Baru’s mission on the Llosydanes was accomplished. She groaned in relief. She had done it, she knew where to go next, and she hadn’t betrayed or ruined everyone around her! Except that brief panic—but as long as there were no sign of actual Navy-Oriati conflict near the Llosydanes, it would do no harm to date season.…

Ulyu Xe looked at her with amusement. “Have you just found last night’s satisfaction?”

“Hush, you.” Baru leapt to her feet. “Why can’t a Federal Prince be a spymaster?”

“It wouldn’t be good trim for a Federal Prince to lie. Their trim is entwined with all the people they serve and govern. When they lie it touches all those millions. Ordinarily, I think, there is a shadow ambassador for espionage instead.”

Nonsense. A good spy never had to lie. You tell everyone the truth, you tell them exactly what you plan to do: she’d said to Tain Hu, resistance is meaningless, we must find a way up from within. And they believe you, they believe in you, and so they cover up your true intentions with their own belief.

“Let’s go help them carry their gifts,” she said.

*   *   *

THE hardest run is the run downhill. The world wants to pull you forward by your own momentum and dash you down on your face, and you must resist it: the art of running downhill is the art of the controlled descent.

As Baru ran she also descended, lulled by pounding feet and crashing waves into her past.

Fifteen years ago, before pestilent corpses burnt in Taranoke’s crater, Baru had been a happy hungry child in the Iriad market. Her appetite could only be satiated by cooked sweet pineapple, brown with extra sugar. Usually her parents bought her some if she was good. But she was not a fledgling bird to be fed by mother! Today she was going to buy her own pineapple.

She simply had to figure out how to convert the little shell in her fist (dug up from the Baru Cormorant Industrial Sand Mine, All Liabilities Guaranteed) into actual money.

“You, kind foreigner!” she called.

A smiling Oriati laman knelt to greet her. Their khanga stretched across narrow knees, high smart brow and full lips all misted in sweat. They smelled of pork smoke and grown-up. Behind them the Iriad Percussion Parade banged on their drums and shouted gladly the news of peace. They’d played the last war with the plainsiders, where Baru hadn’t been allowed to watch as her father Salm killed a man and a woman in the circle.

“Kind foreigner,” Baru intoned, “what brings you to our market?”

“I am here to trade,” the laman said, solemnly.

“Excellent,” child-Baru declared. “I have acquired a priceless artifact. This, O most wise lama, is a valve-shell.”

“A valve-shell, eh? What does it do?”