IN the morning, Apparitor ordered Munette tied to the mast and lashed across her naked back. He said it was necessary to show that she suffer for her assault. Baru thought he was trying to spare himself the pain of hanging her by torturing her instead.

As the lash cracked and Munette howled, Baru slipped down into the ship’s bilge.

Staff Captain Shao Lune had been chained here to soak. She crouched in the ankle-deep filth. In her hands she cupped the last sputtering stub of a candle, the hot wax smearing her palms, the fire so low it must burn her. But she held it to her face and inhaled the smell.

Baru picked her way across crossbeams above the bilgewater. “What did Durance and Apparitor ask you?”

Shao Lune looked up from her ruined candle. Wax dripped between her naked fingers. “The fishmonger of Welthony,” she purred. “Come to drown another sailor?”

“I just want a little honest company. At least I know you want to kill me.”

“Nonsense.” She was an exquisitely severe person, as tightly coiled and finely composed as a braid of vipers. “We took our best shot at you. We failed.”

“And you abandoned your mutiny.”

“Of course I did. I needed an Imperial pardon.”

“Do you really think they’ll give you that pardon?”

She pinched out the candle-flame. Shadow rose up to veil her huge eyes, her fine pointed chin. Teeth glinted in her sneer. “I think,” she said, “that there’s nothing better than an Imperial pardon on your service jacket. You did something unspeakable. And the Throne found you so valuable that they forgave your crime. You know a little about that, don’t you, Baru?”

A weird thrill warmed Baru’s stomach. She was bargaining with snakes again, taking council with her enemy, and that was far better than the company of those she might accidentally come to love.

“Tell me what you told Xate Yawa.” Who Baru now suspected of stealing the ledger of rebel secrets, which meant she might be searching Baru’s past for useful crimes. “Has she asked you about me?”

“Gava girl, if you want something from me, then I know I shouldn’t give it freely.”

Gava. Navy slang for gift—from that ugly old story of an unexplored island, friendly natives, naked happy people who offered you their sons and daughters.

Baru savored warm comfortable rage. It made all the hard parts easier, and more delightful.

She crouched a few paces from Shao Lune, balanced on her toes on planks above the bilgewater. “I can better their deal.”

“Of course you can. Of course you’re not just here to work me from another angle.”

“You came over here to save yourself. Fine, I believe that. But you want your career back, don’t you? You want your navy protected.”

“How gauche. She thinks she knows me.”