Of course, the Lonjaro Princes insisted, they would keep a fist ready, just in case. An army would march up the coast, counterclockwise round the curve of the Ashen Sea, up through Invijay lands to the great Tide Column. Across the Column lay Falcrest’s Butterveldt, where the army would eat everything, steal the herds, and generally force the enemy to reckon the sheer size of the Mbo’s forces. Battle itself would be unnecessary, although a few sporting engagements might be arranged against Falcrest’s militias: fought to the break, not the slaughter.

This was how Lonjaro preferred to fight. Smother the enemy in games of mercy and demonstrations of might. Eat their crops and buy away their friends. Leave their bones unbroken for the handshake and the peace.

Six hundred years ago the Tu Maia had ridden south into Oriati Mbo with warhorses and a will to conquer. All that majestic fury, all the hot blood of the Emperors and the Empresses who carried the legacy of Shiqu Si, had availed them nothing. They had stumbled on the hard earth and crawled into the arms of the Oriati begging for water and salt. They’d made good husbands, good wives, and that was all that remained of them now: except for the Invijay, who were, in the opinion of most, less than bandits.

What would little Falcrest, a small nation of mad kings and nebbish bureaucrats, manage against the mbo? The mbo was soft like quicksand. You couldn’t cut it apart or put your foot through it. It would just flow around you.

Only Mother Tahr seemed concerned.

*   *   *

CHANGE grew up like kudzu vine and it took over the hill.

Mother Tahr spent more time writing and more time in Jaro and much less time on matters of trim and taboo. Tau took command of the house compound, lest it fall into disarray and argument.

In Lonjaro’s stories, the Segu-woman, once awakened to sex, always seemed to become a notorious rake and heartbreaker. But Kindalana, apparently satisfied to scratch her adolescent itches on Abdu, instead drew into a sort of hermitage. Her house attracted a constant stream of historians, griots, book-readers, rhetors, merchant captains, navigators, critics, adventurers, radians, guides, and even cooks of Falcrest’s odd cuisine. Every night Kindalana hosted an occasion and every day the house staff ran about in exhaustion cleaning up and soothing the bees and arranging raspberries and cheeses for the night to come.

Tau-indi really wanted to be invited. But Kindalana did not seem to think of them.

Abdumasi decided to sell his caraval cats to the gamblers in Jaro. On the ferry across the lake the caravals mewed and protested the waves and rubbed their cheeks all over everyone’s ankles. Tau-indi almost cried. Abdumasi certainly did.