The Traitor Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  “I’VE had enough of this,” Bel Latheman said.

  Baru held up a hand to ward off the waiter. “Pardon me?”

  They had met to be seen together, as they did monthly, in places Baru chose so it seemed she was making an effort at discretion. Lately it had been fashionable for members of the provincial authorities and the Trade Factor to eat in open longhouses, served by rare pureblood Belthycs, stolen out of the forests, who smiled and minced and offered trimmed venison marinated in citrus and barded with beef fat, or albacore, or sea bream grilled on redwood charcoal. With Aurdwynn’s native wealth so terribly battered, luxury establishments had learned to cater to the foreigner.

  Baru and the Principal Factor had gone to one of these longhouses, finely dressed, to eat in curt silence and vanish together in a carriage for a pretended liaison. She’d grown to enjoy the display of tailored gowns and underdone jewelry, the sly comparisons and jealous asides of dining technocrats. Bel Latheman had been meticulous in his makeup and dress, always leading the local fashion. In this as in his work, he was diligent and competent.

  Somehow three years of mock assignations had lulled her into the assumption that he’d accepted this as part of his job.

  “I said, I’ve had enough of this. I will not play my part any longer.” He cut his venison into small squares as he spoke, his eyes on his plate, knuckles white on his knife. “I’m quite certain, Your Excellence, that I need not describe the damage done to my reputation, both as a financier and a marriageable man, by our—our—”

  “Arrangement,” Baru suggested, pressing the irritation out of her tone. Oh, it was unjust to think this, but why now? Why would this man make a scene now, with so much about to happen—but that was unjust. He’d been a perfectly pliant and useful instrument, both at the bank and at the dinner table. “And of course, of course, you needn’t describe the damage.”

  “Perhaps I do, though. Perhaps it is unclear to you that once one—mingles—with a very young and very foreign woman, one has established an entirely new and irrevocable reputation.” Latheman set his knife down with decisive force so that his plate rang like an annunciation bell. Everyone in earshot pretended not to pay rapt attention. “There are certain proprieties that you seem unfamiliar with—understandably, given your upbringing. One of them is the impropriety of coercing a subordinate into a personal affair. And another, many might assert, is the impropriety of granting Imperial authority to an untested youth when other suitable candidates are available!”

  Her temper flared—how long had she expected to hear that from him? And yet it still struck home. With great difficulty she bit back her first retort, a Falcresti quip about the unsuitability of a man, concrete-minded and tactile, for matters of abstract figures and books. Better to take the opportunity: that speech would be a wonderful excuse to stop seeing each other. “Bel,” she whispered. “I will happily provide you with a graceful exit. You’ve done enough for me.”

  He leaned in to hiss in return, his mock-mask eyeshadow meticulous and fascinating in its precision, his speckled-egg fingernails trimmed minutely. “There is no graceful exit from this embarrassment. I expect reparations, or I will—” He swallowed and pressed on. “I will alert Governor Cattlson to the rider you have introduced to the new tax form, this matter of dividing ten notes, with all its seditious implications.”

  She counted five breaths. “What do you want?” Somehow she could hear the accent of her own Aphalone, as if drawn out by her anger.

  “A lifetime pension, given that my career in Imperial service will likely never advance.” His lips thinned with determination. “And a marriage permit from the Office of the Jurispotence, for a courtship I intend to pursue.”

  Could this be a honeypot, one of Xate Yawa’s tricks? “No,” she said. “I won’t have corruption on my hands. I’ll sack you and give you generous severance. You can go to Xate Yawa yourself.”

  He restrained a shout and it came out as a tremulous whisper. “You will not dictate terms to me! You’ve ruined me! Xate Yawa will never permit my marriage to Heingyl Ri without your pressure—”

  Heingyl Ri. Interesting. Someone else found those sharp eyes charming, too. “The rider is an empirical trial, a harmless piece of research. I’ve nothing to fear if you bring it to Cattlson.” She shrugged with calculated calm, as much for herself as for the eyes on them. “And I’ve no idea why you expect to succeed in courting the daughter of Duke Heingyl. Marrying into aristocracy is a regressive game for a good citizen of the Imperial Republic.”

  “She deserves your post. You ruin the fiat note, you overlook Duchess Nayauru’s licentious games—what have you done to stop her? Do you even see the danger? The Lady Heingyl is not so blind.”

  “Listen to you.” A careless sip of wine, calculated to infuriate. How like him to fixate on Duchess Nayauru and her lovers as some kind of grand menace. “Tangled up in fever dreams of kingdom and inheritance. Where did you go wrong?”

  Latheman sat with great propriety and composed himself for a moment. She had underestimated him, she realized, and realized it again as he spoke. “You will help me, Baru. Or I will go to Xate Yawa and sign a sworn statement that in three years of courtship you have never shown so much as a glance of interest in me or any other man. And that—that truth she will hold over you forever.”

  She could not help her reaction. It was the wrong threat for him to make, a real and revolting one, and it drew her to her feet, drew one glove halfway off her left hand before she stopped and made herself think. Murmurs rose around them as Bel Latheman stared in appalled shock at her aborted gesture.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said. “You’ve no one to stand for you except that spineless secretary.”

  “Latheman,” she said, “I don’t need anyone to stand for me.”

  “I would refuse,” he said, chin raised. “The duel is a contest for peers.”

  Her mind raced, testing possibilities and consequences. She could manufacture such an outrage, such a ruinous storm of whisper and counterwhisper, such an incredible spectacle—love, jealousy, corruption, impropriety, scandals of race and age and hygienic behavior. Everyone in Aurdwynn would hear of it.

  And it would be perfect, wouldn’t it? It would be exactly what she needed.

  She stripped her left glove the rest of the way off and threw it on the table. “To first blood,” she said, loud enough for the whole longhouse to hear. “For the honor of Taranoke, my home, which you have insulted. You may name a second. I stand for myself.”

  He stood stiffly, gaze locked, incredulous. “Last chance,” he said, meaning, she was sure, before I go to the Jurispotence, and tell her you are a tribadist.

  She crossed her arms and stood there in her white gown, the chained purse at her side, waiting for him to answer the glove.

  “Don’t be hysterical,” he said, although his heart was not behind the insult, although he looked as if he wanted to apologize. Everything was theater now. “Think of what Xate Yawa did to Ffare Tanifel.”

  It was a misstep even though it chilled her. “And you dare imply I am treasonous as well? You, who conspired to print our currency for the rebellion?” She smiled haughtily—it did not come so hard. “You who’ve been planning another courtship under my nose, as if you want an old-blood aristocrat more than a merit-tested savant?”

  Their audience sat rapt. Baru, suddenly stage-frightened, felt the onset of a tremble. But she held herself still, thinking: he cannot refuse now. I have made this about his honor. If he walks away he will leave my story unchallenged.

  And he needed his honor to show Duke Heingyl.

  Bel Latheman picked up the glove, his jaw hard. “You made me fire my favorite secretary,” he said, as if unable, even now, to stop playing his part as her neglected lover. “You never could let me have my way.”

  * * *

  BARU began to tremble during the long climb up her tower, emptied for the night. “You can control yourself,” she hissed, leaning against the stone cen
terpole, the fabric of her gloves creaking as she balled her fists. “That’s part of your job. Control.”

  What had she done? What could have driven her to such hasty, unsubtle action? A duel? She’d never used a blade in anger—and that aside, it would be every bit the spectacle she’d envisioned, which meant that neither Xate Yawa nor Cattlson could ignore it. She’d kept herself cloaked in dull, diligent, loyal work for three years. She could have gone forward into this mad gambit carefully, deliberately, every maneuver subtle and well-planned.

  Instead she’d risen to Latheman’s bait.

  What if he’d been put up to it? What if he were Xate Yawa’s creature?

  She locked the doors to her office and quarters, cursing her hands, and sat to pour herself wine with meticulous precision, spilling not one drop. It went down bitter and she began to pour again, humming to herself, a star-spotting song that must have come from mother Pinion or some aunt or their whole extended family gathered on the mountain to draw new constellations in the old stars.

  “It’s poisoned,” said a voice from her bathroom.

  She’d read in Manual of the Somatic Mind that the character of a man could be divined from how he startled—toward a door, toward a weapon, or toward nothing, a prey animal’s petrified freeze. Whether it was the wine or all the dreams she’d had of a moment like this, she only drew a sharp breath and set the wineglass down.

  She discovered that she could still think through her fear. He would have killed her already if he wanted to. He wouldn’t have revealed the poison if he meant for it to work. She was safe.

  Unless this was an act of cruelty rather than calculation. Unless he was here to harm before he killed.

  “Come out,” she said, sliding her chair back, making ready to stand.

  The man had Xate Yawa’s blue eyes but more gray in his hair, in his long beard. He wore common-cut boots and tunic, deerskin and wool, and his teeth were commoner-rough. She checked his hands and belt and found him unarmed.

  She recognized him. From where?

  “Well,” he said, “here I am. Your secretary made an awful racket trying to find me. So I came.”

  She stood slowly, measuring the distance between herself, the man, and the place where her scabbard hung. “Where’s Muire Lo?”

  “Perfectly safe. Wore himself out barking and yapping all day. But you’re right to be afraid.” He approached her table as she retreated, keeping the space between them open. “Your tower guards are unreliable. You should have had all the locks changed. What I’ve found to be the case with you technocrats”—he took up her wineglass and sniffed at it—“is that you respect subtlety overmuch. You obsess over whispers and rumors and intangible marks of authority, and fail to consider what will happen when a man with a knife breaks into your rooms and cuts your throat. Aurdwynn is not civilized enough for subtlety.”

  “I half expected such a man,” she said. Her scabbard was only a little ways away. “Never a duke, though. What drives you to these theatrics, Xate Olake?”

  “You have, of course. Young folk respect theater more than death.” He drank from her glass, frowning and sniffing. “Ah. I believe I overdid the dose. Let’s be quick, then. Why did you call for me? The city knows I’m a recluse. Why seek me out now?”

  Had her heart just skipped a beat? Was that pain in her stomach just a cramp, her clammy palms just nerves? “How do I earn the antidote?”

  “With the truth.” He drummed impatiently on the table. “Do I look like a man with a great deal of time? Why did you call for me?”

  She drew a breath and took the leap. He had no pen and no parchment, could hardly hope to indict her by written record. But his sister was Xate Yawa, and if she wanted, she would find a way to make the charge stick.

  These could be the words that drowned her, as Xate Yawa had drowned Ffare Tanifel.

  “You killed Su Olonori,” she guessed, “in order to conceal Tain Hu’s counterfeiting plot. But I discovered that plot and destroyed it.”

  There were surgeons in the Masquerade who cut away the vocal cords of dogs so they couldn’t howl. They made for terrifying guards—silent and maddened. Xate Olake’s dry aspirated laugh brought them to mind. “I suppose that is technically the truth. But it doesn’t answer my question. Why have you been loaning gold to ducal commoners? Why have you alienated Governor Cattlson, whose favor could still send you on to Falcrest and a higher station? Why did you call for me?”

  “I’ve considered rebellion,” she said, “and because you’re the rebel spymaster, I needed you as an ally.”

  “And now that you’ve told me that,” Xate Olake said softly, “I will tell Xate Yawa, and she’ll have you boiled alive. They’ll keep your skin for study.”

  “Xate Yawa won’t touch me.” Oh, that bluff of confidence, confidence she desperately wanted to feel. “She wants a free Aurdwynn—the Masquerade is only an instrument to her, and she helped crush the Fools’ Rebellion only because it was doomed. She’s playing her role so that she has power enough to make a difference when the moment comes. I am that moment.”

  “Perhaps you ascribe too much patriotism to my dear sister. Perhaps she’ll back the sure victor, rebel or Masquerade.”

  “I can make your stillborn rebellion the sure victor.”

  “Ffare Tanifel struck the same bargain. But she overstepped, playing her pieces too clearly and too soon, and made her treason obvious even to Cattlson. My sister had no choice but to try Tanifel and issue a death sentence in order to protect herself.” Xate Olake steepled his hands. “Why would you do better?”

  “I can rally the people and the dukes—”

  Again that harsh silent laugh. Again that sense that something within her had skipped a measure. “You’ll rally them. Do you know the Traitor’s Qualm?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “At least you’re honest. Well. I devised it in the model of those Incrastic qualms you people are so fond of. It killed the Fools’ Rebellion, and it goes like this. If you are a duke in Aurdwynn and you see an insurrection rising, you face a choice.” He took another sip of poisoned wine. “You cast your lot with the rebellion, or with the loyalists. You are ruined if your side fails. You hold your position, maybe even benefit, if your side wins. But the thing about rebellions is that they involve a great deal of treason, mm? The traitors cannot condemn treason. So the safest bet is to remain a loyalist at first, and then switch sides if the traitors seem certain to win, pretending you’re terribly clever and have been hampering the loyalists from within. You see the difficulty?”

  Even here with this man in her quarters and poison in her veins, she could not resist a puzzle. “You gather dukes to your cause through success, but you can’t score any success without the backing of dukes. If the rebellion doesn’t begin with a decisive and spectacular victory, no one will gamble on it. It gutters out.”

  “Good. I always wondered if those Masquerade schools taught anything real.” He nodded and stroked his beard as if they were carrying on this conversation in a tufa-walled classroom. “No rebellion can succeed without winning over the cautious and the self-interested. The zealous rebels and firm loyalists must attract the middle. Given that the Masquerade is the status quo, and a seemingly insurmountable one at that, the loyalists have quite an advantage.”

  “The people are ready,” she insisted, though against his age and confidence it felt so hollow. “There is such outrage—”

  “The people cannot make use of their outrage. I should know: I was commonborn, and my sister and I clawed our way into nobility only by playing the Masquerade against the rebels. No, we need dukes, and the dukes are trapped in the Traitor’s Qualm. It is too soon.” He sighed heavily. “What you did to the fiat note helped us, certainly. But conditions have changed since Tain Hu’s gambit. The dukes are afraid of serf rebellion, landlord mutiny, bankruptcy and winter, not the Masquerade. We must allow the deadwood to build up for another decade before we strike a spark.”

  They ha
ve renamed my home, she wanted to shout. They have banned the marriage of fathers and made Iriad into a shipyard. And you would have me wait a decade?

  “You’ve no choice,” she said, thin-lipped. She saw Xate Olake’s eyes glow in the candlelight as he looked up sharply. “I’ve committed. I’ll be fighting a duel with Principal Factor Bel Latheman in the next few weeks, and I’ve made it into a matter of national honor. It’s the perfect moment to declare myself.”

  “My sister will prevent it. Duels are a judicial tradition, and she has power over the Judiciary. You’ll never have your stage.” Xate Olake stood, shrugging, and finished the rest of the wine. “Bide your time, child. We’ll signal you if we want you, and destroy you if you move against us. Perhaps my sister and I won’t live to see the rebellion. But Tain Hu and the others are young, and can afford to wait. The Fools’ Rebellion was well-named. We will not see Aurdwynn ruined by an uprising that cannot win quickly and with decision.”

  She took up her scabbard from its hook on the wall. “The antidote,” she said. “Now. Or I’ll kill you as an intruder in my home, and take my risks with the poison.”

  Xate Olake, at the door now, tutted softly. “I counsel patience and control,” he said. “Perhaps I’ve poisoned you. Perhaps not. But if I have, it will be a slow variety. And if you want to survive it, Baru Cormorant, you will make yourself worth an antidote.”

  13

  BARU roused Muire Lo and together they wrote orders to change the guards and the locks. She permitted him a few details. “Slow poison?” He took the news with alarm, of course, but practiced familiarity, too. “The dose was low? We should screen your food and drink. He might have agents in the kitchens.”

  “It might be a bluff.” Her life was already full of things that could kill her any day. “Take measures, Lo. I’m going to sleep.”

  If Xate Olake had poisoned her, it was a gentle admixture. She slept easy, woke fresh, and took breakfast at her desk, thinking intently about Bel Latheman, duels, taxes, the Traitor’s Qualm, and—with less purpose, and more anger—that damnable word Sousward.