Pauper's Empire: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 2)

by L. W. Jacobs

  Where were they?

  Behind her Feynrick bellowed for help, above her wafters screamed over the walls, around her people already battered and bloodied from a harrowing escape looked around in shock.

  None of it mattered. Without help, they were dead. With help, they were likely still dead, but they had all thought help would be waiting here, people to man the walls, allies in the fight against an endless stream of Broken.

  Instead there was an ache in her spine, a weariness in her bones, and the silence of an abandoned city as a flock of uai-mad Broken dived from the skies and a second pack mobbed the gates they had so recently battered down.

  With a roar Feynrick managed to wedge one splintered half of the drawbar back into the gates, and with Aelya’s shouts those who still had uai left salvaged their failing harmony, but it didn’t matter. They were still dead.

  Ella turned, ears strangely deaf, still looking for some clue in the abandoned buildings, in the walls themselves. What she saw instead was a slender girl pelting down the main walkway toward them, shouting. Pang. That was Pang, one of Tai’s original gang. A mindseye, if Ella remembered right. Maybe she could be taught to tune her resonance, in the moments before they all died. Maybe she could escape, to tell the world.

  Then her words registered. “Inside! You’ve got to come inside!”

  Wafters slammed down into them, water shooting up as the harmony caused most of them to miss their mark. One crashed into the man Ella had helped walk earlier, both of them crying out in pain. She shook her head, focusing on Pang. “What?”

  “The Tower!” The girl’s eyes were wide, to her credit not lingering on what had just happened with the wafter, nor the other Broken now rising up from the waters and turning to come again. “Everyone’s in the Tower! Come on!”

  There was no need to raise the cry. Everyone heard, everyone ran.

  The Broken followed, but by now her students were good at holding resonance and harmony under pressure. Ella smiled just a touch, the tiniest spark of hope lighting in her belly. Maybe they weren’t alone. Maybe this wasn’t over.

  The wide wood doors of the Tower stood open for a change, manned by spotless militiamen in green bands. She could have wept for the sight of them, for the milling, muttering mass of people inside the Tower’s massive central chamber. Could have if her cold logic hadn’t once again assessed the situation and fed her results.

  “Dayglen! Gil! Pull these men and strike harmony on the far side of the door, then bar it!”

  Broken smashing down around them, Ella’s people streamed through the Tower doors, faces of those inside turning to look in shock.

  Safe. They were safe, at least for now. For the moment. The Tower was tall enough, its walls thick enough, even its glass sides dangerous enough, that it would slow the wafters. The brawlers still needed to get through Newgen’s gates, though she didn’t doubt whatever force was controlling them would send wafters down to unbar it from inside.

  She would defeat that force. This was not over. They had perhaps a finger’s worth of time—some distant, disconnected part of herself smiled to find her using the Achuri time system—to recover, organize, and make a defense plan that would keep them safe until these Broken ran out of uai.

  Marrem strode from the crowd, weathered face betraying none of the open shock many of the other people showed. “We took you for dead,” she said, eying the battered survivors. “Though you don’t look far from it. What happened?”

  “No time,” Ella said, relaying briefly the attack on the caves and how they had made it to Newgen.

  Marrem grimaced. “We pulled back to the Tower when the Broken came. Newgen was a good idea, but that amount of wafters alone would have done us in. When we saw they were focused on the caves, we took the chance to pull back in here. We didn’t think any of you would make it.”

  “Well, we did,” Aelya said grimly, limping and cut in a dozen places but still on her feet. “Do you have yura? Winterfood?”

  “I laid in a supply,” Marrem said, “expecting someday it might come down to this.”

  Ella was too tired and determined to register much surprise at this. Of course Marrem did. The woman was nothing if not practical.

  Aelya, on the other hand, pulled the old woman into a bear hug. “You crazy meckstain,” she cried into Marrem’s shoulder. “I take back everything I said about you.”

  Marrem scowled, but Ella could see the humor in it. “And what exactly did you say about me?”

  It was sweet, but there was no time for it. “Any news of Tai?”

  “He’s dead, girl,” Marrem said, face falling. “Or if not, he’s not going to reach us in time. Whatever we do here, we do on our own.”

  She nodded, pushing off the wave of grief that threatened to take her, that same feeling of still not having lived her life. She somehow thought Tai had been the same. That both of them deserved more than this. Still. “We can survive this, or survive longer at least, if we teach them the harmony. This is why they attacked the caves and not you. I’m sure of it. It’s the key to defeating them.”

  “Have you cracked it then? The secret to overcoming?”

  In the rush and confusion of their flight Ella had forgotten entirely about the harmony as a path to overcoming. About timing overcomings like Feynrick and Sigwil’s, to take most advantage of their power, and to actively fight the Broken. “No,” she said, feeling weary all over again. “We had some success in the last day, but nothing repeatable. I know there’s a pattern there somewhere, I just—”

  Marrem put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Keep working, girl. You’ve got a brilliant mind. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you. In the meantime, how do we teach the entire city a new trick?”

  “We start by giving them yura,” Ella said. “Especially those who can’t resonate on their own.”

  The next few minutes were spent in a rush to unearth Marrem’s secret stores, locked three spirals up in an unused bedroom, and explain the concept of harmonizing to the scared faces of the city, assigning all the survivors to help teach them.

  When they had dispersed, others making the rounds distributing handfuls of precious yura, Ella took a moment to marvel. This would never have worked in Worldsmouth. Not only because the Achuri were more familiar with resonances, but because they did not panic under pressure. This was a people shaped by war, by a long history of violence and oppression. A people who had had to survive for so long this likely only seemed like another chapter, instead of the end of the world.

  Prophets make it so.

  51

  The first Broken got in while they were still passing out neatly folded packets of yura and mavenstym, cave survivors teaching others how to harmonize in urgent tones. It smashed through the glass dome high above, the peak of the giant inverted cone that was the Tower. Scarlet glass rained down as it shot toward them.

  “Resonance!” Ella shouted, looking to her students. “Harmonize!”

  People were shouting, eyes wide, but some of the survivors heard and struck harmony. When the Broken got close it lost control and shot sideways, slamming into one of the massive support columns that stood in the central space. Feynrick leapt as it shot down again, uai still roaring from his overcoming, and caved its head in with an overhand blow.

  Thuds and curses sounded from the central doors—their reprieve was over then. Men ran to bolster the doors as others struck resonance, the crowd’s vibration much stronger, but more chaotic as many of them were trying to harmonize for the first time. Broken wafters streamed in from the top, most of them shooting back up or sideways as they came in range of the harmony. A few bore straight down into the crowd.

  Ella cursed, striking resonance, only to see the library door burst open, Broken shoving through into the central space. The glass walls—they must have smashed their way in, then found the inner door.

  They were trying to protect themselves with a glass fortress. This wouldn’t end well.

  Time slowed, her bac
k still aching from the escape but uai resupplied from bittermelon. Ella ran for the new wave of Broken brawlers. Praise the Prophet brawlers were easy enough to kill in slip: a knife thrust to the throat for each, carefully dodging their honey-slow attacks.

  Ella’s stomach clenched when she cut through the group that had made it out the door: the library behind was full of brawlers, knocking down bookshelves, clearing a path for more to attack. She couldn’t hold this many. But when she turned for help, she saw brawlers breaking through two other doors into the central space.

  Harmony. The only thing for it was to get harmonized resonance at each entrance, make sure their coordination was broken before they had a chance to get in. Ella cut three more throats in quick succession, praying the pile of bodies, at least, would slow down the ones behind, then ran back for the milling crowd. Two more doors. There were two more with brawlers coming out, militiamen just beginning to react.

  She stilled resonance on spying Feynrick, and the world slurred back to chaos and noise around her, people shouting, resonance thrumming, Broken wafters screaming in the chamber above them.

  “Feynrick!” she cried. “There are more coming in!”

  “Aye,” the burly man grinned. “Going to be a good one.”

  A good one? The man was insane. “We need a plan. I can’t hold them all.”

  “Aye.” He scratched his thick red beard, as though he were an Academy scholar and she’d posed an interesting theoretical quandary. “But we’ve got the resonances, genitors praise ye. I’d say your first plan was the best.”

  “What plan, the harmony bubble from our escape?” Men shouted as the new lines of brawlers hit the crowd, militiamen scrambling to fight them. “We can’t crowd together here—it’s too big for our bubble.”

  “Aye,” he said a third time. It was all she could do not to slap him, bloody fist still thoughtfully rubbing his beard. “So we make the Tower itself our bubble. Plug the holes, use the rooms as kill boxes, widen the perimeter.” He reached out an arm and snatched Aelya as he spoke, the stocky girl spewing curses. “Here’s what ye do.”

  He laid out a quick plan, thick with ‘ayes.’ It wasn’t likely to get them out of this mess, but it would keep them alive, at least. For a while.

  The first step was to plug the holes on the ground level—that was Feynrick’s job. He grabbed other survivors from the caves and ran, bellowing about resonances, his uai once again raging. They would harmonize and beat the Broken back, then station pairs at each doorway, to neutralize them with harmonies and keep them out of the central space.

  Ella’s job came next, finding pairs of people able to harmonize with each other in the milling mass of bodies, then sending them with Aelya up the spiral walkway that lined the cavernous central space. Feynrick’s idea was to send each resonating pair going a half turn further up the spiral walkway, slowly pushing the harmonic barrier higher up, making more of a buffer between the wafters and the crowd on the floor. It would stop brawlers from breaking in higher up as well, as long as the harmony held.

  The first few minutes or hours were chaos, Ella shoving through the crowd, finding pairs with different abilities and making sure they could harmonize with each other. It seemed like every time she turned around Aelya was there, needing another pair to push further up the spiral or replace one that had gotten hurt.

  Ella stuck to her students at first, then survivors of the flight from the cave, then as her options waned started pairing these with others who had been in the Tower, then finally pairing Tower people together, teaching those to harmonize who didn’t know. Prophets bless the Achuri for being braver and better at resonances than most Councilates. This would never have worked in Worldsmouth.

  At some point things slowed enough for her to realize it was working. The cavernous interior still echoed with screams and shouts, but they were distant, the wafters trapped in the upper half of the conic interior by a thrumming layer of harmony, the holes in the bottom floor plugged and doors holding. It was insane, but it was working. Marrem had even organized a system of runners to take yura and winterfoods out to the resonators, resupplying them, while Feynrick, half his face crusted in blood, had come back to organize reserve sets of fighters and resonators. Everyone looked scared, everyone looked desperate, but no one was panicked.

  “Here, sister,” an Achuri man said, taking her arm. “Let me spell you.”

  It took her a moment to recognize Gil, one of her first students. The first one who’d overcome from harmonizing. “Gil! Yes. Thank you.”

  As soon as she said it there was no question of finding a bench or a quiet place to rest. She just dropped to the floor, spine aching, each leg feeling like it weighed a ton. She’d done her part. Now she had to trust others to do the rest.

  Only they didn’t feel like others anymore, even if she was the only lighthaired one in the room, aside from the Broken. They were in this together. Even Aelya saw that, giving her a wink as she tugged a fresh pair of resonators up the walkway.

  And exhausted as she was, Ella couldn’t help but smile. This alone was worth it.

  52

  The walkway was chaos. Every time Aelya thought they were good, another mecking Broken would break through a door or randomly waft into one of the pairs of resonators, and the harmony would break, and she and Dayglen and Delrik would have to go fight them down. The two men were all that were left of her Blackspines, but they were the best, and Dayglen was good at harmonizing. It was a mecksight easier to plug the holes with harmonies than going head-to-head with the Broken. Each one of them was like Tai on a good day.

  Still, she was tired. How long had she been running up and down this stupid lighthaired walkway? And what was this soft stuff on it, floor clothes? It’d been afternoon when they broke out of the caves and it was full night now, star just a blue glow to the west. Her back felt like a herd of elk had stampeded on it, but she kept eating bittermelon and her uai kept coming back.

  Thank the stains the Broken were easy to fight, at least. One ran at her now through an open door, axe raised. She waited for the confused look to enter its eyes, then thrust for the heart with a long spear, dodging an axe swing suddenly gone wild. The cave entrance had been good for fighting, but these rooms were even better—the door was smaller, and when they lost control inside they usually tried to run out, cutting themselves up or outright dying on the jagged glass windows. There’d be no using the Tower once this was all done. Not without a shatstaining cleanup, anyway.

  Dayglen gave her an old Maimer’s shakes, three fingers in, and she responded in kind, Ella towing up a pair of resonators to spell the one still left here. The lighthaired woman was a banshee—she looked like death from exhaustion, but she was back to teaching down below and bringing new pairs up and even timeslipping to help the fights when she had to. Aelya hadn’t thought lighthairs could work that hard.

  Then again, she’d never thought much of them at all before Ella, except to hate their guts.

  But they’re mostly bad right? Curly asked. ‘Cept Ella? I mean a buncha these Broken are lighthairs, and the Councilate is, right?

  Aelya nodded to Ella and moved off with her men, watching for the next hole. She didn’t know what to say to Curly, so she didn’t say anything. Sure enough, one of the wafters shot through the upper layer of harmony, out of control but managing to smash right into a pair of resonators two spirals up. She nodded to her men and they started to run, Ella running back down for more.

  So it went. The moon rose outside, and she started to see the same resonators coming up again as they ran out of fresh people. Feynrick cursed and Arkless paced and Marrem told her she should really get some rest. Aelya fought Broken.

  Mecking right she should rest, but she couldn’t. Mecking Tai wasn’t here and what was left of their city was trapped in a glass shatting lighthair tower and Marrem wanted her to rest? She’d rest when she was dead.

  Someone screamed below them, but it was too sane to be a Broken scream. She could
tell by now. So they ran down the spiral and found three Broken pushing from a room over the bodies of a resonating pair. One had a sword through her back—that was probably how they’d broken through. Throw it past the barrier, break the harmony, attack. They were getting smarter.

  Aelya struck resonance, familiar strength flooding her body, running faster down the spiral, tossing her spear aside to pull her sword. One of the Broken leapt from the walkway railing—they were two or three spirals up here, but whoever had control of these things probably thought the jumper could at least kill a few people in the courtyard before it died.

  Aelya and her men descended on the other two, Dayglen striking harmony to her resonance just before they hit. The closer one jerked in its movements and she chopped into its neck, Delrik running past to the get the other one. They’d learned to strike harmony just before they hit, to maximize the advantage. Delrik got a good axe chop in to the farther one’s spine and Aelya pulled her sword free.

  Done. It was hard to remember a time when the Broken were a bigger threat. But all it took was one slip with the harmonies and they were again. She’d seen it over and over tonight.

  Now they just had to hold resonance and the doorway until another pair arrived. Aelya looked through it, door broken off its hinges. Newgen was in flames beyond, the night a harsh glow of red smoke, smell of burning paint heavy on the air. Good. Let the enclave burn. They didn’t need it anyway.

  Wind blasted her a second before an insane scream. “Looks like we got a live one!” she yelled to the men, bracing one foot back and grabbing her spear. “Make that two!”

  The wafters arrowed into the bed chamber, dodging through the shattered plate glass. When they hit the harmony they’d slam themselves into ceiling or attack each other, making easy targets.