We smoked on the platform for hours. It was high summer then, and the only relief from the terrible heat is the dry, sandy summer winds. The height of the buildings and the way they’re placed one on top of another serves to funnel these scratching winds through the streets. They move with a ferocious velocity. We sat on the platform wrapped in high-collared quilted vests in the sweltering heat, remnants of a fashion the refugee Athenorkos had brought with them from the cooler, wetter climes of the land south of the mountains. When Sorcha dragged me inside, my face and hands were covered in a film of dust. The sand coated my hair. I had smoked enough by then that I had grown passive and insensate. He had me strip off my sandy clothes, wash my face and hands and hair, and then piled me into the bed. I assumed he was going to pile in after me. I think I imagined he had. But the truth was that he lingered until I fell asleep, which likely only took a bare handful of seconds, and then he struck out on his own.

He woke me well after night had fallen. I had slept the majority of the day and woke bleary-eyed and disoriented. “Ariah! Ariah, damn it, wake up!” he hissed in my ear. He was crouched over me, shaking my shoulder to and fro. When I opened my eyes, he pulled me upright. “You awake?”

“Yeah.”

He squinted at me. Light from the clockwork lamp flooded the room. I blinked at the unwanted brightness.

“You sober?”

“Uh, yeah. I think so. What time is it?”

“Late,” he said. “Or early. I don’t know. Look, that don’t matter none. Look, I got something to ask you. You awake?”

I broke free of his grasp and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah. I’m awake. What’s going on?”

“I got something to ask you.”

“Well, ask it.”