The evidence against Baru was overwhelming. She was leading a false pro-war mutiny just as she’d led a false rebellion in Aurdwynn. Aminata just didn’t want it to be true.
She had Ascentatic’s double complement of eighty marines waiting on her signal to storm the embassy, arrest Baru and Ormsment, and fight their way back out. It would possibly be enough to start a war: locally, at minimum. Everywhere, in the worst case.
She could with one shot of a flare pistol bring the storm surge of history down on the Ashen Sea. That was her duty. It made her itch.
“Mam?” Faroni whispered. “Are you with us? Ormsment’s coming in now.”
“You ever look back,” Aminata muttered, “and ask yourself, fuck me, what did I do to deserve this?”
“Never, mam,” Faroni said, hurriedly: as if she was afraid Aminata would go off on a ramble about the weight of duty. “There’s Baru again, and Shao Lune, and the Prince-Ambassador … and now that’s Thomis Love with Ormsment. Quite a collection, isn’t it?”
Gerewho adjusted his sommelier’s nose, a grotesque elephantine trunk which was supposed to enhance one’s grape-sniffing, so he could speak clearly. “Lieutenant Commander?”
“You say mam, Ensign, you don’t pronounce my rank.”
“Yes, mam, it’s just—the mam over there made a sign to me.”
“The mam over there?”
“Yes, mam, the—er, that mam.” He pointed to the staff captain Shao Lune, who held her gloved hands clasped behind her back as she waited, two steps back from Baru, to be presented to Juris Ormsment.
“The staff captain,” Aminata said, “what sign did she make?”
“Well, mam,” Gerewho said, “if I’m not mistaken, it was the navy cant for I’m drowning: throw me a line.”
Aminata blinked. “And she made this sign at you?”
“She threw a dart at me first, mam.”
“A dart?”
“Yes, mam,” Gerewho said, holding up a discarded meat skewer, “bounced it off my shoulder.”
Shao Lune wanted them to rescue her. Which suggested Baru had her here as a prisoner, right? Maybe even a hostage? A way to control Ormsment? If Aminata could get Shao Lune out, she could be the key to the whole situation. But that would mean exposing herself to Baru.
Beware Baru Cormorant, Calcanish had said.
She will not betray you, Aminata’s heart said.
Duty is what you do even when you have no reason to do it, the navy said.
Aminata put a hand on her flare pistol.
26
THE BLACK EMMENIA
THERE had been a moment in the battle at Sieroch when Baru understood everything.
An arrow pierced a shield and Baru saw the forces that conspired to kill the man beneath. Not merely the velocity of the arrow and the thickness of the shield; not merely the man’s discipline, to keep his shield fixed in place as his brother died beside him; but, also, the lines of causality that crushed down upon this instant and forced it into the pierced-eyeball shape of itself.
She saw the mines that yielded the ore that went to the steel furnaces and then to the smith and the fletcher to make the arrowhead. She saw the old-growth trees cut down for shepherding pasture so that the people could sell wool in the new markets, the old trees replaced by softer younger wood, that softer wood made into the shield.
She saw the ancient collision of Stakhieczi desperate for farmland and Maia desperate for grazing land and the warrior traditions produced by those wars and sustained in the villages by centuries of raiding, traditions which taught the man how to hold his shield in the phalanx, and how to brace against arrows, and how to keep his position and his stance as his brother retched in the mud with an arrow up his armpit.
She saw a man’s life calculated by the thrashing manypartite engine whose eternal components were enigmatic and half-glimpsed like the limbs of behemoth kraken surfacing in fog and whose outputs were nothing other than changes in the design of the machine itself: changes that were people, for the machine was of man and yet no man within it could discern its entire shape.
She saw everything. Master these forces and she would be the master of all creation.
Now, as she crossed the courtyard to greet the traitor-admiral, flanked by viper-faced Shao Lune and golden glorious Tau-indi Bosoka and the imperturbable enact-colonel, Baru again felt the inevitability of the forces that converged here.
The Masquerade had conspired to steal the Ashen Sea trade ring from Oriati Mbo. For that they needed a southwesterly port. So the Masquerade had come for Taranoke, and from Taranoke Baru had gone into the Masquerade. And they had sent her to Aurdwynn, to execute the will of the Throne, and that execution had made an enemy of Juris Ormsment. In the name of her dead, Ormsment mutinied and chased Baru across the face of the world.
But the wake of her mutiny was wide, and if it touched her comrades, she could destroy the very navy she loved.
And so here, as close as she had ever come to her prey, she could not kill.
Baru walked within concentric wards of power. The seal of diplomatic privilege. The Emperor’s mark. The force of the embassy guards. The etiquettes of Falcrest which said you will not begin a bloodbath at a reception: that is neither subtle nor hygienic.
Barber-General Love laughed unctuously at something Juris had said. No—Baru corrected herself—he wasn’t unctuous, she was being unfair: Juris was apparently very funny. Even Thomis Love seemed like a man who might have been decent, if he hadn’t become a barber-general. But Baru hated to trust these impressions.
Together the traitor-admiral and the Kyprist governor wandered west around the perimeter of the courtyard, pretending not to see Baru. Thomis had requested a treat for Juris—Scheme-Colonel Masako went ahead to fetch it. Here it was now, wheeled out by a pair of Oriati stewards, a glass-faced cabinet bearing the legend THESE WHISKEYS ARE OF HISTORICAL VALUE, FOR DISPLAY ONLY.
Juris Ormsment smashed the cabinet’s glass face with the butt of her knife.
The watching crowd gasped. Juris reached through the wreckage, seized the neck of a bottle of Grendlake City Fire, and raised it, turning, in salute to Baru.
“Agonist,” she said, with relish. “That’s what they called you at the Elided Keep. What a name.”
“Hello again, Juris.”
The traitor-admiral reversed her knife. She stabbed the cork, extracted it, and dropped the cork-tipped blade on the grass. “Hello, Your Excellence,” she said. “It’s been a while since our dinner. A winter and a spring.”
“I hope I’ve impressed you with my primal vitality.”
“I did say I was afraid I’d overlooked something about you, didn’t I?”
“You spoke of my whole race, actually.”
“So I did.”
“Miss Plane?” Governor Love blinked in confusion. “Province Admiral, what’s happening here?”
“That’s not her real name,” Juris told him. “She is Baru Cormorant, a renegade and a traitor. And I’ve come to arrest her.”
“Province Admiral!” Masako feigned shock. “This is Oriati ground! Our guests are under the protection of the Mbo!”
“So they are.” Juris clapped Thomis Love on the back. “What do you say, Governor? These are your islands. Willing to let the Oriati protect a traitor to Falcrest?”
Thomis Love blanched. “A traitor? Her? But she showed me the mark.…”
“Excuse me.” Tau-indi put up one hand, to draw attention, and with their other they made a motion as if to shield Baru. “This woman is my guest. And I am inclined to take violation of that guest right as an act of war by the navy.”
The griots stopped singing.
Baru risked one step closer. Her heart beat loud. She and Ormsment looked eye to eye. Juris’s brown skin had darkened toward black beneath the spring sun. Under the red naval mask her even eyes measured Baru carefully. She was very intimidating, in the manner of women who seem unassuming until you consider the decisions they might make to
hurt you. Baru swallowed and spoke. “Come home, Juris. You can survive this yet. If it’s contained.”
“You didn’t let Mannerslate’s crew survive. Or Cordsbreath. Or Inundore. Or any of the others.”
“They were necessary sacrifices.”
“So am I. Necessary to stop you.”
“Juris, please, I can offer you asylum.” Tau opened his arms. “We had a lovely time in Treatymont, didn’t we? You bought me that incredible jar of olive oil. Let me show you my home. There are seas in the south unknown to Falcrest, and we need good sailors to explore them.”
“Even you, Tau-indi?” Ormsment’s mask tilted sadly. She sagged as if struck in an organ she did not know she still possessed. “Oh, you’ll live to regret you ever knew her, Prince.”
“I never regret trying to know someone, Juris.”
Ormsment took a breath from the whiskey bottle. Baru shivered in dismay at her slow contented smile. Juris Ormsment was savoring her last moments.
“There’s a riddle,” she said, “about power.”
“Is it the one about the ministers and the antidote?” Shao Lune called. “You always tell that one, mam.”
She slipped out from behind Baru, one arm snaking around Baru’s waist, pulling them together hip to hip. Ormsment’s fists spasmed in fury. Baru watched something smash against the back of her eyes, like a wave slapping a dam, and wished she could turn this woman, turn her or possess her rather than face her anger.
“Staff Captain. And here I was hoping you hadn’t been killed as you bravely resisted interrogation. I overestimated you, I think.”
“We reached an accomodation,” Shao said, haughtily. “Governor Love, my name is Shao Lune. I am a loyal officer of the Imperial Navy.”
Thomis Love held up his hands. “I don’t understand.”
“Juris Ormsment is a mutineer. I helped her plan her revolt, and then, when the moment was right, I joined the Emperor’s agents in bringing Ormsment to justice.” Her voice rose. “This pretender admiral is a fugitive charged with the highest of crimes. And if you grant her so much as a pipe to piss in then my navy will burn your little rock till it cracks into the sea. Understand?”
“I do not,” Governor Love said, calmly. Baru saw the way he clasped his hands in decision. He was a quick thinker, canny under pressure. She would need to win him over. “I understand nothing. I know nothing of a mutiny, and I have only acted to honor my diplomatic obligations. The Kyprists of Kyprananoke are loyal allies of the Emperor and Its Republic. I want that on record, please. You, there, will you record that? Thank you.”
Something hammered at Juris Ormsment’s bones. A rhythm like a war drum, calling her to violence. Baru could see it, and it made her want to hide.
The traitor-admiral saluted Shao Lune, calmly and elegantly. “Thank you for carrying out your duties, Staff Captain. You’ve briefed Baru on my riddle. That saves me a little work.” Her eyes came back to Baru. “Yes. It’s the riddle about the ministers and the antidote. Three ministers taste poison; one lowly secretary has a dose of antidote. Each minister demands the antidote, threatening the secretary with blackmail, sterility, or violence. The riddle is, whose power wins? Which threat compels the secretary to obey? I’m very curious, Baru, for your answer.”
Baru had actually come up with a very good answer: the only correct answer, she thought, the pithing needle which pierced the riddle and found the truth within.
The entire riddle was an Imperial trap. It put the question of power upon the actors trapped in the poisoned dinner: it set them against each other, these ministers and secretaries, and asked which of them held the “true” power. And so it concealed the agency which had arranged for these ministers to be poisoned in a room with one bottle of antidote. It distracted responsibility from the one who had arranged the scenario of the riddle.
Power was not the province of those who made choices. Power was the ability to set the context in which choices were made.
“May I taste the whiskey?” she asked. “I’ve heard prisoners ask for City Fire as their last request.”
Ormsment looked at the priceless bottle in her hand. She thought for a moment. Then she hawked and spat down the neck of the bottle, and the Grendlake City Fire was ruined.
“Fuck you,” she said, and offered the bottle.
Tau-indi sighed in disappointment.
“What a waste,” Baru said.
“Like the death of good sailors.”
“No,” Baru said, moved to viciousness, “the whiskey never vowed to die for the Republic—”
Ormsment snapped over her. “Let me answer the riddle. Hush. Quiet. Let me answer that riddle about power. Who has the power here? Well, you’ve got the Emperor’s blessing. You’ve got your man in command of my navy, you’ve got Tau here wrapped around your finger, you’re well on your way to the war you want so badly. And I’m not willing to order my marines to storm an embassy full of innocents. So I can’t touch you.
“But I will not, I will not, stand for a world in which my honest sailors are sacrificed in the name of the Emperor’s intricacies. Actions must have consequences, do you understand?” She rose up and her voice dropped into her gut, into the low bawling roar of the sea officer crying against the storm, “I came to capture you, Baru Cormorant, and to hold you to account for those you betrayed. I came and I failed. I do not have the power to do it. But actions must have fucking consequences for the world to be good. I must make you face the consequences of what you’ve done.
“So I have sent Scylpetaire to take your parents.”
“Oh,” Baru said, as the world creased around her, a mark in the page, before this moment and after.
* * *
SHE’D thought that her mother and father would be safe from the Throne, inoculated against threat by Baru’s disregard for Tain Hu’s life.
But Ormsment had never known Tain Hu.
“I didn’t want to do it this way,” Ormsment said, her voice sober, her hands at ease, her shoulders set. “I don’t threaten innocents for their daughter’s guilt. It was Shir who convinced me, I want that known. Shir who was once the Emperor’s agent … like you.”
“I don’t … I shan’t…” Baru tried to decline to care. If she could only signal that she would let her parents die rather than surrender herself, then perhaps Ormsment would believe her, and spare her parents. All she had to do was visibly and convincingly not give a fuck.
But you can’t, can you?
No more than you could’ve let me die.
If I hadn’t had the courage to volunteer.
“So who now holds the power?” Ormsment bellowed the word, power, and the courtyard was silent. “You, or me?”
The power is yours, Baru thought. It is yours. The engine that manufactures all things is driven by the past: by hope and by sorrow, by fear and by rage, by all the passions and calculations of our past it conjures up the mechanisms that drive us forward into the carved channels of our futures.
And you have gone into my past, Admiral, and found the piece of the engine that drove me down this channel.
How can I go to Falcrest to outlaw the death of fathers if it will kill my last father?
“I don’t want to hurt your parents.” Ormsment stepped up into the ring of empty space between them and the crowd subsided around her. “I think people need to carry their own weight. You and I, we can’t cast our sins down on our parents and our crews. So I’d rather we settle this ourselves.”
The crowd gasped and murmured. Tau-indi stiffened with a sudden thought. But Baru’s eyes were all for Ormsment, who touched her saber. “I challenge you, Agonist. Here and now, on neutral ground.”
“A duel?” Shao Lune said, with a perverse excitement.
Ormsment nodded but her eyes were all for Baru, who was thinking of her own saber, and how afraid she was to draw it. “To the death. With diplomatic witnesses to attest to Parliament that I acted on my own. No one else dies for us. No great wars begin. We settle this like
women.”
Baru would die if she went into the ring with Ormsment, Ormsment who had been in real battle. She would be run through. The fear of it made her hands tremble and her spine hurt and the stubs of her missing fingers ache. Run, Baru, her bowels urged her, run, run! But she stood there expressionless and trapped. She couldn’t duel—there were political reasons, too, of course, very important political reasons—for if Baru signaled any care for her parents here, then the Throne would know that she could be controlled through Salm and Solit. Then they would be snapped up and enslaved.
But what if she turned her back on Ormsment? What if she said, so be it, send your ship to take my parents, give my parents to your nightmare Tain Shir?
They might be maimed. They might be keelhauled to death and their severed limbs would sink but their bloated stub torsos would drift on pockets of corpse-gas. And if they died Baru would never know if she had done them proud. She would never have a chance to tell Pinion she was forever her mother’s faithful daughter. She would never tell Solit she was still the greatest thing he had ever made.
But maybe that was how it had to be.
Wasn’t that how her story went? Wasn’t she supposed to sacrifice everything to see her work complete? Every time she’d met an obstacle in Aurdwynn, she’d been able to sacrifice someone to defeat it. Muire Lo and Nayauru, the dukes and duchesses, Xate Olake, Tain Hu—yes, yes, she couldn’t fight, if she died in a duel here she would fail Tain Hu—
Baru, they’re your parents.
They never volunteered as I did.
You must be brave for them!
Baru couldn’t decide. She wanted to scream, to rage and howl, to grip her ribs and tear them wide open so the torment would slump out of her and pool like intestines on the flagstone. She wanted these calculations out of her head forever. Like a ship’s mainmast she was only kept from toppling by the two powerful tensions pulling her to each side.
Ormsment waited with her hand on her sword. The crowd was utterly rapt.
The Monster Baru Cormorant Page 53