Iraji looked like a man who would drink a poison cup. “Oh, child,” I said, though I wore the mask and its clockwork voice-changer, though I sounded of gears and death. “What did she do to you? Where has she gone?”

“She went. With Tau and Shao Lune and Osa. She went to them.”

“Went to who?”

“I have to go to Baru. I have to take her place.”

“Hush, hush, it’s all right.” Execarne appeared with a cup of coffee and a blanket. As he wrapped Iraji, he glanced sharply at me and made an o-shape with his fingers. We were out of time. Even now Shao Lune would be laying the trail for Execarne’s Morrow-men, and we had to pick it up before the jellyfish dye ran too thin.

“She went in my place, do you understand?” Iraji husked. “I have to go to her. I can’t let her do this for me.”

I sat there in the itchy quarantine gown, and I think its alien weight was the only thing that kept me from throwing everything aside to help Iraji. I wanted to say, oh, child, how well I know this pain. How well I know the need to go to my twin and suffer in his place.

Baru isn’t worth it, do you understand? Baru eats people.

Instead I adjusted the ticking voice-changer pressed against my throat and spoke.

“What place of yours did Baru take?”

*   *   *

A TREMENDOUS explosion sounded from the direction of Loveport. An Oriati mine, detonated above water. Baru imagined a police post or Kyprist warship shattered. There were fire bells everywhere now, and from the west, in constant streams and squadrons, came the boats of Canaat fighters crossing to the Kyprist east.

On the little felucca, Unuxekome Ra touched the point of her blade and swallowed. “You’re doing it here?” she asked the shadow ambassador. “What if you cut too much?”

“I won’t,” the pregnant woman said. “The Prince’s ties are thick.”

What did that mean? Tau’s ties of trim were thick? They were going to cut Tau’s trim? Who were these people?

Baru scrabbled up to sit. A thrill in her chest. A sound like cavalry in her ears. She wondered for an instant if she were about to seize again, if this sense of everything coming together was a precursor—

“Oh gods of fire,” she breathed, staring at the shadow ambassador, who was not, she realized, pregnant at all. “Oh gods of stone and fire.”

Baru’s plan had worked.

She’d dangled her bait, and the great fish had swallowed. She had shown the picture of Iraji, and mentioned the rhyme he knew, and the shadow ambassador had heard—

“No,” Osa breathed, staring at the shadow ambassador. “It can’t be…”

Beneath her khanga, the Oriati woman’s wet dress clung to the curve of her stomach. Her small breasts were not much swollen, Baru judged. She wasn’t pregnant.