The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)

by Seth Dickinson

“They understand the secret of power, Baru.” “Which one?” “The ability to improve one’s own power, no matter how slowly, triumphs in the long run over any other power. Time magnifies small gains into great advantages. If you are hungry, then it is better, in the long run, to plant one seed than to steal a pound of fruit. Falcrest applies this logic in all their work. They do not conquer. They make themselves irresistible as trading partners. They do not keep their wealth in a royal hoard. They send it out among their people, stored in banks and

Here’s a coin. Go buy a mango. I’ll cut you a piece. She had given the child a Masquerade coin, so that the child could buy her own island’s fruit, to be cut and apportioned to the child by a Masquerade agent. She had inflicted Cairdine Farrier’s lessons. What you have belongs to me. What you need will be earned with my coin. What you desire will be divided by my knife.

People were hashes. You could only see their output, the passwords they showed to the world. You could not know the truth of them. But with sufficient time and study you might become familiar with the functions that transformed the shape of a man’s soul into the choices he made: the hash that communicated Svir-in-truth to the Svir who Barhu perceived.