WE WILL HONOR YOUR SURRENDER.

“Ah,” Yawa clucked. “The amnesty. Very predictable.”

“Keep your stations!” Captain Branne roared.

“Don’t shout,” Yawa murmured. “Show the crew you trust them.”

“Captain Branne,” Tau-indi said. “I presume you have a signal lantern aboard?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Send my compliments to Province Admiral Ormsment at once. Ask after her health, commend her again on the olive oil she sold me in Treatymont, and assure her that I will offer her asylum in the Oriati Mbo.”

“You’ll what?” Svir roared, wheeling on the Prince. “The fuck you’ll give her asylum! That woman betrayed her oaths and killed my people!”

“And you killed my neighbor Abd’s people,” Tau said, “you lured him into war and burned his friends, and I do not know where he has gone. But here I am, saving your life with my flags, just as you saved mine. Listen to me. You must give Ormsment a way out, or she will fight like a wolverine.”

“They’re navy.” It was Iraji, coming up to stand by Apparitor. “They’ll never go live in the Mbo. They exist to burn Oriati people.”

“I have to believe otherwise,” Tau said.

Sulane passed Helbride barely two lengths away, turning hard. No rockets ignited. No torpedoes fired. She executed a full turn and came back on Helbride’s stern, pacing the clipper.

Suddenly she fired—

—Baru’s heart nearly burst in terror—

—but the salvo of white hornets blew up harmlessly all around Helbride’s masts. They were only signal fireworks. Cries from aloft as the topgallant crews called out to each other, and the indignant shriek of the ship’s beggar gull.

“It worked,” Baru breathed. Her plan, Iraji’s plan, she must be careful to remember to credit him, had worked. Cheetah’s flags kept Helbride safe. Ormsment would not make the navy responsible for an act of open aggression against a Prince’s ship.

Apparitor sighed hugely and hooked his hands in his belt. “Tell the crew they’re free to take turns at the sternrail mooning those bastards. Ormsment can’t touch us.”

Not until we have to leave the ship, Baru thought. Not until then.

*   *   *

TAU-INDI seized Baru’s right shoulder and hissed. “Who is that woman on their prow?”

Who indeed. “That’s Tain Shir.”

“Tain Shir?” The Prince shuddered. Baru felt it in their fingertips. “Oh no.”

“You know her, too?”

“I know Cairdine Farrier, who created her. She was his … argument.” Tau-indi Bosoka came out of Baru’s right-hand darkness and stood before her, huddled like a wet finch, hands cupped before their face, elbows tight together. Baru realized they were resisting the urge to reach out: to Baru, or the Enact-Colonel, someone, anyone. “He used her to provoke war in places where he wished to dictate the terms of peace. And then she … there was an expedition sent into the jungle. An expedition intended to uncover the old sciences. She did not return.”