Watching their reflections, Baru saw Solit take Salm's shoulder, callused hand pressed against his husband's bare strength. 'And the convoy makes a good excuse for escort.' He spat into the surf. 'Pirates make a good excuse for convoy,' Salm said. They're sailing in convoys now.'īaru pretended to dig for kelp and listened.

'Watch.' Father Solit, keen-eyed, took his husband's hand and pointed. He had the shoulders of a mountain and they corded as he moved. 'I see them.' Father Salm shaded his eyes and watched the ships, peeling lips pressed thin. 'They're coming in for the Iriad market.' When they came to the beach, Baru saw Masquerade merchant ships on the horizon, making a wary circuit around Halae's Reef. In the red autumn evening before the stars rose, her fathers took Baru down to the beach to gather kelp for ash, the ash meant for glass, the glass for telescope lenses ground flat by volcanic stone, the lenses meant for the new trade.

She cared mostly for arithmetic and birds and her parents, who could show her the stars.īut it was her parents who taught her to be afraid. But at age seven, the girl Baru Cormorant gave them no weight. Nearly two decades later, watching firebearer frigates heel in the aurora light, she would remember those sails on the horizon. She learned to count by tallying the ships and the seabirds that circled them. Little Baru, playing castles in the hot black sand, liked to watch their traders come in to harbor. The Masquerade sent its favorite soldiers to conquer Taranoke: sailcloth, dyes, glazed ceramic, sealskin and oils, paper currency printed in their Falcrest tongue. Baru was still too young to smell the empire wind.

The baru cormorant