Beggar's Rebellion: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 1)

by L. W. Jacobs

  It was easier to follow the party through the streets. Ayugen was dead, houses shut up and few lights burning. She saw two white-coated soldier patrols but otherwise had the streets and alleys to herself. The party crossed Hightown, passing the Wintersmarket and walking by Odril’s office, then took the road to the prison camp.

  Fear rose in her. Tai would not survive the camp. She knew it as surely as she knew her own life was at risk.

  They took him in the front gates, toward the only stone part of the fortress. The prison proper, likely. It was small, but then, Councilate prisons didn’t need to be large. She shuddered.

  Ella dared not follow them inside, not until the soldiers left. She crouched on the edge of the woods, shivering as her dress dried. She was ravenous suddenly, spine aching with uai hunger. How long had she gone without winterfoods? There was nothing to be done for it now, not with all the shops and vendors closed for the night.

  Presently, a group of soldiers left the gate. Ella drew in a breath, struck what resonance she had, and ran for the door.

  Her uai failed her just past the leaving soldiers, world slurring back into motion. Ella ducked down by a tree stump, cursing.

  No cry rose from the soldiers or the wall. She stayed there a long while, then walked as casually as she could back to the trees, then through the forest toward Riverbottom.

  Sunrise was a long time coming. Ella considered going to Odril’s, seeing if Tunla might be able to help her, but the risk of meeting a soldier or lawkeeper there was too great. The arbitration had connected her to the office, and Sablo could easily have sent men there on her escape.

  Instead, she stayed to the eastern edges of town, shivering in her damp dress, watching the colors gradually lighten in the east, reflected in the wide Genga.

  It was there that she saw the first boat pull in, a narrow vessel with white-lacquered oars. They had trouble docking, with all the half-sunken ships, but once they did, it was as she suspected: white-coated men piled out. The army, or the frontrunners at least. How long until the main force docked? A day? A few hours? She had to get Tai out before then.

  You don’t have to, little sis. In fact, it’d probably be better for you if you didn’t.

  “Get scattered,” she whispered in the gray dawn light, “I finally have something I can do to help someone other than me. I’m not running away this time.”

  He had more to say but she ignored him. Shops began to open, one of every three or four shuttered fronts. Riverbottom was a sorry shell of the place she had first met Tai. Had so many fled? Or been rounded up? Ella bought a few sticks of wintermelon from a hard-looking woman in a leaning shack, then made her way back to the prison to wait.

  A team of whitecoats came from the direction of Newgen sometime before midday, herding a sodden Minchu between them. Ella tensed as the door opened. After what seemed an eternity, streets dead around her, the soldiers reappeared, Minchu left inside.

  Ella struck hard, running along the wall leading to the prison. She would appear as a blur to anyone who focused in her direction; she just had to hope no one looked directly her way or listened for footsteps, or she would be discovered. She slipped in just as the door was closing.

  The prison was dark and humid, the smell of sweat and mold and exhaled air thick around her. A desk faced her, single lantern burning in the gloom. As she’d hoped, the jailer was off dealing with the Minchu prisoner. There was a door to either side of the front room, the left-hand one open.

  Ella crept down the passage beyond, short iron doors and narrow slits in the walls the only break from the Councilate’s solid stone construction. The floor was cool beneath her feet, smooth under a thin layer of grit. She turned the corner and saw a white-coated man holding a lantern and peering into one of the cells. The Minchu’s, likely. Ella slipped past him, the man seeming to stand still, and around the far corner.

  Ella peeked in the wall slits and checked the chalked names as she made her way down the hall. The insides were tiny, cubes half the length or height of a man, not big enough to stand up or lie down, one stacked on another. This was Councilate efficiency: inmates couldn’t exercise and therefore required less food. The slit in the wall allowed almost no vision out, and the rooms were windowless. Efficiency again: isolation made the prisoners break faster, give what information they had. Or go insane, at which time Councilate logic allowed them to be treated like animals, forced to work the fields or row the ships. Or just be put down. Either way, the prisons had few long-term inmates, meaning less cost to the Houses and greater threat to the criminals. Efficiency.

  She caught a glimpse of Tai in a cell labeled Achuri Rebel 12 just as the lantern began to return. Heart racing, Ella ducked into an empty cell and pulled the door shut.

  Prophet’s peace, Ella. What are you doing?

  The right thing.

  The jailer’s footsteps took an eternity. Latrine stench rose from the corner, where a small hole led to the prison’s drainage system—and likely to their rat colony. More efficiency.

  Run now. Run while you can.

  Ella forced herself to take one hundred measured breaths, then another hundred, until the prison was truly silent. Only then did she slip out, tiptoeing down to Tai’s cell.

  She saw him through the narrow slit, line of torchlight tracing a bare chest, bandages wrapped around his neck and shoulder. His skin was pale, and Ella gasped to see one hand grasped in the other, bloody ends where fingernails had been. His chest hardly moved.

  “Tai?”

  No response, though she dared not whisper louder. “Tai!”

  He snuffled, looked up. His eyes widened. “E—Ella? Is that you?”

  “Shhh.”

  He scrambled forward, wincing, pressing his face to the slit. “Ella?” His voice was disbelieving.

  She smiled, feeling the tension drop away. “Hey, there.”

  He reached fingers through the slit, too narrow to fit a hand through, and she intertwined them with her own. “What are you doing here?”

  She smiled. “I’m saving the rebellion. Which means saving you.”

  Tai shook his head. “No. You need to run. They’ll find you here! The army—”

  She nodded. “I know. I watched the first boat land this morning.”

  A moan escaped his lips. “Then at least save yourself!”

  She smiled. “I’m done with that. I saw how you came back for your friends during the fight at the gate.”

  He frowned. “That was a mistake. That whole attack was. All I did was kill more people for nothing.”

  “Well, this is not about killing people. This is about saving your life, and then we can figure out how to stop all the rest.”

  He shook his head. “But why me? I’m just one person.”

  “You’re too smart for that. And too charismatic. And I saw you fight in the attack. The rebellion needs you.”

  He shifted in the tiny cell. “I’m not going to survive these.”

  Ella sucked in a breath. There were still arrows in his body. “They haven’t treated you?”

  “Just enough to stop the bleeding. They’re starting to green.”

  “Tai,” she breathed. “I have to get you medicine, food—”

  “Ella, no. You are not coming back here.”

  She squeezed his hand through the slat. “I’m doing better than that. I’m getting you out.”

  39

  It was only with the advent of the draftboat and the increase in population pressure that people began to settle the Worldsmouth delta itself and eventually build rafthouses into the swamps beyond.

  —Telen Fostler, Empire Reconsidered

  Getting out of prison proved easier than getting in—Ella just opened her mouth and screamed. When the jailer came, she struck resonance and slipped out, blinking against the strong light of day.

  She needed a plan. Tai was locked inside, dying, she was a wanted woman on the streets with no ships coming to board, and in a few days or hours, the whitecoat a
rmy would be here to finish the last of the rebellion. If she could get Tai out, he could rally the rebels. Or she could take him somewhere, nurse him back to health. For better or worse, she was not putting herself first this time.

  Tai needed food, and he needed to get out, but most of all, he needed hardenswort for his wounds. He’d told her of a healworker on the bluffs, though Ella doubted if she was still there. With any luck, the woman had read the breeze and fled rather than being herded into the camp with the rest. Either way, she’d have left her supplies behind.

  Ella found the door barred, with no side entrance. After a moment, not wanting to be found by lawkeepers, Ella muttered an apology and pushed in through one of the oilpaper windows, stumbling in to a sparkling clean indoor kitchen, wicker cages with blue birds hanging in each corner.

  Ella straightened. The birds sung a peculiar low song, and the place smelled of cedarwood. “Hello? Anybody here?”

  No answer. Tai said the supplies would be on the first floor, so Ella began rummaging, feeling like a common thief. A room on the far side of the stairs held a table and restraints, wicked instruments of surgery along the walls. Beyond that she found wooden boxes, each labeled in a precise script.

  “Of all the things I’ve done,” she muttered, beginning to scan for what she needed “I never thought robbery would be one.”

  Cold metal pressed against her neck. “Then maybe you ought’ve thought twice,” a voice came from behind her.

  Ella froze, then struck resonance, stepping away from the blade. A stout Achuri woman stood behind her, knife held to empty air, a younger girl training a bow on the space Ella had been. Ella cursed. Her slip wouldn’t last enough to find the herbs she needed and escape without at least getting wounded. She eyed the woman again—not a soldier, not even a lighthair. Likely the healer, then.

  She dropped her resonance.

  The woman snapped to where Ella’d moved, the girl behind her retraining the bow. “I am sorry,” Ella began, “to intrude on your house—”

  “To break in, you mean,” the woman said, making no move toward her with the knife. She had likely realized it would do little against a timeslip.

  “Yes. I—I just need some things, for a friend.”

  The woman snorted. “Never satisfied, are you? You’ve taken our elders, our mines, the very people from our streets, and now you break in to take my herbs? Ran out of ointments for soldiers wounded in the fighting, have you?”

  “It’s for a rebel, actually.” Ella eyed the woman. “Are you Marrem?”

  “A rebel? What’s his name?”

  “Tai.”

  “Tai!” the woman repeated in a different pronunciation. She let the knife drop. “Well, then. Yes, I am Marrem. And who are you?”

  “Ella,” she said, extending a hand, then faltering, realizing it was a Councilate gesture. “Ellumia Aygla.”

  Marrem took it anyway. “What’s he gotten himself into this time?”

  “Prison.”

  Marrem clucked her tongue. “And you’ve come down here seeking herbs for him?”

  “Hardenswort,” Ella said. “He has two arrow wounds that are greening. And they’ve been pulling his fingernails.”

  “Right,” the healer said, turning to her boxes. “You’ll need more than hardenswort to stop multiple greenings. I’ll make you a tincture of fathersroot and tilderberry and elam…” She looked up. “In prison, you say?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to get him out but first need at least to keep him alive.”

  The healer eyed her. “And you’re not a rebel yourself?”

  “I— No, I’m not. Not really.”

  She nodded. “You care for him, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Marrem smiled and Ella blushed, realizing what she’d said. “I mean—”

  “No,” the healer smiled, “You mean what you said. Good for him. He deserves a nice one. You look decent enough.”

  Ella’s jaw worked, no words coming. Her voice was shouting, demanding she take it back, but now that the words were out, she saw they were true. She hardly knew Tai, had never spent more than a few hours with him—but she cared about him. If only as a symbol of the life she wanted to lead.

  The healer spoke as she worked. “He’ll be a handful. Lord knows he always was, on the street. And now he’s brought this rebellion down on us.” She clucked her tongue, looked at Ella. “But that’s over, isn’t it? The rebellion.”

  Ella leapt at the change of topic. “I think so. They attacked Newgen yesterday, and failed, then Tai tried to kidnap the High Arbiter”—the healer barked a laugh at this—“but it didn’t work, and now the army’s coming.”

  The woman tied a packet shut. “How soon?”

  “I saw the first boat land this morning.”

  “And most of our people herded up into the woods. What do they intend with them, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know. I—” Ella recalled Tai’s account of the camp, and the indignation of the rooster-faced woman saying they should all be put down. “But I am sure it’s not good.”

  “Aye,” the healer said, twisting a cork cap into a small clay bottle. “I expect you’re right.” She handed the bottle to Ella. “What do you plan to do if you get him out?”

  “I don’t know,” Ella said honestly. “Run away, I guess. Get him somewhere he can heal.”

  The healer nodded, lips pursed. “That’s about all there is for it now. Run or be caught up in the Councilate.”

  Ella nodded, surprised to find herself liking the older woman. “Yes. Thank you. I should go. You should too.”

  “We’ll take care of ourselves.” She glanced at the window. “Knock next time, girl.”

  Ella slipped into the prison behind a pair of guards carrying an inert form. To her consternation, the men stopped in the entryway to speak with the jailer, door leading farther in locked. The door behind her had narrowed too much to slip out. There was no hiding in the narrow space, and no leaving without being seen now. So, she dropped resonance.

  “God’s mercy!” the jailer barked, starting from his chair. “Where did you come from?”

  “From the Society for the Preservation of the Savage,” she said, straightening her back. “I am told you have a Minchu here.”

  “Indeed we do,” the jailer said, recovering from his initial shock. “What concern of that is yours?”

  “The Minchu are neither Councilate citizens nor subjects, and I demand on behalf of the Society that I be allowed to see the man.”

  “They ain’t men, lady,” one of the whitecoats said, a pepper-haired Yershman. “They’re beasts. You don’t want to talk to ’em.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I’ll be the judge of that. It would be very unfortunate if word spread in the Worldsmouth broadsheets of undue abuse under the guise of quelling the local rebellion. Jobs could be at stake.”

  The jailer cocked his head, looking her up and down like an exam specimen. “I assure you we follow all legal protocols here, miss…”

  “Merewil,” she said on a whim. “Elyssa Merewil.”

  “Miss Merewil, then. Would you like to see the creature?”

  “I would.”

  The jailer stood up, waving a hand at the soldiers. “Behave yourselves.” He plucked a key from a large rack and turned for the door. “The Minchu are barely verbal, Miss Merewil. I’m not sure what you’ll get from him.”

  “We believe the savages are actually morally superior,” Ella said, more to keep her nerves at bay than anything else. It helped that the Society was an actual movement in Worldsmouth, if the sort that only bored upper-class women pursued. They would be plenty to cause trouble for the jailer’s position.

  The inside was as before, dark and damp and tight, as though every slit in the wall contained watching eyes.

  The man banged on a door, iron ringing. “Here. This is the one.” It was a second-level cell, the viewing slit above her line of sight. “Keep your distance, please. We’ve had a spate of infec
tions.”

  “I will. And thank you,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. The man didn’t leave.

  “Hello?” a voice rumbled from the cell.

  “Ah, hi.” She turned to the jailer. This wouldn’t work if he stayed. “See? The savages are perfectly capable of speech. Now if you’ll leave us to it, I’ll call you when finished.”

  The jailer folded his spindly arms. “I’m afraid protocol requires me to see to your safety.”

  “Hello?” the rumble came again.

  Currents. She couldn’t get to Tai if the jailer stayed the whole time. “Ah, hello, and greetings. From the Society for the Preservation of the Savage.”

  Silence. Then: “Hello. You have come to release me?”

  “Ah, yes, if possible. I…wanted first to inquire if there’s anything you need.”

  “Ha. In this time, I only want to see the outside again.”

  “Yes. Ah, anything else?” She glanced at the jailer. “More…physical, maybe?”

  The Minchu was either smart or she was lucky. “Ah, yes. Sage. I am in need of sage, and this cell is too small for me. May be for a regular size person it is okay, but we Minchu are larger.”

  “Yes.” She turned to the jailer triumphantly. “You heard him. He needs water and a larger cell, or I’ll be forced to report back to the Society about the conditions you’ve kept him in.”

  The jailer snorted again. “I’ll do it when you leave.”

  Currents take the man. Ella was still casting around for another excuse when one of the soldiers appeared down the hall. “Eddard?”

  The jailer looked at her and cursed, then waddled off toward the soldier.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to the Minchu. “I will do my best to see you freed, but”—the jailer disappeared around the corner—“I’ve got something else to do first.”