The Traitor Baru Cormorant (43 page)

“A technicality.” Old Erebog waved the young duke's words away. She'd taken long night council with Xate Olake, but showed no sign of weariness. The Crone had stamina for matters of state. “They gave you freedom to meet us only so that you could demonstrate your loyalty by
refusing
to meet us. If you wanted to play at loyalty, you chose unwisely.”

Nayauru, gowned in white, framed between her two mighty consorts, made a soft sound of mirth. “Wisdom in choice? This from the Duchess of Clay, whose wisdom left her only the choice between starvation or rebellion? You sold your allegiance to Lyxaxu for wheat and citrus.”

“Ah.” Erebog reclined, weighing the point in one gloved palm. Baru fought a chill at the cold empty disregard in her eyes—a skull's patience for the passions of the young. “My neighbor came to my aid, and so I rewarded his loyalty. You attacked your neighbor Ihuake to curry favor with a foreign throne. How should
you
be rewarded, hm?”

This had to be controlled.

Baru spoke into the briefest gap before Nayauru's retort. “The Masquerade thrives on information.” Control the space. Use height and voice and strength of limb to pull at their regard. If she seemed foreign all the better—she would hook them and draw them up out of the sea of their own politics. “You all knew this. You came to this council knowing that Treatymont would hear of it. You came knowing that you committed an act of open sedition.” She looked to Ihuake, to Nayauru, then to their clients. “You knew that this council would meet to answer one question: will the dukes of the Midlands join us in revolt?”

Lyxaxu caught her eye. Shook his head fractionally. She knew she'd erred even before Ihuake spoke, her voice like distant hoofbeat: “I came for another question.” She looked to Nayauru with the distance and menace of a thunderhead. “A question for my ally, my sister-by-oath. For the woman who has shown us all how greatly she hopes to be queen.”

Silence in the hall as Ihuake breathed out, in, spoke again: “Why did you betray me?”

Ah, well. So much for control. Baru let the dukes go.

Ihuake excoriated Nayauru for her betrayal—why had she attacked? Ah, it was purely self-defense, of course; Nayauru's landlords, terrified of the Fairer Hand's hold on the peasantry and sickened by the crimes of the interloping Coyote, had demanded retaliation against Ihuake. Unuxekome called
that
a lie—everyone knew Nayauru's great game. Autr and Sahaule rose up in rage at Unuxekome; Nayauru reined them in, to seem gracious, but still the rebel North accused her of secret collaboration with the Masquerade. How could she have betrayed Aurdwynn's ancient need for freedom? Was she so desperate for a throne?

On and on and on.

Baru listened with half her mind, searching through her points of leverage. They needed the damn Midlands to beat Cattlson. What gave the Midlands its livelihood? Craftsmen. Cattle, soldiers, and clean water. Trade—trade both ways: raw materials from North to coast, food and imports from coast to North.

Forget the bonds of blood and honor. Those were Nayauru's tools. Chase the structures:

Whether the Midlands fell in with the revolt or the Masquerade, they would suffer the heaviest price. They would pay on the battlefield and in the market. And for all their power, Nayauru and Ihuake needed to keep their landlords and merchants content. Rule of Aurdwynn entire had to be secondary to strong rule of their own land.

Like Tain Hu before her futures contracts, they were being asked to assume too much risk. Instability cut them more deeply than the forested North. So they looked to the power with the greatest stability—the Masquerade, its center of strength distant and protected. They would not be drawn away from that stanchion. The rebellion would fail.

So if Baru could not offer them stability—ah.

She surfaced from the trance in the midst of an argument about marriages—someone had called Nayauru
licentious,
an Aphalone word, a Falcrest word. No matter. She had the gage of it now. She took control.

“What you risk,” Baru said into the clamor, speaking as if she were the only voice, “is an Aurdwynn without dukes.”

One more moment of clamor and then silence fell. Lyxaxu smiled a fox-tooth smile, understanding, while the others looked at her in bafflement.

“Explain yourself,” Ihuake said.

“The people want to be free.” She held out one hand, palm open, turned up. “I have given the serfs and the landlords the thought of life without you. If you stand against them, they will rise up and they will destroy you. You could turn to the Masquerade for safety, as they have always wanted.” She stood, so that she could move her voice lower. “Cattlson told me that they needed the dukes afraid of the people, and the people afraid of the Masquerade. But now you are afraid of me, and the people are tired of fear.”

She extended her hand, offering them the invisible weight balanced on it, the fulcrum of history.
Baru Fisher, beloved of Devena.
“Falcrest came to power by overthrowing its own aristocracy. They wrote the
Handbook of Manumission
in the blood of dukes and kings. You sit here thinking that perhaps Treatymont and Falcrest can offer you safe power, but they will discard you like leavings when your time is finished. They want to tear down the duchies and polish Aurdwynn flat like the mirror of a Stakhi telescope. Turn to me instead. Turn to the people you have ruled. Only we can secure your future.”

A hush. An instant for Baru to feel a little satisfaction.

And then Nayauru Dam-builder spoke, Nayauru whose words broke the silence like snakebite.

“You offered my people nothing but rapine and savagery.” She stood to match Baru, dark and intent, her youth ferocious, like an obsidian knife, a Taranoki blade. “I went to war with Ihuake my neighbor, my ally, to save my people from the grind of Masquerade march. It was an honest war, fought by spear and stonework, by the sworn armsman and the levy. And you, Baru Fisher, daughter of a foreign land—how did you answer? You set your Coyote on my forests and villages. On families and children who never chose to fight.”

She spat on the floorboards. “What your soldiers did at Imadyff cannot be argued away. I heard of men disemboweled and mothers burnt. No words in any tongue can disguise that.”

“War has never spared the innocent,” Lyxaxu said softly.

“No.” Nayauru's lips curled in disgust. “But neither has it pretended to love them. I will never give my people to Baru Fisher, who conjures power out of lies.”

*   *   *

T
HE
first day of council disintegrated in abject failure.

Tain Hu tried to catch Baru on the way out. “See to the Coyote,” Baru commanded, and shrugged her off. Frustration and humiliation moved her—and desperation, too, the premonition of the test ahead driving her to solitary action. She had promised the Midlands. She would
have
the Midlands—by her wit and her will she would deliver it, without Nayauru's pacts of marriage or noble covenants, without even Tain Hu's counsel.

If she couldn't manage that, what hope was there?

Baru marched on Duchess Ihuake's camp, her stubbly red-eyed Sentiamut guards shifting uncomfortably between polished plumed ranks of the Cattle Duchess's spearmen. Duke Pinjagata stood with the guards, inspecting their spears; when he saw Baru he raised a hand in salute. “Evening.”

“Your Grace.”

“Your Coyotes fought a good campaign. Spared me some ugly work. I'm grateful.” He plucked a splinter of ash from a spearshaft and glared at it. “I hear you're marching with Stakhieczi jagata. Gave me my noble name. Curious to see their kit.”

Baru nodded at the doors of the duchess Ihuake's guesthouse. “And is she grateful, too?”

Pinjagata turned to consider her for a few silent moments. “Devena guide you,” he said.

Alone and unarmed, Baru went into the duchess's longhouse.

Of all the Midlands powers, surely Ihuake had the strongest reason to cast for the rebellion. Nayauru had attacked her unprovoked, unwarned—the Masquerade had supported Nayauru in that war. Honor would turn her to the rebellion, or wrath, or greed. She had to come over. Her ranks of cavalry and Pinjagata's spearmen could turn the war.

She
had
to.

Duchess Ihuake waited in her audience hall, seated at the center of a marble tilework, a mandala in white and red, a whirlpool in stone.

“Kneel,” the duchess commanded.

Baru, choking on pride, on too many days in the woods, hesitated. But her hesitation bought her nothing.

Ihuake, gorgeously fat, skin the color of fallow earth, golden bracelets chased with patterns of steer and horse, all the picture of imperial Tu Maia wealth and beauty, waited with a gracious smile. How powerless Baru must look: peasant-thin, muscled like a laborer, without title or children, without any authority at all.

Baru knelt and bowed her head.

Ihuake crossed her arms. “You've built a rebellion out of shadows.” She had a rich voice, a ruler's voice. “Tricks of ink and paper wealth. Phantom armies of unarmored woodsmen. The promise of a marriageable hand without sated lovers or proof of fertility. I listened to you in that council, prophesying an end to dukes, and I thought: perhaps she has only bluster.”

Baru opened her mouth and the duchess, frowning, raised a hand. A guard clapped his spear against the stone floor.

She was a foreign-born commoner in a duke's court. She hadn't been given leave to speak.

“Duchess Nayauru betrayed me, and I want her skinned for it.” The Cattle Duchess's treasury chimed softly as she moved. “But I understand her reasons. She wants my herds, my grazing land—just as I want her dams and mills. She wants her children to be my grandchildren, and my name bent at the foot of her throne. She thought she had a chance to claim all this, and to earn favor in Treatymont's eyes. Rebellions are opportunities. What opportunities can you present me, Baru Fisher?”

She opened a hand in permission.

Baru spoke without anger, without pleading, with desperate control. “You gave the Army of the Coyote freedom to roam your land. You gave us men and supplies. In return, we defeated Nayauru when she attacked you. Your investment was rewarded.”

Ihuake waited a moment, as if Baru's thought were incomplete. When Baru said no more, she spoke:

“But my debt to you is only a shadow. It exists only as a belief. Perhaps I choose to disbelieve it: now I could give you to Treatymont, and in reward, they would annihilate Nayauru and grant me her land. Or I could listen to her bleating, accept her reparations, and join her in hunting your Coyote down.” Ihuake eyed Baru like a gangly foal, the disappointing issue of a prize stud. “I came to this council to hear the rebellion's offer. But you cannot outbid the Masquerade with shadows, O Fairer Hand. We remember what happened to the last southern duke who declared for you: Radaszic's people bow to the stag banner now. We remember the Fools' Rebellion, and the fate of those who leapt too soon. If you want me to risk war against Treatymont, you must offer me
substance
.”

The Traitor's Qualm.

Baru set her jaw and met the duchess's eyes. She considered and discarded one last plea:
is a free Aurdwynn worth nothing to you?

Aurdwynn had not been kind to dukes who spent blood for ideas. Aurdwynn had been kind to those who spent blood for power.

Aurdwynn and the world. Taranoke, after all, did not rule Falcrest.

“I hear your question,” she said. “Look to my answer soon.”

 

24

T
HAT
night, Baru called Xate Olake to her tent for counsel. The Phantom Duke came in while she ate, found her picking apart a roasted chicken bare-handed, licking at the salt.

“Sit,” she commanded.

Olake settled himself, groaning, across from her. “Winter has ruined your Incrastic manners.” He stripped his gloves and scanned the tent with practiced caution. “Or perhaps it was Tain Hu that made you feral.”

“Duchess Vultjag's decorum needs no description.” That made him smile. She cracked a thigh bone. “I wonder if my winter tried me as deeply as yours.”

“The scurvied wilderness or the Treatymont abattoir? Hard to know.” He closed his eyes and wound his cloak tighter. “I had an ear on every wall and an eye in every lamp. And I watched it all undone.” Here, like strangled punctuation, the sound of his hissing laugh. “You should have seen the streets this spring. Blood in the meltwater.”

Baru set the two broken pieces of bone down and licked marrow from her teeth. “Did you order the death of Muire Lo?”

Xate Olake opened his eyes a little. In the dark his blue-slit gaze colored like a bruise. “The Masquerade battle plan I brought. Only Yawa and I can read the code it's written in. Remember that.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It's a reminder, child. I've played games of blood for a long, long time. I know how to keep myself valuable.”

She stripped the meat from a wing. “If you and your sister killed Muire Lo, then you want me to believe that it was necessary.”

Xate Olake gave a weary sigh. “Forget the dead.”

“I will keep my own accounts.”

“I said
forget him
!” Olake's roar made her start, and she snapped the wing between her fists. “I killed him, or I didn't, and it was necessary, or it wasn't. The boy's life doesn't matter now. If you cannot win the Midlands, Cattlson's attack on the River Inirein will succeed, and his troops will have a highway into the heart of rebel territory. That harbor at Welthony where you drowned so many marines? It will be flooded by thousands more. Marching up on us like angry revenants. Aurdwynn hangs in the balance.”

“The Inirein. Interesting.” She sat in thought for a moment, moving pieces across her mental map. “That's his plan? He'll put all his strength east, to take the river?”