Buildings loomed large and stagnant. I had not been in a place with such steadfast permanence since I’d escaped the Ma-Halad barracks over seven years before. I thought it was a mistake; I thought we’d slink back into the dunes and try somewhere else. “There’s a town up ahead,” I said.

“Yes, that’s Zaghir,” the person next to me said. “We have an arrangement with the settlers there.”

“What? What do you mean you have an arrangement?”

“We have an arrangement,” ve said, and then ve picked up vis pace and left me behind. That night, we set up our yurts just a few feet away from the gates of Zaghir. The next morning, the pirates manning the watchtowers let us in. The gates were set on cables and pulleys; shirtless pirates at the eastern watchtower pulled a rope, and the gates swung open like the jaws of some great vicious animal. The Kivvni sang no walking song when we marched through the gate. The silence was damning. Pirates milled around us, leaning on the walls of buildings. Some approached the Kivvni and laid out prices for yak butter, woven goods, and what few other things we had to offer. I watched the back and forth in what passed for Zaghir’s market with a sick fascination. Everything seemed wrong. The other Kivvni felt it, knew it, and ignored me.

We bartered our goods, and one of the Kivvni bartered vimself. A young person, no older than fifty, who had already seen too much death and lived too hard a life, bartered with the pirates for a spot as crew on a ship. Apari was a dark soul, cynicism bred right to vis marrow. The clan breathed a callous sigh of relief when the deal was struck. Ve did not return to the yurts that night. “At least ve isn’t cargo,” someone said to me.

“How is this any better? Ve’ll be separated from the land, from you, from the other clans.”

“There are Droma in the ports and on the ships. I am not Yavinaha. Well, I am, and I’m not,” ve said. “I am Yavinaha here, but were I to join a ship I’d let that go. It wouldn’t make any sense out there on the water. I think sometimes the interior clans get confused. I think sometimes they think you’re not Droma if you’re not following Yavinaha. Apari is Droma. Apari will always be Droma. What that means out there on the water?” Ve shrugged. “Apari will find out.”

“You trust them? The pirates? You trust them not to take Apari as a slave?”