He’d lost his red handkerchief on the harbor wind, his neck was naked, and so she saw the convulsion of fear that snapped his teeth together. “What brother?”

“Your brother,” she said, with a snake of guilt in her gut, which she tried, and failed, to step on. “The Necessary King of the Stakhieczi.”

“I don’t know any king,” he said, too quickly.

She smiled at him. “Come now. You were born prince of the Mansions. You tried to lead an expedition into the east, and the Masquerade kidnapped you off your ship.” Baru’s teeth closed on a tiny gannet-bone: it snapped between her jaws and slashed her gums. She’d heard the story from Dziransi, the Stakhieczi fighter in her retinue, and she’d known instantly, instantly, who that prince must be. “Does anyone else know? You’re kept in check by your hostage lover; but do they all know you’re royalty, too?”

He was silent and he was still.

“What would your colleagues do,” she whispered, “if your brother the Necessary King asked for your return, lest he invade? Would anyone protect you? Or would they send you home in rags and drool, with the lobotomy pick still jutting from your eye?”

Apparitor looked at her with pale fire in his eyes, with an aurora light on his teeth, and the charge of the air outside the keep passed through the stone and metal to stir his long red hair.

“You have me cornered,” he said.

It would have been undignified to whoop aloud. Instead she smiled. The blood from her cut gums made him flinch.

“Why do you do this?” he whispered. “I work for the Throne because it keeps me and mine safe. What do you want? What are you?”

She set her broken pawn down on Aurdwynn. The map rug was huge, huge, and she got up to pace the ring of the Ashen Sea, leaving him kneeling there with her plate of leavings and Aurdwynn in all its checkered peculiarity.

“This,” she said, kicking the ocean. “This ring. Trade goes around it, and around it, and around it. Falcrest to Oriati Mbo to Taranoke to Aurdwynn and back to Falcrest. Does it remind you of anything?”

“A water wheel.”

“An engine. Yes.” Baru surveyed her ocean. “What if that engine stopped?”

He did not even hesitate. “Falcrest collapses.”

“Well,” Baru said. “We can’t have that. We should explore the possible ways the trade could be stopped, so we can prevent them.”

“Are you speculating on the downfall of our great and beloved Republic? Some might consider this a mote suspicious.”

She waved in dismissal. “The hand is blameless, if it acts in service of the Throne.…”

“Quoting the Hierarchic? You learn our stories too well.” Apparitor clapped his hands on the rug, and everything rattled, the dish and the bottle, even Baru’s jaw. “Do you understand? You don’t. You will.”