Baru flipped to the last page, frowning: it had been sewn together in haste. “Revelation,” she recited. “You are the Princes of Oriati Mbo. Falcrest’s Parliament has discovered the existence of a secret society in your midst. They are the ancient slavers who once ruled your people, and their strength is now grown again. They are strong in Mzilimake, among the old conquerors of Lake Akhena and the mystics of Uranium Gorge. They are powerfully entangled with Segu’s western coast, with the tribes of the Aam and the Yeni, where their shipyards have built secret fleets. Already they have attacked Falcrest, hoping to provoke a ruinous war … is this all fantasy?”

“Read on.”

“Falcrest’s Parliament demands you hand over the leaders of this cult, and all their collaborators, for trial. If you do not, punitive bombardments will strike your great cities. The word of this cult’s existence has been sent to your griots, to be spread among the people, and now a great wrath arises in them: they do not love Falcrest, but they hate the old slavers with a thousand years of fury.…” Baru blinked at the rules. “Could this happen?”

“It will.” Farrier no longer seemed to care about her immodesty. “Play, now.”

She found unrest rippling through her people. The effect on the economy was quite shocking: where people disagreed with each other they stopped trading, and that caused uncertainty in crops and prices. Where certainty evaporated, people stopped spending money. As if by magic famine began to arise, first in little patches and then growing blights.

She went after this cult with griot-investigators. They were murdered. She sent an army into southern Mzilimake to dig them out. A poor roll of the dice saw a coup by Uranium Gorge seize Mzilimake’s government in the name of the slaver cult. Civil war was instantaneous, and huge, and appalling—there were so many people in Oriati Mbo, and all the death was magnified proportionally—

“I will sell you grain,” Farrier offered. “Cheap. Just give me those ports.”

She had to agree, to save lives.

“I’ll send Charitable Service clinics to contain the plagues.”

She had to agree, to save lives.

“I have architectural concerns who can use those forests and that stone better than you. Grant me some labor, and I’ll clear those canals, I’ll rebuild those roads, I’ll have cash crops growing again.”

She had to agree. She needed money to prop up her side in the civil war.

“Give me access to the Black Tea Ocean,” Farrier said, pointing to the western sea off Oriati Mbo, the sea few Falcresti had glimpsed, “and I’ll send a fleet down there to seal off the slaver ports.”

Her ships had been decimated in the fighting. She had no choice: she would lose the coast entirely, otherwise.