“I killed him in the winter,” the Bane of Wives said, throwing down her fouled snow, “and I froze him here. Mercy kill. He had pika. He was chewing on flagstones. Turn the stone over.”

In rectangular Simple Aphalone characters a chisel had scraped the word ORMSMNT.

“Well,” Ormsment breathed. “You knew I’d come to you?”

“When they wouldn’t let you kill her. Then I knew.”

“So you understand why I’m here?”

“Because you want to pretend the world’s fair,” the Bane of Wives said, with a terrible indifference, which Juris did not like at all: the indifference, at least. The terror she needed.

“I prefer to think I help keep it fair.” Actions had to have consequences. What you did had to come back to you, or the world would be as inchoate and unfair as her childhood in the Butterveldt. When people cannot count on justice they count on blood.

Over the rebel winter she’d asked Cattlson, each and every time they met, can I order her death? We have agents in place, I know we do—no? No? But, your Excellence, how can we protect her? After what she did at Welthony?

And Cattlson would say, it’s out of my hands.

Away a few benches, the Stakhi olive-oil man had begun shaking his fist and making threats. Shao Lune said something in a tone like a sneer and the man pivoted, instantly, into mewling apology: he hadn’t realized she was navy, he hadn’t meant it, could he make it up to her, please? Shao Lune laughed at him. “I did this to you? You’re like a dog who comes at the chime of the bell. Yes, a dog, I said. A dog.”

“What you’re doing is treason,” the Bane of Wives said.

Looking at her was like walking up to the edge of a canyon. You had to do it carefully, and not for too long. “Maybe,” Juris said. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

“They’ll purge your friends.”

“We know the risks,” Juris said, we meaning the whole conspiracy, the plan to overthrow Empire Admiral Satamine and maybe even the Parliament that created him. “All of us do. I have to show the Throne that they can’t use us like dogs without us biting back.”

“You don’t know how many of your officers they already possess.”

“And you do?”

“I know,” the Bane of Wives said. “They possessed me once.”

Of course she had. Who’d sent the Bane of Wives to Mzilimake Mbo to stir up civil war? Who had dispatched her to the Occupation to turn the Invijay against the Oriati?

The Bane of Wives had been the Emperor’s agent.