The Monster Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  But closer beneath him was the crest of the col, a strip of naked wind-raked rock that crossed the saddle between Camich Swiet and Karakys. His Mansion stood high above the green line where the last trees grew. There were no forests, no rivers, no checkered pastures where horses could breed. The flanks of Karakys stepped upward in huge terraces buttressed by walls of interlocked mortarless rock. On those stone terraces the Mansion would soon lay out fields of potatoes to freeze-dry, sheafs of winterwheat, sorghum, and sour red pitahaya. When the wet air shoveled up off the Ashen Sea in summer crashed and fell as snow, Hussacht would live or die by its stores. Yaks wandered the upper terraces in herds of fifty or a hundred, females mostly, producing the milk that would go into the salt-and-coca tea which all the Stakhi drank. Atakaszir had yak butter on his lips right now, to stop the cracking, and a wad of coca in his cheek, to keep him strong. Down in the lowlands they called coca mason leaf and used it for fun and sex. Here it was as vital as water.

  He had promised his people the lowlands, to ease their straining numbers. He had promised an end to the tax on second children, who went out on the naked rock. For one short season his promises had been honorable, for his man Dziransi had found him a bride who could deliver Aurdwynn.

  But the bride was a traitor, a bait set out to entrap him, and the first great act of his Necessary Kingship came tumbling down on him like a keyless arch. And now the army he had raised was camped outside his Mansion with nowhere to invade and no confidence at all in their king. When autumn came they would seize Hussacht’s stores for the winter, and Hussacht would rot away in the wet karst caves of Karakys until the pits and stairways were slimed with corpse. He himself would not live that long. The Uczenith men in particular were agitating in the camp for a dethroning, and traditionally this was done by peeling off the King’s crown and the scalp beneath.

  Fucking Uczenith. Fucking shortsighted stone-licking inbred curs. In spite of their overweening insecurity (their old lord Kubarycz the Iron-Browed had tried to marry an Aurdwynni duchess, leading to his exile: the Uczenith lived in terror that someone would come up the mountains to say, Hello, I killed your Lord and his heirs in combat and so I am now the rightful ruler of your Mansion) Ataka had brought them and all the other mansions together. He had been this close to breaking the Stakhi out of the prison of their history.

  And Baru Cormorant had ruined it all.

  Atakaszir thought: I have started an avalanche and now I cannot get out of the way.

  He turned to face the woman.

  “How,” he said, in the Iolynic that came so hard to him, “will you dowry me?” He knew he’d gotten it wrong but the creole seemed to fight his very tongue. “How will you open the way that was shut?”

  She was dark and clean of face, without one pimple or scar. She wore her coat and furs open and the wind blew her dress back against a body of sinful fullness. She looked as if she had never been hungry; Atakaszir’s eyes betrayed him by seeking out her hips, her full stomach, her breasts. Her sister, Atakaszir understood, had been some kind of whore-duchess, who sealed her alliances in her bed. Ordinarily this would make her and all her sisters unthinkable as consorts to a king. But lately Atakaszir had learned that the Stakhieczi measure of a woman was not always reliable.

  “I offer you what you most desire,” Nayauru Aia said, in perfect Stakhi. “A wife from the lands of milk and grain. A key to the door that bars you.”

  “You are an exile.” Aia had arrived in the company of a beautiful horseman named Ihuake Ro, each of them carrying their ducal banners as they fled the Masquerade. “You have no land.”

  “If my sister’s children die then I have the claim to the Duchy Nayauru,” the woman said, through dark and fulsome lips. The most infuriating thing about her was her utter indifference to his eye. She held herself with poise and confidence, but without the cave whore’s desperate invitation. Atakaszir knew better than most Stakhi that desperation was the keen whistle of death. “What other option have you, Your Majesty the King? What else can you show your brave men and your engineers to sustain the necessity of your existence? You must have a prize out of this winter’s debacle. You must show them a little piece of sun and fertile soil.”

  She was right. He had no alternative. Failing revenge on Baru, which would save his honor, he would need a token of hope: which would not honor him, but at least give him something to bargain with, the merchant’s craven power.

  “Is it true you need a hundred men to satisfy you?” he asked her, for she was so obviously Maia.

  She laughed. He liked the laugh. It reminded him of his bannermen, joyful and unconsidered. Not like the terrified girls the other Mansions had tried to bride to him when they thought he was ascendant. “I don’t need any men to satisfy me,” she said. “My heart is set on a return to the land I love, Majesty, with the steel avalanche at my back. Give me that and you will have my faith.”

  The steel avalanche. The avalanche camped out in the dry lake bed called the erbajaste, waiting, waiting, for word to march. He could turn around now and see them, their spears wavering in the hot dry air.

  If he wanted to survive that army he would need an Aurdwynni bride and he would need to invade. Now.

  But the masks were still out there. The Falcresti who had taken his brother and bottled up the eastern sea, blockading the Stakhi from their fish. And Atakaszir knew the appalling treachery of those people, for Baru Cormorant had taught him.

  When he invaded, when the steel avalanche crashed down into Aurdwynn’s northern duchies of Lyxaxu and Vultjag and Erebog, the Masquerade would use Aurdwynn as an enormous firebreak. Plagues would spread. Forests would burn. Millions would drown in a mud cauldron of pus and shit as the laughing Falcresti bet on who would die last.

  If only he had some way to guarantee they would not interfere—

  A low horn blew from the slot pass that opened onto the col. Atakaszir’s heart seized a moment, for he remembered the day the news of disaster had come from Sieroch. And just as on that day, a kite rose up in signal.

  “What’s that?” Nayauru Aia asked.

  “A man is coming up the pass. A stranger.” The second kite caught the air. “A foreigner…”

  Right now Uczenith’s spies would be rushing to their masters to warn them that another moment had come. Another summit that might see Atakaszir toppled down the col to shatter in the valley below. Would the foreigner bring news of further disaster? Masquerade plagues in the lowlands? An end to the pitiful, vital salt trade in Duchy Erebog?

  A woman in a poncho climbed up to the signal post and began to wave her flags. Atakaszir translated the dips and flourishes as swiftly as they came. Then he peeled his lips back and grinned a death’s-head grin, the skull-joy of a man in battle.

  “What is it?”

  “Someone has come to offer me a gift.” Atakaszir touched the steel peak of his crown. “A gift he claims will make me a king of honor and revenge, whose enemies cannot escape him even if they flee to distant underlands. A king to be feared and obeyed.”

  “How tantalizing,” Nayauru Aia said, smoothly. “What gift can that be?”

  Revenge, Atakaszir thought. Revenge on the woman who betrayed me. A corpse to show my courtiers, and bone to stuff down the Uczenith craw, and blood to water my hopes.

  But the pale man who approached his throne between the great ranked pillars brought different tidings. “King of Mansions,” he began, as Atakaszir’s allies and enemies alike leaned forward like salary workers waiting for their crystals of the Brine. “I bring word of your missing brother, of his life and deeds, and of how he may be restored to you.…”

  “Svir?” Ataka whispered, but a king cannot whisper, it stinks of procht, the sick-thought of schemers, so he cried it aloud instead. “My brother, Svir, is alive?”

  And he saw the Uczenith men whisper in consternation that the King they hated might restore the stolen glory of the stolen Prince. He saw distant Nayauru Aia, leaning against her pillar, quirk her li
ps in thought, for here was another eligible man.

  All Atakaszir wanted in that moment was to call his army and march to his brother’s aid. But he was King, and a king must be wise.

  “Come forward,” he said. “What is your name? And who sent you?”

  ACT THREE

  THE FALL OF KYPRANANOKE

  18

  METAGAMES

  “I WON’T kill her yet,” Apparitor snapped. “This isn’t your courtroom, Yawa, and you won’t hand me a verdict.”

  “You’re sentimental.” Yawa sighed, to provoke him. “String your cook up on the yardarms, Svir. Let Sulane see what you do to traitors.”

  “I don’t want her to die,” Baru whispered.

  The two other cryptarchs blinked at her. “What did she say?”

  “Speak up, Baru.”

  Baru had screamed so much that she’d lost her voice. Every morning she had to change the dressing on her missing fingers, which made her howl like a ghost. She did it as soon as she woke. Do the most painful thing first: the pain is how you know it matters.

  Iraji spoke for her. “She doesn’t want Munette hung. She forgives the cook for attacking her.”

  From her huddle in the corner, Baru touched his ankle in gratitude. Apparitor glared from his hammock, where he fussed over a whittling. Yawa loomed in the curtained doorway like a raven. Their meetings had, Baru thought, become pitiable since the Llosydanes. Apparitor paced his decks cornered and desperate, trying to find a way to save himself from Itinerant and Hesychast and their pawns on his ship; Yawa spent her nights scribbling draft after draft of legal defense for her brother, if she was not down in the hold interrogating Shao Lune or tending to Execarne’s wounds; and Baru, well, she drank and tried not to remember the blood on Shir’s mask. Everyone was wretchedly hurt.

  “Tell me again,” Apparitor said, to Yawa, “who you think could be the mole. The one who left a letter for Ormsment in the Llosydanes post.” Baru had relayed Tau-indi’s intelligence on this point.

  “It had to be someone who knew we were going to Moem,” Yawa said. “We weren’t tailed there. Iscend would have noticed, and Execarne is no fool himself.”

  The crossbow bolt had come out of Execarne cleanly but the poison on that bolt had lingered. He insisted on mixing his own treatments, most of which left him uselessly intoxicated.

  “I knew,” Baru said. “Both of you knew, and Iraji. Ulyu Xe, I suppose, could’ve dropped a letter.…”

  Yawa shifted uncomfortably. She tried to pass it off as an itch but Apparitor had already pounced. “What is it?”

  “When we were on Moem, I ordered a special interrogation instrument shipped ashore from Helbride. A mole might have tracked the boat’s course.”

  “Wait. What kind of instrument?”

  “It was a device I used to interrogate Dziransi.” Yawa touched the spine of a book on Apparitor’s shelf. The Lightning Men: Falcrest’s Expeditions Eastward. “I wanted to learn what he knew about the state of the Stakhi Mansions. If an invasion’s coming … it’s vital that Aurdwynn be warned.”

  Apparitor relaxed very deliberately. No one but Baru would have detected his thrill of terror. At any moment Baru could say, Oh, by the way, Yawa, Apparitor here is the brother of the Stakhi King.…

  “Well?” Baru demanded. “What did you learn?”

  “Very little.” Yawa sighed. “And you saw fit to send the prisoners away. I suppose Dziransi’s sailing back to Aurdwynn by now, hm? What a waste.”

  “I need him in the north of Aurdwynn,” Baru countered, though it felt like sticking her fingers into the wound of their last fight. “I need him to open trade relations between Aurdwynn and the Stakhieczi. It’s the best way to avoid war.”

  “Never mind that.” Apparitor clearly wanted to get off the topic of the Stakhieczi as quickly as possible. “We’re going to die before we make it to Kyprananoke.”

  That got Baru’s attention back. Apparitor rubbed his face: springy red stubble had grown out far enough to curl. “I’ve talked to Captain Branne. We didn’t finish our work at the Elided Keep, and our hull’s still badly fouled. It’s slowing us.”

  “How long,” Baru rasped.

  “Sulane will catch us within two days.”

  “And how long to Kyprananoke?”

  “Two weeks. With good weather. Which we can hope for, but never count on.”

  Silence. Down from above came the low cries of the sailing-master conducting her sorcery. On Taranoke they’d had a saying, You can’t sail faster than the wind, which meant, You can only do as much as you can do. How could anyone sail faster than the wind? Surely, if your ship was traveling at wind speed, then the wind could no longer exert force on the sail: it was an elementary lesson for Taranoki children, Toro Haba’s Law of Force.

  But the Falcresti could break that law. Arranged at the right angle, Helbride’s sails acted like a wing—they could get force from the air by some mathematical trickery. Helbride could run downwind faster than the air.

  And so could Sulane. And she was winning the race.

  “We can’t possibly fight Sulane.” Apparitor drummed his fists on the wall. “We can’t even trust the other ships we meet. We’re still in Ormsment’s waters. She has the power to commandeer trade ships and leave agents aboard. Anyone could be compromised.”

  “No,” Baru said, looking up at Iraji, remembering his idea. “Not anyone. There’s one place we can go that Ormsment can’t touch.”

  * * *

  “LOOK at you.” Shao Lune sneered. “Have you lost two fingers? I’ve been shackled in the bilge, beaten, interrogated, and left to rot. And somehow I’ve still come out ahead of you.”

  Baru came down the stairs to find the treacherous staff captain better appointed than last time they’d sparred. She’d gained a lantern on a hook, a bucket for her toilet (clean, thankfully; it stank only of bleach), a few planks to keep her above the bilgewater, a supply of various linens and pads, and some slack on her chains.

  “Looks like you’ve been cooperating.” Baru tested the boards underfoot. Shao Lune had done her carpentry well. “Left anything to sell to me? Or did you give it all to Yawa?”

  “Left you anything? I’m in a better position than you, I think.”

  “Funny.” Baru looked at her wrist. “I don’t see any chains on mine.” Then she thought of something she’d said to Tain Hu once: the Masquerade rules them, but it has not yet made them want to be ruled, the chains are not yet invisible, and nearly shouted in fright.

  “I tell the Jurispotence this and that. What I know about Ormsment. What I expect her to do.” Shao Lune’s uniform hung from an overhead beam. In her cotton workshirt and rough canvas trousers she looked like a gutter mucker, but she lounged on her hard-earned carpentry with the poise of a schoolyard tyrant. Lamplight conjured faint implications through the cloth. She was not, without the uniform, quite as sleek and slim and minimal as she liked to appear. “I could tell her about you, couldn’t I?”

  “What would you possibly tell Xate Yawa about me.”

  “Still want to bargain with my admirals? Conduct a little military adjustment of Parliament? Yawa would love to learn about that.”

  Baru would indeed very much like to arrange a military coup in Falcrest, right about the same moment she coaxed the Stakhi and Oriati to invade Falcrest. One convulsive cataclysm to break the mask off the world’s face.

  “You know,” Shao Lune said, and what an eloquent sneer she had, “I think gava women don’t understand the scale of the world. I think you believe Parliament’s just like a few dirty elders huddled in a cave.”

  Baru picked up a length of Shao Lune’s chain. The woman flinched. Baru grinned at her: she remembered last time. Baru slipped her hand under her shirt and, very slowly, extracted a wooden bottle of fern shampoo. “Would you like some soap?”

  The staff captain’s wide eyes narrowed with contempt. “Please. I have dignity.”

  “Where?” Baru peered around. “You’ve hidden
it so well.”

  “You knock-kneed gava virgin. You think you’re someone?”

  Baru seized the captain’s chain and took out her general frustration by yanking Shao Lune back to her beam. A few circuits of the chain had Shao pinned with her arms at her sides. Baru’s maimed right hand complained. Baru flexed it and savored the reminder of pain.

  Shao panted with the effort of her resistance. Out of her uniform she seemed somehow spiritually disheveled, her eyes too large and expressive, her mouth too cruel: as if deprived of necessary constraints, bindings that kept her merely human.

  Baru whispered in her ear. “Tell me how to stop Ormsment.”

  “Blow up her ship.”

  “You know we can’t fight.”

  “I’m just a simple navy officer. I only understand fire.”

  Baru would need to offer Shao something more than soap. Something Yawa couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her. Gods of fire, did her hand hurt. Gods of stone, it had grown so hard to think. She’d been clever once. Before she spent her days curled in her hammock, trying to dilute her pain with spirit.

  “You smell like blood and drink,” Lune hissed. “You’re degenerating, aren’t you? Reverting to your primal state.”

  Baru clinched the chains a little tighter. “Ormsment blew up three Oriati ships. She’s out of control. She could start a second Armada War.”

  “Pirate hunting is the admiral’s duty.”

  “They weren’t pirates. They flew Federal Oriati colors.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why?”

  “The admiral wouldn’t burn a Federal-flagged Oriati ship.”

  Baru seized on Shao Lune’s weakness: she couldn’t quite repress her navy training, her need to provide accurate information. “Ormsment wouldn’t attack an Oriati diplomatic ship?”

  “How should I know? As a loyal officer, I can’t understand the mutinous mind.”

  Baru braced one foot against the post and drew the chain tight. Shao groaned and pushed her fists against the planking, desperate to breathe.