“Yawa thinks, eh?” He beamed at her. “I don’t like her thoughts very much. You know why I suspect she sent her brother north to join you? So you’d kill him. She couldn’t bear to do it herself. How’s that feel, Baru, to be a public resource, a wellspring of cruel endings?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Baru said. The barb struck her in numb scar tissue, and fell away. She lived now in a thick fog, and the lights of her hopes seemed very far away.

“Well, I don’t like your thoughts, either!” Apparitor crashed down into his hammock. “Fuck my pink balls. We should be outrunning them. A clipper should outrace a frigate.”

Baru stole his place at his desk. “Your crew’s Storm Corps, aren’t they? Trained for western waters? This is the navy’s ocean. They might know the currents better.”

“I know,” he said, sullenly. He was thinking of his lover. Lindon Satamine the Empire Admiral, the man the navy’s admirals wanted to remove. “I know.”

“We’re still a week out from the Llosydanes. Water’s short.” Baru cleared her throat. She liked telling him how to run his ship, which made her feel faintly guilty. “We should begin rationing.”

“Water’s short? That can’t be right. I had the ship provisioned for—”

“There’s fungus in the casks.”

“Ah. Just our luck. Rations it is!” He offered a bottle of The Grand Purifier, dangled perilously between two fingers. “Vodka to fortify your day?”

They drank together from tiny glazed coffee cups. The vodka stung and made Baru hiss. Apparitor frowned furiously at his cup, and didn’t speak.

“I want to be clear,” Baru said, tentatively, “that, ah, that what happened back at the keep was my fault.”

“Was it? The navy’s always hated Lindon, and the navy knows I protect him.”

“They came for me. To punish me for what I did.”

“Of course! Of course you want the blame.” He poured another thimble of vodka, drank, grimaced, and looked at her with red smiling eyes. “You want to be in charge of everything, don’t you? You even want to rule the disasters. Why—” He laughed with horrible cheer. “All your victories in Aurdwynn were massacres, weren’t they? So this must feel like another victory to you! Your hostage removed, my house reduced! Congratulations, Agonist. You win again.”

Gods of stone and fire, Apparitor, I never wanted to take your people from you: I wanted to pay the whole price myself.