APPARITOR caught her in her morning-room. “We have to go.”

She froze in terror at the hot breath on her ear. She could hear the click of his throat when he swallowed and the nervous motion of his tongue. He’d approached from her blind side, of course.

“I believe we’re attending a dinner,” she murmured, “with Hesychast and Itinerant?”

She’d just finished a letter. She touched the incryptor’s trigger. The device made the most satisfying little thump, the sound of complicated plans sliding into place, and smashed Baru’s coded seal into the letter.

He paced round into visibility. He was flushed as she had ever seen a person—more flushed than she could ever show—and panting. “Did you run up here?”

“I did,” he gasped, “and for your sake. Although also for the sake of several other people who I visited first. Those two warships that came in with Hesychast aren’t his. What are you writing?”

“What do you mean they’re not his?”

“What are you writing?” He snatched the letter out from under her palm. “Is this—are these orders for Aurdwynn?”

They were orders for Aurdwynn. The first of many. She would not delay Tain Hu’s work. She would not risk dying of a burst appendix or some pratfall off the keep’s battlements before she could make the duchess’s sacrifice worth at least a little.

“Give me back that letter!”

“Half-letter, please, see how you’ve done it all a little column on the left? Let’s see—you want to—” He goggled. “This is everything I said I’d kill you for! Trading missions to the north, roads, clinics … salaries for those disreputable rangers … patrols on the rivers, engineers for Lyxaxu’s heights, a senate in every duchy…”

She was oddly hurt he didn’t like the ideas. “I think they’re necessary steps.”

“Fuck my fuzzy red nuts,” Apparitor breathed. “You really are his little creature, aren’t you? Those poor Aurdwynni bastards. You’ll ruin them.”

“Nonsense,” Baru said, trying not to grind her teeth. “I’m going to engage them in profitable trade.”

“You’re a spider, you know that? A hairy little spider crawling underfoot at a picnic. Look at this! You’re opening the northerners to free trade, you’re integrating their shitty little economies with the world. Throwing them to the wolves—and after all that time you spent pretending to love them, too!”

“I am giving them access to fair markets, where they will sell what they have in plenty, and buy what is scarce, improving the lot of every last—”

“Ooh, I’m a feudal peasant, I just can’t wait to sell my shitty grain and skinny donkeys on the open market, ought to be fair competition with the Radascine Combine and their fields of golden plenty—”