Seth Dickinson's epic fantasy series which began with the “literally breathtaking” (NPR) The Traitor Baru Cormorant, returns with the third audiobook, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant.
The hunt is over. After fifteen years of lies and sacrifice, Baru Cormorant has the power to destroy the Imperial Republic of Falcrest that she pretends to serve. The secret society called the Cancrioth is real, and Baru is among them.
But the Cancrioth's weapon cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. If it escapes quarantine, the ancient hemorrhagic plague called the Kettling will kill hundreds of millions...not just in Falcrest, but all across the world. History will end in a black bloodstain.
Is that justice? Is this really what Tain Hu hoped for when she sacrificed herself?
Baru's enemies close in from all sides. Baru's own mind teeters on the edge of madness or shattering revelation. Now she must choose between genocidal revenge and a far more difficult path—a conspiracy of judges, kings, spies and immortals, puppeteering the world's riches and two great wars in a gambit for the ultimate prize.
If Baru had absolute power over the Imperial Republic, she could force Falcrest to abandon its colonies and make right its crimes.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books
Release date:
August 11, 2020
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
624
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Baru jerked awake. Slammed her head against wet wood. It was real! It had all been real! The madness in the embassy, the traitor-admiral waiting for her in the dueling circle, the Kyprananoki rebels hemorrhaging black Kettling blood from their swollen eyes. Governor Love screaming as the plague carriers disemboweled themselves and smeared their gore on his face. Aminata’s marines firing the embassy, shooting the guests. Spilled palm wine on burning lilacs.
And then the shadow ambassador had led Baru down to the secret way beneath the reef. The swim to the ocean. Saltwater pouring off black whaleskin. An orca with a human skull embedded in its breaching back. A woman with swollen cancer in her womb.
Real. It was all real.
She had gone to the embassy on Hara-Vijay islet in Kyprananoke. She had gone to find the Cancrioth, and the Cancrioth had found her first.
“Who are you?” asked the voice from above.
“Barbitu Plane,” Baru croaked. Her cover. “I’m from the Ministry of Purposes. I’m on a diplomatic mission with…”
She’d had someone with her. She couldn’t remember. Her tongue was slimy, her throat dry. She’d been mouth-breathing for hours. She must have been drugged. As a girl she’d been so embarrassed by the idea of gaping like a fool while asleep that she’d trained herself to frown while she dreamed.
“Where am I?”
“You are in Tubercule.”
She tried to look up and slammed her scalp into a metal clamp. No way to see except by desperately rolling her eyes. She reached up to pull the clamp off and found her hands jammed against the walls of a narrow wooden chute. Claustrophobia loped up growling in the dark. Gods of fire it was so deep dark.
“Tubercule.” Speech now the only way she could act, and therefore desperately necessary. “What’s that?”
“Where the dead go to grow.”
“I’m not dead.”
“How do you know? Can you move? Can you see?”
Dog-legged claustrophobia licked at the back of her knees. How deep underground was she? Below the water table? The walls angled in to a joint beneath her. She had to kick and scrabble to keep her feet from sliding together in the pinch. A splinter of soft wood found a toenail, dug beneath. Baru gasped and twisted away. Nowhere to go! Nowhere to go! Water dripped on her scalp and slithered down her body—
Baru made herself be still, and took comfort by measuring the water level. Counting always soothed her: she never did her figures wrong. She was not imagining it. The water was rising around her legs.
So it was going to be like that.
“What do I need to tell you to get out of here?”
The voice above her was silent.
“Ask me, damn you!”
The sound of water kept the time.
“Let me answer!”
“Who are you?”
“I told you! I’m Barbitu Plane!”
A pedal thumped. A valve opened. Piss-warm water slapped against her back and coiled down her legs. “You’re lying. Your name is Baru Cormorant.”
“Who told you that?”
“Unuxekome Ra told us.”
She remembered that name as hands around her throat. Unuxekome Ra, exiled duchess, mother of the Duke Unuxekome who Baru had betrayed. She’d hauled Baru out of the water off Hara-Vijay. And then she’d tried to murder Baru. Someone had stopped her.…
The shadow ambassador. The woman from the embassy, with the tumor that looked like pregnancy. She’d stopped Ra. They’d been on a boat, Baru and the shadow ambassador and Unuxekome Ra and Shao Lune and a man with no lips, and … and …
“Tau!” she gasped. “Where’s Tau-indi?”
“The one who renounced you?” The voice echoed down the shaft above, doubling, doubling again. “Tau-indi Bosoka, who was once a Prince?”
* * *
“NO,” Tau gasped, “no, no no no, please don’t—”
“I cut you,” said the shadow ambassador with the tumor in her womb. “I cut you out of trim. Na u vo ai e has ah ath Undionash. I call this power to cut you. Alone you will serve us, Tau-indi Bosoka, alone we will be your masters, to save the nations we both love. Ayamma. A ut li-en.”
“STOP!” roared Enact-Colonel Osa. The little fishing felucca rocked as the Prince’s bodyguard scrambled between her charge and the shadow ambassador, powerless against sorcery, desperate enough, anyway, to try.
Unuxekome Ra caught her and kicked her down.
The shoreline was burning. The beautiful embassy at Hara-Vijay, all its lilac trees and wine and all the people inside, was aflame. Masquerade marines had torched it to contain the Kettling plague. But right now all the pity and fear in Baru’s heart was for Tau-indi Bosoka, who was being cut.
“Ayamma,” the shadow ambassador repeated. “A ut li-en. It is done.”
Tau-indi Bosoka fell weeping to their knees. Had their hands been severed from their body, Baru could not have pitied them more. But she could not go to Tau. She was paralyzed by astonishment.
The shadow ambassador was Cancrioth. The words of the sorcery she’d spoken were Cancrioth. They were real. And she’d done something to Tau. Was it real? It couldn’t be real. Was it real?
The shadow ambassador lowered her hand. A trick of firelight and setting sun seemed to make her fingers burn cool green. “Well,” she said, shivering now, “that’s over with. Ra, take the boat west. We’ll lose our tails in the kypra and then go home to Eternal. I’ll signal our return on the uranium lamp.”
“Incredible,” Shao Lune breathed. The navy woman huddled stiff at Baru’s side, her proud uniform and elegant face all wet, staring in astonishment. She was Baru’s hostage and uneasy companion, fled from the service of the Traitor-Admiral Juris Ormsment. “They think they’re doing magic.…”
Unuxekome Ra laughed as she unstayed the boat’s tiller. “You stupid little girl. You think it’s just theater?”
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