She knew Tain Hu only briefly, in the girl’s childhood, but she thinks Baru the sort that the duchess Vultjag might love. A shark-sleek woman of brooding intention, a danger and a lure. Like a dark stone beneath rough water. If you pass close to her then you might tear yourself.

Probably Hu did love her.

What Shir does not believe is the possibility that Baru Cormorant ever loved Tain Hu in turn.

So she let Baru go. Not as mercy but as punishment. For in her flight Baru will reveal to Tain Shir what she treasures and what she hopes to achieve and that which she strives to protect. And then Tain Shir will take those things from her. Do you see, O ambitious one? The world does not answer to you. The code you follow will not grant you what you seek.

Province Admiral Ormsment comes up from her war council. “Captain Shir,” she snaps. “Walk with me.”

Shir paces her in silence.

“They aren’t fleeing east to Isla Cauteria,” Ormsment says. “That suggests to me that they know Samne Maroyad might take my side.”

“They’re sailing south to the Llosydanes,” Shir says.

“Yes.” Ormsment measures her. “How did you know that?”

“Baru has to execute the survivors of her rebellion.” The regent Ake Sentiamut, the Stakhi fighter Dziransi, Tain Hu’s occasional lover Ulyu Xe, Baru’s bodyguards, and various others. “In case they know anything compromising. That’s how the Throne operates.”

“We’ve set course to follow them.”

“And if they escape again? If they reach Falcrest?”

Juris smiles as her wrath drums in her breast. Shir can hear it. “My officers turn themselves in to Samne Maroyad for execution. They’ll beg clemency for their families and the common sailors.”

“And you?”

“The crew knifes me to death. So they can say they turned against my madness, at the end.”

Tain Shir looks at her, this admiral in her second prime. Silver-haired, slim, sunspots on skin of a warm promising brown. It is spring in Aurdwynn now. The silted rivers will be the color of Ormsment as they inundate the fields.

She smells rage, rage pent up inside the admiral like whiskey in a cask of smoked cherry. It reminds Shir of her own fury when she came to know the true order of the world.

“What happened to Shao Lune?” she asks.

Ormsment grimaces. Her staff captain vanished during the keep assault. “Saved her own neck, I expect. You didn’t tell me she was compromised.”

Shir is indifferent.

Ormsment seizes her by the elbow. “Some of the marines say you had a chance to kill Baru. The ship whispers that you let her go.”

“I missed,” Shir says.

“The fuck you did.”

“Reprimand me, then.”

“You know I will. I hold this ship together, Shir. My authority. You can’t be seen to get off easy.”