Valdis felt like vacation. It was vacation! There were no fights, nothing really important going on. Fikmet took us to visit her mum, that was a bit uncomfortable. All the old Khas were all the time wondering whether this person or that person “was still a real Khas, or not”.…

Valdis! It’s not as big as I had thought — not as big as Essle, or Sewe, or the Imperial City, but it’s got walls and gates, and Jeran took our boat through the river gate. For the first night, we decided to stay in an inn, the Spotted Dog.…

Essle… I don’t think I understand why anyone would want to live there! Too many people, packed together like in Sewe. Clean water has to be brought by lighter from Tilis. Too dangerous… We did spend a couple of days with the Order of the Sworn, before going on. We…

From Cuytim to Tal-Havin was more of a holiday than work! We did work very hard, and at one point we had to completely rebuild the anchor hole in the front of the ship, where all the anchor chains are coiled. It was filthy work! The cat and dog had…

We left Sewe on the Albatross early in the morning. The voyage itself was, well, not boring, because we were busy! The Albatross is an old ship, and will be completely overhauled in Selday, but every day something would break that would have to be repaired. And then there were…

Well, for what that’s worth. We arrived safely in Sewe. Sewe is an amazing city, all islands, harbours, little causeways, ships that people live on all the time, dozens next to each other. Bamen was really excited about it all, but for most of us, there were just too many…

Shiri has stayed in the Emperor’s City. We’ll miss her! I guess we’ll going to miss people who stay behind more and more and more the longer we’re together. She’s rich though, her parents had died and she’d inherited their house, their business and everything… Not that that’s much consolation…

Well, it turns out the Emperor’s City is not that far way, we are already quite close now. We have had quite a few real adventures along the way! We’ve seen not just the little beings of spirit that lives near Kalyana’s village, but also much friendlier beings of spirit…