“I’m afraid I’ve destroyed the world,” he said, in utter earnest. “I’m afraid I’ve doomed us all to war.”

Baru’s mind flickered along lines of logic. He’d been born in Oriati Mbo, and he’d fled, but still he believed in their ethos: he had reached out to Baru as a human being, to connect them: he had betrayed Baru in service of his master, but on a ship now full of Oriati, a ship where he felt himself reconnected to the great web of the Mbo.…

Did he feel he’d passed some principle of betrayal into the whole Mbo?

“Iraji,” she said, slapping him on the back, “I think the Mbo can digest you and I.”

“Not I,” he said, and teetered, his eyes rolling up in his head, his chest spasming, “oh no, oh principles, ayamma, ayamma, save me—I have to tell her—let me tell her!”

And Baru grasped the patterns. She knew the boy’s doom.

Over dinner at the Elided Keep, Iraji had listened at the door as they spoke of the Cancrioth, and he’d fainted.

On a boat off Moem, Baru had said, old Duchess Unuxekome can put us on the trail to the Cancrioth. And Iraji had fainted.

On sinking Cheetah, Iraji had asked Tau-indi, what powers frighten you so? And Tau-indi had said, the same powers that attacked my ship, powers they would not name.

And Iraji had fainted.

“You’re one of them,” Baru whispered. “Aren’t you.”

He clutched at her and groaned in fear. She went on anyway. “That’s why you ran away to Falcrest as a child. That’s why you’ve been conditioned to go into syncope when we speak of them. You’re trying to hide your own identity even from yourself.…”

Iraji slumped against her.

No wonder Apparitor had remained on Helbride at Moem. No wonder he hadn’t seemed very enthusiastic about hunting the Cancrioth. No wonder at all that Baru had detected a flash of fear in his eyes when she refused to give up the mission.

He already had evidence of the Cancrioth in his hands, and he loved that proof, and he wanted to protect him.

Baru held Iraji’s head in her lap and checked his breathing. Slow, serpentine terror licked the edges of her eyeballs. She knew a way to use the boy as a lure. Iraji’s secret could lead her to the Cancrioth, and, perhaps, to final victory over Falcrest.…

But that would consume the boy. As giving Apparitor to the Necessary King would consume him.

She checked her bandages and the silk stitches in her cheek. She seemed to be holding together.

Then she scooped up Iraji and carried him to the maindeck, where Tau-indi was gathering their party to go ashore.

“Iraji’s coming with us,” Baru said. “He needs trim to heal him.”

Tau-indi knew exactly what she was about. She could see it in their eyes; she could see they had known, since Cheetah, that Iraji had a secret, that he had seen the Cancrioth and knew its name. But they did not know, Baru thought, that Iraji was one of them.