If I am honest, there was more than one moment where I wondered what held me back from him. I seemed trapped there in the City for good, and if I was trapped there, and I was part of this nahsiyya gang where there were so few rules and no one batted an eye, perhaps Sorcha was right, and I could. But I couldn’t. Maybe if I had been told with some finality that Dirva would have no more dealings with me I could have crossed that line, but until he said it, there was still a sliver of a chance I’d return to a place where I needed to be Semadran again, and it seemed prudent not to get ahead of myself.

What I mean to say is that I had no idea where I would be, or who I would be, day to day. I waited for Dirva, and I grew bitter about the waiting. I planned to get back to Rabatha with Dirva, and at the same time made plans for a lifetime in the City with his brother. It was maddening. Sometimes at night Sorcha would wake me while he rolled over. He slept fitfully then. When I woke at night, I was sober, and all of this came crashing down on me. I lay there, drawing in panicked, shallow breaths, so frozen by the choices ahead that I could not think. Sorcha and his insistent grief served to anchor me in the present. He was an escape.

* * *

While we were cloistered in his room, the days began to run together. Time slid by; spring turned to summer, and then it was my birthday. I was thirty-five, and I was faced with the cold realization that even if Dirva relented, the training was over. He no longer had any obligation to me. The day of my thirty-fifth birthday occurred nearly three months after Nuri’s death. When I turned thirty-five, I had not worn Semadran clothes in over half a year. I had not spoken my mother tongue in at least three months. I felt thoroughly nahsiyya, like a true member of the Natives. Every member is expected to make a contribution, and by then, I was making mine: I taught the Natives how to read. I sharpened their Qin and Inalan so they could get better rates in the markets. These skills were sorely needed; even Sorcha was illiterate. Certainly, the ability to sign their own names made navigating the Qin court system much simpler for Cadlah. She was able to get them out twice as fast, usually before they’d been beaten. I had, in fact, earned the highest level of praise one can aspire to in a community of vagrants: I was considered useful. I had begun to feel I belonged there. A nagging need to return to the Empire remained, but mostly because I missed my parents and worried about them. Little else about my life before seemed to matter.