But when she sits in the high seat in the west, facing the other way, the right side of her world is the south and she can only comprehend the north, where she has hung all the trappings of loyalty. When she stands at the east end of the hall the right side of her world, the wounded side, is the north, and so she can only understand the south: the heraldry and broken steel of rebellion. The wound runs deeper than that, the physicians said, and touched Baru’s temple, where the maul had taken her helm and unhorsed her. And a pristine royal seal taken from the governor’s house in Wei Szlatcha, capital of Pyre, where the Throne’s man first gave her the notion to rebel. The trusty chained purse she wore in her rounds. Accounts, audits, inked on sheepskin palimpsest and marbled cream paper. She clothes the north wall, across from the standards and blades, with the papers of her old profession. You are not half-blinded, the physicians told her. As they should she will be a member of the Throne soon enough, wound or no.

They are the Throne’s spies to the last man and woman, but they obey. “Leave it unsewn,” she commands her servants. The tear is new, and she thinks it fitting. In the center of the arrangement she hangs her own war standard, the torn coin-and-comet pennant that rallied her Dukes on the day the rebellion began, on the day it ended, and on all the days between. Even the battle standards Tain Hu took for her at the Low Rail, though it pains her to look on them. All the blades go on the south wall, cleaned of gore and all the worn heraldry of the Pyre dukes, trampled on the day she deserted them. When she takes up residence in the Elided Keep she orders the long room where she will hold court rearranged. She sorts her existence left and right, so that she can forget the proper things by turning. 2014: Beware! If you want to avoid spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth’s Fall 2015 debut novel, don’t read this story yet it spoils everything!īaru Cormorant’s wound swallows half her world.

The traitor baru cormorant