But of course she had work mail, too, Throne mail, the fruit of certain subtleties she’d set in motion before Sieroch.

Purity Cartone, Baru’s personal Clarified agent, had dispatched a letter.

It must have come in through secret channels, fast sloops and dry mailrooms where women in black gloves sorted out codes they didn’t need to understand. The address read:

RETRIEVED FROM APPARITOR DEAD DROP IN TREATYMONT

ESCALATE TO APPARITOR FOR ROUTING

Apparitor had scrawled a note below: Are you getting clever already? Who is it who sent this? Hope you wake up from your coma soon—you’re drooling oat mush on my good pillow right now—

“I didn’t forget,” Baru told Hu. “See, I remembered the ledger of secrets! I didn’t forget!”

The ledger had been created to force the Coyote rebels to trust each other. Every duke, duchess, judge, and accountant who’d joined the conspiracy had whispered a fatal secret to the Priestess in the Lamplight, the rebellion’s secret-keeper. Baru had told the truth: I want to fuck women. And the priestess had recorded that secret.

When Baru had learned the priestess was also a Falcresti agent, she’d sent Purity Cartone to kill her and get the ledger back. Not only to protect herself, but to gain the secret written by Jurispotence Xate Yawa, whose glaring blue eyes hid agendas and loyalties Baru couldn’t begin to guess. The last time she’d gone up against Yawa, she’d lost so badly that only Tain Hu had saved her from mutilation.

Xate Yawa was now exalted, just as Baru had been. And this ledger might be enough to protect Baru from her. But, of course, it would also be full of the unbearably personal secrets of people Baru had loved and betrayed.

Suddenly the bundle of letters was a burden. More heartbreak to wallow through. More ways to punish herself for the choices she’d made. Couldn’t she leave them for later? Wander back to her morning-room, perhaps, and play the Great Game against herself …

A footstep scraped the stone.

A hand closed on her shoulder.

Baru whirled and her hands did two different things. With her left she pushed the man away: with her right she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him close. All the letters tumbled onto the floor and Baru, tossed off-balance by her manual disagreement, yelped and fell on her ass.

It was only Apparitor’s boy Iraji. “What,” she said, from the ground, “are you doing!” But deep within her there was a reptilian calm, a slithering advisor which whispered, If he meant violence he’d already have hurt you.