The Traitor Baru Cormorant (17 page)

B
ARU
went south again, back to Treatymont, back to the snake pit. Racing against time and the rebel plan. There might still be a chance.

On the road north of the crossroads freetown Haraerod, in the fang-shaped shadow of Mount Kijune, a band of soldiers blocked her way: a filthy phalanx bristling with steel. Vultjag's escorting armsmen muttered, sullen but not worried—“
It's Ihuake, taking toll on her roads … thinks we're all cattle, really, just another kind of herd.…”

Likely not assassins. Not here, not now, not by this means. Vultjag's armsmen would have done the job themselves.

Baru dismounted, put on her mask, and marched straight into the teeth of the phalanx with a scowl and a mind to sow terror. Today was not a day for delays. “Stand aside,” she called, raising one white-gloved hand. “Imperial business. I don't pay tolls.” And then, when the wall of spearmen did not stir: “The Duchess Ihuake pays me tribute! Do you want to spend the rest of your lives eating slop in her pigpens?”

One of the fighters in the phalanx put down his long spear and shield and walked out to meet her. He was an old man, leathery, untroubled by the burden of his armor and helm. Angry years had worked his face with scars.

“Afraid they don't speak Aphalone,” he said, and made a good case for his own honesty—his Aphalone was awful. He'd painted black makeup beneath his eyes to fend off sunglare. “Let me get a look at you now. Hm.”

Baru drew up at an arm's reach, baffled. The old man squinted at her, working his jaw in a sort of disgruntled loop, and then shook his head in disgust. “Well, you look just like her, but she's a better rider. Take off the mask, then. I've got to be sure.”

Curiosity beat out indignation. “Just like
who
?”

“The Duchess Nayauru. Word came she'd been sighted in disguise passing through Ihuake's territory. Young woman, very clever, round about your height. Possibly intent on seducing Her Grace Ihuake's son and usurping her lineage, or so Her Grace has warned me. Have you been seducing the Cattle Duchess's heir?” The infantryman noticed the chained purse at her side and his brows knit. “Ah, shit. Are you the Imperial Accountant?”

“I am.”

The man chewed on this for a second and then spat into the road-stones. “Well. Duke Pinjagata, at your service. You're Ffare Tanifel? We met at the—that damn affair in the big house, you recall?”

Baru did her absolute utmost to look unflappable in the face of compounding absurdities. The Duke of Phalanxes turned out on foot to patrol for illicit lovers—it was like something out of a prerevolutionary romance. Or one of Muire Lo's monographs. “Ffare Tanifel's dead.”

“Fuck me, that's right, Xate got her. So you're Su Olonori, the replacement. I don't think we've met.” Pinjagata extended one gauntleted hand. “I also thought you were a man. Or—are you? I know the Oriati are flexible on that point. No place of mine to decide; just tell me which you prefer.”

“He's dead, too.” Baru took his hand and gave the best impression of strength she could manage through the mail. “I'm here to repair the situation.”

“Dead too? Is that right?” Pinjagata eyed her with a kind of bemused respect. “So you came up here to unfuck the situation between these two?”

“Between Ihuake and Nayauru? That's not a priority now.” Xate Yawa could solve the hereditary bickering of the great Midlands duchesses. Tain Hu's maneuver had to be countered. “I have urgent business in Treatymont. Move your soldiers and I'll forget this inconvenience.”

“That's kind of you.” Pinjagata gestured with his right hand and the phalanx behind him raised spears and began to split. “Glad you weren't Nayauru. Damned if I know what I would've done. Probably had to arrest her on some invented charge, and then her stallions Autr and Sahaule would've started another fucking civil war, which I'm damn well tired of winning. You kill the duke, that's fine and good, that's war, but then his relatives start vowing revenge and you've got to kill them all too. Personally, I've never felt easy about strangling some second cousin who hasn't even seen his balls drop, you know? But I suppose that's why Ihuake's got the dynasty and all the cows, and I don't. A certain ruthlessness. You ever had to kill anyone in the course of your duty? Someone cheat you on taxes, default on a loan, the like? I imagine they'd give the purse to a real killer, if the last two died.”

“Mm. A compelling theory.” Baru signaled for her guard to bring up her own mount and the carriage. “Aren't Ihuake and Nayauru allies?”

“Ah, don't ask me. They're both simmering—something about inheritance, or grazing land, or fresh water, or becoming queen. It's all beyond me. I just plan campaigns.” Pinjagata clapped her on the shoulder. “Safe travels!”

*   *   *

L
APETIARE
sailed before Baru returned.

She found Muire Lo waiting at his desk, official correspondence stacked to his left and a single letter sealed in red naval wax filed to his right. “Lieutenant Aminata?” she asked, unbuttoning her coat.

“Gone, Your Excellence.
Lapetiare
has sailed for Falcrest. Your coat—”

She'd meant the letter, and almost snapped the clarification at him. But if it were Aminata's, he would have understood, so it couldn't be. She hadn't written. Baru ignored his offer and kept the coat to fold, just so that she would have something to do with her hands and eyes.

Aminata gone,
Lapetiare
's marines gone. Xate Yawa and Tain Hu working toward their endgame. And Baru had only Muire Lo to stop them, to satisfy Cattlson, to earn her way to Falcrest and the salvation of Taranoke.

“There was some unrest in your absence, Your Excellence.” Muire Lo, stumbling over her sudden cold, fussed with the papers on his desk. “A number of riots, several local functionaries arrested on charges of sedition and conspiracy, temples to the ykari Wydd and Devena uncovered and dispersed. And a number of requests for audience, which I've recorded here. Duke Lyxaxu in particular seems eager to discuss philosophy.”

“Have you hired a staff for me?”

“No, Your Excellence, although I've gathered suitable candidates. Jurispotence Xate's office has yet to return any of my requests for social review.”

She tapped the sealed letter. “What about the letter from Cairdine Farrier you're holding there? Do you already know what it says?”

It came out harsher than she'd meant. Or had it? How could she have meant that as anything but an accusation?

Muire Lo sat back down behind his desk, eyes on his hands, and made a visible effort to say something both decorous and honest. He did this for long enough to make himself flush, and then pushed the letter across the desk to her, the unbroken seal framed between his long fingers.

“He's gone now, I presume.” Baru took the letter from the desk, judging its weight (light) and quality (diamond fold, marble cream paper, choice naval wax). “Which means that you'll need to become more talented at slipping your reports to him, because if I find one, I'll have no way to avoid sacking you. Is that understood?”

She didn't expect the eruption that followed. Maybe it had been building while she was gone, while Muire Lo, left alone to manage her business in a city tearing itself apart around him, sat in her cold tower and made excuses for her. Maybe her careless impropriety left him no choice but to lash back.

It was a slow, purposeful outburst, delivered in silent gesture. He opened a door of his desk, hinges creaking, and (eyes appropriately downcast all the while) drew out a book, the Stakhi woodsman's book, the book that had earned him the bruises that still marked his neck. Page by page he leafed through it, licking his finger deliberately, reading nothing, until he found the last page with any writing on it at all. Then he set the book down on the desk, open to the place—Baru could not read it, of course, but nonetheless—where the man had surely recorded:
she went upstairs with the sailor, into the brothel
.

“A canny politician would certainly have kept careful track of such a potentially compromising item,” he said. “Especially with the city in such a fevered state.”

Baru took the book, snapped it shut, tucked it under her arm, and then—after a moment's silent regard—gave Muire Lo a nod of gratitude, of acknowledgment.

“Of course,” she said. “We can be sure of the loyalties of so few.”

He stood and opened the door to her inner office, bowing at the waist. She touched his shoulder on the way in, her throat warm, her mind working. The notebook could have gone with Cairdine Farrier, on to Falcrest, to her permanent file. But it was here.

She could trust him.

Or Farrier could have left it for Muire Lo, so that he could use it to buy her confidence.

Muire Lo cleared his throat. “Was your trip to Vultjag productive?”

“Thoroughly.” She set out her ink pots across her desk. “You'll be interested to know that all those ilykari priests the Jurispotence has been sentencing to death are using their final days to print counterfeit fiat notes for Tain Hu. She's selling her estate to her serfs in order to launder the forged notes onto her books.”

The secretary stared at her for a moment. “I
am
interested to know that. Should I arrange a meeting with the Jurispotence?”

“No, there's nothing to be done. Xate Yawa is part of the arrangement, she owns the prisons, and at the first sign of discovery she'll bury the proof.” She unlocked the drawer and found her master book. “We need to map out the connections. Tain Hu already has the money she needs, but in order to make a rebellion she has to spend it.”

“I'll find the books of grain merchants and smiths.”

“Good. And get me an urgent appointment with Cattlson.” Baru frowned. “Tain Hu may have something more direct in mind.”

The letter was from Cairdine Farrier, as she had suspected. It said only this:

Order is preferable to disorder.

Remember the Hierarchic Qualm.

I am not their only agent.

You are not the only candidate.

*   *   *

G
OVERNOR
Cattlson's hunting expedition with Duke Heingyl had done him well. “Your Excellence!” He swept out a chair for her. “Returned to us at last, and the whole city clamoring to meet you. Heingyl insists you will undermine and betray me—he's very insistent!—but I suspect he's simply jealous that we've found a wit to rival his daughter, Ri. You, boy, bring us mineral water and then lock the door. Governor's business.”

Time to make her case. To prove her value as an instrument of the Mask. Outside the great window she could see the color of sails in the harbor mist.

As Cattlson bustled about, boasting of the stag he'd taken and the experimental marriages he'd arranged—“For improved endurance in the forests, I think it best to mix only northern bloodlines, diluting out the rest”—she opened her chained purse and drew out the map she'd made.

“What's this?” Cattlson frowned down at the table.

“This is the conspiracy to raise Aurdwynn in rebellion.” She'd worn her whitest gloves, to make the act of tracing the web more striking. “It begins here, in Treatymont. Jurispotence Xate Yawa cracks down on the ykari cults, giving the imprisoned ilykari priests reason to cooperate with the rebellion. Tain Hu's agents, quietly overlooked by the Jurispotence, use the ilykari and their artistic talents to forge Imperial fiat notes of unsurpassed quality.” She touched Treatymont, the roads north, and then Vultjag. “The notes are moved to Duchy Vultjag, where they are laundered into Tain Hu's accounts through transactions with her own serfs: she sells her property to them for a pittance, then pretends they've paid her enormous sums in return. While the other duchies sink deeper and deeper into debt to the Fiat Bank, Tain Hu accumulates her war fund—”

Governor Cattlson put his ramming-prow chin in his hands and sighed. Baru, expecting horror, stumbled to a halt.

“I don't mean to steal your sailing wind.” He smiled gently, a paternal expression, trying to cushion her against everything he thought she didn't understand. “It's a clever little story. Perhaps it's even true. I know Xate Yawa permits certain indiscretions, where she thinks it best—and I overlook those indiscretions, just as she overlooks mine. Perhaps there's a counterfeiting scheme in the Treatymont prisons. Perhaps that brigand bitch Tain Hu profits from it. But it doesn't point to rebellion.”

Baru felt like a diving bird meeting an unexpected sandbar. “Aren't you going to ask for proof?”

“You're Cairdine Farrier's favorite, and I know what he likes. I'm sure you've proven everything in triplicate.”

“Money is the blood of rebellion.” She tried to make herself take up more room, to look big and broad-shouldered like one of his damnable hunting companions, like something he took seriously. “Money is the only thing Tain Hu needs to turn this tinderbox into a—”

Governor Cattlson laughed at her. He tried, visibly, to stop himself, but laugh he did. “You're an accountant. Talented, eager, of course, but—surely you see how that could slant your perspective? Even if Tain Hu has made herself rich, what of it? She still needs to buy weapons, find loyal armsmen, and provision her army. It'll take years, and in that time her neighbors, Oathsfire and Lyxaxu, jealous and wary, will come whispering to us. Even if she suborns them as well—and I won't deny, Your Excellence, that money can sway a mind just as well as wine or secrets—we have spies to watch them. I mean, come now! We're the Masquerade. We won't be taken unaware.”

She wanted to scream at him, and the urge made her think of Diline, the social hygienist at her school, and what he had said:
it is a scientific fact, an inevitable consequence of the hereditary pathways that have shaped the sexes … the young lady is given to hysteria.…