“Your currencies are in tatters,” he pointed out, for the war had put various Princes and their principalities so deep into debt that they’d been forced to coin more money, leading to rampant inflation. “I can’t accept anything in payment but Falcresti fiat notes.”

Baru sighed. She knew from the rules that very soon her necessaries—traders, laborers, shipping magnates, even troops in the field—would refuse to take payment in anything but fiat notes. “I think,” she said, “that I should refuse…”

“I will take payment in orphans, instead,” Farrier suggested. “Let me save these bankrupt cities. Just let me build schools for the war orphans.…”

The Mbo was breaking. She could hardly believe it—especially after all her reading. The thousand-year Mbo was cracking apart before her, and Farrier’s ivy was growing in the seams.

“What is this?” she breathed. “You break them by turning them on themselves?”

Farrier breathed into his cupped hands. “It was the same on Sousward,” he said. “Plainside against harborside. This is just … much larger.”

He was aiming Baru at his next target. And the stakes, she was certain, were beyond tally: not just for the world, but for Farrier himself. “The expedition.” She went at him, even as he drew away, and got him by the shoulders. “Look at me. What’s this expedition?”

Suddenly he was indifferent to her body. Suddenly he had the room’s gravity again. The immediacy of the change was appalling. He smiled, warm and natural. “You and Apparitor and a few others will be going on a mighty journey, Baru. A journey that Hesychast and I have both gambled everything upon.”

“Tell me!” she cried, nearly salivating.

“You,” he said, soberly, “are going to go on a fact-finding mission. Parliament has called a vote on war with Oriati Mbo. The date is set for summer’s end, the ninetieth day of the season. You will provide the Emperor’s Testimony. Did the Oriati Mbo itself attack us? Was it only pirates? Is there cause for war? Or will the peace last?”

“Good Devena,” Baru gasped. “I’m to decide that?”

“Quite. But of course it’s not just about that. Hesychast wants one thing from the expedition. And I … well. I hope you will secure the future of the Republic under my philosophy.”

“What philosophy?” she hissed. “What does he want? What do you?”

“Ah,” he said, his clever hands steepled, “we are antitheses, he and I, he is the body and I am the mind, he is the race and I am the Republic. He sees humanity as cattle to breed and I cannot abide that—oh, Baru, if you knew the hope you’ve given me, the hope that anyone can be disciplined and taught to live righteously. That hope sustains me!”