“Yes. She’s hunting Baru. I think…” Yawa covered her face and groaned. “I think maybe we should send Baru somewhere safer. Back to Aurdwynn, perhaps. Heingyl Ri will know where to secure her.”

“Not a fucking chance,” Baru groaned. If she looked left, at Helbride and Apparitor up on the prow, waving frantically, the pain seemed very far away.

“If we don’t complete our mission,” Yawa snapped, “my brother dies, Apparitor loses his lover, you lose nothing—”

“But you can’t go forward without me. I know where to go next.”

Yawa’s eyes narrowed. “You do?”

“We have to go to Kyprananoke.”

“Kyprananoke?” Yawa frowned. “We can’t go to Kyprananoke.”

“We have to,” Baru said. “Duke Unuxekome’s mother is down there, and she can lead us to the man who funded the warships.”

“But if I—I can’t be near Unuxekome Ra!”

“Why?”

“Because,” Yawa said, “I’m the one who exiled her to Kyprananoke. And she swore her revenge on the life of her son.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Baru said, in too much pain for any patience. “She can give us the trail to the Cancrioth!”

The burning Oriati dromon blew up. A great full-bodied explosion that reached skyward and flattened the waves. Thousands of tiny white stars arched like anenome fingers back down into the sea. From the center of the blast a single streak of fire shot skyward, through the screaming birds, into the dawn.

Iraji, perhaps dazed by all the blood and fire, fainted right away.

Interlude: The Llosydanes

INTERLUDE

THE LLOSYDANES

AMINATA wrapped the boy’s clawed hands in linen, cleaned his burnt body with cold brine, weighted him down with stones, and committed him to the sea. “I’m sorry,” she told the boy’s father. But he didn’t speak Aphalone.

So she went back to Ascentatic to beg Baru for an explanation.

In her corner of the wardroom she knelt beneath her hammock at the remnants of her temple. The tufa center-pot couldn’t sail with her, nor the black Taranoki earth, nor the dead seeds she hadn’t tended. All those had remained behind on Cauteria. All she had brought with her was the cormorant feather, which she’d planted, as well as she could, in a crack between two planks.

“Baru,” she whispered. Her breath ruffled the feather’s gray barbules but did not tip or bend the shaft. That was Baru, wasn’t it? Ruffled by Aminata’s concern, but not moved. “Please tell me. How did you let this happen? I know I don’t understand everything you do. But this. Just explain it to me. Why?”