“We know,” her bodyguard Ude said, darkly.

“Did she tell you that Xate Yawa kept you alive? Over the winter you were all identified and preconvicted of grand treason. You’d all have been drowned in Treatymont harbor, except Dziransi, who’d go to a worse fate. Instead Yawa ordered you transferred here.” He nodded firmly. “Baru never wrote one letter about you lot. Ask yourselves why she’s setting you up so comfortably now. Ask yourselves—is she afraid she can’t make any more money off your country without your help?”

The damnable poisonous thing was that he was right. He was undermining her, doubtless as a favor for Xate Yawa, but he was right. Baru was afraid to lose her influence in Aurdwynn. She had to protect Vultjag, lest she betray Tain Hu, and that betrayal would be a sledge through the last pole holding up her paper roof of righteousness.

Ake was nodding. Ake was looking at her as if to say, I know you always have yourself in mind.

“Where’s the wine?” Baru snapped.

*   *   *

FUCK them. Fuck Yawa and her slithering insinuations and her stolen ledger. Fuck the fierce stiff resentment of her “Vultjagata” (how little that oath seemed to mean). Hadn’t Baru yielded her power to Ake? Hadn’t she said, go, do as you will?

Ake would probably fuck it all up. Heingyl Ri would twist her about, and the North would end up a starving barren firebreak against the Stakhieczi. Damn it. Damn it, fuck! Heingyl Ri was a coastal Duchess! Didn’t Ake understand that the coast needed a poor starving North, so it could get materials cheap?

Ri couldn’t be trusted. The economics were clear.

Baru drank the wine that Yawa had abandoned by the hearth. Then she stole a hammock and went down into the cozy wood cellar. An hour’s nap would do her good.

She put her head down for a moment.

And woke in utter blackness. She fumbled around, her left arm dead and numb, till she found her folio and—oh, thank Wydd, the incryptor: if someone had tried to use it without her dial settings, it might have destroyed itself.

Someone took a breath. “Baru?”

Baru checked her ankle knife. “Who is it?”

“I drew water for your bath,” Ulyu Xe said.

Baru groaned. “Are you serious? A bath?”

“You look like a greasy kitchen rat. You need a bath.”

“You weren’t much help up there,” Baru complained. “I thought—”

Thought what? That the oath they’d taken to Tain Hu would transfer flawlessly to Baru? That everyone could simply set aside what she’d done, and go back to her service?

What a fool.

“I don’t persuade people,” Xe said. “I can only show them what I know.”

Baru growled low in her throat. “So you don’t think I’m trying to plunder Aurdwynn for riches?”