The Monster

by Seth Dickinson

  Baru saw why all the ships at Kyprananoke had put in to the east.

  The Kyprananoki built their homes on storm stilts, or as freestanding flotables like very dowdy ships, tangled together by a web of laundrylines and moorings and buoy bridges. In the east the islands roared with shipping—ketches, clippers, dromons, junks, barques, canoes, brigs, brigantines, and outriggers.

  But in the west a great stillness. No one moved in the waters or the boardwalks. Nothing moved. Except for the dirty red-and-yellow flags that flew like pus-stained rags from every line and rooftop.

  “No,” Baru breathed. “It can’t be.”

  “If I remember my Oriati flags correctly . . .” Apparitor inhaled. “It must be.”

  “The Kettling’s not real,” Baru insisted. “This is an Oriati trick.” Diseases killed people by fever, by pus, by worm and buboe and diarrhea. But they did not melt people into dumplings full of green-black blood. Certainly there had never been a Summer of Black Emmenia, when all the pregnant women of Mzilimake Mbo lost their babies and, mostly, their lives. . . .

  “If it were anywhere,” Apparitor murmured, “wouldn’t it be here?”

  That made a certain awful sense. The Masquerade had ruled Kyprananoke for a little while, and then abandoned it. What if the archipelago was secretly a Masquerade honeypot now? A cultivated preserve? Smash the roaches’ nest, and you’ll only scatter them. Better to leave the pirates one perfect harbor. Better to leave the smugglers one port—where all the Ashen Sea’s sicknesses could ride the dirty ships and mingle. . . .

  “I suppose,” Baru said, quietly, “that this means no one’s going ashore.”

  “Not until we’ve observed the spread of the plague, at least.”

  “Very wise.”

  But Baru was already planning how to get onto Kyprananoke alone, and get to Unuxekome Ra, and then to the Cancrioth: how to get the prize all alone.

  DO you think I’m your friend?” Shao Lune lifted her chin in disdain. “Is that what why you keep coming down here?”

  Baru had to admire Shao Lune’s bargaining skills. In exchange for the names of Sulane’s officers, she’d earned a longer chain, which let her get rid of her bucket and use a bilge pump as a toilet. For a list of Ormsment’s supporters in Aurdwynn, she’d bought herself canvas curtains to convert her platform into a kind of pavilion, and oils and perfumes to soak the canvas and cure the bilge stink. Other tips had scored Shao Lune planks and nails, and now Baru found her stripped down to strophium and trousers, hammering her new gains into an expansion of her sleeping platform.

  She swore viciously as she worked: Baru dallied on the stairway for a while, listening to Lune’s rage. There were two topics Shao Lune would not yet breach. She would not discuss whether Ormsment had other conspirators in the Admiralty (Rear Admiral Samne Maroyad, Censorate Admiral Brilinda Vain, and Province Admiral Ahanna Croftare the primary suspects).

  And she never, ever spoke of Tain Shir.

  “I came to bring you more soap.” Baru underhanded the sac of gut into the bilgewater just outside Lune’s reach.

  “Cunt,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

  “Get a little dirty,” Baru suggested. “Worth it to get clean, isn’t it?”

  “Did you come to watch me wash my filth off? Is that your peccadillo?” Shao Lune cast the slack of her chain into the bilge and managed to hook the floating bag.

  Baru hopped down from the stairs onto the platform. “Your trick worked. We got a diplomatic seal off Cheetah, and it turned Sulane away.”

  “Yes, I could tell you’d found some Oriati by the pervasive floral stink.”

  “They don’t actually eat flowers, you know.”

  “We haven’t been burnt to ashcakes, either, which did give me a clue it had worked.”

  Baru frowned at the planks underfoot, which bounced a little much. “Your engineering’s not right. You should be sistering the joists before you cover them—”

  Shao Lune began banging at the nails again, wielding a block of hardwood in place of a hammer. “Would you get on with it? Threaten me a little, dangle a reward, and ask me what you need to know.”

  Baru sat against the post at the center of the platform. “I think I might sell you on Kyprananoke. There are Oriati agents who’d trade secrets for a navy prisoner.”

  Shao snapped around with a hiss. “Kyprananoke? We’re going to Kyprananoke?”

  Baru nodded.

  “You can’t leave me there.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “It’s absolute anarchy. The Kyprists have taken over now that we’ve left—they’re tyrants!”

  “A military junta seizing command?” Baru mocked her with a gasp and a flutter. “I can’t imagine such a horror!”

  “You can’t sell me. You need me to testify against Ormsment.”

  “I don’t plan to be rid of Ormsment in a courtroom. . . .”

  “I can help you.” Shao Lune clasped her hammer block between her hands like a prayer anchor. “You want to use the navy against Parliament? Fine. Let me introduce you to the other merit admirals. Let me convince them to get rid of Ormsment for you.”

  “I don’t want to wait for you to be useful. I want to get something for you now.”

  “We’re haggling, then.” Shao Lune sat with her legs folded beneath her and her shoulders square, eyes sharp, thinking desperately. It was only that Baru found it so satisfying to see the perfectly coiffed and composed officer stripped down to laborer’s clothes and toiling in chains. . . .

  Her eyes lit. “I can tell you about Xate Yawa. How she’s plotting against you.”

  Perfect. Baru feigned disinterest. “I know all about her medical arrest.” She tapped the deck with her right hand, to emphasize the point, I know all about medical arrest, and she smashed her finger stumps. Nausea coiled her up.

  “She’s going to sell you to the Necessary King,” Shao Lune said.

  The revelation caught Baru strained like a mooring rope between astonishment and groaning misery. Her dead fingers seemed to have grown like cold thread up her arm, across her shoulder, into the back of her head: she clawed at the boards and howled silently.

  “How,” she gaped, sounding monstrous: how did Shao Lune even know about the Necessary King? “How do you know that?”

  “I’m very capable,” Shao Lune purred.

  “Tell me how.”

  “What do I get?”

  “You get to come with me.” She picked herself up with gritted teeth. “When I go ashore to Kyprananoke. With the Oriati Prince. We’re going to hunt for a woman named Unuxekome Ra, who once trafficked with Abdumasi Abd—”

  “Abd!” Shao Lune reared up in horror. “He’s alive?”

  “I hope so. Tau-indi Bosoka thinks so. And I need to know where Abd gets his money.”

  “But Admiral Ormsment told me he’d been killed at Treatymont . . .” Shao’s chains rattled. She was pacing behind Baru’s back. “Why would she hide Abd from me?”

  “Because she’s not as selfish as you,” Baru suggested. “If Parliament learns the navy’s hiding Abd from them . . .”

  “Purge. But I was staff captain in Treatymont! They’ll think I knew!”

  “Better help me find him, hm?” Baru grinned at her. “Unuxekome Ra is our next clue.”

  Shao Lune considered her with narrow eyes and a full-lipped sneer. “What do you want to know about Yawa?”

  “How fine is her control over Iscend?”

  “The Clarified is deviating. They always do, when they’re away from their home mazes too long. She’s begun to use her own command word on herself.”

  Baru found this delightful. The slave was applying her own chains to gain her freedom. “That’s remarkable. So you overheard her. You know the word now. Did you use it?”

  Shao Lune’s sneer broke into a grin, too. She was very pleased with herself. “I gave Iscend the only command she would accept from a prisoner. I demanded to be used as an instrument in her mission.”


  “And she told you . . .”

  “She told me that Xate Yawa plans to trade you to the Necessary King as a dowry. You insulted his honor. He covets your punishment.”

  “And Iscend must have known you’d tell me. . . .”

  “Of course she did,” Shao said, and her grin widened into a triumphant self-satisfied smirk. She crouched on the edge of the platform, balanced on her toes and hands. Her eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “Iscend is Clarified, and the Clarified serve the Republic. The Republic must never collaborate with royalty.”

  Ingenious. Iscend Comprine could be made to sabotage Xate Yawa, whenever Xate Yawa’s schemes defied the values of the Republic. And if Yawa wanted control of Aurdwynn—she would need a truce or an alliance with the Necessary King.

  What better way than to give him a bride?

  Not Baru, mind. He’d never trust her as a wife, and anyway she was very unlikely to produce an heir for him: Dziransi had said he was an honorable man who would never rape. But wouldn’t the traitor Baru Cormorant make an exceptional dowry? Here, as a gift, take this woman who stole your honor. Show her to your lords to prove that you always get your revenge.

  Baru only had one obvious countermove.

  What if she could find a better dowry? What if she could say to Yawa, use this man as dowry instead of me? I have already made the offer, and I know the King craves his return.

  She could offer Yawa the King’s traitor brother Apparitor.

  Baru’s heart crashed like a mismanaged currency: cheapened, devalued, undercut. Had she really committed herself to this? Would she take Apparitor away from Lindon as Tain Hu had been taken from her? The letter was sent, the arrow was shot . . . why did she always come to her regrets so late?

  “Say,” Shao Lune said, casually, “is there a chance you could get me some rum?”

  BARU woke up in chains, mostly naked, violently ill. Her breasts ached and her thighs trembled with carnal exhaustion. She had a hangover so brutal that she resolved at once to vomit, which she achieved by sticking her head over the edge of Shao Lune’s platform and throwing up into the bilgewater.

  Why was she still on Shao Lune’s platform?

  Oh dear.

  She sniffed a bucket, gargled freshwater, and rolled over. The chains wrapped around her were Shao Lune’s; she got free with a little slithering. Shao Lune slept under a rough blanket a few feet away, a lovely assembly of sine curves. In sleep she had an expression of smug victorious delight that made Baru want to throttle her.

  Baru staggered around empty-headed and made an account of how much she’d drunk.

  An empty vodka bottle floated in the bilge. A sac of Oriati wine, drained into a sad gut heap. A flask that smelled of whiskey discarded on the steps. Baru remembered sitting there, already blissfully smashed on vodka, talking with Shao Lune.

  They’d discussed their various solitudes. Baru first: she’d been taken from her home, sent to a distant province, seduced by a glorious woman, compelled to betray and execute that woman for promotion into a world of betrayal and intrigue. Shao had been cruelly unsympathetic, entirely arrogant and dismissive, except that she had very consistently tried to one-up Baru in her stories of misery, manipulation, callous betrayal, and lonesomeness. Shao Lune had been persecuted all her life by those who wanted to tear her down for beauty and intelligence, driven into the navy to escape the infuriating ineptitude of her teachers, forced to keep her own council by the jealous and those who would take credit for her work.

  That was enough to tell Baru that Shao Lune had been alone with her ambition for most of her life. Feeling an uncomfortable kinship, Baru had begun to tease the prisoner. The prisoner had retaliated, viciously, with aspersions on Baru’s intelligence, integrity, and acuity. Baru had liked it so much she got some more rum for Shao Lune. By this point she was so drunk she could perceive Shao’s emotions with absolute clarity. It was all so obvious! Why couldn’t she understand people so confidently when sober?

  Shao wasn’t cruel or smug. She was fucking terrified. She’d been dragged into Ormsment’s mutiny, she’d gambled everything on a second mutiny to get back on the winning side, and now she was a captive resource in the internal politics of the Throne.

  They began to trade ribald stories. Their first, and their best: the same, for Baru. Shao showed no surprise at Baru’s taste for women. She was, if not a proper tribadist, at least unconventional in her desires, and differently than Ulyu Xe and Iraji. Her stories depended not on the beauty or status of her lovers, but on how fraught and dangerous their courtship, and on how ably Shao had manipulated the situation. Privately Baru suspected Shao was a narcissist with a taste for the illegal. She delighted in playing the perfectly reserved and composed Falcrest woman by day—did she, Baru wondered aloud, ever need to lower her guard?

  Not lower it, Shao said, with rum-fueled humor. One did not lower a fortress’s walls. One opened a gate and send out a raiding party to obtain what one required.

  What did Shao Lune require, then?

  She required Baru to come closer.

  That would be quite unwise. Shao Lune was a prisoner, and Baru had standards.

  But the prisoner had already hooked Baru’s ankle in a loop of chain. Baru ought to defend herself, oughtn’t she? Defend yourself, Baru.

  Baru thought she was much too drunk for that.

  Was she afraid? Was she a coward?

  No. She was braver than Lune could possibly know.

  She ought to prove it, then. She should say something brave.

  Come over here and fuck me, then.

  Then Baru was pinned beneath her on the hardwood, cold chains slithering over her skin, Shao Lune’s teeth in her lower lip. A long vague interregnum of foreplay. Shao’s attentions wrapped Baru in chains and stretched her taut across the platform. Was she afraid, Shao Lune wondered? Didn’t she think Shao Lune might drown her in the bilge?

  Baru had answered with husky honesty. I’d deserve to drown. I would be glad to rest.

  (Had she said that? Fool.)

  Shao Lune had looked down at her with irritation and dismay, not amused or entertained by self-pity, but instead obviously turned off. Then she’d berated Baru, excoriated her for wanting to give up. Shao Lune would not be imprisoned and manipulated by a spineless self-pitying slug. Was Baru a spineless self-pitying slug? Did she have no will of her own?

  Baru had tried to get up and get at her and that provoked Shao Lune’s merciless counterattack. Baru remembered the tremendous relief of having no control. She remembered her release, the climax she couldn’t reach with Ulyu Xe. She was pragmatically relieved to have that release, and she ought to be a little gleeful to have scored a Falcrest woman.

  But she wasn’t proud.

  Baru rubbed her aching face. Well. She had made—not a mistake, it hadn’t cost her anything, and at least she’d gotten laid. But she’d embarrassed herself. She was glad that she’d let Shao Lune make the advances, so she didn’t feel like a filthy rapist. Still, Shao was a prisoner, there was an inequity of power between them. Had Baru considered that carefully enough before she let herself be seduced?

  Or was this another principle compromised?

  She gathered her clothes and stumbled up to middeck to wash herself in brine and a little precious freshwater. She felt like frozen shit. But no one seemed to care about her condition. The crew had gathered into whispering clots, and everywhere there was talk of plague ashore on Kyprananoke.

  BARU glared against the sunlight. Through the canvas crowd of the mooring swarm she could see Sulane, red of sail and dark of purpose, moored far enough from them to avoid trickery, close enough to watch.

  Ormsment was waiting for them to leave their ship before she struck. Baru would oblige.

  At the center of the maindeck the Prince Tau-indi Bosoka held court beneath a canvas awning. Under their mayorage the Cheetah crew did Helbride’s laundry, arranged for fish and bird-catch, and scrubbed the deck. Tau was, Baru thought, the happiest person
on the ship.

  Tau met her with level, worried eyes. “Your Excellence. I was told you felt unwell.”

  “I’ve been resting,” Baru lied. She saw Tau’s fine nose wrinkle at the smell of drink on her, and seized by embarrassment she scooped up a smoky candle in a brass cup and held it between them. Candles were terribly expensive: Cheetah had carried boxes and boxes of them. “I, ah, Your Federal Highness, I need your help.”

  “You do. You’re very sick.”

  “This? It’s just a hangover.”

  “The drink is bad medicine, Your Excellence, but it’s not the sickness.”

  Baru squinted against the sunlight. “How would you like to get off this ship and find your friend?”

  “I’d like you off this ship, certainly,” Tau said, frowning, “for a year’s rest in a house that gets no news. But you’re right that I want very badly to find Abdu.”

  “So let’s go!”

  “You and I?”

  “And whoever else you please to bring.” Baru spun in place to check for Apparitor or Yawa. Her brain gyroscoped. “I’ve been placed under medical arrest, they won’t let me go ashore. But if you can get me to Kyprananoke, I think I can get us to Unuxukome Ra.”

  “You think she’ll know where Abdu has gone?”

  “She wrote a letter to her son that was carried by Abdumasi Abd’s ships. Maybe she can tell you what Abdumasi planned. Won’t it bring you a little closer to him, to know more of what he intended?”

  “You learn well.” Tau smiled. “But you’re asking me to go against an Incrastic doctor’s medical opinion. That’s a bleeding offense on a ship.”

  “You’re not a Masquerade citizen. They’d never bleed you.”

  “But you’re still asking me to defy my host’s wishes. That’s terribly rude.”

  “Your host—you mean Apparitor?” Baru clasped indignant hands to her breast. “What about my wishes, Your Federal Highness? What right does he have to hold me?”

  “Isn’t there a terrible plague ashore?”

  “Yes, but it’s mostly confined to the west side, and we needn’t go there—”