“But I can’t be the one to help you right now. I am fighting a war of letters, trying to convince the Princes of the Mbo to understand the true danger of Falcrest, and I’m losing. You are all alone. Hush, hush, don’t cry, we all have to figure out how to be alone before we can be good for anything else. No one can help you? Then figure out what you have, what you have that nobody else has, and pick it up, and use it.”

Tau-indi couldn’t keep the bitterness out of their voice. It felt like they had bitter anger in their blood, in their loins, changing their body and the shape of their thoughts. “What is that thing I have, Mother? The thing that will make me useful to others? Kindalana is smarter than me, and Abdumasi more practical.”

“You want me to tell you?”

“No,” Tau-indi said, thinking. “No, I have an idea.”

*   *   *

THEY called the household together and asked to be told everything that anyone knew about their hostages from Falcrest, Cosgrad Torrinde and Cairdine Farrier.

Cosgrad Torrinde lived in a room in the sentry house, where he kept curious habits. He ate grapefruit constantly and started like a child at the sight of insects. He was terrified of compost and nudity. He was very beautiful, everyone agreed, although because his skin was paler than even a Segu man, the slim contrast between his eyes and his skin made him seem ill. He dwelled on ancient medical texts and asked after griots who had witnessed works of surgery. Many attested (with glee) that he had a comically, foolishly huge cock, which he naturally hid out of shame.

As for Cairdine Farrier, they had never met a man so eager to be elsewhere. Not that he hated his guesthouse (he stayed with Padrigan and Kindalana), far from it; rather he was constantly eager to be at the next place, to meet the new people, to think the new thought. When he wasn’t skittering around Lake Jaro on his kayak, which he had built himself, using techniques “taught to him by the Bastè Ana,” he was holding court among the housekeepers or working in the fields, where he tugged weeds energetically and listened in fascination to the most ordinary things.

Cosgrad was, it was felt, the cleverer and quicker of the two, but Farrier was more likable, and he had the art of laughing at Cosgrad, which made Cosgrad sputter and clench his fists.

Gossip suggested that the two remained implacably at odds.

Tau-indi decided to seek their special purpose in the hostages. If they could be made happy, that happiness would return to Tau.