps and slept hard after. It was a strange and wholly unfamiliar way of living that took me some time to understand. I avoided the orgies at first, choosing on those nights to slip out of the tent and wander through the clutches of warm, bleating goats. They rarely happened in the daylight, when people spread out and worked at keeping the camp going.

Halaavi taught me weaving and embroidery. Ve had me card the downy undercoat of the clan’s yaks, then taught me to spin it into yarn. I learned to dye using the plants and berries of the land. When winter bested the older livestock, we killed and ate them. Halaavi showed me how to tan the skins, and I learned leatherwork, too. We were together, ve and I, most of the day and most of the night. Weeks and weeks together, side by side, working and talking. The only time we were apart was during those raucous, orgiastic nights in the unpaired’s yurt: Halaavi participated, and I did not. I sat outside, wrapped in blankets in the cool night, and listened. I tracked who from the paired yurts emerged and joined Halaavi and the rest. Sometimes one did, sometimes both, but always the ones who joined were Vralas.

When spring came and the grass grew green, it was time to move camp. The clan’s runners spent weeks scouting the next site. The runners were gifted cartographers, and they pored over maps of their previous routes, of places slavers were known to frequent, and of the intersections between their routes and the routes of other clans. A site was selected, and we broke down the yurt, strapped its pieces to yaks, and drove ourselves and our livestock southeast. We landed in the eastern steppes, a place where the grass is tall and rich. I sang the walking songs with them as we traveled. I ate with them and cooked with them. As the days passed, I thought less and less about the Empire and all that I’d left behind, and more and more about life with the Droma, the way their magic made such easy sense to me. Day by day the others’ suspicion of me faded until one day in late spring it seemed there was none left at all. The serenity of the clan was unmarred by my presence.

The day I noticed I’d been woven into the fabric of the clan was a good one. I was in high spirits. I talked to Halaavi about it. “Yes, they see you for you now,” ve said. “Silver without; gold within.”

I laughed. “An alloy.”