“Our mystery currency speculator. I found her name on a mess of papers in the Sydanemoot.”

Nullsin looked warmly upon her. “You took the time to look into the currency event?”

“Made the time, sir. Now, I don’t know much about money.” This to defuse, in advance, accusations that she had stepped beyond her expertise. “But when I went through records from the night of the panic, I found that someone by the name of Payo Mu made a very fast fortune in local ring shell. And she seems to have … invested it in a peculiar fashion.”

“Virtue,” the sailing-master groaned, “please just tell us.”

“She established a trust. A big pile of money locked away for one purpose. The trustees—those who get to distribute the money—seem to be a local harbormaster, a junior woman of the Jamascine clan, a few local bravos, and a female prostitute.”

General laughter. Aminata waited for them to finish. “The purpose of the trust is the support of the Llosydanes’ trade with the Stakhieczi Wintercrests.”

The laughter was now uproarious. The sailing-master had tears in his eyes. Even Aminata chuckled. It was a lot like a joke: What happens when two bravos, a fourth daughter, and a whore take up investment? Stakhieczi trade! The Stakhi did not trade, except the occasional disorganized sale of telescopes or metalwork for salt. And the idea of the Llosydanes sending trade parties not just to Aurdwynn but up the Inirein to the alpine north … wouldn’t that require dredging, and hired security, and better roads?

Still. Whoever Payo Mu was (and Aminata had her very firm suspicions), she had vision. If the Llosydanes actually managed to make contact, selling Stakhi glass and metal to the Ashen Sea would be a better way of life than date farming in rainy climes. Wouldn’t it?

The laughter died away. Nullsin stopped laughing first; when the captain stopped laughing you did not go on long yourself.

“I drew the dead boy,” Nullsin said. He produced a scrap of paper on which he’d sketched, in one-handed charcoal, the boy who’d burnt alive. A few efficient lines captured the pitiful stump of a head. The tormented arch of the back.

Aminata’s fists buzzed with the need to hurt the people responsible. “Savages,” she said, trying on the word, and then, with bitter anger and cold satisfaction, for at least she could say it accurately, “these fucking savages. The north is sick.”

“War runs in their blood.” Nullsin smoothed the picture with his hammerhead. “They get a little less sun at these latitudes, you know. A tiny poverty of light. You can’t blame them for obeying their nature.”

Implicit in that argument, of course, was the belief that an excess of sun caused peace, decadence, and philosophy. The Oriati afflictions. But in that one moment Aminata forgave her captain. She had enough weight to carry already.