“I’ve lived with them. Wheat right is very real. The hara-vijay are responsible for tending the plants of the Butterveldt. They can commandeer raiding parties to kill foreign farmers who disrupt the growth, or call war on tribes who threaten the commons.”

“You lived with the Invijay?” Baru blinked at the little Prince in surprise. “Out on horseback? Why?”

“We sent a mission to try to understand why the Invijay had turned against us.”

“Why?”

“Tain Shir,” Tau said.

“Oh.”

“Quite. Are you ready? You look very nice.”

For the reception Baru had selected a shimmering green silk sherwani and matching gloves, over a blue undercoat and loose blue trousers. Over her polestar mask she had fixed a green-glazed cover from her wardrobe, with a jade inset at the forehead. Her boots were practical, steel-tipped. Tau wore a hip-hugging green khanga and full dermoregalia, nostrils chained to ears, throat scaled in silver over the bright green uranium-stars of Lonjaro Mbo. They were beautiful.

“I think I am,” Baru admitted, having run out of things to fuss over.

“You think you’re very nice?”

“No,” she laughed, “I think I’m ready. But you look beautiful, Tau.”

“Thank you!”

She settled her steel folio on her hip. She was also carrying the picture Iraji had made her, and the words that burned in her mind. But she would not admit those to Tau. “You’ll let me know when you’ve contacted the shadow ambassador?”

Tau grinned at her. “I’ll let you know after we’ve exchanged our signals. So you don’t spy them.”

The Oriati kept a proper ambassador for the business of trust, and a shadow ambassador for the work of espionage. The shadow ambassador would discreetly escort Tau and Baru to a private place, where they would share what they knew of the Kyprists, the Canaat, and the plague. Baru had needled Tau about this distinction—wasn’t Tau both ambassador and spymaster?—and Tau had replied, quite earnestly, that their espionage work was always conducted in the name of peace, and therefore did no harm to their trim.

“Baru,” Tau said, taking her hand. The pleasant citric tang of their soap. “Why did you really bring the boy? Beyond your charming efforts to believe in trim?”

“Eh?” Baru pretended to be distracted by the silver scales on Tau’s long arched throat. “Oh. He’s a hostage. So Apparitor doesn’t trouble me while I work.”

“While we look for this woman who might have seen Abdumasi Abd.”

“Quite.” Not precisely a lie. “We’ll go to Unuxekome Ra and ask her when she last saw him. Where he was going. Where he kept his records, and his contacts. Whatever we can learn.”