Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  A few of the volumes—those with thick covers, or those next to thick-covered books—escaped with less damage. Two of these were Councilate histories commissioned by House Sablos, interesting but unimportant. Another appeared to be a personal journal, mostly empty. But the last was a slender volume on the bottom shelf, where she recalled pulling the book that had first alerted her to the ninespears months ago. It had been sandwiched between the wooden wall of the bookshelf and a book with iron bindings, and while most of its outer pages were blackened to illegibility, a stretch in the center could still be read.

  The rest was trash, and Ella left as quickly as she could, wiping soot-stained fingers on the remains of a fine linen bedcloth. The ninespears was important, but it would take her time to decipher these pages, and her work at the school was more pressing. She’d given Tunla just a vague set of instructions on trying resonance harmonies before leaving for Gendrys, but it was clear now the harmonies were their best defense against Broken.

  Their only defense, unless they started yuraloading.

  She found Lumo outside the entrance to the cave, thick puffs of smoke rolling from his ever-present pipe, tinkling sounds of his lute carrying over the barren ground where Coldferth’s mining complex used to be.

  “Ella!” he cried on seeing her, setting down the lute. “So you did not decide to stay with your own people.”

  “Hardly,” she answered, eyeing the grin on the bulky Minchu’s face. “Though it sounds like I missed some excitement here.”

  “In the town,” Lumo said. “Out here, not so much. Though we have had two more students overcome in these three days.”

  “Two? That’s great!” They had been averaging one a week or less for the month she’d been running the school. “From resonance harmonies?”

  “Ah, no. We have not had great success with the harmonies. But the idea of putting them together once a day, that has been good. They have much to say, and they go back to their caves energized. This has been the thing, I think.”

  The harmonies not helping was disappointing, but she could work on it. “Who overcame?”

  She spent the next hour or so getting a more detailed report from him and Tunla, who they found making the rounds down in the caves. The numbers were encouraging, though two a week overcoming at random times would not make much difference if the Broken attacked. They needed to understand how the harmonies worked, and test if they really did help people overcome, as had seemed to happen with Sigwil.

  Lumo’s eyebrows raised when she explained what she’d found during the trip to Gendrys, how she had the ability to subtly raise and lower the pitch of her resonance to harmonize with others. “I have never heard of this thing. If my people know of this, I do not.”

  Finally something she knew that the Minchu didn’t. “It will be easier to show than explain. Here. Strike your resonance.”

  He did, a powerful hum registering in her bones. Ella struck hers then too, slowing his already-low pitch to something like a rattle, then began flexing her resonance, speeding and slowing the pace of time to raise and lower the pitch of her resonance, till she felt something. She stopped there, where the vibration of her bones seemed to settle into a harmony, and held it for a time before letting go.

  Lumo’s eyes were wide. “What—what was that?”

  “That was the harmony. Did you feel anything?”

  “I felt my higher demon start to loosen. To get confused.” He shook his head in wonder. “Even the shamans could not confuse this one. They said I was hopeless. It is part of the reason I came here.”

  “Well maybe you can,” Ella said, smiling at the uncharacteristic wonder on the Minchu’s face. It took a lot to surprise the man. “Practice changing the pitch of your resonance. Think of it like tightening or loosening the pegs on your lute. If you can do that, you could tune to anyone around you. Maybe something about them would shake your demon all the way free. I’m going to try the students.”

  It was so frustrating, how much promise the harmonies had, and how much she didn’t know. Why didn’t it work instantly with Lumo? Did it need a specific pairing, like brawler and timeslip, as she and Sigwil had been? But Lumo was a brawler too. Had it been something about the setting? The fort had been alive with resonance when Sigwil overcame. Or the stress of it?

  Ella spent a while chatting with the first student, then gave her a ball of yura and asked her to strike resonance. She did, and Ella found a harmony, but nothing happened. Same with the next student, though he reported something like Lumo, that his voice had gotten confused. His ancestor—this one was Achuri.

  Ella kept trying, down the line of twenty-five caves and grottos, unable to find harmonies with some, getting little to no success with others. What was she doing wrong? What was different about that day with Sigwil—or was it just a fluke? Everyone agreed the harmonies felt special, felt different, but maybe she was misunderstanding them entirely. Maybe they didn’t do anything.

  Ella scribbled down the rest of her notes from the last student, accustomed by now to working in near-darkness. Maybe the harmonies were nothing. If that was true, they had no defense against more Broken, and sooner or later the Councilate would send them.

  That meant the end of Ayugen. She wouldn’t let that happen without a fight.

  Fortunately, this was not a battle of swords, but one of ideas. Of experimentation. Of discovery. And that was a battle she knew how to fight. Maybe Sablo’s book would help. Maybe there was a pattern in the notes she was missing. If it was there, she would find it. Ella strode through the torch-lit darkness toward her study. It was going to be a long night.

  37

  Tai flew over the smoking ruins of Hightown, the day’s anger and disappointment hardened into resolve in his gut. He would find Nauro, make sure the man didn’t pose a threat, then face Aelya. They were up against too many threats from outside to split internally now, and she had to know somewhere that what she’d done was wrong. She had to.

  Hightown passed, buildings stuttering into shacks and garden plots before the wall of the eastern forest passed below him, green needleafs patched now with amber and orange. This was a familiar flight: he’d made it many times, in many different situations, during his month or so in the Ghost Rebellion. He hadn’t returned to the camp since then—it held too many memories. The last time he was here was when he had found Fisher and Curly’s bodies.

  When he had nearly given up on everything.

  He hadn’t, though, and he’d lost enough friends on the streets to know it was stupid to blame himself, to beat himself up for their deaths. Those lay at the feet of the Councilate. He’d done the best he could. Still it was hard to drop down among the charred and collapsing ruins of the once-bustling camp, to remember life as it had been then, full of hope and promise.

  They’d been going to defeat the Councilate, he thought with a wry smile.

  Now they were just trying to survive.

  Tai set down on an overturned cookpot, taking the pressure off his broken leg, and waited for the bends to pass. His emotions were bent too—doubled over and spun until they were unrecognizable. He’d known Aelya resented lighthairs. Stains, they all resented lighthairs. But there was a difference between attacking people you knew were guilty of something—even if to them it was business as usual—and attacking those you had no knowledge of. That was hatred, not justice. He hoped to the ancestors Aelya saw the difference, because she was his oldest friend still left. His only friend, for a lot of years. And if they really split, dividing the people and the militia with them, all the Councilate would have to do was mop up.

  Because the Councilate would come back. He knew it as surely as he knew Pang and Tam had once stirred the cookpot he sat on, when it was full of barley and venison bones. Semeca wouldn’t let this go.

  Tai closed his eyes and breathed deep, taking a moment to let his thoughts settle. The air was clean out here, green-scented, bird calls accenting the lack of voices, of noises, of the background hum yo
u forgot you were even hearing in the city. It was wonderful.

  He opened his eyes to find Nauro.

  Tai started, striking resonance, but the lanky man waved a hand. “No need for that, friend.”

  If Nauro could attack him however Sablo had, he could probably cancel Tai’s resonance anyway. He let it drop. “Friends don’t normally attack me.”

  The man’s eyebrows raised, bushy like the fox on a leash at his side. “Have I attacked you?”

  “You’ve been at every Broken attack the city has suffered, and reports say you were there when the granaries were attacked two days ago. Seems like an awful lot of coincidence.”

  “But have I attacked you?”

  He hadn’t. Tai eye’s narrowed. “No. Because you were the one controlling the Broken? Is that why you’re always there?”

  Nauro laughed, a natural laugh, untainted by fear or apparent deception. “Far from it, unfortunately. No, friend, our enemy is the one controlling the attacks. They are why I sought you out in the first place.”

  There was no fear in the man. For most people just feeling the strength of Tai’s resonance was enough, but Nauro stood unfazed by it, as if they were equals.

  Maybe they were. Who knew what the man was capable of? And it was always better to get as far as you could with words before you tested the rest. “So you’re not behind the attacks?”

  Nauro sat on the ruined kitchen wall. “I’ve been the one warning you of them the whole time. Think about it. I sought you out after the first Broken you fought, but you weren’t willing to listen. Then I ran to warn you the day the five attacked, as soon as Illyen here noticed them. Stones I brought you the first body, so you’d know there was a danger at all.”

  That was all true. “But you were there for the attack on Hightown too, and there were no Broken at that one.”

  Nauro nodded. “Illyen has a nose for danger, and believe it or not I care about your safety, so I came to investigate.”

  “An easy story,” Tai said amiably, though the pattern did fit with Nauro’s explanation of coming to warn them. It also fit with him controlling the Broken, mostly. “Then why did you lie to Arkless? Tell him you were a member of the Cult of the Blood?”

  “A regrettable necessity. I… have reasons for wanting to stay in the background of events, and there are those who know the significance of a fox.”

  “Those who know about the nine spears, you mean?”

  The name didn’t faze him as it had Sablo and the councilors at Gendrys. “Them, and others.”

  “Like Sablo? He certainly perked up when I mentioned you.”

  Nauro leaned down to scratch the space between the fox’s ears. “Arten Sablo, yes, of House Sablos. I know of him, though only distantly.”

  “He called you brother. You must be connected in this ninespears society.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a society exactly. More like a group of people who share a goal and general methodology.” The fox gazed at Tai while Nauro talked, its green eyes curious.

  “And what goal is that?” What could this man, a high arbiter of the Councilate, and Ella’s ex-boss Odril have in common?

  Nauro’s eyes gleamed. “The only goal worth fighting for. Power. Real power, not this thing the Councilate plays with.”

  That sounded like what Sablo had said, the morning he tried to get Tai to release him. “Power over the Broken?”

  “I do have some power over them, yes. Not the power to create them at the moment, but I assume that would be attainable eventually.”

  Tai’s hackles raised. The man was talking casually of control over creatures it had taken all of their combined strength and a good bit of luck to defeat. If he could learn what this man knew… “How?”

  Nauro smiled. “Not all knowledge is free. Let me ask you this, Tai. What are your goals for this city of yours?”

  Tai looked away, searching for words. “To create a safe place. A safer one than I had growing up, anyway.” A place where kids like him and Fisher and Curly wouldn’t end up on the streets in the first place.

  It sounded small when he said it out loud. Ella would put it better.

  “And once it is created, what then?”

  “Then… we live. Same as people have always done. But the difference is we decide our own future, instead of having it forced on us.”

  Nauro puffed out his cheeks. “Self-determination. A worthy goal. But at some point you will die, your ideals will calcify, and those who follow you into power will begin chipping away at that self-determination in order to determine themselves as better and stronger. This is the way of things. Believe it or not, history tells us the Councilate started out this way too. They were a group of merchants under heavy taxation from the Yersh Empire who wanted to be free to conduct trade as they saw fit. And now look at them. The same will happen to your city.”

  “Then it’ll be time for another revolution.”

  “And so the wheel spins, over and over, without going anywhere. Doesn’t it seem pointless, when you think about it?”

  He hadn’t really thought about it that way. “Yes. Maybe. But all I can do is make the best choice based on what’s in front of me, and that’s led me here. To you this morning, someone who may know things that will help me protect the people I love.”

  “Love.” Nauro nodded, leaning back against a charred pillar of the cookhouse. “Also a worthy goal. It’s too bad that love won’t hold more than few dozen people together. Beyond that we need laws, and with them eventually come the power grabs and revolutions, and the whole pointless cycle.”

  Where was he going with this? “So you’re telling me you didn’t organize the attacks on our granaries, because you think the whole thing is pointless?”

  “I didn’t organize those attacks because they would hurt you, and like I said I care about your safety. Besides, I need to eat too, and pickings are mighty slim in the forest.”

  More evasion. “Look friend, I don’t mind that you live here on the outskirts of our city. I guess I should thank you for trying to warn us about the Broken. But I have other things on my mind today, so I need you to tell me what you can of the Broken, and then I’ll leave you in peace.”

  The shadow of a smile crossed his face. “I’m never in peace. Not yet. But fine. The Broken are revenants that have been seized in the vulnerable moment of attempting to overpower their host, and that vulnerability exploited to control both revenant and host. It’s an unstable relationship that eventually destroys both of them, but as you’ve seen it’s quite powerful in the meantime.”

  “Revenant? Host? What—”

  “I know, it’s a lot to take in. You asked. But there’s only so much I can tell you, Tai of Ayugen, before I need something from you in return.”

  Of course. At least this was real now. “What’s that?”

  “I need to know if you are satisfied with this little game you’ve been caught in. This moment of rebellion and self-determination. If it is worth your life.”

  “I wouldn’t be fighting if it wasn’t.”

  “Right. But what if I told you there was more to life, more possibilities than you’ve perhaps ever imagined for yourself?”

  “Then I would ask why you are living in the burned out remains of a rebel camp instead of taking them for yourself.”

  Nauro barked a laugh. “Very good! Yes indeed, why haven’t I?” His face was suddenly serious. “Because I am not strong enough. None of us are, alone. Not even you. That’s why we need a team and a strategy.”

  He sounded like Karhail, back in the rebellion. “And let me guess, I’m the key to your strategy.”

  “You, Tai, you would be the key to anyone’s strategy. I don’t doubt it’s why Sablo wanted you too. Likely why he stayed on here this long, instead of leaving as soon as the Councilate game was up.”

  Nauro was clearly educated, but talking to the man was like wandering in a maze. “Strategy to do what?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “To kill Semeca, of c
ourse.”

  38

  Tai’s head cocked forward despite himself. That was not what he was expecting. “Semeca? The councilor from Gendrys?”

  “That is one way to describe her, yes. Sablo’s team may have had its eye on someone else, but it was likely Semeca too. She has raised her head a bit too high with these Broken, and as the book says, the highest heads must be ready for axes.”

  Tai frowned. “What do you have against Semeca?”

  “Oh nothing, really. I admire her, when it comes down to it. But she has something I want.”

  Semeca. Control of the Broken. The pieces were starting to fit together. “Was she the one behind those bridges moving?”

  Nauro gave an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid I don’t have all the facts on your parley at Gendrys, relying as I must on rumors. But from what I’ve heard, yes, I don’t doubt it.”

  “How? She wasn’t using Broken.”

  “Oh no. The Broken are just a useful expedient to her, because she cannot risk revealing her own power. Just as you were a useful expedient, masking the fact that she was moving the bridges. Well, you and the Councilate’s understandable superstition about your resonance.”

  “So you’re saying she has some other power she doesn’t want the Councilate to know about, so she made it look like I was lifting the bridges?”

  “Yes. And the Broken are the same—though she relies on the unstable release of uai that happens when a revenant is dislodged, still this is a way to use her power without tipping the vulgar off to her power.”

  “The vulgar.”

  He smiled apologetically. “Excuse me. I spend too much time around other seekers, and in the company of my own thoughts. Regular people, I meant to say.”

  “So what is this power? Does she just have an incredible resonance?”

  “She has more than that. She has a world full of incredible resonances.” He paused, seeing Tai’s confusion. “Consider House Coldferth. Their inner family has what, twenty members? Twenty-five? And these twenty-five control perhaps five thousand employees, and by extension their families, and by further extension the slaves and workers they hold in indenture to serve in their mines and mills. Perhaps fifty thousand in total?”