Baru’s guts revolted: fear for Aminata, fear of Aminata, too much bad wine, too many bad dreams. She gagged and spat into the bow wake.

“You all right?”

“You tell me. You’re the one who poisoned me!”

“I poisoned you because Yawa said that might give us a way to threaten you. And if we have something to threaten you, we can start to trust you: which is the only way we’re going to survive this place.”

“We’ve survived plenty,” Baru said, though she knew it was sullen.

“Not like Kyprananoke. The Oriati Termite spymasters are here in great force, looking to flip the government to their interests. The archipelago is a chasm full of of intrigue and corruption. And now something far worse has come to play in the shallows. Look! Look at what’s waiting for us!”

Baru saw why all the ships at Kyprananoke had put in to the east.

The Kyprananoki built their homes on storm stilts, or as freestanding flotables like very dowdy ships, tangled together by a web of laundrylines and moorings and buoy bridges. In the east the islands roared with shipping—ketches, clippers, dromons, junks, barques, canoes, brigs, brigantines, and outriggers.

But in the west a great stillness. No one moved in the waters or the boardwalks. Nothing moved. Except for the dirty red-and-yellow flags that flew like pus-stained rags from every line and rooftop.

“No,” Baru breathed. “It can’t be.”

“If I remember my Oriati flags correctly…” Apparitor inhaled. “It must be.”

“The Kettling’s not real,” Baru insisted. “This is an Oriati trick.” Diseases killed people by fever, by pus, by worm and buboe and diarrhea. But they did not melt people into dumplings full of green-black blood. Certainly there had never been a Summer of Black Emmenia, when all the pregnant women of Mzilimake Mbo lost their babies and, mostly, their lives.…

“If it were anywhere,” Apparitor murmured, “wouldn’t it be here?”

That made a certain awful sense. The Masquerade had ruled Kyprananoke for a little while, and then abandoned it. What if the archipelago was secretly a Masquerade honeypot now? A cultivated preserve? Smash the roaches’ nest, and you’ll only scatter them. Better to leave the pirates one perfect harbor. Better to leave the smugglers one port—where all the Ashen Sea’s sicknesses could ride the dirty ships and mingle.…

“I suppose,” Baru said, quietly, “that this means no one’s going ashore.”

“Not until we’ve observed the spread of the plague, at least.”

“Very wise.”

But Baru was already planning how to get onto Kyprananoke alone, and get to Unuxekome Ra, and then to the Cancrioth: how to get the prize all alone.

*   *   *

“DO you think I’m your friend?” Shao Lune lifted her chin in disdain. “Is that what why you keep coming down here?”