Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  Tai kept his dagger low, pulling his arm back. His arms were still free, and he was just barely in Odril’s vision. If he could throw it just right—

  Ella’s eyes flicked to him, then back to Odril. “Master? You’re a smalltime thief with delusions of grandeur. A bureaucrat caught in Alsthen middle management. I took your thralls from you, remember? Exposed you in front of the courts?”

  His face darkened. “And I’ve waited a long time to—”

  Tai threw the dagger underhand, summoning all his strength and slinging it at Odril’s side. It struck true, sliding through the cloak and deep into the man’s flesh.

  Odril gasped, and like that Tai’s feet were free. He shot forward, slamming his hand into the hilt of the dagger, driving it toward the lungs and heart. Odril’s gasp slurred to a scream and Tai pulled the dagger out, preparing the cut the man’s throat.

  “Tai no!” Ella yelled. “Your sight!”

  He paused for a moment, caught in his rage, in his need to protect her. His sight—mindsight. Right. They could learn something. Tai struck resonance, his uai weak but back, and pushed into Odril’s mind.

  Shock. Pain. He still wasn’t good at reading thoughts deeper than immediate ones—it was like reading scraps of paper caught in a rushing stream—but he looked anyway, squinting. He saw flashes—months spent in the woods, desperate moments stealing from villagers, and hunting—but not animals. Hunting what? He tried to focus. Hunting dead people?

  “What were you hoping to do here?” Ella cut in, cold rage on her face. She’d told Tai the whole story of Odril setting her up on the boat, of imprisoning her and forcing her to calculate his illegal books. She hated the man.

  “Become—a God,” Odril gasped, sliding down to the snow as Tai released him. Blood pumped hot and heavy from his side, staining the snow.

  Ella shook her head, but Tai read the answer as she asked the question, rising to the front of Odril’s mind. “He wanted to—thrall us,” Tai said. “To use our uai somehow. He thought—” He squinted, Odril’s mind growing slower but muddier. “He thought if he could channel our uai, then he would be powerful enough to face other, ah—”

  “Other journeymen,” Odril said, though his voice was weak. “Do you know how long it took to get this powerful? How many months I spent freezing out here, seeking revenants? How close I was?”

  Tai glanced at Ella, energy of battle seeping from his blood. She looked as confused as he felt.

  Ella turned back to the dying man. “How close to what?”

  His eyes fluttered closed. “Healworker,” he murmured. “Get—a healworker. Tell you everything.”

  Tai needed no healworker to see Odril was too far gone to get back to the city, even if they wafted. “Who sent you?” he asked. “An archrevenant? Sablo?”

  “No one,” Odril muttered, a strange grin on his face as he slumped into the snow. “No one, anymore. Don’t need—”

  Tai pushed the snow back, trying to read his mind, but the current was darker, the thoughts indistinct. “He’s dying,” he said. “Ella?”

  Ella bit her lip. “Odril. We can still help you. How did you do this?”

  There was no response, blood pumping slow from the hole in his side.

  “Odril!”

  He gave a shuddering sigh and lay still. Tai pushed a moment further in his mind, seeking anything, but the water had stilled. He was dead.

  Tai stood and moved to Ella. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she frowned. “He deserved it. But what—what was that?”

  “It was a ninespears thing, I think. Remember what Sablo did, before we got to Gendrys?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but that was just our uai. This was like—like I was frozen to the ground.”

  Tai nodded. “Me too. That’s why I couldn’t get to him. That’s why I couldn’t get to you. I—” He shook his head, only realizing now how afraid he’d been. More afraid than he’d ever been for himself.

  Ella smiled, leaning in to him. “Thank you. But I can take care of myself, most of the time.”

  “Not if you don’t know what we’re up against. If I hadn’t had that dagger--” He shook his head, shoulder muscles tight.

  She pursed her lips, looking at the corpse. “Odril was always full of himself, but he said he wanted to become a God.” She turned to him. “Can all the ninespears do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Tai said, pulling her close. “But I know someone who does.”

  2

  Tai flew low over the snow-covered trees, face wrapped in furs and body covered in three layers of coats. He was still freezing, and starting to doubt the wisdom of coming out here. The note had said he would know the clearing, which could only mean one place in the southern forests. The clearing where he’d spent three days with a broken leg, while his friends fought and died. The clearing where he’d fought a wildly powerful revenant.

  The clearing where a strange man had left him to die. Nauro.

  He had no defenses. No idea what Nauro was capable of. Tai had barely defeated the revenant Naveinya, and if Nauro attacked anything like Sablo or Odril had, he would be as good as dead. Ella had been against him going—everyone had been against him going, but that was one of the good things about them choosing him as a leader. He knew it needed to be done, and he was the only one who could do it, so he went anyway. They needed answers. And now that Odril was dead, Nauro was the only one he knew that could give them.

  Even if the man had been willing to let the city of Ayugen burn, to prove a point.

  There. Smoke, maybe? It was hard to tell in the gray winter air, clouds hanging low over the forest. Tai turned that direction—it was better than nothing. Yes, smoke.

  Anticipation rose up in him and he slowed his waft, reaching into a side pocket to pull out more mavenstym. He ate the crunchy purple blossoms on the off chance his uai would do anything if Nauro attacked. Feynrick had given it even odds the man would try to kill him, but Tai thought it was better than that. Why would Nauro wait out here for months in the cold if he was so powerful, and wanted Tai dead? For that matter, he could have easily done it while Tai was under Naveinya’s spell. No, Nauro couldn’t be trusted, but he didn’t likely want Tai dead.

  Which made things much more complicated.

  Tai touched down in the center of a field of white, boots sinking in past the knee, forest silent after the howl of wind in his ears. Blue-green needleaves ringed the clearing, frosted in snow, with bare branched leatherleafs sticking through here and there. The smoke rose from a hide-covered tent tucked back in the trees, not so different in design from an Achuri guyo.

  “Hello the tent!” he called, not wanting to startle the man, hating the old feeling of uncertainty and danger. He’d gotten used to the power of his resonance, to his ability to fight or escape anything, but the sense of uncertainty and danger was older, more familiar. It was what kept him alive on the streets.

  There was no answer, so Tai wafted up and inward, following a depressed trail in the snow—it looked like Nauro left regularly, likely to hunt or forage. It would be a lonely existence this far out. The man must really care, to be willing to wait out here for Tai to come to him.

  The area immediately around the tent was hard-packed snow covered in wood shavings. Half an elk carcass hung frozen from a tree. Tai dropped to the ground, called out again, and pulled back the door flap.

  Heat rolled out, almost unearthly after hours of cold. Nauro stood to the side of a blazing fire, bare to the waist, his tailored slacks a strange contrast to the humble contents of the tent. “Tai,” he said, seeming totally unsurprised. “It’s good to see you. Come in?”

  Tai had been braced for an attack but Nauro was unarmed, hands at his sides, though that meant little. “Yes,” he said, voice muffled under his wraps. “I think I will.” The warmth from the fire felt wonderful, and his skin ached from the cold.

  “Care for a cup of mavensytm? Or brandy? I still have a bit left.” Nauro gestured t
o an elegant bench along one wall, on which a few earthenware cups and bottles were arranged in a clean lines.

  Tai pulled the flap closed, and immediately started to sweat. “Mavensytm, yes. Thank you.” Was the man offering it to show he was unafraid of Tai’s resonance?

  “Apologies if it’s warm in here,” Nauro said. “I haven’t spent many winters in the south, and I’m afraid my northern blood isn’t up to it.”

  Tai unwrapped his face and hands, then moved to his three layers of coats. “Where are you from, anyway?”

  “Worldsmouth,” Nauro said simply. “Though Worldsmouth before it was named Worldsmouth. The Yersh pronounced it more Worldsmout, but of course the merchant houses changed that once they successfully won their freedom.”

  Tai shook his head. “How old are you?”

  “One hundred and thirty-eight, at last counting,” Nauro said, sitting back on his cot with a sigh. “Winters like this make me feel it.” He looked thirty.

  There was just one other chair in the room, and Tai took it, wondering how the man got all this furniture out here. “One hundred and thirty-eight? How is that even possible?”

  Nauro gave him a level gaze. “You defeated Naveinya, yes? So you are a mindseye now?”

  Tai nodded, feeling foolish. He still wasn’t used to the resonance—he could have been reading Nauro this whole time. He struck and tried, but Nauro’s mind was a river under ice, thoughts too far down to read.

  The fyelocke man grinned, pouring steaming water from a pot over the fire into a clay mug. “I didn’t mean for you to check the veracity of my statements by reading my mind. I try to stay protected against such things. But you must have read Semeca’s mind, in the end. Seen how old she was.”

  “Yes. I don’t know exactly, but at least a thousand years.”

  Nauro nodded. “And we believe there are archrevenants who are older. Some who are original, even. There are ways to tell but,” he shrugged, “you would need to have captured her revenant to do so.”

  Tai leaned in, accepting the mug. Good. This was the kind of information he needed. “So is that what you do? You—capture revenants?”

  Nauro took a sip from his own steaming cup, releaving the tattoo of a circle pierced by nine spears on the inside of his wrist. “I have longed for human conversation, Tai, but there are still things I cannot reveal until we have an agreement.”

  An agreement. Tutelage, Nauro had called it. Joining his team, whatever that was, and studying their ways with the aim of defeating Semeca. “And how does that agreement change in light of the fact I’ve already killed your target?”

  Nauro smiled. “Very little. You will still need to learn our ways, to stand any reasonable chance of defeating other archrevenants, and that will still take time.”

  “So now that Semeca is gone, you just move on to another archrevenant? Is your goal to kill them all?”

  His raised his eyebrows, in the cultured way Tai had seen lighthairs raise their eyebrows, a controlled show of surprise. “Kill them? Oh no, our goal is not to kill them. It’s to become them.”

  Odril’s words came back to him. To become a God. “You want to—become them? But you’re already immortal.”

  Nauro twisted his lips, setting his mug down with a muted thud on the long bench. “Immortal no. Not even Semeca was immortal, as you proved. But I do have some longevity, yes, and a bit of power to heal myself. All things that would be available to you, if you joined us.”

  An evasion. Tai let it slide—he had more important things to learn here. “You spoke of dangers in your note. Of the archrevenants coming after me, and other ninespears.”

  “Shamans, we call ourselves. But yes. The dangers are real. Which I’m guessing you know, as you’ve been recently attacked.”

  Tai started. He’d been keeping his mind defended against mindsight, using the hundred conversations at once. “How did you know?”

  “There are… traces left, from such an attack. I would love to explain more, but,” he shrugged. “That’s up to you. Stay here, and die, and waste the potential you have to change the world. Or join me.”

  “Does joining you mean becoming your thrall?”

  Nauro’s brows shot up further this time. “Is that what they tried to do? Fools. It must have been a journeyman at best. No, friend, if Naveinya could not manage to keep her hold on you, I have little faith any attempt at thralling you would work.”

  Tai shook his head, feeling too hot in the narrow tent despite having shed his outer layers. He needed to understand all this, needed to know how to defend himself against it. But Nauro had spoke of studying for years, and he couldn’t leave Ayugen that long, couldn’t give up his friends—give up Ella—to go help Nauro fight immortal beings. He had to turn this to his favor somehow.

  Tai shifted on the chair. “In your note, you said I had done what your society has failed to do for three hundred years. You’ve admitted that I can’t be thralled. And yet it seems you are still trying to fit me into your old model of tutelage. That won’t work. I don’t have the time and space to leave and study with you for years on end.”

  Nauro met his eyes, the man’s cool and brown. “You remember our talk of the revolutions of the wheel?”

  “Yes. Of it all seeming pointless when looked at from a longer scale of time. But I saw into Semeca’s mind too, Nauro. I have seen the life that you seek, and it’s empty. She was holding to power for its own sake, had long ago lost anyone she cared about. What she was really fighting was the realization that she was ready to die, that she had nothing left to live for.”

  Nauro shifted, looking uncomfortable.

  “I’m not living that life,” Tai went on. “I have things to live for, people I care about. And if learning the secrets of your society means giving those up, even for a year, then I’m not doing it. I’d rather die now, than spend a thousand years powerful and alone.”

  Nauro held his gaze a moment, then looked down. “Fair enough. You are not our typical apprentice, and the system won’t fit you. But you still need me.”

  Tai shook his head. “In what way? I defeated this man that came after me. I defeated the revenant you put on me, supposedly one of the most powerful the world has ever known. What more do I need?”

  “You need to be able to defeat gods,” the bare-chested man said, voice loud against the crackle of the fire. “The archrevenants are not ignorant of each other. We don’t know how much communication they have, but most scholars agree they’ve had some sort of pact for the last five hundred years, which means they keep an eye on each other. When we attack, we try to do it in secret, with as little fanfare as possible, in the hopes that once we ascend, we will have a few years to prepare ourselves for their counter-attack.”

  He laid another branch on the fire, wet bark hissing. “You have no such options. Word of your battle with Semeca will have spread all over the continent by now, and likely beyond. Thousands witnessed the Broken in Gendrys, and while less will have escaped Ayugen having seen Semeca in her power, do not doubt that some have, and that the tale will grow in the telling. The other archrevenants know of you now, and they know you are a real threat to their power.”

  Tai wiped the sweat from his forehead. Gods? Is that what Semeca was? “Won’t they also know that I didn’t take her power? That maybe I just got lucky?”

  Nauro glanced at him, then back to the fire. “No. I don’t think you just got lucky. But yes, they will know you didn’t take her power. I don’t know how they will interpret that. I’m not sure it’s ever happened before. But any deicide, after so long without one, will raise their hackles. And the archrevenants are not ones whose hackles you want raised.”

  A chill ran down Tai’s spine, despite the heat. “Why? What would they do?”

  Nauro shook his head. “Anything. Everything. Semeca was the least example of these, and still she commanded an army of insane resonators, threw giant bridges at you, duped one of the world’s most powerful governments into thinking she wa
s daughter to a Councilate House. Their power is not limited, Tai, in the way that yours or, to some extent, mine is by the revenants we have overcome.”

  “And they would destroy my friends to get to me?” It didn’t really need to be asked, but he had to know.

  “They would destroy cities to get to you. Whole peoples. Archrevenants think on the scale of millenia, not weeks or months as we do. They view people like we view the insects of summer, dead now for months with no one to mourn them. So would your city be. So would all our cities, if they had reason.” He looked back to the fire.

  Tai took a moment to let his breath catch up. He was in real danger. That was fine—was normal, really—but it meant he was a danger to his friends, to Marrem and Feynrick and Aelya and Ella too. At least he could do something about that. “And this tutelage you offer,” he said quietly. “It would give me a chance against them?”

  Nauro rolled a log, flashing the tattoo on his wrist again. “For most people, no. But you are not most people. Which is likely why this journeyman tried to thrall you.”

  “Odril,” Tai said. “He was—an old acquaintance. From before the rebellion.”

  “Yes, well. What you need to know is that as much danger as you are in from the archrevenants, you are in even more from my people. Make no mistake that they have heard you defeated Semeca, and that you do not know our ways. No decent journeyman, no initiate would have let her revenant escape.”

  “Which means they know I can’t defend against them,” Tai said. The words reminded him with a chill that Nauro was very capable of such an attack, if he wished. That he had only defeated Odril, apparently of a lower rank in their society, by dumb luck and a knife throw, while his uai was gone and his feet were glued to the ground.

  “Yes. And that you are either a threat or an asset, but either way not to be ignored. Odril saw you as an asset—thralling you would have given him access to your uai stream, increasing his own power. Others will see you as a danger to their own attempts on the archrevenants, and want you gone.”

  Tai raised an eyebrow, trying to find some humor in the situation. “I take it you are in the first camp?”