The Monster Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  “Well,” Captain Branne grunted, surveying the damage, “can’t fix that, I don’t think.”

  “No indeed,” Baru said.

  “She’s sinking toward the stern. Fuck me, will you look at all the glass on that sunroom? That’s going to be a mighty expensive aquarium soon.”

  “Cannon,” Apparitor said. He came up beside her, wearing thick gloves: ready to climb up into the rigging and survey the boarding from above. “They were struck by cannon fire. It came in from the starboard side, there, and then the starboard aft as Cheetah pulled away. The attackers aimed high, trying to take her masts off. But by the end they wanted to shoot off Cheetah’s rudder. That was when they put the fatal wound in her stern. I think they wanted to capture Cheetah’s crew, but their weapons worked too well. They fled when the distress rockets went up. Curious that they didn’t finish the job.”

  “We have to go aboard,” Baru said. “We have to get the Prince and the diplomatic flags. It’s our only hope against Sulane.”

  “I know.” He chewed at his hair. “Shit. There’s hardly any time. Shit. If the weather holds we can stay close alongside and—”

  “STORM!” came the cry from the mast-tops. “STORM AWAY SOUTH!”

  Baru and Apparitor looked at each other. Baru couldn’t help but grin.

  The acting master-at-arms shoved Shao Lune up to the rail. “What do you see?” Baru asked her, pointing to Cheetah. As Ormsment’s staff captain, Shao would’ve read secret files. Perhaps they had described a secret navy warship with many cannon, used to “vanish” inconvenient Oriati diplomats.…

  “I see a second-rate clipper hull from our Rathpont yards. The kind we sell to the Mbo to make them envy the quality of our first-rate ships.” Lune’s squint reminded Baru that she’d been down in darkness for a long time. The sun must dazzle. Baru shielded her eyes for her.

  “Queen’s blue bulb…” Shao Lune breathed. “Look at those cannon holes.”

  “What carries that many cannon?”

  “A ghost ship. A ghost ship came upon her.”

  Apparitor groaned into his hand. “There aren’t any ghost ships.”

  “Of course there are,” Shao sniffed.

  “The Empire Admiral would know about them.”

  “Very doubtful. We keep these reports from the more … political elements of the Admiralty.” Shao Lune favored him with a supercilious smile. “In the real navy we’ve all heard the stories. Eight-masted titans that bristle with rockets and cannon as they glide about in banks of spectral fog. Immune to interception … as if they know our patrols and sentries.”

  “That’s fish shit.”

  “Oh?” Lune pointed her shackled wrists to Cheetah’s sinking hulk. “Do you know any ship on the sea with enough cannon to do that? No? I thought not.”

  Yawa came up on Baru’s left. “Ah,” she said, studying the carnage. “I see something’s killing ships. I’m going to go sit in a whaleboat with Iscend and a cask of water.”

  Water. Shit. That reminded Baru of her accounts.

  “Apparitor.” She drew him aside to mutter, “Are you planning to take all the Oriati aboard?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Must we? It’s a risk…”

  “Law of the sea. I don’t care what you say. I’m going to help them.”

  “The world doesn’t reward goodness with goodness, Svir.”

  “No. But people do.”

  “Fine.” She did quick mental arithmetic. “Then we need to put a prize party on Cheetah and salvage as much as we can.”

  “We haven’t any time—there’s a storm—”

  “If we don’t do it, we’ll die on Helbride before we make Kyprananoke.”

  “Oh, damn it. Damn, damn, pepper shit!” Apparitor beat his forehead with the meat of his hand. “The water. We have to rescue the water.”

  “As many casks as we can get.” They would need enough to sustain the new passengers, at least. Enough to keep them from the thirsty death: a ship of mummies adrift beneath banqueting gulls—like the one that was now pacing on the yardarm above, furious that no one had paid any attention to its dance.

  “There’s only one way to play this,” Baru decided. “We have to send hostages over to guarantee our good conduct. Or they’re going to expect us to seize the Prince and sail off.”

  He nodded. “You’re volunteering?”

  “I am.”

  “Are you on good terms with this Prince?”

  Last time they’d met, Tau had said, I’ll have nothing to do with you.

  “Of course!” Baru said. “We share a good rapport, I think.”

  The gull on the yardarm squawked in indignation and tried to shit on her.

  * * *

  SUNSET raked the sky like fingers in a child’s hair. The two clippers settled flank to flank. Helbride silver-white and sleek, arrogant in its grace. Cheetah cruelly macerated, leaking oils and bilge into the waves, sinking inch by drooling inch into a great raft of kelp. The air was too calm: the sailors fidgeted, waiting for the storm front.

  Helbride’s crew put down a bridge over to Cheetah. An Oriati soldier leapt up onto the far end.

  She was a brick-shaped bald woman with her fists wrapped up in rope, pleasantly open-faced, someone you might approach when you needed help with your luggage dockside. She called out in unaccented Aphalone, which meant a Falcrest accent:

  “I’m Enact-Colonel Osa ayaSegu, captain of the Prince-ship Cheetah. Be you all warned, now. If this is a trick to kidnap my Prince, then I’ll make it known that I have six armed naval mines in my hold. If I don’t report that all’s well, they’ll blow both our ships apart.”

  “Iraji,” Baru whispered, “didn’t you say your people were a kind people?”

  “It’s been a long time since I left the Mbo,” Iraji admitted.

  “Enact-Colonel!” Captain Branne shouted back. The sea crashed and sucked between the two hulls. “I’m Captain Branne of the fast courier Helbride. We’re here to rescue all your crew.”

  “We doubt that, Captain Branne! We suspect you’re here for the Prince!”

  “Two of my passengers are prepared to come over as hostages for our good conduct.”

  The enact-colonel scanned Helbride’s deck and rigging. “Send me the pretty boy in the masts.”

  The crew laughed up at Apparitor, who sat perched in the ropes, looking more like an ornament than a crew member. He kicked his feet happily and waved. “Can’t!” Branne yelled back. “He’s my cabin boy, I promised his mum he’d come home! We’ll send these two instead.”

  Baru took Iraji’s arm with her left hand. Feel him, now. He is alive. Remember this, his hard forearm and slim wrist, so that something will remain when he goes. All that you do has a price.

  As they crossed the bridge, Baru looked down, and for a horrifying instant she could see all the depths beneath them. The dark water full of schools of fish and bubbling porpoises, deepening, plunging past great-finned tentacled things and upraised claws of bone, toward fissures in the seafloor where secret fire glimmered.

  If you died here your soul would not have the strength to swim.

  * * *

  CHEETAH’S Oriati crew paused in their work, covered in blood and sweaty caked sawdust, to salute them. “Thank you for coming,” many of them repeated, or they touched their clavicles in gratitude. Baru remembered Aminata showing her why the clavicle was the most delicate bone, you may break it with a few pounds of force: so if you were Oriati, part of a people with a long tradition of the martial arts, you touched the clavicle to show your trust.

  They followed the enact-colonel below. The attack had blasted the ship open to evening light and the sound of birds. Everything was a wet-paint fresco of gore and hardwood shrapnel. Cannonballs had shattered the bulkheads, splintered them through running bodies, painted the deck in the stink of char and bowels. Iraji covered his mouth. “O principles,” he murmured.

  “No principle watched over this,” Osa ayaSegu said,
which made Iraji wide-eyed with a fear Baru didn’t understand. “You will await Cheetah’s full evacuation in the aft sunroom.”

  “Will we see the Prince?” This was all useless if they couldn’t get the Prince aboard Helbride. Had they been hit? Had they been killed? Without the Prince, Sulane might not respect the diplomatic flags …

  “Of course,” Osa said, to Baru’s huge relief. “The Prince will dine with their honored hostages.”

  They passed through a spice room clouded with blown-out cinnamon and drifting cumin. The Oriati artisans had ornamented the ship’s furniture with the shapes of ancient beasts: jellyfish with ruffled bells as long as cloaks, krakenflies perched on reeds, owls of calm and of fear, tigers and ruffed lions, gyraffes with falcons on their heads. From the deck above, the soft rain wept down through the pine-pitch caulking, and it made Baru remember, against her will, the clean air and autumn leaves of Duchy Lyxaxu.

  Fascinated by everything, she forgot to swivel her blind spot, and so she stumbled rightside-first into the Prince Tau-indi Bosoka.

  “Oh,” the Prince said. “It’s you.”

  Yes,” Baru said, warily. “It’s me. Hello again.”

  For a few moments they shared a mutual, tired wish: if only we’d never met before. Then the Prince stiffened, not with distaste but determination and pride, preparing themselves for an honest effort. They cupped Baru’s hands and kissed them, left and right, careful of her bandages. Their lips were warm enough to make Baru shiver in delight.

  “Welcome to my home on the sea,” they said, “damp and bloody as she may be. You’ve come to our aid. I offer the great gratitude of my house Bosoka, and of all Lonjaro Mbo, the Thirteen-in-Three-in-One.”

  “Your Federal Highness, we are honored by the welcome of your house!” Iraji cried. Baru and Iraji bowed together, and Iraji went a little lower than Baru, so Baru went a little lower than him, until they were both kneeling prostrate.

  “You’re really going to do this?” the colonel asked the Prince over Baru’s kneeling ass.

  “I really am,” Tau-indi said.

  “You know I’ll try to take you away by force, if I must.”

  “You may try, my dear Enact-Colonel. You may try.” The Prince looked down at their guests, bemused and smiling. “I think fate has brought me these two as a particular challenge.”

  “As you say, Your Federal Highness.” The door creaked shut behind the colonel.

  The three of them were left alone in Cheetah’s glorious sunroom, a cage of glass that looked over the ruined stern and the rising sea. The Prince offered their hands to help Baru and Iraji both up. “Before we go on,” they said, grunting against the weight, “I must give you one last choice. If you would prefer to break the hostage deal, return to Helbride, and sail away while Cheetah dies, then tell me now. You may leave freely. Understand that if you stay you may well drown in this room with me.”

  “Your Federal Highness,” Baru protested, “I don’t understand. Would you refuse our help?”

  “If you remain,” the Prince continued, softly, earnestly, “your fates will be entangled with mine. And at this moment I am doomed, doomed with all my house. You are my only hope of salvation. If you and I cannot find a common human bond—yes, Baru, you and I and your companion—then all of us will come to an end far worse than the sea.”

  Baru’s skin crawled. She wasn’t superstitious. But her body might be.

  “I was very rude to you on Moem.” The Prince bowed in apology. “I presumed to judge you for luring my friend Abdumasi to his doom. I see now that if there is no hope for you, there can be no hope for peace.”

  Play along, Baru. Play along and see if you can understand. Magic is practiced in the world, whether you believe it or not; it is used to guard over sick children and to ward off the foxes from the coop. People believe in magic. The magic may not alter anything, but their beliefs still guide their actions.

  “Your Federal Highness,” Iraji began, thick with fear, and had to stop to cough and hem until his voice uncreased itself, “what’s wrong? Why are you doomed? Perhaps we can help.”

  “You can help, you can, you can, please.”

  They reached behind them, where a cloth covered a woven basket-dish. Baru braced herself for the revelation of a hideous Oriati superstition—bugs to eat, or blood-brush calligraphy, or some other lurid ritual from the Old Continent. But Tau-indi whipped away the silk to reveal a puff of savory steam and a bowl of thick brown bread, full of almost-raw meats pounded full of spice, gauze-cut fish like pink tissue, candied fruits, fresh eggs, and at the center a clay pot of wine.

  “Please,” the Prince said, earnestly, “will you sit and eat with me?”

  Baru had to know. “What are we doing? Is this magic?”

  “Yes, in a way, I think it is.” The Prince sat cross-legged by the bread bowl and began to fold up hot pitas to eat with. “My ship was attacked, as I’m sure,” they chuckled ruefully, “you’ve seen. But the worst of the damage is invisible, I’m afraid, and if it is not repaired, we will all end up worse than dead. I told you before that a wound in trim is growing around us, a wound that will devour all civilization on the Ashen Sea. You, sir, you were Oriati born. Do you know what I mean when I say a wound in trim?”

  Iraji swayed. Fell down to his knees. “Yes,” he said. “I do … a wound like Kutulbha.”

  Kutulbha was the city where the Armada War had ended. There was a passage about it in Firestorm. Baru remembered it vividly. When the last fires went out in the Ventricular Villages, and the silent rains fell on burnt Kutulbha, nothing remained except the concrete made from the ash of their bodies.…

  “Exactly so.” Tau-indi offered them each a pita. “Wherever the human fabric frays, then older powers come through into our world. Powers that are cloaked in tragedy. One of those powers assaulted this ship. And because we saw that power, and heard its voice, all of us on Cheetah are now cut off from the mbo and doomed to eternal solitude. Unless we can reconnect ourselves to the human community, we will carry this wound wherever we go. Just as I thought you carried a wound, Baru, when I met you on Moem.”

  Iraji clutched at Baru’s elbow with desperate need. She stared at him, absolutely baffled. This was nonsense, superstitious raving: it meant nothing. “Fine,” she said, “what do we do to, er, help you reconnect yourself?”

  “Very simple.” Tau set their legs under them and tucked their khanga against their hips. “We attempt to create a bond of trim.”

  “Do we get to play Purge?” Baru asked, eagerly.

  Tau stared at her in bemusement. “I don’t like that game. I thought we might share a meal and a story. And if the reconnection succeeds, then trim will rescue us from Cheetah.”

  “If by trim you mean sailors from Helbride, then yes”—Baru laughed, ha ha, how funny that we might drown—“we’ll be rescued.”

  “Oh no.” Tau shook their head, solemnly. “We must find our own way out, through our own togetherness.”

  “Yes,” Baru repeated, frowning, “we must find our own way out, until Helbride’s sailors come rescue us.”

  “You misunderstand me. I’ve had us locked inside.”

  “What?” Baru leapt to her feet. “You’ve done what?”

  “I’ve had us locked inside Cheetah while she sinks,” Tau said, apologetically, “so that only trim can save us. So as to guarantee that our survival is a function of genuine human connection.”

  “Baru.” Iraji seized her arm. “Baru. I can’t swim.”

  * * *

  BARU couldn’t batter the door open. The Rathpont shipwrights had built a very fine jamb—of course they had, damn it, they’d engineered the sunroom so it could be sealed against flooding. The hive-glass at the rear of the sunroom might be opened, but they’d have to swim, and what about Iraji?

  “Why did you come?” the Prince asked Iraji, as Baru scurried about trying to escape.

  Iraji folded up a handful of salt beef in his pita bread. “We hoped you could
protect us from our enemies. Your diplomatic status could save us.”

  “You came to bargain with us.” The Prince slapped the deck with their hand, a sound that made Baru’s cheek sting. “Let me be plain. The use of people as instruments is anathema to me. I’d rather die in this ship than live as a pawn in some technocrat’s scheme.”

  “I understand,” Iraji said, “I know the ways of trim: people must be ends in themselves, not means—”

  “For Devena’s sake!” Baru erupted, driven to panic by the satirically stupid ethos of pigheaded moral stiffness. “We’re on a mission to stop this war, understand? We’re agents of the Imperial Throne and we’re searching for the Oriati who attacked Aurdwynn during last winter’s rebellion! We have to be in Parliament by summer’s end to report our findings! We were on our way to Kyprananoke, to ask one Unuxekome Ra about a certain Abdumasi Abd. And if you don’t help us, the mutineers in our navy will kill us, and there will be no one to stop open war!”

  The Prince gasped aloud in relief. “Oh,” they said, falling back on their heels. “Oh, thank you, thank you. Good!”

  Baru didn’t understand what was good about any of that. “You’re welcome?”

  “Skepticism is understandable,” Tau said, breathlessly, “I know you come from a very different culture. But you’ve shared your honest thoughts with me. We found a connection. We are both looking for Abdumasi Abd. I suspect you want him to start the war, not to stop it, but at least we share a common purpose.”

  Baru supposed that was true, in a roundabout way. She was looking for where Abd had been, and Tau was searching for where he had gone.

  “I have to find Abdumasi.” Tau-indi held up clasped hands. “I have to make things right with him. That can stop the war. Don’t look so cynical, Baru. I am a diplomat. I believe trim acts through people, and I believe people can choose peace.”

  “Your Highness,” Iraji whispered mournfully, “Abdumasi Abd is dead.”

  Tau-indi blinked softly. They had a very kind face. “I hope you’re wrong.”

  “The navy reported him killed at the Battle of Treatymont. Burned with his ships. If he’d been taken prisoner, perhaps he would have been sent to Moem for Execarne to interrogate … but he was not with those we found there.”