The Traitor Baru Cormorant
Seth Dickinson
Tom Doherty Associates
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Created by Nic de Vera – Last synced August 6, 2020
Epigraph
A PROMISE This is the truth. You will know because it hurts.
November 15, 2017
12
Accountant
TRADE season
November 15, 2017
14
the empire wind.
November 15, 2017
14
The Masquerade
November 15, 2017
14
Taranoke
November 15, 2017
14
her fathers took Baru down to the beach
November 15, 2017
14
Father Salm
November 15, 2017
14
Father Solit
November 15, 2017
14
Each man wore his hair braided, Solit’s burnt short for the smithy, Salm’s an elaborate waist-length fall—for glory in the killing circle, against the plainsmen.
November 15, 2017
14
her mother and fathers, a huntress and a blacksmith and a shield-bearer.
November 15, 2017
15
She looked that word up too, hoping to understand it, as understanding gave her power over things.
November 15, 2017
15
A child with a spyglass might, if she were too curious for her own good and too poor a daughter to attend to her work, climb the volcano and watch their proceedings all day long.
November 18, 2017
19
How extraordinarily satisfying to be the daughter of Salm the shield-bearer and Pinion the huntress, foremost among the harborside champions.
November 18, 2017
23
“Your help is a fishhook.”
all help is
November 18, 2017
24
I must learn why this happened to Salm, Baru thought. I must understand it, so I can stop it from ever happening again. I will not cry. I will understand. This was Baru Cormorant’s first lesson in causality.
November 18, 2017
27
“If they can be teachers,” Baru asked, “then I can be one, too? I can go to another land and make little girls stop reading at unjustly early hours?”
November 18, 2017
28
He was like Pinion or Solit in his love of her sharpest thoughts. But he was like lost Salm in another way, in the way he relished Baru’s effrontery, her willingness to reach out and ask or take.
November 18, 2017
29
Perhaps the death of fathers could be outlawed. Perhaps doctrines could be rewritten. “I want to be powerful,” she said.
November 18, 2017
29
“You brought this with you!” And he looked at her with open eyes, the bone of his heavy brow a bastion above, the flesh of his face wealthy below, and in those eyes she glimpsed an imperium, a mechanism of rule building itself from the work of so many million hands. Remorseless not out of cruelty or hate but because it was too vast and too set on its destiny to care for the small tragedies of its growth. She saw this not merely in the shape of his eyes and the flatness of his regard, but in what they recalled—things he had said and done suddenly understood. And she knew that Farrier had let her see this, as a warning, as a promise.
November 18, 2017
30
That’s not fair was a child’s protest, Baru reminded herself.
November 18, 2017
37
the murmured Metademe where they made special people of clarified purpose
November 18, 2017
40
You will never change anything with your hut and your little spear! They are too vast, and you understand too little! We cannot fight them from here!
November 18, 2017
43
She hated to trust these impressions: there seemed no reason for them to be true.
November 18, 2017
48
she had done such mighty work, work Baru had studied with respect—twenty years ago, as the common-born assassin of the old Duke Lachta, she’d ripped out the heart of the resistance and arranged her nation’s surrender to the Masquerade invaders.
November 18, 2017
59
a probe to test Baru’s vigilance.
November 18, 2017
60
She had already begun to cluck (just like her mother) at his hurt, had already prepared some reassuring blandishment, when she saw that his only response was a sage nod. She sat back in the seat and decided that her secretary had to be more competent and more dangerous than she’d assumed.
November 18, 2017
62
with her eyes closed behind the mask and her heart clotted shut. Just this one last moment of weakness. Just the one.
November 18, 2017
65
“Tain Hu,” she said. “Duchess Vultjag.”
November 18, 2017
67
I don’t want this! she almost shouted. I want Falcrest and telescopes, proofs of geometry and the fluorescence of certain sea life! I want to know the world, not these sordid little people in their shattered little land!
November 18, 2017
73
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.
November 18, 2017
74
Baru could not permit herself to feel sorry for the man. He was close to her, and weak. “
November 18, 2017
76
Baru could not be soft.
November 18, 2017
79
Without a strong arm and a sharp eye, Aurdwynn would throw her overboard and drown her.
November 18, 2017
80
Cairdine Farrier took a long drink of wine. “You know,” he said, swallowing thoughtfully, “I have a bet with my associate Hesychast.
November 18, 2017
84
Baru stamped on the image and the thought with silent, urgent efficiency.
November 18, 2017
85
I thought it’d all be complicated figures and simple duties, but it’s the opposite.
November 18, 2017
95
Aminata’s face became a geometric proof in bone and flesh,
geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
November 18, 2017
96
I was never very good at this in train—in taverns.”
hah, “in training”
November 18, 2017
100
“I am Baru Cormorant,” she protested, “accountant, and I earned my place by merit. I am a mark of nothing except myself.” “As long as you believe that is all you are, you will never be anything but a piece of the machine.”
November 18, 2017
121
So you came up here to unfuck the situation between these two?”
November 18, 2017
124
a passion, a want, and a powerful will fixed upon that want.
November 19, 2017
144
this was her weakness: drink, and the chance to pretend she lived in a warmer world
November 19, 2017
149
“The only way forward is through. From within.”
November 19, 2017
149
Warlord
“The steering committee. We keep our eyes on the horizon while Parliament squabbles over the wealth of empire.”
November 19, 2017
156
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.
November 19, 2017
167
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.
cute idea but pretty sure that wouldn’t work
November 19, 2017
169
She’s playing her role so that she has power enough to make a difference when the moment comes. I am that moment.”
November 19, 2017
169
Do you know the Traitor’s Qualm?
November 19, 2017
169
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.
November 19, 2017
170
we need dukes, and the dukes are trapped in the Traitor’s Qualm.
there it is, my prisoners dilemma
November 19, 2017
170
that damnable word Sousward.
November 19, 2017
172
every peasant and franklin
November 19, 2017
172
The pale man at Cattlson’s side, the man who was not by his uniform or conduct any sort of captain at all, nodded properly. Small muscles in his neck slithered against each other. “I have charged one of the Clarified with your personal safety,”
November 19, 2017
174
“I am not a man,” the Clarified said patiently. “I am an instrument, conditioned from birth by drug and bell. I must obey my purpose.”
unsullied, similarly foolish and limited program
November 19, 2017
176
This one’s word is “suspire.”
November 19, 2017
177
Hesychast: it meant one who makes a temple of the body.
November 19, 2017
178
“Judge me,” she said, instantly curious. A man of intellect, without ego or agenda of his own: how could she resist knowing what he saw? “Tell me what I am, so I can better serve.”
i exist to serve, up to a point. utility function not up for grabs
November 19, 2017
179
Your dedication to your work and the utilitarian nature of your few known social relationships indicates a useful degree of pragmatic instrumentalism, but also the risk of full-blown sociopathy.
November 19, 2017
179
“Your tactics are self-centered. You have forgotten that you are not the only player on the board, that inherent talent speaks for no more than experience, and that others around you seek to expand their authority and constrain yours. Your error is fundamental to the human psyche: you have allowed yourself to believe that others are mechanisms, static and solvable, whereas you are an agent.”
November 19, 2017
180
she’d dreamed of Taranoke filled with clockwork people, brilliant men and women who built beautiful things at her command and offered cogent truth without fear.
November 19, 2017
181
Baru tried to count her own breaths and factor the count. Primes at one (depending who you asked), two, three, five, seven—
November 19, 2017
192
I think you’ve realized that who you are will forever hold you back from what you deserve. Because I know you’re selfish, calculating, and farsighted, and when you find no way forward through the Falcresti maze, you’ll resort to tearing it down.
November 19, 2017
198
lining their streets with hired mummers whose job was simply to fill the air with Aphalone—long quotes from revolutionary manuals, ambient Incrasticism for the infants and the youth.
November 19, 2017
201
Vultjag, the thorn of the North.
November 19, 2017
205
“Praxis must come before philosophy.”
November 19, 2017
207
She wished for Muire Lo’s company, his shy pragmatism. She never should have taken him for granted.
November 19, 2017
209
“In our silence we exemplify Wydd, who gives us patience to endure. In our will to act we exemplify Himu, who drives us to war. In acting now, when the time has come, we exemplify Devena, the middle course, who tempers these extremes.”
November 19, 2017
210
I hope for freedom, and no more. I hope for freedom. I hope for freedom.”
take it then, claim it, and then defend it, protect it
November 19, 2017
211
AND so they began: the circle now a war council.
House of war
November 19, 2017
212
If you trust anything, trust in me. But give me what I need to do it.”
November 19, 2017
219
Muire Lo stepped forward, eyes downcast. He wore his secretarial coat buttoned to the throat and carried a small folio of loose papers in mindless disarray. At once Baru put her heart in ice.
November 19, 2017
225
Baru watched, not horrified, thrilled on some fundamental level to witness at last the Navy Burn, the Masquerade’s chemical edge.
greek fire, napalm
November 19, 2017
229
You have what I want, foster brother: a name that makes men think of conviction. I want that class of name.
November 19, 2017
243
Truth does not need a mask.
November 19, 2017
243
If they cross the Midlands and come up into the vales and the woods, into the land we know like our fathers’ hands, struggling through the snows, we kill them.
November 20, 2017
255
The other side of the Qualm. If we seem too strong too soon, we’ll force the undecided dukes into a choice. And they will choose the surer bet.
November 20, 2017
256
The tests would never end.
November 20, 2017
257
From the oil-drenched temples in Treatymont the ilykari sent the word out through the quietly faithful, to every vale and peak, every granary and olive field and trapper’s post: justice comes from a fairer hand.
November 20, 2017
258
at a secret henge in high cold duchy Lyxaxu, where the Student-Berserkers grew their strains of mason leaf and studied philosophies of fearless death.
November 20, 2017
259
Erebog, old foe: You taught me cunning. You disciplined my errors. Above all else I value a rigorous teacher, and above all others I know your strength. Now the time for lessons is over. I want you as an ally.
November 20, 2017
259
ykari Himu, whose virtues included spring, birth, genius, leadership, war, hemorrhagic diseases, and cancer, all the forms of energy and excess, including the hot open water of the Ashen Sea and the storms it spawned.
November 20, 2017
262
ykari Himu, whose virtues included spring, birth, genius, leadership, war, hemorrhagic diseases, and cancer, all the forms of energy and excess, including the hot open water of the Ashen Sea and the storms it spawned.
energy
November 20, 2017
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That man watched his neighbor and student, his boorish venal ill-read goat of a friend, grow wealthy and fat by being very selfish indeed. Can you imagine how that felt? To counsel a man out of boyhood, only to see him surpass you? To see his people prosper while yours wept and ate their rags?” The wind fell off. Baru spoke softly, to show respect for the confidence Lyxaxu offered. “Perhaps it means you counseled him well.”
pile of utility, proof of correctness
November 20, 2017
266
“It was my turn to learn a lesson from Oathsfire. No philosophy will feed my daughters. No common good will buy grain for my serfs.”
November 20, 2017
267
“Play the others as you must. Lead Oathsfire and Unuxekome around by their dreams of dynasty. Feed the Xates with blood and poison to keep their teeth from your neck. All this I understand: revolution is a filthy business, and prices must be paid. But Duchy Lyxaxu is not your coin.
your utility function is not my utility function
November 20, 2017
267
“They will all ask me this. Who would not?” “And you will lie to satisfy them. But not to me.”
November 20, 2017
267
The plague signs were Aurdwynni, but the paranoia, the doctrines of quarantine, were Masquerade, were the basics of Incrastic hygiene.
confessional, speaking tube, grill. morse, sign language, semaphore
November 20, 2017
269
WHEN her control faltered it let slip rage: jaw-splitting, teeth-breaking, thought-killing anger, minute and obsessive in its detail, omnivorous in its appetite. Anger at every choice and circumstance that had brought the world to this unacceptable state. Fury against causality.
pre mortem, use it
November 20, 2017
271
Tain Hu shook her head reproachfully. “A man died. Think of his loss, not your own.”
November 20, 2017
273
Baru looked across them, still hollow with grief, the hollow filled in turn with a cold exhilaration. She could survive this loss. She could make advantage out of any grief.
November 20, 2017
275
They had to be liberators. Not bandits. The Coyote was an army at service, a reverse brigand, bursting out of the woods to raid the innocent with money and safety and hope.
November 20, 2017
278
A party of pale red-haired men and women met them on a north road in Erebog, saying in Stakhi: “We are warriors of the Mansion Hussacht. The Necessary King sent us south to find the rebel queen and watch her fortunes. We slaughtered the Mask at Jasta Checniada. Take us in, and we will slaughter more.”
November 20, 2017
278
“Purposes are useful. Mutual interests give us ground for alliance.” “Or perhaps the Stakhieczi hope to complete the conquest they abandoned so long ago. They are stoneworkers. That makes them patient architects.”
November 20, 2017
278
Baru smiled. “I am glad to have your vow,” she said. “It takes two to keep track of all our fears.”
November 20, 2017
278
All down the column they murmured of the omen, the fallen antlers, the stag of Duke Heingyl, the red of the Masquerade navy spilled across the snow.
November 20, 2017
280
Autarch
She learned to swear in Urun and Stakhi, and to forgo the formal Belthyc word ilykari—a word now owned, it was felt, by the Masquerade, by Xate Yawa—in favor of the vernacular Iolynic students.
November 20, 2017
282
“Men used to marry men,” Tain Hu told her, as they crouched together over a fire pit to cook their venison. “And women once took wives. It was done by the poor, the starving, the desperate, by those who needed a business pact or a shared roof. By soldiers on campaign with no one else to turn to. Mostly it was done by those without needs or troubles—done for love. The words tribadist and sodomite, the things they mean and define, came later. Before those words there were only people.” Baru watched her warily, fearing some bait set out for the Taranoki savage. “But all this was long ago. Before the Mask.”
November 20, 2017
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“Long ago? Well.” She grinned across the fire. “Ask around among the divers at the Horn Harbor. Or the actresses at Atu Hall. They will tell you how long ago it was. I am not quickly forgotten.”
November 20, 2017
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Among the women she learned that a regular menstrual cycle in the winter was a mark of incredible prosperity—a noble luxury beyond ordinary reach.
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(bleeding gums and spotted skin and low spirits everywhere, universal, inescapable, synonymous with winter itself: the breath of Wydd), their fears, their small phlegmatic hopes.
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“You have earned respect. But there are no men in Aurdwynn who can respect what they desire. I learned that from Oathsfire’s courtship, when I was young.”
November 20, 2017
285
“You have been given a permit of brotherhood, Baru Fisher, and you have no say in when they will revoke it, or why.”
November 20, 2017
285
The ranger-knight climbed to meet them.
conflict. Knight, armour. ranger, distance travel
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The same mistake Baru always made. Assuming that Nayauru was hers to court, a playing piece to be taken and deployed. Not a player of her own.
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Nayauru had an army designed to win battles. The Coyote had learned how to win wars.
insurgents
November 20, 2017
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“My aunt called it jagisczion. Forest war. The battle is won with confusion, deception, and ferocity. We will make them think that the woods are full of us and that they will surely die unless they flee. I need to be close to the line, with the reserves, so I can strike at the tipping point.”
November 20, 2017
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The terror that took Baru came from the deepest part of her soul. It was a terror particular to her, a fundamental concern—the apocalyptic possibility that the world simply did not permit plans, that it worked in chaotic and unmasterable ways, that one single stroke of fortune, one well-aimed bowshot by a man she had never met, could bring total disaster. The fear that the basic logic she used to negotiate the world was a lie.
faith in technique the religion of dangerous trades
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Or, worse, that she herself could not plan: that she was as blind as a child, too limited and self-deceptive to integrate the necessary information, and that when the reckoning between her model and the pure asymbolic fact of the world came, the world would devour her like a cuttlefish snapping up bait.
November 20, 2017
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“Slash their tendons,” the Fairer Hand ordered. “Let Cattlson drown in his own cripples.”
has anyone done that? the archera flipping the bird story. but, maimed, diseased, maybe contagious
November 20, 2017
295
“There is a balance,” Tain Hu said, “seen everywhere in nature. It takes many prey to support a predator. We have brought too many predators to Duchy Nayauru.” And Baru saw the Masquerade’s hand at work. They had sent their woodsmen everywhere, driven out the deer, burnt the underbrush, gathered the forage and taken it into their fortifications. Left the Coyote no prey but Nayauru’s serfs.
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They had a broad eye for war, a willingness to fight not just in the field with horse and spear but everywhere, with everything. They planned for the long run. She knew this, knew it better than anyone else in the rebellion. Knew the secret strength it gave them.
use of weapons. propaganda, stories, diseases, fears
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I wish, Baru thought, that they would all just shut up and do as I say.
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“Do nothing out of love.” Her smile had a little death in it: not a threat, not a warning. Only the sense that she had grown old, that she felt her fire burning low, and chose to speak plainly. It cost her nothing. “I loved a prince once, far away in the mountains. I loved him without any calculation or reserve. That error still dogs me.”
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“Be cold, Your Excellence.” “I am,” Baru said. A great wall within her shifted a little, and began to crack. What came through it was the urge to laugh. “I am.”
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a steer’s head for Ihuake, a swollen reservoir for Nayauru, a spearhead for Pinjagata, a gleaming crystal of salt for Autr, a rearing stallion, impaled, for Sahaule. And an open hand for Baru, though the hand was Stakhi pale, not the color of her skin at all.
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The Dam-builder had made her own designs out of the powers and principles Baru disdained, and thus escaped notice.
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Now Baru could see Nayauru’s own blindnesses in turn, her neglect of detail, her trust in ferocity and passion and the noble virtues over subtlety and the sly arrangement of common things like coin.
fat Tony is limited, fragile against other initiated. good against npcs, pve, not pvp
November 20, 2017
309
“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?”
November 20, 2017
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“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.”
November 20, 2017
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If you want me to risk war against Treatymont, you must offer me substance.” The Traitor’s Qualm.
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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.
November 20, 2017
315
So easy, so decisive, spoken that way. So much blood in so few words. Xate Olake’s lips curled. It was not disgust. “I was afraid,” he said, “that you would insist on finding a subtler way.”
red wedding from the other side
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“Child,” Xate Olake said, with a kind of wary fondness, “I thought you would bring yourself to ruin without my help.”
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“I have committed a terrible crime,” she said, voice firm, controlled, machined to a polish. “So terrible that I feel I can do anything, commit any sin, betray any trust, because no matter what ruin I make of myself, it cannot be worse than what I have already done.”
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“I try to save my home,” Baru rasped. “Everything I do. For Taranoke.”
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“You are the Fairer Hand,” she said, “and I am your field-general, oathbound to earn you victory at any price. I will not shrink from that oath.”
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she’d thought of him more as friend than an instrument. Dangerous. Stupid.
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That old sick joy, her first and favorite drug. Control. “I do serve Falcrest. Fear not: you will serve me.
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The need to be ruthless would only grow, a rising peak, a steepening precipice tipping toward final cataclysm. She had to harden herself. Remove all weakness. Yes. It had to be done.
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When Ihuake turned her left wrist just so, it rang a bracelet of jade against a band of platinum like a distant bell. “The dead will be good fertilizer.” Erebog, shadowed, glanced back to Baru too, and her face was wry—maybe offering shared mirth at Ihuake’s theater, or shared joy at this great feat of treachery.
nanny and granny
November 20, 2017
339
“He wanted to bind his mansion to Erebog. Get flat land to make himself a king. But he was not necessary. We only accept necessary kings.”
November 20, 2017
341
There are as many villages in each vale as stars in the sky.” “You’re off by…” Baru squinted. “Several orders of magnitude.” Tain Hu shook her head ruefully. “Xate Yawa should ban the marriage of accountants and poetry.”
maybe off by just one order of mag. ~500 villages, ~9000 naked-eye visible stars
November 20, 2017
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The trouble with philosophy, Lyxaxu had said, was that it so often failed to survive a test.
November 20, 2017
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“She’s caged herself in cruelty. Taught herself to believe in a world where nothing goes right except by the harshest exercise of power.
November 20, 2017
348
You would rule the wolf land, Baru Fisher. Every winter we freeze our stillborn in the ice because the ground will not yield a grave.
November 20, 2017
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We are not the only players on the board, Baru thought. We are not the only cunning thinkers with a map and a will to triumph.
November 20, 2017
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“I wanted to be king. Or, maybe—to be the kind of man who you would want as king.”
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a creature made in Falcrest, bred in the Metademe to pass among men and women, but separate from them. Like the Oriati and their lamen.”
November 20, 2017
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“I spent the winter listening to my people cry your name.” He stroked his charger’s mane between thumb and forefinger. “A good duke looks to his people’s loves. I have, of late, wanted to be a better duke. So. Perhaps I studied too well.”
November 20, 2017
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Ihuake eyed Baru in quiet consideration, her nobility drawn about her like an iron cloak.
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But she had no tongue for it. She had burnt all her truth away. Alloyed it into the machine.
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371
Set-piece battles between armies in the field, what the Handbook of Field Literacy called “meeting engagements,” were rare beyond description.
November 20, 2017
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Baru fell into trance, into the analytic cold.
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375
armies did not kill each other, they broke each other, that the day would be won when one army believed it could not survive. A matter of deception, of conviction, of lies made true through performance. Like everything else.
November 20, 2017
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In a way, that legend was the real prize of the battle: a spark of defiance, a little gem of freedom reddened in winter and cut to shine on the Sieroch plain.
November 20, 2017
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He lifted to his face a white porcelain mask blank of all expression and she knew his name was Itinerant.
November 20, 2017
394
“A higher purpose,” the mask said, in one voice now, a mocking harborside voice, the voice of the man called Apparitor.
November 20, 2017
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Victory
like the boy on the battlements
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Letters
As we continue to drive the Imperial Republic toward our goal of total causal closure,
November 20, 2017
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Agonist
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423
I used to wonder if you were a monster. Now I know the answer. If you want power in this world, power enough to change it, it seems you have to be.
November 20, 2017
425
The persistence of folly, removing all doubt 