Baru stuffed her mouth with baby gannet meat, so she couldn’t reply.

“Anyway. These figures are members of the Throne. Here’s Itinerant—” A smiling waistcoated bust, her patron, Farrier. He put it down on the edge of the map. “Stargazer—” A telescope lens, also for the edge. “Me—” A pale figure, with red paint for hair. He put it in Aurdwynn. “Renascent—” A featureless pawn, which he placed, with a shudder, on Falcrest. “And you.”

The pawn he produced was extraordinary. Narrow, thoughtful, storm-dark eyes: Baru’s cheekbones and chin: a faint, uncharacteristic smile, as if the pawn wanted to make Baru happy. All carved from the wood with the most expert care.

“Whittled it myself,” Apparitor said, cheerily. “On the ship with Tain Hu. Thought it’d be a nice gift once you’d spared her. Ah well.”

He smashed his vodka bottle down on the pawn’s head and it split. Apparitor flicked the broken stub over to Baru. “Your pawn, my lady,” he said, and emptied the bottle down his throat.

“Now,” he gasped, “we play.”

“I don’t know the rules—”

“And I won’t tell you.” He stepped onto the map. “Tell me what you’ll do to the world, Baru Cormorant. Show me your savantry!”

“What do I—”

“I told you. I told you.” His eyes glinted in the slatted dawn light. His jaw twitched, like a smile trying to wriggle out of its cage. There was something bestial, something cunning and atavistic about his pig-pale flesh, as if his ancestors had lived in their mansions too long, too far from the light. Baru hated the thought—she hated these prejudices!—but when the earth trembled with a distant avalanche or tremor, and the chandelier of the map of the moon moved above them in sympathy, she almost gasped aloud in fear.

“The rules of the game,” he said, “are the rules of the world. Play!”

Baru set her pawn down in Aurdwynn. A splinter from its broken face got under her thumbnail: she hissed and sucked it out. Blood wicked into the wound and turned the nail red.

“You are in Aurdwynn,” Apparitor said, singsong, mocking. “You have just betrayed all your friends. The rebellion is over. You have gained the absolute overriding authority of the Imperial Throne. What do you do?”

Where to begin! She would do what Tain Hu trusted her to do. “I order the release of religious prisoners, the end of reparatory marriage, and a program of universal inoculation for children. I set patrols on the Inirein and the other major trade rivers. I dredge the Welthony harbor. I—”

“The provincial Governor refuses your suggestions. The Governor wishes to keep the north of Aurdwynn impoverished and ill, so the Stakhieczi cannot seize it and use it as a springboard for invasion.”

“The Governor?” Baru said, in confusion. “Isn’t Cattlson dead?”