“Your Excellence,” he said, when Baru nearly arm-barred his elbow to pieces and he gut-punched her so hard that she gagged.

“Again,” she said, spitting bile.

“Your Excellence!” he cried, when after an elbow to the chin, Baru sat down growling and couldn’t stand.

“It’s fine,” she said. The world was full of ringing sick pain now. The world cared about Tain Hu. She’d made it care. Cast a veil of hurt across everything you see, and everything you see is hurt. “Everything’s fine. You’ve done well.”

“Your Excellence,” Iraji said, with careful calm, “you could catch my blows even when they came in from your right. Did you notice that?”

“Could I? Interesting.”

Last time she was on the battlements with Iraji, she’d looked up through a swarm of petrels and seen a sail on the horizon. Helbride coming with Tain Hu. Baru could still feel that sail on her blind right, way out on the horizon: a tooth of memory erupting through the water. She could still feel—

She frowned.

She could feel three sets of sails.

“Iraji,” she said, and pointed right, into nothingness. “What’s out there?”

She watched his golden eyes narrow against the wind. He put up a hand to block out the sun: she wondered, quite Incrastically, if the dark of his skin let him see better in bright light.

“I don’t understand,” he said, softly. “Hesychast should’ve come alone.”

On the southern horizon three ships approached: a clipper like Helbride, and two warships rigged like fast navy frigates.

Hesychast sailed like he was going to war.

*   *   *

SHE staggered into the morning-room in compression linens and a breechcloth, clutching a block of cellar ice in silk to the side of her head. Farrier was there, and the moment he looked at her, her trap was sprung.

“Oh!” He very politely turned his back. “You’re not proper, Baru.”

“I was with the concubine,” she said, to make it worse on him. “What are you doing? Come, help me sit.”

“When you’re modest, Baru.” He shrugged his coat off and lobbed it backward to her.

“You make these things strange, Mister Farrier.”

He chuckled easily enough. “When one travels the world one learns not to bend to other’s standards. I hold myself to my own rules, lest I ever err. We must be blameless, hm? Always blameless.”

It was a nice sherwani. Baru left it on the floor. What did Farrier see when he looked at her? Not lust—he wasn’t interested in taking advantage of his power that way. But he saw something he didn’t like. Tain Hu had told her once—you wear symbols when you decide how to dress yourself, how to look at men and women, how to carry your body and direct your gaze.