“I don’t want to hurt your parents.” Ormsment stepped up into the ring of empty space between them and the crowd subsided around her. “I think people need to carry their own weight. You and I, we can’t cast our sins down on our parents and our crews. So I’d rather we settle this ourselves.”

The crowd gasped and murmured. Tau-indi stiffened with a sudden thought. But Baru’s eyes were all for Ormsment, who touched her saber. “I challenge you, Agonist. Here and now, on neutral ground.”

“A duel?” Shao Lune said, with a perverse excitement.

Ormsment nodded but her eyes were all for Baru, who was thinking of her own saber, and how afraid she was to draw it. “To the death. With diplomatic witnesses to attest to Parliament that I acted on my own. No one else dies for us. No great wars begin. We settle this like women.”

Baru would die if she went into the ring with Ormsment, Ormsment who had been in real battle. She would be run through. The fear of it made her hands tremble and her spine hurt and the stubs of her missing fingers ache. Run, Baru, her bowels urged her, run, run! But she stood there expressionless and trapped. She couldn’t duel—there were political reasons, too, of course, very important political reasons—for if Baru signaled any care for her parents here, then the Throne would know that she could be controlled through Salm and Solit. Then they would be snapped up and enslaved.

But what if she turned her back on Ormsment? What if she said, so be it, send your ship to take my parents, give my parents to your nightmare Tain Shir?

They might be maimed. They might be keelhauled to death and their severed limbs would sink but their bloated stub torsos would drift on pockets of corpse-gas. And if they died Baru would never know if she had done them proud. She would never have a chance to tell Pinion she was forever her mother’s faithful daughter. She would never tell Solit she was still the greatest thing he had ever made.

But maybe that was how it had to be.

Wasn’t that how her story went? Wasn’t she supposed to sacrifice everything to see her work complete? Every time she’d met an obstacle in Aurdwynn, she’d been able to sacrifice someone to defeat it. Muire Lo and Nayauru, the dukes and duchesses, Xate Olake, Tain Hu—yes, yes, she couldn’t fight, if she died in a duel here she would fail Tain Hu—

Baru, they’re your parents.

They never volunteered as I did.

You must be brave for them!