The Tyrant

by Seth Dickinson

  “Pedant,” the shadow ambassador chided.

  “I don’t believe a secret society would have their leader out in the field.” Farrier and Hesychast had sent pawns, after all. Sent her and Xate Yawa.

  “Are we a secret society now?”

  “I was told you rule Oriati Mbo from the shadows, and always have.”

  The shadow ambassador laughed. “Do we, now? Who forgot to tell us?”

  No, no, don’t say that. Don’t say you’re powerless. I need the Cancrioth to help me fight Falcrest. Don’t be weak, please, please.

  “Well.” The shadow ambassador sighed and stretched her hands. “I am going to signal my people, so they know I’m returning with guests. And we’ll see if they let us aboard.”

  “Wait!” Baru hissed. “You can’t risk a rocket—not even a lantern! You’ll tell the whole archipelago where we are!” She could hardly admit how many people were hunting her, but if even one of those groups found her, she was finished.

  But the shadow ambassador, ignoring her, produced two items from her satchel. First a cylinder of dark iron. Then a fine wicker basket that cupped an open bulb of glass. In that glass was water, and in the water crouched a very tiny, very unhappy frog. It saw Baru and said wart! wart!

  The shadow ambassador gripped both ends of the cylinder and pulled with a grunt. The iron case slid off its base on oily runners to reveal a column of glistening stone. And as the frog saw the stone, it began to gleam—a powerful turquoise light, steady as a candle, but cold.

  And the shadow ambassador’s hands glowed, too.

  Tau moaned like they would be sick.

  The shadow ambassador began to shutter the iron sleeve up and down over the stone. With each motion the frog dimmed or brightened.

  “What is she doing now?” Shao Lune said, with forced disinterest.

  “It must be uranium lore. Cancrioth magic.” Osa protected Tau-indi with her arms. They were wet and shivering and the sun was going down, but they did not huddle against Osa for warmth.

  In a dead voice, Tau said, “It’s a frog from the hot lands in Mzilimake. They glow in the water that pours out from the secret caves. Every three hours they glow brightest, and then for three hours they fade. The water causes cancer. The water will kill those who drink too much of it. The water makes the sahel frogs glow. From that water the life that lives in life was born. Ayamma. A ut li-en.”

  Whatever happened after that was lost to Baru’s memory. She must have been drugged. She remembered nothing else until she woke up in Tubercule.

  Baru slumped forward as far as the claw around her head would let her.

  She’d lost Tau. However desperate her situation, at least she’d chosen to risk herself. She’d tricked Tau into it. Once again she’d dragged someone infinitely better than her to their doom.

  No! No time for despair. Tain Hu was counting on her. Tain Hu had died to make this possible. As long as Baru carried that burden, she had to do what was necessary to succeed, or she didn’t deserve Hu’s trust!

  “Why did you come here, Baru Cormorant?” the voice from above asked.

  Baru put her feet down and strained against the clamp. “Are you the Cancrioth?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  To destroy Falcrest! To betray Cairdine Farrier, avenge Tain Hu, and liberate her home!

  But how? How exactly had she meant to do that? She was so lost, so deep in the reefs, so far from the way she’d imagined this happening. . . .

  She’d meant . . . yes, she’d meant to ally herself with the Cancrioth. That was still her purpose. That must still be her purpose. To obtain from the Cancrioth a weapon or an advantage that could destroy Falcrest.

  She had seen that weapon. She had seen that weapon! They had it!

  “I want the blood,” she croaked. “I’m here to bargain for the blood.”

  The Canaat rebels had sent plague carriers into the embassy to infect the Kyprist leaders. They bled green-black plague blood from their eyes and noses, gums and ears, from their miscarrying children. They had used their own blood to deliver plague to the Kyprists who’d oppressed them.

  That blood was a symptom of the Kettling, the Black Emmenia, the abominable pandemic of legend. The Kettling came from the deep southern jungles of Oriati Mbo. So did the Cancrioth.

  The Cancrioth must have brought the Kettling to Kyprananoke.

  And if the Cancrioth could bring it here they could bring it to Falcrest.

  “The blood?” the voice repeated. “What blood?”

  “The Kettling.”

  “The Kettling?” Her interrogator gasped aloud and Baru thought, oh, this is odd, she’s no good at her job. Why had they chosen such a bad interrogator? “There’s Kettling here? Where?”

  “Haven’t been off the ship lately, have you?” Baru’s laugh banged her head against the clamp. “It’s been making rounds ashore! Just put in an appearance at the embassy reception!”

  “How do you know we’re on a ship?”

  Bait taken, dragged and swallowed. Good Himu, this woman was inept. But she was winning anyway, damn her, because Baru was still stuck in this hole!

  She kicked against the wood to keep her feet from pinching together in the joint below. The confinement was intolerable—she tried to imagine her blind right side as a great empty space, but all she could think of was the wall. Panic like fat mosquito bites, swelling down her back, itching, itching—

  “I could explain everything if you’d just get me out of here!”

  A mistake. The woman above hardened again. “How did you learn about us? Who led you to us?”

  “Get me out of this hole and I’ll tell you!”

  This time she heard the click of the footpedal in time to cringe against the slap of warm brine. “Who led you here?”

  “Drown me and I can’t tell you.”

  “Who led you here?”

  “You don’t frighten me. Let me out.”

  The pedal clicked again. The water was up to her hips now, still rising. “The Womb said you showed people a picture of a boy. Who is the boy?”

  The boy’s name was Iraji. He had been born into the Cancrioth, meant to receive one of their tumor Lines. But it had frightened him so deeply that he’d run away, ended up as a concubine and agent for Baru’s rival cryptarch Apparitor. Baru had stolen him and used him as bait. He was an innocent boy, fiercely intelligent, generous with his heart, and he had given her more help than she had ever deserved.

  If she told the voice a little about Iraji, maybe she could win her freedom—

  Don’t.

  “Fuck you,” Baru snarled.

  The woman sounded urgent now, her Aphalone pronunciation slipping as she rushed her words. “Where is Abdumasi Abd?”

  So there was that name again. A man Baru had destroyed, entirely by accident: a prize she’d caught for Falcrest without even realizing it. Tau’s old friend.

  “I don’t know,” Baru said. Which was the truth.

  “Tell me where Abdumasi Abd is or I’ll drown you.”

  “You won’t.”

  She wished she did know where Abd had gone. When Baru’s false-flag rebellion tore through Falcrest’s troubled province of Aurdwynn, Abdumasi Abd had seen a chance to strike at the empire he hated. (Like Baru he had devoted his life to Falcrest’s annihilation: he just went about it more honestly.) He had gathered his ships and sailed north for Aurdwynn to shatter Falcrest’s fleet in the region and give the rebels aid.

  It had been a trap, of course. Like the whole rebellion. Juris Ormsment had boxed Abdumasi’s fleet in and burnt it to ash.

  Now the Cancrioth wanted Abdumasi back. He must be one of them: poor Tau, they hadn’t known. Whoever held Abdumasi could prove the Cancrioth’s existence and that secret could split the world in two.

  The voice, insistent: “Where is Abdumasi Abd?”

  The water had risen to her navel, and she was terrified of going under with her hands pinned, trapped like a cork in an underwater
cave, her shoulders stuck, her screaming face pressed against black rock—

  “Shut off the water and we’ll talk!” she screamed.

  There was a clatter, and then a crack. “Oh shit,” the woman said, in Aphalone, and then swore in Maulmake, the Mzilimake Mbo tongue, which Baru did not speak.

  The water pouring over her back tapered off to a patter. But it did not stop.

  “Is it still coming down?” the interrogator called, nervously.

  “Yes!”

  “I think I broke something.”

  “You what?”

  “It’s a very old ship. Things are brittle.”

  “Get me out of here!”

  “I—I’m not sure how.”

  “Where are the guards? Where are your clerks, your griots, whoever the fuck you have recording my responses?”

  “There aren’t any.”

  “There aren’t any guards?”

  “No one’s supposed to come near you yet. The onkos have to confer about what to do. I was told that if I was quick—well, I snuck in.”

  This must be some kind of trick. Some way to convince Baru she was about to die—but the water was still rising, turbid and scummed with seaweed. Like drowning in a salad.

  Baru strained against the claw over her head. It wouldn’t budge. “Get help!” she screamed.

  “Where’s Abdumasi?” the woman shouted back. “Tell me where Abdumasi Abd is and I’ll get help.”

  Even here a part of Baru was calm and cool and distantly preoccupied with intrigue. That part of Baru imagined Abdumasi Abd as a knot, a straining knot that tied three ropes together—the Oriati Mbo, the secret Cancrioth, and Falcrest. No wonder everyone wanted to find him! He was living proof of collaboration between Mbo Oriati and the Cancrioth they despised. He was incarnate blackmail that could sway nations.

  So why was this hapless woman, this amateur, asking after him?

  “Why do you give a shit?” Baru called.

  “He has my husband’s soul in him!” the voice cried. “Please, you must help me find him!”

  “He what?”

  “He bears Undionash, as my husband did before him! Where is he, please? Please?”

  The water was up to her chest, warm as sewage, and in that warmth Baru felt only cold heart-seizing sorrow. Poor Tau-indi! They’d hoped and hoped that they could rescue Abdumasi, bring him home, tie up their tattered friendship . . . but Tau also believed that anyone touched by the Cancrioth was forever lost.

  “Get me out of here,” she shouted, “and I’ll tell you where to find Abdumasi!”

  “Tell me now, and I’ll get you out!”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Oh, Alu,” the woman above groaned, a name or an epithet, Baru didn’t know. “I’ll go for help.”

  The rising water licked at her sternum.

  Baru strained so hard against the clamp that the discs of her spine cracked and popped. She panted and rattled and beat her body against the wooden shaft and grunted like a rabbit in a trap.

  The clamp would not give. The water was coming up.

  Shouting in the room above—a commotion of voices in Maulmake, and other languages she didn’t recognize. She called out: “Get me the fuck out of here!”

  “What is this?” a voice called down: the shadow ambassador.

  Something fell into the water by Baru’s face. It was a metal cylinder, like a Falcresti grenade, perforated by needle-gauge holes. Through those holes thin phosphorescent light bled out into the brine. In the darkness of the pit, the light was as dazzling as the moon.

  “Jellyfish tea,” Baru shouted, “it’s jellyfish tea!”

  “What is that?”

  A dictionary entry sprang to the tip of her tongue. “A luminous extract, used in fireproof lamps in Falcrest.”

  “Is it used to trace the course of ships?”

  “I suppose it could be,” Baru hedged. “In calm waters, for a little while.”

  “Galganath found this tin pinned beneath our boat. I saw we were leaving a wake, but I thought it was just the usual phosphorescence. Were we tracked here?”

  Baru rattled through her memories. When they swam out to the boat, Shao Lune had been the last one to surface. The cunning snake was working for someone else! Had she fixed a tracker to the keel? Assume so. Lie accordingly. Lie quickly and lie well.

  “Yes. My aide Shao Lune put it there, so my people would know where I’d been taken. You didn’t think I came without insurance, did you?”

  “What insurance?”

  Lie well! “If I don’t report back to Helbride by dawn, they’ll burn this ship to the keel. We have two Imperial Navy frigates in port here, armed with torpedoes and Burn. You won’t escape.”

  “So those men nearby are your agents?”

  “What men?” Baru prevaricated.

  “There are armed men scouring the area around our mooring. They’ll find us within hours. Are these yours?”

  “Yes,” Baru lied, even as her heart slowed with cool, thoughtful distress. Those would be Xate Yawa’s people, Durance’s people, two names for one foe. Xate Yawa had been charged by Hesychast to find the Cancrioth and bring home their immortal flesh.

  “What will they do when they find us? Will they attack?”

  But the water was too high to answer. Baru blew froth, gurgling enthusiastically, certain that she had—even from the bottom of her drowning hole—gained leverage, a foothold to climb up out of here.

  “Get her up,” the shadow ambassador commanded someone. “Kimbune! Kimbune, come here!” And then she snapped something in Maulmake, in a tone of harshest reprimand. The voice who’d questioned Baru first protested loudly.

  So that first woman was named Kimbune. Why did you come here, Kimbune, to ask after your husband’s soul? Why was I hidden from you?

  If there were factions on this ship, Baru could play them off each other, as she had in Aurdwynn. She’d won there. But Tain Hu had not survived that victory.

  What had they done with Shao Lune? With Osa and Tau?

  Baru flinched from the thought, and her face ducked below the filthy water, and the groan of a ship’s timbers came to her, the complaint of a leviathan. It would be easier this time, if she had to sacrifice again. It would not hurt so much. She had practice at it.

  She would get the Kettling blood from the Cancrioth, and she would use her success to buy Cairdine Farrier’s trust long enough for the final betrayal, and Falcrest would be destroyed, and her parents would be all right in the end, and she would see her home free.

  She was on course. She was doing well. And if Shao and Osa and Tau were all lost, as Tain Hu and Duke Unuxekome and Xate Olake and all the others had been lost, that was just proof that victory required sacrifice.

  The water closed above her.

  NOW

  So you met Tau-indi Bosoka,” Farrier says. An odd thing to focus on, out of everything she’s told him.

  “Yes.” The heavy wool of her straitjacket itches. She shimmies against it to scratch; she hears his waistcoat crinkle as he looks away. She is mostly naked beneath it and that troubles him. “We met on the Llosydanes. I was tracking water purchases made by the Oriati fleet that attacked Aurdwynn, and it drew Tau’s attention.” She had figured that she could find the financiers behind Abdumasi Abd’s fleet, and prove that they were the Cancrioth. Prove that the Mbo harbored them and you could set the world on fire. She had thought, almost to the end, that this proof truly was Farrier’s prize.

  Why had she ever believed that he’d given her the real reasons for her mission?

  Farrier asks, from his wary distance, “Is Tau all right?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Farrier sighs. His years seem to gather about him, regrets like old sweat on his skin. “That’s very much . . . not what I wanted.”

  He almost slips. He almost admits he cares about a person who is unhygienic and unIncrastic and unsuited to his reputation. But he gets his shield up in time. He does not know that he’s
fighting for his life, but his instincts for danger are too good.

  He disengages: “Do you need to rest? Water? Anything?”

  “I’m fine, Mister Farrier. We can continue.”

  “You mentioned this embassy attack several times. What happened?”

  “We were attacked by the Canaat. The Kyprananoki rebels. They were rising up against the Kyprists, the puppet government Falcrest left behind.”

  “I don’t know these Canaat.”

  “Purely a local concern. Of no major interest, until we discovered the Oriati were giving them weapons. Pistols. Machetes. Bombs.” She grunts in shock. “Their eyes. Mister Farrier. Their eyes were bleeding—the blood was black—are my eyes bleeding? Is that why I can’t see?”

  “No, no.” A cool cloth dabs at her forehead. “No, Baru, you’re not sick. Your temperature’s quite normal. You’re safe.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Tell it all as you remember it,” Farrier says, clearly and encouragingly. “Tell me everything, Baru. I’ll have the presses turning by nightfall. By month’s end Parliament will send a note to the Oriati Federal Princes demanding that they turn over everyone associated with the Cancrioth. By year’s end the Oriati will be killing each other in the streets and the fields, all convinced everyone who’s ever wronged them is a tumor. A thousand years of scars all opening at once. And we’ll only have to wait for the right time to move in and save them. That’s how it works, Baru, that’s how it’s always worked, cracking open a new province. Stoke their problems with each other, find the cracks and widen them: like tapping an egg on the edge of the dish. And then sell them the solution. They’ll buy it from you and thank you for it.”

  “This idea of turning the Oriati on each other . . .” Baru asks it keenly. Farrier will not believe her question is genuine, unpracticed, unless she sounds keen. “Did you get it from Tau and Kindalana and Abdumasi? When you were with them?”

  Farrier does not freeze when he is surprised. He’s far too good for that. He does something extremely ordinary, instead, to buy himself time. He sneezes. He can sneeze on command! What a talent.

  “Sorry,” he says. “With who?”

  “The Prince Hill children. Tau, Abdu, Kindalana.” She would blink if she could, as if she were bewildered by the idea he might lie to her. “You met them long before I did. Didn’t you, Mister Farrier? A quarter-century ago, in Lonjaro Mbo. When you lived on Lake Jaro, with the crocodiles and the cranes. . . .”