“Tell me, then,” Juris whispered, her bones suddenly athrum, her nose stuffed with the smell of thawing dog, the bee buzzing in her ear and the spring sun glittering on the melt, the whole world waiting, waiting on this answer, “can you lead me to her?”

“You have ships?”

“Two, yes, enough loyal crew for two ships.” Those officers who’d stayed here under Ormsment, rather than moving on with Ahanna Croftare, did it for love of her. “Will you tell me who among them are compromised?”

“If you let me see to them myself.”

That rankled at Juris, but so did the idea of blackmailed officers simpering among her loyal few. “So you shall.”

“Good.” The Bane of Wives spat into the snow. “Baru’s at the Elided Keep. It’s not on your charts. But I can take you there.”

And now Ormsment had no excuse to turn back.

“Of course,” the woman said, looking at Shao Lune, now alone, with callous appetite, carnal or violent, Juris couldn’t tell, “once you do this, you can’t come back. Even if you take Baru. Even if you force her to write you a pardon. The Emperor will destroy you.”

“I have to do this,” Ormsment said, simply. “The dead demand it.”

The Bane of Wives looked at her as if she recognized something she might respect. “The dead do task us.”

The bee whirred off to find a brighter flower. The dog’s jaw creaked shut. Shao Lune’s suitor fled.

“I have a price,” the Bane of Wives said.

“What is it?”

“I get to keep Tain Hu.”

5. The End of History

5

THE END OF HISTORY

WILL you admire Cairdine Farrier?

He is fifty-four years old, a big man, a happy man, well liked and deep in love. He owns nineteen businesses, but these concerns own stake in others, too: unless you could find all his false names and paper legends you could never count all his money. Fisheries are some of his favorite investments. He owns, perhaps, one in a hundred fish in the sea, and who else can claim that? No shark and no kraken, no gape-mouthed whale with combs of baleen. Farrier has outmaneuvered the leviathans of the deep. Ships are very useful to him, but it does not suit him to seem like he has a private navy. So instead of possesssing vessels he possesses their masters.

He speaks in Parliament, where he is a great favorite for his humor and his digressions, and, of course, for the things he has accomplished. The opening of Sousward-which-was-Taranoke to the Republic’s trade, which completed a great circle of commerce that rings the entire Ashen Sea in one golden river of endless profit. The young tyrants of the Suettaring markets call the modern prosperity the Farrier Age. The Egalitarians who protest beneath the Suettaring hills call him the King of Pillage. Parliamins and Ministers call him Mister Farrier, with great respect.