It was like Iriad. Pirate captains haggled over sealed map-cases, privateer mates traded letters of take with Oriati attachés, stilt dancers advertised ratting dogs and birding cats for sale, teamsters hauled bundles of planks to the south quays, taciturn cooks called to customers with bursts of spicy hot-stone steam, acrobats mimed brutal war and vigorous sex on bamboo frameworks, addicts staggered from pole to pole in mumbling trance, rhetorics shouted their retorts from the posts of floating galleria, geometry clubs of old Kyprananoki and Oriati gathered to work on tile puzzles on the ground between big pots of dried beans and raisins and candied corn, pulque-makers and ash-paper sellers moved product in narrow stalls where coins clicked and flipped like game pieces, money everywhere, money and sun-touched flesh, the smell of spices hammered into fresh sizzling fish and the delectable sound of crab legs torn by teeth. Somewhere close by a handball game had drown a raucous crowd.

But there was something wrong. The music—the music was wrong. Baru knew that melody the band played, why, it was—“In Praise of Human Dignity.” An Incrastic hymn.

“Good grief,” Tau said. “They think we’re a Falcresti delegation!”

“So they do. I’ll take the lead, then. We’re on a goodwill tour, showing how much we’re not at war.”

“Excellent.”

The barber-general waited with his band and retinue, surgeons in white caftans with bandoliers of scalpels, generals with peace-knotted rapiers on their belts and soft orange shoulder-length gloves. The men and some of the women went sensibly bare-chested in the late spring heat, the men shaved sleek, the more heavily built women haltered in nets or cotton strophia. A few of them, men and women and a scattering of lamen, favored khanga; the tradition upon Kyprananoke being that lamen should dress to hide their bodies.

Each and every one of them wore a white ceramic mask.

“Kyprists, of course,” Shao murmured to Baru. “They idolize our image.”

“Do we still fund the Kyprists covertly? No? Then why do they pay us service?”

“How would you hold this place together? Islands full of gava, tunks, jellyfish eaters, three cultures older than the king’s mummy? If they could see each other’s faces they’d set right back to cannibalism.”

“That’s nonsense,” Baru insisted, “they have common economic interests, they could work together to benefit from the trade—”

Shao Lune laughed. “You think like a schoolgirl.”

“Fuck you.”

“Tonight, if you’re interested,” Lune murmured, which made Baru shiver in disgust and desire.