The training coiled up in Iraji’s body. The meats and eggs that fed him well last night. The uneasy sleep that quicksilvered his reflexes and sautéed him in fear. The shout from Apparitor, and the terror emblazoned in his body, a body which Iraji could read better than any text. Do not let her die! If she dies, I take the punishment!

Baru understood it all. She saw all the variables. It was a little like godhood. And when Iraji tackled her face-first into the bilge, and the crossbow bolt buzzed overhead, some might have called it luck. But to Baru her survival was as sure and determined as the rising tide.

Apparitor drew no knife. Shot no bow. But still he struck back in desperation.

“TAIN HU SURRENDERED HERSELF!” he roared. “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? YOUR COUSIN GAVE HERSELF UP!”

And then, into the sudden silence: “Tain Hu came to me to be captured. She turned herself in by choice.”

“What?” Baru gurgled. She was up to her chin in swampwater, her dinner clothes filthy, Iraji’s knee in her back. The world was full of fire and shrieking birds. But suddenly Apparitor’s voice was more important than air or life.

What was he saying?

What did I do?

“She came down from the mountains!” Apparitor cried. Now he wept, and if his grief and his awe was theater, it was the finest Baru had ever known. “I never tracked her down! I never pulled her from some Wintercrest cave! She rode up to my agents and she told me to bring her to her sworn lord Baru Fisher!”

Harder than a mace to the head. Tain Hu was dead but she still had the power to shatter Baru with her gallantry.

She had obeyed her oaths.

In life. In death. I am yours.

She could have run into the Wintercrests. Lived to fight again.

But Tain Hu had sought out Baru so that she could discharge her vows—

—keep my deepest loyalties.

Tain Hu had volunteered to die. She had planned her battle well.

Oh, kuye lam. Not for me …

I made an oath. I kept it.

For Taranoke.

For Vultjag.

*   *   *

APPARITOR raised one hand: white-gloved, long-fingered, palm upraised in admonition. He was a cryptarch, exalted for his mastery of secrets, knowledge sharper than a Maia sword, quicker than Falcrest’s fire, surer than the Stakhi plate. Thus he held back his own death.

“We have your father,” he said. “We’ll punish him if you harm us.”

A soft indecipherable sound from Xate Yawa.

“Is that so?” The red mask swiveled to her. “Will you let them hurt your brother, Auntie Yawa? Will you let them hunt your little Shi?”

Yawa didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“Auntie,” the red mask rasped. “Look at you. Remember what you told me? It’ll get better. I promise.”