The Monster

by Seth Dickinson

  Tau and Abdumasi pretended they needed Kindalana’s permission to go swim in the lake, but this was just an excuse to get Kindalana. She was the rarest of them, the most bound to her studies, the most reticent with her praise and favor, the most cutting in her indictments of failure, and thus the most precious.

  “They’re inseparable,” Tau-indi’s mother, Tahr, once said to Kindalana’s father Padrigan, “those three.”

  “No, not at all. They are often separated!”

  “How so?”

  “Your laman is thirteen, and my daughter and Abdi-obdi’s boy are sixteen, which means they’ll argue about anything, throw a tantrum, insist they’re grown-ups and don’t want to talk about it, and then sulk.” Padrigan placed a pawn down on the game map. The two parents were playing Rule, a foreign game which had burst up in Jaro like a summer carnation. They spent so much time together that everyone thought they must be having an affair, and they lied to themselves that it was their faith to their missing spouses (Tahr’s husband vanished while exploring Zawam Asu, Padrigan’s almost-wife returned to the gold speculation business she preferred) which kept them apart. In fact it was Kindalana.

  “But,” Tahr said, kissing her next pawn in thought, “they always come back to each other. That’s better than being inseparable, I think. To be separable, but bound.”

  On a recent night Padrigan had met Tahr’s eyes and decided not to look away. She smiled back at him. Her eyes seemed like a hearth for the cold in him, and he wanted to be near her.

  But suddenly the connection broke. In the curtain door stood Kindalana, sixteen years old and still tiny, holding a bee in her closed fist.

  “I think you’d better come and care for my hand, Father. I’ve been stung.”

  While Padrigan fussed over her ruptured palm, Kindalana looked at Tahr with flat disappointment. Do better, her eyes said. Do better. I will not permit a scandal between my father and the mother of a fellow Prince.

  Anyway. The adults were away, Tahr on this matter of Falcrest, Padrigan on business in the city Jaro, Abdi-obdi seeing to her sprawling merchant empire and its growth in Segu. So the children ruled the high hill.

  Tau-indi and Abdumasi beat on the door-plate of Kindalana’s compound with the big mallet they weren’t supposed to use. They hid. One of the groundskeepers came out to shout at them. They knew that once the groundskeep came out, he would give in to his cravings and run up the hill to pick raspberries.

  When he did, they snuck inside.

  “I wonder if she’s remembered my birthday.” Tau-indi looked around the beehives curiously. They almost never came inside the compound proper: usually Kindalana came out to the gate.

  “Of course she’s remembered. You’re a Prince and she’s a Prince. She’d never forget a Prince’s birthday.” Abdumasi thought of something delightful and beamed with cunning. “I wonder if she’ll be rude to us! Tau, let’s make her be rude.”

  “Why?” If you went to someone’s house, they had to apologize for anything possibly wrong, and Kindalana hated apologizing.

  “To mess up her trim, of course.”

  Tau-indi never wanted to make Kinda uncomfortable, but they also loved Abdumasi’s trickster smile. “Quick, then, find something to eat!”

  They ran around the beehive and the herb gardens in their hiked-up khangas and thong sandals, dodging groundskeeps until they could snatch a carton of honeycomb. Then they went to Kindalana’s window, hoping to find her. But it was open and empty, and she’d left no sign.

  “She’ll be up in the silkroom,” Abdumasi said, “reading and getting some wind.”

  “You don’t know her at all, you flighty jay. She’ll be in the sun house, tanning herself and drinking raspberry water.” Kindalana had lighter skin, being from Segu, and she sometimes sunned herself to darken and beautify her look.

  “Pah.” Abdumasi did not think it likely. “She’s hardly so vain.”

  “She’s hardly so studious!”

  They were both wrong. She sat on the boardwalk above the north slope and the lake, sketching with charcoal. Her shoulder blades moved thoughtfully.

  “Psst,” Tau-indi hissed, while Abdumasi took a huge bite of stolen honeycomb. “Kindalana!”

  “Hi!” she said. “Happy birthday, Tau, I thought you’d come.” She wore her hair shaved almost to the scalp, since it otherwise became unmanageable in the heat.

  Abdumasi stared at her and made big rude crunching sounds with a mouthful of honeycomb. Kindalana rolled her eyes enormously, not at his stare (she was from Segu, where the men were very modest), but because she clearly wanted him to stop eating her honey.

  For no reason they could understand, Tau-indi felt suddenly, strangely young.

  “Welb?” Abdumasi said between bites. “Where are yourb manners?”

  Kindalana crossed her arms. “You are endlessly welcome to the honey of my house.”

  “Thamf yooh,” Abdumasi said. “Yor hibeness.”

  “It must,” Kindalana said performing the polite self-deprecation required by etiquette, sickly sweet with sarcasm, “be too tangy, this early in the summer.”

  “You’re right,” Abdumasi said, refusing the politely trimmed reply that the honey was in fact the greatest honey ever to drip from the finest bees on this good earth, “it is, it tastes like shit!”

  And he took another huge bite, smiling insufferably.

  Tau-indi stepped on his foot and Kindalana (grinning at Tau-indi) leapt at him so that he flinched away and tripped on his pinned foot and fell off the boardwalk into the soft cypress shrubs.

  They ran down the hillside, skirmishing amongst each other, toward the lake and the cranes who staggered around drunkenly eating cranebliss and the crocodile fences that kept them safe, away from the houses where their parents failed to have affairs, away from the past, into the sun-dappled wavetips of the future, on this the last summer of the last year before the Armada War.

  DOWN in Lake Jaro, where the water tasted like sweet silt, Tau-indi came up from a dive in the kelp to find Kindalana treading water.

  She looked like a head bobbing on the waves, her small ears folded back, her wide far-set eyes canted a little to meet a broad flat nose. Tau-indi imagined her head as beautiful bait floated up by some submerged fish. They laughed, and then their guts vibrated with nerves: oh, what was this, when had this happened, when had the word beautiful gotten onto Kindalana? They didn’t want their friendships to be complicated. Especially they didn’t want the complication to be Kindalana, who had no patience at all.

  “You’ve got ash on your brow.” Kindalana frowned in concern. “Are you grieving?”

  “Oh no,” Tau gasped, pawing at their head. Why hadn’t the ash washed away?

  “And now it’s mud.” Kindalana sighed. “You can’t let mourning ash go to mud, Tau-indi, or the principles of the lake will think you’re a liar.”

  This was a small disaster, and not just because the principles would inflict grief on those who made light of grief. You simply couldn’t show any kind of want or need in front of Kindalana. You couldn’t mention that you were hungry, or sad, or lonely, because Kindalana would try to fix it. She would get you the melon you’d idly wished for, or fetch you a primer in Uburu because you kept whining about not knowing any. Tau-indi hated this. In Tau’s opinion, complaining about your problems was a necessary part of life, and should never be confused with actually trying to fix them, a separate and much more private matter.

  “What is it?” Kindalana sculled closer. Tau-indi wanted to dive away but she reached out for them. “I promise I won’t tell Abdu. What’s wrong? Why did you put the ash on?”

  Tau-indi put their mouth and nose under the water and looked up at Kindalana shyly.

  “Oh.” Kindalana frowned in disappointment. “You already told Abdu about it.”

  “Sorry,” Tau muttered.

  “It’s all right.” Kindalana glared at Abdumasi’s receding ass, racing down the beach after his frog quarry. In the di
stance a Bosoka sentry watched them from her high post. “I suppose he’s jealous.”

  “Jealous of what?”

  “Our future, of course. He knows he’ll have to spend the rest of his life moving money around and going to fancy parties, while we argue with mayors and chiefs and get malaria and worms and finally die of heatstroke in service to the Mbo.”

  Yes, good, Tau-indi thought. Tell me more about how we’ll travel together as Princes, solving problems. “He’ll be very sad when we’re gone.”

  “He will,” Kindalana said, and the space between her eyes wrinkled up in worry. “Poor Abdu.”

  Tau-indi sank underwater, down toward the lake-floor, and leapt back up off the bottom. Briefly Kindalana was a wavering dark shape against the watery light.

  “It’ll be hard for him once we’ve gone,” they said, when they came back up. “We’ll have to keep in touch with him and make sure he’s all right.”

  Kindalana looked at Tau-indi with warmth and pride, Prince to Prince. “You do listen to the griots,” she said, “you do remember what they tell us. Nothing’s better than helping someone get what they need.” And she hugged them wetly so that Tau-indi had to protest and laugh and flail.

  But then Tau-indi remembered Abdumasi saying, we’re mbo people because we help other people get what they need. And it was like Abdumasi owned this moment, this moment that should have been between them and Kindalana.

  Kindalana looked proud of them. Pride was for children. Adults got respect.

  “It’ll be okay,” Kindalana whispered in their ear. “You don’t have to wear grief ash. Your mother will come back okay. I promise she will, Tau, and I’ll keep trim with you, to be sure.”

  No! How hideously embarrassing! Kindalana thought Tau-indi was upset because mother Tahr had gone away. Little Tau-indi, afraid to be alone!

  “I’m not worried about Tahr,” Tau-indi said, quite regally, and then they said the words that would accidentally ruin the next years of their life. “I’m concerned for poor Abdumasi, left behind when we go. We shall have to tend to him. He will require our most special care.”

  Kindalana put her feet on their thighs and pushed away. “Really?” She had opened herself to Tau in comfort, and Tau had pricked her pride, so of course she had to look disdainful. “You’re grieving for Abdu?”

  “I think he needs more from us,” Tau said. “We have each other as Princes. We must do all we can for him. But of course my ash isn’t for him. I’m simply sad I can’t go abroad with mother, and do my work as a Prince.”

  “You want to go to sea? Weeks on a ship? A narrow smelly ship with a bunch of oars?”

  In the distance Abdumasi whooped and put up two fists full of two protesting frogs.

  “What do you mean, go to sea?” Tau-indi asked. “Mother’s gone to Kutulbha in Segu, and she said she was going by road.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Kinda, what are you talking about?”

  “The summit at Kutulbha decided to send a fleet to hunt down the Falcresti pirates.” Kindalana paused, but she couldn’t ever pass up the chance to prove she knew best. “And your mother’s sailing with them. She’s left the waters of the Mbo. She’s gone with the war fleet to rebuke Falcrest.”

  Mother gone to . . . Falcrest? Where was Falcrest? Wasn’t it in that story about ancient Tahari, Tahr’s namesake, and the narwhal horn? Hadn’t it been blown up or something? Wasn’t it ruled by a mad king who bred people like dogs? Or possibly an octopus?

  “Why?” Tau-indi cried.

  “She’s gone in your place, since you’re not old enough.” Kindalana sculled back a little. “Didn’t she tell you? Didn’t she write to you? I heard through the traders who come to visit the Abds, and I thought you already knew. . . .”

  She’d heard through the Abds! Why, this matter was between Princes! Abdumasi should have nothing to do with it! Tau-indi was so furious and ashamed and confused that they said, “I think you should be sure Abdumasi is all right,” and stalked ashore.

  Kindalana called after them in sorrow. “Tau, I didn’t mean to surprise you! Tau!”

  But Tau-indi was not moved. A child would run back and apologize. A Prince would go do work. “I must go see to my mother’s house!” they called back airily. “I am sure Abdumasi needs you very much.”

  Mother Tahr had written a letter to Tau-indi, explaining that she had to go away for a while. But she’d sent the letter to Padrigan to deliver, and he’d put off reading it. For as long as it was unopened, you see, it might still be a love note.

  Of such things, the Whale Words tell us, are the destinies of empires made. Not of armies or great notions or the glitter of wealth, but the most delicate motions of our hearts.

  7

  HESYCHAST, WHOSE FLESH IS A TEMPLE

  Svir kicked the treadle too hard and the grindstone’s crankshaft threw a gear. The bad gear jammed against its mate and the shaft bucked straight upward, slamming the grindstone into the mirror and shattering it right down the center.

  Svir had destroyed his telescope.

  “No,” Svir said, “no no, that didn’t happen,” and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to worm through the walls of the world into some other place where he hadn’t broken his mirror. His foot hurt. The broken things in his hands. This priceless, flawless, unbelievably pure glass disc, glistening with the oil he used to soak up glass dust, the disc he’d been grinding for months for his new catoptric telescope.

  The mighty cryptarch Apparitor had been thinking about Baru and he’d kicked too hard.

  “Iraji,” he groaned. “Iraji, come here—”

  But Iraji wasn’t on Helbride. He was up in the Elided Keep, spying on Baru, slipping into the role of her lost secretary.

  Very fucking clever, Svir. You sent your confidant to your enemy.

  He set the broken mirror down and went to his cabin’s little washbasin. The mirror had sliced a perfectly fine crease across his palm, thin and cold as a winter sun. Blood, of course, very much blood: a red patina on pink flesh. Svir licked the salt off the wound, as he’d been taught back home (never waste salt), and then he stepped gently on the basin’s footpedal. A valve clicked. He listened, never tiring of this marvel, as the footpedal opened a tap to the reservoir casks on the afterdeck. The faucet gave him a thin cool stream of water.

  Svir watched his damned royal blood swirling to the drain.

  Everything was fucked.

  The navy had someone, he knew it, he knew they had someone no matter how often Croftare and her Merit Admirals denied it. An Oriati syndicate captain or Federal Prince or a griot who’d seen too much. They were plotting against him, and against Lindon. They were going to use their prisoner to start Armada II.

  Falcrest had no idea what wrath they’d awaken if they went to war.

  And Tain Hu. Poor Tain Hu. Svir had thought her so magnetic and so fiercely principled that no one, not even Itinerant, could want to be rid of her. Baru had executed her so coldly that Svir’s protests had peeled off his tongue like frozen steel.

  And without any control over Baru, Svir and dear Lindon were doomed.

  Consider this—Svir always thought best in pictures—consider this pyramid, each dot a cryptarch. Renascent at the apex. Where else could she go? Itinerant (fuck him) and Hesychast (fuck him too) stood below her, contending for her favor, balanced against each other by the threat of mutual annihilation. They held influence over the bottom tier, Stargazer and Baru (Agonist, what a gruesome name) and he, Svir. All brilliant little exemplars of what Lindon called the Cult of Youth, Falcrest’s obsession with bright-eyed savants.

  If only he could have secured a hostage over Baru. If only he’d taken her into his control. With that power he could become this happy little X:

  Then he’d be able to prod Baru onto the center of the political stage as a dazzling distraction. Present her to Parliament and the navy, fill her up with money and power: shining, doomed Baru, burning brightly. Do this for me and you’ll
see Tain Hu again.

  He’d thought she must love Tain Hu as wholly as he loved Lindon—

  But she hadn’t. And with no way to control Baru, Svir had no mask to hide behind while he and Lindon made the final preparations for their endgame: the money, the charts, the ships required to get the fuck out, eastward and forever, before it all came crashing down.

  Svir thought of the words Iraji had whispered to him, in the deepest darkness of the ocean night, as thousands of glowing jellyfish rose up below the ship:

  A ut li-en.

  And he shuddered. And the mirror was broken. And Baru knew where Svir had come from, she knew how to burn him, he was very nearly under her control.

  “Oh, Lindon,” Svir groaned. “I hope you’re happy out there. And the wife. And the kids. And your stupid little dog.”

  A bolt of longing convulsed him. He had no home, anywhere in the world, except where Lindon arranged a safe house and summoned him to stay. Svir would come up the back way, through the storeroom or the kitchens, to find Lindon reading in that horribly uncomfortable wooden chair he loved, the one that left dents on his buttocks. The fire would be low, the wine cold from the cellar. There would be a little vidhara extract in a cup, for later; a game of Rule or Purge or grids arranged in some interesting puzzle; and Lindon’s stubble rasping on Svir’s chin as they fell on each other, the heady oakmoss smell of him. His hard ass (a nervous ass, Svir liked to tease him, permanently clenched) cupped in Svir’s hand as he came. Then the long, lazy, half-dressed afternoon with books and games and gossip, and the daydreams of what they would do when they reached their goal. With luck Enwan would visit, Lindon’s wife, and they would have one of those dinners the Falcresti loved to write about, where every sentence was a game. She would tell Svir about the children, all Lindon’s but that precious one, and he would make her laugh and laugh and laugh, the only way he had known, in those fraught early days of their arrangement, to set her at ease. And if the night came with thoughts of Ahanna Croftare, the khamtiger pacing her war-deck, and of Parliament’s masked choir singing a hunting song, well, there was vidhara in the cup, and Enwan would give her silent permission for Lindon and Svir to go to bed.