The Tyrant by Seth Dickinson

Author:Seth Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

“I have proven here that the Number of Interest, raised to the power of the Round Number multiplied by the Impossible Number, equals negative one.”

At first Barhu didn’t understand. But there was a light on Kimbune, some astral delight, and she was, in this shining light, with this secret in her, almost dizzyingly beautiful: not attractive, not lust-invoking, but worthy of veneration and protection and awe.

Barhu thought it out in her head. The Number of Interest e, 2 point 7 1 8 2 8 and so forth into infinity, was a remarkable number used in the computation of compound interest. The Round Number pi was the ratio of a circle’s radius to its circumference, 3 point 1 4 1 5, as tattooed on Kimbune’s brow.

“I never understood i,” she admitted. She was an accountant, not a wild number-philosopher. “The square root of negative one. It’s an impossible number, it can’t exist. But here you’ve done something with it, you’ve proven . . . it’s related to these other two, somehow?”

It did not seem possible.

Why would these three insane numbers, two of them infinite and impossible to write on a page, one of them imaginary and impossible to write at all, yield a simple elegant result like negative one? How could you do math with numbers that never ended? How could you prove anything about them?

Yet Kimbune had. If Barhu believed in her proof, she had established that these numbers were connected, far deep down in the universe: like three masts of a sunken ship, jutting from the waves, hinting at the bulk beneath. Proof in the highest sense, pure mathematics, issued from that place the Oriati believed in, the realm of perfect premade shapes, beyond the Door in the East.

“If you brought this to Falcrest,” Barhu whispered, “and the scholars in the Faculties verified it . . . they would have to accept that the greatest mathematicians in the world come from Oriati Mbo. Kimbune, this proof would upend the Faculties, the polymaths, everyone who believes Incrasticism is the only way to learn truth. They would have to give you a place in the Exemplaries, and sit you among the greatest wonders ever known. . . .”

“Then why are you frowning?” Kimbune asked, softly.

“I frown a lot.”

“No,” Kimbune said, stubbornly, “you’re upset.”

Barhu told the truth. “I don’t understand how a people who made something so beautiful could also release the Kettling on innocents.”

Kimbune closed her eyes. “Neither do I,” she whispered. “Neither do I.”

“If I bring your ship to Isla Cauteria . . . will they use the Kettling again?”

“I don’t know.” Kimbune’s eyelashes flickered between them. “If the Brain wants that, she would make it happen. You’re under her power. She frightens me.”

“I belong to myself, Kimbune.”

“She cast a spell on you, to bind you to her. I saw her do it.”

Barhu could hardly deny that had happened, and to deny the Brain’s power would in a sense be to deny Kimbune’s protection, too. “All she did was call me to return to her.

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