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January 20 - February 8, 2024
The Cancrioth was born on the principle that life had value. At first, though, it was merely market value.
Were you a Cancrioth breeding experiment? Maybe it was a game for them. Maybe one of them bet another, oh ho, watch, I’ll turn the fierce Maia into pineapple-eating sluts!” “I do not like pineapple!” Baru snapped, because she was so bemused at being called a slut. “YOU DO!” Tau screamed, and the blood rushed into their eye like poured wine. “I ASKED YOUR PARENTS WHAT FOOD YOU LIKED! AND THEY SAID PINEAPPLE!”
“Farrier is your secret master, for his mastery is secret from you. He has concealed it within your pride. He has dominated you through your conviction that you secretly resist him. There is no difference between pretending to obey Farrier and committing yourself utterly to his control.”
We got rid of kings because they weren’t accountable to the people. Now we have the power, we the mob, and we’re accountable only to ourselves. We’re getting bigger and stronger because who wants to grow smaller and weaker, huh?
Aminata watched Baru kiss her, promptly, like a signature on a promissory note. It felt weird to watch her friend kiss a woman. Not good weird. But weird like eating cantaloupe, which Aminata hated. You could see, theoretically, why someone else liked it.
Some people wouldn’t take their gods’ names in vain. Some people wouldn’t use words like bitch or tunk. Some had secret names for their lovers that they never spoke in anger. Most everyone had something they did, every day, that was a bit like a prayer to the things they believed in.
“That’s stupid,” Svir said. “I beg your pardon?” Yawa blinked at him. “It’s stupid and you’re stupid for thinking it.
“And Yawa—don’t think I’ve forgiven you for using Iraji, by the way, my vengeance is glacial in its patience—
No matter how vivid and imminent the horrors here, Falcrest was in a distant but powerful way responsible. But Barhu could not bring herself to forgive the Pranist and his warband. No matter the cause, these were people doing evil. To absolve them of guilt would be to deny their humanity, to deny that they had some intrinsic dignity and moral independence which only they could choose to surrender.
WHEN human hands pulled her from the whale’s back, when rough ropes hauled her up a cliff of golden film and black wood onto the deck of a ship, she was still aware enough to begin the Mantra Against Captivity. “Aminata isiSegu. Brevet-Captain. RNS Ascentatic. I will not break my silence except to repeat these truths, my name, my rank, my ship, Aminata isiSegu…”
They’re squabbling, she thought, they’re squabbling over me. Am I about to be killed? I suppose that depends on who wins the squabble. Should I tell them I gave them the way through the minefield? Should I tell them I saved their ship? No. Don’t admit you helped them. No one loves a traitor. No one trusts a sneak. And it’ll just convince them they can turn you, if they try.
Call it Incrastic fastidiousness, but she found his deformity frightening. Evil. The character expressed itself in the flesh, didn’t it?
But no matter how much he wanted her, he was a Stakhieczi king, and self-denial came as easily to him as thirst.
Baru, intellectually calibrated and mentally awakened to the highest planes of aesthetic and philosophical appreciation, stared at her tits.
CANDLE watch, drowsy and warm. They curled in the hammock together. “You want to tell me something,” Barhu prompted, not because Xe had given any hint, but because she was a devotee of Wydd, and if you didn’t prompt her occasionally she would just hold her silence for days.
“Child, have they taught you any war magic?” “No,” Iraji said, staggering a little under Osa’s weight, fighting that old, old conditioning to faint. “Not yet…” “Then it is very fortunate for us,” Tau said, wringing out their hands, “that I know a great deal of it myself.”
It was uncouth for anyone’s name to align with their profession; that carried the suggestion of inherited class.
“I don’t know many dances,” Barhu admitted. “Just what they taught us in school. And I threw tantrums.” “Can you fight?” “Naval System, yes, I can—is dancing like fighting?” “Utterly unlike it. Dance is the expression of meaning through movement. Combat is the denial of meaning, the assertion of material effect over symbolic power.”
“Your Excellence. Aurdwynn is my blood knowledge. Trust that I have the matter in hand.” “Trust?” He smiled with a squeeze of his arm. “Now there’s a word I don’t look to hear from you.” “Mistrust my loyalties, Your Excellence, that I can respect. Just don’t mistrust my competence.”
The label read: POISON LETHAL POISON: RAPID CONCENTRATED KRATOM OPIATE ALCOHOL SOLUTION WITH ACONITE SUPPLEMENT: FOR LARGE ANIMAL DEFENSE IN BAITS OR BOLTS. LOT ONE OF SEVEN WINTER AR 130. HOMEOPATHY IS A FRAUD: DO NOT ATTEMPT.
But let us imagine her as a huntress, because huntresses are attractive.
“Your Gracious Excellence!” Barhu hastily conjoined the honorifics for a governor and a duchess. “I hope Aratene’s hospitality brings you comfort.” “Very much so. Although”—her eyes flashed with irritation—“I did have to explain to my armsmen, more than once, that no one would be offering their daughters.” “I’m afraid the notion of sexual hospitality is based on a misunderstanding of our culture. If you can imagine such a thing. Not so much a Taranoki tradition as a tradition of foreigners writing about Taranoke.” “A cultural misconception sustained by lurid rumor? In our great republic?” Heia
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The matter of money, Falcrest’s wholesale adoption of paper fiat notes and liquidity banking, which allowed them to move value more efficiently: you could not raise money from your people to fund an expedition if all their value was locked up in farmland and lumber and milk. But when it was stored in paper notes in banks then you could borrow from the people without actually taking their property.
Poor Cosgrad Torrinde. He has loved this woman Kindalana for decades, in one way or another: maybe not sexual or romantic love, but some kind of love, some absolute appreciation for Kindalana’s existence.
