The Traitor Baru Cormorant_The Masquerade

by Seth Dickinson

  “That’s kind of you.” Pinjagata gestured with his right hand and the phalanx behind him raised spears and began to split. “Glad you weren’t Nayauru. Damned if I know what I would’ve done. Probably had to arrest her on some invented charge, and then her stallions Autr and Sahaule would’ve started another fucking civil war, which I’m damn well tired of winning. You kill the duke, that’s fine and good, that’s war, but then his relatives start vowing revenge and you’ve got to kill them all too. Personally, I’ve never felt easy about strangling some second cousin who hasn’t even seen his balls drop, you know? But I suppose that’s why Ihuake’s got the dynasty and all the cows, and I don’t. A certain ruthlessness. You ever had to kill anyone in the course of your duty? Someone cheat you on taxes, default on a loan, the like? I imagine they’d give the purse to a real killer, if the last two died.”

  “Mm. A compelling theory.” Baru signaled for her guard to bring up her own mount and the carriage. “Aren’t Ihuake and Nayauru allies?”

  “Ah, don’t ask me. They’re both simmering—something about inheritance, or grazing land, or fresh water, or becoming queen. It’s all beyond me. I just plan campaigns.” Pinjagata clapped her on the shoulder. “Safe travels!”

  * * *

  LAPETIARE sailed before Baru returned.

  She found Muire Lo waiting at his desk, official correspondence stacked to his left and a single letter sealed in red naval wax filed to his right. “Lieutenant Aminata?” she asked, unbuttoning her coat.

  “Gone, Your Excellence. Lapetiare has sailed for Falcrest. Your coat—”

  She’d meant the letter, and almost snapped the clarification at him. But if it were Aminata’s, he would have understood, so it couldn’t be. She hadn’t written. Baru ignored his offer and kept the coat to fold, just so that she would have something to do with her hands and eyes.

  Aminata gone, Lapetiare’s marines gone. Xate Yawa and Tain Hu working toward their endgame. And Baru had only Muire Lo to stop them, to satisfy Cattlson, to earn her way to Falcrest and the salvation of Taranoke.

  “There was some unrest in your absence, Your Excellence.” Muire Lo, stumbling over her sudden cold, fussed with the papers on his desk. “A number of riots, several local functionaries arrested on charges of sedition and conspiracy, temples to the ykari Wydd and Devena uncovered and dispersed. And a number of requests for audience, which I’ve recorded here. Duke Lyxaxu in particular seems eager to discuss philosophy.”

  “Have you hired a staff for me?”

  “No, Your Excellence, although I’ve gathered suitable candidates. Jurispotence Xate’s office has yet to return any of my requests for social review.”

  She tapped the sealed letter. “What about the letter from Cairdine Farrier you’re holding there? Do you already know what it says?”

  It came out harsher than she’d meant. Or had it? How could she have meant that as anything but an accusation?

  Muire Lo sat back down behind his desk, eyes on his hands, and made a visible effort to say something both decorous and honest. He did this for long enough to make himself flush, and then pushed the letter across the desk to her, the unbroken seal framed between his long fingers.

  “He’s gone now, I presume.” Baru took the letter from the desk, judging its weight (light) and quality (diamond fold, marble cream paper, choice naval wax). “Which means that you’ll need to become more talented at slipping your reports to him, because if I find one, I’ll have no way to avoid sacking you. Is that understood?”

  She didn’t expect the eruption that followed. Maybe it had been building while she was gone, while Muire Lo, left alone to manage her business in a city tearing itself apart around him, sat in her cold tower and made excuses for her. Maybe her careless impropriety left him no choice but to lash back.

  It was a slow, purposeful outburst, delivered in silent gesture. He opened a door of his desk, hinges creaking, and (eyes appropriately downcast all the while) drew out a book, the Stakhi woodsman’s book, the book that had earned him the bruises that still marked his neck. Page by page he leafed through it, licking his finger deliberately, reading nothing, until he found the last page with any writing on it at all. Then he set the book down on the desk, open to the place—Baru could not read it, of course, but nonetheless—where the man had surely recorded: she went upstairs with the sailor, into the brothel.

  “A canny politician would certainly have kept careful track of such a potentially compromising item,” he said. “Especially with the city in such a fevered state.”

  Baru took the book, snapped it shut, tucked it under her arm, and then—after a moment’s silent regard—gave Muire Lo a nod of gratitude, of acknowledgment.

  “Of course,” she said. “We can be sure of the loyalties of so few.”

  He stood and opened the door to her inner office, bowing at the waist. She touched his shoulder on the way in, her throat warm, her mind working. The notebook could have gone with Cairdine Farrier, on to Falcrest, to her permanent file. But it was here.

  She could trust him.

  Or Farrier could have left it for Muire Lo, so that he could use it to buy her confidence.

  Muire Lo cleared his throat. “Was your trip to Vultjag productive?”

  “Thoroughly.” She set out her ink pots across her desk. “You’ll be interested to know that all those ilykari priests the Jurispotence has been sentencing to death are using their final days to print counterfeit fiat notes for Tain Hu. She’s selling her estate to her serfs in order to launder the forged notes onto her books.”

  The secretary stared at her for a moment. “I am interested to know that. Should I arrange a meeting with the Jurispotence?”

  “No, there’s nothing to be done. Xate Yawa is part of the arrangement, she owns the prisons, and at the first sign of discovery she’ll bury the proof.” She unlocked the drawer and found her master book. “We need to map out the connections. Tain Hu already has the money she needs, but in order to make a rebellion she has to spend it.”

  “I’ll find the books of grain merchants and smiths.”

  “Good. And get me an urgent appointment with Cattlson.” Baru frowned. “Tain Hu may have something more direct in mind.”

  The letter was from Cairdine Farrier, as she had suspected. It said only this:

  Order is preferable to disorder.

  Remember the Hierarchic Qualm.

  I am not their only agent.

  You are not the only candidate.

  * * *

  GOVERNOR Cattlson’s hunting expedition with Duke Heingyl had done him well. “Your Excellence!” He swept out a chair for her. “Returned to us at last, and the whole city clamoring to meet you. Heingyl insists you will undermine and betray me—he’s very insistent!—but I suspect he’s simply jealous that we’ve found a wit to rival his daughter, Ri. You, boy, bring us mineral water and then lock the door. Governor’s business.”

  Time to make her case. To prove her value as an instrument of the Mask. Outside the great window she could see the color of sails in the harbor mist.

  As Cattlson bustled about, boasting of the stag he’d taken and the experimental marriages he’d arranged—“For improved endurance in the forests, I think it best to mix only northern bloodlines, diluting out the rest”—she opened her chained purse and drew out the map she’d made.

  “What’s this?” Cattlson frowned down at the table.

  “This is the conspiracy to raise Aurdwynn in rebellion.” She’d worn her whitest gloves, to make the act of tracing the web more striking. “It begins here, in Treatymont. Jurispotence Xate Yawa cracks down on the ykari cults, giving the imprisoned ilykari priests reason to cooperate with the rebellion. Tain Hu’s agents, quietly overlooked by the Jurispotence, use the ilykari and their artistic talents to forge Imperial fiat notes of unsurpassed quality.” She touched Treatymont, the roads north, and then Vultjag. “The notes are moved to Duchy Vultjag, where they are laundered into Tain Hu’s accounts through transactions
with her own serfs: she sells her property to them for a pittance, then pretends they’ve paid her enormous sums in return. While the other duchies sink deeper and deeper into debt to the Fiat Bank, Tain Hu accumulates her war fund—”

  Governor Cattlson put his ramming-prow chin in his hands and sighed. Baru, expecting horror, stumbled to a halt.

  “I don’t mean to steal your sailing wind.” He smiled gently, a paternal expression, trying to cushion her against everything he thought she didn’t understand. “It’s a clever little story. Perhaps it’s even true. I know Xate Yawa permits certain indiscretions, where she thinks it best—and I overlook those indiscretions, just as she overlooks mine. Perhaps there’s a counterfeiting scheme in the Treatymont prisons. Perhaps that brigand bitch Tain Hu profits from it. But it doesn’t point to rebellion.”

  Baru felt like a diving bird meeting an unexpected sandbar. “Aren’t you going to ask for proof?”

  “You’re Cairdine Farrier’s favorite, and I know what he likes. I’m sure you’ve proven everything in triplicate.”

  “Money is the blood of rebellion.” She tried to make herself take up more room, to look big and broad-shouldered like one of his damnable hunting companions, like something he took seriously. “Money is the only thing Tain Hu needs to turn this tinderbox into a—”

  Governor Cattlson laughed at her. He tried, visibly, to stop himself, but laugh he did. “You’re an accountant. Talented, eager, of course, but—surely you see how that could slant your perspective? Even if Tain Hu has made herself rich, what of it? She still needs to buy weapons, find loyal armsmen, and provision her army. It’ll take years, and in that time her neighbors, Oathsfire and Lyxaxu, jealous and wary, will come whispering to us. Even if she suborns them as well—and I won’t deny, Your Excellence, that money can sway a mind just as well as wine or secrets—we have spies to watch them. I mean, come now! We’re the Masquerade. We won’t be taken unaware.”

  She wanted to scream at him, and the urge made her think of Diline, the social hygienist at her school, and what he had said: it is a scientific fact, an inevitable consequence of the hereditary pathways that have shaped the sexes … the young lady is given to hysteria.…

  Or had that been Cairdine Farrier?

  “She can use her money to destroy you and everything you’ve tried to build,” she insisted, quiet, thin-lipped, speaking more from pride than hope of getting through. “The Federated Province of Aurdwynn will slip from Falcrest’s grasp. Parliament will not have its fortress or its riches. You will be held responsible.”

  She would lose her road forward.

  Cattlson sat back, exasperation unconcealed now. “You’re so sure there’s a rebellion coming. You’ve snatched this whisper out of the air and made it your own temple and creed. But you have no sense of history. The dukes of Aurdwynn have been fighting each other for centuries, Cormorant. Nine years ago they tried to revolt, and they still remember our reply. We’ve given them an excuse to rebuild, ride their estates, hunt their forests, and sate their lusts. We are not so harsh on them—surely you’ve heard Duchess Nayauru bragging of her lovers? Hardly hygienic, but she still rules half the Midlands. We’ve given the people safe roads and the promise of inoculation. Even a blind man could smell the ways we’ve made their lives better. Why would they rebel?”

  He thought she understood nothing but coin, that she’d neglected the rest. And perhaps he was right—surely, thinking rationally, she had to consider that he might be right. He was older, more experienced, selected for merit and ability, and from Falcrest as well, the seat of all knowledge—

  No. She had learned from Tain Hu, of politics and of defiance. “The Jurispotence uses harsh tactics to suppress their faiths. We dictate their marriages and customs, we tax their lords and they pass those taxes on to their serfs. You said it yourself: they live hard lives. These are all reasons.”

  The corners of Cattlson’s lips told her that he took a certain pleasure in correcting her naiveté. It was not vindictive, exactly. Perhaps it was satisfaction, or relief that he did, after all, have things to teach this savant girl. “The Jurispotence does what is necessary to satisfy her more zealous overseers back in Falcrest. What if we suppress their faith? What does it matter? No one cares about the old books except the ilykari and their acid-stained congregations. The people want beer, medicine, meat, and games, and if we offer those we can ask a little Incrastic discipline in exchange.”

  It would be better to withdraw now. Regroup and reconsider. But he had spoken down to her.

  She pushed her map at him, her web of transaction and sedition. “Your Excellence, I—I exhort you to consider the position of the people with respect to—” She gave up on presenting it academically. “The people of Aurdwynn have been kept like cattle. Taught to love their duke and fear everything past the horizon. You told me yourself that the Masquerade does not fear the discontent of the people, it fears the discontent of their lords. When the rebellion comes, the people will follow the nobility.”

  He waved her away. “Your disregard for the common people of Aurdwynn troubles me. This is a land built on the ruins of three different cultures, complex and divided. The dukes cannot unite their people—”

  She was on her feet now, fists on the table, leaning halfway across. “The dukes don’t rebel because they’re all enormously in debt to the Fiat Bank, to me! They owe me their prosperity! They draw loan after loan just to keep up with each other. I could call that debt tomorrow and destroy them, but if Tain Hu uses her counterfeit liquidity to buy up their debt—if I try to call the debt, and Tain Hu bails them out—do you understand?”

  Cattlson huffed. “You can buy debt?”

  “You can buy anything! Tain Hu doesn’t need to raise an army or hire a spearmaker! She can buy the other Duchies themselves, Nayauru and Ihuake and the whole Midlands with all their armsmen and all their cavalry, Radaszic with all his olive fields and grain that feeds us here.” She put her closed fist down on the coast, white glove on black ink. “Once she’s bought up their debt, she’ll hold the controlling stake in their wealth, not me—and instead of racing each other for paper loans to keep their commoners and landlords happy, she’ll have them buying gold, grain, and spears. She’ll subvert our own economic system to prepare Aurdwynn for revolt.”

  He sighed. “But now you know that her money’s counterfeit. So you won’t let her buy anything.”

  “She laundered it into her books. Xate Yawa will back the transaction. Xate Yawa will refuse to prosecute on any of this. I can’t stop Vultjag without your help. She’ll be me, you understand? She’ll be the new Fiat Bank!” She hammered on the map. “She’ll make herself rich, she’ll offer them wealth and freedom, and they’ll all rebel. They’ll have us bottled up in Treatymont within the year. Any relief from Falcrest will either need to come overland—and you know they’ll drop the bridges at the river Inirein—or risk the winter storms at sea. We won’t last that long!”

  Cattlson looked as if he had just discovered a terrible problem right in his lap. For a moment she thought she might have convinced him of the danger. But no: it was just his realization that she would make his life complex and miserable. He’d liked her better when she was just a girl with a purse and no ear for riding innuendo.

  She found herself expecting to hear: “Is it true that you spent the last fortnight out in Vultjag?”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. He had a good smile, open and happy; he looked like a man who preferred to smile, whenever his life allowed him. “Why don’t you assemble a case, and you can present it at the next meeting of the Governing Factors, where we can all evaluate your warnings fairly.”

  Where Xate Yawa, alerted by Tain Hu, would be waiting to make a mockery of her, destroying her authority before she’d ever properly exercised it.

  She left the map on the table when she departed. On her way out she passed Cattlson’s secretary, carefully watering a glass of wine.

  “He’ll be in a foul mood,
” she warned him. He raised the glass in thanks.

  * * *

  WHAT to do now?

  There was a preposterous amount of work to be done, an appalling amount. Even with the Fiat Bank’s records—which she would have to review in great detail, trusting no other eye—she still needed to request copies of the master book from every individual duchy, then cross-reference and hunt down every discrepancy. And every day she spent on that work left the daily business of the Imperial Accountant piling up: preparations for tax season, rates and structures to modify, request after request after request from merchants and duchies and the Fiat Bank to review one policy of Olonori’s, or another of Tanifel’s. Would she continue to demand this milling fee or forbid that river tariff?

  Not with a staff of a hundred and a sleepless year could she bring this under control. And her meeting with Cattlson had left her too angry to work. After a while she gave up, set her gnawed pen down, and rang Muire Lo in.

  “Your Excellence?” He peered around the door.

  “Do you duel?”

  “Not with you, Your Excellence!”

  The incident with the woodsman’s book had made him brave. It might not be wise to like it. She liked it anyway. “I’ve had enough of this. Get the wine and sit. There are questions I should’ve asked you by now.”

  He poured with deft efficiency, hesitated, sat. “You’ll want to know if I have a family, I expect. Whether there’s anyone I need to find.”

  She tucked her legs beneath her and took the offered glass. “Astute.”

  “I’ve made a few inquiries. A visit or two. But by and large, I’ve found the results…” He drank, a short draw and incurious swallow. “If my family misses anyone, it’s the boy they lost to Falcrest. Not the man they got back.”

  “They don’t recognize you.”

  “That’s the intent of Masquerade education, isn’t it?” He shrugged, eyes averted. “To remake.”