I want to eat a heart, Baru thought. I want a tender deer-heart, cut out raw and still trembling, all its lobes spread out like a butterfly and slathered in cream and simmered over low coals. And I want my bodyguards laughing around me as Hu crouches across the fire and whittles her wood.

Well, she would have her bodyguards back soon enough. Though not at all in the way she wanted.

“No,” she said. “I need meat, and hard liquor, and lemon. That’s all.”

The cook turned to go, and then Xate Yawa stood in her way, barefoot and severe in a cotton peasant’s dress. In that instant Baru saw the most curious thing. Yawa began to duck her head and avert her eyes, like a serving-girl passing a Falcresti steward in the hallway.

Then she was smiling brilliantly at Baru and Svir, and the cook had been entirely erased from her body’s reactions.

“Iscend and I have reached a bargain with Shao Lune,” she said. “She’ll tell us about the mutiny and its scope in exchange for an Imperial pardon for grand treason and a guilty plea to charges of excessive loyalty to an officer below the Emperor.”

Baru was very disappointed. She’d wanted to slip in and offer Shao a better bargain on the side. Well, there was still a chance. “Let’s go see her now!”

“I don’t want to talk to her.” Apparitor began scrounging around for his pen. “She’s a mutineer and an opportunist, she only ‘defected’ to us because she wanted to save her own life, and fuck, fuck!” He came up with a broken pen in his fist. “Fine, fine, I’m done throwing a tantrum, let’s go see her.”

“Very good,” Yawa said.

Baru went after them and Apparitor blocked her. “Not you. Go talk to Captain Branne, figure out how to ration the water.”

“Svir’s right.” Yawa smiled sweetly. “I think seeing you might enrage her. For you are, after all, the face of all her troubles.”

*   *   *

BARU went back to her hammock in the ship’s prow arsenal, which was fitting, because she was in a seething fury. She resolved to at last open her mail. But instead she lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, and after most of a watch, lulled by the ocean and the sweaty warmth, she fell asleep.