And the month after that, as Jaro griots raced to spread the word of the measles and the names of the dead (this made Cosgrad Torrinde panic, and beg Tau to stop the griots, lest they carry the disease—but Tau tried to explain that the mbo knew disease, that the griots moved too quickly for their exhalations to pool in one place), a mother-of-worms was found in the cisterns in the Segu capital Kutulbha.

Nothing revolted Tau more than the mother-of-worms, a great mass of mature and fecund parasites, gathered in a snarl in the water. Cistern inspectors found the colony creature squirming in white lashing loops, shedding and peeling off masses of egg to fill up the drinking water.

No mother-of-worms had ever been seen in Segu Mbo. They lived in southern Mzilimake and Devi-naga. But somehow one had made it to Segu, and worse yet, some merchant in Devi-naga, some cruel and selfish soul who Tau cursed with balled-up fists, had bought all the wormsbane and hoarded it. Wormsbane only grew in the jungle that bordered Devi-naga and Mzilimake, and it was the best treatment for worm infestation in a body: there was no easy way to get more.

Rumors circulated, of course, that the merchant was a Falcresti agent. Tau wondered, cynically, if Falcrest had moved the merchant, or if the only motive was greed. The mbo should prevent such atrocious avarice … but the mbo, of late, seemed thin, like a ragged net.

Ships refused to dock in Kutulbha. If you drank a worm egg it would grow inside you and crawl out through your foot over agonizing weeks, burning like a bee sting.

Wracked by famine in Lonjaro and a shipping stoppage in Segu, the mbo staggered.

And then all the money froze.

Tau-indi couldn’t understand it! Everyone still needed everything, the goods were out there, the money was available, supply and demand existed, nothing had changed! But all the griots complained that the merchants had tightened their fists and the families on the road were ungenerous. The hawala banks stopped conducting transfers across the mbo, preventing merchants from moving their fortunes.

The principles of anxiety and miserliness had snarled up the mbo.

Tau went over to Jaro and talked to the merchants in the bazaar, who had talked to their suppliers, who had talked to the shipping captains, all of whom were slashing their prices, down and down and down, trying to get anyone to buy: no one would, not even at ruinous discounts.

“Something must be wrong with our trim,” Tau-indi said, baffled. “Why would everyone just … stop spending money?”

“It’s not trim!” Kindalana shouted, throwing down the knotted string she’d been using to do figures. “You idiot, you idiot, don’t you learn anything from Cosgrad? It’s a deflationary collapse!”

“A—a what?”