“I have some work in motion here I need to look after—”

“Baru,” Yawa murmured, in a raw cold voice like city slush, “we should talk. You drink all day and lie awake in your hammock all night. You’re sick. You’re dying, in fact, and you don’t know it, because by the time you’re dead it will feel quite normal to be lifeless. And you talk to Apparitor like he’s your friend, when he’s poisoning you day by day.

“I tried to keep you out of all this. I failed. You are in it now. I won’t see you waste what my niece gave you. Will you listen, please?”

*   *   *

BARU did not want to listen. “Did you find the Morrow Ministry station?”

“Never mind that.”

“Did you steal my ledger?”

“Your ledger?”

“Never mind. There are two spies following me—”

“Oriati, I expect,” Yawa judged. “The Termites must have a post here. Keep an eye out for a tunk case officer.” She dropped the obscenity without apology or hesitation. The streets had brought out the commoner from behind the judge. “Through here, now, we’ll take the bridge back over to Samylle.”

They crossed the dizzying height across sand-roughened hardwood. Yawa clung to Baru and refused to look down. Around them passed crowds of women. The way they held hands made Baru reflexively nervous. It was a culture of public adoration and touch, not a sign of romance, but fear was fear.

In Samylle plaza an old fat man in handsomely drab costume played the role of Wydd, sitting patiently as children tickled and tugged on him. Merchants sold little scrimshawed idols of Wydd and Devena and Himu: Devena, a tall spare woman with flat breasts and her hands opened equitably; Himu, a delightful dancing grotesquerie with motherly hips and a jutting erection.

“Vile,” Yawa muttered, surprising Baru, her anger not Incrastic at all, “vile to sell likenesses of the virtues.”

“Why?”

“The virtues must come into you and live in you and express themselves through your works. Idols teach you to keep them outside. Idols mislead.”

“Unuxekome told me you were a believer,” Baru ventured, “but I didn’t know whether…”

“Whether I’d lied to him?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, child!” Yawa laughed sadly. “Do you think Falcrest would choose an unbeliever as their persecutor? When you want to slaughter the cattle, you spare one of them, and then you send her to the next herd to lead them. You don’t waste time putting a man in a cow suit. Come, come down here, see what a believer I am. I had to visit it.”

She led Baru down the road called Llallyrd (she said yee-a-yeerd) to a square at the edge of the islet.

Baru gasped in wonder.