Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  Weiland just grunted, grinding his own mouthful of dreamleaf. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke he always had something good to say. It was one of the things she liked about him. Curly, on the other hand, was a mecking chatterbox.

  Course it’s gonna work Teeks! This is the pearliest idea you had since you got Theron to give me a real sword! In her mind’s eye he was still a muss-haired kid with big feet and a talent for picking fights. Not the frog-throated young man with the rusty sword they’d laid in the ground two months ago.

  Let’s hope it’s better than that one, she thought back at him. And anyway Tai’s the one who said we should work more abilities into our tactics.

  Out loud she said, “Bet you dinner Dayglen gets the flag from your lighthair.” She’d chosen Dayglen, a former street tough, to lead the raiding team, and Weiland had picked a sandy-haired Yershman to run the defense. Feynrick had them running militia drills while he worked with new recruits in town.

  Weiland just grunted again, but she could tell from his tone he was willing. That was another thing she liked about him: the man had expressive grunts.

  Down the prison wall, a group of men rushed from the trees with ropes and ladders. She squinted, watching to see how fast the under-manned defenders would spot them and get to the wall. They were not to use any resonance for this exercise, other than mindsight. “Any of your men cheat and it’s elk steaks on you.”

  Weiland grunted.

  The six mindseyes in the exercise had all overcome their first demon, and they were using yura to access their second ability, to send thoughts into the minds of their other team members. The ability had lots of potential for the battlefield, but they were just starting to test it. Some of the mindseyes were still sloppy, a trace of their thought coming into the mind of anyone nearby—she could hear some of it now, like echoes off a canyon wall. They’d have to get over that if it was going to mean much when the Councilate came back.

  Weiland gave a pleased grunt, and she saw defenders were running toward the wall attempt. It wasn’t a particularly great place to rush the fort—she’d expected better strategy out of Dayglen.

  Then a rope swung over the opposite wall, where old construction met newer at a right angle. Right where the defenders rushing to the first attack—the decoy attack—would be least likely to see it.

  Aelya whistled. “Ha! That’s shattergood timing. Dayglen’s using his mindseyes. I’m thinking honeywine with my steak...”

  Weiland stayed leaned against the wall. “Beringil too.” A group of defenders were rushing toward the rope from the ground level, and Aelya could hear a faint voice in her head, cussing about the far wall.

  “Scattermeck.” There was no way the defenders could see the scaling attempt from there, but Weiland’s captain had posted his mindseyes at strategic points along the walls, relying on them to send the centralized defenders where they needed to go, instead of spreading his men thin along the length of the walls.

  Sandbag arrows flew as the first men scaled the corner, and the soldiers dutifully died when hit. Dayglen was giving them a better run on the first side, having concentrated his men there. Aelya saw a third rope go over the wall at the far end of the prison fort and grinned. Dayglen was a former Maimer, a street tough, and he was damn devious. One greenscarf made it over, then two, then three, using another rope to drop down the far side. Beringil’s men spotted them and started running, but Dayglen’s were closer to the flag.

  Weiland gave a sour grunt, and she grinned. “Feeling awfully hungry over here.”

  Her men took the flag a moment later, and she blew a shrill note through her fingers to call a reset. As the teams trotted back to their bases Weiland gave another grunt, but not with the sweet note of defeat she was expecting. She looked at him, then followed his eyes to the road leading out of the clearing, where three darkhaired militiamen dragged a third between them, a lighthair.

  “The meck is this?” she asked.

  “Trouble, looks like.”

  They’d caught plenty of lighthairs causing trouble in the past few weeks, stealing food or property or starting fights, but never one of their own men. There were precious few lighthairs in the militia to begin with—she’d seen to that. Looked like it was still too many. Aelya stomped down the stairs.

  Why are they even in there? Curly asked. They’re not Achuri.

  Because everybody else insisted, she thought back, flexing her good arm. Tai, Weiland, the Councilate girl, they all said Ayugen was for everybody now. Even the people that had ruined it.

  She strode the hard-beaten ground to the gate. Some of the men were drifting over from the training exercise. Let them. They needed to see this militia kept discipline.

  She met the foursome under the gates, still scorched from the attack that had earned Tai the nickname the Blood, after he fell from the sky bleeding and got it on everyone trapped inside. She knew one of the darkhairs, Jemma, a Seinjial who gambled with Weiland sometimes, but didn’t recognize the other two. They saluted her, even the lighthair caught between them, a slender man with fuzz instead of a beard. “What’s this?”

  “Theft, cap’n,” Jemma answered. “Sendyal and I were on duty and caught him sneaking out of the storehouse with a sack of grain.”

  Her good fist tightened. “This true?” she barked at the lighthair. “You stealing from your own company?”

  His mouth worked for a second. “I did. I’m sorry! I just wanted something extra for my girlfriend.”

  “For your girlfriend. And you thought that meant you could take what you like from our stores, when food’s so scatting expensive we have to beg for it at council.” Her head was hot, knew it was hot, didn’t care. Curly tried to say something, but in a stride she was to the man, resonance thrumming, and struck him across the face with her iron hand.

  She felt something break, heard him cry out and saw him go limp, didn’t care. Mecking thief. Shatting lighthair.

  She turned to find the men in an arc around them, eyes split between her and the lighthair. “This is what happens when you steal from your own company.” She flexed her good fist. “We’ve got enough mecking problems without having to police our own. Without having to worry about scatshattering grain thieves. Get back to work.” She flicked her iron arm at them, droplets of blood flying from the end.

  They got.

  “Cap’n?” It was Jemma.

  “What.”

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Meck if I care. Is he dead?” She turned then, realizing what kind of a blow she’d dealt him. His face was a mess, and he was bleeding good, but he was still breathing. Stains. She hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. “Take him to the healworkers. Marrem. She’ll fix him up.”

  She flexed her good arm again, watching them take him up. It might have been a mistake, but she didn’t care. Someone had to keep discipline, or the whole scatting city would fall apart. She turned to see Weiland watching from the walls, face unreadable.

  9

  Tai showed up a few hours later, while they were having the brawlers run drills, captains relaying orders to mindseyes who sent them out to brawlers five hundredpace distant. One minute she was watching the drills with Weiland, next minute Tai was slamming down in a rattle of uai. “Prophetsmeck,” she cursed. “You gotta stop doing that.”

  She caught sight of his face and knew something was wrong. Tai didn’t turn into a thundercloud for nothing. “We need to talk,” he said.

  She nodded. Probably about the lighthair. “Alright.”

  “Alone.” He held out a hand.

  Aelya glanced at the sky, back to his face. “Let’s walk, okay?”

  “Fine.” He stepped off the walkway and dropped to the dirt below, resonance strong enough to vibrate the wood beneath her.

  “Weils, watch the drills, okay?”

  He grunted, still with that unreadable look in his eyes.

  Aelya followed Tai out the gate, his pace fast enough she had to work to keep up.
He didn’t say anything, so she didn’t say anything, the road taking them across the prison camp clearing and into the woods. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the hard-packed path, and a few birds called in the treetops.

  “You remember when we hid out here?” he asked finally, legs still eating ground.

  “The day we joined the rebellion? Course I do.”

  “You remember how Maimers and Mothers ended up joining us too?”

  “Yeah.” She bit back the so? She hated when Tai lectured her. Or anyone, for that matter.

  “How they used to be our enemies on the streets? How they cut off your arm?”

  “I couldn’t mecking forget that, could I? I remember all of it. I remember the same meckstain from the Maimers who told me I wasn’t big enough to be one of their brawlers saving my ass during the attack on Newgen. What’s your point?”

  “My point is that you don’t kill for stealing food!” He stopped in the road, air suddenly vibrating around them.

  “I didn’t kill him. Prophet’s piece, I just smacked him across the face.”

  He glared at her, a head taller and same uai rattling off him that once defeated an army. Dust and leaves caught in a swirl around them. Aelya swallowed.

  “Marrem says he’ll likely die. That if he lives he won’t be good for much. His mecking brains were coming out his ear, Aelya.”

  She swallowed. “Stains. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Yeah well you did. And if I heard it right most of the militia saw you doing it. Or if they didn’t hear about it they will by tonight. And what kind of message does that send?”

  She flexed her good arm. “That we don’t let anybody break the rules in the militia, lighthair or not.”

  “Lighthair or not? Remember Dayglen? Remember catching him with five extra swords? Remember what we did?”

  They’d given him a talking to, assigned him privy duty for a month. Meck, he was still cleaning them. Aelya bit her lip. “I remember.”

  “So what message does that send? If you used to run on the streets or came from Ayugen or anything, if you’re a darkhair, you’ll be fine. But lighthairs? They get braindead in the healworker’s shop.”

  Aelya frowned, head cocking. “Are you defending him?”

  “No. No one should be allowed to steal, from the militia or anywhere else. But they need real justice, need a hearing. Stains Aelya, we don’t even know if he did it.”

  Tai shook his head and the leaves whipping around them dropped. “That’s what the mecking Councilate was doing to us at the end, just arresting anybody and throwing them in there—“ he threw an arm the direction of the prison camp— “without any kind of proof or hearing. And now we’re killing lighthairs because they did what got Dayglen privy duty?”

  Aelya swallowed a big lump. “Sickpots. You’re right, Tai. I should have brought him in. We should have had a hearing.”

  “That’s what they were bringing him to you for.” He shook his head, eyes drilling into hers. “Don’t you remember Beal? Ilrick? All the lighthairs that fought alongside us in the rebellion? I thought we were trying to make a place that’s different than the Councilate. That doesn’t treat its people the way they did.”

  She stuck her head up at this. “The difference is we weren’t doing anything wrong. The mecking lighthairs now are causing trouble all over town, stealing and picking fights and trying to take homes from people. I would treat darkhairs just the same if we were doing it, but we’re not.”

  “Would you? How many of these lighthairs have we given a hearing at council? I can remember two. The rest of them got punished before we could even hear if the charges against them were true, and Marrem’s sick bay is full of lighthairs still recovering from it. What if this is just other darkhairs lying to us? Or setting the lighthairs up because they want them out?”

  “They did it to us long enough. Maybe it’s our turn.”

  Tai’s eyes widened, and she suddenly wished she had the words back. “Our turn? Do you even realize what you’re saying?”

  She held up her hands. “Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, I mean yeah, some of them are good, I’m sure Ella’s doing good things with her school, and there are others, I mean we’ve got some in the militia even, but mostly…”

  “But mostly you think they should leave.” He shook his head, whole body slumping, and that made her feel worse than anything. “I thought I knew you, Aels. I thought we were in this together.”

  Panic twisted in her stomach. She grabbed his arm. “We are Tai. I mecked up, alright? I’ll stop it. I promise. I’ll make sure everyone gets a hearing now. I’ll tell the militia I mecked up. I just—“

  “You just hate lighthairs.” His eyes were sad. “I did too. That’s how we grew up. But this isn’t about light- and darkhairs anymore. It’s about rebellion and Councilate. Or not even that, it’s seeing beyond what the Councilate taught us. Hair color, that’s something they care about. Something they used to divide us. We have to be better than that.”

  She nodded, still holding on to his arm. “I’m sorry, Tai. I—it’s gonna take me a while to get there. But I want to get there. They just shattermecked us for so long, it’s hard. I’ll do better, okay?”

  His expression softened, and he nodded. “Okay. But you really do need to talk about this to the men, or it’s not gonna stop here. And you need to go see the soldier. Dalglese, his name is. To make it right with him. If he ever wakes up.”

  That was gonna be fun. She nodded though, just relieved to have Tai back. “I will. You… want to come see the drills? We’ve been practicing with mindseyes today. It’s working really well.”

  Tai glanced down the road and sighed. “I should, I know, but I’ve got to get back. Marrem wants me to look at the granaries. Part of being a figurehead, I guess.” Her bones suddenly buzzed as he struck resonance. “You will make this right Aelya? Things are already shaky enough, and if this kind of attitude spreads… we could lose everything we fought for.”

  She put on her best face. “I will, Tai. Don’t worry about it.”

  He searched her eyes once, then nodded and shot into the air. Aelya bit her lip, watching him go. He was right, she should change. But how did you unlearn what you’d known your whole life?

  10

  Tai pushed through a sea of kids, toppled remains of a granary rising from them like a stone island ahead. They filled the brick courtyard, shouting and pushing as they tried to gather the spilled grain, air smelling of unwashed child and wet millet.

  “Excuse me, little brother,” Tai said to one. “Pardon, sister,” to another. Marrem pushed beside him, her words sharper but still loving, like a grandmother. The kids ignored them, hands scraping at the ground, picking broken stalks of millet from the dirt. He was surprised to see some lighthaired kids scrounging alongside the dark, but that was the new Ayugen—all equal, all hungry.

  Tai grimaced. At least these kids didn’t seem to care he was the Lord Blood, unlike the pack of five or six cultists who stood at the edge of the merchant’s yard, eyes following his every move.

  “There you are! Finally,” a wiry man snapped in Achuri from next to the granary. “Tell these kids to leave! Get them out of my yard!”

  “I was a hungry kid once,” Tai said to him, pushing in to the center. “I don’t think telling them to leave will do much.”

  The merchant—not a cultist, Tai was relieved to see—looked about to snap something angrier back, but Marrem laid a hand on his sleeve. “You can’t sell grain that’s already in the mud, Eacham. Think of it as a free clean-up service.”

  The man looked sour at this, but held his tongue.

  “What happened here?” Tai asked, gazing up at the toppled granary. It had been built of thick stones, solidly mortared together. It would take real strength to push something like this over.

  “I woke up to the sound of falling rocks, but they locked me in. My own house! And I had to sit there inside while they filled their sacks
and made off with my grain.”

  Marrem reached an arm into the broken bottom of the granary, coming up with a handful of dark red millet. “Any idea who did it?”

  “No. Not a clue. I’ve had yura and dreamleaf and mavenstym stolen before, but grain?”

  Tai’s shoulders let down a bit. At least the man wasn’t instantly blaming it on lighthairs, the way Aelya might. If the city’s opinion toward lighthairs started really shifting it would be a disaster.

  “Times are changing,” Marrem said. “What was worth real money under the Councilate may not be what makes you marks now.”

  “You mean we are short on food,” Eacham snapped. “Every merchant knows that. The least you could do is keep our granaries safe.”

  “This one is a lost cause, friend,” Tai said, suppressing irritation at the man’s short-sightedness. “Perhaps if you could give us clues as to who did it, we can stop the next one from happening.”

  “Well they obviously planned it, targeted me, and were working in a team.”

  “And they had a few brawlers with real strength,” Marrem added. “Though why they would topple the thing instead of just break open the door is beyond me.”

  “I had a real lock on the door,” Eacham said. “Seinjial iron. They weren’t getting through that. It’s still there, for all the good it did me.” He waved at an iron door amongst the rubble of fallen stone.

  “More importantly,” Tai said, “unless your granary was mostly empty, they didn’t pull it down until they’d gotten the millet out, or it would have spilled everywhere.”

  Marrem frowned. “So they stole the grain and then took the time to topple the granary?”

  “Sabotage!” the man snapped. “On top of theft! It was my competitors. It had to be. Arkless! He’s wriggled his way into your circle. Ask him who did it!”

  Tai shared a look with Marrem. “Eacham, would you give us a moment?”

  “Fine with me, if it makes you do your job any faster.” He stormed off, unsuccessfully trying to shoo away kids peeking into his house.