The Monster

by Seth Dickinson

  “Trust a sailor to think first of whores.”

  “I wouldn’t want the gava girl to grope the wrong hole.”

  “I don’t grope at all.”

  Tau and the scheme-colonel began to apologize to each other: for being late, for their ill dress, for the condition of the embassy grounds and the state of the weather. Then, when Baru thought it might finally be over, they started reassuring each other that everything was quite all right on each point. Baru couldn’t take it.

  “Where’s the Prince-Ambassador?” she demanded.

  “With their sincerest apologies, Dai-so Kolos is away on a fact-finding mission.”

  “What sort of facts?”

  The scheme-colonel smiled diplomatically. “They are tabulating the size and number of fish that may be caught from a little yacht. A spontaneous excursion, for their health. Of course the embassy’s services remain at your disposal, Your Federal Highness.”

  Osa let out a very soft sigh of relief, perhaps because the embassy was in the hands of a military man and a fellow ayaSegu. Under a Termite officer (a scheme-colonel would be a Termite, just as Enact-Colonel Osa was a Jackal) surely their security would not be neglected.

  “Excuse me,” Baru said, loudly and rudely. “Excuse me. Are the embassy’s services also at my disposal?”

  “Yes, Miss Plane, of course.”

  “I’m looking for someone’s parents. He is an Oriati boy. I assume he must therefore have Oriati parents. Where are your eugenic records?”

  Tau blinked at her. “What are you doing?”

  Baru held her body carefully still despite the urge to jitter in place. “I’m trying to track down the birth parents of a boy in my care. I have a portrait, well drawn, and a few snatches of rhyme he remembers. Who could I speak to about this?”

  “I’m afraid Oriati Mbo is quite, ah, larger than your esteemed home, Your Excellence, and we do not practice eugenics. Therefore it can be difficult to keep a comprehensive census.” Scheme-Colonel Masako offered his left hand, the hand you were taught, as a child, to keep off food and other people. “But I can, of course, bring your portraits and rhymes to our archivists?”

  “No!” Baru screwed her eyes up in suspicion. “I’ve been entrusted with these documents. I cannot let them out of my hands.”

  “Ah. Very Falcresti.” Masako glanced at Osa, who glanced at Tau, who was staring at Baru with their brows furrowed. “Is the matter urgent?”

  “Not really,” Baru admitted, which was to her advantage, because she needed time for word to percolate through the embassy that a Falcresti technocrat was asking questions about a mysterious boy. No—she ought to think of Iraji as a man. She ought to make a practice of it.

  Masako bowed. “Then I’ll ask around during the reception, and introduce whoever from our staff seems best qualified. Now, if you’ll come with me, I’m sure the pineapples are approaching perfectly browned . . .”

  “What are you doing?” Tau whispered.

  “I’m looking for Iraji’s parents,” Baru said, which was the truth. She did not have to say those parents were Cancrioth, did she? She had sworn to share whatever she learned, not what she already knew. . . .

  On Cheetah she’d debated the difference between goodness and playing-at-goodness. She knew which side she was on now.

  “You didn’t tell me,” Tau-indi said.

  “It’s between me and him.”

  “I could help.”

  “He doesn’t trust Mbo people. He wants me to handle it.”

  “That’s very sad,” Tau said, with genuine hurt.

  “The grounds are secure, I think,” Osa muttered, “Masako seemed comfortable, and he didn’t show me any secret signs.”

  “Oh, how I wish it were so.” Tau smiled wearily at his escort. “The embassy is thoroughly compromised, and Masako cannot be trusted. Something’s gone terribly wrong here.”

  Osa frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Dai-so Kolos hates fishing. They have ever since they saw me put a barbed swordfish hook through my hand.”

  BOLTS of fluttering sailcloth divided the courtyard of the embassy into warm shade and narrow ley lines of sunlight. Oriati griots sang soothing stories, people of wealth and influence schooled and darted in ever-shifting cliques, and even the big security men were armed only with tall glass flutes of wine. Not in an oil portrait in the Exemplaries could Baru have found a finer picture of springtime ease.

  “Look at all the tits,” Shao muttered. “It’s like a bordello revue.”

  “There’s very little breast partialism on Kyprananoke,” Tau said, as if Shao’s disapproval were born of ignorance, rather than disdain. “It’s simply a matter of culture. Rather like your royalist era in Falcrest, when I believe the taboo was instead on bare calves?”

  “Don’t you speak of our royalty,” Shao snapped. “You made them, didn’t you?”

  Baru rolled her eyes. “Let’s split up. Tau, take Osa and go make your hellos.”

  “Whyever should we?” Tau protested.

  “We’ll center everyone’s attention if we stay together.” Also, she needed to begin showing pictures of Iraji and repeating the Cancrioth phonemes. “Shao, with me, if you will.”

  Baru was relieved to find everyone’s Aphalone very good, and more relieved to find Shao Lune kept her fangs folded. They circulated about the pleasant courtyard, making introductions beneath the blooming lilacs and the chatter of little honeyeater birds. Shipping factors from a new local concern (Consolidated Kyprananoke Hulls, Largely Liable) put out feelers about sponsorship from Falcrest, for wasn’t it about time that the Republic admitted Taranoke was just too much trouble as a trade port? Several dashing young local women who styled themselves griots and truthtellers confronted Baru about the possibility of civil war.

  “War is a bloody business,” Baru assured them, “and causes plagues. We’re here as friends.”

  A fat Kyprananoki man in a lovely dashiki dress came at them sidelong, and archly: his body was female and the dress was androgynous, but he made his masculinity plain with paint and carriage. “Ah,” he drawled, in a voice smoked by a long hash habit, “the unexpected guest from Falcrest. What a lovely gem in your mask. It must be a very subtle symbol of something.”

  “It represents obscene wealth,” Baru deadpanned, taking his hand. “What a wonderful dress.”

  “Thank you kindly. Would you like to buy it? I’m rat broke.” His eyes flickered over Shao Lune. “A net? Are you a fish?”

  “I’m Miss Plane’s slave,” Shao said, sweetly.

  The man grimaced. “Slave jokes. How modern.” Oriati Mbo had, in its ancient days, entirely annihilated the practice of slavery on the Ashen Sea: one of those things Oriati people liked to shout about when drunk and determined to prove that the Mbo was the greatest nation in the world. “Well, allow me to introduce myself. Ngaio Ngaonic, trade factor for the great nation of Devi-Naga Mbo. As you might expect from a nation on the far end of the Tide Column, and thus subject to Falcrest’s tariffs, I have very little trade to oversee here.”

  “But you’re Kyprananoki,” Baru said, rather too bluntly, “aren’t you?”

  “I am! Born and raised! But I won a citizenship and a Devi-Naga name for my work during the Armada War. Shuttled water to a stranded crew for nigh on three months.” He winked at Shao Lune. “Begging your pardon for aiding the enemy.”

  “Granted, of course,” Shao said, puzzling over Ngaio’s bare chest, until she figured out what Baru had intuited at once. She was, at least, blessedly cosmopolitan, and did not need Ngaio’s masculinity explained to her. “We’re all of the sea, aren’t we?”

  “And to the sea we shall return. Tell me,” Ngaio pointed with the back of a curled hand, “have you met Tau-indi Bosoka, the laman over there?”

  “Yes,” Baru said, cautiously, “we traveled with them.”

  “You poor souls. They’re rather a fundamentalist bore, aren’t they?”

  “Quite,” Shao
purred, as Baru cried, “Not at all!”

  Ngaio laughed. “So I deduce, from your split opinion on Tau-indi Bosoka, that you two must have different stances on the Great Embrace?”

  “Oh,” Shao Lune said, and laughed a high derisive laugh. “Yes. This is Kindalana’s plan? Wherein Oriati Mbo signs an Act of Federation and joins the Imperial Republic?” She laughed harder. “That’ll be the day!”

  Baru faded away from the conversation for an instant, into a colder place, where she could pass the name Kindalana over her memories. She remembered Tau’s voice, as Cheetah sank beneath them. When I was a young laman during the Armada War, my two closest friends were Kindalana of Segu and Abdumasi Abd. Now, our great house entertained two hostages from Falcrest named Cairdine Farrier and Cosgrad Torrinde . . .

  “I’m all for joining Falcrest,” Ngaio said, touching his heart. “Anything but war. War is a way to kill those who least deserve death, and enrich those who least deserve life. If I might put a word in Falcrest’s ear, Miss Plane—”

  “Is there an outbreak of Kettling on Kyprananoke?” Baru asked.

  “Hush!” Ngaio snapped, and when this got the attention of a passing server, he took a flute of champagne and beamed. “Do you think the Kyprists want that known? Never mind spoken openly in the Oriati embassy?”

  Shao sidled in with a well-timed question. “Do you think the Oriati brought the disease?”

  “No,” Ngaio said, sadly, “it began out on the west edge, in Canaat territory. The locust farmers had it first. Everyone knows the Canaat are backed by the Mbo, and why would the Mbo poison their own allies? So I think the Oriati didn’t bring it.”

  “But Kettling comes from the Mbo,” Shao insisted, “it’s in the legends, everyone knows the Summer of Black Emmenia—”

  “Five hundred years ago.”

  “Nonetheless, in the Mbo!” Shao was breathing hard now, which Baru could hardly believe—what had softened her frost? She couldn’t care about the welfare of Kyprananoke, so what had pricked her conscience?

  Ngaio Ngaonic knew.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, pausing for a delicate sip of champagne, “I just assumed Falcrest had released the plague to control the Canaat. Perfectly deniable. Perfectly natural. Your navy must have a few carriers, stashed away somewhere . . . ?”

  “We would not,” Shao Lune hissed. “On Kyprananoke? Are you mad? It would get everywhere. Everywhere.”

  Ngaio took another sip and smiled at her. “So it’s not a way to slaughter all the Canaat, and leave no bases for ‘pirates’ on Kyprananoke before the war? I quite expect those warships that arrived recently to join in the bloodletting. And to read a mournful editorial in Advance afterward: ‘Can’t those savage islanders ever stop murdering each other? If only they’d had proper hygiene.’”

  “But we don’t have the Kettling,” Shao said, with matronizing patience. “It’s an Oriati disease, do you understand? It is not endemic to Falcrest. Now I ought to go check on the quality of the plumbing, before I drink any of your water.”

  “You ought to unbutton, too,” Ngaio said, critically, “or your breasts are going to shrivel up in sweat like little baby faces.”

  “That does not happen,” Shao snapped, and stalked off.

  Baru took the opportunity to unfold her little portrait and ask: “Do you know anyone who might be this boy’s mother? He recites this scrap of poetry, ayamma, ayamma, a ut li-en . . .”

  Ngaio had no idea what she meant. A passing Oriati woman, fully pregnant, handsome in a black eyepatch, stopped to look. “Who’s that?”

  “A boy,” Baru said, for the first of many times, “whose parents I’m trying to locate. Do you know this scrap of poetry? Ayamma, ayamma, a ut li-en—”

  BY the time Governor Love and the Kyprist party arrived for dinner, Baru had flashed the picture of Iraji at every Oriati person she could find, Tau-indi excepted. She would have kept on looking, too. But the Kyprists brought Ormsment as their guest.

  Province Admiral Juris Ormsment had dressed for a presentation to the Emperor. The starched dress reds, the black cuff-pins, the short boots that slipped off so easily. Jeweled tiles of her merit fastened like Purge pieces at her neck. On her left hip curved an officer’s boarding saber. She chatted easily with Barber-General Thomis Love, who wore a sleeveless waistcoat and an expression of immense relief. Behind them forty Masquerade marines in full battle rig stood at impassive attention, their short lances cocked at parade rest. The poles pushed the barge to a halt one inch from the quay.

  “They can’t step onto embassy ground,” Tau-indi whispered to Baru, “without declaring war. Not so armed, and in such force.”

  A many-legged thought crawled over Baru’s chin. She snatched at it, hissing. Tau held up their hands: “What’s wrong?”

  “I had a terrible thought—” They huddled under the south pavilion, among the ruined husks of pineapple. Lizards the size of short knives had come out to bicker over the pulp. “What is Ascentatic up to? What if they’re here to help the Kyprists? What if they decide to strike this embassy, to root out whoever’s funding the Canaat?”

  “They’d be mad to try it. It’d be an act of war, and Parliament would purge the navy. Every last seat in Parliament wants a chance to install their pick of admirals before the banquet opens.” Tau smiled against bitterness. “Your navy will be the first to pick the Mbo’s fruit, after all.”

  Baru squeezed their hand. It was very nice to touch someone without thinking up excuses. “If worse comes to worst, and there’s a fight, the embassy has security. . . .”

  “There are families here, Baru.”

  There are families everywhere, Baru thought. That has never stopped anyone: except the people who lose.

  Scheme-Colonel Masako stepped out to greet Barber-General Love and the province admiral. There was a general exchange of courtesies and salutes, and then Ormsment and two bodyguards—both tall capable men, neither one plausibly Tain Shir—marched straight up the long boardwalk toward the embassy courtyard. A drummer beat out a few bars of the Whale Words, something about ships: Baru could hum it, but never remember the verse.

  “Well,” she said, straightening her lapels, “shall we go meet her?”

  Tau swallowed. The chains between their nose and ears rustled and chimed. “I know Ormsment. Shall I make introductions?”

  “No need. We became acquainted over dinner last year. Where’s—” Baru whirled in a thrill of panic. “Where’s Shao Lune?”

  “I’m here.” She stepped out of Baru’s rightness, Osa shadowing her at a careful two strides. Shao had picked a dart from one of the steward’s trays, the sort used to lance meats: she threw it, offhandedly, at one of the overhead balconies. Someone up there flinched. “I didn’t find anyone sneaking in through the plumbing. Maybe Ormsment’s given up.”

  Baru arranged herself. “Let’s go find out. Shao, why don’t you button up?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s formal, that’s all.”

  Shao Lune stared at her former admiral with petty serpentine hate. The woman who had complicated her career, Baru thought, the woman who had endangered Shao’s very favorite thing, which was herself.

  “Let her think we’re fucking. Let her think I’ve gone mad. It’ll make her sloppy, to see one more of her sailors lost to you.”

  AMINATA tipped the griot a silver piece. The girl kissed the coin in delight, wished bright bells and soft scars on Aminata, and danced away in glee. Aminata, feeling very bittersweet, sighed.

  “She thought we were from the Mbo, didn’t she,” Lieutenant Faroni whispered. “That’s cute. It’s like we made her a real griot.”

  “They don’t even have a griot school here,” Aminata groused. “I bet she hasn’t learned eidesis, even. It’s all fake.”

  “So are we,” Gerewho said. And he was right. Aminata’s little party had come disguised as Oriati spiritists trying to sell Captain Nullsin’s good whiskey, and thereby secured themselves a vantage
as the reception kicked off. Aminata’s interrogation of Ake Sentiamut and her fellow rebels had left her and Captain Nullsin in a bitter bind. The rebels said Ormsment was a mutineer, on a mad mission of revenge against Baru. But they themselves were rebels, traitors, left behind by Baru’s design. Aminata couldn’t take their word alone.

  She needed a glimpse of how Baru and Ormsment reacted to each other.

  When Baru walked in arm in arm with a cruel-looking navy woman, Aminata hired one of the local “griots” to keep an ear on Baru’s party and learn the woman’s name.

  Her name was Shao Lune, the griot reported. Aminata’s files said that she was Juris Ormsment’s staff captain.

  Aminata covered her eyes and groaned in horror.

  All the signs seemed to confirm what Aminata had most feared. Baru was building a mutiny inside the navy. A mutiny that would draw in unreliable officers to be purged . . . all part of Cairdine Farrier’s grand plan to provoke Oriati civil war and insinuate his agencies into the Mbo. Yes, Ake Sentiamut and her friends insisted that Juris Ormsment was on a mutinous mission to kill Baru . . . but here was Baru, dangling Ormsment’s staff captain on her arm.

  Which made it very hard to believe they weren’t in league. Just as Baru’s letter to Aminata had suggested: I intend to recommend you to Province Admiral Ormsment . . . And who else was with them? Oriati Mbo’s ambassador to Falcrest, Tau-indi Bosoka.

  Tau-indi whose ship had been lost at sea. Aminata had fished a cabinet full of Cheetah dishes out of the water herself. The destruction of a Prince-ship would be a tremendous goad to war. And where better to begin that war than here on Kyprananoke?

  There was the question of Tau-indi Bosoka’s motive. But they had a long record of contact with Cairdine Farrier. By blackmail or by greed they might be in on Baru’s scheme—stoke tensions, draw out the navy’s warmonger admirals the way she’d drawn out Aurdwynn’s rebel dukes, eradicate them.

  King’s balls. It was so hard to find a way to deny it now.

  AMINATA remembered Rear Admiral Maroyad’s orders. Find Baru Cormorant. Learn who she’s working with—every last name. Bring her back here if you can. And if you can’t, remove her from play.