The Traitor Baru Cormorant (23 page)

And it would be perfect, wouldn't it? It would be exactly what she needed.

She stripped her left glove the rest of the way off and threw it on the table. “To first blood,” she said, loud enough for the whole longhouse to hear. “For the honor of Taranoke, my home, which you have insulted. You may name a second. I stand for myself.”

He stood stiffly, gaze locked, incredulous. “Last chance,” he said, meaning, she was sure,
before I go to the Jurispotence, and tell her you are a tribadist.

She crossed her arms and stood there in her white gown, the chained purse at her side, waiting for him to answer the glove.

“Don't be hysterical,” he said, although his heart was not behind the insult, although he looked as if he wanted to apologize. Everything was theater now. “Think of what Xate Yawa did to Ffare Tanifel.”

It was a misstep even though it chilled her. “And you
dare
imply I am treasonous as well? You, who conspired to print our currency for the rebellion?” She smiled haughtily—it did not come so hard. “You who've been planning another courtship under my nose, as if you want an old-blood aristocrat more than a merit-tested savant?”

Their audience sat rapt. Baru, suddenly stage-frightened, felt the onset of a tremble. But she held herself still, thinking: he cannot refuse now. I have made this about his honor. If he walks away he will leave my story unchallenged.

And he needed his honor to show Duke Heingyl.

Bel Latheman picked up the glove, his jaw hard. “You made me fire my favorite secretary,” he said, as if unable, even now, to stop playing his part as her neglected lover. “You never could let me have my way.”

*   *   *

B
ARU
began to tremble during the long climb up her tower, emptied for the night. “You
can
control yourself,” she hissed, leaning against the stone centerpole, the fabric of her gloves creaking as she balled her fists. “That's part of your job.
Control
.”

What had she done? What could have driven her to such hasty, unsubtle action? A
duel
? She'd never used a blade in anger—and that aside, it would be every bit the spectacle she'd envisioned, which meant that neither Xate Yawa nor Cattlson could ignore it. She'd kept herself cloaked in dull, diligent, loyal work for three years. She could have gone forward into this mad gambit carefully, deliberately, every maneuver subtle and well-planned.

Instead she'd risen to Latheman's bait.

What if he'd been put up to it? What if he were Xate Yawa's creature?

She locked the doors to her office and quarters, cursing her hands, and sat to pour herself wine with meticulous precision, spilling not one drop. It went down bitter and she began to pour again, humming to herself, a star-spotting song that must have come from mother Pinion or some aunt or their whole extended family gathered on the mountain to draw new constellations in the old stars.

“It's poisoned,” said a voice from her bathroom.

She'd read in
Manual of the Somatic Mind
that the character of a man could be divined from how he startled—toward a door, toward a weapon, or toward nothing, a prey animal's petrified freeze. Whether it was the wine or all the dreams she'd had of a moment like this, she only drew a sharp breath and set the wineglass down.

She discovered that she could still think through her fear. He would have killed her already if he wanted to. He wouldn't have revealed the poison if he meant for it to work. She was safe.

Unless this was an act of cruelty rather than calculation. Unless he was here to harm before he killed.

“Come out,” she said, sliding her chair back, making ready to stand.

The man had Xate Yawa's blue eyes but more gray in his hair, in his long beard. He wore common-cut boots and tunic, deerskin and wool, and his teeth were commoner-rough. She checked his hands and belt and found him unarmed.

She recognized him. From where?

“Well,” he said, “here I am. Your secretary made an awful racket trying to find me. So I came.”

She stood slowly, measuring the distance between herself, the man, and the place where her scabbard hung. “Where's Muire Lo?”

“Perfectly safe. Wore himself out barking and yapping all day. But you're right to be afraid.” He approached her table as she retreated, keeping the space between them open. “Your tower guards are unreliable. You should have had all the locks changed. What I've found to be the case with you technocrats”—he took up her wineglass and sniffed at it—“is that you respect subtlety overmuch. You obsess over whispers and rumors and intangible marks of authority, and fail to consider what will happen when a man with a knife breaks into your rooms and cuts your throat. Aurdwynn is not civilized enough for subtlety.”

“I half expected such a man,” she said. Her scabbard was only a little ways away. “Never a duke, though. What drives you to these theatrics, Xate Olake?”

“You have, of course. Young folk respect theater more than death.” He drank from her glass, frowning and sniffing. “Ah. I believe I overdid the dose. Let's be quick, then. Why did you call for me? The city knows I'm a recluse. Why seek me out now?”

Had her heart just skipped a beat? Was that pain in her stomach just a cramp, her clammy palms just nerves? “How do I earn the antidote?”

“With the truth.” He drummed impatiently on the table. “Do I look like a man with a great deal of time? Why did you call for me?”

She drew a breath and took the leap. He had no pen and no parchment, could hardly hope to indict her by written record. But his sister was Xate Yawa, and if she wanted, she would find a way to make the charge stick.

These could be the words that drowned her, as Xate Yawa had drowned Ffare Tanifel.

“You killed Su Olonori,” she guessed, “in order to conceal Tain Hu's counterfeiting plot. But I discovered that plot and destroyed it.”

There were surgeons in the Masquerade who cut away the vocal cords of dogs so they couldn't howl. They made for terrifying guards—silent and maddened. Xate Olake's dry aspirated laugh brought them to mind. “I suppose that
is
technically the truth. But it doesn't answer my question. Why have you been loaning gold to ducal commoners? Why have you alienated Governor Cattlson, whose favor could still send you on to Falcrest and a higher station? Why did you call for me?”

“I've considered rebellion,” she said, “and because you're the rebel spymaster, I needed you as an ally.”

“And now that you've told me that,” Xate Olake said softly, “I will tell Xate Yawa, and she'll have you boiled alive. They'll keep your skin for study.”

“Xate Yawa won't touch me.” Oh, that bluff of confidence, confidence she desperately wanted to feel. “She wants a free Aurdwynn—the Masquerade is only an instrument to her, and she helped crush the Fools' Rebellion only because it was doomed. She's playing her role so that she has power enough to make a difference when the moment comes. I am that moment.”

“Perhaps you ascribe too much patriotism to my dear sister. Perhaps she'll back the sure victor, rebel or Masquerade.”

“I can
make
your stillborn rebellion the sure victor.”

“Ffare Tanifel struck the same bargain. But she overstepped, playing her pieces too clearly and too soon, and made her treason obvious even to Cattlson. My sister had no choice but to try Tanifel and issue a death sentence in order to protect herself.” Xate Olake steepled his hands. “Why would you do better?”

“I can rally the people and the dukes—”

Again that harsh silent laugh. Again that sense that something within her had skipped a measure. “You'll
rally
them. Do you know the Traitor's Qualm?”

“No,” she admitted.

“At least you're honest. Well. I devised it in the model of those Incrastic qualms you people are so fond of. It killed the Fools' Rebellion, and it goes like this. If you are a duke in Aurdwynn and you see an insurrection rising, you face a choice.” He took another sip of poisoned wine. “You cast your lot with the rebellion, or with the loyalists. You are ruined if your side fails. You hold your position, maybe even benefit, if your side wins. But the thing about rebellions is that they involve a great deal of treason, mm? The traitors cannot condemn treason. So the safest bet is to remain a loyalist at first, and then switch sides if the traitors seem certain to win, pretending you're terribly clever and have been hampering the loyalists from within. You see the difficulty?”

Even here with this man in her quarters and poison in her veins, she could not resist a puzzle. “You gather dukes to your cause through success, but you can't score any success without the backing of dukes. If the rebellion doesn't begin with a decisive and spectacular victory, no one will gamble on it. It gutters out.”

“Good. I always wondered if those Masquerade schools taught anything real.” He nodded and stroked his beard as if they were carrying on this conversation in a tufa-walled classroom. “No rebellion can succeed without winning over the cautious and the self-interested. The zealous rebels and firm loyalists must attract the middle. Given that the Masquerade is the status quo, and a seemingly insurmountable one at that, the loyalists have quite an advantage.”

“The people are ready,” she insisted, though against his age and confidence it felt so hollow. “There is such outrage—”

“The people cannot make use of their outrage. I should know: I was commonborn, and my sister and I clawed our way into nobility only by playing the Masquerade against the rebels. No, we need dukes, and the dukes are trapped in the Traitor's Qualm. It is too soon.” He sighed heavily. “What you did to the fiat note helped us, certainly. But conditions have changed since Tain Hu's gambit. The dukes are afraid of serf rebellion, landlord mutiny, bankruptcy and winter, not the Masquerade. We must allow the deadwood to build up for another decade before we strike a spark.”

They have renamed my home, she wanted to shout. They have banned the marriage of fathers and made Iriad into a shipyard. And you would have me wait a decade?

“You've no choice,” she said, thin-lipped. She saw Xate Olake's eyes glow in the candlelight as he looked up sharply. “I've committed. I'll be fighting a duel with Principal Factor Bel Latheman in the next few weeks, and I've made it into a matter of national honor. It's the perfect moment to declare myself.”

“My sister will prevent it. Duels are a judicial tradition, and she has power over the Judiciary. You'll never have your stage.” Xate Olake stood, shrugging, and finished the rest of the wine. “Bide your time, child. We'll signal you if we want you, and destroy you if you move against us. Perhaps my sister and I won't live to see the rebellion. But Tain Hu and the others are young, and can afford to wait. The Fools' Rebellion was well-named. We will not see Aurdwynn ruined by an uprising that cannot win quickly and with decision.”

She took up her scabbard from its hook on the wall. “The antidote,” she said. “Now. Or I'll kill you as an intruder in my home, and take my risks with the poison.”

Xate Olake, at the door now, tutted softly. “I counsel patience and control,” he said. “Perhaps I've poisoned you. Perhaps not. But if I have, it will be a slow variety. And if you want to survive it, Baru Cormorant, you will make yourself
worth
an antidote.”

 

13

B
ARU
roused Muire Lo and together they wrote orders to change the guards and the locks. She permitted him a few details. “Slow poison?” He took the news with alarm, of course, but practiced familiarity, too. “The dose was low? We should screen your food and drink. He might have agents in the kitchens.”

“It might be a bluff.” Her life was already full of things that could kill her any day. “Take measures, Lo. I'm going to sleep.”

If Xate Olake had poisoned her, it was a gentle admixture. She slept easy, woke fresh, and took breakfast at her desk, thinking intently about Bel Latheman, duels, taxes, the Traitor's Qualm, and—with less purpose, and more anger—that damnable word
Sousward
.

So long since father Salm had gone. So long since she'd wondered exactly who had done it, and how. Had he been killed? Likely. Could the murderer—murderers?—be an officer now, a garrison commander, a town watchman? Could mother Pinion have tracked him down over the years? Could they be stalking each other now, looking for an opening, a moment to use the boarding saber or the man-killing spear?

Your daughter is one of us,
he might taunt.
She serves in Aurdwynn. Very poorly.

In the waiting room Muire Lo began to shout.

Baru had an instant to compose herself before Cattlson burst in, wolf's head cap snarling, trailing armored garrison troops and a slim man whose milky skin barely showed past mask and glove. “Cormorant!” the governor roared. “You've done
enough
!”

“Your Excellence.” She made herself nod and smile, though the ranks of armed guard set her heart racing. What did he know? What
could
he know? Had Bel Latheman gone to him? “Is there some concern?”

Cattlson waved his guard back and marched down the length of her office in a dull thunder of hobnail on rug. The pale man shadowed him noiselessly. “A
duel
?” Cattlson roared. “With your own
banker
? And the first I hear of it is from Duke Heingyl, who tells me everyone in the city, every peasant and franklin between here and Haraerod, has already started making wagers?”

“He insulted my honor,” Baru said, fighting the urge to stand (it would only make her feel shorter than Cattlson). “I had no choice.”

“
Your
honor? Tax season is almost on us, and you're making a theater out of your affairs! If you cared about your
honor
you'd have some mind to overturning the reputation of Taranoki women!” He slammed his fists on her desk. “You are an embarrassment to my government, a catastrophe for our rule—”