Baru would need to offer Shao something more than soap. Something Yawa couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her. Gods of fire, did her hand hurt. Gods of stone, it had grown so hard to think. She’d been clever once. Before she spent her days curled in her hammock, trying to dilute her pain with spirit.

“You smell like blood and drink,” Lune hissed. “You’re degenerating, aren’t you? Reverting to your primal state.”

Baru clinched the chains a little tighter. “Ormsment blew up three Oriati ships. She’s out of control. She could start a second Armada War.”

“Pirate hunting is the admiral’s duty.”

“They weren’t pirates. They flew Federal Oriati colors.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why?”

“The admiral wouldn’t burn a Federal-flagged Oriati ship.”

Baru seized on Shao Lune’s weakness: she couldn’t quite repress her navy training, her need to provide accurate information. “Ormsment wouldn’t attack an Oriati diplomatic ship?”

“How should I know? As a loyal officer, I can’t understand the mutinous mind.”

Baru braced one foot against the post and drew the chain tight. Shao groaned and pushed her fists against the planking, desperate to breathe.

“Would an Oriati diplomatic flag stop Ormsment?”

“Let me breathe.”

“Tell me what I want to know. Would Ormsment attack an Oriati diplomatic ship?”

“I’d tell you anything—to breathe.”

Baru gave her an inch. Shao gasped in relief, panted, her icy composure in disarray. The effect was intriguing. Baru suddenly missed Ulyu Xe very much.

“You shouldn’t do his work,” Shao said. “He’s a mannist. He comes from a mannist society.”

Baru blinked. “What?”

“You’re taking the red man’s side, Apparitor’s side, against the navy. He’s Stakhi, and they’re a patrilineal culture. He’s an instrument of the sexual dialectic.”

“Oh, Captain, I don’t think the sexual dialectic has much to do with this—”

“Of course it does!” she crowed. “You child. Listen: Parliament doesn’t like the navy’s difficult women, doesn’t like us asking for fair pensions and seizing their trade ships for leverage. So Parliament asked the Emperor to put a man in the Empire Admiralty. To do that, to put Lindon Satamine in that post, Apparitor had to sabotage Ahanna Croftare’s chances. She worked her whole life for that post. And she lost it to Parliament’s stupid fears. If Croftare can’t get a fair chance, why should any woman?”

Baru thought the poor staff captain should try life as a Taranoki woman if she wanted to know about unfair sexual dialectics. But she sat down on the opposite side of the post, Shao’s slack chain in her fists.

“All the more reason,” she panted, out of breath from all the torture, “to help me adjust Parliament.”

“What can you even do to them?”

“I have the Emperor’s own power.”