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The ship that took me back across the Summer Sea was not Ramla’s, but the vessel of a woman from the northern shore. Her name was Astraea of Danar, and she possessed the golden hair and sky-blue eyes that I had only ever seen before in my countrymen from the far reaches of the North. I myself, however, favored my mother, and my hair was dark and my eyes were the same as any other man who walked these southern shores. Only my build set me apart from the people who walked the streets of Gallia, whence I was returning.

I asked, but Astraea had never seen the floating mountains of ice, nor walked among the mountains that I had crossed in the early days of my exile. She did not speak my mother tongue. In response to my next question, she declared that she had met the man called Hamilcar and his ship, the Lady of Osona, and remembered him fondly. 

“He sails these waters from time to time,” she said. “At the beginning of the year, when the winds are swift and the waves high. If you stay in Gallia, you might see him again.”

I hoped that I would, but my hope lasted only a brief moment. What could I tell him of my adventures since we parted? That I had found the birthplace of my beloved Khalim, and found that I had known him for so short a time that I was hopeless to follow him through the land of the dead? That I had destroyed the city of Svilsara by slaying the being who called himself his god, and left them starving and alone without even the illusion of prosperity to comfort them? That I had aided a man who wished to assassinate a king, and escaped only because I was deemed a lesser threat than my guide? 

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Cricket was charged with provisioning me for my journey. She took me to a passage hidden behind a tapestry on the first floor, with a staircase that led us into the rocky bowels of the cliff. At the bottom, a tiny kitchen, no larger than a ship’s galley, sat dark and cavernous with only a clay chimney pipe to relieve the smoke. Why this place was hidden, and why it had to be here under the rock, Cricket did not say. Perhaps this was the only kitchen she had ever known. It certainly was her domain; a selection of copper pots and iron pans hung well within her reach, and I had to duck to avoid another rack of herbs hanging from the ceiling.

“Has Deinaros told you anything of my journey?” I asked her.

She rolled a selection of dried fish in a thin cloth and handed it to me. “No. If you return, you can tell me of it.”

“If I return?” I echoed. I could not help but smile at her utter lack of faith in me. “You think I won’t?”

She shrugged, and the trinkets still around her neck clattered softly. “We’ll see.”