The Traitor Baru Cormorant

by Seth Dickinson

  Xate Olake offered the circle a bead of wax and wood. “In here, written in our most private code, lies the Masquerade’s strategy of retaliation. Their plan to crush the rebellion.”

  The dukes leaned forward in silent anticipation.

  Baru, unwilling to let Xate Olake command all their attention, spoke. “What will we need to crush them in turn?”

  Xate Olake’s gaze met hers. She felt her palms prickle, and remembered the threat of slow poison, remembered his farewell: make yourself worth an antidote.

  “The Fairer Hand.” He passed the bead of secrets from one hand to the other and his eyes gleamed orange and blue in the torchlight. “We heard that you had made yourself queen of the rebellion.”

  “I made myself a rallying cry.” (How wearisome it had become to see Unuxekome and Oathsfire meet each others’ eyes at that word, queen.) “As I promised you.”

  “And it was well done. Come Falcrest’s stroke, we will need a united Aurdwynn.” Xate Olake looked around the gathered traitors with deep and unhidden weariness. “Governor Cattlson plans to end the rebellion in the first days of summer, with a single, decisive strike into the North. Nothing can stop him but the cavalry and phalanxes of the Midlands duchies. So tomorrow we must break the Traitor’s Qualm, or see ourselves undone.”

  He grinned at them through the hush, filthy, hairy, matted. “You all remember the Traitor’s Qualm, don’t you?”

  * * *

  LATER, when at last the council broke, Tain Hu came over to them and knelt to murmur. “Duke Lachta.”

  “Vultjag.” The old man ruffled Tain Hu’s hair. “You look strong, niece. Visited Ko’s grave on my way north. Had to pretend to be a madman to get in past the groundskeep. I wish the old warhawk could see us now … rebels again, at last.”

  “You were in Treatymont. I wondered if—” Tain Hu glanced at Baru, continued in a rush. “Word of our rebellion had all winter to spread around the Ashen Sea. Was there any sign of—by ship, perhaps, or even a letter, a symbol? Some mark left for your eyes?”

  Xate Olake’s eyes hardened. “No,” he said. “No. I think we should be thankful for that.”

  Baru made a note to chase the matter, once the council was past, once the Midlands were won. But there was a rawness in both of them that seemed to beg for space. “I’ll give you privacy,” she said, and left Tain Hu to speak with this man who was her uncle by marriage to a woman now years dead.

  Tain Ko. Why did she know that name? Who had mentioned it before? Why could she remember the voices of the Iriad elders but not—well: as a child she had never been quite so often drunk.

  Erebog caught her at the door. In the street behind the old duchess a file of her guard waited with bright torches, their tabards red with the symbol of the clay-fired man. “Your Excellence.”

  “Your Grace.” Baru caught herself against the doorframe.

  “Fascinating to see you in council.” How frail the Crone looked, snow-haired and spotted with age. How ancient and forbidding her eyes. Nothing like Xate Yawa’s sharp brilliant stare—no, Erebog had eyes of dry bone, eyes of scurvy and desperate cold and rime on stone. “Lyxaxu told me so much about you. Interesting to see what he gets wrong.”

  Baru made to kiss her hand, as Xate Yawa had taught her. Erebog declined with curled fingers. “No pleasantries. We each have our own work to attend. I wanted to tell you—”

  Baru, wary of yielding too much authority, wary too of her own instinct toward deference, arched a brow and waited.

  “Do nothing out of love.” Her smile had a little death in it: not a threat, not a warning. Only the sense that she had grown old, that she felt her fire burning low, and chose to speak plainly. It cost her nothing. “I loved a prince once, far away in the mountains. I loved him without any calculation or reserve. That error still dogs me.”

  Not personal advice, Baru understood now, not among nobility. Who—it was driving her mad—who had tried to tell her about this other sort of power, the power of blood and line? Tain Hu? No, she would remember that, she always did. Someone else …

  “I have the instruments I need to go forward. I ask for no king yet.”

  “But you will. I want a future for my lineage in Aurdwynn, and that future needs a ruler who can command these hungry rabid men. So.” Erebog drew back a step, into the circle of her waiting spearmen. “Be cold, Your Excellence.”

  “I am,” Baru said. A great wall within her shifted a little, and began to crack. What came through it was the urge to laugh. “I am.”

  She stood there by the door as Erebog’s retinue left, waiting for Tain Hu. Unuxekome came out of the longhouse, flushed and breathing heavily, and shook his head at her. “I miss sailing.” He went off into the dark without escort.

  Baru thought about going after him; she missed sailing, too. But it would be unsafe in too many ways.

  * * *

  AND then it was the vital day.

  They sat for their council in the Hill House, on the little rise at Haraerod’s center where long ago a mutinous Maia warlord had planted her banner and, liking the way it moved in the breeze, said come, rest and sing; I will make a safe place for joy. In a council room of redwood and marble the Haraerod town guard prepared eleven high-backed chairs beneath eleven standards. A comet for Vultjag, a stony peak for Lyxaxu, a mill for Oathsfire, a sail for Unuxekome, a man cast of clay for Erebog. There the rebel north; and then the Midlands, a steer’s head for Ihuake, a swollen reservoir for Nayauru, a spearhead for Pinjagata, a gleaming crystal of salt for Autr, a rearing stallion, impaled, for Sahaule.

  And an open hand for Baru, though the hand was Stakhi pale, not the color of her skin at all.

  When Nayauru entered with her consorts and her retinue Baru stared, astounded by the instant of recognition, the repair of frayed memories and half-built connections. Idiot, she thought, idiot, idiot, why didn’t you remember? But it didn’t matter now—the recognition had come too late. Nayauru had come at Baru sidelong, sly, and found a way to map out her blind spots, to bait her with a chum of pride and vanity and observe the shape of her teeth when she bit. The Dam-builder had made her own designs out of the powers and principles Baru disdained, and thus escaped notice.

  But now Baru had marked her as an equal. Now Baru could see Nayauru’s own blindnesses in turn, her neglect of detail, her trust in ferocity and passion and the noble virtues over subtlety and the sly arrangement of common things like coin.

  If she could be won—if she could just be won—ah, but that was a dangerous hope.

  The Dam-builder met Baru’s eyes. Her control was perfect: Baru obtained nothing from them. Over her shoulder Oathsfire pulled at his beard and looked uncomfortable.

  Ihuake came last, a silent power who hushed them all with the storm-cloud weight of her presence. She had years on Nayauru, and all the authority that came with them; she was rich in dress and gem and bracelet, in the strength of her retinue, in the hush that she trailed as everyone saw the fury in her, yoked up and ready to be set to work like a prize bull. Duke Pinjagata marched at her side, a living lance, his strangling hands loose and ready.

  “So.” Baru took the initiative. “Let us begin.”

  At once it all went awry. Unuxekome lifted a hand in caution. “No one else should speak until an ilykari has blessed our meeting.”

  Autr Brinesalt, sprawled and massive, traded glances with Sahaule Horsebane across their beloved Nayauru’s seat. “We are not all rebels yet.” He adjusted himself, contemptuous, ferociously strong. “Treatymont would permit no ilykari blessings.”

  “Treatymont would have no meeting here at all,” Lyxaxu said. He had come into the council with a terrible focus, the aspect of the fox that he sometimes showed.

  “Why not?” Sahaule opened his hands. “We’ve come to settle the dispute between Nayauru and Ihuake, the dispute that Vultjag’s bandits”—his eyes flickered to Baru, to Tain Hu, dressed in leather and mail—“interfered in. This is a legal peace conference between t
he great powers of the Midlands Alliance. You are the intruders here.”

  “A technicality.” Old Erebog waved the young duke’s words away. She’d taken long night council with Xate Olake, but showed no sign of weariness. The Crone had stamina for matters of state. “They gave you freedom to meet us only so that you could demonstrate your loyalty by refusing to meet us. If you wanted to play at loyalty, you chose unwisely.”

  Nayauru, gowned in white, framed between her two mighty consorts, made a soft sound of mirth. “Wisdom in choice? This from the Duchess of Clay, whose wisdom left her only the choice between starvation or rebellion? You sold your allegiance to Lyxaxu for wheat and citrus.”

  “Ah.” Erebog reclined, weighing the point in one gloved palm. Baru fought a chill at the cold empty disregard in her eyes—a skull’s patience for the passions of the young. “My neighbor came to my aid, and so I rewarded his loyalty. You attacked your neighbor Ihuake to curry favor with a foreign throne. How should you be rewarded, hm?”

  This had to be controlled.

  Baru spoke into the briefest gap before Nayauru’s retort. “The Masquerade thrives on information.” Control the space. Use height and voice and strength of limb to pull at their regard. If she seemed foreign all the better—she would hook them and draw them up out of the sea of their own politics. “You all knew this. You came to this council knowing that Treatymont would hear of it. You came knowing that you committed an act of open sedition.” She looked to Ihuake, to Nayauru, then to their clients. “You knew that this council would meet to answer one question: will the dukes of the Midlands join us in revolt?”

  Lyxaxu caught her eye. Shook his head fractionally. She knew she’d erred even before Ihuake spoke, her voice like distant hoofbeat: “I came for another question.” She looked to Nayauru with the distance and menace of a thunderhead. “A question for my ally, my sister-by-oath. For the woman who has shown us all how greatly she hopes to be queen.”

  Silence in the hall as Ihuake breathed out, in, spoke again: “Why did you betray me?”

  Ah, well. So much for control. Baru let the dukes go.

  Ihuake excoriated Nayauru for her betrayal—why had she attacked? Ah, it was purely self-defense, of course; Nayauru’s landlords, terrified of the Fairer Hand’s hold on the peasantry and sickened by the crimes of the interloping Coyote, had demanded retaliation against Ihuake. Unuxekome called that a lie—everyone knew Nayauru’s great game. Autr and Sahaule rose up in rage at Unuxekome; Nayauru reined them in, to seem gracious, but still the rebel North accused her of secret collaboration with the Masquerade. How could she have betrayed Aurdwynn’s ancient need for freedom? Was she so desperate for a throne?

  On and on and on.

  Baru listened with half her mind, searching through her points of leverage. They needed the damn Midlands to beat Cattlson. What gave the Midlands its livelihood? Craftsmen. Cattle, soldiers, and clean water. Trade—trade both ways: raw materials from North to coast, food and imports from coast to North.

  Forget the bonds of blood and honor. Those were Nayauru’s tools. Chase the structures:

  Whether the Midlands fell in with the revolt or the Masquerade, they would suffer the heaviest price. They would pay on the battlefield and in the market. And for all their power, Nayauru and Ihuake needed to keep their landlords and merchants content. Rule of Aurdwynn entire had to be secondary to strong rule of their own land.

  Like Tain Hu before her futures contracts, they were being asked to assume too much risk. Instability cut them more deeply than the forested North. So they looked to the power with the greatest stability—the Masquerade, its center of strength distant and protected. They would not be drawn away from that stanchion. The rebellion would fail.

  So if Baru could not offer them stability—ah.

  She surfaced from the trance in the midst of an argument about marriages—someone had called Nayauru licentious, an Aphalone word, a Falcrest word. No matter. She had the gage of it now. She took control.

  “What you risk,” Baru said into the clamor, speaking as if she were the only voice, “is an Aurdwynn without dukes.”

  One more moment of clamor and then silence fell. Lyxaxu smiled a fox-tooth smile, understanding, while the others looked at her in bafflement.

  “Explain yourself,” Ihuake said.

  “The people want to be free.” She held out one hand, palm open, turned up. “I have given the serfs and the landlords the thought of life without you. If you stand against them, they will rise up and they will destroy you. You could turn to the Masquerade for safety, as they have always wanted.” She stood, so that she could move her voice lower. “Cattlson told me that they needed the dukes afraid of the people, and the people afraid of the Masquerade. But now you are afraid of me, and the people are tired of fear.”

  She extended her hand, offering them the invisible weight balanced on it, the fulcrum of history. Baru Fisher, beloved of Devena. “Falcrest came to power by overthrowing its own aristocracy. They wrote the Handbook of Manumission in the blood of dukes and kings. You sit here thinking that perhaps Treatymont and Falcrest can offer you safe power, but they will discard you like leavings when your time is finished. They want to tear down the duchies and polish Aurdwynn flat like the mirror of a Stakhi telescope. Turn to me instead. Turn to the people you have ruled. Only we can secure your future.”

  A hush. An instant for Baru to feel a little satisfaction.

  And then Nayauru Dam-builder spoke, Nayauru whose words broke the silence like snakebite.

  “You offered my people nothing but rapine and savagery.” She stood to match Baru, dark and intent, her youth ferocious, like an obsidian knife, a Taranoki blade. “I went to war with Ihuake my neighbor, my ally, to save my people from the grind of Masquerade march. It was an honest war, fought by spear and stonework, by the sworn armsman and the levy. And you, Baru Fisher, daughter of a foreign land—how did you answer? You set your Coyote on my forests and villages. On families and children who never chose to fight.”

  She spat on the floorboards. “What your soldiers did at Imadyff cannot be argued away. I heard of men disemboweled and mothers burnt. No words in any tongue can disguise that.”

  “War has never spared the innocent,” Lyxaxu said softly.

  “No.” Nayauru’s lips curled in disgust. “But neither has it pretended to love them. I will never give my people to Baru Fisher, who conjures power out of lies.”

  * * *

  THE first day of council disintegrated in abject failure.

  Tain Hu tried to catch Baru on the way out. “See to the Coyote,” Baru commanded, and shrugged her off. Frustration and humiliation moved her—and desperation, too, the premonition of the test ahead driving her to solitary action. She had promised the Midlands. She would have the Midlands—by her wit and her will she would deliver it, without Nayauru’s pacts of marriage or noble covenants, without even Tain Hu’s counsel.

  If she couldn’t manage that, what hope was there?

  Baru marched on Duchess Ihuake’s camp, her stubbly red-eyed Sentiamut guards shifting uncomfortably between polished plumed ranks of the Cattle Duchess’s spearmen. Duke Pinjagata stood with the guards, inspecting their spears; when he saw Baru he raised a hand in salute. “Evening.”

  “Your Grace.”

  “Your Coyotes fought a good campaign. Spared me some ugly work. I’m grateful.” He plucked a splinter of ash from a spearshaft and glared at it. “I hear you’re marching with Stakhieczi jagata. Gave me my noble name. Curious to see their kit.”

  Baru nodded at the doors of the duchess Ihuake’s guesthouse. “And is she grateful, too?”

  Pinjagata turned to consider her for a few silent moments. “Devena guide you,” he said.

  Alone and unarmed, Baru went into the duchess’s longhouse.

  Of all the Midlands powers, surely Ihuake had the strongest reason to cast for the rebellion. Nayauru had attacked her unprovoked, unwarned—the Masquerade had supported Nayauru in that war
. Honor would turn her to the rebellion, or wrath, or greed. She had to come over. Her ranks of cavalry and Pinjagata’s spearmen could turn the war.

  She had to.

  Duchess Ihuake waited in her audience hall, seated at the center of a marble tilework, a mandala in white and red, a whirlpool in stone.

  “Kneel,” the duchess commanded.

  Baru, choking on pride, on too many days in the woods, hesitated. But her hesitation bought her nothing.

  Ihuake, gorgeously fat, skin the color of fallow earth, golden bracelets chased with patterns of steer and horse, all the picture of imperial Tu Maia wealth and beauty, waited with a gracious smile. How powerless Baru must look: peasant-thin, muscled like a laborer, without title or children, without any authority at all.

  Baru knelt and bowed her head.

  Ihuake crossed her arms. “You’ve built a rebellion out of shadows.” She had a rich voice, a ruler’s voice. “Tricks of ink and paper wealth. Phantom armies of unarmored woodsmen. The promise of a marriageable hand without sated lovers or proof of fertility. I listened to you in that council, prophesying an end to dukes, and I thought: perhaps she has only bluster.”

  Baru opened her mouth and the duchess, frowning, raised a hand. A guard clapped his spear against the stone floor.

  She was a foreign-born commoner in a duke’s court. She hadn’t been given leave to speak.

  “Duchess Nayauru betrayed me, and I want her skinned for it.” The Cattle Duchess’s treasury chimed softly as she moved. “But I understand her reasons. She wants my herds, my grazing land—just as I want her dams and mills. She wants her children to be my grandchildren, and my name bent at the foot of her throne. She thought she had a chance to claim all this, and to earn favor in Treatymont’s eyes. Rebellions are opportunities. What opportunities can you present me, Baru Fisher?”

  She opened a hand in permission.

  Baru spoke without anger, without pleading, with desperate control. “You gave the Army of the Coyote freedom to roam your land. You gave us men and supplies. In return, we defeated Nayauru when she attacked you. Your investment was rewarded.”