Please see to the well-being of my lord even when she will not. Please ensure that she is not alone even when she convinces you that she needs no one (she is lying). Please do not abandon her even when she makes herself wholly intolerable.

She will not betray you. When I am done with her she will have had her fill of betrayal for one life. Thus I will protect you.

I name you,

By my station as Duchess Vultjag,

A knight of Baru Fisher, Queen of Aurdwynn (by acclamation),

And a ranger of the Duchy Vultjag.

And I remain,

My lady’s sworn Field-General,

Tain Hu.

Baru, Aminata wondered, Baru, what are you doing? What’s happening here? What became of this woman who thought she was your friend?

A Story About Ash 4

A STORY ABOUT ASH 4

FEDERATION YEAR 912:
23 YEARS EARLIER

THE summer of 912 grew hot.

The termites built their mounds and the crows fished for the termites with sticks.

The griots came up Prince Hill to tell the war.

Cosgrad Torrinde recovered from his frog-licking and developed diarrhea. He was appalled and embarrassed that everyone had to work to filter enough water for him. He would boil his own drinking water on a little pot-fire even after they filtered it, and the housekeeps murmured that this ingratitude and mistrust was making him sick. His room filled up with smoke and steam and damp, which caused mold, and he scrubbed miserably in between bouts of shit. Cairdine Farrier came and visited him now and then, and they muttered together lowly, but inevitably the mutters would rise to shouts and Farrier would leave and Torrinde would crouch miserably over his pot.

Tau-indi couldn’t figure out how to go talk to Kindalana and Abdumasi and repair their friendship.

The griots began to soften their proud words. Kindalana noticed the change in the epithets and pointed it out to Tau, as she would point out anything she thought was hidden from others. “The unsurpassed cunning of Eyotana Six-Souls” became merely “the clever words of Eyotana Six-Souls.” House Mbunu’s captains slipped from “invincible” to “formidable.” The skittish, fragile-looking Falcrest frigates were promoted, in metaphor, from water-bugs to makos and barracudas.

Tau didn’t need Kinda to explain that this was a bad, bad sign. To the extent that the Mbo had a military, it was made of the brave and the venturesome, and its goal was to intimidate and dazzle so the enemy could be embraced and absorbed. When the heroes lost their shine, they lost that war, too.

Padrigan and Tahr brought their children together to explain that it was time for their Instrumentality, a course of lessons that would make them ready to go anywhere in Oriati Mbo. They would be prepared to visit the archipelagos of north Segu and the very southern outposts of Zawam Asu, where indigenous tribes watched the Mbo’s explorers guardedly, and the Mbo’s explorers tried very carefully not to disturb them.