The Traitor Baru Cormorant (10 page)

“Oh,” she said, straightening.
“Oh.”

 

5

S
HE
wrote a letter to
Lapetiare
's captain
,
and then—impatient now, eager to pursue this new avenue—went to her scheduled lunch with Cattlson.

He had a beautiful dining room, flooded with light through walls of small paned windows set in redwood. With the light she expected warmth, but no: she sat shivering. Aurdwynn was cold. The cold made her want to move. She wanted to get back to her office, or to the harbor, and keep constructing her plan.

It was only when Cattlson had finished his third glass of wine that she realized this, too, could be part of that plan.

“We're here to help them,” he said, staring at his hive of windows, at the huddled city beyond. “I write it in every report to Falcrest. I see it in all the statistics from Census and Methods. The wealth we feed the dukes to keep them happy drips down to their peasantry. We're helping them. But we could be helping them more.”

She drank politely. “Should we be pressing Parliament for a policy change?”

“Parliament.” He snorted. “Parliament is a theater for the mob. The Throne sets these imperatives.” He stood abruptly, going to the windows, leaving Baru alone at the wide table.

The Throne. The Masked Emperor. Could Cairdine Farrier be the sovereign, unmasked? No. Absurd.

“It's the burden of empire.” He touched the window glass, hand splayed. “We know how to help them best … and sometimes we have to help them a little less right now, so that we can help them a little more later. Does that make sense to you, my fellow Excellence?”

“No,” she said, trying to bait him into seeing her as a student, a daughter. “Everything the Masquerade brought to Taranoke helped us.”

“Taranoke!” He laughed. “I hear all sorts of things from itinerant Cairdine Farrier—boasts of warm winters and easy women.” At this he frowned sharply, as if he had just delivered a rebuke, or reined in a bothersome new mount. He had a square face, a strong jaw, skin the color of weathered oak, and Baru quibbled for a moment over the feeling that this man chosen by Parliament had no design to conceal, no machinations to guard—just a plain honesty, too naked to last. That could be a clever camouflage.

He continued. “If you'll forgive me, my lady, I mean no slight. But this is not Taranoke, you see? This is a cold and grudging land. Every valley's got a duke, and a lot of starving muddy serfs rooting in the earth for their shallow livelihoods. Their children die—the polymaths tell me that they're all used to losing one in three, and assure me that as a result they don't love them at all. But I've seen the mothers weeping. One in three! In a good winter!”

She didn't know how to answer this. Child rearing on Taranoke had been safe, communal, full of fathers and warmth. She took another short drink and listened.

Cattlson set his shoulders and raised himself erect. His wolfskin mantle gathered in troubled bunches. “I want to teach them sanitation. I want to extend the roads, give them better crops, send a hygienist to every village. I want everyone in Aurdwynn to have a bar of
soap
. But if the peasants are happy and safe, the duchies will not fear rebellion. If the duchies do not fear rebellion, we cannot rule them. And if we cannot rule the duchies by fear of rebellion, Parliament asks, what shield will we have if the Stakhieczi come south over the mountains again?”

What similar calculus did they make on Taranoke? Had they let the plagues run rampant, saving inoculant only for the children they planned to steal away? Had they—but she could dwell on this later. She'd had time enough to obsess over it in school. “Rule demands harsh arithmetic.”

“Arithmetic.” He chuckled joylessly. “Do you know what I want from my station? I want to see the children of Heingyl and Radaszic at hunts, not funerals. I want to find a good husband for Heingyl Ri, observe the resulting bloodlines, present a nice report to the Committee on Incrastic Thought. Instead I hear:
keep them divided and afraid, so they need us.
Do you know how I made a loyal brother of Duke Heingyl? I showed him I could give his children the world. But Parliament says—
let the children rot
.”

He would take bad news poorly with his temper up, but she went ahead anyway, hoping to make him angry about something smaller. “Our master accounts have been poorly kept. I'll have to rebuild them from local statements. With your understanding, I'm going to begin at the Fiat Bank, to be sure the trunk's solid before we move on to the branches.”

“Whatever you please.” He leaned his brow against the windows. “You'll see to the arithmetic Farrier says you're so talented at. Xate Yawa will chase their little ykari cults and drunken sodomites like a mad dog. And I'll send the letters home:
we are helping them
.”

“I'm concerned about the possibility of revolt.”

“You're new.” He sounded impossibly weary. “Aurdwynn threatens revolt the way a jealous mistress flirts. You'll grow accustomed to it.”

Baru could not permit herself to feel sorry for the man. He was close to her, and weak. “This is dangerous talk,” she said. “It could harm you, in the wrong ears.”

She'd made a threat, hadn't she?

He stiffened, drew breath to speak, and was silent. “Cairdine Farrier was right,” he said, after a time. “You
are
precocious.”

“Your Excellence, I must attend to business at the harbor.”

“Go, go.” He did not turn. “I'm leaving tomorrow to hunt with Duke Heingyl.”

“We'll have to ride together when you return,” she said, trying to be patient, to offer him a salve for his pride. But his shoulders slumped: shame, or something enough like it that he would not answer.

*   *   *

S
HE
had already sent word ahead to
Lapetiare,
sealing the missive with her technocrat's mark. When her carriage came harborside she found the marines already ashore, ranked in red like a leash of foxes come up out of a forest of salt and mast, faceless in their enameled steel masks.

Gulls called over the soft whickering of her carriage team as she dismounted. To her limited surprise, it was Lieutenant Aminata who took her hand and helped her down from the carriage. “Your Excellence. We await your command.”

Baru took a breath of salty harbor air and put thoughts of home out of her mind. “Is my authority clear?”

“The captain recognizes your authority. Without direct orders from the Province Admiral, we report to the highest-ranking Imperial factor ashore.”

“Good. Unless we meet the Governor or the Jurispotence, your orders come from me—and if we do, you bring them to me and I make myself clear to them, understood?” She tugged on the wrists of her woolen overcoat, itching at the heavy fabric. Aminata waited in silence as she checked her belt, first the symbolic chained purse, then her sword.

One last breath. “Fall in, then. I'll lead the way.”

Every bit of power she wielded in Aurdwynn stemmed from money. Most of that money was now Masquerade fiat paper, backed only by careful monetary policy. Any idiot at the provincial Fiat Bank could ruin the value of the fiat note by printing too many or too few, and without her ledgers, she had no way to keep that idiot in check.

“Where to, Your Excellence?” Aminata fell into step beside her, and on her heels the column of marines snapped into easy cadence.

“We're going to the Fiat Bank,” she said, “to conduct an audit.”

“And you need marines for that?”

She allowed herself a little smile for Lieutenant Aminata's benefit. “I don't need marines for the audit,” she said. “I need marines to tell them not to trifle with the auditor.”

And to demonstrate to the eyes watching from Treatymont's alleys and stone arcades that the new Accountant had full command of her powers.

*   *   *

B
EFORE
the Masquerade seized Lachta and made it Treatymont, the Fiat Bank had been a huntsman's hall, full of hardwood rafters and smoky charm. They'd left the stag heads up on the walls, and Baru considered them with a certain fascination, counting the branches of their antlers.

“Pointed horse,” she said. “They're pointed horses.”

“Excuse me?” the man at her side croaked.

The Treatymont garrison kept a unit of regulars on guard here, their loyalty doubtless gilded by performance bonuses, but where they'd bristled at the column of
Lapetiare
marines gathered in the plaza outside, one impatient wave of her purse—the technocrat's seal glaring at them from the steel chain—melted their line. Now Aminata and a file of marines stood watch over the exits as Baru wrote out her requests.

All ledgers, general and specific. Make copies for yourself, and provide me the originals.

All orders to and receipts from the moneyprinters. Make copies, provide me the originals.

All account standings, as above—

A hand count of all physical holdings by my officers—

The Principal Factor for the Aurdwynn Provincial Fiat Bank stood beside her and his makeup ran with his sweat. Bel Latheman was a handsome man by Falcresti eyes, young, by all reports talented, and dressed in such exquisite fashion that she took it as a sign of honesty—no one would advertise corruption so blatantly, would they?

She hadn't asked for his papers and marks. It would give the impression that this was personal.

Save for the quiet sound of her pen, silence took the floor. The clerks and factors sat stiffly under the eyes of the marines. She found it hard, very hard, not to savor their faces, each and individually, like candies in a rack—all united in trepidation, all afraid that she might find
something,
guilty or innocent—

Maybe this was how the teachers had felt. Maybe this was how Diline had felt.

“I admire your animal heads,” she answered the Principal Factor, signing the palimpsest in Aphalone letters. “I've never seen the like. Take these orders and execute them at once. I'll wait in your office until you can bring me the records.”

He pursed his lips and struggled visibly to keep himself reasonable. He'd been sweating since he saw the chained purse—thinking, perhaps,
the last two died; this Accountant was mad to take the post
. “The records I can, of course, provide, though this is most irregular. But we cannot open the vaults for a hand count. Especially not for these soldiers—Your Excellence, they will be leaving the country within a week and will feel at liberty to steal. It would be criminally irresponsible.”

“A salient point.” He had the diligent, precise mind his bearing and presentation suggested. She laced her gloves in thought. “Lieutenant Aminata, you will have ample time to search
Lapetiare
during your return to Falcrest, correct? Keelhaul any marine found with contraband.”

She had no power to dictate military justice, but Aminata saluted smartly nonetheless. Baru smiled coldly at her, and only had to hide the warmth.

The poor assailed Factor went down into the old ice cellars to open the vaults for inspection and left Baru to make a restless pacing home in his office, wondering at the wisdom of acting so viciously so soon. A pale Stakhi-blood woman in a ruffed bearskin coat offered her beer (the Aurdwynni did not, as a rule, seem to trust their water) and quiet words through pursed lips: “Bel Latheman is
very
scrupulous. Things were so confused under His Late Excellence Olonori, however, that I do worry—please be kind to him. He's never bent a rule in his life.”

“The numbers will speak to that.” She wanted to apologize at once, out of pity for Latheman, and out of respect for the loyalty his staff showed him.

But the woman in the bearskin coat only bowed and extended the heavy mug. Her downcast eyes were dark as thunderheads. “I am Ake Sentiamut, liaison to the moneyprinters. Whatever you find, Your Excellence, I ask this: be good to Bel Latheman. He has been kind to us.”

Sentiamut. She remembered that name from tax records—a family from the north. Baru felt a twinge of empathy for Ake, who must have left her home behind to serve in Treatymont. But Baru could not be soft. “He is the Factor of this bank. Responsible for everything and everyone within it.”

Ake Sentiamut held the bow. “Of course, Your Excellence. I only fear that Latheman would take on blame better left with others.”

She left the mug and went before Baru could reply.

At length the Principal Factor returned with a parade of secretaries carrying waxed records and palimpsests reeking of oat bran. She waited in silence for them to set the records out and begin the copying. After a few minutes she found a pen and joined their sullen ranks.

She had seen rebellion in the eyes of Tain Hu and Xate Yawa. Glimpsed it in the maps and histories. But the stink of it would be here, in the numbers, rotting on some back page.

Aminata's touch on her shoulder snapped her out of her work trance. “The count's proceeding apace, Your Excellence. The vaults are full of metals and jewels gathered for tax season, so it will take time.”

How deep would the rot run, how high the rebellion reach? Could Ffare Tanifel's arrangement, the corruption Su Olonori had been so desperate to root out, still be marked in the ledgers here? Was the Imperial Accountant still the key to the plot?

When would the rebellion come for her, to court or kill?

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She tapped Aminata's hand, once then twice, the deliberate rap of a schoolteacher. “Mind your familiarity.”

*   *   *

I
T
took all day and every clerk in the bank to finish copying the ledgers, and another night for the marines, working in shifts, to count the vaults. Late in the evening Muire Lo arrived with coffee and a train of servants, and with their help Baru began shuttling the originals back to her office.