FIRST, a quick stop at the post. She bought a clipper-rate seal, rolled up her letter to Purity Cartone, and left it for the next mail ship to Treatymont. Her letter to Aminata went in for routing through the navy.

So that was that. Despite her fear for Apparitor’s personal anguish, she had promised him to the Necessary King. She was too busy to feel anything of it.

“We’re going to the harbormaster,” she told Hu. “It’s the Cancrioth money we want, isn’t it? So first we find if anyone supplied those Oriati warships. Then we find out who.”

A paper ticket got her an appointment, and a competitively priced bribe put her on the priority list. Her bravos played grids over a rudder table and whispered about her.

“Miss Payo Mu?” The harbormaster, a compactly fat Belthyc woman of very handsome build and alert features, ushered her inside.

“Nice desk,” Baru said, meaning it. She’d hammered planks across half a wooden wheel, creating a sort of formidable half-moon balcony. She looked as if she sat at the helm of a great ship.

“Thank you. I do well at it. I understand you paid an urgency fee?”

“Yes, your Excellence.” Baru curtsied extravagantly. “I’m with the Ordainments, Imperial Republic shipping insurance and futures. I’ve been asked to reassess the risks of trade near Kyprananoke. As your islands are not so far north of the kypra, here I am.”

The harbormaster looked up sharply. “And you came to me? Not the Sydanemoot? Do you understand that any peril to the date trade means people starve?”

“I work from the bottom up, your Excellence. It’s the republican way. I only want to see your shipping records.”

“Why?”

“I’m looking for unusual transactions,” Baru said, “transfers of water, salted goods, medicines, anything which might supply a large group of warships.”

“Pirates. I see.” The harbormaster nodded very firmly. “We’d be happy to open our books to an authorized factor. I’ll just send a girl to check your papers against our records? Not to imply that you’re a fake, but an unscrupulous party might try to cause a panic.…”

“Yes. About that.” Baru winced theatrically. “If word of my presence got out…”

The quartermaster’s hand twitched. “Yes?”

“Don’t you think it might cause a run on the local currency?”

She made a face like Baru had gutted a rat on her desk. She very much thought it might cause a run on the local currency. And she knew that would doom her.

The exchange rate between the Sydani ring shell and the Falcresti fiat note was nearly eighty to one: you paid eighty ring shells for one fiat note. Fiat notes were scarce here, because as soon as they came into the islands, they went out again to buy food. Just like any other good, their value depended on their rarity.