Baru had screamed so much that she’d lost her voice. Every morning she had to change the dressing on her missing fingers, which made her howl like a ghost. She did it as soon as she woke. Do the most painful thing first: the pain is how you know it matters.

Iraji spoke for her. “She doesn’t want Munette hung. She forgives the cook for attacking her.”

From her huddle in the corner, Baru touched his ankle in gratitude. Apparitor glared from his hammock, where he fussed over a whittling. Yawa loomed in the curtained doorway like a raven. Their meetings had, Baru thought, become pitiable since the Llosydanes. Apparitor paced his decks cornered and desperate, trying to find a way to save himself from Itinerant and Hesychast and their pawns on his ship; Yawa spent her nights scribbling draft after draft of legal defense for her brother, if she was not down in the hold interrogating Shao Lune or tending to Execarne’s wounds; and Baru, well, she drank and tried not to remember the blood on Shir’s mask. Everyone was wretchedly hurt.

“Tell me again,” Apparitor said, to Yawa, “who you think could be the mole. The one who left a letter for Ormsment in the Llosydanes post.” Baru had relayed Tau-indi’s intelligence on this point.

“It had to be someone who knew we were going to Moem,” Yawa said. “We weren’t tailed there. Iscend would have noticed, and Execarne is no fool himself.”

The crossbow bolt had come out of Execarne cleanly but the poison on that bolt had lingered. He insisted on mixing his own treatments, most of which left him uselessly intoxicated.

“I knew,” Baru said. “Both of you knew, and Iraji. Ulyu Xe, I suppose, could’ve dropped a letter.…”

Yawa shifted uncomfortably. She tried to pass it off as an itch but Apparitor had already pounced. “What is it?”

“When we were on Moem, I ordered a special interrogation instrument shipped ashore from Helbride. A mole might have tracked the boat’s course.”

“Wait. What kind of instrument?”

“It was a device I used to interrogate Dziransi.” Yawa touched the spine of a book on Apparitor’s shelf. The Lightning Men: Falcrest’s Expeditions Eastward. “I wanted to learn what he knew about the state of the Stakhi Mansions. If an invasion’s coming … it’s vital that Aurdwynn be warned.”

Apparitor relaxed very deliberately. No one but Baru would have detected his thrill of terror. At any moment Baru could say, Oh, by the way, Yawa, Apparitor here is the brother of the Stakhi King.…

“Well?” Baru demanded. “What did you learn?”

“Very little.” Yawa sighed. “And you saw fit to send the prisoners away. I suppose Dziransi’s sailing back to Aurdwynn by now, hm? What a waste.”