She does not hesitate in her judgment, for all who participate in the apparatus are complicit in its crimes. Even the least functionary in the lowest ministry. They had a choice to refuse to participate in the devastation of Kyprananoke but they did not. The spymaster would plead that she has a duty to her nation. The spymaster would plead that through small evils she prevents greater disasters. The spymaster would plead, I did not know what they were doing, I did not know who I was working for, how could I anticipate the use of Kettling?

Shir would ask:

Who says you have a duty to a nation? Who says you cannot reject an unjust duty?

Who says you can decide which evil is small enough to tolerate, and which is too great to allow?

Who says you should allow anyone to hold such power over you, the power to use your work for purposes you do not understand?

If the spymaster could be forgiven for helping to arrange the civil war upon Kyprananoke, then Shir could herself be forgiven for what she has done. And she cannot be thus forgiven.

Shir holds her breath, plunges the trigger on a slim grenade, waits for the crystals to crush and mix with the smoking agent, and drops the cyanide bomb down the chimney.

She watches from the roof. No one comes out.

Tain Shir fashions herself an atlatl, the bloodiest weapon in all of human existence, if you reckon the lives it has taken. As the uprising begins she kills a Kyprist and takes his patrol canoe. Paddles east. She moves between two rednesses, evening light in the west and the sooty stain of firelight thick in the east. A group of Canaat rebels hail her. When they see she is a foreigner they demand that she heave to for inspection.

Shir complies. When the biggest man steps between their boats she waits until he has one foot on each side and she embraces him and stabs him in the taint and pushes him back into his boat with a blast grenade under his body.

She takes a pistol and some shot from the boat’s carnage. The rocket-powder comes in tiny clever sacs of animal gut which can be stuffed down the oiled barrel. She smiles at the workmanship. Hello again. Cancrioth craft, as she remembers it from the jungle.

She knows where Baru Cormorant will go.

Tain Shir is here to teach a lesson. A lesson about the costs of manipulation, and the hubris of forcing others to pay those costs for you, and the lie that you can serve a master today without also ceding to him all your tomorrows.

She rows south, to scout the teaching ground.

Past the maelstrom the fjord plunges in toward the flooded caldera of the dead mountain. Light kindles all around her. A million worms cling to the shadowed stone cliffs.