He attacked Oriati Mbo with all his powers. Schools to seduce the young. Banks to issue loans, loans to put the Oriati into debt, debt to give him an excuse to seize their land and property. He built toll roads and canals for exclusive trade. He gave his allies inoculations against disease. He brutalized the Oriati currencies with counterfeiting and debasement, flooding their continent with fake money so they would turn to the stable, reliable Falcresti fiat note as their trade coin.

It was precisely how he had captured Taranoke.

It failed utterly.

The students in his schools could not be isolated from their families and communities: they rejected Incrasticism. The banks could not repossess the collateral of failed loans, because debtors’ neighbors bailed them out. The toll roads and canals were captured by local governments and opened to free trade until they were as crowded and slow as all the rest. Inoculations worked well, except that the inoculated were shunned and shamed for not sharing their immunity. When one of the four Oriati currencies foundered, another grew more valuable, as if the currencies were rabbits and foxes and wolves, one’s misfortune another’s opportunity.

The Mbo absorbed his attacks. At the end of the game Falcrest was more part of the Mbo than the Mbo of Falcrest.

Farrier looked up with shining, delighted eyes. “You see?”

“How,” Baru said, baffled, for the Oriati had just defied the powers which she had spent her life to claim, “do they do that?”

“Hesychast has one theory, and I have another. But it will be up to you, Baru, to find out who’s right, and to see the solution executed.”

The thought of Hesychast, of flesh and body, reminded her of his moment of weakness then. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“What?”

“To know that I want to fuck women?”

She could say it right to his face. Because Tain Hu had sacrificed herself to permit it. Death to buy freedom, the freedom to end the death.

Cairdine Farrier flinched. She wanted to shout in triumph, You don’t like it, do you? You don’t like it when I say it aloud, without fear.

“We all have our flaws,” he said, softly, “we all make our mistakes. But if we work to overcome them—if we prove that we can master our flesh—then we’ve triumphed.”

Baru thought she’d won this conversation, or at least gathered valuable intelligence: she was just warming up to a little smugness when Farrier, offhandedly, knocked her back down.

“Have you been catching up on the letters from your parents?” He beamed at her. “I’m sorry I held your mail these last three years. I just thought it’d keep you focused. I do hope they’re well!”

“Letters from my parents?” Baru echoed.

“Yes, piles of them, haven’t you—oh no.” He covered his heart in shock. “Apparitor didn’t show you the library?”

6. The Lightning in the East

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