THERE was a better world, a world Aminata could not imagine how to find, where she would vault this balcony and land light-footed among the gaudy important people below. And she would call out, “Ormsment! I know you’re a traitor!”

Then she would step forward, between her friend Baru and the traitor Juris Ormsment, to offer herself as Baru’s fighter in this duel. She would take her old boarding saber (Baru had kept it! She had kept it close! Like the cormorant feather in Aminata’s shrine!) from Baru’s hands and raise it up to guard. And whether she lived or died, in Falcrest they would hear of what had happened on the embassy island Hara-Vijay, where Lieutenant Commander Aminata dueled the Traitor-Admiral Juris Ormsment in defense of the Emperor’s own. And they would all marvel that such gallantry could yet spring from such old soil.

Ake Sentiamut insisted that Ormsment was a mutineer.

But—but—

What if Juris was about to save the entire navy from purge? What if she’d discovered Baru’s scheme?

Aminata’s hearts and hands ached to go save Baru. She was so close. Just one leap and one shout and they would be together again, and all this uncertainty could be resolved.…

But what if throwing in with Baru set Aminata against Samne Maroyad, who trusted her? Against Captain Nullsin, who’d helped her dig out that burnt boy? And his orders were to obey the chain of command until they had proof positive Ormsment was a mutineer.

So Aminata kept her hand on her flare pistol and squeezed her jaw shut, and although she knew she would regret her inaction for the rest of her life, her duty pinned her in place.

*   *   *

“COME on!” Ormsment barked. “They said you were brave at Sieroch. Will you be brave for your parents now?”

As if by an outside will Baru was stepping forward. Her hand was on the hilt of her saber, Aminata’s boarding saber, and her mouth moved, her tongue curled, she spoke: and a soaring freedom took her heart. She could not bear the choice as Baru Cormorant. So she made the choice another woman would have made.

She said, without knowing the words until they left her mouth,

“I stand for Tain Hu.”

And she drew, and the saber came out with an eager rasp, the blue killing edge as long and lunar as the underwater moon she had hallucinated while she drowned. Enact-Colonel Osa nodded once, in satisfaction and respect. The crowd murmured, and children were drawn away, and Juris Ormsment drew her own saber with hydraulic grace: the rage that animated her pumping itself down her arms, into the blade. She went down to the plow guard, her left foot far out front and her hilt tight against her stomach with the blade tipped up towards Baru’s face.