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It had not occurred to Baru to want anything except stars and letters until the day when the red-sailed frigate moored in Iriad harbor. It had not occurred to her to want the impossible until she lost father Salm, first to that awful doctrine, and then to death. Perhaps the death of fathers could be outlawed. Perhaps doctrines could be rewritten. “I want to be powerful,” she said.
“I think you’d like it better if I pretended not to understand, so you could tell me.”
She was right; she was right, of course, and more fool Baru for not having said it first—the Taranoke of her childhood was gone, had probably never existed; Halae’s Reef had never cut the waves like smooth shark teeth, the water had never lapped that clear on luscious black sand. Pinion had not known the name of every star and Solit had never held her up to count them for an entire night and Salm had—ah, no, better not to think of that while drunk, not at all.
She had crushed Tain Hu’s rebellion in the name of her own advancement. She needed to get to Falcrest. Needed to play the Masquerade’s game in order to reach the top. There had been no other choice.
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.
Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent.”
She had always loved the stars. But in the desert of winter it was impossible to forget that they were cold, and distant, and did not care.
“You have been given a permit of brotherhood, Baru Fisher, and you have no say in when they will revoke it, or why.”
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.
