Sorcha and I made the trip to Essala as soon as his horse was ready. He rode his horse, and rather than sell my yak to Fahmi, I rode the poor thing all the way there. It was slow going, but the trip gave Sorcha and I time to talk, time to relearn each other, time to figure out what was still the same and what the years had changed. He loved my hair; it reminded him of his da’s. He made me promise night after night not to cut it. I’ve kept that promise. A Nakash ship waited in the Essala harbor for us. We were in and out of the city in the blink of an eye. I barely had time to say goodbye to the yak, much less get captured by the Qin police.

The Nakash clipper was manned by a crew of full elves, many of whom were mostly silver. Some were born in Essala and had joined the ships rather that stand in a factory line. The captain of the ship was a friend of Sorcha’s; they’d started as crew at the same time and helped each other up the ranks. She gave me passage on her ship without demanding affiliation and let us stay together in the vacant tether’s cabin next to her own. I didn’t realize at the time how generous this was of her. I was still wary of the pirates then, even though Sorcha was so thoroughly one of them, and I rarely left that cabin. He rarely left it, either. There’s not much for a fleet recruiter to do on a ship full of fleet members. He told me about his time on the ships. He traced over the scars I’d gotten in the desert, and I told him about the Avolayla and the Allunga and the Kivvni. I told him about Halaavi. Laavi and I made as little sense to him as Sorcha, Shayat and I made to Laavi. Every conversation ended in sex. Sometimes I stayed shaper, and Sorcha wondered why. Sometimes I drank pirate rum and remembered everything. I was grateful for every second of it.