Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  “What did this?” Aelya choked.

  “And why didn’t it take the body?” Tai asked a moment later. Something in the forest was always willing to eat the dead, whether it was bears or wolves or vultures or insects. This one was untouched: bloated beyond recognition, skin a mottled purple and black, foul fluid seeping from it’s eyes, ears, and anus. Not even the heavy flies of late summer, desperate at this time of year for a place to lay eggs, buzzed in the air.

  “Gods if I know,” one of the men cursed, collar over his mouth. “Not sure I want to.”

  The wind changed direction again, blowing from the east, and Tai drew a grateful lung of clean air. “Look for the trail,” he called to the men. “Does anyone see hoofprint or sign of other animal crossing?”

  The men spread out, and Tai did the same, but found nothing. The breeze gusted, orange leaves chittering from the tall leatherleafs surrounding the clearing. “What of human mark?” Tai called over the wind. “Any shod prints or sign of tool?”

  A boom sounded to the west, reverberating underfoot. Tai frowned, meeting Aelya’s eyes. “What—“

  The breeze swelled to a gale, leaves and sticks flying. Aelya yelled something, but her words were lost in the groan of trees.

  Tai looked up, confusion changing to horror as a line of massive leatherleafs cracked and toppled toward them.

  4

  Tai struck resonance, uai roaring to life within him. He thickened air against the trees, shoving backward with his own wind. They hung halfway down, balanced between his push and the unnatural gale—another wafter?

  “Run!” he yelled at Aelya and the men. “I don’t know how long I can hold it!”

  His words were lost in the roar. He pushed harder against the trees, unable to tip them back. Just as he was thinking he might need to run too, the gale died and his shove shot the trees the other direction, crashing into the forest beyond.

  Men shouted and drew swords around him, ichor and stench welling from the body where a stick had impaled it. Aelya grabbed his arm, pointing upwards with her iron fist. “Tai!”

  Something black hung in the sky. His stomach dropped. It was another wafter, then. A Titan? And as strong as he was. This must be the Councilate’s new weapon. The thing that killed the body below.

  And the end of any idea he could defend the city, if they had more. He’d be lucky to save Aelya and the men.

  Tai shoved his fear down and pushed into the sky. Street instincts kicked in: no time for fear. Do what you can. Lead the wafter off, like he’d led off so many lawkeepers. Give the others time to escape.

  It flew for him as he rose up, fast but definitely not a Titan. Titans wore shining steel armor. This wafter was covered in dirt and blood. Almost like the body Arkless had brought in.

  Had the two fought each other?

  Tai wafted the other direction, and the wafter gave chase, thank the ancestors. The forest spread out below him, a lumpy carpet of green, wind howling around his ears.

  No, not just the wind. The wafter was howling too.

  What in ancestors?

  Tai looked back to see the figure still streaking toward him, sword in hand. They were already a thousandpace or more from his friends. Good enough. Run, Aelya, the thought as he struck his higher resonance. For once in your life don’t be stupid.

  Air thickened around his hands, and Tai imagined a giant fist made of air, punching down into the wafter’s back.

  Their—her?—howl changed to one of pain and it crashed into the treetops. At that speed, she had likely broken most of the bones in its body.

  At least it was over quick.

  He scanned the green canopy, trying to find a place to descend and look for the body.

  The body came to him, shooting up from the trees shrieking, sword gone, leaves a swirl around her.

  She’d survived that?

  Air buffeted him like she was trying to imitate his fist of air. She had a second resonance, then, but didn’t know how to use it. Or was too broken to control it well—the way she flew at everything top speed, it almost seemed like she was using her resonance for the first time.

  He dodged back. Control or not, she was as powerful as he was. More powerful, maybe. So he’d have to be smarter, use her lack of control to his advantage.

  Tai shot away, pouring on speed. As soon as she followed he dived for the trees.

  It was insanity. Leaves and needles tore at him as he plunged through the canopy, then the understory opened up to long bare trunks. At this speed, any one of them would break his neck. He was counting on it, actually.

  The wafter crashed down nearby and Tai sped away, weaving through thick trunks, dodging fallen trees and broken branches, mind totally taken up in staying alive. Behind him, the wafter screamed.

  And he grinned. This, at least, he knew how to do. This he was good at. Forget leading the city, or being someone people looked up to, or even solving the city’s food shortage. He was a wafter. A good one, even if he would never defeat an entire army again. And wafting like this, at the limits of his ability, uai raging inside, felt good. It felt right.

  The wafter screamed again behind him, a crack sounding. He looked back to see her bouncing off a trunk but barreling on, one leg flopping limp.

  Ancestors, could she not die?

  He sped ahead, barely missing a leaning trunk himself, spine starting to ache from all the uai he was using. He didn’t have much more.

  What about the wafter’s? It had to run out soon. More screams and cracks sounded from behind, and he spun quickly around a giant leatherleaf, shooting south instead of west. A heavy thud sounded, and the wafter’s almost constant screams cut off.

  Tai slowed, spine aching, listening for any hint of the other wafter. Ancestors, what was it? A wildly strong, half-controlled yuraload gone bad? That couldn’t die? He had been sure, until now, that he was the strongest wafter in the Councilate, but this wafter was a match for him in strength. And it seemed animal, somehow, its screams and cries more primal than a human would make, even in battle.

  The silence continued for ten breaths, twenty. Tai dropped to the earth, damping his uai despite the bends that hit, realizing the hum might give him away. The world bent and spun, his stomach threatening to leave him, and still he listened, counting to sixty.

  Nothing. Had he killed the thing? Maybe it had run out of uai.

  Tai chewed a hunk of dried bittermelon and risked a look around the tree. The forest lay silent, ferns swaying in a light breeze. He tried a yell, ducking back to avoid attacks, but nothing came.

  Tai crept out then, scanning the area. Leaves crackled at his first step so he bounced into air, grimacing at the resonance, and also the ache in his bones. He hadn’t used this much uai since the final days of the rebellion.

  Tai skimmed toward the giant leatherleaf, shafts of sunlight dappling the forest floor, alert for a sudden attack.

  He found the wafter crumpled in a heap, almost unrecognizably mangled. Again, like the body Arkless brought in. He shivered.

  What was going on?

  First things first. Make sure it’s dead. He slowed, dropped to the ground and threw a stone. It bounced from the figure’s leg with no response. Tai walked closer, uai at the ready.

  It was another Councilate soldier, white coat still visible under the dirt and blood. A woman, the lemonpepper hair of a mixed blood spilling from a tight-fitting helmet pushed askew. She’d broken multiple limbs, and blood seeped from her mouth as well as a gaping tear in her stomach.

  He listened for a breath, heard none, and crouched down over her.

  “What happened to you?” he whispered, feeling for a pulse at the neck.

  She screamed, eyes bulging wide, and the forest pulled down around them.

  Tai shoved back with everything he had, trees cracking and uai burning up his spine, then her shove was gone and the trees burst outward. She collapsed, and Tai used his last bit of uai to break her neck.

  He collapsed next to her
. “Prophets,” he panted, “what are you?”

  5

  Aelya crashed through the forest, resonance burning, slamming trees aside with her iron fist. “Tai!” she yelled, echoed by the militiamen spread out in the trees. Mecking idiot, just flying off where she couldn’t help. Where was he?

  There, maybe, a tree looking freshly broken.

  What if he’s dead, Aels? Curly’s voice was a squeak inside her head, like he’d been a year ago, before they joined the resistance. Before the Councilate murdered him.

  “If he’s dead I’ll kill him,” she muttered, cracking off a branch in her path. He was always doing this, trying to protect her when he was the one who needed protection. He should know by now how mad it made her.

  Mecking idiot.

  Whatever that thing was, it better still be alive when she found it, because she needed a fight. Fights were how she worked out her feelings. That’s how she’d always been, even on the streets. Get angry, fight something, feel better. Tai knew this. And still he flew off.

  She rounded a giant leatherleaf, bark shredded high up, and found him collapsed next to a bloodied body. Fear hit like a logger’s axe. “Stains,” she cursed, dropping to feel his neck.

  A heartbeat. He was alive. Thank the elders.

  Anger came back a second later, and she slapped him. “Wake up, assface.”

  His eyes opened. “Wha—Aelya?”

  “Yeah, Aelya. The meck were you thinking, flying off like that?” Good thing he looked pretty beat up. Otherwise she’d punch him.

  Tai pushed himself up, wincing. “I didn’t want to fight her and worry about you all getting hurt.”

  “Worry about me? You didn’t think maybe I could help you?” Still, he was alive. She could pound some sense into him when he healed up. “Who is this meckstain anyway?”

  “Looks like another Councilate soldier.” He prodded at his side. “A mecking strong one.”

  “You’re telling me. I just about got crushed by one of those trees.”

  “No, I mean strong.” There was a look in his eyes, like when the Roughbloods would come looking for protection money.

  Aelya swallowed. “Like, stronger than you?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Meckstains.” She took a step closer to the body and squatted down. “She looks so… broken.”

  Tai squatted next to her, a few militiamen approaching. “That’s a good word for it. Broken. Like she was… broken inside too.”

  Aelya poked the body with a stick, half cautious and still half wanting to kick the shatters out of it. “You think they sent this broken lady after you?”

  “Maybe. But how would they know I was out here?”

  Aelya glanced at the men. Not great to make them start worrying, but nothing for it. “They must have. Why else would they wait until now?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m thinking she’s the new weapon that Titan was talking about.”

  Aelya poked the thing again. “That’d make sense. Pretty dead now though.”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t easy.”

  He looked exhausted, like he used to look coming back from battles in the rebellion. He must have burned a lot of uai. She fished him out a stick of wintermelon from her belt. “So how’d they break her? Drug her up on yura? She didn’t seem to be making much sense.”

  “Maybe. That’s what she reminded me of, she and the body Arkless brought in.”

  “Of what?” Tai could be mecking vague sometimes.

  “The yuraloads—the first ones.”

  A gory scene came into her head, of a wafter smashing himself to death against cave walls. “Matle.”

  Matle was the reason they’d started tying people up before they yuraloaded them. Because a few of the loaders would go crazy, screaming and losing control of their powers. “But they always killed themselves in a few minutes,” she said. “This one seemed like she had better control.”

  “Or like she was being controlled. She broke her leg and kept coming, Aels.”

  Aelya poked the body in the nose. “Anyways, you beat their new weapon, so we’re good, right?”

  Tai rolled his shoulders. “That’s the thing. If this really is something like yuraloading, then those other bodies were probably Broken too.”

  “Meaning there’s more coming.”

  He nodded.

  Aelya sighed. Being angry was so much better than worrying. You couldn’t fight out worry. “Well we’d better pack her up. The circle’s gonna want to see this.”

  6

  There was a music to our gatherings, then. A song our ancestors would sing in winter. I haven’t heard it for many years now.

  --Ellumia Aygla, Interviews with Achuri Elders, unpublished

  Ella pulled her knit shawl closer over her shoulders. The wind swirling across the square had a bite, and she recalled Markel’s passages on Achuri winters so cold no one would go outside for days. It wasn’t even properly fall yet. Ayugen was exciting, but she was missed Worldsmouth’s constant heat. The caves were warm, at least, but Gil had insisted on meeting here, at an open-air kitchen on Sandglass Square, to talk through his overcoming yesterday.

  He was talking now about the details of his voice—he’d understood it as a former lover, not the divine challenge of Seinjial belief. Tunla was there too, sipping a steaming cup of mavenstym tea and tutoring her daughter in Yersh letters. In the square children screamed and chased each other, and scents of roasting buttersquash and seared elk wafted from the kitchen. Ella breathed deep. It was refreshing to see sunshine. Maybe she should work outside air into the students’ routine…

  Gil trailed off. “Or is this not what you are wanting?”

  Ella realized she’d stopped taking notes some time ago. “No, no! I guess we are just more curious as to what happened in the final moments, any insights you have as to how you overcame your voice.”

  “Oh.” The young man still spoke in clipped sentences, but there was a vibrance to him that was new. The pockmarks on his cheeks from acne in his youth were also gone, healed in the overcoming. “Honestly I don’t know. I had been fighting with my lover since I woke up. Then you came and it was like she got confused. Or, that I could see it wasn’t her talking. That she was something else. Something that didn’t care about me, whatever she said.”

  Ella nodded. “Do you think the isolation helped?”

  “Yeah. I missed seeing people, but I could… hear her better, down there. Or it. Whatever it was.” He laughed, took a sip of his thick beer. He wore the red necklace that marked cult members, scarlet beads on a black strip of hide.

  “Was there anything shocking or stressful that happened while I was there?”

  He shook his head. “The opposite. It was nice having company. I think your presence helped.”

  So much for the shock trials theory. Ella scribbled in her book—from what she could tell of Titan memoirs, extreme stress was the method the Councilate used to get their soldiers to overcome voices, though it resulted in a high casualty rate. “Was it something I said? Something I did?”

  Gil shook his head. “No. Really, I think it was just having you there.”

  Ella glanced at Tunla. The elder they’d visited yesterday, upriver from Ayugen, had talked of guides, that most went into the caves with someone who had gone before, who had gotten ‘the boon’ from their ancestors, as Tunla translated it. Did Ella have some kind of boon, now that she’d overcome both her voices?

  “Thank you, Gil. Let us know when your second voice comes. You’d be welcome to work through it with us.”

  Gil paused in sipping his beer. “Second voice?”

  Ella nodded. “Everyone has two. Your next one will show up sometime soon, but having gone through this process should help you. It doesn’t matter who it is or what it says, remember that the last one was not who it said it was. Neither is this one, and overcoming it will give you more power.”

  Gil set the glass down, eyes sharp. “What kind of power?”

&nbs
p; “Healing,” Ella said. “Like your first voice kept you from being able to get strength whenever you wanted it, this next voice will be controlling the ability to heal yourself. You can access a weaker version of it now, with yura.”

  Gil stood. “I’ll remember that. Will you… tell the Lord Blood? That I overcame?”

  Ella kept her face neutral. She’d made her peace with religions and belief systems—everyone had theirs, plausible or not—but it was hard to think of Tai as a holy figure. “I’ll let him know.”

  “Thanks,” he said, scraping back his chair and placing a few coins on the table. “I’ll be back when the next voice comes.”

  Ella watched him go, quill hovering over the page.

  “I know that look,” Tunla said. “What are you thinking?”

  She glanced at her Achuri friend. Tunla looked similar to when they had first met, under Odril’s employ—bright eyes, glowing skin, thick black locks with streaks of gray—but there was something looser in her now, more at ease. Freedom was treating her well.

  “I’m thinking we’re at a dead end. Gil says the isolation was good for helping him concentrate, and that’s how Tai and I overcame our demons. He also says my company helped, but that’s the opposite of isolation. It can’t be both.”

  Tunla sipped at her tea. “Maybe it is. Maybe keeping them separated from each other down there all the time isn’t the best way. Maybe they should be meeting in groups. Or not talking, but sitting near each other.”

  “Did your mother do anything like that?”

  Tunla had grown up in one of the rural Achuri villages near the ice sheet, her mother a local shaman. It was one of the reasons Ella had hired Tunla to work with her, along with Tunla’s translation skills.

  And she was one of the few friends Ella had.

  Tunla rubbed at her ceramic mug. “Not that I remember. But people having trouble with their spirit guides—their voices—used to get together in the winter and talk about it. Voices were always stronger in winter.”