“So that’s where I sent the survivors of Baru’s inner circle. The Coyotes we captured.” She pulled the bone comb free with a grunt. “One of them must know something about the Oriati fleet that came to their aid. Where those ships came from. Who owned them. Where they harbored last. If that fleet had anything to do with the Cancrioth, then we track the fleet back to our targets.”

It was a sound strategy. It would bring Baru face-to-face with everyone she’d betrayed.

She turned away from the others, to hide her dismay. But Apparitor thought she was looking astern for their pursuers. He leapt up onto the rail to point to Scylpetaire, pursuing.

“They can’t allow any survivors,” he said. “We’ll relay a report of their treachery to Falcrest, and the Emperor’s wrath will come down on them and their families. They’ll chase us to the ends of the world before they let us live.”

The end of the world, Baru thought. The end of the world. Can the Cancrioth give me the end of the world? Falcrest’s utter annihilation?

Is that what I promised Hu?

On the mast-arm above Baru, a gull squawked and began to patter its feet.

Interlude: RNS Sulane

INTERLUDE

RNS SULANE

TAIN Shir walks the deck of RNS Sulane between the bombs and incendiaries and steel-tipped barbs. A weapon among weapons but she alone is free. The tragedy of the knife is the hilt. The tragedy of the crossbow is the trigger. Shir has neither. She cannot be gripped nor fired.

She is unmastered.

The sailors are rude with her. So be it. Etiquette is the domain of those whose power is conditional upon the respect of others, and Shir is unconditional. If she drifted alone in the void beyond the moon or if she walked among the monarchs of the ancient Cheetah Palaces she would not be altered in her capabilities or her intentions, for not one truth of her resides within a relationship to any other thing.

The wind in the sails. The stars obscured by stormcloud. Far to the south lightning jags between the clouds as if the world might tear open into meaningless bright. Sulane is going south toward the lightning, south after Helbride, after Baru Cormorant, who escaped.

Tain Shir let her go.

The red-haired trifle Svirakir says that Tain Hu loved Baru. Little running Hu, who once beat her father’s horse with a poker, crying, “A ranger must disarm the rider from foot!” Poor Chafflicker kicked out the stable wall in panic and ran away. Hu reported directly to her father: the wall destroyed, and her enemy driven into rout. She was very proud.

Those forest days. Days when Shir still believed that her father Olake and her aunt Yawa were going to save Aurdwynn from the evil Masquerade. Days before Shir understood the world and its dreadful freedoms.