But the word would not come. “We’re going about this wrong,” Muire Lo said, sitting in a circle of abandoned thesauruses and rubbing his temples. “What should the roots be? If you had to invent the word now, from first principles—what would it be?” “Crypsis,” Baru said, “for secrets.” She sat beside him, leaning back on her hands. The lamps made their shadows dance. “And the suffix?” “For rule? -Archy.” “Crypsarchy?” “Cryptarchy. And the rulers would be cryptarchs.” Baru thought of the Masked Emperor, silent and mindless on the throne.
