“After a great uprising they drove the immortal suzerains of the Cancrioth into the shadows. Some say the Cancrioth awaits the day when the Oriati will need to call on them again. Others believe they wait for the Mbo to fail, when they will retake the chattel they lost.”

Everyone had stopped eating. Baru felt triply queasy: sick at the images from the story, doubly sick at her fascination, for imagine what you could achieve if you lived forever—

And triply sick because she had missed the clues.

Four years ago, Farrier had taken their ship Lapetiare off-route on its way to Aurdwynn to visit a little Camou village called Chansee.

And where had he taken Baru?

A cancer ward.

And who had he mentioned, for the very first time in Baru’s memory?

Hesychast.

With a student’s instinct to answer first, she burst out before even thinking: “That’s why you had Xate Yawa ripping through the ilykari. The usual reasons, of course, the need to clean up superstition—but you were looking for signs of a cancer cult!”

Yawa nodded thinly.

“Oh, come on,” Apparitor snapped. “Aurdwynn’s as far as you can get from the Oriati without getting off your ship and hiking. How could there be any Cancrioth influence here?”

“An excellent question.” Hesychast nodded. “Because I believe Himu, the ykari virtue, was inspired by a Cancrioth operative named Hayamu raQù. Hayamu became Himu.”

“Really?” Apparitor laughed. “You’re reaching, Cosgrad.”

“You know he’s not,” Farrier said. “Because you worked with the proof this spring.”

Baru frowned. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t understand. Were they talking about her? No, no, that was her being self-centered again. The ilykari priests. Something about the ilykari. How could the ilykari prove the Cancrioth had been in Aurdwynn?

Farrier took pity on her. “Baru, do you remember those ilykari priestesses you were so fond of using as operatives?”

“Of course I do,” Baru said, sipping her whiskey. Ulyu Xe, diver and midwife, who’d sat in Baru’s tent and listened to her confession. Too far. I’ve come too far. “Lovely women.”

He shot her a look that said, not in front of Hesychast, please? “You know, I believe, that some of them worked for us in the last stages of the rebellion? We used them to chart holes in the Welthony minefield, so the marines could land and ambush your army at Sieroch.”

“Yes, I know…”

“Did you ever wonder why?” Farrier pressed. “Why would any of the ilykari cooperate with us, when we persecuted them so?”

She hadn’t wondered. She knew exactly how the persecuted could end up as collaborators. “I assumed you had hostages, or blackmail, or bribes.…”

“No.” Hesychast looked up from his cupped hands. “They did it because some of them worship me. They believe I’m their messiah. Himu incarnate.”

Himu. Storm and heat, life and life’s excess, which was cancer. “Why?”