I smiled very, very thinly. Every night I worked on the defense I’d use when Xate Olake went on trial in Falcrest. Pointless, of course, because the verdict would be set by then. If I failed to perform as the Throne required, Olake would certainly be lobotomized.

They’d probably make me conduct the operation.

Olake was screaming BARU and HU in gruesome polyphony: BARHU, BARHU. “Baru,” I said, with all the damnable griefs and furies of my life summoned to sustain me. “Baru, where is the duchess Vultjag?”

Cairdine Farrier smiled like a satisfied cat. Hesychast crossed his arms. My brother wailed.

“She’s dead,” Baru said, absently. “I had her executed.”

I’d seen a glacier calving once. Far away east in Starfall Bay. Something older than worlds, colder than winter, a dirty frozen mass that bared its glowing blue interior as it crashed, unstoppable and hideous, down into the sea.

Yawa fed her brother a gum-pellet of opiate. He curled up on the floor like a dog.

Baru’s meal crept up as acid. Poor Olake. Remember when he’d pretended to be a carriage driver? Remember how he’d snuck into her towertop apartment and pretended to poison her wine? His bearded grin as he stumbled into the war council at Haraerod with the Masquerade’s battle plans?

Xate Olake, who’d looked on the victorious Tain Hu and whispered, I wish she had been my daughter instead.

Xate Olake in a steel muzzle and a bloody shift. Whimpering on the floor.

Baru’s mother, Pinion, had taught her a special law, Toro Haba’s Law of Force, to explain the way two boats collided. When unequal forces meet, they always bargain fairly. One boat cannot strike another without being struck in return. Did memories obey this law? Is this how you keep grief from crushing you—whenever you are struck, you strike back from within? Your soul sustained by the equiposition of violence inside and out.

Baru tried to imagine some way to comfort Olake. Maybe she could go to him in secret and whisper, Your Grace, hope endures in me …

Then he would strangle her and chew on her spine.

“Your Excellence Durance.” Hesychast drew out a chair for Yawa to sit. “Your report on the Cancrioth, please?”

“Of course.” She wouldn’t look at Baru. Maybe her pride was wounded. She suffered a hostage, and Baru had escaped. Not monster enough, eh, Yawa? Not quite monster enough.

“The Cancrioth.”

*   *   *

SU Olonori was the Imperial Accountant of Aurdwynn before Baru, murdered when he came too close to discovering a certain duchess’s counterfeits. Baru knew him through his notes.

Yawa had canvassed him for intelligence.

And he’d yielded a terrible trove.