“There is one aristocrat,” Hu said. “One whose power you already wield.”
Baru turned the thought over in her mind. Then she laughed in wonder.
“I’m a genius,” she said. “It’s that simple.”
“Yes,” Hu sighed. “To my constant bewilderment, you really are.”
She leaned over, put her warm lips on Baru’s, and exhaled.
Helbride sailed north and east on a gentle following sea.
It was the worst case of meningitis Yawa had ever seen, she told Baru between spoonfuls of oat mush. But it was also the worst she had ever seen anyone survive. “How you screamed and screamed, Agonist. Quite the lungs on you.”
“I picked a good name,” Barhu croaked. “It invites pain, and survives it.”
“Ai!” Yawa slapped her wrist. “Don’t say that. Something will hear you and make it true.”
“Magical thinking, Jurispotence?”
Yawa hid her smile behind her breath mask.
Four times a day Barhu received visits from the woman who had saved her life. Iscend Comprine wore a cotton surgeon’s smock over baggy sailor’s slops and she made it look like high Heighclare fashion. She cleaned Barhu’s bedsores, fed her spicy soup that made her sneeze and cry, and read poetry that convinced even the ship’s angry seagull to cock its head and listen.
Barhu studied her in consternation. Iscend had come back from the dark water of el-Tsunuqba utterly unchanged: her calm medial-folded eyes, mountain-fox cheekbones, the lithe (yes, lithe, here if anywhere Baru felt the word belonged) poised armature of her body. Like a dancer executing the choreography of her entire life.
“What did you do?” she finally asked Iscend. “How did you cure me?”
“Oh, I can hardly take credit. And it was only a treatment, not a cure. The Metademe’s test panels discovered that certain Oriati honeys serve as powerful anti-infectives. I found one of those honeys among the supplies we took off Cheetah. A vintage called Zawam Asu Southern Tea-Myrtle.”
Cheetah made her think of Tau. “You fed me honey?”
“I diluted the honey in distilled water, luxated your right eyeball, and trickled the solution through the punctured bone into the inflamed tissues behind. After aggressive irrigation of the wounded area, you began to improve.” She lay a concerned hand on Barhu’s wrist. “When you went into convulsions, I was afraid I’d killed you.”
“Don’t try to take the credit,” Yawa growled. She was in her plain linen peasant’s dress, hands chafed and cracked from too much soap, sorting through the detritus beside Barhu’s hammock: a glass chemistry set, a bladder for tsusenshan or opiate smoke, a dry sponge. “It was the meningitis that would’ve killed her.”
Iscend, undeterred: “The treatment will make an intriguing monograph!”
“Yawa,” Barhu croaked. “How’s the ship?”
“Well enough, I suppose. Captain Nullsin’s frigate is escorting us northeast, back to the trade ring. Svir’s lonely and snippy.”
“Where is everyone? I remember it more crowded. . . .”
“We had to transfer the Oriati from Cheetah over to Ascentatic. They kept demanding to know what happened to Tau-indi. It broke Faham’s heart to lie to them.”
“Kyprananoke?” Barhu asked, quietly.
“It’s all gone,” Xate Yawa said, as she sorted the glassware, clean and dirty, thick and delicate, light safe and dark stored.
Well. Well. That was an intractable, a fact. Barhu couldn’t alter it. There was no sense chewing on it like a dog with pika, cutting her teeth on the broken stone. No sense. The jellyfish pens and the cricket farms and the coconut groves and the bright blue lagoons, the Canaat who wanted their freedom and the Canaat who had gone mad to gain it, the orange-gloved Kyprists and their jealous reservoirs, all gone together.
Yawa lay a polishing cloth over the surgical lenses. Her long slim fingers trembled faintly. “Baru, Svir and I agreed . . . it had to be done. The mathematics were clear. But we never gave the order. She,” looking to Iscend, who did not react, “set the fuses herself.”
Of course it had been Iscend to execute the decision. Who else would act so swiftly and fecklessly in service of the Republic? In a sense there had been no decision at all. Iscend was the hand by which the power of Falcrest had reached out and pulled that mountain down. She had acted in service of the Throne. In the Throne’s eyes she was blameless. And it was through the Throne’s eyes that she regarded herself.
“So be it,” Barhu said, resolving to accept what could not be changed, but to never, ever forget it. She had her course. Now she would sail it to its end. “Tell me, please—where’s the Cancrioth? Where’s Eternal?”
Two more,” Aminata muttered. “Let them pass.”
She pushed Iraji back into the shadow of the ballast block. Eternal’s bilge was a pond of ankle-deep water that sloshed around monumental bricks of quarried basalt. Aminata figured they were dampers, installed here to keep the ship from swaying in rough seas. You could hide down here, if you were desperate.
Feet splashed past. Aminata held her breath, and held Iraji, and hoped that he could hold his breath as long as she.
They had been in the dark. Navigating by touch, sneaking abovedecks only to steal freshwater, sleeping on the narrow wooden platforms that had once stored water casks. Eight days ago the Brain’s faction had seized the ship. Aminata had only just worked up the courage to approach Iraji again, asking him to show her a domed planetarium, where pinpricks of glowing green paint mapped out constellations she didn’t know. Tau’s warning had kept her away from him: Iraji was one of them, bred to host this ancient Oriati taint. But she noticed, anyway, how his arms and shoulders glistened with sweat in the half-dark of the lantern, how his lean hips curved into an ass like that. And at the same moment as she ogled him, in maybe the same exact watching part of her mind, she noted Eternal’s every groan and sway, imputing her dimensions, her armament, the strength of her crew.
The coup had struck while they were in the planetarium. The Brain’s people cordoned off the foreigners’ staterooms with Tau, Osa, and Shao Lune inside. The Eye’s entire faction was rounded up into the deckhouse; some were given parole to help sail and repair the ship, and the provision of food and water to the rest was conditioned on the parolees’ good behavior.
The Brain, born to the signs of eclipse and burning whirlwind, had taken Eternal. Now she was making it ready for war.
Aminata figured it was inevitable. The Cancrioth crew had nearly seen their ship destroyed by one Falcresti frigate; days later they’d seen Falcrest drown an entire nation. When people were threatened, they closed up their hands into fists. It had happened on Eternal like it would happen in Falcrest. After that first moment of terror, when the enemy’s power became apparent, the war faction became almost overnight the common-sense default. After that it was only a matter of time before they did what all war factions do: expunge foreign influence, arrest sympathizers, and prepare a first strike.
She figured they were sailing northeast, for Isla Cauteria. Where else? They didn’t have the water for a long crossing south, to the northern Oriati coast and the trade winds that would bring them west and home. If they tried to cut southwest across the Kraken Still, past Taranoke to Segu Mbo and access to the Black Tea Ocean, they would die in the Still’s bad winds and wandering maelstroms. And a breakout to the southeast, through the Tide Column and out to the Mother of Storms, then a long journey south along Devi-naga Mbo and around the horn of Zawam Asu, would be purest suicide. They would never make it through the Tide Column, never mind the perils of Cape Zero.
There was a torpedo wound in the ship’s prow, a bleeding hole too large to repair with scrub timber from any passing island. They needed a proper yard and good trees. They needed what Isla Cauteria could offer.
The Brain was going to attack. And if that destroyed her, and her ship, and any chance of peace, then all the better. The way Iraji explained it, the Brain feared peace with Falcrest much mor
e than she feared death.
“There are more of her,” Iraji told her, “all over the world. Part of the same Line. She doesn’t see herself as someone who can die. She’s like a memory, Aminata. If one person who remembers her dies, the memory will go on in the others. It’s the same for all the lines. Even Undionash, the line I’m meant for. . . .” He had wavered for a moment. “But Undionash is precious. There are very few hosts left.”
Now, in the darkness, the searching footsteps passed away. Aminata’s fingers found the bundle of tendons and nerves beneath Iraji’s wrist.
“They built their ship too big,” he whispered. She filled in his grin from memory.
“Yeah,” Aminata muttered, while the part of her that was and always would be a navy sailor chewed on this. What was this ship built for? There were no locks on most of the doors. No organized marine detachment or posted guards. She’d heard pistol discharges during the coup, and shouts of fury and surprise . . . but there had been no cries of agony afterward, no surgical screams, no wet pleas from the dying.
Maybe the pistols were loaded only to frighten. Maybe life was sacred aboard Eternal, and so they didn’t hurt each other, not even in the extremes of their wrath. Not even with the whole ship out of water and dehydrated to the edge of white death.
“Iraji,” she muttered. “There’s something that’s been on my mind.”
“Is it me?” he murmured.
It was not even innuendo: he had been willing to talk about his past more openly. In these furtive days her casual lust had softened into fondness, and trust, and a sort of awkwardly racialized camaraderie. In Falcrest’s eyes, she and Iraji shared a single Oriati body, scrutinized for its beauty and sexuality, condemned for its indulgence and its melancholia.
“It’s about Baru. Tau said that she was . . .” She swallowed. Repeating the words of a Federal Prince felt obscene. “Tau said that Baru was trying to destroy the Republic. Is that true?”
“What would you do if it were?” Iraji whispered back.
“I swore an oath to defend Falcrest. If she means us harm, I . . . I made a terrible mistake helping her. If she means us harm, Ormsment was right. . . .”
Iraji made a thoughtful sound. “How much could Falcrest change before you considered it destroyed?”
“What?”
“If Baru’s purpose is to change Falcrest, is that the same as—”
“Iraji?”
A voice called in the dark, echoing among the towering ballast stones, splitting and rejoining: “Iraji? Miss Aminata? You’re down here, aren’t you?”
“It’s Tau!” Iraji gasped. “That’s the Prince!”
“Miss Aminata,” Tau-indi Bosoka called, “there’s a man here who says he’ll shoot me in the gut if you don’t come out. His name is Scheme-Colonel Masako. He says that if you aren’t moved by my slow death, he will have to use Cancrioth magic to draw Iraji out. He doesn’t want to do that. But he will.”
“We have to go to them,” Iraji gasped.
“What?” Aminata whispered. “Why? It’s not real. There’s no magic. They can’t do anything to you.”
“Tau-indi is important. We can’t let Tau-indi die.”
“If this is some trim bullshit,” Aminata hissed, “something about Baru and Tau and spells and all that—”
“It’s not that,” Iraji insisted, “well, it is, but not only that. Tau knows something. I’m sure of it. Every member of the Throne has a secret—Tau might know—and the Eye said Tau was important!”
“The Eye’s just a gardener, Iraji. He doesn’t know anything.”
“Iraji,” Tau-indi called from above. “I need you. I need your help. Please come out.”
Iraji tried to take a step. Aminata tried to pull him back. They struggled for a moment. His foot came down too hard and made a splash.
“Shit,” Aminata hissed.
For a moment there was nothing in the ballast hold except the quiet echo of that splash.
And then that echo multiplied, returned as the sound of footsteps, closing in from all around.
18
Groundwork
This can’t be it,” Xate Yawa said, tightly. “This isn’t all you have.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Barhu breathed.
Yawa’s right hand twitched on the table, brushed the edge of the Great Game map, sent the pawns and tokens rattling out of their positions. She looked like she wanted to bang a gavel on the little table and declare a mistrial.
“This,” she said, “is not a plan.”
“It’s exquisite!”
“Trade? Economic exploitation? Falcrest’s goods everywhere from Oriati Mbo to the Wintercrests? Why are you proposing Cairdine Farrier’s dream as the solution to my quandary?”
“Yawa,” Barhu sighed, “this is our plan. Both of me.”
“I won’t believe it. Tain Hu would never agree to this.”
That stung. Barhu, kissing her own right palm thoughtlessly, tried to find another way to explain it.
“Trade is like a waterfall,” she offered. “The further it has to fall, the more power you can get from it. It doesn’t fall across physical space, though. It falls across . . . across the difference in what two places can offer. Can you imagine two places more different than the Wintercrests and Oriati Mbo?”
They were in Yawa’s slot cabin in Helbride’s stern. Apparitor had disassembled the ship’s stateroom and captain’s cabin; there was simply nowhere more private to gather.
“Your trade route doesn’t work, Baru. You might as well try to sell garlic to the moon. There is no overland road from the Wintercrest Mountains to the Duchy Vultjag, so the very first link in the chain is broken—”
“Vultjag’s rangers have been navigating that route for centuries. Smugglers already move goods. They can break trail for a road.”
“And then what? The river Vultsniada is too narrow and rapid for steady commerce. It joins the Inirein, which is large enough, but that river is a bandit’s bordello. How will you secure the way? With what loyal troops?”
“Provincial regulars raised by the Governor.”
“There are no provincial regulars! You butchered the garrison last winter, remember? And the third link in your plan is worse yet! The harbor at Welthony’s never been dredged for large trade ships. It’s a fishing port. And you blocked up the existing channels with sunken wrecks—”
“Governor Ri can solve all these problems,” Barhu countered. She imagined herself and Yawa as sprightly duelists, trading points with rapiers. Of course, the last duel she’d seen was Tain Hu against Governor Cattlson, and Hu had beaten in Cattlson’s brow with the pommel end of her sword. But never mind that. “She’s got money to build the roads, dredge the harbors, and raise the troops. I should know. I ran the accounts she inherited from Cattlson. And you have her ear, don’t you, Yawa? You could make it happen!”
“Ridiculous. It’s all ridiculous. You can’t expect an empire of starved mountain barbarians to conduct trade with an unknown ocean. It’s not a realistic prospect. You’ll never turn a profit.”
“We don’t need to make a profit! We just need to sell shares in a joint-stock concern operating the trade—”
“How in the name of Himu will you convince anyone in Falcrest to invest in your concern?”
That was the key, the trick, the masterstroke. “By offering a share of profits from the most coveted market in the world. The Emperor Itself will grant my trade concern a monopoly on the western coast of Oriati Mbo and the Black Tea Ocean. Falcrest doesn’t know it yet, but the wealth waiting there will make every concern in the Suettaring look like a pauper’s billfold.”
“The Emperor Itself? The Emperor is a puppet in a straitjacket! It says whatever the Throne makes it say!”
“I haven’t quite solved that part yet,” Barhu admitted. “But there’s a way to make the Emperor give us the monopoly. We only need the appropriate leverage. . . . Yawa?”
She wasn’t listening anymore. She reached
across the Great Game board and picked up the little pawn that represented Barhu. Apparitor had made that pawn for Barhu, and then, after Tain Hu’s execution, smashed it. Yawa stared at the splintered stub that remained.
“It won’t matter,” she murmured. “Even if we did all this, Baru, it wouldn’t make a difference to the fate of my home.” She did not have to say Tain Hu’s home. They both heard it. “There’s no time to build a trade route. The Stakhieczi will invade Aurdwynn. They may do it before winter. The only way to stop them is to arrange a state marriage between Governor Heingyl Ri and their king. And you were supposed to be the dowry.”
“And,” Barhu added, because she understood, “this whole plan depends on the logic Farrier taught me. Turning everything into money.”
“Yes. It’s all Farrier’s technique.” The thing in Yawa’s voice was worse than anger. Yawa hated herself for wishing that she’d gone ahead and lobotomized Baru. “What good is some speculative trade route owned by an imaginary concern? I still have nothing to show Hesychast. No sample of the immortal cancer. No victory over you, to win him his reckoning. And if he doesn’t see that I’ve clearly, decisively defeated you . . . Baru, what does this do for my brother?”
This was exactly the kind of moment when Barhu wanted to leap ahead, trading on her reputation for savantry and brilliance, and browbeat Yawa into obeying her.
Exactly the moment when she knew her instincts were wrong.
“You’re right. I need to develop this plan more. I’ll come back to you when I can answer that question.” She took a deep breath. “There’s something else. Tain Shir made an . . . alarming suggestion to me.”
Yawa laid her hands flat on the table and pressed till it creaked. “What suggestion?”
“She thinks there are more cryptarchs than the seven we know.”
Blue eyes narrowed in brown folds. “Explain.”
“She thinks that the Throne we know is just one cell of a larger organization. Our cell handles matters out on the periphery of the Empire. That’s why we’re arranged like a tiny model of the Imperial Republic and its surrounds—a Taranoki woman, an Aurdwynni woman, a Stakhi man, two Falcresti men, Renascent, and Stargazer. Maybe Stargazer is the Oriati representative? Anyway, listen,” Barhu leaned closer, as delighted as she was terrified, she did so love the intrigue, the moment when your understanding of the world unfolded to reveal a secret diagram scrawled within, “in the grand scheme, most of Falcrest’s power is concentrated in Falcrest. Doesn’t it make sense the Throne would have another cell there? A model of the home province’s interior, maybe. With members from the different cities, maybe. Or the different ministries?”
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