The Traitor Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  A terrible unwise unwanted thing trembled alive inside her, a thing she had known for a long time, a thing she could not yet acknowledge nor admit. A vast mistake. The second worst thing she had ever allowed.

  Perhaps, on review, the worst.

  Tain Hu’s hobnailed boots made soft spark-sounds on the fallen henge stones, gentle scrapes on the moss. Her voice came like low smoke, blown in from a fire too close: “Something burdens you. I saw it in the winter. Now I see it again.”

  “Duchess.” Plea in her voice. A protest of crows in the near distance.

  “Are you weary of the war? Does the pillage sicken you? You would rule the wolf land, Baru Fisher. Every winter we freeze our stillborn in the ice because the ground will not yield a grave. Have you had too much of blood and corpse-flesh? Is it that?”

  “Your Grace. Please.”

  Tain Hu’s boots came two steps closer. Baru wished she could close her ears just as she shut her eyes. “What great secret rots in there, child of Taranoke? What awful truth would you conceal? You have betrayed so much already. What other crime do you fear?”

  A hand on her shoulder. Deerskin glove, smooth through broadcloth and leather and linen and her own flesh.

  If you close your hand with all your strength, Baru thought, I will crumble into ash. Nothing will remain.

  What have I done?

  What have I done?

  She stood in utter stillness, unable to advance, unwilling to withdraw, the charge of Tain Hu’s touch galvanic, annihilating.

  Everything she most wanted in this instant would destroy everything she had most wanted for all the rest of her life.

  Your Grace, she began to say. Tain Hu. I—

  Contact broke. Tain Hu released a ragged breath and drew away. “It will grow dark.”

  “I’d hoped to see the stars.”

  “There are safer places under the same sky.” Duchess Vultjag spoke with a terrible, unwanted deference. “You were right about the Belthyci, Your Excellence. I misspoke. They deserve my respect.”

  “Hu,” Baru began, grappling with chains of implication and consequence, trying to set the incendiary impossible words one after another without detonating the whole thing, trying to find a way out, a way to stop, a way to go on. A bridge across the bottomless, red-haired chasm.

  There had to be some way—

  But a long low boom sounded in the distance, a terrible exhalation: the waterfall keep’s great horn, blown in signal. The word had come.

  Tain Hu looked at her with quiet, loyal, agonizing resolve. “It’s time.”

  The Masquerade’s patient quiet had ended. Cattlson marched to war.

  * * *

  BARU gave one last order before they left Vultjag. “You’ll remain here,” she told Ake Sentiamut, and then, against the hurt in the woman’s eyes: “We need a strong hand in Vultjag. I know you have the duchess’s trust.”

  Ake bowed to Baru, and to Tain Hu. “Your Excellence. Your Grace.”

  If there were other things she wanted to say, her loyalty did not permit them.

  27

  TAIN Hu led her rangers and phalanxes downriver along the roaring Vultsniada, the men on the banks pacing the barges through warm idyll days and wolf-howl nights, until at last the river passed between high white cliffs feathered in terns and joined the great Inirein in the south of Duchy Oathsfire.

  The Mill Duke’s waterwheel banners flew in greeting. On the far bank marched his bowmen, cohort after cohort. When they saw the banners of Duchy Vultjag they gave no response, but the coin-and-comet sigil of the Fairer Hand drew a resounding cheer.

  “He bought the yew for all those bows from Duke Lyxaxu.” Tain Hu surveyed the columns of bowmen with hard eyes. “Always brothers, those two.”

  They stood together at the prow of a river barge, and behind Tain Hu the snowcapped Wintercrests bit the clear spring sky.

  “You sound bitter,” Baru said. They’d talked about this once before, in winter, and Tain Hu had said: He wanted me. He wanted my land and he wanted his heirs. He was gracious, generous, chivalrous—he couldn’t understand why I refused. It poisoned him. His courtship was perfect, so he understood that the imperfection, then, had to be with me. And Lyxaxu, of course, Lyxaxu with all his wisdom and philosophy—Lyxaxu still stands with his brother.

  Baru had asked what she should take from this. Tain Hu had said, with cold venom:

  That we are not free. Not even when we march beside them, nor even when we lead them. Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.

  Now she said: “Bitter no more. Aurdwynn must set its past grievances aside, Your Excellence.” And Duchess Vultjag bowed her head in respect to her sworn lord.

  She had grown so distant. Something Baru had done in the forest, or failed to do, had spoken to Vultjag—said something final.

  From the road beside the river came the sound of horns. Baru shielded her eyes and looked for the dust of Oathsfire’s guard.

  “Your Excellence!” Xate Olake clapped her shoulder, Dziransi a respectful two paces behind him. “I have news. From the headwaters, from Ihuake’s capital, and from Welthony.”

  Something had happened to the old man along the river, some poison drawn out of him by the clear meltwater, by the thousand marching banners. Baru could see in his teeth and brow the sense of an approaching end.

  “Your Grace,” she said, unable to repress a smile. “Remarkable how you remain the spymaster of Lachta, even deprived of Lachta.”

  Time for one last look across the board. One last chance to ensure all the pieces had been set in their places.

  So much depended on everything happening at just the right time, the right place.

  “Flattering old men might have gotten you this far, but Cattlson’s arrayed a force you won’t be able to trick your way around.” Xate Olake smoothed a letter between his forefingers. “Duke Unuxekome says that Cattlson marches on the Inirein with five thousand Falcresti regulars and a thousand engineers. He’s skirting the north edge of the coastal marshes to make best time. His route will take him across the Sieroch floodplain, just as he planned.”

  “So few?” She had accounted the troops camped at Sieroch again and again, estimating rebel losses to disease, starvation, desertion. “We’ll outnumber him four to one.”

  Tain Hu exhaled between her teeth. “Count again. Those are only Cattlson’s regulars.”

  Duke Heingyl. Of course. Baru waved to Olake—proceed.

  “The Stag Hunter brings his full strength. Ten thousand drawn from Duchy Heingyl and his conquests in Duchy Radaszic.” Xate Olake rubbed the roots of his beard. “And four thousand cavalry, including the Stag Hunter’s elite.”

  Twenty thousand men. An enormous force. And on the open floodplains at Sieroch, his cavalry would be free to maneuver. They had chosen their ground well.

  Baru made a quick computation of supplies and consumption. “They cannot feed so many for long. He means to strike directly at our army. End the war in one battle.”

  “Wisely so,” Tain Hu said. “So many of our levies are scurvied and starved. Cattlson wintered with his granaries full. Fighter to fighter, his phalanxes will have the edge.”

  Olake pointed across the river. “Then we don’t count on the phalanx line. We win with archers. With cavalry.”

  Could they split the army? Let Cattlson waste his fury against a decoy while they outran him, took Treatymont, waited for him to starve? No, that would be madness—Baru didn’t know how to fight that way, couldn’t pretend to be a general. Nor could the vast force camped out at Sieroch possibly manage it. The individual duchies’ soldiers had their own doctrines, loyalties, language … impossible to divide them and retain any coordination.

  They would have no choice but to meet Cattlson in their full strength, and bet everything on one battle. They would outnumber him by a small margin.

  Uncomfortably small, by an accountant’s standards.

  She had to defeat Cattlson. Of th
is she had not the littlest doubt—she had to bring the war to a swift, focused conclusion, an indisputable rebel triumph.

  Everyone was waiting for her to speak.

  “What of the marines?” Baru asked. “The reinforcements from Falcrest?” More than any other force at arms, the rebels had to fear them. Masquerade regulars were, by intent, a variegated and underequipped bunch, meant to menace the occupied and offer no threat to the Parliament they might rebel against.

  But the marines, Falcrest’s favorite and most loyal spear …

  When the end of the rebellion came, the marines would write it. Of this, too, she had not the littlest doubt.

  “Word from Xate Yawa says their marines will land in Treatymont and garrison it while Cattlson marches. A waste of their best, if you ask me, but I am no field-general.”

  Tain Hu looked downriver, thinking, perhaps, of Unuxekome, who had always seemed friendly with her in council. “If they changed course, they could still land at Welthony.”

  Welthony would give them the Inirein’s mouth, and a way to strike north. Too late to matter at Sieroch, though. Baru saw the politics—Cattlson wanted to demonstrate victory without Falcrest’s support. He’d built his reputation on his rapport with the dukes, and so he would go to war like a duke.

  Like Baru, he wanted to prove that he knew how to master Aurdwynn.

  Baru gestured again—on to the next concern. “The next letter? From Ihuake’s capital? Tell me our western flank is secure.”

  Olake coughed. “There have been revolts in Duchy Nayauru. I am assured they will be suppressed.” (Of course they will, Baru thought, with black amusement. We are in the business of crushing revolt now.) “Some strange force has emptied the woods of forage and filled it with enemy bowmen. Erebog’s troops have encountered enormous difficulty; the Crone regrets that she will be unable to spare forces to join us at Sieroch.”

  The Masquerade’s winter policy at work again. Could Erebog be party to some secret arrangement—a web arranged in the high north…? Perhaps Lyxaxu would know. Perhaps Lyxaxu would be party, too, though surely he would not split from Oathsfire—

  Her mind felt like it might spin apart.

  Tain Hu hissed between her teeth again, seeing some other difficulty. “If Erebog can’t hold her new clients, then we should expect cavalry from Autr and Sahaule to join Cattlson at Sieroch. Perhaps another two thousand. The Horsebane and the Brine Duke had many sworn riders, and they’ll want revenge for what we did at Haraerod.”

  Damn. Damn. Erebog should have—but there was nothing to be done about Erebog now.

  “Your Excellence. Erebog has fallen victim to jagisczion.” Tain Hu spoke with urgency and forthright focus—but still those downcast eyes, that eerie deference, as if she was rehearsing a part she would play for a long long time. “Cattlson and Heingyl deployed their woodsmen to bog her infantry down in forest war, liberating the cavalry of Autr and Sahaule to swing east. This tells us how they plan to win at Sieroch.”

  We are not the only players on the board, Baru thought. We are not the only cunning thinkers with a map and a will to triumph. We must be wary.

  So very close to victory.

  She pointed to Dziransi. “He, at least, must bear good news. Is the Necessary King’s gift on its way? Have the jagata sailed?”

  Xate Olake translated the question over and the answer back. “The tail of Duke Oathsfire’s column has already sighted them. They will join us at Sieroch.”

  “We are fools,” Baru murmured, “to go into this battle without the certainty that we have already won it. We are all fools.”

  All the careful manipulation of coin and grain and cattle and marriage, all the delicate alignment of vectors. And it would all be reckoned here, in two masses riding lathered horse and casting their spears, killing potentialities as they killed each other: It will be this way, not that way! This way and no other!

  “Eat your onions,” Xate Olake said. “We’ll need the luck.”

  “Nothing can be left to luck,” Baru said, and felt their eyes on her as she turned away.

  * * *

  SHE could feel everything racing toward Sieroch. Felt it in her ears, like the pressure of diving too deep in the clear water off Halae’s Reef.

  Baru went ashore to pay her respects to Duke Oathsfire. They rode the riverbank between ranks of laughing bowmen and the barge-clotted river, speckled, now, by the fall of a gentle spring rain.

  “I was cruel to her,” Oathsfire said. Baru followed his gaze and saw Tain Hu, at the prow of her riverboat, calling orders across the water. “When we were young. And when I left my wife. Cruel to her, both times, in my clumsiness.”

  “She speaks of you with respect,” Baru lied.

  “Does she?”

  “Your Grace,” Baru said, looking down on the compact duke, his beard and brawn, the richness of his tabard and cloak and boots. “Aurdwynn must forget its past now, and look to its future.”

  “I said something like that to Lyxaxu once. He told me—” Taken by some particular mood, Oathsfire opened one bare palm to the rain. “Every moment is an edict spoken by its past. The past is the real tyranny.”

  “I regret, then, that we cannot aim your bowmen at anything but our future.” She struggled briefly with her borrowed rouncey horse, and only made it more cantankerous.

  “It is enough.” He looked to her with a strange wide-eyed frankness, a child’s regard. She did not expect it from the man who had spent so long bickering with Unuxekome and playing for her hand. “I am glad to be part of this fight. Glad to do something I know is right. I think I always needed this more than coin or family.”

  But family was on his mind. “Your Grace, will you be able to fight alongside Tain Hu?”

  “Am I a petty man, you’re asking?”

  She looked at him in surprise, struck by his awareness. “You have been speaking to Lyxaxu, haven’t you.”

  He laughed. “We had all winter to continue our dialogs. And yes, yes, I think I was a petty man. I envied Lyxaxu, you know, even though he was my friend. His looks, his love, his—his certainty. I coveted them. I made myself rich off the river trade just so I would have something he lacked.”

  “You will not die at Sieroch,” Baru said, because although she could not know that, she felt some new fatalism in Oathsfire’s words. “You need make no confession to me.”

  “But I must. A good man never goes to battle dirty.” He stroked his horse’s neck, smiling gently. “I took such vindictive pleasure when you sent Unuxekome away, you know. The Sea Groom and his salt and his smiles—I hated him, hated the way you pinned your plans on him, the way you spoke to him, the respect you gave him. When he left, I was sure all my bowmen and barges would give me a suit.” He flinched as the distant mountains strobed with lightning, and then laughed at himself. “I wanted to be king. Or, maybe—to be the kind of man who you would want as king.”

  Baru pitied him, in spite of herself, in spite of the little anger down there: All of you jousting for me like a prize. You could have spoken, and had your answer. “You know about the Necessary King, then. The offer he made to Aurdwynn.”

  “I have my spies in Vultjag’s court.” The wide child eyes had gone, replaced by a kind of stillness, an inner peace. “You face a terrible choice, Your Excellence.”

  “What is it?”

  “You will need a king. If you are to rule, you will need children to avert civil war. And the more you have, the stronger your position will be, the firmer our confidence in your dynasty.” He avoided her eyes, looking instead to the marching longbowmen. Beneath his beard he flushed a little. “Among the Maia you would seek many fathers. Among the Stakhi, only one. I have heard it whispered that on your home the men are sodomites and the women must dress as boys and go among them. Whatever creed you follow, Baru Fisher—and I will not pretend that I do not favor the Stakhi ways, that I did not meet some of the Masquerade’s edicts with gladness—soon you will need to choose a general for the army
at Sieroch.”

  “And it will be a sign of my favor.”

  Now he spoke with obvious care, his stillness troubled. He wanted to be selfless, but he was still a duke, and he had pride. “If you pass through victory at Sieroch without the appearance of a lover, real or intended, many will give credit to the whispers directed toward your association with Tain Hu. That you are sterile, a gelding. Or a tribadist, drawn only to fruitless congress, a threat to your own dynasty. Or a creature made in Falcrest, bred in the Metademe to pass among men and women, but separate from them. Like the Oriati and their lamen.”

  He made the recitation seem obscene, and Baru did not hide the cold in her voice. “Or they will know that I have given my word to a distant man, and that I will keep it.”

  “Is that true?” he asked softly. “Please, tell me. I thought you had yet to judge him. I thought perhaps I—still had a chance to speak my case. It is not only ambition.”

  “You fool.” She spoke rashly, unwisely, but with honesty. She had never wanted to care about these politics of courtship, the intrigue of who would own her and what everyone would think about it. “You cannot care for me. We’ve hardly met.”

  “I spent the winter listening to my people cry your name.” He stroked his charger’s mane between thumb and forefinger. “A good duke looks to his people’s loves. I have, of late, wanted to be a better duke. So. Perhaps I studied too well.”

  The noblemen of Aurdwynn had clearly been raised on some profound lie about courtship. In no mood for more lies, she lashed out, spoke with care only for her own thoughts.

  “You court an illusion. A mask. You could have been my comrade. You will never be my lover.”

  She struck his pride. She saw it in the way his eyes hardened. “My man in Vultjag says you walk into the forest with the duchess. I know her appetites. Please, Your Excellence, look to the future of Aurdwynn.” He still spoke with an earnest open need, but now it filled her with wrath. “You must have children. Don’t squander our victory on the Maia perversions of your youth. Don’t break the alliance over rumor of your ill-chosen bedmates.”

  She seized his horse by the bridle, gloves tangled in the leather tack. “Duke Oathsfire,” she hissed, furious, affronted. “Will you fight at Sieroch? Will you lead your fighters, and in turn be led by those I set above you?”