There was the question of Tau-indi Bosoka’s motive. But they had a long record of contact with Cairdine Farrier. By blackmail or by greed they might be in on Baru’s scheme—stoke tensions, draw out the navy’s warmonger admirals the way she’d drawn out Aurdwynn’s rebel dukes, eradicate them.

King’s balls. It was so hard to find a way to deny it now.

*   *   *

AMINATA remembered Rear Admiral Maroyad’s orders. Find Baru Cormorant. Learn who she’s working with—every last name. Bring her back here if you can. And if you can’t, remove her from play.

She remembered what sweet well-hung Calcanish had said to her on the Llosydanes:

Beware Baru Cormorant.

But—a stupid silly girlish part of Aminata kept saying—but Baru’s your friend. Baru was the one who made it. The federati who did her duty, took her exams, and got her post.

And there was the one matter of the letter from Tain Hu, which stirred in Aminata all sorts of horribly naïve and anti-Incrastic sentimentality about honor and friendship and deathless trust.

The evidence against Baru was overwhelming. She was leading a false pro-war mutiny just as she’d led a false rebellion in Aurdwynn. Aminata just didn’t want it to be true.

She had Ascentatic’s double complement of eighty marines waiting on her signal to storm the embassy, arrest Baru and Ormsment, and fight their way back out. It would possibly be enough to start a war: locally, at minimum. Everywhere, in the worst case.

She could with one shot of a flare pistol bring the storm surge of history down on the Ashen Sea. That was her duty. It made her itch.

“Mam?” Faroni whispered. “Are you with us? Ormsment’s coming in now.”

“You ever look back,” Aminata muttered, “and ask yourself, fuck me, what did I do to deserve this?”

“Never, mam,” Faroni said, hurriedly: as if she was afraid Aminata would go off on a ramble about the weight of duty. “There’s Baru again, and Shao Lune, and the Prince-Ambassador … and now that’s Thomis Love with Ormsment. Quite a collection, isn’t it?”

Gerewho adjusted his sommelier’s nose, a grotesque elephantine trunk which was supposed to enhance one’s grape-sniffing, so he could speak clearly. “Lieutenant Commander?”

“You say mam, Ensign, you don’t pronounce my rank.”

“Yes, mam, it’s just—the mam over there made a sign to me.”

“The mam over there?”

“Yes, mam, the—er, that mam.” He pointed to the staff captain Shao Lune, who held her gloved hands clasped behind her back as she waited, two steps back from Baru, to be presented to Juris Ormsment.

“The staff captain,” Aminata said, “what sign did she make?”

“Well, mam,” Gerewho said, “if I’m not mistaken, it was the navy cant for I’m drowning: throw me a line.”

Aminata blinked. “And she made this sign at you?”