“He’s the better cook,” I said. It was a thing that would have eaten at me back in the Empire, but years with the Droma had worn away my masculine pride.

Fahmi laughed. He fingered a thick jacket I’d knitted of undyed yak wool. “You’ll do the mending, though, eh?”

“Did he tell you about Shayat?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Her father is a tailor. She’ll do the mending.”

“Which makes you what?” Fahmi asked. “Just a pretty face?”

I read him just a little, just to see if there was anything to worry about behind those words. There was nothing there but curiosity, but it made me nervous nonetheless. I drank my tea. “I suppose so. Hand of djah?”

“Always,” Fahmi said.

Winter came and went. Spring came and went. That next summer was brutal, and I lost one of the yaks. I wept. I was morose. I had grown very attached to that yak. I sold the saddle to Fahmi for a pittance. The Droma are a people who see omens everywhere, and I must have spent enough time with them to pick up the habit, because my dead yak struck me as a bad sign. Three weeks after the yak died, Sorcha rode into Zaghir. So much for omens.

He came at dawn. He rode the three hundred miles from Essala on that horse, as fast as he could. His horse was half-dead when he got to Zaghir, and none of the pirates were surprised he’d treated it like he had. They’d seen him do it before. He came to Zaghir in the early morning, just after dawn, and knocked on Fahmi’s door for water and a place to sleep. Fahmi sent him to me.

He knocked on the door of my yurt. I woke slowly, disgruntled. I opened the door, bad-tempered, half-convinced it was my yak rubbing against the yurt to shake loose the last bits of her undercoat. And there he was. He stood before me as close to shy as I’ve ever seen him. He looked sheepish and boyish and uncertain. He grinned wide, though, and I could feel the happiness bursting from him. He was there, in one piece. He’d found me, and I’d found him. I threw myself at him, pulled him tight against me. I breathed in his smell and felt his hair against my cheek. I never wanted to let him go. Sorcha took my face in his hands and kissed me. It was soft at first, but grew hungry. Unbridled and desperate. I lost myself in half a second and came to again next to him in the yurt, naked, deliriously happy. He studied me when I came to; there was a trace of worry about him. “You all right? Was that all right?” he asked.

“I’m all right.”

“I should’ve held back, though. Should’ve checked.”