Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  “I want you and everyone in your city razed the ground,” she said, in the same casual tone.

  A chill ran down his spine, but this was better. Honest, at least. “For what? For yura?”

  “That is what Alsthen would do it for, and Coldferth, and likely some of the other Houses. You might even strike a deal with them, if you restarted the yura trade. But no, I’m afraid for me it’s personal. I need you dead.”

  “Me?” He’d never met this woman before. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know enough,” she said evenly. “I know that you created a militia that uses its resonances without yura. That your personal resonance is powerful enough to push an entire army down a river and still create that,” she waved at the rapids leading up the Genga. “And that you’ve defeated all the enhanced soldiers we’ve sent against you—though this last time that had as much to do with your friend Ellumia as with you, didn’t it?”

  Tai’s hands went cold on the stone. “How do you know that?”

  Semeca’s gaze went back to the waters. “When you live as long as I have, you learn things. Learn how to learn things.”

  Not good. He needed her to stop seeing them as a threat. “Well the yura is almost gone, and most of the militia we trained died in the battles before I created those rapids. So maybe you could leave our petty tyranny alone.”

  Her smile was sad. “It’s not your resonance I’m afraid of, Tai Kulga, or your stocks of yura. It’s your knowledge. The things you are discovering. Things best left hidden.”

  “Yuraloading, you mean? Your key to making the Broken?”

  “Broken?” She took a sip of her tea. “A good term. But no. A few more people accessing their resonances is no real trouble.”

  “Then what?” He couldn’t bargain if he didn’t know what she wanted.

  She glanced at him, eyes so dark they were nearly black. “You know for the slick way you played Delnin back there, I had you pegged as a subtler negotiator, Tai. But look there, we seem to be gathering again.”

  “Wait.” Tai took her by the arm. “What do you need to stop attacking Ayugen?”

  “Just one thing,” she said, arm surprisingly firm under his grip. “Surrender to me here, now, along with everyone who knows about natural overcoming and the ninespears. Do that, and I imagine I could find a way to convince the council to abandon your city.”

  Surrender everyone he cared about to the woman who wanted them dead? “Never.”

  She considered a moment, eyes looking deep into his. “What if I could offer you knowledge in return?”

  He shook his head. “What could you possibly know that would change my mind?”

  “Your parents, Tai.” Her free hand ran lightly down his spine, the enlarged ridges there. “These markings don’t show up often anymore, but they do appear occasionally.”

  He frowned, trying to see where she was going. “My father was a Councilate soldier and my mother an Achuri sexworker. You think I would sell my city for that?”

  “They weren’t, but no. Worth a try, at least.” She gave him the ghost of a smile. “I was once as you are, Tai Kulga. I am glad we talked, even though this will end badly. But here, let’s rejoin the farce, shall we?”

  With that she pulled out his grasp and called something mocking to Delnin, who was approaching the island with most of the other lighthairs.

  Tai stayed there a moment, catching his breath, trying to work through the conversation. She didn’t care about yura, though surely that was why the rest of the Houses were here. She didn’t care about the militia or his resonance even—but she wanted him dead, him and the rest of his city. And she knew details of the Broken attack she couldn’t possibly know, unless one of her informants had been in the fortyard, then left immediately for Gendrys, beating them down the road.

  And the way she talked about the ninespears, she clearly knew more than she was letting on. Why had she been so interested to hear Sablo was part of them?

  One thing was certain: to get anywhere further with this parley, he had to win over Semeca. And all she wanted was him dead.

  25

  The horse-faced woman stared at Ella. The commander looked between them, face going red. Feynrick grunted behind them, likely reaching for his axe. And Ella felt her motherly composure start to crack.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, grasping at straws. “You must be mistaken. I’m Myella Fensley, of House Fensley? My husband employed you once upon a time. Such a shame, the calculors leaving—”

  “Like hell,” Clarella spat, turning to Riker. “Arrest this woman. She’s working with the rebels. Probably came with them today, looking for information.”

  Riker’s face darkened, tendons standing out in his neck.

  Well, so much for Plan A. At least Riker had pointed her the right direction.

  Ella struck resonance, scene stilling around her—door flap blowing partway open in the breeze, Riker with his rigid neck tendons, Clarella with her mouth open in a scowl. It was tempting to do something to the frozen woman, but it would inevitably be petty, and Ella had bigger fish to fry. She pushed through the flap.

  Behind it was a short hallway of canvas partitions, heavily guarded with blue-banded soldiers. Yurafighters. Whatever was inside must be pretty precious.

  But when Ella pushed through the far end of the partition, soldiers frozen around her, all she saw was an infirmary. Cots lined both walls of the long, rectangular space, men and woman in battered uniforms sleeping on them. Coal braziers burned between them, ripples of heat dreamlike in slowed time. Ella stepped closer, resonance humming, knowing she had perhaps two minutes to get this done and get back with enough uai to help Feynrick escape before Riker called the guards.

  There was something strange about the soldiers on the cots—they didn’t bear cuts or stab wounds, as though they’d been wounded in battle, but their uniforms were roughed up, and many of their necks and arms looked rubbed raw, a few crusted with blood. Nothing like the amount of scabs and wounds they’d seen on the Broken in Ayugen, but was this a start? Did the process somehow involve massive amounts of pain?

  Should her first move be to slit every throat in the room? Much as it made logical sense, she knew she couldn’t do it. These were just soldiers, like the ones she and Feynrick had talked to. They didn’t deserve to die, even if they were now Broken.

  Ella moved on. A hole flapped in the roof, to one side of the central tent pole—perhaps for Broken wafters to fly out of. After they were controlled, somehow.

  At the far end of the rows of beds were a few poles driven into the ground, and piles of ropes. Ella smiled—this she understood better. This was almost an exact copy of how the Ghost Rebellion was yuraloading in the days before the ousting, trying new recruits to trees and stuffing them with yura.

  So the Broken process did involve yura. Which meant that somewhere nearby—

  There. Ella opened a wicker chest to find tidy rows of leafpaper packets—each one packed with fourteen yura balls. A king’s wealth in yura, and no doubt part of the reason they kept such heavy guard. How much did the Councilate still have, a month after the ousting?

  No matter—they would have this much less. A brazier smoldered in the corner, where a Councilate healworker stood frozen in the act of warming a plate of food.

  How were they feeding these soldiers? Why were they all asleep in the middle of the day? Had they successfully yuraloaded then been knocked out somehow? Because the abrasions she’d seen on their bodies had to be from the ropes, from going through the process. But something more was going on here.

  Ella slid the brazier out from under the healworker’s plate, heat strangely cool in slip, and walked it to the yura chest before dumping the entire thing in. She was slipped so deep the coals just lay on the paper packets for a moment, before the first tendrils of smoke began to push out, like exploratory fingers.

  Beautiful, but not her priority at the moment. An ache was creeping up her spine, and she still needed to get
out and gag Clarella and the commander before they could spread word. She turned to run for the door.

  A guard pushed through it at something like normal speed. Another timeslip.

  “Scat,” she cursed aloud, turning and pulling one of the blankets from the bed. This would slow her down, and she’d already spent too much time here. The man began shouting, voice preternaturally low from the time difference, and Ella struck her resonance again, harder, trying to get deeper.

  He slowed a bit—it would have to be enough. If this man was free, when she ran out of uai he’d make quick work of her and Feynrick both. She ran at him, soldier pulling his sword out through honey, and tried to tie the blanket around his arms, but the man was implacably strong—the blanket would do little good. Same with the legs, and his sword was out now, man turning on her as the ache deepened in her spine.

  Fishscat. Ella dropped the blanket and grabbed a teapot on one of the braziers, steam still leaking from its spout. Before the man could get his sword around at her, she swung the pot at his face.

  It smashed, hot liquid rolling out in the slow motion of timeslip, a deep emerald green. Dreamleaf. They were feeding these yuraloaded soldiers dreamleaf. And a heavy draught, from the looks of it.

  The man’s fingers loosened on his sword, his expression changing as the boiling liquid rolled further over his face. Good enough. She was sorry to have scarred him, but this was war after all, and if she and Feynrick made it out a lot more lives would be saved by what she’d learned here. Her spine was burning, but this man had made enough noise there was no chance they could escape without alerting the other guards now. So they needed a diversion.

  Ella ran back to the yura chest, pulling a stick of bittermelon from her pouch and chewing madly, though there was little hope the uai would digest in time to extend her slip. Smoke was rising in thick curls from the coals now, and she saw the first tongues of flame beneath. Good.

  She shoved the chest against the side of the giant tent, then for good measure tipped the over other two braziers over and threw blankets on them. See how eager the Councilate was to catch them when their precious Broken started burning up.

  Then she sprinted for the door, spine aching, still madly chewing, time shifting around her, the low tone of the other timeslip’s scream slurring up and down as her hold on time slipped, uai running out. Ella burst through the partition, five remaining yura fighters turning for the inner door after the timeslip, slipped through them and just had time to clamp a hand over Clarella’s mouth—she was the more likely of the two to cry out—before her uai ran out and the world slurred to life.

  Someone screamed in the inner room. Guards shouted, Clarella bucked under her hands, and Riker started, looking from where she had been to where she was now.

  For his part, Feynrick didn’t hesitate. He balled a meaty fist and swung it back. “This is for pissing on the Yati in your service, old man,” he said, and smashed it into Riker’s nose.

  Riker dropped. “Help me,” Ella gasped, breathless from her run, Clarella clawing at her hands.

  “Aye,” Feynrick said, then smashed a meaty fist into Clarella’s eye.

  Ella gasped, dropping the woman as she too went limp. “You—”

  “I know, I know, ye Councilate types are squeamish about women. Come to Yatiland sometime, and ye’ll see how delicate a women are. Anyways, time to leave isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Ella said, quashing the momentary pity she felt for Clarella. “This tent will be a bonfire in a minute or two.”

  The guard’s shouts were more muffled now—they had likely found the timeslip. It wouldn’t be long before they figured out what happened.

  “Well that’ll help then. Come on, and best if ye wipe that dreamleaf from your sleeve. Yer a fancy lady, mind.”

  Stepping out into the army camp was like entering an alternate reality, where it was still a sleepy afternoon and an entire legion of Councilate soldiers was napping and playing at dice around them.

  They walked briskly, Ella glancing back once to see a few wisps of smoke rising from the tent. Any moment now guards would come running out.

  They walked halfway through the camp, taking the main road out, Feynrick markedly less gregarious than he’d been on the way in. Then something shot from the tent screaming, and everyone looked to the sky.

  It was a Broken. A flaming Broken, no less. Ella kept chewing bittermelon, kept walking, though she knew she and Feynrick were no match for a full Broken, especially if she couldn’t use her resonance.

  He’d clearly added up the odds and decided the same thing, because he gave her arm a squeeze. “Run along ahead then lass. I’ll handle this part.”

  “The hell you will,” she started to say, then looked again. The Broken wasn’t coming for them—it shot in a straight line west, toward Gendrys fort.

  Toward the parley.

  26

  A lighthair charged Aelya from the firemad darkness. Ayugen was chaos and smoke around them, people screaming, roofs collapsing, bodies in the street. She cut him down, resonance fueling a sword slash that nearly split him in two.

  She ran on, yelling to the militia still loyal to her. From the edge of Hightown she could see the fields burning across the valley, more evidence of lighthair betrayal. All around them Hightown burned, walls smashed and granaries toppled by coordinated bands of traitors. They were trying to destroy Ayugen. Thought that with Tai gone they’d finally get their chance.

  She struck another one down savagely, blood hissing against a smoking wood wall. Not if she had anything to do with it.

  27

  Tai settled with Dayglen on one side of the table, the twelve lighthairs filling the rest of the circle. Servants scurried about them, laying out porcelain plates of cheese and preserved meats. Tai ignored them, not putting it past Semeca or the others to try poison.

  “Well,” the elder stateswoman said as soon as they were settled. “Let’s return to business, shall we? Delnin, I assume you’ve sent someone for your cousin, and have calmed down a bit?”

  “We’ll find him,” the martial man growled. “And woe be to the man who stands in our way.”

  “Good, good,” Semeca said, actually patting him on the arm like she might a child. “Now. Tai, you indicated you were not in fact here to accept our offer of surrender?”

  “We are not,” Tai said, uneasy. The woman held the power here, and she wanted him dead—which meant she wanted these talks to fail. And if Ella and Feynrick didn’t find what they were looking for, negotiating some kind of peace was their best hope for stopping the Broken attacks. The Gendrys council was in direct control of the army camped there, so they likely made decisions about the Broken too. “Though I am prepared to discuss renewing trade between our nations on a limited basis.”

  “Yura trade?” the Galya man asked. “That’s the only thing that matters here.”

  “We know you’re stockpiling it in the caves,” the grizzled Coldferth man put in. “Keeping it for your army. And we can overlook that, if you start trading it again too.”

  “We’re not stockpiling it,” Tai said, trying to strike a balance between these men and Semeca. What solution would satisfy them and still keep Ayugen free? “The mines are nearly stripped. You should remember that from when they were yours.”

  “Stripped,” the Coldferth man scoffed. “They’ve been saying that for years. You just have to go deeper. Push your men harder.”

  Meaning your darkhaired prisoners, Tai thought.

  “We could—send help,” Galya put in, assuming a bland expression. “If you don’t have the manpower for it.”

  A bunch of Councilate soldiers in Galya uniforms? No thanks. “We have enough manpower, thanks. But the basis of this discussion has to be recognition of Ayugen’s independence and peace between our nations. Any aggression breaks the treaty completely.”

  “As I understand it, you’re not in much position to bargain, Tai,” Semeca said.

  Threats, then. Well, they
had some ground to stand on there too. “We pushed you out once,” he said, striking resonance just strong enough that they would all feel it. “We could do it again.”

  Faces around the table looked startled, then fearful. Semeca raised an eyebrow, as if she knew he was bluffing.

  “Be that as it may,” Delnin cut in, “we have a new weapon in this war. One you’ve just barely tasted.”

  “The Broken,” Tai said, keeping the concern from his face. “Not much of a weapon, as it turns out. They have this bad habit of killing themselves before they reach us. We’ve kept our response diplomatic thus far. But don’t forget I had the option of drowning your armies in the river, instead of wafting them back to you. I showed mercy. I may not do that again.”

  Real fear showed on most faces, save Semeca’s.

  And Delnin’s—the man was still angry. Maybe that was how he dealt with fear. “We’ve sent only messengers so far,” he said, “and I know you struggled with those. Wait till we send squads. Platoons. You’ll have trouble drowning them in the river.”

  “Send anything more than you have,” Tai said coldly, “and face the destruction of every man woman and child in this city.”

  Semeca snorted, even as others were paling. “It’s a bluff. He’d have done it by now, if he could.”

  He kept a hard face. “Unlike you, I don’t see value in the needless destruction of life.”

  Still, he could see her influence swaying them back. Damn the woman. What could he give her, short of full surrender, to placate her?

  “Let me put it this way,” he said, trying a new tack. “You attack us again, and we destroy every last bit of yura in the caves.”

  The councilors looked shocked, a few gasping. That was better.

  “You wouldn’t,” House Galya said.

  “You can’t,” Alsthen cut in.

  “We can,” Tai said. “Turns out yura is very sensitive to humidity—that’s one of the reason it grows in our caves and not elsewhere. Not enough and it won’t grow. Too much and it dies. You attack, we flood the caves.”