Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  Would this be the one that did it? What did the woman have against them, personally, to be here instead of letting her Broken do the work? What did she want or fear badly enough to risk herself?

  If Ella knew that maybe they could find a way to fight her. She stayed a moment longer, mesmerized by the sight of a city in flames, by the fact that all their effort could come to this, could very simply not be enough.

  Ella turned away. There was still work to do.

  A scream turned her back—this was not a scream from inside, nor the now-familiar cries of the Broken. It was a scream of rage.

  She turned to see the boulder plummeting past, falling to smash into buildings below in a shower of sparks. In their violet glow Ella spotted Semeca’s white dress, tangled with a dark figure, the two spinning in air.

  Who—but she knew that figure. Ella broke out into a grin.

  Tai. He’d come back.

  60

  There was no question where the action was, or who to attack. A horde of Broken swarmed over Newgen, and within it a figure in white lifted a massive boulder toward the glass Tower’s peak.

  Semeca. He wasn’t ready, his leg was broken, he hadn’t overcome his voice, but that didn’t matter. He might never be ready, and the time was now. He turned in air, pointing his feet like a dive into the river, and shot forward with everything he had.

  His leg exploded in pain when he hit, but the woman screamed and the boulder dropped from her grip, plummeting down. He spun around to grab her, seeking an eye or a throat, a quick end to this.

  Instead a wall of air slammed him back. The boulder smashed into the fires below, and cinders swirled up like burning moths.

  Semeca floated, regal, a few paces away. “So you couldn’t stand to see your little city burn,” she said, pale figure shimmering in the heat. “I was counting on that.”

  Tai’s chest was a mix of too many emotions to even respond. Anger at what she’d done to his city. Fear for his friends, trapped inside the Tower. Regret that he’d spent this long confused by a revenant while Ayugen fell. But most of all determination. He would end this now or die trying.

  He shot forward again, but Semeca cut left and slammed another wall of air into him, his leg screaming in pain and his head ringing. “Your determination is admirable,” she said, “but I am a mindseye. I am the queen of mindseyes. There’s nothing you can do that I won’t anticipate, won’t counter, won’t quash. Give up now and I will allow your friends an easy death.”

  A mindseye. He knew how to deal with those. Tai broke his mind into a hundred competing conversations, a room full of drunken idiots each yelling louder than the next, his own a street child huddled under one of the far tables, seeking a way to defeat her.

  She laughed. “Very nice. Such parlor tricks likely work very well against my vassals. They won’t work against me. Now. I offer you again: an easy end to this, or a hard one.”

  Tai kept the drunken idiots going, in case she was bluffing. Huddled under the table, he felt a surge of hope. If she was bargaining that meant she still wasn’t sure of victory. Which meant she was afraid of something. Which meant there was an advantage somewhere, if he could find it.

  Semeca smiled, underlit face looking skeletal in the fire’s glow. “Oh hardly. It’s just the disadvantage to me, of how much cover up I have to do once this all is done. Whether I can still continue the convenience of Semeca Fenril, or I will have to go to ground and let this all pass. Really, you could save me decades of trouble.”

  Tai gritted his teeth, crouched under the table. She really could read his thoughts then, through the defense. And attacking her was out—the woman was more than a match for him in strength. What else did they have?

  “Let me make this easier for you.” She gestured to her left, where the boulder she’d been wafting was rising again from the ground, slower, wafters covering it like ants on a scrap of melon. “I have been drawing this out, but now that you’re here there’s no need to wait. If my wafters drop this directly atop the Tower, the top four support pillars will fold, and the Tower will go down, with all your friends in it.”

  Fear clutched his chest. He fought it, like he’d had to so many times on the streets. Fear lead to bad decisions. He needed to be clear. The boulder rose slowly past them, uai roaring like a forgefire from the mass of wafters. There had to be fifty or sixty—more than he could fight.

  “Your friends won’t die immediately. But there really is no death like being buried alive—impaled here and there, waiting for blood loss or thirst to end you, alone in the darkness. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, honestly. But this choice is yours, not mine.” Semeca arched an eyebrow.

  Give up now, or risk their awful deaths on the chance he could find her weakness.

  “You haven’t found it, Tai. Do you really think you will in the next thirty seconds?” The boulder was past them now, just starting to crest the peak.

  Tai gritted his teeth, glancing from it to Semeca to the Tower. There were people at some of the windows, watching him decide their fate. One of them stood out, her light hair practically glowing in the red blaze of the fires.

  No. He would not figure this out in the next fifteen seconds. So he had to fight.

  “Idiot,” Semeca cursed, but Tai was already shooting up the side of the Tower. It looked like about sixty Broken pushing on the boulder. He could fight that many, right?

  A squad of ten split off from the boulder to meet him, no doubt under Semeca’s direct control. How far away would she be able to read his mind, anticipate his moves?

  He circled left and the wafters mirrored him, drawing weapons. This far, at least. Meckstains. He broke the street urchin in his mind into a hundred street urchins under a hundred tables, imagining shooting a hundred different directions.

  It worked, for a moment, the wafters pausing while he spun over them, barreling for the main force holding up the boulder, still no plan on how to beat them. They were too far over the Tower to just draw enough wafters off that the boulder fell. The once-perfect spiral of stone and glass was already sagging from previous drops. Who knew how many more it could take?

  Then the effort of hiding his thoughts with a hundred different drunken pubs was too much, and the wafters flew after him.

  Too bad they weren’t as fast. And the more Semeca sent after him the less they had to lift the massive stone, already slowed to a crawl with the ten wafters gone. Keeping them occupied wasn’t a solution, but it put off the inevitable.

  Until a wall of air slammed him into the stone. Semeca. Right. She had a wafter’s second level ability, to push air.

  Then again, so did he. He struck his higher resonance, back burning but nothing to do be done about it, and slammed down at the wafters pushing directly beneath him.

  The stone lurched as the wafters fell, but they caught it as soon as his push ended, and Tai was forced to dodge out and up as the ten free wafters caught up and arrowed for him. He shot away and they slammed into the spot he had been, stone lurching outward.

  Tai had an idea. A very stupid idea, but that was still better than nothing.

  I heard that, Tai, Semeca’s voice rang in his head. There’s nothing you can do that I won’t anticipate.

  He ignored her, starting an obit around the boulder, red fire then black sky then red fire again, faster and faster, red to black, red to black. It was true she could hear his thoughts, but her wafters were not fast enough to catch him, and she couldn’t commit any more to the chase without dropping the stone.

  Which meant she could react to what he was planning, but not exactly when.

  Tai struck second resonance again, forming a thick wall of air in front of him. Maybe this way he wouldn’t die, or break every bone in his body. He thickened it further, earth and sky a blur as he spun around the stone. Maybe.

  Tai slammed himself into the top of the boulder, arms out to catch it.

  Stars, and pain, and something snapping in his body. Somethings. No matter. All was the
push. The stone tilted under his grip, a primal roar ripping from his mouth, just a little, then a little more, the massive rock beginning to sway outward—

  Then some deep center of balance shifted, and all the force Semeca’s Broken were putting into pushing the boulder up became force pushing the boulder out.

  It dropped, but not before shooting outward, the wafters’ push much stronger without the counter of gravity. Out beyond the Tower’s edge, beyond the burning buildings of Newgen proper—Tai breathed out, pain blossoming in his arm and chest but relief flooding in. The boulder smashed into the steep slope of the bluffmanses, where the plateau of Ayugen dropped to the river below. Most of the buildings there were already ashes from a Ghost Rebellion attack, and the boulder careened through those that weren’t like sandcastles, before crashing through the lower wall and dropping into the river, where the dark waters swallowed it.

  Tai smiled despite the pain. Good luck getting that out anytime soon. Until then, he’d have to pray whatever defenses the city had been using would hold up.

  A thick wave of newly-freed Broken coming for him, Tai shot up the Tower side and dropped in the broken glass top.

  61

  Cheers rose from the people inside, news passing from those at the windows to those down below. “He did it!” “Lord Tai saved us!” “The boulder’s gone!”

  Hope swelled in Ella’s chest too, but this was far from over. As soon as Tai had come the assault had dropped off, wafters streaming up and out of the Tower to go lift the boulder while Tai fought Semeca high above the city. Feynrick had taken the brief respite to regroup, fortifying doors and redistributing soldiers, but Ella had been glued to the window, sure Tai would die at any moment.

  And now he came shooting through the shattered cupola, to renewed cheers and shouts. Ella ran to the inner walkway, heart still reeling between resignation and hope as her calculating brain took over. Semeca wasn’t dead, and Tai didn’t need cheers or applause. He needed information, to understand everything she’d learned. And then they needed a plan.

  She waved her arms and shouted, trying to draw him over to her section of the walkway. She didn’t know if it was the waving or her light hair but Tai noticed, wafting her way.

  Only to collapse immediately on landing, face ashen with pain. “Marrem,” she barked at the runner who’d followed her up. The girl ran.

  Ella knelt to him. “You’re alive.” There were tears blurring her eyes. She wiped them away. Prophets. Turning into a weepy lighthaired lady at a time like this.

  “Something like that,” he groaned, sitting up with her help. “What—how are you surviving in here?”

  She told him briefly of how the harmony confused the Broken, of their escape from the caves and the defensive system they’d set up in here. “Look,” she said, pointing to where a stream of wafters flooded in after him, only to stop ten paces above them. “It’s working even now. But we’re running out of people and—”

  “The Tower is about to collapse. I know. It looks like hell from the outside.” He tried a laugh but seemed distracted, eyes unfocused like he was listening to something.

  “What about you? Where have you been?”

  “Nauro. He—it’s a long story. I hope I get the chance to tell you. Main thing is he sicced a voice on me that trapped me in the forest for days.”

  “And you overcame it? That’s how you got here?”

  He gave a pained smile. “Not so much. This is a famous one, apparently. She’s yelling at me right now.”

  Prophets. A third voice? Still, if it worked like the others did, maybe he could overcome it now. “Did anything change when you came into the harmony field? Does your voice feel less stable? Less confident?”

  He grimaced. “She started talking once we landed. But I don’t know if I can get rid of this one.”

  “You can, Tai. You have to.” She racked her brains for anything else she knew that might help. “Here,” she said, digging out a neatly-folded packet. “Mavenstym.”

  He smiled, genuine despite the obvious pain. His elbow was swelling larger—he must have broken something. “Marrem? Is she still alive?”

  “It’d take more than an army of Broken to stop that woman.”

  The cries of the Broken suddenly cut off, and the wafters throwing themselves at the barrier pulled back. Tai paled. “Semeca. She’s coming in.”

  “How do you—nevermind. Tindwal! Arela!” The Achuri pair ran over and together they dragged Tai into the room, out of sight.

  “Semeca will be immune to the harmony,” Tai wheezed, face paling, sounding distracted. “She’ll kill them.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Ella soothed, fear rising in her belly all the same. “Focus on your voice. Whatever it’s telling you, they’re lies. If you overcome it, you’ll have the power to beat Semeca.”

  She didn’t know that. Didn’t know if you even got a surge of uai after overcoming your third voice, like people did with their first and second. Or if even a surge would be strong enough to beat whatever Semeca was. But it was all she could think of.

  That, and one more thing. “Tindwal,” she said. “Arela. Your harmony.”

  They struck it, quickly finding harmony, and she hit hers, time slowing, seeking the third note. The one that would take them from a harmony to a full chord, like she had heard fleetingly at the points of overlap along the walkway, like had popped occasionally out during the escape from the cave.

  She had one more theory about the resonances. Prophets ancestors and scholars send that it worked.

  62

  This whole quest is idiocy, Naveinya raged, voice blending with the pain in his arm and leg.

  Focus. He needed to overcome her. Ella was right. If he got another surge of uai like the other times he’d overcome, he might have a chance at Semeca. At saving his friends.

  Don’t listen to that twit. I told you I’m different.

  He was getting tired of people reading his mind. And yet he sensed the same fear in Naveinya he’d sensed in Semeca. Naveinya had woken up when he entered the harmony, so it was doing something to worry her.

  The question was, would it be enough?

  No one has pushed me out in my seven centuries of trying, young Tai. But those who’ve followed my advice have sometimes lived long and fruitful lives. So let me tell you this: the one thing you can do right now is run. Run and perhaps we will live to avenge your friends.

  Run? “Never,” he croaked. Ancestors, but his body hurt. Ella blurred above him, the harmony around him swelling as the other two Achuri—Tindwal and Arela, if he remembered right, carpenters in Riverbottom—tuned their resonance. “You’re scared.”

  Naveinya laughed. Of what? I told you. You cannot defeat me like some freshly-dead greenhorn. I cannot be convinced with logic or swayed by emotion. And no one has ever broken my will.

  “Then I will be the first,” he gritted, not even sure if he was speaking aloud anymore. Outside the room shouts and cries sounded. Semeca was killing them. Attacking the resonators, probably. Trying to force a way in for the Broken.

  His heart lurched, wanting to go out there, to fight, and knowing he needed to stay here. Because the part of his mind that had kept him alive on the streets, that doubted everyone’s intentions and always looked for the reason behind the reason, said that Semeca was not only attacking to defeat the Achuri. She was attacking to distract him, because she knew he would react this way.

  Which meant if he overcame his voice, she knew he would have a chance against her.

  So he shut it all out, the screams, the fear, the panic, the ornate Councilate bedchamber. He either defeated Naveinya now, or they all died.

  63

  Ella flexed her resonance, looking for a completing third note, cursing her inattention in music lessons. There. The medium pitch of her resonance dropped in beside the deeper buzz and rattle of Tindwal and Arela, fitting somehow into a chord that felt… uplifting?

  She watched Tai for a response. It was
hard, in slowed time, but he looked unchanged. How long would it take? How long could she stay in slip while he worked on it?

  Not long. She adjusted her resonance, slurring time faster to drop her pitch, though to her bones it felt more like Tindwal and Arela’s resonances rose. There—a different chord. More melancholy. Was that what he needed?

  Her theory was simple: the overcomings she’d seen on the walkway had been mostly at places where resonating pairs overlapped, and had consciously or unconsciously tuned with each other, creating a harmony with four tones instead of two, a chord, that carried mood as well as just order. And something about that mood matched the internal struggles of the resonators who overcame. Whether it was a melancholy chord for the melancholy struggles, or a happy chord that helped the melancholy ones out, she had no idea and no time to research. But with Semeca in the Tower and Tai too wounded to fight, she had to at least try. It was that or give up and wait for someone else to save or destroy them. And that went against everything in her to the core of her confused, not-Councilate not-Achuri being.

  She tsked in the basso silence of slip, noting no change. Maybe not melancholy either. What then? Ella flexed her resonance again, seeking a new chord.

  64

  Feynrick roared and hurled his axe, but the cursed woman was a force of nature. Fast as a slip. Flying like a wafter. Strong as a brawler. And dodging everything they threw at her like a mindseye deep in concentration. Was she a genitor finally come back to life? But no, no genitor would consent to anything other than properly red hair.

  The axe went wide and the demon-genitor-thing smiled again, slamming another swathe of people into stone walls, himself among them. Stars exploded but he was already shouting, ordering more men up the walkways. He might be dreamleaf-addled and half-dead, but he wasn’t stupid. A general only charged the front lines if he was desperate for a hole to push his men through, and though this woman fought like no general he’d ever seen, she still wouldn’t risk it unless she needed an opening. In this case a way through the field of resonance harmony they were creating on the walkway, that somehow didn’t affect her.