The Monster Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  “Well,” she said, archly, “the bird is always plain about what it wants, so it’s welcome in my court. Tell me, Mister Torrinde, if you’re here to examine me, what do you see? A woman fit only for farming, fishing, and pleasure?”

  He clasped his hands at the small of his back: chest out, chin up, hips cocked. He didn’t blink. His mask was the brown of Falcresti flesh, rimmed in Aphalone script, words from the Manual of the Somatic Mind: with discipline of the body comes discipline of the soul. Wait. No. That wasn’t from any Falcresti manual—that was an Aurdwynni saying, an ilykari saying. Why would he write that on his mask?

  “I see a cryptarch without a hostage,” he said. “I had my Clarified vet your relationship with Tain Hu. She seemed very dear to you.”

  Baru made a little wobbling scale with her hand: dear-ish.

  He sighed and puffed out his cheeks. “I was afraid this might happen.”

  “You were afraid I’d obey the law?”

  “I was afraid you’d obey your upbringing rather than your nature, yes.” His left fist curled minutely. Was he left-handed? Was he thinking of Farrier, just then? “Well, if you’ll permit it, I’d like to examine you. I’m sure you know the Physician’s Qualm?”

  “I do.” The flesh of the people is the body of the Republic. The care of the flesh is the care of the Republic. Neither by injury nor by neglect may I allow the Republic to come to harm.

  “Will your throne room serve as an examining space?”

  “Here? I thought—” She stumbled. “A cellar, perhaps, or a private room?”

  “Not at all, my lady Agonist. Here is best. I want you comfortable and confident.”

  He wanted to bring his instruments and authorities into the space of her power. Clever.

  When she glanced to the left, and he fell onto her right, then she saw him without seeing. She saw a slab of meat beaten on a sizzling forge, and the hammer was a human fist.

  * * *

  IT was the strangest exam she’d ever taken.

  “Strip as far as you’re comfortable,” he said. “I do autopsies, humane vivisections, clinics and examinations of every sort. Please let me assure you there is nothing taboo or shocking to me. You will be exactly as interesting as a fine watch.”

  With tape and compass he measured her reach and flexibility. With stinging unguent and scraping trowel he tested the reactions of her skin and tongue. Could she taste this plant? How long could she hold her breath: would she demonstrate. Now would she catch her breath, and read this sentence, Souswardi people are from the island called Sousward, and hold her breath again? Interesting. What happened to your gumline, there? A fish bone cut you? You must be more careful, infections of the mouth are a hazard to your race, as your teeth and gums have softened on a diet of fruit and southern fish. Are your menses regular? Do you depilate, and if so, have you observed any rashes or acne as a result? Do you believe the female coital paroxysm serves a purpose, or is it purely of hedonic value? Do you ever experience a hemorrhage of will, especially when trying to get out of bed? How often do thoughts of self-negation occur to you when you see a great height? Or a knife? Or a body of water?

  “No,” she said, too quickly. “I never consider suicide. That would hardly be useful.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. The Oriati Emotional Disease often strikes new cryptarchs.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An excess of feeling and care,” he said. “It consumes the intellect.”

  The light was good for drawing. He had prepared his examining space with an artist’s care: first he’d arranged an apparatus of mirrored dishes and whale-oil lights around her, then soaped and rinsed his hands, donned thin membranous gloves, and stared into a candle-flame for ten seconds while breathing smoothly. He took all his notes in angular shorthand, writing with a sterile stylus on thick soft white paper.

  “Your wound.” He tapped his temple. “Let’s talk about it. You were struck on the right side? And it’s also your right side that’s blind?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s very unusual!” His enthusiasm was boyish, and admittedly charming; he even rose up a bit as he spoke. “You see, we can sometimes induce hemineglect by insulting the tissue of the brain, but it almost always occurs on the contralateral side of the body—that is, the side opposite the wound. And almost always the blindness is to the left. But your wound is ipsilateral, and also on the right.…”

  She was irritated that he seemed to have no bad habits: he didn’t chew his nails, bite his lips, curl his hair, or slouch.

  “Well,” he said, softly, “a very unusual wound. Let’s proceed with the body of the test, then. Iscend! Iscend, come in here, please!”

  A terror entered Baru’s throne room.

  Later Baru would (through guilty indulgence of gaze and imagination) pare Iscend down into more specific strengths and marvels, so as to quantify, and hopefully resist, her forbidding and devastating effect. But in that moment Iscend Comprine entered the room like one long golden brushstroke, like a swimmer stretching in the sun.

  She was Clarified, born by the Metademe’s breeding plan, conditioned for service. Baru knew it instantly. She moved with a graceful inevitability as if falling into her own future. She was shorter than Baru, and slimmer, but not less present. Over the garment of her body she wore a black ankle-length sherwani coat with an interior pattern of striking green and blue diamonds, unbuttoned from the waist down and split for agility: she had the delicate athletic power of a pinstep dancer. Tain Hu would have sneered at Iscend, of course, Hu never gave a shit for anyone who walked like a performance. But there was a certain, ah, fetishistic interest in a woman whose every movement had been choreographed—

  No! Look at the woman’s face, her face alone. Fix it in your memory: she is a person. Cheekbones like a mountain fox, prominent and deeply angled. Eyes as level as a calm sea, medial-folded amber marvels: what the poets called honest eyes, for their equanimity.

  Baru would never forgive herself if she took advantage of a Clarified woman. They were slaves.

  “Mister Torrinde!” Iscend shook his hand. “How can I help?”

  “We’ll be proceeding with the attribution test now. Is your memory house calibrated?”

  “Yes, your Excellence, my house is open.”

  “Excellent. Let’s undress, then.”

  Each of them stripped down briskly to their linens. Baru fidgeted. Context mattered, of course, clearly this was artistic or clinical nudity—but she was wary, so wary, of his trap. She tried to focus on his beauty, how valuable he might be as a statue, to keep her attention off Iscend, off the diamond-knurled muscles cross her back and the flare of her hips and oh dear.

  Baru shook herself, and then regretted it, and tried to be still.

  Hesychast unpacked a bag of small paper placards. Iscend Comprine smiled once, a calm competent pleasure at the work about to be done: that shot a thrill right up Baru’s spine.

  “Is this a test of my sexual preferences?” she asked. “My taste is hardly a secret.”

  “No, not a secret.” Hesychast dealt out the placards into piles. “Hardly a crime, either.”

  “Hardly a crime? Hardly a crime?” Tribadists got the knife. It was his law: eugenic law, Metademe law.

  “Is it a crime to have the flu?” he asked, to Baru’s almost unmasterable rage. “A treatment isn’t a punishment.”

  “You circumcise us!”

  “Yes, in some unresponsive cases, there’s a painless surgical intervention to deinforce the behavior.” He held up his hands and Baru did not miss that protective gesture. He could see that she wanted to murder him. “But we reserve those, ah, relic punishments mostly for the provinces. In Falcrest, so long as you don’t act on your condition, or show any intent to bear or work with children, you’ll go untouched. Our laws are very humane.”

  “Humane.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at his hands, not at her, “yes: things have to get better as one moves from
the provinces toward Falcrest, don’t they? There must be a gradient of hope.”

  “In Aurdwynn they told me that women in Falcrest can’t enjoy sex. That they are all as dry as stone.”

  “What? No, I assure you, that’s quite untrue.”

  “Perhaps it’s conditioning,” Baru said, blandly. “Your women are so worried about their writs of hygiene and childbearing licenses that they’ve come to associate conjugation with terror.”

  “You’re needling me,” he said, in delight, “you really are his student, aren’t you? Well. Let’s see how deep his teaching runs.”

  Hesychast held up a fan of paper placards: on each one was a nonsense word in clear Aphalone script, blocked out so that each letter took up precisely the same space.

  Foer. Lvbe. Haut. Rimprss. Hoie. Grievy. Caut.

  He gave half the cards to Iscend. She smiled slyly at Baru, a sideways mocking expression: already, already she’d started to probe for reactions.

  “Let’s begin,” she said.

  * * *

  IT was a mind probe. A Metademe game calculated to pierce deception. Iscend must have been trained to read the briefest involuntary expressions on the human face, the hesitation of falsehood in the voice.

  Hesychast and Iscend took turns to step forward, fix Baru’s gaze, and then—suddenly!—reveal a nonsense word printed in black ink. If Baru hesitated they would shout at her and smash a gong. “Failure!”

  Baru hated failing. So she had to answer the question as quickly as she could:

  What word did she see?

  If they showed her the nonsense word foer she could answer four, or fear, or foe, or maybe fore or even fare or fire. “Faster! Faster!” And Iscend, with soft disappointment: “Too slow. Do better.”

  There was no time to calculate a deception. Baru could only think, desperately, I shan’t associate the woman with the words of terror: when Iscend shows me grievy I will say gravy not grieve, and when she shows me caut I will say cat and not cut. But her plan only tripped her up.

  “Faster!” Iscend barked, in a thrilling low contralto. “Faster! You’re not making sense! Answer quickly and accurately!”

  And the glee of service burnt in her eyes, the delight of a task well-executed. She was tricking Baru and she took joy in it, which only made Baru more discomfited: she could deduce, now, that her reactions must be different when Iscend stepped forward with magnificent sway-hipped grace and those hard plates of muscle beneath the soft full undercurve of her breast—what was she betraying? Ah, a new card, __press, she had to fill in the prefix—

  “Impress!” she shouted, after a sputter and a stumble. Not repress. Impress.

  In the second phase they put a helmet on her with an enormous steel blade instead of a nose, portioning her vision into left and right hemispheres. Hesychast and Iscend swapped sides, left and right, back and forth, ever faster. Cards blurred past. Baru’s tongue knotted. The gull woke up and began to squawk and patter.

  Iscend held a card out at arm’s length to her left, Baru’s far blind right, and snapped, “What is it?” Baru couldn’t see—but Iscend would have none of it. “Tell me what you see!”

  “Beast!” Baru guessed, wildly. “It says beast?”

  “That’s enough, I think,” Hesychast said. “Iscend, you have the times and error rates?”

  “Perfectly, your Excellence, I have them firmly housed. I’ll compute the results at once.”

  “Wait,” Baru protested, “wait wait, surely you can explain what you just did?”

  “I’m afraid,” Hesychast said, regretfully, “that there is no time. In brief summary: I’ve tested you for the effects of the Farrier Process.”

  “Yes? And? What’s the Farrier Process?” But he was turning away, dressing himself again. “Why did you have to be so naked? What was that about?”

  “I think that’s obvious.” Iscend winked at Baru, devastatingly.

  “It’s time,” Hesychast said, “for all of us to sit down and tell you what comes next. Dinner in the evening-room at first dog watch. Come alone. We will await you.”

  8

  DINNER, DESTINY …

  APPARITOR caught her in her morning-room. “We have to go.”

  She froze in terror at the hot breath on her ear. She could hear the click of his throat when he swallowed and the nervous motion of his tongue. He’d approached from her blind side, of course.

  “I believe we’re attending a dinner,” she murmured, “with Hesychast and Itinerant?”

  She’d just finished a letter. She touched the incryptor’s trigger. The device made the most satisfying little thump, the sound of complicated plans sliding into place, and smashed Baru’s coded seal into the letter.

  He paced round into visibility. He was flushed as she had ever seen a person—more flushed than she could ever show—and panting. “Did you run up here?”

  “I did,” he gasped, “and for your sake. Although also for the sake of several other people who I visited first. Those two warships that came in with Hesychast aren’t his. What are you writing?”

  “What do you mean they’re not his?”

  “What are you writing?” He snatched the letter out from under her palm. “Is this—are these orders for Aurdwynn?”

  They were orders for Aurdwynn. The first of many. She would not delay Tain Hu’s work. She would not risk dying of a burst appendix or some pratfall off the keep’s battlements before she could make the duchess’s sacrifice worth at least a little.

  “Give me back that letter!”

  “Half-letter, please, see how you’ve done it all a little column on the left? Let’s see—you want to—” He goggled. “This is everything I said I’d kill you for! Trading missions to the north, roads, clinics … salaries for those disreputable rangers … patrols on the rivers, engineers for Lyxaxu’s heights, a senate in every duchy…”

  She was oddly hurt he didn’t like the ideas. “I think they’re necessary steps.”

  “Fuck my fuzzy red nuts,” Apparitor breathed. “You really are his little creature, aren’t you? Those poor Aurdwynni bastards. You’ll ruin them.”

  “Nonsense,” Baru said, trying not to grind her teeth. “I’m going to engage them in profitable trade.”

  “You’re a spider, you know that? A hairy little spider crawling underfoot at a picnic. Look at this! You’re opening the northerners to free trade, you’re integrating their shitty little economies with the world. Throwing them to the wolves—and after all that time you spent pretending to love them, too!”

  “I am giving them access to fair markets, where they will sell what they have in plenty, and buy what is scarce, improving the lot of every last—”

  “Ooh, I’m a feudal peasant, I just can’t wait to sell my shitty grain and skinny donkeys on the open market, ought to be fair competition with the Radascine Combine and their fields of golden plenty—”

  “Once their economy values currency instead of land, the peasantry will be able to profit and save off their own labor instead of tithing their incomes for protection—”

  “You are conquering Taranoke,” Apparitor said.

  “What?” Baru snapped.

  “This is how Itinerant conquered your home. You know that. You play the game with him every day. He opened the markets. He made it possible for everyone to sell everything they had in exchange for our scrip. The pageant of the rebellion is over. Now you execute the final bondage of Aurdwynn, when you force them to export their livelihoods to Falcrest.”

  Baru stepped on his toes. While he was squirming she said:

  “Why, Prince Svirakir, it sounds as if you prefer the old economy! One tax to protect their land, another tax to feed their lords, and a tax on every third baby: it must be planted shallow in the winter earth.”

  “No,” he snapped, and kicked her in the shin till she got off his foot. “I just think I’d prefer it if someone from Aurdwynn made these decisions.”

  “Someone like Heingyl Ri?”

&nbs
p; “Why, the very same!”

  Baru threw up her hands. “Oh, yes, the Stag Duke’s daughter. What a fresh, republican start! What a clean break from the corrupt aristocracy!”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Of what? She married that prat Latheman and got the Governorship because she was the only one left standing—a real triumph of intrigue, Svir, a very cunning player—”

  “You killed all her enemies, didn’t you? You cleaned out her father, who was so proud of her he would’ve kept her in a display case. You killed the old Governor. She set you up to kill Duchess Nayauru, her dear cousin, so she wouldn’t have to do it herself. You even drove Bel Latheman into her arms!”

  “I did not.”

  “How was he to escape your manipulation if he didn’t get married?”

  Baru bit her hand in frustration. “The ships. What’s all this about the ships? Why do you want us to flee?”

  His jaw worked on the flesh inside his lips. “The frigates anchored offshore are Scylpetaire and Sulane.”

  “What?” Baru hissed, and shoved him into the corner. “But Sulane is Ormsment’s flagship.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I absolutely ruined her last year!”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Why would Hesychast summon her here?”

  “Hesychast didn’t invite them,” Apparitor muttered. “Ormsment’s not supposed to know this keep exists. Somehow she found us.”

  “We’re compromised?” Baru clutched at his neckerchief and it came undone. That damn grief-knot. Now she’d stolen his silk and didn’t know what to do with it: she began dusting off his shoulders. “What are the others going to do?”

  “That’s the really hilarious bit,” he said, bleakly. “Hesychast’s people think the navy’s here for Farrier. Farrier thinks they’re here for Hesychast.”

  Baru goggled at him for a moment. “They don’t know?”

  “No,” he said, and swallowed slowly. “No one’s in command of Ormsment’s ships except Ormsment. Who, by the way, submitted eleven requests for your assassination.”