The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

by Seth Dickinson

This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.

She looked that word up too, hoping to understand it, as understanding gave her power over things.

That’s why it’s an Empire of Masks, dear. When you wear a mask, your wits matter.”

She was powerless without her patrons. Could power be real if someone else gave it to you?

Either she’s ineffective and ignored, or effective and despised.”

“History is never only a distraction.”

“Money is only one kind of power. Faith is power, too. Love is power. Slaughter and madness are both roads to power. Certainly, symbols are power—you wear one wherever you go, that purse you carry. And you wear others when you decide how to dress yourself, how to look at men and women, how to carry your body and direct your gaze. And all these symbols can raise people to labor or war.”

“As long as you believe that is all you are, you will never be anything but a piece of the machine.” “A piece can change the whole. It may take patience, or sacrifice, but—” “This machine? Better to break it, and build something new.”

Everyone poised to destroy everyone else, and thereby held in check. A trust governed not by love or simple fear, but by the assurance of mutual ruin, by the delicately balanced threat of certain annihilation for anyone who stepped out of line. Mutual blackmail.

“Because I think you’ve realized that who you are will forever hold you back from what you deserve. Because I know you’re selfish, calculating, and farsighted, and when you find no way forward through the Falcresti maze, you’ll resort to tearing it down. I knew it even when you ruined my counterfeits. I knew you’d tire of the chains.”

What did you see?” “Hope,” Baru said. “Oh?” “The people can still see their shackles. The Masquerade rules them, but it has not yet made them want to be ruled. The chains are not yet invisible.”

are not free. Not even when we march beside them, nor even when we lead them. Freedom granted by your rulers is just a chain with a little slack.