This, he realizes, is why he has been so terrified. Because he already knows. She’s back. She’s going to take his wife away.
“I’m sorry,” Sutra whispered. “I just thought you should know that . . . your wife might be considering a political marriage. To end the invasion, at least, and to give this king an heir. . . . I know it’s royalism, but she comes from a savage land, she might consider it necessary to . . . to disavow your marriage.”
“Stop,” Bel snarls. “I don’t know who put you up to this, but stop!”
She begins to cry. “I’m sorry. The woman dancing with your wife was Baru Cormorant. I think she’s going to marry your wife to the Stakhi king. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Everything terrible in Bel’s life returns in a moment.
Sutra Cane gets up and vanishes into the numb void. When Bel looks up, she’s not there anymore. Much else is missing, too. His mind hungers to chew on itself, the way a wound hungers for a probing finger.
And there it is. As if summoned by his fear. Sitting on his desk.
The nootrope.
It’s not alcohol and it’s not mason dust. In the Faculties they called it Ant Juice, because its discovery involved the mushed corpses of millions of ants. It tastes acrid and it burns hard. If you put it in water and drink it, you feel as if you could recite the whole number line from zero to forever and still have time for brandy before bed.
Ant Juice helps you do work that will make your important governor wife happy when she comes home from whatever the fuck she won’t tell you about.
Suddenly Bel has the bottle in his hands.
Ant Juice also drives people lust-mad, or at least that was the rumor in the Faculties, though at the time Bel just found it made him supremely anxious. He was afraid to jerk off because of what had happened to Roreigh, so he never tried. The one time he’d used Ant Juice before going to bed with Heia she’d begged him to stop, because he just kept going and going without result.
Cuckold.
No, idiot. She actually loves you. You know that.
But that wouldn’t stop her from cuckolding you for aristocratic politics, would it?
Just focus, Bel, focus on the fucking work—
With a snarl of rage he tips too much Ant Juice into his coffee and takes a sip. It tastes awful. He likes that. Images of his diminutive, easily manhandled wife wrapped around huge pale monster men appear to him. Her head thrown back in the throes of a passion that reveals itself, like bruises on fruit, under hard and grasping hands.
But the awful taste of the Ant Juice will condition these thoughts away. Baru’s notes are suddenly clear. Is this how she feels all the time? Arrogant and perfect?
He snaps his quill. He reaches for another, and takes a sip of coffee. He cycles through this process. Broken quill. Sip of coffee.
“Doorman,” he calls.
“Sir?” the man says, through the door.
“Did my wife leave word as to when she’d return?”
An eternity splits that request from the doorman’s reply. Bel can tell because he’s gotten so much done. “I’m sorry, Your Excellence,” the doorman calls. “Word’s just in, actually, that she is going on to the north shore, and will not return for some days.”
“I see,” Bel says. His coffee’s empty. That means he drank all the Ant Juice. “I see. In company with those Stakhieczi, I suppose!”
“Sir, why are you shouting?”
“I’m not shouting!” Bel screams.
“Sir, that woman Sutra Cane . . . she told me that you were very upset with Her Grace—that is Her Excellence, the Governor, sir. She said you called her a liar and a royalist whore.”
“Did she?” Had he said that? He couldn’t remember. “How indiscreet.”
“So it’s true, sir? You’re upset with Her Excellence the Governor? You called her a whore?”
“Why would you care?”
“Because I am her armsman, sir, and I defend her in all matters, including those of the household, sir.”
Bel laughs. “Don’t you start with the insinuations. My wife is my wife. She doesn’t need you to protect her from me.”
“I haven’t insinuated anything, sir. I’ve only asked—”
He seems to be saying whatever comes to mind, because all his thoughts are so clear and forcefully cogent he cannot stop them from running to their conclusion. “Whatever you two got up to before I courted her, it’s in the past, understand?”
“Sir,” the doorman says, in what Bel thinks of as the Aurdwynn Stiff, a tone of mild but unyielding threat, “I took an oath to her father. I helped raise her.”
“Well, her father’s dead, isn’t he?” Bel finds it oddly relaxing to taunt the man even as he keeps on with the letter. Why is he writing a letter? Because he’s working. The chatter coming out of his mouth is just an accessory to getting the work done. “Poor dumb bastard finally got a real spear up his ass, huh?”
“Sir.”
“And you care whether I call her a whore? Are you used to defending her from such accusations?”
“Sir, you mustn’t.”
“I really don’t care if she is,” he says, jauntily. “I understand the culture’s different, if you don’t bleed out a bastard by the time you’re sixteen you’re probably infertile—”
“Sir.”
He recognizes, distantly, that he has had too much Ant Juice after too long off the stuff, and that he is undergoing some sort of catastrophic reaction. How the fuck did the Ant Juice get on his desk? He poured his entire personal supply into the Horn Harbor, months and months ago, when Heia asked him to be rid of it.
“Sir,” someone’s saying, from inside the room, how is the doorman inside the door—Bel catches up on a queue of delayed stimuli, the smash of the door opening too hard, the huge man throwing his huge shadow, the stink of sweat under leathers. “Sir, you’re not well.”
Bel grins toothily at the man. He remembers this distinctly from The Manual of the Somatic Mind. Territorial challenge. Dogs. Stand your ground. The dominant male.
“Get the fuck out,” he says, “you motherfucker.”
“Don’t talk about my mother,” the doorman says: he does not understand the idiomatic usage of the word, he thinks he’s been accused of incest.
“Why shouldn’t I? You’re happy to talk about my wife.”
The man is breathing hard. “It’s just that you mustn’t say such things about the Duchess Heingyl. Especially as you’re a foreigner. It’s not right to call people whores. It’s not safe. The Judiciary could become involved. The hygiene courts.”
“Why,” Bel repeats, “shouldn’t I talk about your mother? Is something wrong with her?”
“Your fucking people took my mother away!”
“Whores get bores,” Bel says, out of mad self-destructive self-loathing, and pushes his finger into his brow above his eye, where the lobotomy pick goes.
The man makes a mad dog sound. Bel sees a reflection on sharp steel. Then the reflection disappears, somehow, into Bel’s chest. Bel thinks, with the clarity of Ant Juice, that the Aurdwynni are a culture of honor, that insults may truly be mortal, that he can’t wait for Heia to come back and set all this right, oh, Heia, how he misses—
30
Send Bru
What a pitiful sight.” Yawa swept her spyglass over the Cancrioth boats struggling down the bay. “Hardly immortal for much longer, I should think.”
“You’d be pitiful, too, if you’d been on water rations and pump shifts for weeks.” Barhu turned to wave to her parents, who were waiting with the village shieldbearers. “Bring up the casks!”
“I’d rather keep them thirsty until we have a bargain,” Yawa grumbled. “I’d make them pay for every drop.”
“Believe me, these aren’t the people you need to wring dry. You’ll know those when you meet their leader.”
“The Brain. If she’s so all-frozen important, then where is she?”
The moment Iritain had signaled that they were ready to
receive shore parties, Eternal began to launch barges. At first the crowds packed aboard had frightened Barhu: was it an attack? But then she’d seen the Eye, waving a white cloth from the bow of the first boat. A warning against death. He was bringing in his weak, his helpless.
“He’s a snail man,” the elephant-faced matai said, in bemusement. “Are they all snail men?”
“He’s very worried about his people dying,” Solit added thoughtfully. “For an immortal.”
“Of course he is,” Yawa said. “If one of his people dies here, who’ll be strong enough to receive their Line?”
“So sensitive to the foreign faith,” Barhu teased.
“I am a Jurispotence.”
“And a religionist.”
“Hush. That’s a secret.”
An old idea returned to Barhu. “Do you really believe that Himu”—the ilykari virtue associated with energy, excess, and cancer—“was a member of the Cancrioth?” Hesychast had proposed that Himu might have been named for a historical figure named Hayamu raQù.
Yawa laughed harshly. “Not for a moment. The Throne likes to see conspiracies everywhere. The real world never fits together so well.” She made the Incrastic handwashing sign against evil, and then reached into her purse. She had an onion in there. She kept touching it, for Aurdwynni luck.
“What’s got you squirming?” Barhu asked.
The old Jurispotence nodded to the arriving barges. Village shieldbearers waded out to bring cups of water to heat-struck Cancrioth. “Dehydrating people bleed a lot. Cracked lips, cracked skin, open sores. . . .”
“You think the Brain would send Kettling in one of them?”
“We can’t know. From the moment those people come ashore, we’ve got to treat this entire village as a potential outbreak. No one can leave unless they go straight into quarantine.”
“So we’re trapped here.”
“So we are,” Yawa said.
Durance, Barhu remembered, meant imprisonment.
Yawa had arrived two chimes into forenoon watch, on a heavy bank carriage from Annalila Fortress. She’d passed Iscend Comprine the night before, running back to Annalila Fortress on foot, like some ancient messenger carrying word of battle. “Did you drive her off?” she asked Barhu.
“No,” Barhu said, defensively. “I don’t think so. I—It’s complicated. Did you bring Kimbune and Abd?”
“Yes. They’re in the back.” Yawa lowered her voice. “Helbride’s away. Set out back upwind to Aurdwynn yesterday. Svir sends, and I quote, ‘best wishes for the negotiations, and his most affectionate Fuck Yourself.’ ”
How fickle the heart could be: here she stood in a village full of her parents and her people, and yet Helbride’s departure felt like leaving home.
“I’m glad to hear he’s still himself.” She frowned at the carriage vault: “You did remember to leave air holes, I hope?”
Yawa’s marines pulled the locking bars back and swung the portable vault open. Abdumasi Abd’s mold-spotted face came groaning out of the gap. “Water! No, not your poisoned canteens, I want fresh well water. Principles, first you won’t feed me, now I can’t get a drink.”
Barhu helped the merchant down from the sweltering interior. He had been on a purely liquid diet, to clean his intestines out before surgery. “You’ll see Tau today,” she told him, hoping she wasn’t telling a lie. “Though I can’t promise they’ll be happy to see either of us.”
Abdu stared up into the first free sky he’d seen in months. “It’s not up to us to decide how they think. Trust them to make the choice. I’ve heard people call Tau naïve; even other Princes. But I have never, ever known anyone to influence Tau’s judgment of character. That’s what makes Tau so strong. They always get to the truth of you, whether you like it or not.”
“Barhu!” Kimbune leapt down from the carriage with excitement shining in her eyes. “He’s in there! I showed him my proof. I showed him everything. I know Undionash took root. He’s really in there.”
“Mzu’s waxing buttocks,” Abdumasi muttered. “I’ve got to take a piss.”
She pointed Abdumasi to a claypit and went over to Kimbune. “Your husband’s in Abd?”
“Yes!” Kimbune preened with satisfaction. “He didn’t believe a word of it!”
“You’re satisfied that your husband’s soul survives in Abdumasi Abd because . . . he doesn’t believe your proof?”
“Stubbornly, irrationally, against the clearest mathematical evidence! If he were just the merchant Abdumasi, wouldn’t he be simply baffled? But he argued every word of it! It must be him!”
Barhu couldn’t resist prodding at her faith. The possibility of immortality was just too intriguing to leave untested. “Did you ask him to tell you something that Abdumasi couldn’t possibly have known?”
“It’s not like that. Abdumasi was never taught to reach my husband’s memories, so of course he can’t remember me. What he’s got is my husband’s soul.”
“His soul.”
“Yes! His way of being! His stupid, stupid inability to see that I’m right about this!”
Barhu was about to scoff. And then she thought, why, I’ve never asked my illusion of Hu to tell me anything that only Hu could’ve known. Because I know it’s not really Hu.
Aren’t I, though?
You never knew the real Hu;
you knew your mind’s own awareness of her.
Does it matter if that awareness
comes from within or from without
if one is true to the other?
What I carry is the image I’ve made of Hu, my record of her beliefs and the method of her choices. It’s the law of being Hu: and that is enough for me to carry and to tap for strength.
Isn’t that a soul?
“Kimbune,” she said, “I believe you.”
The Brain did not appear. Negotiations did not begin.
The sun rolled past the zenith, inspecting every shadow for secrets.
There was no sign of the hostages. Not Tau, not Aminata, not Enact-Colonel Osa.
Some of the Eye’s people, restored by water and kind treatment, began to wander cautiously into the market. Canvas awnings had been pitched on the riverside green; Heingyl Ri’s factors waited alongside old Taranoki traders to haggle. Water was free—Barhu and her parents had insisted on that—but everything else was up for sale. The Taranoki offered coffee and tapa cloth, canvas and glass, mirrors, finished telescopes, polished stones, salt, sugar, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, Masquerade fiat notes and traditional reef pearl. Heingyl Ri’s factors had brought samples of their goods to Cauteria to impress merchants: fine-spun wool, pine, planks of redwood both coastal and northern, horseshoes, toasted grain, barrels of flour, spear and arrow points, sword blades, cotton and hemp, mint, tin mugs and pots, huge jars of olive oil, mason leaf, hard cow cheese, silphium.
But the Eye’s people had nothing to barter. They huddled by the shore in little knots and took wary turns visiting the toilets. They did not trade.
“When you suggested a trade concern to reach the distant parts of Oriati Mbo with Aurdwynn,” Yawa murmured, “did you ever consider that the Oriati might not want to trade?”
“Uncle!” Barhu called. “Bring out the food!”
The smell of fresh coconut, roast pork, and salt-cooked pineapple began to stir the Oriati. The Eye sent a barge out to Eternal and it returned with baskets of gold, silver, electrum, gems, thunderbolt iron, medallions of jade, ebony and teak, whale ivory, rubber, resin, myrrh, knotted codices, polished chunks of amber, huge barrels of dried tea, whittled figurines of people and of abstract geometrical shapes, bracelets and necklaces and pectorals and torcs. One Cancrioth sailor hauled up an entire bag of his lovingly patterned penis gourds.
After that there was no keeping the three nations from each other. Many of the Cancrioth monks did not know quite how to value their treasure. Barhu saw one cassocked woman buy a banana with a platinum chip.
Barhu brought Abdumasi Abd out
of his house and sat him down on a bench to watch. “Once,” she said, sitting beside him, “there were no chairs except thrones. Everyone else in the world sat on benches.”
“And you wouldn’t know it, if not for the histories we kept. What am I supposed to see here?” He was putting on his exhausted old man act. “A bunch of Oriati being defrauded?”
“Trade,” Barhu said, in delight. The whole mess made her want to leap up with a fistful of pebbles and a liar’s grin and go conduct some arbitrage. Trade was a better annealment than alcohol, a sweeter invitation than beauty. You could trade with an octopus, you could haggle with someone who didn’t speak your language. Just look at the things on the table between you, and search for that common place, the notch of agreement, where both sides feel they are getting the better deal, and both are right.
This was how to make a world out of different people. Not Incrasticism. Let them meet and see what they have to offer each other. And if someone tries to take it: all together, stop them.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” Abdu sighed.
“The bazaar? Well, it’s a sideshow to the real negotiations, of course. Once I have my concern in place and monopolized—”
“Not your bazaar. This whole charade. Your pretense that you’re some bright young entrepreneur looking to make her way in the world. We both know you’re an agent of the Throne. We both know what you’re doing. Trying to make me give up my trade contacts, my ports, my routes, my rutterbooks. You’re thinking, why, these Oriati, they do everything by personal association. I’d better bring Abdu over to my side. Make him my personal associate. Then he’ll give me his friends, and they’ll give me their friends, and before you know it we’ll be sailing into far Oriati ports grinning like sharks. Falcrest wins.”
He thought this was another extension of his imprisonment. Another clever game. “It would be worth setting all this up,” she admitted, “to get us into the Black Tea Ocean. It would be worth using an entire island as a theater. Maybe even worth risking the spread of the Kettling.”
His bloodshot eyes widened. His mold-stained brow furrowed till it seemed to crack. “The Kettling? What do you mean?”
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