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 tide is coming in,” he said. “The ocean has reached this little pool. There will be turbulence, and confusion, and ruin. This is what happens when something small joins something vast. But—” Later she would hold to this moment, because it felt that he had offered her something true and grown-up and powerful rather than a lie to shield her. “When the joining is done there will be a sea for you to swim in.”

I don’t want this! she almost shouted. I want Falcrest and telescopes, proofs of geometry and the fluorescence of certain sea life! I want to know the world, not these sordid little people in their shattered little land! I want to save my home!

The forest filled it, wall to wall, and the shadows of the clouds shivered on the treetops as the wind moved through the boughs. Down the center like a crooked bolt ran the river Vultsniada, white and racing, and along its banks crowded mills and villages and—to the north, on the lowest steps of the mountain—a limestone keep which bridged the torrent and admitted, through open sluice gates, a great waterfall. But for all the beauty of it, Baru’s eyes went to the crows and hawks and harriers soaring on the thermals, high above meadows and clearings of stone, the birds gathered in towering kettles that seemed to stretch from canopy to cloud.

“I would get children with the dukes and the sons of the duchesses. I would marry my blood into theirs and hold their loyalty by passion and shared joy. Once I had my heirs aligned, my rivals bound to my flesh, I would tear up the borders and stitch our lands together. I would irrigate the herdlands and make them rich with wheat, I would feed the cattle and make my people fat on milk and beef, I would guard my roads with the broad-backed sons and daughters of women free to love. Against our ancient strength the pale chemistries and mincing edicts of a younger people would be as a child’s tantrum, and they would pass away into the east to be forgotten. I would issue forth a dynasty. And my blood would make a place in the world for the Urun songs to sound again, for the imperial line of the Tu Maia to find its lost glory and in time surpass it. This is the power I claim.”

She’d read in Manual of the Somatic Mind that the character of a man could be divined from how he startled—toward a door, toward a weapon, or toward nothing, a prey animal’s petrified freeze.

She’d prodded at the thought over and over again with the nauseating fascination of a child pulling scabs, unable to decide if what she felt was pain or glee.

Tain Hu spoke in Baru’s ear and the force of her presence snapped Baru from her work trance in a galvanic jerk—the coiled weight of her bent over the chair as if to draw Baru away from her writing, one arm braced like the preface to strangulation or embrace.

“Is this how you’ll lead?” Tain Hu sometimes came to her study to mock her. “Bolted up behind a desk, ink-stained and often drunk?” “This is how your conquerors overcame you. This is their strength.” Baru shook a cramp out of her wrist. “And I’m nowhere near drunk.” “I can correct that.” “Go away,” Baru said, laughing.

I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.