At last she got sore, and as happened with overused men, he couldn’t come with ordinary sex. They took turns on their knees on the soot-scattered flagstones: she came on the thrill of his beautiful upturned face, on her guilty delight in his confusion and lust. Afterward, she could see he was ashamed. “Thank you,” she said, with a twinge of conscience, and pecked him on the cheek. The used cap she put in the rubbish pit, certainly built here for just such things. One did not name a restaurant Demimonde without certain arrangements. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, roughly.

“I liked that.”

“I’m glad,” he said, with a shaky but genuine smile. “It was … I’ve been tense, too. A calm body makes a calm mind. Thank you for your discretion.” Meaning her future quiet.

“One learns.” She checked that her trousers still had the key, and dressed. “Ah. Please don’t take this wrong. I know it can be tempting, sometimes, but I meant what I said. It’s better if you don’t try to reach me.”

“Aminata,” the man said, with soft concern. She turned to see him at the mouth of the alley, rather charmingly trying to adjust his worn manhood through the fabric of his trousers. But he sounded different—older, more confident, and more afraid.

“If you want to protect Baru, and your navy too,” he said, “I think you should bring her back to Aurdwynn. She can be sent into the Wintercrests, away from all this. There’s safety in exile. The only safety for her, I’m afraid; and for the rest of us who fear her.”

“Baru’s a savant,” Aminata protested, still proud, despite these revelations, of her terrible young friend. “The Republic needs her.”

“She isn’t safe.” Calcanish slipped his gloves back on. “She’ll never be safe until she’s away from her master, Farrier. She will do anything for him. Kill her lover. Kill you. Beware Baru Cormorant.”

*   *   *

HER suasioners Faroni and Gerewho waited at the docks with a marine squad. She’d ordered them to be ready in case she had to move tonight. “How’d it go, mam?” Gerewho asked.

“I got what I went for,” Aminata said, sticking her thumb through her clenched fist, “and the prisoners, too.”

“You rake,” Faroni said, enviously. “Is he affordable?”

“Lieutenant, he’s not even for sale.”

“You went honest?” Faroni blinked. “I can never—” She swallowed the truth, which was a complaint about the great difficulty Oriati women faced getting laid in Falcresti settings.

“Mam,” Gerewho said, cautiously, “are you sure he wasn’t a honeypot of sorts? I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to arrange, knowing a navy ship’s coming ashore.”

Aminata judged Calcanish far too genuinely fucked up to be a plant. “Let’s go find out. Marines, fall in, we’re headed to Jamascine.”