KOSAR AND A’MEER talked long into the evening. Their closeness had returned, along with a sense of attraction and comfort that set them fully at ease. There were a few jokes, some flirting, some outright innuendos from A’Meer, but mostly the talk was serious. And mostly it concerned magic.

A’Meer had once fought a Red Monk. When Kosar started his story she mentioned it straightaway, trying to appear casual but knowing the reaction her revelation would invoke. Kosar, already drunk on Old Bastard and rotwine, leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows, waiting for A’Meer to continue. She had told him many stories during their time together, but never had she mentioned the Monks.

“I was traveling down through the stilted villages of Ventgoria. Everything is built high off the ground there, on wooden platforms set on the thick trunks of Bole trees. They try to make sure the villages—they call them villages, but usually there are no more than a couple of hundred people living in any one place—are built as far away from the steam vents as they can. The stilts keep them up away from the marshes and the gas floods that happen there sometimes, but really they’re frightened of the steam vents as well. They emerge here and there sometimes, unexpected, as if they shift underground and break out wherever they desire. Some of the villagers believe the vents are caused by giant steam dragons, living beneath the ground and burrowing their way through the loamy soil. And each time they need to take a breath, they vent their steam out through the ground. Who am I to doubt their beliefs?”

“Everything amazes you, doesn’t it?” Kosar said fondly.

“I’m Shantasi. We’re more receptive to wonder than you fucking Noreelan wasters.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Kosar drained his glass of rotwine and wondered whether he would wake up the next morning.