And I do consent to whatever operations and interventions the Emperor sees fit to improve the prisoner’s well-being.

Signed—

But there would never be a signature. Baru never cried out for mercy, for mercy was not in Tain Hu’s battle plan. Thus Baru drowned her beloved field-general in the morning tide.

This will be her legend. Listen, listen, do you know?

No living thing ever defeated Tain Hu in battle. Only the tide could fight her. Only the moon and the sea together could bring her down.

*   *   *

NOW only the rush of the waves and the cry of the shorebirds.

Baru closed her eyes and felt the slam of the surf in her ears and heart. There were birds above, a great whirl of them, as if in her passage Tain Hu’s soul had called up a maelstrom of wings.

Baru wouldn’t look at the damn birds. Red-haired Apparitor paced and fretted behind her, and Baru thought he was waiting for her to look up from Tain Hu and count the birds. He thought it was Baru’s tell. A sign that she was lying.

He wanted Baru to betray her horror.

Well, she’d vomit on him before she looked up.

“All right, then!” Baru clapped her hands, twice, briskly. There was a high ringing inside her, like a bell struck with steel, not quite hard enough to shatter. When Hu was giving her riding lessons she’d fallen and hit the stone, breath crushed out of her, a giddy emptiness, something huge has happened but I can’t feel it yet.

Oh, my lady Vultjag, how will I do this? How can I carry this weight?

“All right?” Apparitor croaked. “All right what?”

She looked at Apparitor sideways, slyly. She had to pretend to be untouched by the execution, so that she could be untouched by the execution. For what, in the end, was the difference between pretending perfectly to feel something, and actually feeling it? If you acted the same way, truth or lie?

“All right,” Baru said, “I want to start learning my new powers. And issuing some edicts: I like edicts. Let’s do it over breakfast.”

“Breakfast? You’re hungry?”

“Yes?” She offered him a gracious arm. “Will you walk with me?”

Apparitor burst into rage.

“You killed her! I can’t believe you killed her!” He ripped the handkerchief off his neck, and the grief-knot at his throat came undone at the slightest pull, which a grief-knot should, that was the whole reason sailors called them grief-knots. He waved the silk at Baru like he was trying to wipe her up.

“Baru Cormorant, you fucking asshole, do you realize what you’ve done?”

Oh, I realize, oh gods, I realize nothing else! I killed her for political advantage! She could have lived and I did not let her live! What am I, Apparitor, what slithering beast could do this thing I’ve done?