She took the stone from its place in the gallery wall. In small Aphalone blocks, using a calligraphy brush, she painted a date and a time. She had never done this, and she had no reason to believe it would work, except that the Bane of Wives said it would.

Nothing had ever stopped the Bane of Wives from doing what she said she would do.

Juris Ormsment realized she would probably never see her little gallery again. So she got out her dive knife, knelt on the filthy ice in her dress uniform, and began to chip the black-footed corpse free of its tomb.

*   *   *

SHE called up her commands that night for a harborside review. They turned out on the piers in ragged order but fine spirits, cheering to each other, boasting of their ships: of sure helms and ready rockets, of rope splice and steady masts, the most beautiful boys and delicious cooks. Here were her Sulanes and Scylpetaires, Welterjoys and Juristanes and Commsweals, the enormous companies off Kingsbane and Egalitaria with their faces ash-blackened in disdain of the enemy. All in fantastic spirits after the spring’s reversals, especially now that their shares of the prize money had been paid out: symbolic prizes for the forty-three Coyote and Oriati warships burnt to the keel without a single Falcresti loss.

She’d commanded that battle. Navy Advance called her a hero of the Republic. Even His Hypocrisy the Empire Admiral, Lindon Satamine, had commended her to Parliament.

If she kept her calm and let this victory propel her she might one day be Empire Admiral herself.

But she would be Empire Admiral of a navy that sold its sailors to women like Baru Cormorant.

From Sulane’s mast-top she raised her open hands like yardarms and the roar of the crews broke over her like storm waves. And like a good ship in storm she rose up and shook off the water and kept her course.

Juris often dwelt on a riddle she’d heard at academy in Shaheen. What is power? Where does it come from, when is it false, when is it true? Imagine that the Minister of the Metademe, the Minister of the Faculties, and the Morrow Minister are at dinner when it is announced that the wine is poisoned. A nameless secretary leaps up with a bottle of antidote. Each Minister demands the secretary hand over the bottle. The Metademe threatens her family and her fertility, the Morrow Minister threatens her reputation and safety, and the Faculties threaten to stab her up the eyeball with a meat skewer. Whose power is truest? Who gets the antidote?

And if you called to your sailors to follow you, but their Emperor called them to destroy you, who would they heed? If you knew for certain that they would follow you to ruin—would it then be wrong to ask for their service?