Shao Lune wore her freshly cleaned and starched uniform, without any pins or insignia. She’d skewered her hair into an intricate braid with two steel picks. Beneath the uniform she’d slipped an item of mountaineering gear, a thick net bodystocking designed to trap insulating air between one’s skin and overclothes. Baru would never have thought it could be used as erotica, and about that she was very wrong. The net drew faint lines on Shao’s wrists: she had run a slender silver chain across her open collar, and the net sectored her skin beneath.

The suggestion of control and submission did not escape Baru. Nor did the temptation to imagine the contours of the net.

Shao winked. Baru was so distracted that she didn’t anticipate the enact-colonel’s warning. “They’re coming ashore. Now.”

“Oh principles,” Tau breathed. “She’s coming now?”

“How many?” Baru snapped, for they must mean Ormsment.

“All the marines.” Shao had climbed up the houseboat’s mast to get a better view. Baru could tell by the pace of her chest. “Ormsment is with them. I think they’re trying to reach the Kyprists before Baru does.”

“And Tain Shir?”

Shao spat on the very fine rug. “I didn’t see the bitch.”

“What about Ascentatic?” The other navy ship had exchanged coded rocket volleys with Sulane, but there was still no hint as to her purpose.

“She’s sent no one we saw.” Osa buckled on her knives. “Prince Bosoka, I know you’ll refuse, but I must advise—”

“We’re not skipping the reception,” Baru and Tau said, in more or less the same words, except that Tau added an apology. “We need to reach that embassy. All my resources on Kyprananoke depend on it.”

Osa began to rope up her fists. “So be it, then.”

“You do know,” Shao Lune whispered to Baru, “that Ormsment is—”

“Coming in to attend the reception. Of course.”

“Of course, she says, of course she’s attending a diplomatic reception, how sensible, how obvious.”

“It is obvious. The Kyprists would invite the commander of any Falcresti warships anchored offshore.”

“You know what they’re afraid of, don’t you?”

“Death, I’d think.” The Kyprists feared that Sulane and Ascentatic had come to burn the islands and cauterize the plague. “They want to assure Ormsment they have the plague under control.”

Shao smirked. “What if Ormsment tells the Kyprists you’re a renegade? What if she demands your head?”

“Why, then my naval attaché will have to tell them who’s really gone renegade, won’t she?”

“What if I don’t? What if I let Ormsment take us?”

“Then we’ll die together in our formalwear.”

Shao studied Baru with narrow-eyed amusement. “And if I’m—”

“Ormsment’s deep-cover agent, waiting for the perfect moment to betray me?”

“Exactly.”