Taint. The stain of Oriati degeneracy, bred into them by a thousand years of decadent, self-contented peace and perversion. How else, the Incrastic scientists asked, could the Oriati have failed to discover infectious hygiene or sanitary inheritance? Failed to better themselves?

“We’ll beat it, Midshipman,” she promised him. “Remember your qualms. You carry the weight of your ancestors—”

“—but I lift it, and that makes me strong, mam.”

Below them they heard Faroni ask, gently, “He’s made you bleed! What made him do this? Was there some particular question?”

“He wanted to know who funded me,” Abdumasi Abd groaned. “He wanted me to name the Fairer Hand…”

“Who?”

“The Fairer Hand.” Abd closed his eyes. “Her parents told me she could be trusted. They were wrong. I was wrong to trust Baru Cormorant.”

Aminata straightened up slowly.

“Well,” she managed, through her tumbling distress: Baru, what have you gotten yourself into? “That’s interesting.”

*   *   *

REAR Admiral Maroyad puffed on a cold-mint cigarette, tapped the ash onto a clamshell, and sighed.

People called her the ice-fisher, one who could harpoon her prey through shadow and turbulence. Aminata was terrified of her. Her ships guarded a full quarter of the trade circle around the Ashen Sea, from noon to three o’clock. And with all that salt and silver under her command, she could still make Aminata feel like she was the only fish on the admiral’s harpoon.

Maroyad stabbed her embered cigarette at Aminata. “Do you want to start a war?”

“If I fail in my duty, mam?”

“No, Lieutenant Commander. If you succeed.”

“I don’t understand,” Aminata said, desperately. “How so?”

Maroyad was Bastè Ana, one of the fish-eating people who lived in Falcrest’s icy Normarch. Recently (Aminata followed the race laws closely) the Metademe had discovered that the Ana were simply a Falcresti subrace, as evidenced by their phenotypes and expert ice constructions. Aminata had read that women once ruled all Bastè Ana households, and that men actually had to sneak into other womens’ homes to court the daughters—but surely that was tosh. Even in Segu, the closest the world had to a matriarchy, men and women married openly. Even if the women then abandoned their poor husbands and tiny daughters to hare off in search of fortune.

“Tell me again what Abd said,” the rear admiral ordered. “Tell it plainly.”

Through the good glass behind her the high prow of Annalila Point stabbed north. Fishing feluccas and junks tacked across silver-tipped afternoon water below; a mail clipper raced in ahead of the storm. Aminata thought that if the meeting went very badly she might be able to jump through the window and hurl herself off the point.

“Well, mam”—don’t say well, it signals weakness of character—“that is to say, mam”—don’t clarify yourself, say it right the first time, nuance and ambiguity are Oriati habits—“today I pivoted Abdumasi Abd from the resentimente to the attachment.”