Unuxekome Ra, exiled duchess, mother of the Duke Unuxekome who Baru had betrayed. She remembered that name as hands around her throat. Piss-warm water slapped against her back and coiled down her legs. “What do I need to tell you to get out of here?”Ī pedal thumped. Counting always soothed her: she never did her figures wrong. Nowhere to go! Nowhere to go! Water dripped on her scalp and slithered down her body-īaru made herself be still, and took comfort by measuring the water level. A splinter of soft wood found a toenail, dug beneath. She had to kick and scrabble to keep her feet from sliding together in the pinch. How deep underground was she? Below the water table? The walls angled in to a joint beneath her. “How do you know? Can you move? Can you see?”ĭog-legged claustrophobia licked at the back of her knees. “Tubercule.” Speech now the only way she could act, and therefore desperately necessary. Claustrophobia loped up growling in the dark. She reached up to pull the clamp off and found her hands jammed against the walls of a narrow wooden chute. No way to see except by desperately rolling her eyes. She tried to look up and slammed her scalp into a metal clamp. As a girl she’d been so embarrassed by the idea of gaping like a fool while asleep that she’d trained herself to frown while she dreamed. “Who are you?” asked the voice from above. She had gone to find the Cancrioth, and the Cancrioth had found her first. She had gone to the embassy on Hara-Vijay islet in Kyprananoke. An orca with a human skull embedded in its breaching back. Spilled palm wine on burning lilacs.Īnd then the shadow ambassador had led Baru down to the secret way beneath the reef. Aminata’s marines firing the embassy, shooting the guests. Governor Love screaming as the plague carriers disemboweled themselves and smeared their gore on his face. It was real! It had all been real! The madness in the embassy, the traitor-admiral waiting for her in the dueling circle, the Kyprananoki rebels hemorrhaging black Kettling blood from their swollen eyes.

The traitor baru cormorant