She knows how to kill cryptarchs. They ward themselves with intrigue and secrecy but a knife will cut exalted meat as easily as rat-skin. Like a sorcerer they must be struck down before they speak.

Shir would shoot him down to rot in the marsh except that she knows him. He will not show himself except where he is invulnerable. His name carries weight, his heavy brows and fine beard beam from the front plate of the Manual of Expedition, which everyone has read. And he knows things which everyone needs.

Even Shir.

She lifts herself onto the boardwalk and trains the crossbow on his back. One shot will kill him. The world is indifferent to the reputations of men. Beneath the veil of civilization the truth prowls on an older earth.

“Farrier,” she calls.

She knows how grotesquely he grapples with his own incarnation as a body. He wants to be more, he wants to be a thought and a word. He forces himself into a fastidious abstinence, and it only makes his appetites, his temptations, more dire.

Shir has seen them together, Farrier and his temptation. And Shir knows that he will never rest until he can master that temptation, master the threat of her, achieve dominion over her and all she cares for so that all her happiness is at his disposal. Not one of his students. One of his foes.

He looks slyly over his shoulder. “Hello, Shir. I came out here to see if you’d turn up.”

“Who will die if I kill you?”

“We have your father. He would be made to regret my passing.”

“I walked away from him once.”

“You did, didn’t you? And then you walked away from me. You’re running out of people to abandon, Shir. Let your father die and you’ll have no one left.” He offers her a wax-paper bundle. “Care for some leftovers?”

She feels nothing. There is nothing to feel. The world is indifferent and she is not of men but of the world. “I will kill you now.”

“No. You won’t.”

He waits there, smiling. With a prickle of ancient emotion she remembers this smug expression. He is waiting for her to pick up the clue he dropped. Let your father die, and you’ll have no one left.…

There should be one more soul worth saving. One more.

“Farrier,” she says, over the taut string of the crossbow. “Where’s my cousin?”

He puffs his cheeks and sighs.

“Farrier.”

“Do you remember what happened with your mother?” He shakes his head mournfully. “Baru’s a quick learner, I’m afraid. Quicker than you ever were, Shir.”

“Where is she?”

“Why would I risk my favorite student by telling you?”

There are only two ways to understand that. Tain Hu is with Baru Cormorant, and Farrier does not want her to find Baru. Or Tain Hu is dead. And Farrier does not want Shir to have her vengeance.