The Monster Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  Ake is an adept in the technocratic arts. She organized the other survivors of Tain Hu’s house. She made them into a committee.

  Why?

  Because a committee has dignity and power. A committee solves problems by sitting down and talking, not by beating and knifing each other. If I deny that the people at this table are a committee, then I deny the form Ake has imposed on this awful reunion.

  And then they return to the protocol of shouting, beating, and knifing. Starting with me.

  This had to be a negotiating table, because it was the only sane way they could face Baru with any self-possession and self-respect.

  “Very well,” Baru said, coolly. “Let’s negotiate.”

  And she sat at the stool Ude had prepared for her.

  * * *

  ULYU Xe was the stenographer, of course, and little Run was the page boy who brought water and supplied the ink. Ude Sentiamut wore a forester’s jerkin, even if he did not have his bow; Yythel the herbalist had adopted a simple dress of coarse-spun wool, not much different from the one she’d been wearing on the morning of death at Sieroch, when she was with Xate Olake; and the cook Nitu wore an Oriati-style khanga, which she must have taken from Execarne’s wardrobe.

  Dziransi and Ake sat side by side at the far end of the table from Baru. “Representing the rebellious duchies of Aurdwynn,” Ake said, crisply, “I am Ake Sentiamut, regent for the duchess Vultjag. Representing the Stakhieczi Necessity, Dziransi of the Mansion Hussacht. And representing the Faceless Emperor of the Imperial Republic of Falcrest…”

  “Agonist,” Baru said, and, at the glares and exhalations from the table, with a mote of defensive pride, “it’s my work-name.”

  “You are an Imperial agent. That was made clear to us at Sieroch.”

  “Yes,” Baru said.

  “Is it true, as our duchess supposed, that your—theft—of our rebellion was a gambit to secure that Imperial agency?”

  “Yes,” Baru said, high-chinned. “Yes.”

  “We have demands,” Dziransi rumbled. He gripped the edge of the table like a vise, as if he had to hold the boards together.

  “Demands?” Baru wanted to remind the jagata man that Falcrest would suck him dry through his eye sockets to learn what he knew—but she knew she would be in a way indulging her own desire to hold power over him. “Well, all right, go ahead.”

  Just then Xate Yawa and Iscend Comprine slipped inside. Both wore full-face service masks of light lacquered wood. The prisoners reacted stiffly to Yawa’s presence: Ude even rose halfway out of his chair, growling.

  Ake cleared her throat and spoke very loudly. “We demand full Imperial pardons in your name. We demand guarantees of protection for ourselves and our families. We demand to be returned to Aurdwynn and granted our freedom.”

  Yawa sat down and began taking notes.

  “That’s all?” Baru said. “You want to go home?”

  “Everything we do,” Ulyu Xe murmured, “is to save our home. For Aurdwynn.”

  Yes. When people really cared about their homes, didn’t they go home? But not Baru, no, she traveled further and further away, sniffing the trail of power, and she did not even read her parents’ letters.…

  Xe was peering curiously at her now.

  Baru blinked and swallowed. “Yes. Well. I think we can do a little better for Aurdwynn than a few Imperial pardons, can’t we? I made a promise to the duchess—”

  Yythel’s rage spilled down her face like bitter tea. “We don’t need any more of your promises in Aurdwynn, Baru.”

  “This boy needs his family.” Ude clasped Run’s shoulder. “Send him home.”

  Baru put up her gloves, palms forward: wait. “Let me ask you all a question. I am the Queen of Aurdwynn by the acclamation of the dukes, am I not?”

  “Under false pretenses,” Dziransi said. “A queen without honor.”

  “They were all false pretenses,” the cook Nitu muttered.

  “Nonetheless, am I not the oathbound lord of your duchess Tain Hu? Are you not, in her absence, my oathbound Vultjagata?”

  “We vowed our lives to her,” Nitu spat. “Not to you. Fuck you. Everything you say is poison.”

  She left in a swirl of cotton color. Ake looked after her, obviously longing to follow, or at least to tell Baru to go fuck herself.

  “You won’t let us go home,” Run said. His voice cracked. “Will you?”

  Xate Yawa drew on the thread of his doubt. “You can all earn pardons from the Stag Duchess, if you only tell us what we want to know.”

  And there was the problem. Baru would happily send them all back to Aurdwynn, far from her thin-walled heart, if only she weren’t certain that Yawa and her pet Governor would devour them. These people were rebel cadre, the inner circle of the Coyote: they would never be allowed to live free lives.

  “I was with Tain Hu on her last night.” Baru tried her damnedest to show no pain, for Yawa was off on her right, watching everything: and then Baru thought, why should I care? What does it matter if I mourn? “We made a plan together. The rebellion can still accomplish its goals—”

  “I thought you said the rebellion never began.”

  Baru tried to plead with Ake by gaze alone. “In the eyes of the Republic, perhaps, but we know—”

  “Are your eyes not the eyes of the Republic?”

  “I will not allow Tain Hu to die for nothing,” Baru hissed.

  “We kissed Tain Hu’s sword,” Dziransi said, with ritual solemnity. “We vowed to serve you in your work. If you kept her faith.”

  “We have decided,” Ake pronounced, firmly, “that you will not keep her faith. We demand to carry on Tain Hu’s work ourselves.”

  Once Hu had said, freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.

  And here Baru was, offering them slack, begging them to take that slack and call it freedom.

  “I need a moment,” Baru said, and she fled through the sooty curtain to stand by the fire and think.

  * * *

  “SPIRITED bunch, aren’t they?” Execarne said, cheerfully. He had his tongs in the fire, and a thick pair of leather gloves to keep off the sparks. He was cooking fresh fish on a hot stone.

  “Mm,” Baru said.

  “You spent all yesterday turning up the islands. Didn’t find what you needed?”

  She had, in a way. She knew a man named Abdumasi Abd had provisioned his warships here. “I found your cover-up,” she said, levelly. “The numbers you had your harbormaster fake. Concealing information from the republican people isn’t a survival strategy, Mister Execarne.”

  “Ah,” Execarne sighed. “What can I say? I’ve sacrificed so much to keep the peace. A little cover-up hardly tallies against my sins.”

  “Agonist,” Yawa said, and her glove closed on Baru’s right shoulder. Baru leapt in fright. “You seem troubled. Negotations not proceeding as you’d hoped?”

  Baru smiled icily. “At least no one’s throttled me.”

  “My, you are tense.”

  Baru struck out at her. “The woman in the dress, Yythel? She was your brother’s lover.”

  Yawa deflected. “Then she’ll be very happy to know I kept him safe. That fish smells divine, Faham. Or should I say, ha ha, it smells virtuous.”

  “Caught it just today, your Excellence.” He winked at Yawa. “I don’t mind a little idolatry over my cooking.”

  Yawa settled on the brick apron of the hearth. “Baru, can I ask you something?”

  “I won’t stop you.”

  “Why are you legitimizing them? Why are you going along with this farce of negotiations and surrender? You hurt them. You made fools of them. You’re not the one who should be offering them mercy.”

  “We need a little honey to—”

  “I know that,” Yawa snapped. “So offer honey from a bee that never stung. Offer them letters of pardon from Governor Heingyl Ri.”

  By now Baru was quite accustomed to Heingyl Ri’s name floating up from
the mist at every opportunity: the woman obviously had Yawa’s favor. “You want them in her debt, don’t you. You want your stooge to look merciful.”

  “Of course I do! Ri needs to build her reputation as a peacemaker. Imagine how powerful it would look if she were to pardon these rebels and return them safely home. A message for the rebel North. All is forgiven, no harm done: let us go back to growing prosperous.” Yawa spread her gloves. “Baru, it would be good for Aurdwynn.”

  And Yawa would get Dziransi from the bargain, Baru figured. Her key to the Stakhieczi door.

  Remember the man in the iron circlet!

  Remember the ledger—

  It was so tempting. Just be rid of them. Be rid of the need to think about them, to consider their well-being, to remember how you hurt them.

  But Tain Hu’s voice would not stop echoing. Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.…

  If Baru died today, she would die having done nothing for Aurdwynn, or even for Taranoke.

  How long could she delay? How much power would she insist on gathering before she did even one good thing for the people she’d stepped on? You couldn’t manipulate people like little pawns forever. You had to remember that they were their own autonomy, their own power, self-moving, and you had to trust in that—

  What was the sense of accumulating all this power if it never went to the people who needed it most?

  “No,” Baru breathed, and then, with confidence now, “no, we’re not giving them to Heingyl Ri. I know what to do.”

  “Baru, Heingyl Ri is Aurdwynn now—”

  She went back toward the curtained door. Yawa rose to come after her and Baru blocked her way. “Get out,” Baru ordered. “Take Iscend and go outside. I won’t have you listen to this.”

  Yawa’s eyes slitted behind the dark mask. “You can’t bar me from an interrogation.”

  “Of course I can,” Baru said, flatly. “I can do anything I please, Yawa, because when they put your twin brother on trial for grand treason, they’ll call for my testimony. You do want me favorably disposed, don’t you?”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “That’s how it works here. That’s how this game is played. Leverage.”

  She was too exhilarated by her new plan to feel any guilt at the terror and pain in Yawa’s eyes; or, at least, to feel it right then.

  * * *

  AKE and her committee stared at Baru.

  Baru hunched over the paper and wrote and wrote and reached for more paper and wrote some more.

  “You left me,” Ake said. “You left me behind in Vultjag because you didn’t want me taken with the others at Sieroch.”

  “Mm,” Baru grunted. “Fetch me more paper.”

  “You could have left Tain Hu instead,” Ake whispered.

  “I couldn’t leave Hu.” Baru wrung out her wrist. “She was a duchess. I had to bring the rebel leadership together in one place. I had to give them a convincing victory and then an immediate crushing reversal, to show the confidence of Falcrest’s control. Also, I wanted every moment I could get with her. Will you sign this?”

  “Not until you tell me what it is, and I read it, in case you’ve lied.”

  The order needed a clean draft anyway. Baru snatched a fresh sheet from the pile. “This is your letter of provisional governorship. I’m going to stamp it with something called an incryptor, which creates a special polestar mark. That will bind this document directly to the Emperor’s authority. When you go home, if anyone tries to stop you from doing what I’ve written here, you show them this seal—”

  Everyone stiffened. “Home?” Ude gasped.

  “Yes. I’m pardoning all of you, unconditionally.”

  “You’re conceding,” Ake said, in cautious wonder.

  “Oh, I’m far more than conceding.” Baru signed, in tight rectilinear blocks, AGONIST. “Ake, you will rule the North.”

  “I will what?”

  “You’re familiar with the provincial economy through your work in the Fiat Bank. You understand the difficulties of governance during the winter, and the Coyote mutineers look up to you as Duchess Vultjag’s friend. A perfect choice, I think.”

  Ake looked as if she’d just drawn a bucket of rattlesnakes from the well. “I will not be your pawn,” she said, thinly. “None of us will. Not again.”

  “You won’t be anyone’s pawn. I told you. This order grants you broad authority within your dominion. You can carry on Tain Hu’s work as you see fit.”

  “But Aurdwynn has a governor,” the herbalist Yythel said, reminding Baru that she was literate, and followed news, and developed strong opinions. “Heingyl Ri is in the Governor’s House.”

  “I don’t care,” Baru snapped. “She can write me a letter of complaint.” Her incryptor jumped in her fist and smashed the Imperial mark onto the letter. She raised it up and offered it to Ake’s trembling hands.

  “Your Majesty…” She smoothed the letter on the table. “These are wartime emergency powers.”

  “Yes, of course.” Baru couldn’t help but grin, she was so very clever. “The North of Aurdwynn is in a state of open rebellion, isn’t it? Lawless and disordered.”

  “The rebellion is over—”

  “The Emperor has not formally recognized the rebellion’s surrender. Therefore the rebellion is still ongoing. You will be dispatched to the rebellious duchies with absolute wartime authority to reorganize and rebuild as you see fit. The Emperor’s seal is on that letter and so you are Its emissary.”

  Dziransi could not look at her without seeing treason, so he turned to Ake Sentiamut. “She has this power?”

  “I suppose,” Ake said, slowly, narrow-eyed in thought, “that she does.”

  “She has made you the Emperor’s warlord?”

  “It’s like I’m a peace-lord, Dzir. I cannot move Governor Heingyl’s forces. I cannot send embassies abroad, or appoint judges. But in the North I have power over money, and courts, and trade … someone will come to take this power from me, Baru. Someone will see what I’m doing.”

  “Let them come. You have my backing.” Baru clapped to get their attention. “You must get the North weaned off raw exports as quickly as you can, understand? You must use your position between the coast and the Stakhi to build up your wealth. Ake, do you hear me?”

  Ake looked at Baru’s letter as if she might ball it up in her fist and cram it down Baru’s throat. “Tell me your angle.”

  “I don’t have an angle. You should salary all the rangers. Don’t let them wander off as guides or hunters; you must salary them and send them north on expeditions.”

  “My King,” Dziransi began, “he will not trust you; I do not trust you.”

  “Trust Ake, then. Trust the money. Open trade with the Stakhieczi. They want food, so buy food from the south and sell it north. The south wants Stakhieczi steel and glass, so buy steel and glass and sell them south. The flow of money will prevent the flow of blood. That’s how we did it on Taranoke, for centuries—but you have more than we did, so invest the profits in mills and trading posts, invest in the roads, build dams and sewers—get yourselves on your feet before hard times come. You must be ready to survive if the trade stops.”

  Faham Execarne came in carrying what seemed like an entire ship’s rudder loaded with steaming fish steaks. “It’s hot,” he said, “very hot, and don’t choke on the tiny bones. I’ll be back in a moment with beer. Has anything interesting happened?”

  No one spoke.

  “Not really,” Baru said. “I’ll be sending these people home. The pardons are here for your inspection.”

  Execarne produced a huge knife with a flourish. Baru was the only one to recoil. “Interesting,” he said, and began to chop the fish with great sweeping strokes, the blade thumping pleasantly against the wood, “pardons all around, eh? In whose name?”

  “Mine.”

  “Ah. Is that so?” Execarne grinned at his guests. “You’ve got to be careful with this one. She
’s a prodigy at lies.”

  “We know,” her bodyguard Ude said, darkly.

  “Did she tell you that Xate Yawa kept you alive? Over the winter you were all identified and preconvicted of grand treason. You’d all have been drowned in Treatymont harbor, except Dziransi, who’d go to a worse fate. Instead Yawa ordered you transferred here.” He nodded firmly. “Baru never wrote one letter about you lot. Ask yourselves why she’s setting you up so comfortably now. Ask yourselves—is she afraid she can’t make any more money off your country without your help?”

  The damnable poisonous thing was that he was right. He was undermining her, doubtless as a favor for Xate Yawa, but he was right. Baru was afraid to lose her influence in Aurdwynn. She had to protect Vultjag, lest she betray Tain Hu, and that betrayal would be a sledge through the last pole holding up her paper roof of righteousness.

  Ake was nodding. Ake was looking at her as if to say, I know you always have yourself in mind.

  “Where’s the wine?” Baru snapped.

  * * *

  FUCK them. Fuck Yawa and her slithering insinuations and her stolen ledger. Fuck the fierce stiff resentment of her “Vultjagata” (how little that oath seemed to mean). Hadn’t Baru yielded her power to Ake? Hadn’t she said, go, do as you will?

  Ake would probably fuck it all up. Heingyl Ri would twist her about, and the North would end up a starving barren firebreak against the Stakhieczi. Damn it. Damn it, fuck! Heingyl Ri was a coastal Duchess! Didn’t Ake understand that the coast needed a poor starving North, so it could get materials cheap?

  Ri couldn’t be trusted. The economics were clear.

  Baru drank the wine that Yawa had abandoned by the hearth. Then she stole a hammock and went down into the cozy wood cellar. An hour’s nap would do her good.

  She put her head down for a moment.

  And woke in utter blackness. She fumbled around, her left arm dead and numb, till she found her folio and—oh, thank Wydd, the incryptor: if someone had tried to use it without her dial settings, it might have destroyed itself.

  Someone took a breath. “Baru?”

  Baru checked her ankle knife. “Who is it?”

  “I drew water for your bath,” Ulyu Xe said.