TAIN Shir will force Baru Cormorant to kill Aminata or to kill herself.
She will compel Baru Cormorant to govern herself by the laws with which she governs others. As Baru destroyed Tain Hu for her own benefit so Tain Shir will compel Baru to destroy all that she pretends to love for the sake of all that she professes to want. Until Baru has gained everything and possesses nothing at all. Or until Baru finds one thing in all existence that she values more than her own power.
Tain Shir will teach her thus.
When Shir began this hunt she hoped to find a particle of redemption in Tain Hu’s rescue, but Tain Hu is dead and that particle is now beyond Shir’s reach. Each moment she annihilates herself. Each moment she destroys all that she is and yet the need to avenge her cousin re-forms from the nothingness as if it is now axiomatic to the universe like gravity or the first winter frost.
Tain Shir feels neither hope nor regret. She knows only purpose and the wilderness of possibilities that she might traverse to achieve that purpose.
Before her stands one of those possibilities.
“Why did you take my prisoners?” Aminata intercepts her on Sulane’s middeck. “Captain Nullsin just flashed it over—you had Tain Hu’s household loaded onto an assault boat. Why?”
She brushes past. Aminata chases after her. “Those are my prisoners! They’re under my protection!”
There is no protection.
“You don’t believe me?” Aminata follows Shir down into Sulane’s belly, still shouting. “I’ve got a letter that’ll prove it. Those people are my charge. Not yours, Tain Shir. That’s your name, isn’t it? Look, I have a letter from one of your relatives! Look!”
Shir sits on the chest at the foot of her sleeping pallet and goes back to work. She is carving a stone weight for the arm of her atlatl, to improve the quality and silence of its throw.
“Letters aren’t for me,” she says.
Aminata, strong and high-browed, would catch Shir’s eye if she were not so pricklingly nervous. Shir watches her hand as she offers the letter. One nervous flinch. But only one. “This letter is. It’s addressed to me, but you need to read it. I mean it. It’s for you.”
Shir works her chisel’s point against the limestone and cracks a flake away.
“Listen,” Aminata snaps, “I have a duty here. Do you understand that? We all have a duty to uphold the lawful orders of our superiors. But we also have a responsibility”—she hesitates—“to … examine those orders critically … when they go against the good of the Republic.”
Shir does not acknowledge the existence of any republic or any good that might accrue to it. But she does acknowledge the existence of dutiful young women who almost understand the meaninglessness of the laws that bind them. “What orders do you doubt?”
Aminata leans in to mutter, “Killing Baru before we understand what she’s doing here is wrong—”
Shir scoops a dart with the atlatl’s forked tip and whirls to put the dart between Aminata’s legs at better than a hundred miles an hour. The steel-tipped fishing spear pierces even deeper into the wood than it would Aminata’s bone.
“That’s real,” she tells the Oriati girl. “Only that. Duty? Law? The men who control you don’t have any duties. The men who control you don’t obey any laws. They act. Then they tell you that it’s your duty to obey.”
Aminata flinches. Most people flinch when they look at Tain Shir, because they see nothing and fill it with their own fears.
“Tain Hu believed in duty,” Aminata says, softly.
“Tain Hu died.”
“Not without leaving a testament.” She brandishes the letter again. “Read it, damn you. Or I’ll tell Ormsment to deny you the marines you want. How are you going to get Baru then?”
Shir requires Aminata herself more than she requires the marines. So she takes the letter and reads it.
To the Oriati Lieutenant who I know is close to my lord, I write this by the mercy of my captor, who hast permitted me a final inscribtion on the eve of the voyage which I hope will end in my death.…
Hu’s Aphalone writing is poor. Shir reads on. The line about “emotional hemorrhoid” makes her laugh aloud. Aminata jerks in surprise.
Please see to the well-being of my lord even when she will not. Please ensure that she is not alone even when she convinces you that she needs no one (she is lying). Please do not abandon her even when she makes herself wholly intolerable.
Tain Hu loved Baru Cormorant.
“This says nothing about Baru,” Shir tells the woman who believes she was Baru’s friend. “This letter is only a testament to the quality of Tain Hu.”
“It names me protector of Tain Hu’s legacy.” Aminata does not flinch from her eyes this time, though the galvanic blue of Shir’s irises is alien to anyone born south of Aurdwynn. “So your sister’s house is my responsibility. The people you’re stuffing into that assault boat to use as leverage against Baru are my duty. You can’t just steal them for—”
“Cousin’s house,” Shir corrects, being the child of Hu’s aunt Ko.
“Whatever! Don’t we owe it to your dead cousin to consider the possibility that Baru needs our help? Shouldn’t we at least give her a chance to tell her side before we…” She looks over her shoulder again, afraid not just of Ormsment but of every last sailor on this ship, all of whom chose death and exile for a chance to kill Baru. “Hand her over to Ormsment for execution? I asked Ormsment if Baru would get a fair trial. I know she was lying.”
“You know how flag officers lie, now?” Shir says, teasing her. She decides that she enjoys the Oriati woman. She needs to be stripped of her beliefs, as most do. But then she could be so exquisitely violent.
“I’ve seen Samne Maroyad smash up her office and stub out a cigarette on my hand,” Aminata snaps, “so I’m very familiar with the ways flag officers behave under stress, thank you.”
Shir does not particularly know who Maroyad might be. Some admiral. Aminata’s commander before she came here. “Tain Hu is dead. I came to avenge her. How she died doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does! This letter says your cousin wanted to die! She gave her life for Baru!”
“People can be made to want things. The way Baru was made to want to serve Farrier.”
“Then we can save her from Farrier,” Aminata says, which is so foolish Shir laughs in delight, her eyes wide, her smile wider. Aminata, recoiling, nearly trips over the spear shaft between her feet.
“I was once Farrier’s creature,” Shir tells her. “I escaped him. There is only one way to escape the masters of manipulation.”
“What’s that?”
“Chaos.” Shir stands and grips Hu’s letter in her two fists. “When everything is as violent and disordered as the world in its primal state, nothing remains for the master to manipulate. Man may enslave man. But never will he ever master fire. If you want freedom, be as fire.”
She moves to tear the letter apart.
“Stop!” Aminata cries. “Stop, stop, don’t do that!”
She lunges for the letter. Shir catches her by the lapels of her uniform reds and swings her by her own momentum to slam down onto the pallet beneath her. The wood pumps her breath out of her as hot wet wind across Shir’s face. How many times she’s felt that last startled breath before opening a throat.
“Fuck you!” Aminata hisses, struggling, trying still not to draw attention. As if anyone on Sulane would be surprised by Tain Shir’s rage.
“Would you bet your life that Baru’s your friend?” Shir asks that defiant face. “Would you wager everything that she really cares for you?”
Aminata’s throat flutters against Shir’s knuckles. “I have a duty to discover the truth.”
So it will be duty until the end. A shame.
Shir tightens her grip. Shir smiles.
“Let’s help Baru show us the truth,” she says. “We will go to Eternal now. It is a good place for teaching.”
Aminata blinks warily. “What’s Eternal?”
“The Cancrioth ship.”
“The what?”
“I found it. I told Ormsment where to find it. She believes it will vindicate her.” It will not. The Throne will never allow her to survive her betrayal. Control is paramount. “Ormsment will assault Eternal and bring home the Cancrioth to Falcrest to justify her mutiny.”
The cries of the sailing-master sound on the weather deck above. Sulane heels as she turns south, toward the ruined volcano. Deckhands roll mines to the stern as a tactical clerk carefully marks down the position of each drop, so the field can be recovered.
“The Cancrioth!” Aminata gasps in excitement. “I knew it! Baru’s looking for the Cancrioth!”
Poor Aminata. She clings to this letter because it allows her to believe that Baru never betrayed Tain Hu. And if she didn’t betray Hu, then perhaps she never betrayed Aminata.
Shir saw them together, once and only once, when they snuck out of the school at Iriad. Aminata tall and lanky and sailor-smooth, drawling stories to Baru from the side of her mouth. And Baru perched beside her on a stone on the harbor cliffs, dark-eyed, looking up intently at Aminata’s face, taking every word and biting it like a coin. When Baru laughed it was like flash through thundercloud.
Baru will betray Aminata tonight. When Shir forces Baru to choose between Aminata’s life and her own. Baru will choose herself. And choose again, an endless sacrifice, each one justified by the accumulation of its priors. It will not stop until Shir forces Baru to sacrifice her own father. And perhaps not even then.
“YOU’LL regret not making a bargain with the Eye,” the Womb said. “The Eye just wants to find Abdu and go home. The Brain will extract a price.”
“You’re afraid of her,” Baru suggested, cheerily. That made her even more excited to meet this Brain.
“You certainly should be.”
“It’ll be all right,” Baru assured her. She felt much better now, after the medicine Shao had given her. “I’m an agent of the Emperor Itself, Miss Womb. To defy me is to defy the entire Imperial Republic. Isn’t there anyone else on this ship?”
The Womb led Baru forward along a dark causeway toward the ship’s bow. “It’s night. The crew’s asleep.”
Baru thought they must be sailing badly undercrewed, and she was confident in her assessment. Shao Lune’s marvelous mason dust had her feeling like the old days again, like bright autumn mornings in Treatymont, waking up to a draft under the door and a saber-blade of sunlight through the window, Muire Lo setting out coffee on her desk downstairs. Snorting mason dust was better than drinking coffee for the first time! Yawa must have known all along that it was a treatment for Baru’s dark moods—but Yawa wanted her weak.
Well, no more! By the time Yawa blundered her way to Eternal, Baru would have a pact with the Cancrioth, the promise of Oriati civil war for Cairdine Farrier … and a vial of festering blood in her pocket.
“So this Brain woman shot up Tau’s clipper?”
The Womb walked more slowly than Baru, and had to rush occasionally to catch up. “She was the one who insisted we arm the ship. She divided the crew during the voyage.”
“How?”
“Sermons. Her faction controls the ship’s prow, the orlop lockers, the chartroom, and the navigation instruments.”
So she has the rutterbook, Baru thought.
“She appeals to the vengeful and the angry.” The Womb sighed. “And there are more and more of those the farther we stray from home. Why are you humming?”
“Sorry,” Baru said, turning slow circles as she walked. “D’you reckon I could buy some of this iroko wood?”
“No. It comes from the western Oriati coast, along the Black Tea Ocean. Your ships can’t sail there. Segu controls the strait from the Ashen Sea.”
“Perhaps we could arrange some kind of conditional passage? A few ships on a limited basis?”
“Trade with Falcrest?” The Womb snorted. “Please.”
“Shame,” Baru said, still grinning. What a wonderful remedy this dust was! “It’s very nice wood.”
They climbed a stairwell that wrapped around the huge cavity of a cargo hoist. Baru stopped at each landing to stare, and to imagine Eternal unloading goods at the Crane Gallery in Falcrest. The Womb tugged her irritably onward. “What’s gotten into you? You’re sweating.”
“My mind is like a furnace,” Baru said, and tapped her temple winningly. The cold uranium chime swayed at her neck.
The curled cuttlefish of the Womb’s hands flared in her sleeves. “Did you get into something from the pharmacopeia?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Baru. Stop.” The Womb barked it with such force that Baru braced herself on the railing, very rationally afraid she might be blown down into the cargo hoist. “You must persuade the Brain to act, do you understand? You must convince her to abandon her madness here and sail. If we die, I’ll be sure you die with us.”
“What madness keeps her here, specifically?” Baru inquired.
“Does it matter? Dreams of prophecy and change. Dreams of war.” The Womb’s eyes filled with exhaustion. “Her line … they lose themselves in wild ideas. When the growth develops too far, they become erratic. Maybe she’s gone malumin.”
“Malumin?”
“I don’t know the Aphalone word.”
Baru leaned against the corridor wall to get her breath. Her heart was hungry, and she kept coming up short on air. Doubtless her mind was sucking it all down. “Would Abdumasi Abd be as valuable to her as he was to the Eye?”
The Womb looked at her sharply. “You’re ready to offer him, now?”
“Of course.” If it made Tau sad, well, they could take some mason dust and feel better.
“I don’t know. It’s very hard to know her.” The Womb paused on a landing to catch her breath. “She thinks, Baru. She thinks and thinks and thinks. Among the people of Abattai, of my line … to us, Incrisiath is the Unborn One.”
“Why?”
“Because her mind is like a child in the womb. Full of possibility. But curled up on itself, unseeing. All the Brains see visions and portents, and they struggle against the pull of the Door in the East, the temptation to involute their consciousness and abandon reality for what lies within. This Brain … has fought harder than most to remain in our world. She wants to make her visions real.” The Womb straightened, breathed, and tugged her cassock down. “But she wouldn’t have come on this expedition if she didn’t care about Abd. And Abd’s line, Undionash, is a natural ally of Incrisiath. Surely the Brain wants him safe.…”
“So she’ll negotiate?”
“She’d better.” The Womb swore in Maulmake, a sound like a bobcat. “This damn book-taught crew! No discipline. No proper captain. I told them we should’ve hired mercenaries.”
“You use mercenaries?”
“Here and there. When there are no better ways.”
“And you don’t have … problems keeping their loyalty?”
The Womb laughed, and took the bait. “No. No, we do not.”
So the Cancrioth were rich. Intriguing.
THEY came abovedecks, where the green wormlight from the caldera walls washed out the stars. Baru stared up into the rigging overhead, thick as jungle canopy, awestruck by its complexity.
“Maybe you are immortal. It must take a hundred years to learn how to sail this.…”
“Baru,” the Womb said.
“Is it an automaton, somehow? Are there gears, pulleys, levers you can pull to make the sails work—or is it all done by hand? Do you have some special line of cancer suited to crawling around on the tops—or monkeys? Apes? Jungle apes, trained to sail—”
“Baru!”
“What!” Baru snapped.
And saw the crew.
Ranks and ranks of them. They were all Oriati. But they were not the brisk smiling traders Baru remembered from Taranoke, nor the waistcoated civil servants of Falcrest’s federated Oriati, nor the Jackal grenadiers with their dashing shoulder flags. They were certainly not like Tau-indi’s golden Cheetah crew in their fine clean uniforms. If all those kinds of Oriati had gathered here, they would not have filled a single file of this crowd, this parliament of human variety.
They were so ecstatically different as to defy any category larger than the individual. Sweaty albinos with big straw hats, women with vitiligo spots like you might see in eastern Falcrest around Grendlake. Loinclothed divers in belts of cork, able sailors with spare lines knotted up their arms, navigators whose long queues fell halfway to their trousers. Shaven-headed riggers. Carpenters in turbans and gunners with gauged ears and missing fingers. Their eyes contained all the shapes Baru knew—the upturned and lightly folded Maia, the level and crisply folded Falcresti, the round Stakhi, the wide-spaced classical Oriati—and many more besides. Some of them wore cassocks like the Womb, but others were dressed in sailor slops and loose vests, or kept their own taboos: one man wore only work gloves and a bright orange penis gourd.
Some had split brows and swollen lips. They’d been brawling down below, before the Womb brokered her peace.
“Not a word,” the Womb whispered. “They know you’re not part of the crew. If they hear Aphalone in your accent…”
“Hello!” Baru called, in the Urunoki of her childhood, daring herself to keep any hint of Falcrest’s trade language from the sound. “Do any of you know my tongue?”
“What did you say?” the Womb hissed.
“I just said hello. They won’t kill me for hello, will they?”
“They might kill you just for seeing their faces, Baru! Some of them have lives to go back to in the mbo—”
“This isn’t a warship at all, is it?” Baru stared in wonder. So many different people in one place reminded her of Iriad market days, cooked pineapple juice stinging her lips, the last season before the red sails. “These people aren’t soldiers.”
A very small man, not much more than four feet tall, perfectly proportionate, what Falcrest would have called a pygmy (Baru did not know a better name), came forward from the ranks. “Baru Cormorant. The Brain will see you, if you will help her with her chores.”
“What chores?”
“She is slaughtering the fattening hogs.” He beckoned with his small hand. “She will show you what to do. She prefers to teach.”