“There is a tumor closing up the chemist’s throat. She signals to you with her hands. We sell to you this death: but for those who win a place among us, we offer everlasting life.…

“Oh, Yawa, I know what you’re thinking! Rag stories from the Filthy Continent. Savage rituals deep in the fetid jungle, where worms crawl up the dickholes of good Falcresti men. But that sensationalism is just our Republic protecting its pride. There is no Filthy Continent. Oriati history is no more hideous than our own. They invented laws and farms! They created the first calendar and outlawed slavery forever! They not only ended (most) warfare, they seduced all their conquerors!

“And when they produced abomination, it came not from savages doing unspeakable things in the jungle but from the work of their sorcerer-scientist elite. Yes! Scientists! They were the first practitioners of empiricism. In the time before the Oriati had a Mbo, sorcerers plumbed the jungle for the first medicines and prophylactics. They developed a method to test the effects of their compounds: home-group and journey-group, the basis of the experimental method. We in Falcrest cannot admit this, because it would be disastrous to confess how wholly we adopted the tools of science from our Oriati neighbors.

“But am I not an Oriati accountant? Isn’t that evidence we were once great empiricists? The old numeracy is strong in my blood.

“Anyway. Some would tell you that those first sorcerer-scientists, Undionash and Virios and Abbatai and the rest—some would tell you that after a thousand years they still live. Some would tell you that their names are even now hot on the lips of those who seek an ally to destroy Falcrest. Some would tell you so.

“But not I. I am a good Incrastic citizen.”

*   *   *

BARU began to imagine dreadful things. Why was Yawa wearing that quarantine gown? Had something infected her? A horrible garment—like the shadow of a raven cast up into strange dimensions—an angular and feverish architecture, black robe with a skeleton and a superstructure, cantilevers and flying buttresses.

When Yawa fell silent, Baru almost gasped in relief. She believed in a world that could be understood, apprehended, made to work for her. Yawa’s story … did not come from that world.

Apparitor burst out in incredulity. “And you want us to go find these people? For blood’s black sake, why?”

“Hush, Svir.” Farrier patted him matronizingly on the arm. “Hesychast, tell them.”

The man-temple leaned in to command the table. “I have been hunting the Cancrioth for most of my life. We can begin with their origins in myth. As the Whale Words tell it, the Oriati Mbo was founded as a pact between all the tribes of Segu, the houses of Lonjaro, the kettles of Mzilimake, and the squadrons of Devi-naga. They came together in revulsion against the Cancrioth who ruled and enslaved them.