Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  “We learned some,” Ella said, leaning close to the fire. “Not enough to copy their process, I think, but maybe to stop it, or slow it down. Anyways, they were using volunteers to make them, and I don’t doubt less will volunteer after seeing the Broken today.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Feynrick said, trying a rub of his own chin. It wasn’t rugged, but he did have a sizeable beard. “They were just being polite with that volunteer thing. They’ll start forcing em now. S’what they do every time a war goes wrong.”

  “Well word of this needs to go out to the rest of the Councilate,” the lady said. “The townspeople will be angry. The Gendrys Council too, if they didn’t already know the risks.”

  “Question is, angry at who,” Dayglen asked, stirring the tincture.

  “What happened up at the parley?” Feynrick asked, trying to stay ahead of the man. Not that it mattered, but Gleesfen was right, there was nothing to pass the time like vying for a lady’s attention. “Did you mindseye anything good?”

  “A lot of fancy nobles worrying about how they looked,” Dayglen said. “With one of them blocking me some way I’ve never seen before. I couldn’t get even a whisper of her thoughts.”

  “So what in pissing hells happened then? Seems like they did more than worry about their clothes.”

  “They attacked,” the Achuriman said. “Threw whole bridges at us.”

  “That wasn’t Tai?” Ella asked.

  “Tai was the one that stopped the first bridge. It would have killed us all.”

  Feynrick frowned. “So it wasn’t the Councilate doing it?”

  Ella glanced between them. “Was it the ninespears?”

  “It was Semeca,” Dayglen said darkly.

  “Who?” Feynrick asked at the same time as Ella.

  “Semeca Fenril, the councilor from House Fenril. She was the one in charge of the council, then her and Tai had a private chat and Tai came back looking pretty bad about it. When the bridge flew at us she was the only one not in a panic. I tried to attack her but,” he shrugged, “she knocked me off the cliff.”

  Damn the man. It was a heroic story. Ladies loved heroic stories.

  Ella goggled. “And you survived that fall?”

  Dayglen struggled for a moment, probably wondering how much he could stretch his story. “Lord Tai saved me,” he admitted. “Told me to come find you, but after Semeca’s blow I had all I could do to get to shore.”

  “Where we found you,” Feynrick said. “The real question is, what do we do now?”

  “The first thing,” Lady Ella said, dipping a finger in the tincture. “is to give this to Tai, so his wounds don’t green.”

  Dayglen jumped up at the same time Feynrick did—the man obviously knew helpfulness was one of the things ladies most admired in men—and they propped Tai into place while Ella held the cup. The lad made the first few swallows in his sleep, then spluttered and his eyes went wide.

  His resonance hit like a struck gong, and Feynrick clutched the lad’s shoulder, worried for a second he’d attack. “Easy there Tai, you’re safe, we got you out, you’re with friends.”

  He glanced between them, still caught in whatever fever dream, then relaxed, resonance fading. “Where—”

  “In the bushes somewhere north of Gendrys,” Ella said. “I killed the Broken that did this to you, then Feynrick and Dayglen fished us out of the river and brought us here to recover.”

  She listed his name first—always a good sign. Though, now that Tai was awake there was little hope either of them would get much attention. “And Semeca?” he asked, looking from face to face. “Did she get away?”

  “I didn’t see her again,” Dayglen said. “Not after she hit me.”

  Tai nodded, wincing, seeming to remember he was in pain. “What—what happened to me?”

  “Far as I could see,” Feynrick said. “One of them Broken pinned you to the bottom of the river bed then drop-kicked you in the femur. Lucky the bone didn’t hit your main artery down there, or you’d be scraps already.”

  “As it is,” Ella put in, “You’re probably not going to walk for quite a while, though none of us are experts in healworking. Feynrick splinted your leg, and we treated the cuts as best we could.”

  “We have to get back to Ayugen,” Tai said, trying to sit up. “Tonight. I can fly us—”

  Feynrick pushed him down with a gentle hand. “You’re in no shape to fly lad.”

  “What’s the other option?” Tai cut in. “Sit here and wait for my bones to knit? That could take weeks. Months. We don’t have that time kind of time. The Councilate will see today as an attack.”

  “How could they?” Ella asked, tin cup still in hand. “Sure, we released the Broken in the camp, but Dayglen says you saved councilors from the bridges.”

  “If Semeca survived, and I’m sure she did,” Tai said, “she will spin this against us. Say the attack was our fault.”

  “She was already yelling it when the first bridge came,” Dayglen put in.

  “But the people on the bridge,” Ella said. “You saved them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. And I tried to talk sense into them, that I wouldn’t attack just to then save them, but—they were panicked. And they’re a lot more likely to listen to a fellow councilor than a rebel.”

  “The Savior of Ayugen, they were calling you,” Dayglen grinned.

  “Savior?” Feynrick grunted, glad to see Tai of solid mind but sorry to lose the lady’s attention. She only had eyes for him now that he was awake. Genitors grant the boy was smart enough to do something about it, at least. “Sounds an awful lot like your cultists. Maybe you are a god, milkweed.”

  Tai grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Well it will take them a while to reform their Broken operation, if they’re going to,” Ella said.

  “And we can handle an assault by what’s left of their legion here,” Feynrick added. “Especially as the forest road is too narrow to move an army down. They could march three or four wide at best, easy pickings. S’why they haven’t tried it yet.”

  Ella nodded. “The Councilate’s power has always depended on the rivers. Efficient transportation of goods and men.”

  “Good,” Tai said, laying back on his pallet but eyes still sharp, “but that’s on the scale of days, not months. And Ella you need to work on whatever you learned in Gendrys, and get back to keep working on the harmonics thing. Our priority has to be a realistic defense against the Broken that doesn’t involve yuraloading our fighters.”

  The milkweed was dedicated to doing it different than the Ghost Rebellion had. You had to admire him for it, even if it got them all killed. “So we send someone upriver to fetch wafters, then,” Feynrick said. “Dayglen or I could make it in two days maybe, using our resonance. You others wait here for them to come and pick you up.”

  “Too slow,” Tai said, “and flying won’t hurt my leg. Besides, if any of this greens I’m going to need more than stolen herbs from Gendrys. I need to get back to Marrem, to the healworkers.”

  Feynrick could see the lad’s logic affect Ella and Dayglen. “Hard to argue with that,” he said. “You’ve got a talent for convincing people, ye know that milkweed?”

  The lad glanced at Ella. “So I’ve been told.”

  “Right then,” Feynrick said. “To bed with us all, and flight first thing tomorrow if ye’re still up for it. No, I won’t hear it, it don’t take Marrem to see you need to rest before ye try flying three adults over a four day’s march of forest with yer leg all busted up. I’ll take first watch. Dayglen I’ll tap ye around starset.”

  The milkweed grumbled some, but Lady Ella laying down next to him seemed to quiet him down. Not so Gleesfen, who was still sure the best chance to win the lady was knocking out Dayglen and the lad while they weren’t expecting. The old lecher. Feynrick let them settle in and laid another few branches on the piss-poor fire. They couldn’t actually stand a full assault. The lad probably knew that, but no need to push it
. The Broken would take them long before, so it all came down to Lady Ella and whatever tricks she could rustle up with that fine brain of hers.

  And they’d better be good. Because he was pretty sure neither Coldferth nor the Councilate army would have much interest in reenlisting him now.

  33

  Tai smelled the smoke before he saw it, sitting in a clearing with late afternoon sun spearing through the trees. They’d been flying all day and his leg throbbed painfully, but they were most of the way back to Ayugen already. Ella kept giving him worried looks, but they all knew the sooner he could get to Marrem the better.

  Feynrick lifted his head from the last of the millet cakes Ella had stolen, sniffing. “Smoke, isn’t it?”

  Tai nodded. “Must be a settlement or outpost near here.” He’d kept them away from the smuggler’s path, just in case, flying on the far side of the river. Still, there were isolated settlements all along the Genga.

  Feynrick shook his head. “That ain’t wood smoke. Leastways, not only wood smoke.”

  Ella frowned. “What then? A forest fire?”

  Feynrick looked troubled but said only, “Best we get back in the air as quick as we can.”

  They left as soon as Tai’s mavenstym digested, spine aching but urgency doubled in him to get back. The wind had shifted while they rested, and he could see trails of smoke on the horizon.

  Trails coming from Ayugen.

  “What the hell?” Feynrick called over the wind, but it was too loud to talk. Tai pressed on faster, fear throbbing in time with the pain in his leg.

  The first thing they saw was patches of black in the river bottom, golden fields of wheat and barley burned to ash, circles of a few farmsteads burned as well.

  Fear throbbed harder. Food was already dire. They couldn’t afford to lose more.

  The black patches increased as they sped east, the Genga’s wide fertile plain blackened like a charred quilt, with only a few patches of color here and there, where fate or farmers had saved the crops from total destruction.

  Ayugen was worse. They cleared the final line of forest, Tai’s back screaming, to find half of Stonetown in smoking ruins. That the rest of the city looked normal only highlighted the damage, and it didn’t take Tai’s mind long to make the connection. Eastern Stonetown. Grain merchants. Burnt fields.

  Someone attacked their food supply. And timed it exactly for when he was gone.

  Tai should have flown straight to Marrem’s, or to the Tower, to a healworker’s, but he set them down in Stonetown instead. He had to see this. Had to touch it with his own hands.

  Ella and Feynrick were talking, trying to help him walk, but he just left his uai burning, what little was left of it, and drifted through the shell of a neighborhood he’d spent so much time in growing up. The crooked alley where he’d once fought off a pair of angry Maimers, now waist-high with ash and debris. The wide street corner where Curly would juggle for coins, covering in a tumble of scorched stones, the grain dealer’s shop collapsed from its own weight. Behind it smoke still rose from a long spill of scorched barleycorn, granary toppled in an eerie echo of the one he and Marrem had investigated just days ago.

  He should have known. Should have seen it coming. Should have guessed the Councilate would attack their weakest point: not their militia, not their leadership. Their food.

  Aelya found him there sometime later, collapsed on a heap of rubble, leg throbbing, mind a curious sort of blankness as to what to do. What could they do? They couldn’t feed their people.

  “You’re alive,” she said, running over to him. “Thank the mecking prophet.”

  She wore a bandage across her temple, and Tai saw new scrapes on her iron hand, one of the fingers entirely missing. “What—”

  “Traitors,” she said, face darkening. “Lighthairs. Hit us in the night. Half the town was on fire before we even got here. We did what we could but—” She shook her head.

  “How bad is it?”

  Aelya clenched and unclenched her good fist. “We should call a meeting. You’re back. Let me call a meeting.”

  “How bad is it?”

  She met his gaze. “We have enough food for a week. Maybe two.”

  34

  What did they need? They needed someone willing to listen. No ancestor ever granted a boon without being heard. You don’t always need to take their advice, but you need to respect it.

  --Ellumia Aygla, Interviews with Achuri Elders, unpublished

  The Tower amphitheater was surreal, with its elegant arched ceilings and plush velvet seats, as though nothing had ever happened. Why didn’t the Councilate destroy this place? Destroy what was left of them in Ayugen and be gone?

  Tai knew why. I want you and everyone in your city razed to the ground, Semeca had said, staring out at the river. The things you are discovering. Some secrets are best left hidden.

  A cold anger started in the pit of his gut, where for the last two hours he’d felt only shock, only hopelessness. This was Semeca’s doing. It had to be. Whether she convinced the council to do this, or organized it on her own, this was part of her plan to destroy them.

  And whatever she wanted, he would stop.

  Marrem had come as soon as she’d heard he was back, and even now was reworking his bandages, muttering to herself about dirty wounds and Yati poultices.

  “Am I going to die?” he asked, exhaustion and lingering bends sickness putting him in a black humor.

  “One of these times. But not today.”

  Arkless showed up impeccably dressed, but with unusual lines under his eyes—his grain stores had likely been hit as badly as everyone else’s. Ella followed him, and Lumo, the two hovering over Marrem asking about Tai’s condition until the healworker snapped, “All your hot air’s like to sour his wounds, now get.”

  They got, and the amphitheater was nearly full by the time she’d finished working on him, three or four times the normal attendance they had for meetings. The people were scared—he could see it in their eyes, hear it in the tight tones of their conversation.

  They were also darkhaired, almost entirely. Gone were the sprinkling of Yersh merchants and Ghost Rebellion militiamen usually in attendance, despite the higher numbers. Ella’s platinum locks, braided today in a simple loop, stood out like snow on ashes. Aelya had said it was a lighthaired attack, but surely not all of them were involved.

  The people were looking at him. Not all of them directly, not many of them for long, but still they looked. Expecting him to start this.

  Didn’t they know he was the reason half the city died last time?

  Tai stood, leaning on the wood crutch Marrem’s daughter had brought. His leg hurt, but it all felt of a piece at the moment. “You know why we’re here. I’ve heard rumors but I need facts. What happened to Stonetown?”

  “We were attacked,” Gellonel cried. “They burned everything! All my grain!”

  “Who burned everything?” Tai asked, anger an icy fire in his stomach, demanding clarity.

  “The lighthairs,” Aelya said.

  “The Councilate?”

  She shrugged. “Is there a difference?”

  Something deep in Tai reacted to this. “Yes there’s a difference. The lighthair you see sitting two seats down from you has saved my life twice in the last two days, and she was born and raised in Worldsmouth.”

  Aelya glared at Ella. “I guess the exception proves the rule then.”

  “Facts,” Tai snapped, too angry to get into it with Aelya. “I need facts. Who did we actually see attacking? Are there any of them left to question?”

  “They all ran,” Aelya said, face infuriatingly peaceful. “You should have seem ‘em yesterday.”

  Arkless shifted in his seat, the refined man clearly uncomfortable.

  “Arkless,” Tai said. “Speak.”

  “They ran,” he said, glancing at Aelya, “because your friend here was executing them at will.”

  “We were trying criminals,” Aelya said. “And
you’ll notice we haven’t been attacked since.”

  Tai remembered the lighthair Aelya had struck down earlier that week, the way the man had lain pale and unconscious in Marrem’s infirmary. “Trying them? Under whose authority?”

  “Under mine,” Aelya snapped. “Under authority of needing to protect the mecking city from people trying to kill us.”

  “We’ve talked about this,” Tai said, voice going cold as his anger got hot. “You are not a judge. Everyone deserves a fair trial. Meaning even lighthairs.”

  “Oh, so I guess you would have stopped the men burning buildings and asked them nicely to wait for an arbitration to organize? I’m sure that would have worked great. Too bad you were too busy chatting with lighthairs in Gendrys to do anything about it.”

  “Aelya I need you to shut up for a minute,” Tai gritted, “so I can learn what happened. Anyone other than Aelya. Who attacked us?”

  Aelya snarled but kept her mouth shut. Good enough.

  “It did seem to be primarily lighthairs, sir,” Sigwil spoke up, glancing uneasily between them. “They hit Hightown just after starset, as far as we can tell. By the time we rallied out of the barracks and got there, well, there wasn’t much we could do.”

  “Were there Broken? Brawlers? How many did we kill?”

  “Hard to tell in the firelight, sir. No Broken, but I’d say we killed upward of thirty men.”

  “Fifty-six,” Arkless said, some of his composure apparently returned. “I counted fifty-six in the square.”

  “The square?”

  “Your—accomplice had them dragged there and displayed. As a lesson, I believe she said.”

  “Shatting right,” Aelya spat. “And it worked.”

  He should be worried, or disappointed, or anything, but Tai just felt hot. “And this is when lighthaired people started to leave I take it?” Ella’s face was ashen.

  “It appeared to be that or interrogation followed by execution,” Arkless said. The man almost seemed to be enjoying this.