The bold merchant they’d mentioned could be no one but Abdumasi Abd. Abdumasi Abd who Baru had destroyed, or, worse, lured into the navy’s hands.

She might, by now, have destroyed her parents, too.

When she looked down at herself she found her right hand clasping her left wrist, as if to pin the hand in place.

*   *   *

“NO,” Apparitor said, laughing, “you can’t see Tain Hu’s will.”

“It’s a bet, Svir, come on”—Baru slapped the boards of his cubby’s floor—“let me see if if I win the round!”

“Why are you so interested, anyway? Are you sentimental now? Is that your new game?”

“Xate Yawa stole a palimpsest I need,” Baru said, pausing to belch. She had secured a bottle of Grand Purifier with an early victory, and she did not intend to forfeit it till it was empty. “I thought if I had Tain Hu’s will I could trade it for the palimpsest.”

“You think she cares about Tain Hu’s will?” Apparitor finally selected a card to play. The Minister of Time. He paid his fee in beans and bought himself an extra turn, making Iraji groan and declare said Minister “fundamentally unsound bullshit.”

“I’ll stake…” Baru thought about her assets. She couldn’t think of anything solid. “I’ll finish the bottle if I lose, you show me the will if I win.”

“At the rate you’re going,” Apparitor said, “you’ll have no stakes left when I win.”

“I fold,” Iraji said, wiping his tableau of faces and beans. “I hear too much bickering. Would anyone like a brine shot? It soothes the constitution.”

He poured a shot of hard whiskey and a shot of diluted canning brine, a foul and compelling combination if you took both shots together: like swilling out your guts. Baru had two before she switched back to The Grand Purifer. Apparitor went on to win, growing more loose-tongued with each drink but not less devastatingly capable, his patter flowing between Aphalone and Stakhi as he took the pot. They played not for money but for chits with the names of nations and great leaders carved upon them. Baru wanted to get Shiqu Si or Iro Mave, but didn’t manage.

He won again. He kissed the card for the Empire Admiral and fell back, belching, against his hammock. “So,” he said, thickly. “We never finished our conversation.”

“Which one?” It felt as if they’d never finished any.

“How would one destroy the Imperial Republic?”

Baru giggled, and covered her mouth, quite appalled at herself. “Bankruptcy, I think. The Empire could be rendered insolvent. By disruption of the trade.”

“Spoken like an accountant.”

“I am discovered,” Baru said, holding up her hands in surrender.