The Traitor Baru Cormorant (42 page)

“Tsk.” Erebog flicked a speck of lint from the sleeve of her gown. “You mistake her appetites for her politics. If I'd had Autr and Sahaule as neighbors in my youth, I'd have gone hunting, too.”

“We could have had Oathsfire's child in her by now. That would tie her to us.” Unuxekome opened a hand to Baru, as if to pull on the rope of her regard. He'd greeted her like an old shipmate, and stayed late to hear her war stories. “It's not too late to arrange an alliance by marriage.”

“You're as eligible as I am.” Oathsfire scowled. “You think marriage would bind her? She'd get a child on me and set him in my place.”

“Perhaps,” Erebog said silkily, “you should be the last one in this council to speak to the trustworthiness of marriage.”

Baru missed the ilykari priestess, her ledger of secrets, her hushed temple drowned in olive oil and perilous lamplight. This damn conspiracy was missing its keystone. All that remained were the unsteady arching ambitions of the dukes.

Ah, but—hadn't
she
volunteered to be that keystone, at that river house, on that bloody shore? Hadn't she declared herself the Fairer Hand?

“Enough.” Baru leaned forward into the circle of redwood chairs. “I've read the ledgers—”

“At least I divorced mine,” Oathsfire hissed. “Instead of arranging for a quiet disappearance far away north, in the mansion of someone I decided I loved more.”

“I said
enough
!” Baru's voice set Oathsfire back in his seat and drew a little twitch of the lips from Erebog. “It's true that the winter ate our treasury. But we invested well. Our coin bought food and arms for thousands. The Coyote's efforts in the Midlands saved tens of thousands more from starvation. We have a commanding position. Now we need to leverage our gains.”

All the dukes watched her in sharp attentive silence. Baru felt the greatest pressure from Lyxaxu—and Erebog, who had never sat in council with her before.

There was nowhere in the world, Baru thought, no collection of lords or lovers, that did not have its own politics.

“You know these dukes better than I.” She would give Lyxaxu a little here, a sidelong acknowledgment of her error. “How can we set Nayauru and Ihuake at peace, and win them both together? Will their clients follow them?”

Control of Aurdwynn now balanced on the Midlands in every way that mattered: geography, trade, strength of arms. To win the summer, the rebels had to turn the Midlands against Treatymont, against the shadow of distant Falcrest and its rising retaliation.

“Not with our treasury, it seems,” Tain Hu murmured. Oathsfire rolled his eyes.

Unuxekome rubbed his wrists. “She's right. We don't have the bankroll left for a long war, especially if it comes to siege at Treatymont. The sea lanes are open—they can bring in relief by ship.”

Baru had been gnawing at this problem. They needed revenue, and that would mean either harsh taxation—killing the very popular support that had brought her here—or pillage. Pillage would work in the short run, but it went against Baru's goals in the long.

“We must show our strength.” Erebog's kindling-crackle voice touched on memories of Iriad elders in whispered council, in times before plague swept Taranoke. “Before Falcrest's ships arrive. A demonstration of force that will swing Ihuake and Nayauru to us.”

“We have cavalry,” Oathsfire said, and then, with a grudging glance at Unuxekome, “and many ships. Perhaps a sortie on the Horn Harbor—”

A cry of alarm came from the longhouse's door. Baru leapt to her feet almost as quickly as Tain Hu. Two of Unuxekome's ilykari, seal-shaped women in iron-mordant green, had seized an old man in the broadcloth cloak of an Ihuake ducal levy. They called out in Urun to their duke; Baru did not know the words.

Lyxaxu let go of his knife. “Well spotted. A talented disguise.”

The gray-bearded man began to laugh. “Too talented,” he croaked. “Harried all the way from Treatymont, hounded through wood and vale with but one loyal man to spot me, and for this? I should have stayed!”

He began to cough, a dry aspirated sound, not so different from his mirth. Baru recognized the cough with a thrill of fear.

“Xate Olake,” Tain Hu breathed.

Baru reached the old man first, Tain Hu barely a step behind her. “Release him,” she commanded the ilykari. “He's ours.”

The spymaster-duke of Treatymont, twin brother to the Jurispotence of Aurdwynn, stumbled forward into the rebel circle. Exhaustion had carved the lines around his eyes deep, runes of mirth or fury.

I wonder, Baru thought, if you killed Muire Lo; and the thought had teeth.

Duchess Erebog leaned forward in her chair. “Olake? Is that you, you old fox? I thought you'd died three years ago.”

“I would have died three
days
ago, if it weren't for that Stakhi cripple Yawa sent to guide me. Never seen a finer woodsman. The Phantom Duke, foraging and bolting like a deer!” He leaned on Baru and, pulling her along like a cane, limped toward a chair. “I lost Treatymont. Cattlson's given birth to a brood of these demons he calls Clarified. They ripped my network up by the roots. Like they could smell a spy just by a sniff of his breath.” He collapsed into Baru's seat, drawing his cloak around him. “Yawa decided to ‘arrest' me before they could. She tipped me off in time to flee. And—” When he smiled his eyes glittered like winter gems in the hair of his face. “She sent me with a gift.”

From beneath his cloak he drew a drinking horn, uncapped it, and poured a stream of dark beer onto the floorboards. “This,” he said, reaching into the horn, “is the fruit of all her subterfuge. Cattlson still believes she's loyal. Her cruelty is all the proof he needs. And that keeps her in his inner circle.”

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?”

*   *   *

L
ATER,
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.

*   *   *

A
ND
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 the great powers of the Midlands Alliance. You are the intruders here.”