Mr. Calcanish’s eyes traced the seams of her gloves. Lingered on the glittering pins in her cuff. He swallowed nervously, sensually, and met her eyes. Aminata felt a thrill of power.

“Obviously the Emperor desires an Oriati civil war.”

“Why?”

“Once they’ve ground each other down, we can step in and save them.”

Aminata was faintly disappointed to hear such pacifism from him. Oriati Mbo might be huge and old, but so was a tar pit. One couldn’t dilute or purify a tar pit. It had to be burnt off.

She asked a clarifying question, which was faintly unwomanly, as women were supposed to intuit subtlety: but fuck it. “Who would possibly cause the Mbo to have a civil war?”

“Cairdine Farrier,” Calcanish said, with a wry sadness she didn’t understand. “And Kindalana.”

Aminata’s whiskey did not even jump. She was perfectly steady against surprise, even the surprise of two very familiar names. Kindalana, who Abdumasi Abd had seen in his tormentor’s face. And Cairdine Farrier, Baru’s patron. The man who had convinced Aminata that she needed to terrify Baru out of any affections she might hold … lest she come to a worse fate.

“Excuse me?” she said.

*   *   *

“CAIRDINE Farrier is a popular public figure,” Calcanish explained, “who wants an Oriati civil war. And the closer Falcrest and Oriati Mbo come to war, the stronger he becomes.”

“Why?”

“Because there are many Oriati who would prefer a peaceful surrender to open war. The closer that war, the more concessions Farrier can extract from them.”

Kindalana of Segu was one of those Oriati. She was the so-called Amity Prince, elected-to-birth Oriati royalty, and she came from the same Mbo nation as Aminata, if not the same tribe. For at least seven years she’d lived in Falcrest, working to achieve the outrageous and unlikely goal of an Article of Federation which would make Oriati Mbo part of the Imperial Republic, Falcrest’s hugest province.

“But more of them,” Aminata countered, “would surely prefer war? Being a proud and unbiddable race?”

“More of us, surely? You being Oriati?”

“I’m a federated citizen of Falcrest,” Aminata warned him. “I’m not part of the Mbo.”

“You shouldn’t be ashamed to call yourself Oriati!” Their food arrived: he spoke right over it. “I know Kindalana through business. You’re very much like her as she was in her youth. A great bit taller, of course, but she was brilliant, just brilliant. A credit to your race.”

Aminata stowed away her irritation. “What about Cairdine Farrier? I knew him, actually.”

“Did you?” Calcanish said, and somehow a certain heaviness of eyelid, a wrinkle of the lips, implied a kind of disgust.

“Not in that sense,” Aminata reassured him (damn the women of her nation, for giving the world the impression they were all cads). “He was very proper.” In fact Aminata could never shake the feeling that he was somehow afraid of her.