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from
candle wax from the temple's Priests, and arranged them across my
dresser and shelves, along with oddly shaped glass bottles and the
wooden wolf Reis had carved me for my twenty-fifth
birthday.
    Yet
sometimes, I still expected to open the door and walk into my
farmhouse; to open the door and see a four-poster bed, blocking the
view of Isin from the window.
    I laid
on one side of the bed, blanketed by the stifling heat, wishing
that there was any adapting to it. I could get used to the language
and the food, the customs of the locals, but even those who'd spent
half a century in Canth ended up drenched in sweat before
midday.
    Everyone
except for Kouris, that was. She hadn't once been tempted to hack
off her long hair.
    “... I
love it here, but I could do without the heat,” I said, eyes fixed
on her as she curled up next to me. I felt the ache in my chest
ease when I caught her smiling, and said in a whisper, “I don't
want to leave forever. But I need to know. You went back to
Kastelir for a reason, didn't you? You wanted to help the pane, to
help everyone, and it's worse for them now than it ever has been.
That's why I wanted to go back. Even if...”
    I
pressed my face into the pillow and Kouris placed a hand against my
back, pulling me close. I let her draw me to her chest, not
believing it could get any hotter until I'd committed myself to
being plastered against her.
    “I know,
I know,” she said softly. “We'll be there and back again before you
know it, yrval. You'll see."

CHAPTER II
    Tizo had
inherited three ships upon becoming a captain, but only one of them
matched up with my old expectations of pirate ships. The other two
were more suited to hauling cargo, and we set out on one of those
at dawn, sailing west as the sun rose with a crew of
twenty.
    “Akela
not with you?” one of Tizo's regular crew asked, once the sails
were tended to and Mahon was fading in the distance.
    “We're
just picking up goods. I doubt we're going to run into much
trouble,” I said, leaning on the railing and watching the waves.
“Besides, I haven't seen her in a few days. I think she's off on a
job at the moment.”
    The
woman shrugged, supposing we could do without Akela, and headed
below deck to pretend to make herself useful. Even amongst pirates,
Akela stood out as particularly intimidating, when she wanted to
be, and she had no shortage of offers from people needing someone
to stand behind them, arms folded across their chest while threats
were issued, or to act as a bodyguard. I often went along with her
to help translate, for few in Mahon spoke Mesomium, and Akela
hadn't picked up the language as quickly as I had.
    Eloa
took less than an hour to reach with the favourable winds we'd been
granted. It was easily twice the size of Mahon and boasted that
those within all earnt an honest living, but the port thought far
too much of itself for a town that openly traded with pirates. The
docks were swarmed with fishing boats that hadn't yet set out for
the day, and the Eloans had been expecting us; everything we were
there to collect was waiting for us, and a space to make port had
been left clear.
    It was
in their best interest that they get the exchange over and done
with as quickly as possible, lest we tar their
reputation.
    “Seems
to me that we ought to be getting a discount,” Tizo announced as
she strode across the gangplank. The merchant who'd been sent to
make the trade cleared his throat nervously and placed a hand atop
one of the crates, as though that'd stop us from pulling them from
under him. “Seeing as how you lot are no longer making the
deliveries, that is. Time is money, and you've cost us a hell of a
lot of it. A whole morning wasted on services you should be
providing!”
    “Y-yes,
well, Gavern's dominion of the sea has affected us all,” the
merchant began, voice drowned out by a dozen feet hitting the
docks.
    While
Tizo gently persuaded the merchant that it was in his best interest
to offer us a