Tau-indi, thick-tongued, pretended not to hear him. Kindalana wasn’t there, and yet it felt like Kindalana was walking between them.

“Do you think it’s a good mix?” Abdumasi said hopefully.

“Eh?”

“A satirist, a gossip, an epic, and a comic. Do you think they’ll help us understand the war?”

“How should I know?” Tau-indi snapped. “How should I know anything about that?”

“You don’t have to know.” Abdumasi, much taller, didn’t have to work to catch up. “I just want you to say you approve.”

He was trying his best to be soothing. Soothing! Just one more thing Abdumasi did better. Fah. Abdumasi deserved no credit for it. Anyone could be magnanimous if they had a secret advantage, if they knew that they could hurt without being hurt in turn. Why wouldn’t Abdumasi admit he was sleeping with Kindalana? Because he knew that it would make Tau lonely. Because poor little Tau wasn’t old enough to have lovers.

Poor little Tau.

Tau-indi stalked along, rubbing the broken bones, that’s what Tahr always said, carrying on while upset was just like walking on a broken bone.

“When will the griots come?” they made themself say. “I want to listen.”

“That’s good. You Princes, you’ve got to listen to us merchants, we’re the ones who are really in touch with the world!” Abdumasi grinned his big buy-my-cats grin, everyone’s funny friend. Tau-indi hated him with a sick, self-loathing totality. “We have to keep you in touch, or you might not realize what’s going on!”

“No,” Tau-indi said, pouncing oh so sweetly, thinking of Abdumasi and Kindalana on the rock. “We might not realize what’s going on at all.”

*   *   *

THE griots came up Prince Hill to tell them about the war. They all gathered in the garden of House Abd to eat and drink and listen.

The epic stood up and recited all the great names of the captains, the Segu navigators Kolosan ayaSegu and Eyotana Six-Souls, Cho-oh Long Oar and the Man with the Rudder Thumb, and Lonjaro’s champions too, the sons and daughters of house Mbunu who had sailed so far north they could breathe smoke, Nyoba Dbellu who had salt crystals in her earlobes. Thrill at the names, O listeners, thrill at these thinkers of sharp thoughts!

Next was the gossip griot, who wandered from family to family whispering about the dalliances of both the champions and the enemy. He had a warm old smile, big as the calendar on the first day of the new year, and after he talked about Cho-oh Short Cock and who exactly might be breathing smoke into who, he reminded them all that they had nothing to fear from war. A war could be fought between champions on the clean sea. Neither the Mbo nor Falcrest need suffer.

Kindalana stood behind her father with her arms across the shoulders of two of her clerk friends and grinned in delight. Tau-indi felt a spiteful need to make her sad, to beg her pity.