The Monster Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  Yawa nodded thinly.

  “Oh, come on,” Apparitor snapped. “Aurdwynn’s as far as you can get from the Oriati without getting off your ship and hiking. How could there be any Cancrioth influence here?”

  “An excellent question.” Hesychast nodded. “Because I believe Himu, the ykari virtue, was inspired by a Cancrioth operative named Hayamu raQù. Hayamu became Himu.”

  “Really?” Apparitor laughed. “You’re reaching, Cosgrad.”

  “You know he’s not,” Farrier said. “Because you worked with the proof this spring.”

  Baru frowned. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t understand. Were they talking about her? No, no, that was her being self-centered again. The ilykari priests. Something about the ilykari. How could the ilykari prove the Cancrioth had been in Aurdwynn?

  Farrier took pity on her. “Baru, do you remember those ilykari priestesses you were so fond of using as operatives?”

  “Of course I do,” Baru said, sipping her whiskey. Ulyu Xe, diver and midwife, who’d sat in Baru’s tent and listened to her confession. Too far. I’ve come too far. “Lovely women.”

  He shot her a look that said, not in front of Hesychast, please? “You know, I believe, that some of them worked for us in the last stages of the rebellion? We used them to chart holes in the Welthony minefield, so the marines could land and ambush your army at Sieroch.”

  “Yes, I know…”

  “Did you ever wonder why?” Farrier pressed. “Why would any of the ilykari cooperate with us, when we persecuted them so?”

  She hadn’t wondered. She knew exactly how the persecuted could end up as collaborators. “I assumed you had hostages, or blackmail, or bribes.…”

  “No.” Hesychast looked up from his cupped hands. “They did it because some of them worship me. They believe I’m their messiah. Himu incarnate.”

  Himu. Storm and heat, life and life’s excess, which was cancer. “Why?”

  “Because I can create tumors,” Hesychast said. “I can implant pellets of a particular chemical into human flesh and induce a tumor. I worked in Aurdwynn when I was young, testing my methods on the cancer-prone Stakhieczoid lines. And my reputation … grew.”

  Apparitor goggled at Baru: can you believe this shit?

  Farrier took Cosgrad’s glass to refresh. “Cosgrad’s various failures have led him into an obsession with cancer. No, Cosgrad, please don’t protest, we both know it’s true. You see—” Farrier poured from two feet above the glass, a sparkling red arc, and he didn’t miss a drop. “Hesychast here wants to breed perfect citizens. The Clarified are his great triumph, wouldn’t you agree, Cosgrad?”

  “I would, Cairdine.”

  “But I am afraid his successes have come too slowly. Please don’t take this as insult to my colleague’s skill! After decades of eugenic failure in the Metademe, it’s credit to Hesychast’s brilliance that he was able to salvage anything at all.” Farrier drank. His beard guarded his throat. She couldn’t see him swallow. “Ah. But too many of the Clarified wash out. People breed too slow for Hesychast to get the results he needs in his lifetime. And with a great reckoning approaching, with enormous and varied new populations entering our great Republic, Hesychast needs more radical solutions.”

  Farrier saluted his colleague with the wineglass. “So Cosgrad has begun to explore mutable flesh.”

  Hesychast’s hands were hidden from Baru but she could hear the goose bumps in his voice. “I believe that it’s possible to extract behaviors and values from one person’s body and introduce them into another. I believe I can splice a model citizen’s virtue into the behavior of a newly jacketed federati … by the medium of flesh.”

  Xate Yawa, with a tint of curiosity in her voice. “But the adult body doesn’t grow new flesh…”

  “No. No new flesh.” Hesychast held up one strong surgeon’s hand to show them. “The only growth in an adult human body is fat, muscle, hair, and tumor.”

  Farrier repeated this in silent amazement, shaking his head.

  Hesychast continued. “Tumors are the only viable medium for noocanic transfer. If a tumor could be moved from one body to another, and convinced to take root, it might be possible to move discipline, experience, and knowledge from one body into another. A child, for example, could be given a savant’s attention to school.”

  Yawa was very studiously not looking at her brother. “You think the Cancrioth possesses the secret you need.”

  “I think,” Hesychast said, “that the Cancrioth are tumors. Souls passed from one body to another by the medium of cancer. Immortal puppeteers of Oriati Mbo.”

  Silence, but for the mechanism of the tall clock and the voice of the wind. Baru had bumped her wineglass with her right hand, and only noticed the spill now. She began to sop it up and squeeze it, one-handed, onto her plate.

  Finally she could bear the silence no more. “And you?” she asked Farrier. “Why do you want us to find the Cancrioth?”

  “You should know,” Xate Yawa said. “You’ve already done the trick for him once.”

  Then Baru did know. She knew exactly. The Great Game, and the cult of slavers that had turned her Mbo to civil war—

  “You want us to bring home proof the Cancrioth exists. Proof we can use to turn the Oriati against themselves. And when they’re exhausted, we can step in as their saviors.”

  Farrier nodded soberly. “We cannot compromise the Mbo. So we simply need to make them digest themselves.”

  “Fuck,” Apparitor said, with disgusted admiration. “That might just work.”

  Baru was thinking of Farrier’s play in the Great Game, and of Hu. “Excuse me.” She squeezed another rush of wine from her napkin. “What’s in it for us?”

  Everyone stared at her.

  “Yawa, Apparitor, and I. We understand you’d both benefit from the Cancrioth’s discovery. What about us?”

  “Well,” Hesychast said, uncomfortably, “if you don’t carry out this mission, I should be forced to … harm the hostages we hold over you.”

  “Very sad for my colleagues,” Baru said, sweetly. “What about me?”

  Farrier grinned at her. He was in that moment so absolutely proud that Baru felt a stir of true gratitude. Thank you, Farrier, for letting me fight in this arena. Thank you for letting me rise up to destroy you. I love it so.

  “It is my belief,” he said, “that the Cancrioth wants Oriati Mbo to go to war with Falcrest. A war that will annihilate Oriati civilization, spread the black-blooded Kettling of darkest myth, give the Cancrioth a chance to regain their ancient power—and possibly, just possibly, collapse the totality of human society.

  “So, Baru, if you do not find the Cancrioth? If no arrangement can be made? If they are left to conspire against us, and draw the whole Mbo into their net? Then the world goes to war. At best millions die. At worst…” He shrugged with his hands. “The end for Incrasticism, and so much else.”

  “You want the Cancrioth for their cancer secrets,” Baru said to Hesychast. And then to Farrier, “And you want them to start your Oriati civil war.”

  “We both know war is inevitable,” Hesychast said, with all the naïve fatherly concern of a Duke watching his favorite bastard take up the dueling sword. “I do not think that war will ultimately solve the crisis. We must gain the Cancrioth breeding techniques. The introduction of our hygienes directly into Oriati bodies will bring them into us.”

  “I reject that,” Farrier said, firmly. “I do not believe any flesh will ever substitute for the educations and incentives of the Incrastic program. An Oriati civil war will leave them nicely positioned for our rescue, and the Cancrioth will be the perfect wedge.”

  And in her own darkest depth Baru felt a spark of raw desire.

  She had her opportunity. She could at last point to a single ultimate goal for her work. She would draw Falcrest into war with Oriati Mbo; she would coax and unite and convince the Stakhieczi to invade from the north. And as these two wars destroyed the trade engine t
hat turned in the Ashen Sea, she would secure the absolute the annihilation of the Masquerade’s power. The Mask would leave Taranoke. The Mask would leave Aurdwynn.

  And if their works were all undone with their departure … if the secrets of inoculation were lost, and the great roads overrun by banditry, and plague left to sweep the world, and babies abandoned in the wind, and the winter given to scurvy, and a portion of the good and great taken each year by a simple tooth abscess … then so be it.

  The end. The ruin of everything. A great jet of blood across the face of history. Wasn’t that what she’d promised Tain Hu?

  * * *

  A SUDDEN thud struck the door. Farrier looked up sharply. Hesychast kicked back his chair and put up his fists. Even Yawa covered her brother.

  Apparitor cried, “Iraji!” and sprang for the doorway.

  “Don’t!” Farrier shouted. “Don’t open it, it might be a trick—”

  But Apparitor had already done it. A cold sea draft stirred everyone’s clothes as Apparitor caught Iraji: the boy still possessed of a high-browed strong-nosed dignity even as he fell.

  “He was eavesdropping,” Apparitor said, with pride. “Good man.”

  “We seem to have sent him into a faint.” Farrier elbowed Hesychast. “Have you a clever explanation, Mister Torrinde?”

  Hesychast rose and went to tend to the boy. “Yes,” he said, “I do, the boy is Oriati.”

  “And?”

  “And the terror of the Cancrioth must be bred deep into him.”

  The clamor woke up Xate Olake, who began to howl again. Baru shuddered and tried to look away. But something told her she had to stare at him, that he was important, vital, why, why—

  Not him. The windows behind him.

  Baru ran to the window, fumbled with the shutters—slammed her head into the right side, having forgotten to open it—at last stuck her ringing face out into the wind and looked down toward the harbor.

  The navy frigate Sulane was running up her signal flags.

  “Your Excellences,” Baru said, “Sulane is demanding our surrender.”

  10

  THE KILLING WOMAN

  A ROCKET drew a thread of smoke from Sulane’s prow up across the cloudless blue and then down in a lovely parabola to strike the stone gables of the observatory tower, tumble in sparks, and fall into the gardens.

  “We’ve been ranged.” Baru wanted to laugh of fear and wonder. She’d seen Ormsment’s ships take the range before: she’d watched them burn two pirates to their warped keels. It had been so beautiful. “The navy’s going to burn us out.”

  “Now?” Hesychast barked. “That’s mad! Why would they act here?”

  Xate Yawa stroked her brother’s wretched burnt scalp. He whimpered into her gown. “Farrier, is this your doing?”

  “Oh, enough chicanery, Cosgrad.” Farrier was cutting meat to wrap up in a little takeaway bundle. He hardly looked up at the sound of the rocket. “If you detain me, I won’t send my passwords, and then my agents open your bottled failures in front of Parliament. Call off your ships. I’m not amused.”

  Hesychast’s whole lean might seemed to twitch in shock. “My ships?”

  “Yes, your ships out there—”

  “But wait now. I thought those were your ships.”

  Farrier collected his waxpaper full of meats. “Why would I do that? Why would I need two shiploads of brute force?”

  The two men looked at each other. Farrier swore. Hesychast said, “Do you think she planned this?”

  Apparitor sat beside Yawa with poor fainted Iraji’s head in his lap. Now he looked up at the two men with exquisite relish. “You’re not in control now, you dismal fucks! Ormsment’s here to avenge herself on Baru, and she doesn’t give a tiller’s stink for your lives.” His voice rose triumphantly. “If you want to escape on Helbride, then I demand a writ of pardon for Lindon, and all the money you’ve denied me for my—”

  Down in the harbor, the navy ships made a sound like ripping wool.

  Baru seized Farrier. With her free hand she cupped the bottom of the dinner table, grunted, and tossed it on its side. Gravy and butter and wine splashed across cuts of overturned meat. “Down!” Baru roared, as everyone stared at her, “You idiots, get down!”

  Apparitor leapt on top of Iraji. Yawa drew her catatonic twin to her breast.

  Baru experienced a fear-fueled episode of technical history.

  Rocket-powder was an Oriati invention, used to celebrate holidays. But in old royalist Falcrest, a more dismal land, the rocket-powder was turned to the destruction of armies. Put a rocket engine on an arrow, put hundreds of those arrows on a rack, and now you had a hwacha. You didn’t have to pay or train or feed it, and it could beat a company of longbowmen barrage for barrage.

  And when revolution passed, and war came, Falcrest’s naval architects needed a way to defeat Oriati Mbo’s fleets of dromon galleys. If a hwacha could carry hundreds of rocket arrows, each fit to kill a man—could you build a rack of larger rockets, each one equipped to kill a ship?

  You could.

  Sulane’s prow vanished in a cloud of white sparks. Scylpetaire a moment later. Their rockets fanned across the southern sky like a god’s hand opening.

  Airbursts cracked over the keep’s bleak battlements and narrow towers. Caltrops like steel urchins riddled battlements and walkways. Smoke rockets plunged into the main courtyard, shattered the hive-glass in Baru’s morning-room, rolled into the gutter. Choking fog spilled down the rooftops to pool between the walls.

  The purple-gauzed windows of the evening room broke the rocket-light into crazy wheeling arcs that refracted through empty wine bottles and glinted off the silver dinner service. Down in the mist below files of robed staff moved in silent discipline. They were carrying books and files to destroy.

  “Good grief.” Farrier peeked over the top of the overturned table. “So much for the rest of dinner.”

  “Farrier!” Hesychast barked. “There’s no time. If you die here I expect no end of trouble from your vendettas. I have a hidden ship across the Prydoc. Will you sail with me?”

  “No. I have my own arrangements.” Farrier seized his arm. “Wait! Cosgrad, this may be the last time we can speak as equals. So. Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you,” the eugenicist said, but with a respectful and absolute disgust. They shook hands in the narrow space between their bodies, their fingers clawed, working for advantage in the grip. Hate clung on them like butter. Baru could have drawn a streak in it.

  Another brace of rockets shrieked down into the keep, and Baru couldn’t help whirling to look. Her blindness swallowed everyone and she turned back only in time to see Hesychast carry Xate Olake through a hidden door and vanish. Xate Yawa watched him go with pitted eyes.

  The secret door clicked behind him. A lock turned. He was gone.

  “Wait!” Apparitor cried. “Wait, my ship’s the only way out, you can’t just leave—oh, you unbelievable assholes!”

  Farrier seized Baru’s hands. “You won’t need luck,” he said, fervently. “You’re the best student I ever had. Find the Cancrioth. Return proof to Falcrest. If you fail, they will strike, and the war will spare nothing. If you succeed … then everything is yours.”

  He looked at her with open eyes beneath hard fortress brows, his face provisioned with the weight of his age: ready to go on, to continue and conclude the work, to prepare his design to receive Baru like a flower opened to a mote of pollen. He had selected her. He had picked her up off the black lava stone and machined her into his weapon.

  She felt despair. How could she be anything except what he had designed?

  But other hands had touched her. And closer to her heart.

  Baru put on a smiling mask for him. “You’ll be all right?”

  “Oh, I can talk my way out of anything.” He grinned at her and tossed off a little salute. And then he leapt up with a young man’s vigor and went out through the serving-door.

  Baru fell down
beside Yawa and Apparitor. “I think we’re on our own.”

  Yawa raised her mask and fastened it to the seals of her gown. Valves and mechanisms clicked and ratched. She exhaled, slowly, a sound like early frost on cracking wheat.

  “They’ll both escape,” she said. “Will our marines fight?”

  “I doubt it,” Apparitor said, sourly. “You can only trust the navy to love the navy.”

  “We can’t go overland.” Yawa would know: how many times had she cordoned off a target site before the grab? “The sentries will put up rockets the instant they see us.”

  “Apparitor, do you have a way out?” Baru hissed.

  “There’s an underground river that drains into the east marsh. We can reach Helbride from there.” Apparitor scooped up the boy Iraji in his arms. “Assuming whoever compromised us didn’t give away the escape routes, too.”

  “Who was it?” Baru asked.

  “I suspect,” Yawa said, softly, “that it may have been my niece.”

  “Your niece?” Apparitor straightened so swiftly he almost dropped poor Iraji. “That’s impossible.”

  Yawa shrugged. The buttresses and veils of the quarantine gown clicked like mantis legs. “Perhaps she came back after all.”

  * * *

  FOR the second time in her life the Bane of Wives rows up this cold harbor toward the gray and brooding bulk of the Elided Keep. Red-masked marines swarm the battlements. Smoke billows above the walls. Ormsment’s ships discharge another volley of rockets to flush the Thronesmen from their catacombs and low halls.

  All futile. They will not take their quarry. The cryptarchs will flee through a hidden way.

  Tain Shir knows their intentions in the way that an exterminator anticipates the flight of crawling things. She knows these arachnid underlords of a nation that worships paper and glass and the hot-sterile implements of surgery. She will intercept them and arrest them in their flight and when some of them claim their rights as technocrats she will explain to them that they have mistaken the terms of their detention.

  The marines in her skiff call her Captain Tain. She has not answered to this old name for nigh on fifteen years and in these recent months when she lived deep in the blood-hot jungle and stalked the innocent across contested ground it seemed to her that never again would she know herself by any name at all. Her sign would be the glistening smile her machete cut on the throats of boy-soldiers. I am this, this mortal act.