Instead they sidled up to the Farrier man, who was stroking his beard and listening intently. “Your Excellence Farrier,” they murmured, with an overt politeness, “does it trouble you to hear our griots discussing your defeat?”

Farrier knelt with them. He had a charmingly self-satisfied face, like a clever raccoon. “No,” he said, “it doesn’t bother me, or, rather, it fascinates me to see the war from your perspective. Do I kiss you on the cheek? Is that the right thing?”

“If you like!” Tau said, pleasantly surprised. The Falcresti had both been very standoffish. “Or kiss the air beside the cheek, like this—”

Farrier tried this, and accidentally made a childish poot with his lips. Tau laughed. Farrier wiggled his eyebrows and sat back, beaming at the firelit gathering. “I’m so happy to be here,” he said.

“Why are you happy?” Tau couldn’t imagine being so far from home and family.

“Because,” Farrier said, “Oriati Mbo has stood for a thousand years, and no matter what my people say, I think we have things to learn from you.”

Tau-indi felt a sudden warmth toward him. “I’m sure the converse is true, as well! What do you think you might learn?”

Farrier’s eyes sat deep in their sockets, as thoughtful as they were guarded. But they seemed to open and allow Tau inside. “Young lama,” he said, “I want to know how to make a civilization last a thousand years. And since you do not have eugenics, I know the answer cannot lie there—”

They were interrupted by the satirist, who reeled out into the center of the circle on unsteady toppling stilts. They shaded their eyes, a young laman with white ash around their mouth, and looked around.

“Behold!” they said. “Behold the people on Prince Hill, chosen to rule! We voted your families to give birth to our lords, and we are very satisfied with those young lords, oh, what else would we be? We are a satisfied people, the Oriati, a smug people, we do everything best. Don’t we?”

There was a hesitant cheer. Hooray? We are the best?

The satirist rose up nobly, their chin to the sky. “It is best to raise our Princes on a high hill away from the city, away from the fields and the grasslands where our people do their labor. Far away from the sickness and the filth of the cities, where we have invented new ways to debase and ruin ourselves. Up here our Princes can concern themselves only with trim and taboos! Up here our Princes can play games of principle instead of working in the fields and the filth! Today the taboo is against going uphill too quickly! That is the most important thing!”

The crowd murmured. Abdumasi put a worried hand to his mouth. Kindalana frowned in thought. Farrier made a note in his book.