She came through the small door (no one had moved to open it for her), among her watching staff. They stared at her.

“Go on,” she said, gently. As if they were the ones she’d hurt. “I want breakfast for two in the morning-room, and space cleared for a floor map.”

A cook dusted her floured hands on her apron, and a great puff of powder shot up into the sunbeams. The motes danced. “My lady,” she said, “we had it set for three, shall we clear the third place?”

Baru nearly shattered. Shall we clear Tain Hu’s place? No, she would say, no, leave it, leave her empty chair: she would stand there weeping silently while they watched her and understood. “I lied,” she’d tell them, “I wanted to be free of your control, so I had her executed, oh, what have I done?” And they would comfort her as they brought the poison cup, the blade, the slim garrote.

She said: “Leave the prisoner’s seat. It’ll make an interesting conversation piece. I have the sense, from your reaction, that I was meant to fail this test. Will anyone confirm that for me?”

No one would.

“Then go!” she snapped. “And serve me fresh code seals with breakfast. I have letters to write!”

They scattered in silence. One more time she wondered: how many of her predecessors had vowed, in secret, to defy their masters? None had succeeded. Or, worse, they had all succeeded, all of them defiant, all of their defiance expected and incorporated into the Throne’s victory.

Baru had only one weapon they’d lacked.

Tain Hu.

Remember that name. Pronounce it in a special way, so that it repeats itself: Tain leads to Hu and Hu leads to Tain, and you never forget her, she loops through your mind like a cant of resistance, now and always she is chained starving and ferocious to the rock-face of your memory and she heaves you forward by the manacles of her death.

Tain Hu.

You will destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest. You will liberate the world.

Tain Hu wills it.

And something rushed at Baru from her blindness—

*   *   *

SHE whirled, desperate, doomed—how had they decided so fast—the assassin came at her swift, elusive, a flicker of bird-wing shadow in twilight, the Throne’s answer for the cryptarch who refused to be bound—she tried to run, she tried to draw her boarding saber and stop-thrust the phantom through the breast—but she wasn’t wearing her sword, and as her turn and her failed draw put her off-balance she tripped on her cloak and fell on her ass.

No one there.

Baru groaned and rolled onto her stomach. With willfully bleak humor (probing the wound, trying to pinch shut the vein) she thought, oh, I am glad Hu can’t see her last hope now.

“My lady Cormorant?”