“We have demands,” Dziransi rumbled. He gripped the edge of the table like a vise, as if he had to hold the boards together.

“Demands?” Baru wanted to remind the jagata man that Falcrest would suck him dry through his eye sockets to learn what he knew—but she knew she would be in a way indulging her own desire to hold power over him. “Well, all right, go ahead.”

Just then Xate Yawa and Iscend Comprine slipped inside. Both wore full-face service masks of light lacquered wood. The prisoners reacted stiffly to Yawa’s presence: Ude even rose halfway out of his chair, growling.

Ake cleared her throat and spoke very loudly. “We demand full Imperial pardons in your name. We demand guarantees of protection for ourselves and our families. We demand to be returned to Aurdwynn and granted our freedom.”

Yawa sat down and began taking notes.

“That’s all?” Baru said. “You want to go home?”

“Everything we do,” Ulyu Xe murmured, “is to save our home. For Aurdwynn.”

Yes. When people really cared about their homes, didn’t they go home? But not Baru, no, she traveled further and further away, sniffing the trail of power, and she did not even read her parents’ letters.…

Xe was peering curiously at her now.

Baru blinked and swallowed. “Yes. Well. I think we can do a little better for Aurdwynn than a few Imperial pardons, can’t we? I made a promise to the duchess—”

Yythel’s rage spilled down her face like bitter tea. “We don’t need any more of your promises in Aurdwynn, Baru.”

“This boy needs his family.” Ude clasped Run’s shoulder. “Send him home.”

Baru put up her gloves, palms forward: wait. “Let me ask you all a question. I am the Queen of Aurdwynn by the acclamation of the dukes, am I not?”

“Under false pretenses,” Dziransi said. “A queen without honor.”

“They were all false pretenses,” the cook Nitu muttered.

“Nonetheless, am I not the oathbound lord of your duchess Tain Hu? Are you not, in her absence, my oathbound Vultjagata?”

“We vowed our lives to her,” Nitu spat. “Not to you. Fuck you. Everything you say is poison.”

She left in a swirl of cotton color. Ake looked after her, obviously longing to follow, or at least to tell Baru to go fuck herself.

“You won’t let us go home,” Run said. His voice cracked. “Will you?”

Xate Yawa drew on the thread of his doubt. “You can all earn pardons from the Stag Duchess, if you only tell us what we want to know.”

And there was the problem. Baru would happily send them all back to Aurdwynn, far from her thin-walled heart, if only she weren’t certain that Yawa and her pet Governor would devour them. These people were rebel cadre, the inner circle of the Coyote: they would never be allowed to live free lives.