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Back The Monster Baru Cormorant Save as PDF
Chapters (49)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Map
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prelude
  7. Act One: The Fall of the Elided Keep
  8. 1. In the Ruin of Them
  9. 2. Incarnation
  10. Interlude: The War Paper
  11. 3. The Lever
  12. 4. Neath the Dead Dog’s Tongue
  13. 5. The End of History
  14. 6. The Lightning in the East
  15. A Story About Ash 1
  16. 7. Hesychast, Whose Flesh Is a Temple
  17. 8. Dinner, Destiny …
  18. 9. … and Durance
  19. 10. The Killing Woman
  20. Interlude: RNS Sulane
  21. Interlude: Admiralty War Plot
  22. Act Two: The Fall of the Llosydanes
  23. 11. Scytales and Shao Lune
  24. 12. The Llosydanes
  25. 13. Baru’s Dates
  26. A Story About Ash 2
  27. 14. Is the Oath Kept?
  28. 15. If I Tallied My Life Today
  29. 16. Tau-indi
  30. 17. The Mask Beneath the Mesa
  31. Interlude: The Llosydanes
  32. Interlude: The Mansion Hussacht
  33. Act Three: The Fall of Kyprananoke
  34. 18. Metagames
  35. 19. Cheetah
  36. 20. Glass Pierces Cheek
  37. A Story About Ash 3
  38. 21. The Map Entire
  39. 22. Baru in the Bilge
  40. A Story About Ash 4
  41. 23. The Pithing Needle
  42. 24. Iraji
  43. 25. The Embassy
  44. 26. The Black Emmenia
  45. Eternal
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. Books by Seth Dickinson
  48. About the Author
  49. Newsletter Sign-up

“She was a wonder, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Baru said, with dead despair.

“Hm,” Xe said. “I think I may sense the problem.”

16. Tau-indi

16

TAU-INDI

I’D be fucked bareback in a pen of gonorrhetic pigs before I let Baru steal my home.

The gall of her. The bilious clotted gall. Ordering her pale little stooge back to Vultjag to seize control of the North! All she’d had to do was let Heingyl Ri give the pardons, trust Heingyl Ri to care for Vultjag and the others, but no, no, Baru had to have them for herself.

Baru might be a vicious narrow-minded weasel but she had a certain insight, didn’t she? If, in the spirit of my career as a hygienist, Aurdwynn could be imagined as a gigantic cunt (having midwifed most of my life I tended to think the nation and the organ shared a certain perverse resilience) then the coastal south was the happening end where all the business was conducted. But the north was the potential, the fallow womb, and Baru wanted to get her child in there first.

She knew what I was up to. Somehow she knew. And she was moving to stop me. I would need to write Heingyl Ri as soon as I could, and urge her to mind her security: Baru’s assassins would be at her already.

I’d been in a foul mood since Baru left me at the World Telescope, and doubly foul since that limp prick in the plaza tried to hang me with his cock-grip hands. But as soon as Baru began to move openly against me, I felt much better. I’d tidied away the whole mess of Baru at last. No more uncertainty. Hesychast was right about her, she had been irreparably compromised by Farrier’s secret process, and therefore she was an enemy of Aurdwynn’s freedom and had to be treated as such. My thoughts of befriending and tutoring her were easily dismissed. She was entirely wrapped up in her own ambitions, and would never accept me.

So I moved ahead with my other plan for Baru.

The enemies of kings are powerful prizes, my friends. If you know anything about the Stakhieczi, know that they do not like their kings. A Necessary King may be elected in times of need, but at his first sign of weakness he is unmade again.

The man who ruled the Wintercrests knew he had erred terribly by offering his hand and his armies to Baru, only to be betrayed. Now he looked a fool, dishonored and weak—

—and if he wanted his honor back, there was only one way to get it.

I would give him that honor. And in exchange he would give me my fulfillment.