Acolyte's Underworld: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 4)

by L. W. Jacobs

  Her mother.

  Ella scowled, and the pucker-cheeked Brokewater woman getting in across from her started. Elyssa Merewil knew her daughter was in Worldsmouth, and a tip from her might motivate the authorities. Their last conversation hadn’t ended well. But had it been bad enough to make her mother send lawkeepers after her?

  And how would she have known to send them to the Quill? Unless she recognized her daughter’s voice in the last article.

  Ella’s scowl deepened, and she looked across the bay to West Cove. She’d been heading back for Zaza’s intending to lie low for the evening, maybe start writing a new article. But it looked like a different kind of night was in order.

  25

  Ella rang the chimes at House Merewil with a strange mix of anger and apprehension. The more she thought about her mother sending the lawkeepers after her the more it made sense, and the angrier she got. At the same time she couldn’t approach this house without the old fear that she would get trapped somehow, that they’d lock her up again.

  Well, they were trying to lock her up anyway. And Ella had never been one for running if there was someone she could fight face to face.

  A servant answered. It was no one Ella recognized, and mercifully they didn’t appear to recognize her either. There were paintings of her in the house, or used to be, but by this late in the day she likely looked closer to 50 than the 15 she’d been when they were painted.

  That, or they’d taken all the pictures of their murderous daughter down after she escaped.

  “Malia Galferth,” she said mildly. “Calling for Elyssa Merewil, if the lady is home.”

  The servant lead her into the courtyard, Elyssa’s carefully pruned halia bushes still surrounding the quiet unplumbed fountain and circle of stone benches. It looked so small now, compared to when she had grown up here. Unbidden, her eyes looked to the north wing of the house. A third story rose there, smaller than the others, with not even a window looking over this side. The hours she had spent with an ear pressed to the wall, trying to make out who was talking or what was happening out here. Seeking any relief from the sweltering boredom of her cell.

  Ella stood, trying to quiet her emotions and think logically. Her parents would respond to logic. To emotion, she would get scorn from her mother and a stone wall from her father.

  Elyssa entered the courtyard a few minutes later, wearing the simple gray gown she preferred at home, hair tied but unbraided. She cleared her throat, the sound high and tight. “I thought it would be you. Come to apologize?”

  “Hardly,” Ella said, frost in her tone matching her mother’s. “Did you send lawkeepers after me?”

  Elyssa jerked at her satin dress, straightening a crease along one edge. “No. I told your father I’d seen you, and I suppose he alerted the authorities.”

  Of course he did. Ella’s anger went cold, freezing onto something much bigger and older. Adding weight to a glacier of resentment that had weighed on her since childhood.

  “And the Quill?” Ella asked, voice gone cold too. “He knew to send them there?” Her mother had always been a more perceptive reader than Illen. She doubted he would recognize her prose from anyone else’s.

  Elyssa jerked at her gown again, though the thing hung perfectly straight. “I recognized your style. The article was beautifully written, even if it’s full of lies.”

  “They’re not lies, mother. Why would I do that?” You raised me better than that, she almost said.

  “Well either way it reflects poorly on the House,” Elyssa said stiffly.

  Ella ground her teeth. On the House. Of course. “So that’s why you did it? Better to have your daughter executed than to have something I do ‘reflect poorly on the House’?”

  Elyssa took the last stair, lifting her hem so it didn’t brush on the way down. “We would never have you executed. But you are a loose sail, Ellumia. How long do you think until someone puts it together and figures out who ‘Malia Galferth’ is? How well would we do in a bid for a Council seat if our daughter was known to be consorting with Yersh rebels?”

  “There were no rebels, Mom. You would know that if you’d actually read what I wrote. But you don’t have to believe me—people will be coming back now with their own stories. Maybe if they read mine they won’t be afraid to tell theirs.”

  She couldn’t help a feeling of vindication, even through her glacier of anger. Her parents could talk all they wanted about the good of the House. She was working for the good of something much bigger.

  “That would be fine for someone else. But your father has always put our House first, and we can’t risk things not working out the way you think.” She trailed her fingers in the fountain’s water. “You always were an idealist, even when you were my little girl.”

  There was an unfamiliar tone in her mother’s voice. “And you, Mother? What do you put first?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “I understand if you think keeping you in your room was unfair.”

  “Unfair?” Ella snapped. “It was—”

  “Or unjust,” her mother overrode her, “or however you want to put it. But I always wanted what was best for you.”

  “And locking me in a room for five years, then trying to marry me off to laborers and merchant’s sons, that was what was best?”

  Elyssa sighed. “Walk with me, will you?”

  Ella almost left. She knew every twist and turn of this garden, and the last thing she wanted to do was walk it with her mother and listen to the woman try to justify what she’d done to a ten-year-old girl. Except she’d never gotten an answer in all her years of imprisonment, and she burned to hear what the woman had to say.

  So she entered the towering halias at her mother’s side, fallen leaves wilting pale green and orange along the carefully swept paving stones.

  “Halias are such delicate plants,” Elyssa said. “They’re a southern bush, did you know that? They were originally found in the Knuckles between Yatiland and the Yershire.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ella said. Didn’t notice the bushes as I was battling shamans, mother.

  “People here love them because they exhale water in the afternoon, offering a bit of cool. But that’s just their attempt to survive in a climate that’s too hot and wet for them. Without careful pruning they die within a season.”

  Ella thought of all the mornings she’d watched her mother out there with her shears and worn apron, meticulously clipping the growing bushes. She’d refused to let the servants near them. But that still didn’t make an answer. “So? You’re saying I was like a halia bush, and keeping me in my room was pruning me because I couldn’t handle the real world?”

  Her mother sighed, plucking a branch from one of the bushes. “I loved a man once too, you know.”

  “You’re not talking about Dad.”

  “Illen? No. I suppose I do love him, the way you love a trusted friend or a sturdy pair of boots. He’s a loyal and straightforward man. But I don’t love him, the way you love this dark-haired man.”

  “Tai,” Ella said. “His name is Tai. And how would you know anything about how I love him?”

  “I can hear it in your voice,” her mother said, snapping another green shoot where it connected to the branch. “I sounded like that once.”

  “So what happened?” Ella asked. Her mother didn’t speak much of her past. “Did your parents lock you up too?”

  “Oh no. They let me go. Even gave their blessing to the marriage, though he was the second son of a salt marsh family whose plantation would do nothing for our House.”

  “And?”

  “And he left me,” Elyssa said, back still turned as she worked at the bushes. “I lost my charm, for whatever reason, or his eyes found a new fancy. He was always like that. And then my parents had to do what they could with me. Merewil was a poor House but Illen was an upright man, and they accepted the offer on the strength of our pedigree alone. It was a poor match, but what else were they to do with an abandoned daughter?
”

  “You thought I would run off with Poddy,” Ella said slowly. “So you locked me in my cell?”

  “You did run off with Poddy, and praise the gods neither of you were old enough to consummate whatever you were feeling. What I did, I did for your own good. For yours and Telen’s, always.”

  She dropped her handful of broken branches into a wicker basket. “I imagine that’s hard to understand, or maybe you just think I’m lying entirely, but other than Rodrick you and your brother are the only people I have ever loved.”

  “Could have fooled me.” The words came out like ice.

  Her mother turned to her with drawn red eyes. “There is still a place for you here, Ella. A place with your family. You are unmarried. We can drop the charges. Welcome you back in. Leglin is still a child, and your father and I will be lucky to be of sound enough mind to teach him as we taught you. Prophet knows your father’s new wife will never be able to run the House. We need you. And if you keep running with rebels and yura-eaters, I don’t—” Her mother turned away, voice thick with emotion. “I can’t lose you again.”

  Ella stared at her, heart thumping with too many emotions. Her mother’s back was beginning to hump under the gown—when had she gotten old?

  She took a deep breath. “I’m not doing any of this to hurt you, Mom. I’m following my heart. My passion. Can’t you see that?”

  “Yes,” Elyssa said, busying herself with leaves that had fallen from the basket, getting dirt on her gown. “That is what I’m afraid of.”

  Ella exhaled loudly. She had never known any of this about her mother, but it didn’t change who she was. Or the fact that, everything else aside, Ella would be miserable living in this house with her walled-off mother and her stone-hearted father.

  “I need you to drop the charges against me,” Ella said with an evenness she didn’t feel. “There are things I need to do in the city and having lawkeepers after me is just going to make it more dangerous. I don’t have malintent toward you or father, but I’m not giving up.”

  Her mother turned to her, jerking at her skirts, control regained. “If it were up to me, I would. But your father has ultimate say over that, and you know him. He won’t rest until the House is safe.”

  Ella shook her head. “And his own daughter is killed?”

  “Not killed. Just deported. Maybe a year or two in an upper-class holding cell, and then we could move you to a monitored facility somewhere farther out. But no, never killed.”

  “A monitored facility,” Ella said, feeling the old glacier of emotion grind against her stomach. “So you still want me locked up. Still don’t trust me. Don’t want what’s best for me—it’s what’s best for the House.”

  Her mother raised a hand, as if to touch her. “Ella.”

  Ella stepped back, suddenly done with this conversation. “There’s a soiree this Ascension day, did you know? All the major Houses will be at it. Could be good for the House.”

  Elyssa pulled at her gown. “We don’t go to such things. They’re expensive and, well, Aletta is busy with the baby.”

  Good to know. “Well I don’t want to impose on you,” Ella said, falling into the false tone her mother would use around company. “Wouldn’t want to make a scene, in case one of the servants called the authorities.”

  “Ella. Sweetheart. The only thing I ever wanted was your happiness. You have to know that.”

  “Sure,” Ella said. “You just never trusted me to find it.” She turned for the gate. “I’ll see you around, huh?”

  “Ella wait,” her mother said from behind. “Is there an address? Somewhere I can reach you at? I—I want to meet this Tai.”

  “And give the lawkeepers somewhere to look?” Ella felt as cold as Ayugen in midwinter. She did not want this woman meeting Tai, not if this was how she treated her own children. “Leave a message with Martus at the Quill, if you have something to say.”

  “Ella please.”

  Ella sighed, recognizing that the ice of her emotions was just another place to retreat, like her mother would. That part of her did not want to say goodbye like this. “Tell father I’ll do my best to keep our name out of this, okay?” she said without turning. “If he drops the charges, maybe we can just talk about it like adults.”

  “You know he won’t do that.”

  “Yeah,” Ella said. “I know. Bye mother.”

  And she walked out the gates she had run through so many years ago.

  26

  Madame Fetterwel, I am now prepared to meet your request at full value. I would like to clear this matter up quickly, as noted in previous messages. Please respond directly to my office.

  —Daleb Mattoy, Junior Petty Officer, riverpost to House Fetterwel

  Marea saw ghosts. Sliding along the cobbled streets of The Racks, humped feeding on the backs of smartly dressed couples taking tea in the morning sunshine, drifting in tatters through the red stone shops and houses of the suburb, sailing on an unfelt breeze.

  She smelled them too—now that she was paying attention, the scent of rotting leaves was everywhere in the city, another layer to its brine and sweat and incense smoke, each district with its own peculiar mix. The Racks, true to its name, smelled mainly of the fish drying on platforms behind the coastal dunes, and the silty smoke of charcoal fires coming from shops and courtyard kitchens.

  Marea was getting used to the revenants as another layer of reality, like the sexual tension in adult conversations she’d started noticing a few years ago. She kept her eyes focused on them, trying to make it a habit so the sight would not fail her when it mattered.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by an opening into one of the distict’s shadier alleyways. One she had run headlong from just a few days ago.

  She was different now, but she still needed money. Was she different enough to face whoever lurked in there?

  Marea felt for the dagger strapped to her thigh. Summoned a few shamanic arms and took revenants from passersby. Only one way to find out.

  She strode into the alley, shaded with overhanging buildings and damp from cobbles that rarely saw sunlight. And like before, up ahead she saw a dark figure leaning against the wall. No, two of them.

  “Something I can help you with?” one of them called, pushing off. Then he hissed.

  “That the one broke your nose, Feddin?”

  Feddin, hm? “I’m just a lost girl in need of a few coins,” she said, feeling a little giddy with the risk. She should be running from these men.

  “S’what she said last time,” Feddin said, voice nasal from the bandages wrapped around his face. She probably wouldn’t leave as much damage this time. At least, not physically. “You’ve got some wattle, showing up here again.”

  “Don’t have any wattle, friend,” she said, still in slight shock she was doing this. Talking like a hero from one of the broadsheet stories. “So. Either of you scatstains got a couple moons to spare for a lost little girl?”

  Her only answer was a snarl from Feddin, who rushed at her. Marea knocked his revenant off casually and rammed a revenant onto his spine.

  He tripped, screaming, broken nose smashing into the pavement. Marea winced, keeping her eyes on his partner.

  “How bout you?” she called. “Got some change you could spare?”

  The man’s eyes darted quickly from her to his screaming friend on the ground. He broke and ran.

  Marea smiled. “Good enough.” Keeping another revenant at the ready, and dodging the man’s wilder thrashes, she bent down and picked his pockets.

  Sixty-three moons. Not bad for a morning’s work. She stood and backed away, still slightly in awe of her own power. Fatewalking was good, but this was great. She might not even need the deal with Mattoy to keep Nawhin and Rena afloat. Just a little time with the city’s underground.

  Two hours later she was climbing the stairs to Uhallen’s tower. Rena had looked even worse than last visit—breathing labored, blood vessels blue under waxen skin—but her eyes were still b
right. It seemed like the worse her disease got, the cheerier Rena was. Marea was really coming to enjoy her visits, much as the actual sight of the girl made her worried she wouldn’t get enough uai in time to save her. It was good motivation, but moreso it had just been a long time since Marea’d had a friend her own age.

  Too bad this one was dying. And it was Marea’s fault.

  She found the door open to the sitting room below the top level of the tower, Uhallen seated on a plush couch. A breeze wafted through the stone lattice, swirling his drifting layers of smoke. She tried to catch what he was saying—was the man talking to himself?—but he cut off as she came in.

  “Marea,” he said. “Come in. Cigar?”

  She declined and he tsked, closing the lid on his lacquered chest. “Pity. Your friend Ellumia brought such a fine batch.”

  Ella—Marea hadn’t thought of the woman much since their parting yesterday. Mostly because of how condescending Ella had sounded, warning her about Uhallen while she casually talked about hunting down an archrevenant. Like it was fine for Ella but Marea was still a child.

  Uhallen blew smoke. “You two didn’t get on well?”

  Right—she kept forgetting the man could read minds, and had no compunction about doing so. “We got on fine. She just—doesn’t think I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

  Uhallen regarded the smoke rings he’d blown, drifting and expanding in the light breeze. “She thinks you are making a mistake in coming here.”

  “Yeah. But she’s always been paranoid and untrusting. I just wish she’d give me the benefit of the doubt for once.”

  “Have you considered that she might be jealous?”

  Marea cocked her head. “Why would she be? She’s an insane timeslip.”

  “And you are a talented fatewalker. But on top of that,” he ashed his cigar, “now you are a talented shaman, with an uai stream many times hers, despite her healthy natural quotient. Such things have been known to come between friends.”