The Tyrant

by Seth Dickinson

  Barhu had indeed sent him a very bossy letter. “I hope we’re in accord on some points?”

  “Not even one, alas. Aurdwynn’s time to flower has not yet come. The recent news of invasion is not unexpected, and I left very clear instructions as to what should be done.”

  “What should be done?”

  “The coast must be protected, of course. The Stakhieczi denied access to the Ashen Sea, even at the cost of our northern duchies. Don’t you think?” The Stag Governor sighed and made moon eyes at Yawa. “How our home does shoulder the burdens of the Empire. Truly we are martyred.”

  Yawa finished her sangria. “Truly,” she growled. “How are you and Bel?”

  “We are very happy.”

  “The shit you are,” Yawa hissed. “Damn you, Heia, he was supposed to secure your governorship in Falcrest’s eyes, not settle in and buy you matching cutlery. The divorce should’ve been in by now, I had the causes all written up—”

  Barhu watched in fascination as the Stag Governor’s eyes flashed in defiance. “I expect we’ll soon be pregnant.”

  It would not have surprised Barhu if Yawa snapped off the stem of her sangria glass in Heia’s eyes. “Heia! This is no time for sentiment!”

  In Barhu’s right ear, Iscend murmured, “If she is your target, you should touch her as soon as you can, and associate that touch with surprise and delight. An interruption now would save her from unpleasantness. . . .”

  “Oh,” Barhu said, “good idea.” She took one long stride forward and tripped the Stag Governor.

  Their legs entangled: the Stag Duchess in her black gown and golden circlets fell back onto Barhu’s waiting arm. Her antlers nearly tapped the floor. The armsmen would have seized Barhu, if Heingyl Ri had not called them off with a snap of Iolynic.

  Barhu closed a hand around her chin. Pressed one gloved finger to her lips, bare beneath the half-mask. “A dance?”

  Those eyes! Heingyl Ri’s lips curved beneath the glove. She moved her shoulders, just so: Barhu was suddenly and pleasantly aware of her body. “Why not?”

  Iscend turned to Yawa and offered her hands. “Your Excellence? Shall we dance the Cavalry Night?”

  Yawa groaned. “You’re going to rub my bones through my feet, child.” Her eyes lingered on Heia, wary, watchful, maybe hurt.

  Devena help me, I did not see him till he spoke. I should have known him by the weight of his shoulder or the length of his stride. For if he was the symbol of the body as destiny, then the proportions of his body were the measurements of my fate.

  But I did not recognize him. He wears more masks than one.

  “Durance,” Hesychast said. “How do you feel?”

  I had dismissed him as another one of the brimmingly fit Falcresti waiters who infested the place. I admit they all washed together in my eyes. But once I knew it was him, he stood out like a burn.

  “Your Excellence.” I bowed shallowly. Iscend, damn her twice for leading me to him, had vanished. “What an unexpected pleasure. What brings you to Isla Cauteria?”

  “Waiting for you to turn up, of course. I used one of my legends to travel here. I thought it would be a likely port on your way home to Falcrest.” Cosgrad Torrinde took me companionably by the waist and steered me away from the benches along the south wall, where Faham Execarne was making exchanges with his agents. “Is Ormsment handled?”

  “Thoroughly. Though at some cost.” I outlined Aminata’s choice to go aboard Sulane, and to sacrifice herself with the ship.

  He frowned terribly. It was awful to see such a fine face so sorry. “A shame about Aminata. I warned her off Baru. I really did try. She seemed a tremendously promising officer . . . and yet I see Baru here. You failed to remove her?”

  O Wydd, arm me with the lies I needed. “She defeated the Farrier Process. Her wound developed into a complete tulpa, a true marvel of pathology. I thought it best to preserve her for your inspection.”

  “Farrier’s process failed? Barhu is making decisions he would not allow?”

  Such directness to his questions. The situation in Falcrest must be at its point of absolute crisis. “It’s unclear, Your Excellence. Something grand is about to be accomplished here . . . and her plan does match Farrier’s requirements precisely. But it may also be to our advantage.”

  “If you won’t use her as dowry, how have you secured the Necessary King? If you do not control the Stakhieczi invasion, we will have to revert to the original contingency. Plague and democide through Aurdwynn and the Wintercrests. Loss of so many germ lines. A disaster.”

  I tried a grandmotherly pat of his hand. “We have an alternative dowry.”

  “What is it?”

  “Please leave that to me.”

  “You have no time for improvisation, Durance. If the king dies and the Mansions fracture we’ll have missed our chance to solve the Stakhieczi problem forever—”

  “Your Excellence. Aurdwynn is my blood knowledge. Trust that I have the matter in hand.”

  “Trust?” He smiled with a squeeze of his arm. “Now there’s a word I don’t look to hear from you.”

  “Mistrust my loyalties, Your Excellence, that I can respect. Just don’t mistrust my competence.”

  “Consider me rebuked. How has Iscend performed?”

  “There has been some deviation, after so long away from the Metademe. If you would only divulge the reconditioning protocols . . .”

  He laughed. “Absolutely not. Did she fall back on her deeper qualms? As her contingent rewards extinguished, she should have come to fetishize the overall well-being of the Republic.”

  “I would say she did.” I swallowed. “Perhaps . . . more so than you intended.”

  “How so?”

  “There was an outbreak on Kyprananoke. She judged it was too dangerous to be allowed off the islands. I agreed with that assessment . . . but no one gave her the order to trigger the apocalypse fuse. She did it herself.”

  “Oh.” Hesychast did not react, except for that word. I pictured him in the Metademe, whispering desperately to the Clarified babies in their cribs, waving a sulfurous match under their little noses, don’t extinguish entire cultures, I shall be very displeased and you will smell a stink if you do it.

  “I should say,” he managed, “that she correctly put the Republic’s well-being before all other concerns. Would we hesitate to lose a hundred thousand lives to win a war? No. And an epidemic is ten times the threat any war will ever be.”

  “Put that way,” I said, “she made the right choice. But it was an almost total loss of the Kyprananoki germ line.”

  “Yes . . . a conundrum. Where did the epidemic originate?”

  “From a ship, we believe. A Cancrioth ship.”

  “Truly? You’ve found them?”

  We swept through a crowd of guano merchants engaged in vigorous financial intercourse with Heingyl Ri’s trade factors. I turned my face away from Bel Latheman. “They’re coming here. Now. I have one of them aboard Helbride as a hostage. A mathematician. She knows things no one has ever known. . . .”

  He killed the gasp while it was still in his chest. His lips parted in silence. “Well done. Well done. Where did you find them?”

  “Kyprananoke. Where Abdumasi Abd’s fleet harbored before their journey north to attack Aurdwynn.”

  His body screamed in triumph or alarm: the conscious sublimation of a great shout into a thousand tiny flexions. “Abdumasi Abd? I know that man.”

  We brushed through a sailcloth privacy curtain, down a corridor of sailing ships muraled in smashed seashell. “How closely can Abd be linked to the Cancrioth?” he muttered.

  “Intimately. They claim him as their own. He may even contain . . . a somatic portion of the Cancrioth.”

  “Abd is a popular man in the Mbo. Name him as Cancrioth and half the merchants in Lonjaro would be implicated as collaborators. It would be a disaster for our endgame if Mandridge Subahant and his goons in Parliament get their hands on him. Subahant already wants
a good old-fashioned dustup with the Oriati, a chance to prove we’re the better race. This would be the perfect excuse. Where’s Abd now?”

  I dared not lie. “We believe that he is here, in this fortress.”

  He burst out laughing. “Naturally!”

  “Naturally, my lord?”

  “I don’t believe in trim, yet I am always haunted by the suspicion of its influence. Come. I have something to show you.”

  He led me down twisting counterclockwise stairs. Cold sea air teased at my gown. My ears began to ache. “My lord?” I asked, impatient to know where we were going.

  He led me down an unmarked corridor to a plain white door. “In here.”

  Suddenly I knew. I almost fell. He had been so casual about the approach—I had no warning. His arm clamped around me like a yoke as he turned the key in the lock.

  My brother looked up at me from darkness. The perforated steel muzzle over his face broke his groan into a thousand little sounds. The smell of diluted bleach and fear-sweat drove me back.

  Hesychast lit the wall sconce. I stood like a corpse, seized by guilt and horror, above my wretched brother.

  “I’ve been giving him therapeutic conditioning,” Hesychast sighed. “But he retreats into delusion. He asks after the rebellion. Have you left Treatymont yet? When will you join him in the north? When will we go to Sieroch, to meet Cattlson in battle? Confronted with unacceptable reality, his mind seeks the last tolerable state it can remember.”

  Olake blinked up at me. Then he whimpered and tried to scuttle back like a crab. The wall stopped his flight and he curled into himself.

  “He’s trapped here,” Hesychast said. “In the moment when he realizes you betrayed him. He comes back to it again and again.”

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “Please?”

  “Please don’t lobotomize him.”

  “Even if it soothed him? Even if it let him love you again?”

  But it would be my fault. It would taint everything else I ever achieved. Olake was my twin and my equal in everything except ruthlessness. The more I did, the more he might have done, if only I hadn’t betrayed him.

  We stood facing each other, Olake huddled between us. “Do I need to reinforce how vital it is that you destroy Baru?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Good. I’m going to take Abdumasi Abd away. A spell recovering in the Metademe would keep him out of the public eye.”

  “My lord, you mustn’t. We require him.”

  “Why?”

  The appalling perfection of Cosgrad by candlelight. After all his experiments, all his voluntary and pampered brides, had any man in all the world ever fathered more children? Dividends of his beauty would pay down generations to come.

  My brother mewled and tried to part the floor with his hands.

  “We can trade him for the information you require, my lord, to finish your work. The Cancrioth do possess a cancer which can be passed from body to body. They do believe that it carries the souls of its past hosts. They want Abd back. We can use Abd to force them to yield a sample, and perhaps the protocol for its reproduction.”

  He slipped. I saw him slip. His broad face remained perfectly impassive, his deep bright eyes calm and considerate: but I saw that living chest heave.

  He hated the idea of losing Abdumasi Abd.

  “Options,” he demanded. “What will you do if the bargain fails?”

  “I have influence upon the Morrow Minister, operating under the name Faham Execarne. He has agents on Cauteria trained in boarding and seizure. We’ll take the Cancrioth ship.”

  “You have control?”

  “He’s my lover.”

  “Good. That man’s a sensualist, and easily mastered by those means. But be careful. He’s also a solipsist, with a solipsist’s willingness to alter the world to suit his whims. He may become impulsive. Be prepared to remove him from the situation.”

  Indicating my brother: “You think I’ll be sentimental?”

  “No. I don’t. But I do think your failure to remove Baru could mean she’s compromised you.” His eyes searched every bone and muscle of my face, ticking them off one by one, inventorying my reaction. “What are the risks of taking the Cancrioth ship by force?”

  “They could destroy themselves. We would lose our chance at a sample, and their knowledge of how to propagate it. Also, there’s danger to the hostages they hold.”

  “Anyone of significance?”

  “The Prince-Ambassador Tau-indi Bosoka.”

  And once more I detected that hitch of shock, and old sorrow. Tau-indi meant something to him, too.

  “Best to keep the Prince-Ambassador alive, if we can. Their death would be an outrage. Will you be able to remove Baru?”

  “I’m quite sure—”

  The bastard knew how to interrupt me, how to make me feel like a serving girl again, jealous and resentful of my power. “No pride, Durance. Just the truth.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ve got her for epilepsy and aberrant identity. We can lobotomize her whenever we please.”

  “Then do it. As soon as she’s played her part.”

  “Your Excellence—”

  “No, Yawa.” He used my name for the first time. “No delays. No clever ideas about how to use her. Renascent is waiting for my protégé to defeat Farrier’s. So defeat her. And if you cannot . . .”

  He did not even need to look at Olake.

  “Yawa?” my brother rasped. “Are we at Welthony? I smell the sea.”

  24

  Men Who Love Girls Kill Women

  You’re not afraid of me?” The duchess clasped her hands round Barhu’s shoulders. “The woman who used you to conquer Aurdwynn?”

  “Not afraid.” Barhu looked down at Ri the way Tain Hu had looked at her: open curiosity and playful menace. The memory helped her smile. “I suspect your husband would scream if he saw us dancing, though.”

  Ri looked away. “He hates you the way anyone would hate you for what you did.”

  “It all feels so long ago,” Barhu admitted. “Not even a year since I saw him last. But so much has happened.”

  “Four years since you and I met. Four years since our last ballroom. The man who introduced us is dead. You worked so hard to build your rebellion, and then to crush it. And while you labored, did you ever remember me?”

  “Of course I did,” Barhu lied. She had been a precious little solipsist back then. “You kissed my hand and gave me a problem to solve, which are two of my greatest delights.”

  “If I tried to kiss your hand now, I think my antlers would gore you.” Her headdress complemented her sharply cut black ball gown, ornamented in emerald, hemmed in cloth of gold. “But I’ve stolen all your credit, haven’t I? In Parliament they are saying that I united Aurdwynn. In Treatymont they are saying, at last we are safe with honest Ri, after lying Baru and her rabid Coyotes.”

  “I did my own work,” Barhu said, stamping on an ember of real nervous attraction, schoolyard desire for the clever older girl’s interest, especially after she insults you, “for the Emperor and the republican people. Not for you.”

  “Not for me?” Wide, innocent eyes looked up at Barhu. “Then why are you dangling these mysterious Oriati traders before me? Why announce access to the Black Tea Ocean and all its riches here, instead of in Falcrest? You were Imperial Accountant, Baru. You know what that kind of trade would do for Aurdwynn. Trade benefits those in the middle most of all. With a connection to the Black Tea Ocean, we’d be more than Falcrest’s lumberyard and olive grove. . . .”

  “The betterment of the Republic betters me.”

  She showed Barhu her teeth. “Don’t be feckless.”

  “It would help my cause”—she guided Ri by her right shoulder blade, fingers firm, through rise and fall, feeling her relax—“if you bought some stock in my new concern, and sent some of your factors to meet with these Oriati traders. It would add a certain legitimacy to the affair.”

  “Is it illeg
itimate, then?”

  “Nothing I do can be illegitimate.” Barhu drew her closer as they turned. Voice lower in the throat, now, husky as you please: “Do you know what I am?”

  “Yes,” she said, soft and calm, “the word went out from Sieroch. You are an agent of the Emperor on Its Throne. You execute the will of the monarch that does not know its own name.”

  “Just so,” Barhu said, and drew away a moment, to flourish and bow. Behold me, the shrike with all the rebels pinned on my thorns, and consider what I may accomplish for you. “Loyal hand of Its Majesty the Faceless Emperor, champion of the commoner, bane of all nobility.”

  “Are you the bane of me?”

  “I would be some things to you,” Barhu said, smiling up from the bow, “but not your bane.”

  “Do you want the same thing as Yawa?” Heia said, sharply. “Are you here to ask for my divorce? I love my husband. Bel’s a good man.”

  “Is he?” Barhu settled her hands back to shoulder blade and waist. On the close pass: “He threatened to report me once. I’m sure you’ve heard the gossip about why.”

  “Baru, you forced him to be your necklace for two years! You killed any prospect of his marriage or advancement! You called him to a duel!”

  “Do you really think my actions to protect myself from harm are the same as his choice to threaten me with circumcision?”

  “No,” Heia admitted, drawing closer, yielding in apology, “no, it’s not the same. You hurt him, but not in a way which justifies that. Nothing does, nothing can. But he was raised a Falcrest man. They have certain fears and fragilities. . . .”

  “Are his feelings more important to you than Aurdwynn’s future?”

  “Obviously not,” Heia snarled, and Barhu thought, you damn fool, she conspired toward her own father’s death, of course her feelings don’t rule her duty.

  “I’m sorry. Your father did his duty to the end.” Barhu let her eyes drift away, to far memory. “He tried to stop my field-general Vultjag’s charge, and we sent our reserves down at him. He was unhorsed. He fought on foot, protecting his banner. He was crying honor the word.”