The Traitor Baru Cormorant (6 page)

And Baru took him in her own arms, shocked by how frail he felt, by how close they were in height, and whispered in his ear: “I remember my father. I remember my fathers.”

She felt his breath go out of him, a slow release that felt like it had waited years. They stepped away from her, their faces dour now, as they had to be. “Go, then,” her mother said, and then, with softness: “I hope you return carrying all the things you want.”

Baru backed up a few steps, not ready to look away. But it hurt too much to see them receding step by step, so at last she made herself face the sea.

She went down the quay, and found Cairdine Farrier waiting for her by the skiff. He beamed at her.

Baru held his gaze and shook his hand as an equal. “You'll accompany us to Treatymont and then continue on to Falcrest, I presume?”

“I'm going home,” he said, “just as you're leaving it. My work on Taranoke is done, and now you can begin that same work in Aurdwynn. It feels like a design, doesn't it? Like a made thing. Elegant.”

“And what work is that?”

“My favorite work,” he said, tugging at the breast of his summer jacket. “Finding those who deserve more, and raising them up.”

They settled themselves in the skiff. Baru glanced over the crew, assessing their ranks and races, and found someone else watching her in return. “Lieutenant Aminata,” she said, smiling, her stomach turning with uncertainty and anger. “Congratulations on your new post.”

“Likewise,” Aminata said, and smiled back. “Congratulations on your service appointment. I understand you performed remarkably.”

The new ship was a frigate called
Lapetiare,
and from her deck Baru saw for the first time the whole shape of Taranoke, hazed in birds, black and fertile and oh so tall, falling down past the horizon and into memory.

*   *   *

L
APETIARE
turned north with the trade winds, racing along the Ashen Sea's western coast. Baru kept to the main deck and practiced her navigation. The master's mate took sightings of passing landmarks, logging their course by coastal navigation, but Baru preferred to watch the sun and stars—more beautiful, and more absolute. Computing longitude demanded more than an hour of hand-scratched calculations. Baru resolved to work that time down to twenty minutes by the time they reached Aurdwynn. If she failed as an accountant, at least she could find a ship.

Spray crashed off the bow. The warm trade winds carried dark-winged shearwaters with them and the southern sailors, from Oriati Mbo and its many islands, threw them salted fish and called out wishes in their own tongues.

“Salt and citrus,” Cairdine Farrier said, joining her at the stern with half a lemon in each hand. “The chemicals of empire.”

“Salt to preserve food for long journeys,” Baru recited. “Citrus for scurvy.” Farrier had made the trip into an extended service exam (his very first question when aboard was
Do you recognize the name of the ship,
and she had; Lapetiare was a character from the revolutionary classic
The Antler Stone
). It might have annoyed her, but she was restless and appreciated the chance to work herself.

She'd grown proud.

“They have a strange red salt on Taranoke.” Farrier arranged himself against the stern rail and threw a gnawed bone into the wake. “Iron salt, I believe it's called. I've sent samples home to Falcrest these past few years. Two of my colleagues are greatly interested in exploratory chemistry.”

Baru pursed her lips. “I'm sure the work being done in Falcrest is very important.”

“Falcrest is the heart and mind of the world.”

“So I've been taught.”

Farrier offered her one of the lemon halves. She waved him away without a glance. He clucked at her, shaking his head. “You're being petulant. Falcrest isn't lost to you. There are other paths than the service exam. Paths that reward patience, loyalty, and ability.”

“One wonders which I've failed to demonstrate.”

“You are young. The hereditary strengths of your people are untested, and their degenerate, unhygienic mating practices are a source of great unease. You should be pleased to—”

“And here I thought only wit mattered behind the mask.”

Farrier drew a sailor's knife and began to cut the rind free of his lemon. The motion of the ship made him cautious with the blade, and he laughed softly at himself. “Perhaps you're asking the wrong questions,” he said. “It could be that you've demonstrated truly
exemplary
capability. That you've been judged fit for additional tests. More rigorous evaluations, in more demanding environments, without the usual slow path of apprenticeship and advancement. The Imperial Republic is, as you justly remind me, a meritocracy through and through. And we will need merit in the years to come. There are wolves to our north, rising from cold dens, and water buffalo in our south, circled and ferocious. Very soon the Masquerade will win or lose a great game.”

She lifted her eyes to judge the winds by the course of distant birds, playing for time. She was nervous, unsure of her position. Cairdine Farrier was not a simple merchant—she'd suspected that since the early days of the school on Taranoke, been certain of it since he meddled with her service exam. “I prefer to know who's testing me, given the choice. I prefer to know why I've been given an Imperial province and a high office, instead of an apprenticeship.”

“You will have to trust that the Imperial Republic knows how best to permit you to serve it,” Farrier said. He lifted his peeled lemon in toast.

Baru went to find her practice blade and a sailor who could test it.

*   *   *

T
HAT
evening Baru summoned her new secretary to her cabin.

“Muire Lo.”

“Yes,” he said, slipping sidelong through the doorway. “Your Excellence. At your service.”

He was a slim man, narrow-shouldered, his skin almost invisible to Baru in that it was so very Taranoki (a little pale, perhaps, like someone who shut himself up inside, like father Solit). He wore gentle Falcrest-style makeup over a careful composed face. Instantly and inexplicably Baru wondered if he could sing, and only after a moment did she realize that he reminded her of a finch, curious and abrupt in his movements. She hated to trust these impressions: there seemed no reason for them to be true.

“You're from Aurdwynn,” she said, gesturing
sit, sit
. There was barely room in the slot cabin for two and a table. She'd tidied her effects with a nervousness she preferred not to admit. This was her first subordinate.

“Yes, Your Excellence.” He had a way of showing deference with his eyes, downcast and polite, but he couldn't quite hold it. Every few moments he glanced at Baru. When he did this his eyes were sharp and probing, frankly curious. “I left at thirteen. After the Fools' Rebellion. A Charitable Service selectee.” When she didn't ask for details (somehow it felt dangerous to even discuss rebellions) he took his seat. “Several years in Falcrest at a School of Imperial Service. Then two years on Taranoke, assisting in the census of labor and resources.”

Falcrest-educated. She felt a snap of resentment and possessiveness at that. He was four years older, too, but no matter, no matter, it was for the best. In Aurdwynn she would have to command her elders, and the Falcrest-educated. If Muire Lo or anyone else challenged her authority on those grounds, she could always invoke that delightful word
savant
.

“Muire Lo is a Tu Maia name, isn't it?” This said mostly to bait him. She knew how the Maia had risen in the west to rule half the Ashen Sea in centuries past. Legend and linguistics said their children had settled Taranoke long ago.

“Yes, Your Excellence. Aurdwynn's families descend from the Maia and the Stakhieczi, for the most part.” He hesitated for an instant, too brief to be an affectation. “If a native eye might be of use, I've prepared a brief survey of the province. At your discretion, of course.”

Baru made a small gesture of permission, much more subtle than the relief she felt. How fundamentally satisfying to have a knowledgeable subordinate—like a little auxiliary mind. But she would have to be careful: he had been chosen for her.

They opened a map and tried to remedy Baru's atrocious grasp of geography. “Aurdwynn stretches north to the Wintercrest Mountains,” Muire Lo said, tracing the contours of the land with long ink-stained fingers. Bent over the map, some of the self-consciousness had gone out of him. “East to the river Inirein, which can only be bridged here—and—here. West to the old Tu Maia keeps at Unane Naiu, and the desert beyond. And—obviously—”

“The Ashen Sea to the south.”

“Quite, Your Excellence.”

She traced the facts of stone and water that boxed Aurdwynn, made it small and desirable and impossible to escape—an arena, a cage, a pulpit. Empires had grappled and died here. But whoever ruled Aurdwynn ruled the north of the Ashen Sea, and whoever ruled that piece of sea controlled the seaward approach to Falcrest itself.

The Masquerade ruled from Falcrest and its rule was like an octopus: stealthy, flexible, smart, gripping half the Ashen Sea—but soft, so soft. It had to surround itself in hardness to armor itself against the Oriati and its other rivals. Taranoke in the west, as a fleet base to check the Oriati. And Aurdwynn to the north, as a bastion.…

“You were a child when the Masquerade arrived,” she said, running her fingers over the landlord-manors of Duchy Erebog, the clay lands that gave Aurdwynn its pottery and its oldest duchess.

Muire Lo kept his eyes on the map. The lamplight shone on the perfumed oil in his dark hair. “Aurdwynn has been a federated province for twenty years. I was two when Xate Yawa—she's the Jurispotence now—killed the old Duke Lachta and arranged our formal surrender.”

“But there was a—” If it was foolish to mention rebellion, it was more foolish to shy away from it. “A rebellion. You lived through that.”

“The Fools' Rebellion gave up arms when I was twelve. Not even a man. I have always been loyal.”

I'm sure you have, Baru thought. I'm sure those early years involved no tumult at all, in Aurdwynn or in your heart.

There was no question Muire Lo had been chosen to watch over her. Everyone was someone else's instrument. But she would have to take him into confidence and use him as a trusted instrument nonetheless. She could afford to make some of her agendas known to Farrier and Farrier's creatures. Far more dangerous to shut him out and deny even the illusion of control.

“They want to hold Aurdwynn because it protects Falcrest and the heartlands.” She touched the Wintercrests. “From the Stakhieczi in the north, who could invade by land through Aurdwynn and then east across the river Inirein. And from any rival on the Ashen Sea, who would have to sail clockwise with the trade winds, and follow the coast of Aurdwynn to reach Falcrest.”

“
We
want to hold Aurdwynn,” Muire Lo said softly. “Your Excellence.”

“Thank you.” She drummed her fingers on the map, considering both the map and the loyalties of Muire Lo. Exhilaration rose in her: here, before her, a problem of power, a riddle of empire. A chance to show her worth to Cairdine Farrier, whoever he really was, whatever great designs he hinted at. “What a cauldron. What a trap.”

Alpine forest and rugged mountain, coastal plain and rich cold fisheries. A land of mineral and animal wealth. An economic dream and a military nightmare: a land of valleys riven by dangerous geography. Cavalry would be king in the lowlands, the key to controlling the Sieroch floodplains and the capital at Treatymont. But in the north, rangers and woodsmen roaming the towering redwood forests would be able to close the roads during summer. In winter there would be no forage to feed an army to chase them.

And the tumult of the geography was nothing next to the politics. “How many times,” Baru said, leafing through the parchment, “has your home been invaded?”

“I believe we have lost count.”

Five hundred years past, Aurdwynn had been overrun by waves of Stakhieczi and Tu Maia armies, invasion and counterinvasion between two great empires at the peak of their power. The warlords and dukes left behind when the empires collapsed (a mystery Baru's schooling had not touched upon, though one often blamed on unhygienic mating) had settled into uneasy coexistence. A dozen contenders had tried to unify Aurdwynn in the centuries since. A dozen alliances rose to amputate their dreams of a throne.

On the gates of Lachta, the old Stakhieczi outpost that everyone now called Treatymont, the stone bore ancient words—

“Aurdwynn cannot be ruled,” Baru murmured.

“
Only the Masquerade can rule Aurdwynn,
” Muire Lo said, eyes still downcast in respect. “The Northgate engraving has been amended.”

Why had the civil service exam arranged for her to go
here
? Why had Cairdine Farrier wanted his savant, groomed from childhood, thrown to the wolves?

“Give me the Treaty of Federation.” Baru beckoned and Muire Lo searched his folders for his waxed copy of Aurdwynn's treaty with the Empire. She scanned it, lips pursed, chuckling again at the flock of Iolynic signatures that crowded the final page—all the dukes and duchesses of Aurdwynn, Autr through Vultjag, gathered to submit their mutual surrender—until she found the passage rankling at her.

Aurdwynn shall have a Governor, appointed by the Emperor in Falcrest, with power over the legal Imperial military and its garrisons
—yes, yes, and so forth—
and who shall serve as liege lord to the dukes and duchesses of Aurdwynn by sworn oath.
Fine.

Aurdwynn shall have a Jurispotence, who shall have power over all the courts, and power to review the law, and who shall oversee the dispersal of cults, the teaching of proper Incrastic thought, and the sanitation of heredity.
Falcrest's eye and lash. Not a popular post.