“Word from the Llosydanes had it the war was already underway.”

“The Llosydanes are a nervous place.” Tau laughed easily. “Barbitu and I are on a mission of joint charity, to help ease tensions after the recent unpleasantness.”

“Perhaps,” Barber-General Love said, with a flat smile, “if the Prince-Ambassador is interested in easing tensions, they could discuss the Canaat with the Oriati embassy.”

“I would love to,” Tau said, sincerely. “What should I say?”

The aide-de-camp stepped in smoothly, to say what the Barber-General, politically, should not. “The Canaat rebels have Oriati munitions and Oriati money. Strange ships come and go in the west. Are you funding them?”

Tau’s golden throat kinked with tension. They looked quickly at Baru, signaling confusion. “I’ll look into it at once, I promise. I don’t want war here, Governor. No embassy of the Mbo’s should ever want war.”

“The sudden bankruptcy of the rebels would certainly restore my faith in the Mbo’s goodwill.” The Barber-General signaled to his aide-de-camp, who snapped her fingers at a portly majordomo overseeing the baggage.

“Ah—that reminds me.” Baru dropped her voice, as much to hide her own nerves as to protect her confidence. “I’m tracking an exile from Aurdwynn. One Unuxekome Ra. Do you know her?”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s a Maia woman, former aristocrat, exiled during the insurrection in 922—”

“I know that.” Governor Love wore the marks and medals of an Incrastic citizen on a thin collar, all rendered, in capable miniature, with fine paint and scrimshawed pearl. They stared at Baru as if in echo of his dismay. “Of course I know of her. How could I not know the leader of our enemy? The war-leader of the Canaat revolt?”

*   *   *

“WHERE am I?” Iraji leapt upright in the bed. “Baru, what’s happened?”

She shushed him with a hand on his hot cheek. “We’re on a houseboat. Moored off Loveport, one of the kypra islands. Tau is here.”

“Helbride—Svir—are they all right?”

“Everyone’s fine.” Baru had tried to lay out an outfit he might like, and draw a warm bath from the solar tank. She was really quite nervous whether he’d like that outfit. “I snuck you off Helbride.”

She watched him uncurl his hands and relax his calves. “Why,” he said, when he was firmly in control of himself. “Why did you take me?”

“I knew Svir wouldn’t let you go.”

“I didn’t ask to go.” He threw off the thin cotton sheets and rose magnificently. Baru had no sexual response to him but his poise and grace were monumentally striking. She’d undressed him to sleep off his faint, in private, out of respect for whatever modesty he had, which was not apparently very much.

“I need your help,” Baru said. That was as specific as she dared be. “About … the matter you confessed to me.”