The Tyrant

by Seth Dickinson

  He’d been manful about it, at first. He’d stood and she’d knelt and he’d touched her toasted-grain curls and the low bones of her cheeks in wonder. But he hated the etiquette of it, the requirement to penetrate but never yield. They ran together, side by side; not above and below. And when at last he knelt she never tried to stop him: although it would woman Svir, and man Pirilong, and throw both of them into danger, for Svir was a Prince of the Mansions, and as his brother kept reminding him, a woman, with or without a womb, could not be a Prince.

  He wondered if he’d see Pirilong again. He wondered if she was still a woman. Or if the Masquerade tide had licked its way up the mountains, and convinced everyone to give up the bad old ways in favor of the bad new.

  Silver reflection caught his eye. Like the bracelet Baru had used to signal him, back in Annalila Fortress. His eyes went by reflex to the light: the glint of steel.

  There was an army camped down there.

  “Oh kings,” Svir breathed. “It’s the fucking Uczenith.” Mansion Hussacht’s ancestral rivals had laid siege to his brother’s throne. And there were no Hussacht jagata to challenge them. They had all gone to war.

  “I was paid to show you this,” Goat Face called. “They had me wait for you, in Vultjag. They told me to bring you here.”

  She’d moved away from him, out of reach of a knife and a lunge. The sun glinted off the smear of yak butter around her cracked lips. “They needed to know if the woman who promised your return was telling the truth.”

  “Oh, I know,” Svir said. “The Uczenith paid you. No hard feelings.” His return would be a victory for his brother, and the Uczenith could not allow that. “You’d better run, now. They’ll kill you, too, when they’ve finished with me.”

  “What procht,” a man called. “Betray our guide? Go back on our word? You are lost to the mansions, Svirakir. Seduced by the world and its low ways.”

  “Better we spare your brother the grief of knowing it,” another man said.

  Four jagata fighters in steel plate rose from their hides among the boulders. They had him squared, one at each compass point: and they were armed with long blades and short triangular stabbing swords. Tunnel-fighting weapons. Masquerade “experts” liked to say they were forged to make triangular wounds, but the truth, as with most things Stakhi, was simpler. The triangular blade gave the sword strength to punch through armor. They would use those blades to crush Svir’s face before they cut him apart.

  “Hello, boys,” he said, smiling at the shadows under their sun visors. “Let me guess what I’ve missed. My return would prove my brother’s a worthy and Necessary king, and you Uczenith can’t have that. So you’ll stab me to death, destroy my face, and throw my pieces down a crevasse. Right?”

  “That’s right,” the first one said. Goat Face had vanished in the scree.

  “I’ve found the legitimate heir to your mansion,” Svir said. “I know who killed Kubarycz the Iron-Browed in single combat.” That made the men halt for a moment, crouching like they felt a tremor in the rock. “It was a man named Tain Hu. Tain Hu, Duke of Vultjag, consort of the rightful Queen of Aurdwynn. He killed Kubarycz and all his heirs. He won the right to rule you. I serve Tain Hu’s house, I serve his queen, and that means I serve the legitimate lord of the Mansion Uczenith. That means I serve your rightful lord. Now you will damn well remember our oaths and listen to me—”

  The jagata looked at each other. Despite their codes of honor, knights were, in Svir’s experience, a lot of thugs, rapists, and brutes. But would they kill a Prince of the Mansions to conceal what had happened to Kubarycz? Were they that craven—

  “Kill him quick,” one of the jagata said.

  “Aye,” the next said.

  “Aye.”

  “Aye.”

  “You people are satires,” Svir snarled, and went for his flare pistol.

  Four longswords rose against him. He would break out north: unarmored, he would be faster climbing the slope, but not much faster. He had seen armored jagata do somersaults and handstands in their plate, and free-climbing rock faces was a basic knightly skill.

  He shot the northern jagata in his armored face, dropped the pistol, and charged.

  The man ducked his head by reflex and took the rocket on his helm. Goat Face was screaming, “Procht! Murder! They’re murdering the Prince! They’re murdering Tain Hu’s Prince!” Svir grinned wildly—so the brigand bitch of Vultjag still lived in her people’s hearts! He should’ve mentioned Tain Hu to Goat Face sooner—

  He brushed past the knight. The cold clean air burnt his throat. For an instant he was a boy again, dashing with Pirilong across the seam in the world where the sky met the earth.

  The jagata got him by the back of the belt.

  The trick knot at Svir’s waist let go and the belt slithered off. The North Knight stumbled back, suddenly off balance. Svir, whirling, drawing, lifted the pointed estoc sword to high ox guard, gripped it halfway down the blade with his left hand, and, with his strong right, thrust the sword into the seam between the knight’s helmet and his collar. There were not many ways to instantly kill a man, and the narrow estoc blade made small deep wounds: but the throat would do.

  But there was no seam. The knight had an armored bevor, one solid piece protecting his neck and jaw, and it stopped even the estoc’s hardened point cold. He grabbed for Svir’s shirtfront—seized it, pulled him close, lifted his own sword for Svir’s stomach—Svir, as he’d been trained, flipped the estoc around, and, gripping it by the midsection and its tip, swung the pommel down like a hammer on the knight’s helmet. The mordstrike left the North Knight dazed, and a dazed tunnel fighter always crouches, gets his guard up, and waits.

  There was no time to fight. Unarmored longsword duels ended in one or two strokes: the first cross and the first, usually fatal, counter. There were four of them and they all had armor so Svir was the only one who would be dying in two strokes here. He tore away and ran. Three jagata came after him, silent but for the actuation of steel. Goat Face was still screaming murder.

  Someone up ahead answered. Svir scrambled up the ridge toward Karakys, and down toward him came a man, a beautiful young Maia cavalryman in leather chaps, his narrow hips and powerful legs scrambling on the scree. “Svirakir!” he cried. “Svirakir, to me!”

  It was either salvation or a trap. Svir, always gambling on trap, jagged north, across the ridgeline, into the wind shadow—

  —and found the West Knight waiting for him, swift on familiar ground.

  The longsword came up off his shoulder and down on Svir like a bar of dawn. He half-sworded the estoc and parried with both hands but the huge longsword smashed the estoc down onto his chest, drove him to his knees. If Svir had not dropped one end of the estoc the West Knight would have simply ground the sword into Svir’s face and neck. As it was the block turned the longsword away to the left—but the bigger blade caught one of the estoc’s parrying spurs and ripped it from Svir’s hands.

  No hesitation. Svir lunged from his knees and tackled the armored man. If he could get his arming sword out, wedge it through the man’s visor—

  The West Knight headbutted him. Steel obliterated sight: Svir lost motor control. An armored gauntlet smashed him in the ear and smote him to the rock. His blood gushed over stone. “Fuck!” he bellowed, and kicked the jagata in the crotch, doing nothing. “Fuck you! Kill me now and the whole world will know! You’ve been seen murdering me! The guide knows it, that man knows it—will you lie? Will you lie, now, about who you killed here? I am a Prince! I am the brother of the Necessary King!”

  The West Knight looked down at him in disgust. Finally, breathing evenly, barely winded, he sheathed his sword. “You live,” he said, “by procht alone.”

  The Maia cavalryman swam into Svir’s wavering vision. “In the name of the King, leave that man be!”

  The four assassins closed their sun visors and marched contemptuously down toward the Uczenith camp. The cavalryman helped Svir to his feet
. “Thanks,” Svir said, beaming bloodily at him. “Shame we didn’t get to fight it out. Would’ve been an interesting matchup. To whom do I owe my continued life?”

  “Ihuake Ro,” he said, grinning back. He was a pretty fuck, wasn’t he? Those folded eyes. “You’re Svirakir? The eunuch’s been promising your arrival. The king had given up all hope of your return. There’s been fighting. Bad fighting. We aren’t ready for winter. He hopes you’ll make a difference.”

  “I see we both have good timing,” Svir panted. “I don’t like last-second reprieves—”

  “Nothing last-second about it,” the cavalier said. “Your brother’s weather-woman Ochtanze gets word from agents in Vultjag. She knew you’d arrive today. We were supposed to meet you downslope, before you were ambushed.”

  “But?”

  “But there was a cave-in. Probably sabotage. Another act of Uzenith, ah”—he pursed his lips around the strange word—“procht. I had to climb up an air shaft.”

  Svir dusted himself off. Mustn’t look disheveled in front of the horseman. “I’ve brought my brother a bride. And a political weapon to make the Uczenith shit their guts out. This matter of their rightful lord.”

  “A bride,” the horseman said. His dark face hardened. “The bride is Heingyl Ri?”

  Svir smiled fixedly at him, mind tunneling, trying to deduce what angle this man Ihuake Ro would take. “Yes. Heingyl Ri, Governor of Aurdwynn.”

  “That madman Dziransi says he had a prophecy. A dream from the hammer.”

  Svir had to laugh. “Did he, now?”

  “Dziransi’s certain that a woman will be brought here. To prove the King’s vengeance is inescapable. You didn’t bring a woman named Baru, did you?”

  “No,” Svir said. “Just myself. And important news. Tell me, Mister Ihuake Ro, what brings you to our high mountains? Anything I can help with?”

  “I am searching for allies to free my ancestral duchy.” Now those cocky brown eyes were wary. “My companion Nayauru Aia makes suit for the king’s hand. I protect her.”

  “Then we both have an interest in preserving the king?”

  “We have interests in the king. They may not be common interests.”

  “Have you thought about going over to those bastards?” Svir suggested, pointing to the shining army in the lake bed, the Uczenith in all their cynical grandeur.

  “Of course not,” Ro snapped. “I know exactly what happens when a Necessary King falls. I’ve never liked thieves, rapists, or tyrants. Your people will be all that to us and more.”

  He was sharp, then. “Are you any good in a fight, Ihuake Ro?”

  The cavalier smiled hungrily. “Better than you, Prince Svirakir.”

  Svir felt the lightning.

  Long ago, in a faraway place, a secret fire had passed through Svir’s body. It had aligned something in him . . . something that thundered in the empty spaces of his mind. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, that palefire leapt within him, and a solution came.

  His brother was at reign’s end. His home mansion was invested by its oldest foe. When his brother was scalped of his crown, the Stakhieczi would run rampant in Aurdwynn until starvation and plague scattered them.

  But the lightning told him that he was not going to die here. The lightning told him that he had a destiny across the farthest sea.

  “I’ll handle the procht and politics,” he said. “There may be some legalities to resolve . . . it may require bloodshed. If it comes to trial by combat, you’ll be my champion.”

  “Champion in what cause, Your Highness?”

  Svir looked up at his brother’s mountain: the mountain of his past. “A marriage,” he said. “The strangest web of marriages you ever did see.”

  He looked around for Goat Face. She was gone. He began to walk uphill, into the katabatic wind. Ihuake Ro sighed and followed him.

  Svir opened his mouth to the cold onrushing air. He began to sing.

  On the lake below, speartips whirled in white sun-tip arcs. The drilling Uczenith phalanxes presented their faces to all sides, surrounded by imaginary foes, surrounded as the Stakhieczi were always surrounded, by drought, by dissent, by white cold death.

  NOW

  I’ve been lobotomized?” she says. “My parents exiled me, and then I was lobotomized? That’s what happened?”

  Cairdine Farrier is weeping. He nods, tries to speak, and makes a sound like a hiccup instead. He has to swallow and wipe his eyes before he can talk.

  “I’m so sorry, Baru. I never wanted this. You made the hard choice about your lover, and you deserved the world for it. Not more . . . not more cruelty. Not more loss.”

  “But I won.” She wrinkles her brow in confusion, in dismay. “It’s not fair. I remember now . . . I found the Cancrioth. I learned all about them. I tricked them into giving up a map . . . we were going to trade with them. The way you traded with Sousward, to bring us into the Imperial Republic. I even tricked them into giving us Abdumasi Abd. I did everything you asked.”

  “You did wonderfully.” Farrier’s fine beard cannot hide his trembling lips, his scowl of fury. “You brought home your goal and more. Yawa failed to retrieve a viable sample of the vile cancer. She should be sent back to Aurdwynn in bottles!” He chokes back his anger. “She failed. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “But this is the Throne, Baru. You made one mistake. You didn’t have leverage to keep Yawa from destroying you. It was petty and vindictive and wasteful, but she knew you were going to win the Reckoning of Ways, destroy her master, and cost her everything.

  “So she lobotomized you.”

  In the straitjacket she can only move her head and her hands. She closes her fists over the carved eels on the armchair’s rests, and pricks her fingers with their teeth. “I had a plan, Mister Farrier, I had a glorious plan . . . a trade concern . . . I was going to set up a trade concern. . . .”

  Farrier falls still. She knows, from watching Svir do it so many times, that he is withdrawing to his place of absolute strength, the foundation of his mind, where he can separate his foolish instincts from the things he needs to do.

  “It can still happen,” he says. “We’ll do it together, Baru. I own twenty entire business concerns, with all their subsidiaries and investments. I would have to pull a stack of files as tall as you are just to remember all the men and women I can influence or possess. I have a fleet of ships with captains who are indebted to me. We’ll go to the Black Tea Ocean. We’ll buy sugar and coffee and tea and spices and fabric and everything else Falcrest wants. We’ll sell shares in our concern so that every would-be tycoon with two children and a nice house buys a ticket for a piece of our wealth. We will go to the Oriati and buy them out and trade them down until they wear the mask. And when Oriati Mbo goes to war with itself—when the Cancrioth calls for our destruction, and the Oriati split between those who fear us and those who need us—we’ll be the ones to save their children from their own savagery. It’s going to work, Baru!”

  His eyes run with a different kind of tears. Like a man looking straight at the sun. Scalded by the power of his vision.

  “Kindalana,” Barhu says.

  Farrier’s eyes narrow. There is a part of him that he cannot open up, an inner overseer who will never join in his grief or in his joy, and it rises from its seat. “What?”

  “She’s your tool, isn’t she? I learned all about her. Kindalana the Amity Prince . . . she’s going to lead the Mbo to Falcrest.”

  “That’s right, Baru. She’s worked her whole life to convince the Oriati to federate, to join the Imperial Republic.” He grins a little, the chiding father amused by his daughter’s rudeness. “But she’s her own woman, Baru. Not my ‘tool.’ ”

  “What about me?” Barhu whispers. “I can’t be your tool. I’m broken now. . . .”

  “No, no, you’re not!” He grips her hands with crushing sincerity. “I’ve been reading about lobotomies. People have survived to lead good lives! Oh, kings, Baru, people
have lived their entire lives with cysts the size of melons in their brains, and no one even knew until their autopsy! You’ll need an aide, someone to help you. Not one of those awful Clarified. A real person. But you can still do figures and watch plays and read books and do everything else a brilliant young woman deserves. And nobody will come after you now. Nobody ever. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

  “Promise?” She grips his hand desperately.

  “I promise,” he whispers. “I really do.” And she knows she has him.

  “How can I help you?”

  He looks down, ashamed of himself. “You don’t need to do anything now, Baru. You’ve done enough.”

  “But I do. I remember. You told me that the doctors said to let me sleep but you had to wake me up. Because you needed to know about the Cancrioth. . . .”

  “You’ve told me of the Cancrioth. How you turned the crew against the Brain and made a deal with the Eye. How you sent them away to open the route for our ships.”

  “No . . . there’s something else. The rutterbook? Do you have the Cancrioth rutterbook?”

  “Xate Yawa says she has it. But never fear. We’ll get it back. Hesychast can’t keep it from me, not if he wants to use it. I’m the one with the ships.”

  “Hesychast . . .” She lets her eyes bulge in their swollen sockets, and her body leap up against the straitjacket. “Hesychast’s won! He won the Reckoning of Ways! Mister Farrier, he’s going to get Renascent’s blackmail files, he’s going to control you!”

  “Not yet. Not yet, Baru.” The absolute calm, the dread excitement, of a man with nothing to lose by his failure and everything to gain by the deft use of his influence and skill. “We can make the case to Renascent that we triumphed. Your education never failed, after all. You kept faithful to me.” A sob of pride, as naked as he has ever been to any other human being. “You were out there all alone with no one to help you. And you remembered your lessons. You could’ve strayed, run off with some woman, bought a ship and gone home to Taranoke to rot away in a coconut-roofed hut. But you did your work, you came home. . . .”