Her mask almost slipped. She almost stared at Apparitor wild-eyed and screamed a high meaningless note. But it would not do. It would not do. She couldn’t grieve now, she couldn’t let herself be sorry. Tain Hu was counting on her. When you are disemboweled in battle, you tie your guts up tight, and you keep fighting. Later the wound can kill you. Once you’ve won.

Baru set off toward the Elided Keep. Listen: her boots crushed snail shells into the rock. When things break underfoot, you know that you are going forward.

“I know what I’ve done,” she said. “I executed a traitor to the Imperial Republic and an obstacle to the progress of humanity.”

“You executed your lover!”

“Are we sentimental people now? Is that the new game?”

“The game? Do you think I didn’t care about that woman? She was my prisoner for weeks, she was brave, she was good—” Apparitor grabbed himself by the skull, his fingers spidered in his hair, his thumbs trembling on his chin. “Farrier taught you to do this, didn’t he? That bastard Itinerant! He made you kill her!”

Baru laughed in shock. Her patron Farrier? How could Tain Hu’s execution possibly work in his favor?

Apparitor was panicking. What a stupid fucking idea.

“I haven’t seen Cairdine Farrier in some years,” she said. “Since my first days as Imperial Accountant, actually. Come along, now. I need you to teach me my powers.”

Everyone had strung out behind Baru like autumn geese, straggling and confused, asking each other what to do. The marines with their polearms, the spies who’d pretended to be Baru’s staff, Apparitor’s little retinue and his gold-eyed concubine boy. All of them began to follow her down the stone ridge, back to the Elided Keep. They were all watching her when she skidded to a stop in shock.

A ship had capsized against her fortress.

Oh—it was Apparitor’s clipper. At high tide the crew must’ve used winches on the Elided Keep’s battlement to tip the ship over, careening it on the beach. She was called Helbride, a ghost sliver of white wood and slim steel. Now the crew swarmed over her to clear the barnacles and foulage.

A gloved and masked sailor at the stern pulled a two-foot-long and squirming shipworm from the keel. Three huge teeth like half-shells flashed in the morning light. They ate ships; a nest of them must have gotten through the copper worm-armor.

That’s me now, Baru thought. The worm beneath the armor.

Apparitor, dully: “She said you loved her.” He was staring at his overturned ship as if he wanted very badly to push it back upright and sail away with the tide.

“Ah,” Baru sighed, “well, I’m sure she had a great many strange ideas about me.”

“She could’ve lived…”