“Ooh,” he said, cupping his chin. “That’s fascinating. How scandalous … my goodness. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Prick,” Baru muttered, and then she reached for On the Nature of the Eastern Supercontinent (from the Satamine Report). Her hands did exactly as she wished. She opened the book and a shiver ran from the crown of her head down to the cable of her calves: like cold water, poured from above.

*   *   *

AFTERWARD, renewed, she saluted her new colleagues.

To my peers of the committee … Power was the opposite of the sea. It flowed upward, away from the commons, toward the peaks. Show her a city with a council of five hundred, and she would find the demagogues who divided them in two. Show her ten friends: some would be spoken of, and some would do the speaking.

Why? Why? She wanted to know. And if the Oriati had lasted a thousand years, how had they kept so much power in their commons?

Was it a tradition they had? An idea?

Or was it in their blood?

I have completed my initial review of Apparitor’s documents, she wrote. We clearly face important strategic challenges.

And each of those challenges was an opportunity, a fang in Tain Hu’s ghost maw.

A resurgent Stakhieczi monarchy. The steel people north of Aurdwynn had united under their Necessary King. Usually they starved, or turned on each other. But this time, with secret help, they might crash down on Falcrest.…

Backlash from our ongoing efforts to destabilize the federated governments of Oriati Mbo. War was coming, Baru had no doubt of that. Falcrest had gained the whole Ashen Sea and the Oriati federations couldn’t stand for it.

She did her best work in wartime, didn’t she? Imagine what she could do with the whole Ashen Sea at war. The clay of humanity in her fists, wet with blood.…

An increasingly apparent pattern of epidemic disease in the unconquered west. The maps called the west the Camou Interval, a vast historical lacuna left by the collapse of the old Tu Maia. On her voyage up to Aurdwynn, Baru had visited a Camou fishing town called Chansee, where pale people died of cancer.

And, of course, the disturbing findings of our expeditions across the Mother of Storms.

And oh, those findings did disturb her, they filled Baru with terror and with joy.

Falcrest sent its ships across the great eastern ocean from which no visitors ever arrived. Across the Mother of Storms. The fourth expedition went under the command of Lindon Satamine, a brave young captain in the Storm Corps. Not two weeks out of Grendlake he stumbled on a fleet of primitive Stakhieczi longships. He seized their young leader, Svirakir, as a hostage: the fact that he was a prince was not recorded. (Hello, Apparitor, so that’s your real name? Svirakir?)