“Ah,” Baru heard him say—he wore a neatly trimmed little goatee, it must have been done up this very morning—“ah, ah.”

The third skiff came at the woman in determined coordinated silence. Spears and crossbows ready for the mace-grass to part and give them a clear shot. The killing woman tore a fat red grenade off the ring on her chest and there was a tremendous rip like a kraken’s beak tearing through steel as the grenade’s inner mechanism engaged. She held it to her ear for a moment, listening to the fuse, and then underhanded the grenade from waist height into the last skiff.

One of the sailors tried to bat it away with her pole. The grenade ruptured on contact. Grease sprayed in gobbets and streams. The fire raced up oil and flesh.

Incinerated screams.

And then Apparitor shoved Baru aside to climb into the prow of their skiff. Brandishing a leather folio he shouted:

“TAIN SHIR! STOP!”

*   *   *

APPARITOR stood against the killing woman with only paper as his ward.

“You!” he shouted. “I know your name! Look at me!”

The red mask tilted. Gore and murk streamed off heaving shoulders. “Svir,” she said, in a voice as alkaline and impersonal as the filters in her mask. “Where is she. Tell me.”

“She’s dead, all right? Your cousin’s dead.” Svir stood highlighted against the sky, a slim man-shadow with a whirl of red to crown him. Baru tried to understand his gambit.

This madwoman’s cousin was dead?

Who’d died at the Elided Keep except …

… oh Wydd, except me?

Baru could not accept it. It had to be true.

Somehow this marine was Tain Hu’s cousin.

How could that be? How could Tain Hu’s cousin wear the mask? And how could Hu have kept her a secret from Baru?

Apparitor touched Baru’s head with one hand. Brandished the paper with the other. “I have your cousin’s final testament right here. Tain Hu’s will. And in this testament I have her assurances that she loved this mud-speckled woman, Baru Cormorant.” He flourished. “Rise up, Agonist. Speak.”

The killing woman’s blood-spattered mask turned back to Baru.

“I…” What could she say? Apparitor was making faces at her, a strange gesture, oh, he was blowing kisses. Tell her that you loved her cousin, and her cousin loved you. Tell her that vengeance for Tain Hu would be misguided.

Baru clambered to her feet through a cloud of buzzing spring flies. The skiff rocked beneath her. And she tried to tell the truth, the truth that Apparitor would hear as a lie.

“I loved the duchess Vultjag dearly. She was my …

“She was the compass that kept my course.

“We fought together. She was my field-general, my trusted hand.

“And when I needed to do something hateful, I asked another.

“Because I would not force dishonor on Tain Hu.”