The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)

by Seth Dickinson

You will never wake up to anything worse than Sieroch. You will never wake up to anything better than Tain Hu’s arms.

“Baru,” she says. “I’m Baru.” And it is only a little bit a lie.

Well

He gave her algebra, astronomy, geometric proofs and maps of the world, everything she had ever dreamt of knowing. And all he took from her, all he ever asked, was her mother, and her fathers, and her people, and her lover, and her soul.

And bound, each of them, to the shattered land of Aurdwynn: she by love of a dead woman, and Yawa by love of a hostage twin.

And she hears that traitor hitch of compassion in his breath, spoor of his hidden weakness: she finds herself salivating, because she wants so badly to get a claw into that hidden wound and tear it bloody.

She has stopped trying to force it into logical terms: it is a morality that cannot be separated from the community that practices it, cannot be exploited or manipulated or even defined by one person alone. Giving without hope of getting, in the hope of getting without needing to ask. You can attain good trim and everyone will know it’s yours. But you cannot ask how to get good trim, or even claim to have it.

Falcrest has cut your people, cut off lips and balls and fingers and tongues, and you cannot get justice. You cannot wait for history to turn in your favor. But at least there is revenge, which is like justice the way saltwater is like fresh. So you take what you can from the Falcresti in your reach. You cut your debt out of her—

And after Tain Hu, Baru had promised herself never again—

But the incryptor was still proof that Baru mattered. That she’d gained something, anything at all, by putting Hu to death.

Once again she’d dragged someone infinitely better than her to their doom.

No! No time for despair. Tain Hu was counting on her. Tain Hu had died to make this possible. As long as Baru carried that burden, she had to do what was necessary to succeed, or she didn’t deserve Hu’s trust!

He almost slips. He almost admits he cares about a person who is unhygienic and unIncrastic and unsuited to his reputation. But he gets his shield up in time. He does not know that he’s fighting for his life, but his instincts for danger are too good.

Maybe I was born as someone who hurts their friends. A principle of selfishness.

And you are really good. People admire you, Tau, though you don’t know it; people think you’re unambitious, compassionate, thoughtful, kindhearted, all the things they want in a Prince. But I could use you around as a friend, so Kinda doesn’t walk all over me. I should’ve come to you for advice before I started sleeping with her. I should’ve come to you for advice a lot. I need a friend a lot more than I need another Prince.”

Why not me? Tau-indi wanted to ask. But it was a stupid question. They’d known Abdu since before they could talk. What room was there for anything like desire between them? Desire required distance. They’d left no space for it to grow.

thousand Oriati dead. And more later. And more. And more forever. Who ever heard of an avenger satisfied? Even one?

Chew me, then: you haven’t the fire for it, Lune, you’re too dignified.

Oh, fuck that.

Real

To get something from them to kill your whole civilization. To make Tain Hu’s sacrifice worth it. To prove I was worth her faith.

She had not been a walking wound, before Baru. She had not been a thin dressing over a gushing cut.

People bent. You hit them hard enough and they just bent.

Maybe Aminata could find Baru. But if Juris involved her, she’d be doomed. Attainted as a mutineer.

I had, in my station as Jurispotence of Aurdwynn, learned to hide my love of the divine. If a Ministry of Antiquities stooge brought me a two-thousand-year-old ceremonial oil scrape and asked me to destroy it as an artifact of unhygienic religiosity, I could hardly scream in anguish, could I? I could hardly stand on my toes and beg for Himu’s sky-swift forgiveness. My mission was to protect the living faith, not its dead relics. So I never betrayed my awe in the face of the sacred.

“She’s playing you, child,” Execarne warned him. “Is she?” the boy said, quietly. “I’ve saved her life twice, on Helbride and at the Elided Keep. She saved mine, too, on Cheetah. And I am sure that I am the closest thing she has to a friend. We are bound together.” “That’s how she lies to people.” “No,” Iraji whispered. “It’s not a lie. No matter how much you both want it to be true, you and her … you’re wrong.”

And if he failed, then I failed, and I had done everything for nothing! Decades of paranoia and self-denial, persecuting my own people, betraying my own brother, wasted because upstart Baru Cormorant beat me to a cult of cancer worshipers!

Hey, bird. I’m gonna find out what the fuck is going on with you, and I’m not going to let anyone hurt you until I do.

Aurdwynn. If Baru had kept that sword close at hand she must still care about Aminata—she must be worth more respect than a woman who would take Baru’s innocent parents hostage—

And that was why she had to be the one to find Baru first. She had to know, once and for all, if Baru … If Baru what, exactly? Served the Republic in all she did? Or cared about Aminata, even a little? Deserved the trust that the Duchess Tain Hu had expressed in her? Where did her duty lie?

“You wanted to be alone. You wanted to be hurt. You think you have to be miserable alone, so everyone will know you’re too noble to put your misery on them. But you want us to know you’re miserable. Your favorite thing in the world is to be too hurt for anyone to help.”

“I guess, when you start fucking, you can’t skip over the childish part, the part that feels like love.” Kindalana caught Tau-indi by the earlobe to swipe paint from the side of their chin. “Or I can’t, at least. You left us alone, Tau, and what were we supposed to do, with you taking charge of everything? You took all the burdens on yourself, your house and your mother’s trim, and then you took Cosgrad, too.” “You wanted to seduce Farrier! I wasn’t the only one who—” “You’d already seduced Cosgrad, hadn’t you?” “Not like that!” “You befriended him. I don’t make friends easily, Tau. That’s your gift.” “You make me sound so mighty.”

“People listen to you. I know all these things, I’ve figured out so much, but who wants to listen to me?

They could have stormed a line of house guard, a company of local shua, or even Falcrest’s masked marines. Against two bright young Princes in their regalia they had no chance at all.

So Tau had trusted her, and felt betrayed—fine! Tain Hu had trusted her first. She had to focus!

But she knew she was lying. Her women did not survive.

BARU did not exactly mean to get down on her knees and sniff the ship. Her right foot slipped, and the wood made her go the rest of the way.

Lmao

“I wish I were a linguist,” Baru said, out of the nervous need to speak. “You would know more ways to lie.”

Baru said, idiotically.

Lmaooo

The Prince blinked. Their cheek spasmed. They said nothing. A very long way away, on a continent vast enough to hold Tau’s heart, mountains fell.

Any price would be worth it to secure the Kettling and destroy Falcrest. Tain Hu had been willing to die for that goal. Therefore Baru had to be willing to die as well, or she was a coward and a hypocrite.

Tain Hu had seen the worst of her and stayed loyal. Tau had seen the worst of her, and now they were telling her exactly what they saw.

And, to her own horror and shame, she began to weep. She couldn’t do it anymore. She just couldn’t do it. Tau had been so kind to her. Iraji had been her friend, played Purge with her, sparred with her when she wanted to be hurt. And she’d had to harm them both to reach this moment, the moment of crux, the goal she’d worked toward all her life. The harm she’d done should make it all the more urgent to go forward, to complete the task. She had the weapon to end the Masquerade.

“There are two kinds of people, Baru. One kind is like Auroreal. They just go on and on, no matter how awful the circumstances. But you’re like the other kind. You’re like Purpose. You are a precision instrument, intolerant of damage. You must be calibrated.” She took Baru’s hand, inspecting the bandaged stubs of the two fingers Tain Shir had cut away. “You’re brilliant, but you break so easily.”

That’s the trick, she thinks. You let them choose which road to follow. But first, you have your people build the roads.

You will put yourself into it as you have put yourself into us, thinking that it is your will. But it is your doom that moves you thus. And your flesh will be filled with ruin, as you have come to bring ruin into us.”

“Death first,” the sorcerer said, with the fire of her words spattered down her chin. “Death before we let you into us.”

That was when Abdu realized the Cancrioth could give him something Tau and Kinda could not.

This, Abdumasi was thinking. This is what we become when we are desperate. We grow thorns from our skin, we shout ancient words, and we beg our people to stay away from us. For we cannot be bent from our purpose, which is revenge.

Baru, don’t be a fool, don’t leap without looking

Oh hu

Nothing had happened exactly the way it was remembered, especially not in the Mbo, where memory was like a house you arranged for the benefit of those who lived in it, not a museum to leave untouched.

We’re all blind in our own ways. I choose that word carefully, knowing many great thinkers without eyesight. Everyone has a blindness, somewhere. Very few remember it.”