Life stirred. Day birds screamed the dawn to night birds as they passed in their thousand-strong flocks and murmurations. Shallow-water fish with eyes like coins peered from their dens at the deepwater squid rising to eat the day. The fisherfolk of the Cauteria Catch Concern raised anchor for a double shift on a boom market. And the wind out of the northwest filled their sails before it crossed the slanted black Normarch-style roofs of Cautery Plat, on up the slope to Annalila Point, across the walls of looming Annalila Fortress, through the racked hwachas and batteries of anti-ship rockets, down through banners and mill-sails that creaked as they turned the engines below, into a ward-house window: to rouse the lieutenant commander from her whore-satisfied sleep.

Aminata groaned and pressed her fists against her forehead.

Awake. Fuck. She was awake again. Hey there, navy girl, here’s waking up to you.

A navy officer must always review her situation and her resources. Here she was, Aminata isiSegu, Lieutenant Commander in the Navy of the Imperial Republic of Falcrest, skimmed out of an Oriati orphanage by the navy’s talent scouts. First tour of duty on federated Taranoke, second tour on the frigate Lapetiare.

She’d never had a third tour. She was marooned.

Beneath her linens, marinated in sweat, Aminata thought, damn it, I’m still a torturer. No warship posts for her. No marks on her service jacket. No coin toward her great dream to earn command of a tall ship.

When they’d come to her, she’d been so proud to have their attention. The old-leather women of the Admiralty, Rear Admiral Maroyad and her matron Ahanna Croftare, with a secret offer. Lieutenant, a war’s coming. We need Oriati interrogators who know Oriati fears.

Can you learn how to break your own, Lieutenant Aminata?

How could she refuse two admirals? Even if they asked her to trade the clean sea wind for the soft and sinister arts of Incrastic truth enhancement?

How could she refuse?

Science said that Oriati people were creatures of community. Mbo meant a thing that is whole because it’s connected. People only mattered in the context of other people: there was no room for individual genius, or solitary peace, or defiance, and that was why Aminata was glad she’d been rescued.

Yet she missed her community, her people. Lapetiare was gone, gone like Taranoke with its easy boys and long warm nights and buttered lobster. They’d even cut her off from Baru: or, maybe, Baru had done that herself. Damn you, Baru, fucking write back, I don’t care if you died in that rebellion, at least have the courtesy to haunt some postmaster and send me a letter.

At least Aminata had her whores.

“Hey.” She poked him in the ribs. “Wake up. I’ve got to go do navy shit.”