5
ABSENT FRIENDS
The five-day journey to Pom with Ves and Mann wasn’t as awkward as Syrina imagined it might be. The three of them fell into their old camaraderie, such that it was, but there was an empty space where Pasha should have been. They all felt it, and they avoided talking about it. Twice they saw Tyrsh ships on the horizon, heading east, but they ignored the Heaven’s Compromise. Mann said he didn’t know if he should be glad about that, and Ves told him to count his blessings without looking too closely at the details. Syrina said nothing, though she thought of what Kalis Kirin had told her.
Docking at Pom was out of the question. The Heaven’s Compromise had been raiding Ristro ships for almost a year, and there was no telling how many of those had been bound for the Isle of N
