The Tyrant

by Seth Dickinson

  “Promise me you’ll be Baru’s friend,” Tau said.

  “What?”

  “The most meaningful power in the world is the bond between two people. The dyad. You will retain the most meaningful power over her, Aminata.”

  “You’re high.”

  “Yes, but soon I will be sober again. But you, Aminata, will be exactly the same. You will still need the approval of Falcresti superiors to feel better than other Oriati people. You will still despise your Parliament, your Metademe, and all the other organs of Falcrest’s government. You think you despise them as enemies of the navy but in truth you hate them for the way they make you feel about your own Oriati body.”

  Tau said it all without the slightest condescension, with a genuine joy, as if the view into Aminata’s eyes was wider and more wonderful than all the stars above Eternal and all the sea around. “And the idea of you and Baru against the world, even against that part of the world which you pretend to love to serve, will always fill you with longing. You must stay close to her, Aminata. Now, more than ever, she cannot be alone. She cannot become the wound. You and she are the last string of connection holding the world from its final hernia into chaos.”

  Tau took several gasping breaths. Their heart fluttered hummingbird-quick in their throat.

  “And if she becomes terrible,” they said, still smiling, “one of us needs to be close enough to kill her.”

  Afterward she wanted her uniform reds so badly that she made Innibarish fetch them. They were still salt-caked and filthy, ruined when she’d gone overboard from Sulane. The Cancrioth hadn’t spared any water for the wash.

  Aminata turned the jacket over in her hands, marking the places where it would need alteration. It would cost the better part of a season’s pay.

  “Damn,” she said.

  Innibarish’s huge hand fell on her shoulder. She stiffened warily. It was the strangest thing in the world to be among people who looked like her. Stranger yet to look down at her uniform and see it not as proof she fit in but as a marker of separation from the people around her.

  “You’re all right?” the Cancrioth man asked. “Tau said many strange things.”

  She wanted to tell him what she felt about the navy. But how could she articulate it? The joy of being one body among many useful bodies as you sailed the ship? The pure knowledge that your talent and labor could not be denied, could not be stolen and given to someone else, when you were up there in the rigging of a ship, sailing with your own skill?

  The isolation of shore leave, where the other women made it silently clear you would not be looking for lads in their company. The strange propositions of Oriati fetishists, the casual assessment of her body by strangers’ gaze and comments, the remarks on her height, the size of her thighs and shoulders and breasts: an assessment which became internal, and constant, so that Aminata saw herself through Falcrest eyes in every mirror, heard the other women muttering in their own minds when she was naked among them.

  On Taranoke, a sailor had remarked to her, once, that men thought about women’s bodies nearly as much as they believed women thought about their own. The novelists were wrong: women did not measure themselves in mirrors and stare down their shirts.

  Maybe you don’t, she’d wanted to snap. Maybe a Falcrest woman doesn’t. I am constantly thinking about how to hide myself. How to deny the assumption that I’m a slut.

  Here on Eternal she was unremarkable. She had only one set of her eyes: her own. The second set, the imaginary Falcrest eyes she carried with her and looked at herself through, were shut.

  “Is there any water to wash this uniform?” she asked Innibarish.

  “Only if it comes out of your drinking water.”

  She would pay in thirst to know who she was again. She would pay eagerly.

  “Fine,” she said. “Take it out of my ration.”

  On the next morning, as Aminata and Iraji washed Osa’s powder burns, the Prince returned to them.

  “Excuse me,” Tau-indi said, in a clear, bright voice, like a warm breeze after days becalmed.

  Aminata stared.

  Tau-indi stood in the doorway of the stateroom, open-handed, scoured clean by dry strigil and alcohol, wearing a simple gray Cancrioth cassock. “I’ve been very poor to all of you,” they said. “For that I will not apologize, any more than I could apologize for sickness or frailty. Without trim I was unmoored. But I treated my grief as well as I can. If I cannot go back I will go forward.” They clasped their hands before them. “Osa, I am so sorry you’re burnt, and as soon as I can, I will find a salve for it. As for the rest of you, I feel that I owe some explanation.”

  “Your Highness?” Osa gasped. Hope stirred in the creased-paper wreck of her face. Shao Lune lifted herself from folded knees with wary interest.

  “Whether you believe in trim,” their eyes found Aminata, “or not, you must know that I believe in it, and so it affects me. I accept that I am excised. I cannot ever return to the Mbo. But I still believe in the mission I set out to achieve. The salvation of my people from war, through the influence of the intimate bonds between us.

  “I came to find Abdumasi Abd, and to repair the wound in trim between us. It is a wound made when we were children, scarred over and torn open. Now I know that Abdu has taken a Cancrioth implant, and that I can no longer repair the wound. On Kyprananoke I saw that wound devour a whole nation: what Abdumasi began there led to catastrophe. Now the Brain has control of this ship, and she is going to lead all those aboard, willing or otherwise, to tear that wound further open, and to begin the war she wants. Isla Cauteria is her target. We must stop her.”

  “Agreed,” Aminata said, loudly.

  “This isn’t right,” Shao Lune snapped. “Lieutenant Commander Aminata, you’re not to speak to this person. They’ve been drugged into obedience—”

  “Indeed I have. My current good cheer and spiritual clarity are the result of a dangerous dose of entheogens and hallucinogens. I cannot expect the cheer to persist, but I hope the clarity will.” Tau opened their hands to Iraji and Aminata. “When you told me about Baru’s surrender to Ormsment . . . it led me to a hope. Consciously or otherwise, Baru seemed to be acting according to the principles of trim. They are not so easily explained, but when I teach them, I often introduce them this way:

  “To maintain trim is to act in a way that puts the well-being of others before your own. Not in the hope of reward or advantage, but in the knowledge that the only way to a good world is for all people to put themselves second so that all people will be put first. To keep good trim, you must be a good friend to those around you, so your own happiness and health must be maintained. But it is also good trim to go to your enemy, and to offer forgiveness and recompense, to deliver yourself into their judgment: that is a high act of trim.

  “It seems to me that when the Womb cut me out of trim, the bonds that once defined my place in the human context may have fixed upon another person. A woman who was reaching out, in desperation, for some hope of reconciliation. In short”—they bowed their head, shuffled, made themself speak with visible effort—“I believe that Baru now occupies the place in trim where I was removed.

  “This means that it is her actions which will ultimately reunite my scattered friends Abdumasi Abd and Kindalana of Segu, and, in that reunion, bind the mortal wound that has opened in our world. Whatever happens at the end of our journey, it will happen through Baru, and it will save the Oriati people. It is destiny.”

  They turned, with obvious worry, to Aminata. “I know that you most of all will be skeptical of this idea of mine.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Aminata hedged. She could not conceive of a worldview in which something as grand as a second Armada War could be stopped by reuniting two people.

  “I know.” They smiled. “So I must ask you something. Will you answer honestly?”

  “What is it?”

  Shao Lune hissed in fury.

  Tau-indi swallowed, and said, in one ex
cited run, “Have you, in recent months, found yourself entangled by seemingly spontaneous connections with the lives of others? In particular Cairdine Farrier the Itinerant, Cosgrad Torrinde the Hesychast, Abdumasi Abd, Kindalana of Segu, and myself? Have you noticed these names, or the people themselves, appearing to you in unexpected places?”

  “Bit of a leading question, isn’t it?” Shao Lune sneered.

  It surely was, Aminata thought, it was the very definition of a leading question.

  Only—only—it had all happened exactly the way Tau said. Hadn’t it? Aminata had been given a prisoner to torture: Abdumasi Abd. He had blurted out Baru’s name. The hunt for Baru led her to the Llosydane Islands, and to Mister Calcanish, who’d told her about Kindalana, and who’d been so aroused and troubled by that name. Then on to Kyprananoke, and to a meeting with Tau-indi, and with Baru, who wanted to know if Cairdine Farrier had twisted their friendship. . . .

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I know all these people. Except Cosgrad Torrinde. I know he’s Minister Metademe but I’ve never met him personally.”

  “No?” Tau looked crestfallen. “He moves under many identities. He would be an extremely lithe, supple, athletic man. A bit like the illustrations in an anatomy textbook you weren’t supposed to find exciting as a girl.”

  “Oh, no,” Aminata groaned. “Oh, no. Calcanish—?”

  “Oh, well conquered,” Shao Lune purred. “The man who denies the navy’s women their marriage permits? What a fine catch. You really will let anyone—”

  For the first time in Aminata’s life, the room was full of Oriati people, and their collective bristling disapproval drove Shao Lune back.

  “Tau,” Iraji said, carefully, “what made you seek . . . treatment? Who convinced you that you needed help?”

  Tau blinked at him. “Child, I am almost forty years old. I’ve spent my entire life thinking about how to be a better person. My capacity to be a terrible person is undiminished by that work, as a pit is undiminished by the construction of a tower. But I can set myself aright when I falter. I don’t need to be spurred.” They self-consciously smoothed their cassock over their hips. “I recommend psilocin mushrooms to all those who suffer an overcast of character. I’ve used them before.”

  A quick sly smile at Aminata, and then they gathered the room’s attention with open arms. “I must ask all of you for your help. I cannot be ambassador for the Mbo any longer, but perhaps there is a reason for that. Perhaps fate took everything I loved because those bonds held me back from who I need to be. I was ambassador to Falcrest, a place without trim. I must believe that people without trim are still capable of good. I must believe the Cancrioth can make human choices. Will you help me help them?”

  Aminata, against the cold judgment of Shao Lune’s eyes: “Help them with what?”

  “Retaking the ship, of course,” Tau said. “Preventing the Brain from leading us to war.”

  “That’s impossible,” Shao Lune scoffed.

  “I’m afraid I agree,” Osa croaked, from Iraji’s supporting arms. “How could we possibly . . . ?”

  Tau smiled a little, and Aminata smiled, too, helpless, because she loved the foreign Prince’s impish delight.

  “Magic,” they said. They bowed to Iraji, not deep, not long, but a bow nonetheless. “Child, have they taught you any war magic?”

  “No,” Iraji said, staggering a little under Osa’s weight, fighting that old, old conditioning to faint. “Not yet . . .”

  “Then it is very fortunate for us,” Tau said, wringing out their hands, “that I know a great deal of it myself.”

  A STORY ABOUT ASH 10

  Federation Year 912:

  23 Years Earlier

  Upon the Ashen Sea

  off Segu Mbo

  These were the terms of Oriati Mbo’s surrender, as demanded in the document held by Cairdine Farrier.

  Oriati Mbo would yield its sole claim to the Ashen Sea and cooperate in establishing a Free Navigational Commons along the northern Oriati coast, in which Falcrest’s convoys and their escorts could move untroubled. The eastern Mothercoast along Devi-naga would remain open to Falcrest’s ships. They would make no claim to the western coast and the Black Tea Ocean (because, Tau thought, they could not practically reach it: not without fighting through Segu’s islands, or looping south and west around Cape Zero and the deadly horn of Zawam Asu).

  Oriati Mbo would receive damages: blood money, in Oriati terms. Falcrest would send paper money by the shipload, good tender in any Falcresti market; they would send more in exchange for counterpayments of gold, silver, and gems, at generous rates of exchange, practically devaluing their own currency. They would buy up Oriati debts, paying cash for the right to receive the debt when it was paid—a practice not foreign to the Oriati, but usually used compassionately, not for profit.

  Oriati Mbo would not be asked to yield its pride or culture or its political independence. This was a trade dispute, the Falcresti said. A market correction. For many decades, Oriati Mbo had overvalued its strength, and undervalued Falcrest’s.

  Violence had been transacted as a result.

  The treaty put a name to the whole tragedy. It would be called the Armada War. As if it had all been fought at sea, among the willing and the glorious. As if burnt Kutulbha had been a particularly large ship.

  Maybe one of the spoils of a war was the right to name it.

  “Well,” Tau’s mother Tahr said, reading it again. “Segu’s not going to like this. Are they, Kinda?”

  Kindalana eshSegu shook her head. She was watching the man beside her with a gaze Tau couldn’t decipher.

  “That’s why Segu was hit hardest.” Farrier frowned through his beard. “And Devi-naga, I assume. Both the great nautical federations would need to be shocked into surrender. I wish we could get news of Devi-naga’s coast.” But the Tide Column was blockaded, and with it all sea traffic from the Mbo’s eastern nation, so news had to come overland. “I visited it when I was younger. A marvelous place. Have any of you been? No? Oh, I recommend it. Such resilience in them, the Devi and the Naga both. A land of cholera and typhoid, terrible floods . . . which reminds me, Tahr, I wanted to talk to you about the captain’s problem with the ship’s owner. If we can sort it out for them I expect it would be good for both our trim. . . .”

  Tahr and Farrier went forward to speak to the captain. Cosgrad Torrinde, leaning against the back wall of the compartment, put his hands together and sighed into them. Tau-indi bit on their toothache and wished that they could all go home to Prince Hill again, and fight over small troubles of sex and honey.

  “I don’t want Oriati Mbo conquered,” Cosgrad said. He looked between Tau and Kinda with thin-lipped determination. “This treaty is the beginning of the real war. Not the end. Don’t forget that.”

  He drew away. Tau-indi watched him go, thinking of jellyfish and squid and thin membranes moving languidly down in the deep.

  “You have to marry Farrier,” Kindalana said.

  Tau-indi’s head filled with a hollow ringing sound, as if they had just stood up, hard, into the corner of an open cabinet door. “What?”

  “I can’t do it.” Kindalana crossed her arms and stuck her jaw out. “You’re right. I have to take care of Abdumasi. You have to do it, Tau-indi. We need to find a way inside them, a way to use influence where force will fail. Or we’re lost.”

  “He’s older than me!”

  “He’s a foreigner. The age difference can be excused.”

  “He’s never shown a lick of interest!”

  “You don’t need to fuck him. You don’t need to love him.” Kindalana and her awful way of solving things. “You just need to marry him. We’re Princes, Tau. We do what the Mbo requires. Think of what a marriage bond to Falcrest could do. It worked with the Maia. It could work again.”

  “Why not—” Tau shifted awkwardly. “Why not Cosgrad?”

  “Because Farrier’s more dangerous.” She put her face in her hands. When she looked back
up her eyes were soft and her jaw was oh so hard. “Falcrest will get inside us and change us. I think our only chance is to do the same to them.”

  Tau-indi could find nothing to disagree with that.

  “We’re Princes,” Kindalana said, simply. “We have to save the Mbo.”

  Tau-indi choked down bitter unseemly protests about the meaninglessness of marriage, about their absent father, about Kindalana’s runaway mother. “Falcrest will destroy itself in time. What they do will turn back on them.”

  Only if you’re right, Kindalana’s eyes said. Only if you’re right, and trim is more powerful than fire.

  “Then both sides will be ruined. Is that what you want? Each of us broken? History has given them the power to take what they want from us. We cannot pretend it is otherwise. We must accept our defeat, and find a way to make something from it.”

  Their dromon sailed toward Kutulbha through a green sea scummed with ash. Tau woke in the night to the sound of the prow parting corpses. The rowers coughed so much that Tau couldn’t get back to sleep. Fat sharks circled with grins full of human meat, and the black sky lowered limbs of ash to feed from the funerary water.

  They sailed between two plates of death and they were like one torch moving across a charred savannah under a starless sky.

  The principles in Kutulbha were the principles of a tomb. No, Tau-indi thought, that was wrong. A tomb was, after all, a place people made to consecrate and remember the dead. It had a purpose.

  There were no principles in Kutulbha. This was a hole, a breach in the Mbo, severed from trim and life. The world here had been rubbed naked to the primordial chaos.

  They arrived in Kutulbha harbor among the dromons of other Princes flying flags of war and grief. Here they found the sleek shapes of Masquerade frigates, red-sailed, like the wings of a bloody carrion bird peering up from its feast. On their decks engines of fire and racks of rocket arrows waited for orders to kill. The Masquerade sailors wore white masks and red waistcoats. From a distance they might have all been painted figures positioned in some scholar’s diorama.