Cosgrad Torrinde was bound to the mbo as a hostage, a prisoner volunteered by Falcrest to maintain tenuous diplomacy. Thus trim bound Cosgrad to the very war itself. The large reflected the small.

Tau-indi Bosoka had made Cosgrad a guest of their house, and used Cosgrad in their battle against Kindalana and Abdumasi, a foolish selfish battle.

Without realizing it, Tau-indi had connected the war between Falcrest and Oriati Mbo to their own childish war against their friends.

The logic of trim was irrefutable.

The war could not end until Tau-indi Bosoka made peace.

*   *   *

THEY walked to Kindalana’s house. The bees were gone, as was Cairdine Farrier, who’d gone over to Jaro to study the death rites. The raspberry bushes had withered. Tau used the mallet to ring the door, and smiled at the door sentry, and walked up to Kindalana’s room, dry-throated, wishing that they could do something with their hands.

“Yes?” she said. She’d been dyeing cloth. Her arms were wet to the elbow. Sweat and motion had pressed her ratty old work shift close against her, but Tau-indi noticed that with distant disinterest compared to the fright and buzz of meeting her eyes. She swallowed very slowly, as if to hide the motion from them: as if to pretend that she did not need to inhale or swallow, she never needed to move anything into herself, only out.

“Do you still want to go together?” Tau-indi asked.

She’d ask a clarifying question now. She’d make Tau-indi say something she already understood, so that she could draw them out.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Do you still want to work together to serve the mbo, as Prince companions, the way we used to talk about?”

“Oh.” Kindalana wrung the wet from her hands in short snaps of the wrist. “Your mother’s going to be here soon. I don’t know if it’s a good time to talk.”

“Do you want help with the dye?”

She looked at Tau-indi with her jaw set and her hands loose at her sides, turning, turning again, as if she could stir up the air between them and knead it out flat and simple.

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

Tau grinned and shrugged. “Me neither.”

“Okay. Come help.”

Someone came into the house later to visit Padrigan, and the housekeeps brought the two filtered mint water. Tau-indi and Kindalana both knew who it was, so they talked to each other stiffly and loudly, to warn their parents not to have sex.

When they were done, Kindalana said, “I’m trying to seduce Farrier.”

“What?” Tau squawked. “Why?”

“Because you’re right,” Kindalana said, “there’s power between people, and I don’t think Falcrest understands that power. And Farrier’s afraid of his attraction to younger women, to foreign women, and whatever he’s afraid of, I need to pursue. Because that’s how I’m going to beat them.”