“Yes.” Yawa’s voice crackled like paper. “She was born to my brother and Tain Ko, a secret marriage between commoner and aristocrat. She … left us, in her youth. Farrier told her she could find a truer revolution with him.”

“Farrier was in Aurdwynn? I thought you didn’t know him!”

“Not as Farrier, no. The Itinerant has wandered the world for a long, long time. He took her with him, when he went to Taranoke.…”

“Oh gods,” Baru gasped. Dizzy revelation tipped her world halfway over. She did know Tain Shir! She had seen Tain Shir as a girl on Taranoke. Remember the guard by Cairdine Farrier’s stand? The guard who’d offered to buy Baru a piece of mango?

She’d had brilliant blue eyes. Xate Yawa’s eyes.

On the day Cairdine Farrier had selected Baru as his next protégé, his harvest from Taranoke, he’d had his protégé from Aurdwynn right at his side. Wasn’t Farrier drawn to brilliant young people with political ambitions? Was it any surprise he’d chosen Xate Yawa’s niece, Olake’s daughter, Tain Hu’s cousin—blood of aristocrats, and blood of the commoners who’d delivered Aurdwynn to the mask?

One Tain had abandoned her homeland.

The other had remained, and ruled, and changed Baru’s course forever.

*   *   *

“BARU.”

She whirled left, searching for the whisper, and went all the way around in a full spin before fetching up face-to-face with the black judicial mask and hideously angled raven-gown.

“What,” Baru snapped, quite charged with hurt and exhilaration, totally unready to have a delicate fencing match with the Jurispotence. “What is it, what, what?”

“I read your letter.”

“Oh.” A schoolgirl’s flush of humiliation: the teacher had found her diary! “Well, ah, yes. A bit theatrical. I didn’t think we’d see each other until—”

“You thought he’d died.”

“Olake? Yes, er, Apparitor told me he’d … he’d been killed.”

“You tried to save him.”

The unblinking lenses were impossible to stare down. Baru tried to fidget with her coat, which stank of smoke, and accidentally dirtied herself with cooked marsh filth. “Yes, I sent him away with Tain Hu.”

“He must have followed her south,” Yawa rasped. “He was trying to save her. That’s where he was captured. I didn’t know.”

Baru’s throat closed up with horrible grief. Nothing was harder than imagining the love and loyalty shared by those she’d betrayed. Nothing. She had the uncomfortable image of a serpent’s tongue flickering behind that mask, tasting her guilt. The crew moved around them, executing a ferociously intricate algorithm of tying and untying and rigging and cutting and hauling, readying the ship for a long race. But Baru would sooner understand their work than Yawa’s thoughts, she felt.