Abd saw it happen in his eyes, a meaty pop like a knuckle of lamb in the fire, and from that moment on Zee was mad with among, the rescue-fever that came over Oriati people, sometimes, when their friends and family needed them. Zee had gone mad when he realized they’d sailed into a trap. “Zee,” Abdumasi whispered, “I’m so sorry.”Īnd he put his sailing knife under his chin and tried to cut his own throat. He’d joined the rebel armada at Welthony and together they’d struck Treatymont, the colonial capital: a gray cage of ironwork and stone to the north, and two burnt-out towers guarding the harbor like rotten dog teeth.īut the Masquerade had been waiting for them. He’d brought his fleet to Aurdwynn to help their rebellion against the Masquerade. The scream of fire and the groan of broken hullplanks and beneath it all the ebb and rush of the sea, tumbling the burning dead, stirring the pot of fire and wreckage.Ī disaster. Beyond Zee he could see a sliver of the battle-burning masts and broken ships, arcs of hwacha-fire scratching terrible perfect curves out of the sky, war rockets that crashed down into wood and waves to bloom into blue-white fire. Masquerade rocket arrows had pinned all the corpses to the deck like rare butterflies.Ībdumasi looked up at Zee from under the fallen sail, where he’d crawled to hide.
The masts had toppled and the rowers lay suffocated at their broken oars. “Run out the sweeps, soak the rowers, beat the drums! We’ll get out of this yet, I promise you, I promise!” He was a big dreadlocked man with a green flag bound to his war-spear and a false hope in his voice. “Fire parties to the port rail!” cried his battle captain, poor Zee Dbellu who had come to war with Abdumasi to avenge his grandmother. PreludeĪs the firestorm took his ships, as a monsoon rain of greasy incendiaries burnt his people like screaming human skewers, Abdumasi Abd tried his very damndest to die. The Monster Baru Cormorant will be available on October 30th. It’s her chance to trigger a war that will consume the Masquerade.īut Baru’s heart is broken, and she fears she can no longer tell justice from revenge…or her own desires from the will of the man who remade her. Hunted by a mutinous admiral, haunted by the wound which has split her mind in two, Baru leads her dearest foes on an expedition for the secret of immortality. The traitor Baru Cormorant is now the cryptarch Agonist-a secret lord of the empire she’s vowed to destroy. For the power to shatter the Masquerade, s he betrayed everyone she loved.
Her world was shattered by the Empire of Masks.
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