The Traitor Baru Cormorant (25 page)

She found herself fascinated by the litany, and a little infuriated—infuriated enough that it slipped out of her sidelong in a meaningless demand: “Taranoke. Call my home Taranoke.”

“I cannot.”

Stupid of her. No reason to waste time on triviality. “Tell me what mistake I've made. Tell me why my authority has been hobbled.”

“Your tactics are self-centered. You have forgotten that you are not the only player on the board, that inherent talent speaks for no more than experience, and that others around you seek to expand their authority and constrain yours. Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent.”

So easy, so satisfying, so sickeningly sweet to use him like this. To find in her hands this pale and pliant oracle, this man who would speak with authority and intellect on any topic she pleased without demands of his own. And hadn't his jaw relaxed a little? Hadn't his breath smoothed and deepened like a man on opiates? He had served her by informing her, by using his talents to help. It had brought him real joy.

Was it really slavery if the slave was grateful? If that gratitude had been hammered into the alloy of his being?

Deep in her heart she suspected that the Masquerade sought to make the whole world in Purity Cartone's image. To breed a future of grateful human automata. They had crushed their own inbred aristocracy, crying
poison in the heredity, weakness in the germ
. But even after the Old Lines died, that obsession with better blood had carried on. In the Metademe they had determined that behavior and experience altered the hereditary cells. Hygienic behavior bred clever disciplined citizens—and social sin bred licentious, hedonist parasites.

“And my next move? What do you suggest I can do to secure my position?”

“Take a lover.” His expression betrayed no lechery, no particular interest at all. “Arrest on charges of unhygienic behavior is the most powerful weapon that can be used against you. My word to Governor Cattlson that you had a male lover would be taken as fact in any Imperial court. You would be secured, at least a little, against these allegations.”

Her stomach filled with a seasick buzzing not very different from what she had felt when she realized her authority over him—a powerful sensation, but utterly unlike lust. Maybe that was what made her dismiss his suggestion at once: her body did not agree with it, for all his composed Falcresti looks, for all her queasy interest in the thought of someone doing anything she ordered. Or maybe it was something more intellectual, inherited from her conversations with Aminata about the navy: a stubborn and recalcitrant sense that using her body as a political tool, in even the slightest way, was a form of surrender or compromise.

Why should she be punished for her chastity? Why should her bedroom matter more than her books and coin?

But the man before her was a kind of answer.

“Go,” she said, troubled and uncertain, petrified suddenly by the fear that she spoke in her sleep and that Purity Cartone listened. “Go guard the bottom of the stairs while I sleep. Suspire. Go.”

She told herself the next morning that she'd dreamed of Taranoke filled with clockwork people, brilliant men and women who built beautiful things at her command and offered cogent truth without fear. Dreamed of the whole Ashen Sea ringed in them and made reasonable, like a well-kept account, everyone set in their ordered chosen place as the stars in constellations.

But it was a lie and she knew it. It hadn't been a dream. She'd prodded at the thought over and over again with the nauseating fascination of a child pulling scabs, unable to decide if what she felt was pain or glee.

The duel was coming. She only had a little time before Cattlson cut her hand off, or worse, and left her bedridden and impotent. Only one course remained: answering the letter that had carried the trigger word.

So she acted.

Purity Cartone watched her write the note, watched her pass it to Muire Lo. An innocent thing:
I would like to meet to discuss planning for tax season.

Xate Yawa came that afternoon.

 

14

T
HEY
took coffee and small cakes drizzled in date syrup under the eyes of Purity Cartone and Muire Lo, two silent attendants reporting to distant authorities, two men that Baru felt she could trust completely—within narrow, defined bounds.

Bounds she was about to depart.

Xate Yawa eyed the pale man with fascination. “He's a spectacular specimen, isn't he? Remarkably capable. When the Governor showed him off, I had him repeat the whole conversation word-for-word. He could replace all my recorders.”

Baru heard the warning there, and almost smiled. She'd set Muire Lo to transcribe the whole conversation, to be sure that Xate Yawa understood how scrutinized it would be. She should've trusted the old judge to know. “With a dozen of him I could've sorted out Su Olonori's books in a week.”

“I doubt there are a dozen Clarified in all of Aurdwynn. They're bred in the Metademe, where they've built these ingenious cribs out of levers and bells—oh, but that's all rumor.” She chuckled with polite mirth. “I shouldn't pass it on.”

“Rumor is all I've had these past few days,” Baru said, marking Purity Cartone and then the door with her gaze:
the guards
?

Xate Yawa's bright eyes followed hers intently. “Yes. The matter of this … protective detail. Were it a formal house arrest I could lift it at once. But as the Governor sees the, ah, unknown intruder as a matter of provincial security, he has the right to conduct military action in your defense. If he can justify your confinement as short-term protection, I am—for the moment—powerless.”

Not that she or her brother saw any reason to let Baru out of her tower. Not so long as they believed a rebellion had no chance.

That was what Baru had to change. They'd backed Tain Hu. They could be swayed again.

She spun her coffee cup on its plate and flopped back in her chair, overly at ease, screaming to Xate Yawa:
now, this, this is the important part
. “No matter at all. It's given me a chance to focus on our tax program.”

“How dutiful of you.”

“With our collectors on the road and the coffers beginning to fill, I've started to worry about matters of security. In lean times like this, taxes put the people in a mood to revolt and the dukes in a mood to defraud. And Governor Cattlson—” She flicked her gaze to Purity Cartone. “He is most concerned that we offer Falcrest a healthy season. Parliament is frustrated with its losses here. They expect war with the Oriati federations, and that war will cost them.”

Xate Yawa examined the decor idly, her gaze tracing a long anchor-and-chain motif. “I've made an example out of the fraudulent the past few years. Taught them that lean times are the times that most demand brotherhood. I think you'll find rich yields.”

What she really said:
Play your role. Don't make trouble.

Muire Lo's pen scratched away at the parchment.

“Quite.” She caught the older woman's gaze and held it. “But it's occurred to me that we risk a different disaster. Rumor of the new Imperial fleet being built in Sousward will push pirates north along the trade circle. Their old haunts in the southwest of the Ashen Sea won't be safe. They'll be looking for new targets.”

Xate Yawa's gape of astonishment might have seemed a fake to anyone who didn't understand her real allegiance, anyone who hadn't met her brother in the night. Baru knew that it was real. That she'd intuited where Baru was going.

Xate Yawa took a moment to regain her composure. “The tax ships headed to Falcrest, loaded down with a nation's worth of gold … but surely the navy will guard them diligently. Surely these pirates will be turned away.”

“I am confident no disaster will befall them. But I'd like to take steps to raise that confidence to surety.” Baru smiled blandly. “The markets run on confidence, you know.”

In the background, Purity Cartone stood statuesque, his eyes focusing here, there, relaxed and inattentive and screaming danger from every pore.

And Baru, too, wanted to scream: for in this instant she could feel her whole life, all her dreams and ambitions, every painful perfect memory of Taranoki water and seabirds calling, every hope of imperial power and subversion, balanced on a knifepoint, and that knife in the hands of Xate Yawa.

I am a fool, Baru thought. She will keep to her brother's word. It is too soon.

He'd said:
she'll have you boiled alive
.

Xate Yawa sat in silence for a moment, and spoke again.

“Of course we must take steps. I'll have Admiral Croftare's liaison bring you the necessary paperwork so that you can examine the schedules and reassign ships as you see fit.” Xate Yawa sipped at her coffee. “Perhaps the tax ships should be held until they can sail together in convoy. So they cannot be taken piecemeal.”

“Just what I'd thought.”

The Jurispotence frowned sharply. “There's another matter to attend to, however, and one less pleasantly constructive. I am gravely disappointed that you and Governor Cattlson alike have elected to go forward with this juvenile challenge. I've worked for years to end Aurdwynn's affection for trial by combat. Now here you are, stirring up the country with rumors of the commoner's favorite gold-lender taking up sword against the Governor. I would insist that this ridiculous dispute be settled in court, but the Governor is fixated on the duel.”

“As am I. It's a matter of honor.” Baru tried not to overplay, tried to go along with Xate Yawa as she sailed the conversation smoothly away from the offer that had just been made and accepted.

Xate Yawa tugged at her gown with convulsive irritation. “You could be badly injured. I insist that you find someone to stand for you. We can't afford to lose your service.”

“Or the Governor's.”

“Or the Governor's.” She rolled her eyes. “I forgot. You are a duelist, too.”

Baru spread her hands, helpless. “I'm in no position to search for a second while I remain under—” She laughed, spontaneously and genuinely, amused by the irony. “Under the Governor's protection.”

“Well, then.” Xate Yawa smiled irritably and gave not one hint of satisfaction, not one smug silent tic to indicate the pleasure she might feel at this deal so rapidly done. “I will have to find an appropriate swordsman to serve as your second. One who can ensure that neither party is damaged.”

And surely Xate Yawa could—Xate Yawa, who in years long past had murdered the old Duke Lachta herself, who controlled every criminal enterprise in Aurdwynn by the fact of her station.

Muire Lo and Purity Cartone made their respective records, pen and silent mnemonics, marking down the words and with any luck at all missing entirely the great pivotal stroke that Baru had ventured, the twin irresistible prizes she had offered to the twin masters of Aurdwynn's simmering rebellion: gold and blood, arranged before them, waiting only to be seized.

It was done. All the power had gone out of her hands. In a few days Xate Yawa would destroy her, or see the first spark of rebellion lit.

And then Baru's real test would begin.

*   *   *

T
HE
day of the duel broke rainy and hot, the whole city steaming from pavestone and cobble after a midsummer squall. Baru came down to her office, already stretched and limbered, dressed in riding trousers and a heavy surcoat, to find Muire Lo standing at the windows behind her desk.

“Cartone's gone,” Muire Lo said, smiling out at the city. “The Governor recalled him to report on your activities. I've brought breakfast.”

“I didn't notice him missing,” she said, surprised at herself. Muire Lo had cooked fresh cod in olive oil, and onions for Aurdwynni luck. She wished she had an appetite. “He's like furniture. Just slips right out of attention.”

“Not mine.” Muire Lo spidered his hands against the windowpane, staring into the mist. Baru felt a little pang at the look on his face: a soft, graceful melancholy, as if he had decided he would do something that hurt. “I remember mornings like this used to smell like shit. We had awful sewers, and everything would back up into the streets when it rained.”

“And now?”

“The Masquerade rebuilt them while I was gone.” He shrugged. “No more sewage fog on summer mornings. But you have a hot bath at the top of a tower, so I suppose you're not impressed.”

“You can go on,” she said, picking at the cod.

“Mm? About plumbing?”

“With all the things you wanted to say while that man was attached to my side.”

He set his brow against the glass and closed his eyes. She watched him, wanting to understand even as her thoughts circled back to the duel, to Cattlson's plan to see her crippled and taken out of play. Would it hurt? Would she lose a finger, a hand?

“What are you doing?” Muire Lo murmured, softly, as if to escape some hidden eavesdropper.

“Well.” She swallowed and lifted her knife. “I can't back down from the duel without issuing an official apology to Bel Latheman. If I do that I'll compromise my ability to hold office, and I'll be pushed into resignation. Cattlson sees the duel as a chance to repudiate all the harm I've done to his government. Xate Yawa doesn't seem to care enough to stop the whole affair. So neither of us have a way out, and we have to fight.”

“That's not what I mean.” He peeled himself away from the window and the abstract slithering shapes in the fog (Baru thought, with a chill, of Purity Cartone's slim muscled neck). “The tax rider. Your cryptic arrangement with Xate Yawa. Your meticulous scheduling of appointments six months in advance, like you're trying to prove you'll still be
having
appointments six months from now.” He came to the other side of her desk and stood there, hair sleekly oiled, his surcoat buttoned to full formality. He didn't look so much like a finch now. Maybe a crow. “I know you. You wouldn't stake your standing and career on this childish duel without some reason behind it. What are you doing?”