"Is she mad?" hissed Tanner Sack to Bellis. "What’s she talking about?"

"This is obviously designed to create panic," the Lover continued. "This is a plan to ruin everything. He’s in fucking league with gods knows who, and we can’t let them win. Uther, take him away. Brief the guards-and pick them well; pick those you’re certain of. Brief the guards about the lies he might shout to them.

"We will stop this, right here," she said, hard. "We’ll not let this seditious shit succeed. This goes no further. We bury this story, right now, right here, and we go on. Agreed?"

Perhaps the Lover and Uther Doul nodded to her. Bellis heard nothing.

She had turned her face to Tanner at those last words. She watched him listen to his ruler-to whom he had committed himself absolutely, declared himself utterly loyal-announce her plans to deceive everyone in the city. To keep secret everything she had heard. And to drive on to the Scar.

Bellis watched a cold, a dead and frightening cast come over Tanner’s face as he listened. The muscles of his jaw clenched, and Bellis knew that he was thinking of Shekel.

Was he remembering how he’d said and thought that this-what had happened to them, being found-was a blessing? Bellis did not know. But something had set in Tanner’s face, and he looked at her with murderous eyes.

"She," he hissed to her, "will bury nothing."

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Seven

Tanner Sack was known. He was the one who had fought a bonefish to save a dying man. He had Remade himself into a kind of manfish, the better for life in Armada. He had lost his boy.

Tanner was known, and he was respected.

You listened to Tanner, and you believed him.

Bellis could tell no one anything. Her mouth was hard and cold as a stone.

She had to turn to others to spread words.

Everyone knew Tanner Sack.

If Bellis had tried to tell what she had heard in that unpleasant little cubbyhole, if she tried to tell the secrets she had listened to, she would not be believed. She would not be heard. But she had introduced someone else to her room, so that he could speak for her and tell the story.

She could not help nodding. Smiling without warmth. Gods, it’s well done, she thought, bowing her head, acknowledging consummate work. She felt skeins of cause, effect, effort, and interaction tying around her. She felt things all coming together, pushing her into this place, at this time, having done this thing.

Oh, it’s well done.

It started almost as soon as she and Tanner came up out of the lower decks.