The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

by Seth Dickinson

“It’s curious, then, that you’d sell goods for coins and gems, but only buy with paper,” said Baru. The shape of her words changed here, not entirely by her will: for a few moments she spoke like her mother. “Because if I understand my figures, that means you are taking all the things we use to trade with others, and giving us paper that is only good with you.” The broadcloth merchant watched her with sudden sharpness.

“The mask is for acts of service. The soldier wears a mask on his patrol. The mathematician wears a mask defending her proof. In Parliament they are all masked, because they are vessels for the will of the Republic. And on the Faceless Throne the Emperor sits masked forever.” A deflection. How unacceptable. Baru pursued her question. “When do you wear a mask? How do you serve?” “It’s too hot on Taranoke for masks. But I am here to sell wool, and help occasionally in matters of charity.”

And he looked at her with open eyes, the bone of his heavy brow a bastion above, the flesh of his face wealthy below, and in those eyes she glimpsed an imperium, a mechanism of rule building itself from the work of so many million hands. Remorseless not out of cruelty or hate but because it was too vast and too set on its destiny to care for the small tragedies of its growth.

Young folk respect theater more than death.”

“I vowed to die for you—don’t make a liar of me.”

A hand on her shoulder. Deerskin glove, smooth through broadcloth and leather and linen and her own flesh. If you close your hand with all your strength, Baru thought, I will crumble into ash. Nothing will remain. What have I done? What have I done? She stood in utter stillness, unable to advance, unwilling to withdraw, the charge of Tain Hu’s touch galvanic, annihilating. Everything she most wanted in this instant would destroy everything she had most wanted for all the rest of her life. Your Grace, she began to say. Tain Hu. I— Contact broke. Tain Hu released a ragged breath and drew away. “It will grow dark.”

That we 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.

“Every moment is an edict spoken by its past. The past is the real tyranny.”

I see your strategy, Tain Hu, Baru thinks. I see the order of battle. You go to your death with exquisite loyalty. I measure my treason against your faith and it eats me up, now and for the rest of my life. It is the most hurt you can manage. It will work.

And she was so sexy for that

But I will not be bound as you are. I will walk among your council and you will tremble at what you have unleashed.