I must learn why this happened to Salm, Baru thought. I must understand it, so I can stop it from ever happening again. I will not cry. I will understand. This was Baru Cormorant’s first lesson in causality. But it was not quite the most important thing she ever learned from her mother. That came earlier, long before the school or the disappearance of brave father Salm. Watching the red-sailed warship in Iriad harbor, Baru asked: “Mother, why do they come here and make treaties? Why do we not go to them? Why are they so powerful?” “I don’t know, child,” mother Pinion said. It was the first
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