His fingers shifted, and he began gently to massage his own hands.

"People are made and broken and remade by their circumstances," he said. "Within three years the boy ruled Garwater." He smiled.

"Less than three quartos after that, one of our ironclads intercepts a vessel-a gaudy recurved sloop-on its way from Perrick Nigh to Myrshock. One of Figh Vadiso’s noble families, it appears: A husband and wife and daughter, with their retainers, relocating to the mainland. Their cargo was stripped. The passengers were of no interest to anyone, and I’ve no idea what happened to them. They may have been killed; I don’t know. What is known is that when the servants were inducted and welcomed as citizens, there was one maid who caught the new ruler’s eye."

He looked out into the sky.

"There are some who were there, on board the Grand Easterly, at that meeting," he said quietly. "They say she stood tall and smiled crooked at the ruler-not like one trying to ingratiate herself, or one terrified, but as if she liked what she saw.

"Women don’t have it well in the northern Shards," he said. "Each island has its own customs and laws, and some of them are unpleasant." He clasped his hands. "There are places where they sew women shut," he said, and watched me. I met his eye: I do not intimidate. "Or cut them, excise what they were born with. Or keep them chained in houses to serve the men. The isle our boss was born to was not so harsh as that, but it… exaggerated certain traits that you might recognize from other cultures. From New Crobuzon, for example. A certain sacralization of the woman. A contempt masked as adoration. You understand, I’m sure. You published your books as by B .Coldwine. I’m sure you understand."

That shook me; I admit it. That he knew this much about me, that he understood my reasons for that harmless little piece of obfuscation.

"On the boss’s island, the men go to sea and leave their wives and lovers on the land, and no amount of custom or tradition can chain legs closed. A man who loves a woman with a fierce enough passion-or says he does, or thinks he does-aches when he leaves her. He knows intimately how strong, how powerful her charms are. He himself succumbed to them, after all. So he must lessen them.

"On the boss’s island, a man who loves strongly enough will cut his woman’s face…" We watched each other, unmoving. "He’ll mark her, to make her his, inscribe his property, notch it like wood. Spoil her just enough that no other will want her.

"Those scars are freggios.