“It’s a shame.” Execarne sighed, and settled his cigar again. “She had a fascinatingly disfigured mind.”

*   *   *

BARU packed the lies that would protect her. Payo Mu from Aurdwynn, Ravi Sharksfin from Taranoke, Barbitu Plane from Falcrest. Her gorgeous mask and Aminata’s faithful boarding saber. And her incryptor, which she kept in a waterproof gut-pouch on her belt. When she left Helbride, she would need to carry everything she needed to see this through—whether it stopped with Unuxekome Ra or led all the way to the Cancrioth.

“Baru,” Iraji croaked.

Baru whirled right, checking her blindness, but in fact he’d just snuck up the ordinary way, on her left. She completed a near-full orbit to find him in the doorway of the arsenal, bracketed by boarding spears. He’d been crying again.

She shocked herself: without hiding the legends or making any effort to conceal her preparations to leave Helbride, she went to him. “Iraji. What is it?”

“I’m afraid,” he whispered.

Baru tore the canvas curtain shut behind him, and tacked it to the wall. “Is it Apparitor? Did he hurt you? Is it Yawa?”

“It’s you,” he said, and began to weep again, silently. “Oh, Baru…”

She offered him a snifter of vodka, which he refused, and a seat on her hammock, which he accepted. She did not leap to the idea that he was in love with her, or any such ridiculous tosh. She remembered her revelation, on Moem, about hash functions and cartouches. Iraji’s grief was a cartouche, a hash of many possible inner states into one hunched, red-eyed distress.

She asked questions that would allow her, tenderly, to update her notion of Iraji’s inner state. “You’re afraid you’ve wronged me.”

He nodded.

“Because you helped poison me.”

He nodded again, shakily, and put his arms around her. She held him wordlessly. She selected her most recent item of evidence on his behavior—she’d asked if he was all right, and he’d said, No, my ship is full of Oriati!

She put the two ideas next to each other, Iraji’s role in her poisoning and Iraji’s distress at all the other Oriati, and searched for connections.

A channel opened.

We need Oriati protection for an Oriati place, he’d said. We need a bond of trim.…

“You made a bond of trim with me,” she said. “And now we have so many other Oriati aboard. Do you believe … is trim real for you? Is this place an Oriati place, now?”

He took a big long breath, firmed himself up, and said, “You saved my life. And look how I repaid you. Poison in your bottle.”

“I don’t hate you,” Baru said, quite honestly, “for doing what you had to do.”

“But when we poisoned you … you were calling out to Tain Hu,” Iraji whispered. “You were so hurt.”