A/N: I've never read Monster and I doubt I ever will. Traitor hurt me too much. So I took refuge in my own ending, my more generic ending, my rejection of canon, love triumphs over all. Probably it's cowardice, but a kindness, too. This was written for anyone who needed healing.
Reflections
She woke in arms of corded leather. She woke to oil-scented hair tickling her nose. When she licked her lips she tasted the faint anesthesia of anise. She woke to an internal clock she had set earlier last night, pragmatic even in love, and she woke before her general-turned-lover, before the soldiers, before the dawn.
She dressed in a linen and tabard and trousers, and after a moment of hesitation, put on a thin chainmail. She thought she might need it. Behind her Tain Hu called her name. "Go back to sleep," Baru said, buckling Aminata's saber, giving it a few practice swishes. She might need this, too. "I'll be back in a bit."
Even in spring Aurdwynn was cold. The guards had left a wide berth around the entrance of their tent. She was grateful for the discretion. They must be used to their duchess's trysts. The air woke her as it always did, washing out the last vestiges of that strange dream: an island fortress, a woman chained to rocks, the relentless crash of tides.
The few soldiers who had roused huddled around campfires, having slept in their armor, and that was how she found Xate Olake bent like a crane over the flame. He shoveled cold porridge into his mouth.
He came to her without command. They walked a little ways off, and when Baru spoke she kept her voice low.
"I have a task for you."
"Your Excellence?"
"Go to the camp of – " the Vultjag fighters, and tell the duchess Vultjag that I have stripped her of her station, that today I cast her out – Baru shook her head, startled, wondering where the words had come from. "Go to the camp of each of the dukes and tell them this: they are to gather their most trusted guards and surround themselves. Nobody who's been with them less than ten years. Nobody not born in Aurdwynn. Let nobody else near."
He opened his mouth, questions on his lips, but they did not have time for questions. She cut him off with a slice of her hand.
"Go. Immediately." Then, after a pause, a sudden horror at how she could've forgotten something so important: "Tell them to take no food or drink except what they themselves prepared."
He went, loyal old crane. Did he know? He must've suspected now, after this order. He could not doubt her now. To doubt her would be to die. Worse, it would be to destroy all he – they – had built, had clawed from the cold grasp of corpses and the colder grasp of the sea.
Baru rode her rouncey east, towards Inirein, the great slaughtering-ground. The camp stirred behind her, but she wore a helmet fished from a dead man, and the soldiers were still drunk on liquor and sleep and fear. Someone might've called her name; she wasn't sure, and whatever soldier had spied her would be less sure than she was. She could not be found now, here at the precipice of all things.
Get clear, and trust us to be ready…trust us to be ready…trust us…
She turned the words like a hymn and was rewarded to find the Stakhi man on the very eastern edge of the camp. The first thing she saw was the shock of red hair. Absurdly, she wondered how he could possibly be a spy, be secretive, when his heritage marked him surer than any heretic's brand. The grief-knot choked his throat. She felt an odd pity for him.
Apparitor congratulated her, assured her that he would take care of everything from here. She rode east under his scrutiny. She tried to figure out what expression she should wear. Would hesitance mark her unfaithful? Or would it be expected for her first betrayal? Would the lack of hesitance betray her? A drawing tight of her eyebrows, a hardening of her lips, a brief spasmodic twitch as if she meant to look behind: all this she calculated like an astronomer's equations. Apparitor seemed satisfied, because he turned away from her to focus on the road.
They rode in silence on the frozen earth, their breaths puffing ahead of them. Faint woodsmoke drifted downwind. Birds chirped. She tried to figure out their songs, but even though she recognized most birds now in this foreign land, their songs still eluded her. Not like Tain Hu, who not only knew each song like her mother's voice but could mimic them perfectly. That lilting trill must be a chickadee, that flute the thrush, diluted by some harsh caw Baru didn't recognize, and faintly in the distance, her ears pricked at what she thought might've been the ugly warble of the fisher…
You made a bad bargain, the accountant half of her chided. The only bargain I could've made, she bit back, and for a while she preoccupied herself, arguing.
Oathsfire's horses found them halfway to the Inirein. A voice broke the silence, then the thundering of hooves charging down, a full line of armored cavalry. They must've been hiding since dawn. Oathsfire must've gnawed and gnawed on his doubts, realizing at last why Lyxaxu, wisest among them, would turn traitor. Lyxaxu would be proud, Baru thought, that his brother had figured it out as he had.
"Sloppy, sloppy," Apparitor said. His voice was not terrified but amused. From his saddlebag he took out a hollow cylinder. "Ride," he ordered, turning away from her, raising the signal flare to the sky where it would call the marines to destroy Oathsfire's slipshod revenge. "Ride hard. Think of what's waiting – "
Her sword slipped out of its sheath with a gracefulness she thought she had lost, rusting as she had among tax records and war councils. Her sword pierced his wrist, and he cried out, and dropped the signal flare. Immediately he was upon her, murder on his face: the game was up. Apparitor had realized too late. Fumbling, she deflected his blows, and he was stronger than her, faster than her, and more used to fighting on a horse besides; but a crossbow bolt caught his charger, which reared on its hind legs, throwing him off. He stumbled to his feet. His eyes met Baru's, calculated, made his choice. He turned to run.
Six guardsmen drew abreast of him, boxing him in.
Ten others surrounded Baru, Duke Oathsfire leading. He wore black warpaint of mourning, and his sword hung limply from his fingers, as if the weight of it was too much.
Baru held up her hands to show she was no threat. Oathsfire advanced without pause, grief still as raw and bloody as the dead men left for the crows. He had come to kill her. Part of her rejoiced. She would gather all the hatred of the people of Aurdwynn and throw herself upon his sword and thus burn the continent's sins on that pyre of immaculate steel.
She thought of Tain Hu, of high-peaked black hair and a falcon's nose and eyes that glowed like summerwine, and in a sharp voice she commanded, "It's not what you think."
"You sold us out," Oathsfire said, still advancing. Grief had burned all the anger out of his voice.
"I did no such thing. You saw me attack him, made him drop the flare."
Slowly, warily, she bent down and picked up the cylinder, held it forward like an offering. "See? See?"
"Lyxaxu's dead."
"Lyxaxu was wrong."
The silence stretched between them like a skein of ice. A worm of doubt crawled over Oathsfire's face. He had seen the two of them fight. His eyes flickered over to the Stakhi man standing palms-up with his sword cast on the ground. For a moment, Baru thought grief would win, and not even Tain Hu was able to wipe that thrill from her heart –
( – a phantom blow struck her head. The entire right half of her world vanished as perfectly as through a surgeon's knife – )
Oathsfire sheathed his sword.
"Tie them," he commanded.
The soldiers woke to a curious sight: an entourage of horses dragging their queen bound on foot. Outrage followed her, clamors like cymbals in her breast, and several soldiers blocked Oathsfire's way. They withered under his stony glare. Oathsfire carried her to the war council, where the dukes had already gathered. Each sat ringed in a circle of bodyguards. Her eyes sought Tain Hu and was relieved to find her in the middle of her own circle of ranger-knights. Briefly their eyes met. Baru turned away.
"What's the meaning of this?" Ihuake thundered, bracelets jangling with accusation.
Oathsfire threw Baru forward. She tripped and fell, trying to pick herself up with her wrists bound behind her. A strong arm lifted her up. Tain Hu's eyes searched Baru's, asking nothing, offering everything.
"I found her riding east with the Stakhi," Oathsfire said, and for the first time the dukes saw the other bound man. Oathsfire held up the crests and the papers and the signal flare he had taken from Apparitor, and the masked sigil of the Empire condemned Baru as surely as a magistrate's gavel. Several sharp intakes of breath. Good, Baru thought. Let them see.
"Explain yourself," Xate Olake said.
Baru explained herself. She spoke through each step as if she had planned it all along, years ago, before the rebellion, before she even set foot on Treatymont. She gave herself prescience beyond even the oracles of myth. Let them think her omniscient. Her voice grew dry and her mind grew heady with the scent of anise. Tain Hu supported her through an arm at her back. When she finished there were fury and recriminations. She knew none of them would ever trust her again, and Oathsfire was lost to her forever. Why didn't you tell us? he said, voice rising above the others by sheer pierce of anguish. Why didn't you save Lyxaxu?
I couldn't, Baru told them. It was too risky, the Masquerade's spies were everywhere…
No matter. The break was only temporary. She had bound them to her once. Would she not do so again?
Without her, they were doomed. That truth lay unspoken in the tempest of their rage. One by one, their voices dwindled, fell silent, until only Oathsfire spewed curses at her, and probably he would've done so until the marines swarmed them had not Xate Olake held up a hand and said, "Enough."
"Now what, thrice-betrayed?" Ihuake said.
Baru told them, and when she finished, they cut her ropes.
"You stole my gloves," Tain Hu accused.
Baru looked down at her hands and found that she had. In the hurry of the morning she must've put on the wrong pair. The touch of them had been so familiar she hadn't noticed.
Bashfully, she smiled, like a child caught in a prank. Tain Hu threw her head back and laughed.
They sat astride their horses south of the floodplains, all their armies arrayed behind them – starving men, tired men, wounded men with lame legs and arms in bandages still soaking with wounds of yesterday's victory. The air stank of pus and disease, and the battle hadn't even begun yet. Frost clung to the trodden reeds. The dukes thought her mad – nobody could ford the swamps. Xate Olake had wanted to avoid battle altogether. They would disperse among the dozen duchies of Aurdwynn, homelands too vast for the marines to follow, and lick their wounds before launching another strike. Baru had calculated the speed of their recovery against the speed of Falcresti reinforcements, and she had said no.
Nobody could ford the swamps, the dukes repeated sullenly as they waited, the sting of betrayal not yet dressed. They stopped their chatter as the first of the marines broke through the mist. Their polished metal armor – impenetrable, so the saying went – made diamonds of them. The sight sent a twinge of want through Baru. This could've all been hers…she quashed it ruthlessly. The marines sang a strange song in a strange accent of Iolynic: She was ours. From the beginning. From the first day you spoke her name…
The first of the marines saw her and floundered. A crack ran through their song. Four thousand voices jangled in discordance.
They saw the Stakhi man kneeling at her side, the rope around his neck held by the Fairer Hand.
Their march stopped as if at the edge of a cliff. Even now Baru could admire the synchronization of their steps, could admire the inexorable efficiency of Empire. Tain Hu's hand tightened on her own, and through that grip said what the soldiers behind them could not say: We cannot fight this. We will be destroyed.
From the ranks of the marines strode forth a dozen twinkling soldiers led by a man with a green feather in his helmet. She let them forward as much as she dared, then jerked Apparitor's rope. The marines stopped immediately. The man in the lead took off his helmet. Dual artifice. Behind it was a mask.
"Hand over the prisoner," he said, "and you may all yet live."
Baru smiled and stayed silent.
"Hand over the prisoner, and the entire rebellion will be pardoned."
The trill of chickadees, high-pitched and frantic.
"Hand over the prisoner," the captain said desperately, "and for a period of one year Aurdwynn's taxes will be halved, and restrictions lifted on the practice of unhygienic acts, and no Imperial soldier will approach the temples where you practice heterodoxy to your pagan gods."
No, Baru Fisher said.
She laid out her terms: The marines are to retreat immediately, and for a period of one year no Imperials will set foot on Aurdwynn. At the year's end, they may send a single ship, and she would release the prisoner.
A dangerous, foolish gamble, the accountant said. You have no idea of the value of your leverage. There may be hundreds of paramount masters, thousands. You are trying to solve an equation missing a variable. The dukes watched the parley with stiff faces. For all the dukes' grumblings, none of them uttered one consideration at a game so clearly beyond them. The Masquerade was her domain. Her heart pounded like war drums, but she allowed none of it to show, one hand idly holding the rope, as if the Stakhi was barely worth the effort.
"Abeyance! Don't listen to her!" Apparitor howled. "Kill me! Don't you see? If you don't kill me they're going to kill him instead! Abeyance! Abeyance!"
The captain turned to him apologetically.
"I am bound by a higher command."
The marines retreated, a great fist pulled back at the apex of the punch. With their departure, a long sigh passed through Aurdwynn's soldiers; the gust of it rippled over the floodplains and turned turbulent over the Ashen Sea before doubling back in glorious refrain: We've won. We're free. We're free!
Laughing, Tain Hu kissed her, fuck the stares, and when they broke Baru opened her mouth to say –
Good-bye, kuye lam. I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.
She clamped her mouth shut, and said nothing at all, and wondered why her tongue tasted sea salt.
In the weeks that followed, a great myth sprouted through the land: The Fairer Hand had turned away the Empire's best with words and but a single prisoner, plucked from some unknown chalice. She had planned it all from the start, foresaw each strike the Masquerade would make and countered with ripostes so deft not even her own allies could dance along. Thrice-betrayed, Ihuake said, now fondly. They talked no more of dynasties. They could not afford to lose her. Baru Fisher was the face of the rebellion; Baru Fisher was the voice of the people; Baru Fisher was the mastermind, the accountant, Baru Fisher, Baru Fisher…
"You're a fool," Apparitor said in the dungeons beneath Vultjag. His words were listless, like a teacher explaining a truism to a dim-witted pupil. "The Masquerade cannot be beaten. Do you think nobody has tried? You've bought a year's worth of grace. What then? You have the tatters of a nation against an Empire so vast you can't even comprehend the shape of it. You think the Stakhi will help you? You lost their support when you fell to your tribadist urges. You think the Oriati will help you? They've already lost one war – "
Baru laughed, but quietly; there was no use in gloating against a man just as shattered as she. And he was not wrong. The war was only beginning. It had not even started. They were on the edge of it, courting it, arousing it as Tain Hu had taught her to do, the slow loving strokes.
The first order of business, upon reclaiming Treatymont, had been a full census of their troops. Anyone who had not been born in Aurdwynn, who had not lived there for ten years, who did not have at least two others to vouch for them – all these were imprisoned. Most of them unfairly. They could not risk spies. Xate Olake had been broken by news of his sister's betrayal. When the Masquerade had sank their hooks into Xate Yawa, what they offered her, not even Baru knew. For a week, Xate Olake had taken to his cups. On the final day, each duke had visited him in turn, Baru the last to go, and came morning he took no more of his cups.
Still spies escaped. In the north, Duchess Erebog, too far away to warn, died by a fire that could not be extinguished by water. With an accountant's eye, Baru considered the Duchies: Erebog, Lyxaxu, Nayauru, Sahaule, Autr, Heingyl. Ihuake would claim all of them, but that was too much, too generous. Baru would make the dukes and their surviving children play for her favor…
"You've only bought moratorium," Apparitor said.
Against the cold draft of the dungeons, Baru circled him, the Stakhi – and there was the other edge of the knife, the man's other purpose. Did he suspect? No – he'd cast away that life long ago. Had to. But something still bound him yet. They're going to kill him instead! At length she had managed to worm from Apparitor what would've happened had she kept to her path: the island fortress, the woman chained to rocks. So went the mystery of her dreams. She could not imagine Tain Hu an armature of slavery, and yet she could, the image so stark and real she gasped out loud (Apparitor looked at her strangely).
A red-sailed ship carrying a figured cloaked in black wool, bound wrists to ankles.
"You taught me fear," Baru said when the image passed, pretending as if it never occurred. Once more she circled the Stakhi. "You taught me the Empire could be afraid."
"Annoyances. The Stakhi and the Oriati – "
"Even through mention of their names, you teach me fear. The Empire is afraid of them, afraid of the big nations and the little nations they've conquered whether by sword or by coin. Why go through all this – the rebellions, the honeypots – if you were not afraid? You're scared of Aurdwynn, of Stakhi, of Oriati, of Taranoke, of every little plot of soil your boots have touched. You know they are all you have. You know you are fragile. You stamp out rebellions mercilessly, start them yourself, because you know all it takes is one rebellion, one, and the rest will ignite, and the Empire goes down like the Navy Burn torching a sail."
"The Stakhi – " he began, and stopped. Anything he said would only damn him.
She left him in the dungeons, her lips humming a forgotten song.
There was work to be done; there was always work to be done. A year was precious short to grow a crop field, much less a rebellion. She wrote letters until the ink bled onto her desk. She partitioned lands, ordered the building of ships, laid new tax policies. Before all else the framework must be solid. She standardized the army, no more this duke's troops and that duke's guards – only one, flying a single banner under a single field-general. She would give Tain Hu all of Aurdwynn.
She expanded the messenger relays and set up a primitive post system, modeled after Falcrest's own. There was much she had learned from the Empire. There was much she could use against them.
(The strange visions continued, drawing her out of the moment, to a world too terrible to imagine – )
It was easy work. She did it all with light in her heart and Tain Hu at her side.
At night, she took to bed and learned what had been denied her these twenty years.
"The Stakhi will not help us," Tain Hu said one night as they nestled against each other, the sweat of each other drying on their skin. "They do not think we can grow strong enough in a year, and without marriage, they know they cannot control us."
Tain Hu always moved, even in love, even afterwards. As she spoke she gestured with her hands, and when she finished speaking her hands continued to pick at the blankets, her hair, Baru's arms. There was no guilt in her voice. Unspoken, imperiously disregarded: Our love has doomed our alliances.
The Empire had no hold over Baru now. She was a tribadist. Her people sang her heresy from the roofs, a grace note in the symphony of rebellion. The whole world knew of it. It could never be used against her again. She could never be used against herself.
Did Tain Hu suspect? Baru searched her lover's expression and found only placid contentment; and yet Tain Hu, so observant, so clever, must've known.
The truth was this:
Baru Fisher did not plan anything. Up to that very night after Sieroch when she slept with Tain Hu, she had meant to betray the rebellion to the Masquerade, not thrice-betrayed but only twice-betrayed (counterargument: I could only deceive them if I deceive myself). She would offer up Aurdwynn as fuel for the furnace of her exaltation. She would sail with Apparitor to Falcrest and take up moniker, her new name, her new role, what she'd sought ever since the wool merchant's promises, We are the real powers behind the throne.
She would trade a new home for a lost one.
And Taranoke was lost to her now, she could see at last, the cloth stripped from her eyes, the seductions wrested from her ears whispered by the Empire's purposeful agents. They had dangled Taranoke in front of her, knowing all the while Taranoke could never be Taranoke again. Her people had given themselves up to Falcrest of their own accord. They relied too much now on sanitation, on clean sewers, inoculations, rich trade ships. Had she not seen her own parents, before she left, dressed in the Masquerade's silks? The old ways were already lost even should the Empire be turned away. Lost, but not forgotten. She would return for them.
But not at the price of her new home. Not at the price of herself. Her stomach sickened at how close she had come to it: to destroy the Masquerade from within would be to lose herself within the Masquerade. The moment she gave herself over to them, she would be lost. Shivering, she wondered how many others had tread the same path. Apparitor, certainly. Xate Yawa, too. Itinerant? Maybe. Aminata…Each of them had started where she started. How arrogant to think that she was the only one who had ever considered the possibility of destroying the Empire from within! Their treacheries had been foretold and worked carefully into the tapestry of history. See this thread: She began as our enemy. Probably she still thinks she is. The spinsters laughed –
The difference was that none of them had Tain Hu.
"There is a stolen Stakhi prince," Baru said, "loved by his people, returned at last."
Realization came immediately. Tain Hu looked at her with admiration.
"You've no intention of returning him to the Masquerade."
"In the summer we will go to Stakhieczi," Baru said. "We'll tell them we have their prince, and we'll find out whether he is worth an alliance."
More gambles, gambles stacked on top of gambles. What kind of accountant are you? You remember infinite series taught in the classroom. Taken to infinity, any sum of halved integers approach one, approach inevitable loss.
"We'll go hunting in the woods," Tain Hu said. "The foxes are plentiful in the spring. Their pelts are roan after winter's shedding. I'll teach you how to shoot them."
"They've left behind the mint. We can print as much fiat paper as we need, buy anything we want."
"Have I taken you to River Vultsniada yet? We'll go fishing and eat the rainbow trout fresh as we catch them."
"The Empire will try to blockade us. We need our navy rebuilt before then."
"The orchards are beautiful this time of year. You'll love it. We'll pluck apples until juice runs down our arms."
"We need to – "
Contact the Oriati. Buy pirates. Build forts along the harbors. Solidify our hold on Heingyl. Raise more troops. Root out spies. Stockpile food. Forge more equipment: shields, mail, spears, swords, arrows…
Tain Hu smiled at her, and all of Baru's plans asphyxiated in her throat. They leaned in to each other –
A woman shackled to the rocks, the tide crashing in –
Baru cried out, clutching her head.
"What's wrong?" Tain Hu said, gripping Baru's shoulders. "Is it the headaches again? Should I get a doctor?"
Baru shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. This will pass –
She fought the rising tide with her chains wrapped up around her brawny arms and battlehacked fists –
Baru staggered from the bed. The cold made goosepricks of her skin. These images were not real –
Let the duchess live! Please, I love her, let her live! –
Tain Hu approached, her face stricken with worry, and Baru saw a horrible sea-bloated corpse –
You killed her! I can't believe you killed her! Baru Cormorant, you fucking asshole, do you realize what you've done? –
Sea salt and vomit, again and again, her own self-castigation –
The surf swallowed her. Still the chains groaned with her might –
Good-bye, kuye lam. I will write your name in the ruin –
Tain Hu's lips closed over her own, swallowing all the worlds. Desperately, Baru sank into the woman who had saved her from herself – the woman who had, in a single night in that tent beside the wind hissing through stone henges, scattered all of Baru Cormorant's carefully-laid plans. At last Baru had found something she could not betray. Did Tain Hu realize how utterly she had saved her people? Did anyone? Did they need to?
That is not my world. She wrapped the words in her lover's tongue. I reject all I had been.
Tain Hu led Baru back to bed and stroked her face until she slept. In the morning, they went out to hunt in the woods, and catch fish, and pluck apples until juice ran down their arms.
Listen for the sound of rebellion. It is a thousand farmers harvesting crops, it is a thousand drunkards swapping stories over ale. Listen for the rumors escaping across the mountains and seas: The Masquerade has been defeated. Some backwater nation to the north has ejected the Empire from their shores. A moratorium, the skeptics say. In a year the Empire will return with ships and soldiers and chemicals, their wrath all the more terrible for their adjournment.
The stories spread. Stories always do.
Listen for the crackle of ignition. Listen for the fire. Listen for that new edge in people's voices, so easily missable, spine where there had been no spine, retort where they would never have dared retort. Listen for the heresy of the two queens to the north. They claim as their banner a fisher, and one passes her time taking census of birds.
Listen: There are many paths possible here. Any one of them can be true. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.