by Levi Jacobs
“I—“ Tai felt the resonance a second later, the low steady hum of a brawler, and knew there was no point arguing. He’d stolen a lamp, and they wanted it back. Nevermind that he’d just had his stolen too, probably by one of them.
Tai spun for the lower passage—better the known enemy—and dropped down the series of slopes, footsteps hard behind, rocks sliding down, leaping down the shorter falls, nearly losing himself in his struggle to climb down with one hand and keep hold of his lamp with the other.
Tai hit the bottom and sprinted, recognizing the curves he’d just retraced, darting past them, taking a side passage, another, the spaces getting narrower. His lamp—his lamp was a problem. So long as it was lit, the brawler would know where to chase. And if he put it out, he might not be able to find his way back. Tai would have to outrun him, get so far ahead the man lost sight of him and had to turn back for fear of getting lost himself.
The passage opened out, bobbing light of another miner ahead. Tai blew past him, brawler’s footsteps further behind but still coming, and stooped into a narrow hall that wound down, down, took a left fork, another left, always moving down, air getting hotter, sometimes squeezing through narrow passages, other times losing sight of ceiling or walls around him.
A chimney opened up to his right, ceiling lost in dimness above. Tai scrambled up the wall, shoving his lamp ahead of him into the chimney, then pressed his back against the light. Only a bit of light shone out. Good. He heard the footsteps, still coming, slowing now, and willed his breath to slow, to become silent. The footsteps stopped, and Tai could see the glow of another lantern.
“Hey!” a man’s voice called, distorted by the passages. “Where are you, little thief?”
Tai held his breath. If he used his resonance, he could take the man—but flying at high power in these narrow spaces, he’d probably hurt himself as bad as the brawler.
You think?
“You can’t steal a helper’s lamp and get away with it! HEY!”
The voice sounded close. Tai kept still, lungs hitching after the run.
Another moment, then a curse in a hilltribe tongue. “Well hope you die down here, little man. You show your face up there again, and we’ll make sure you do.”
Tai’s lungs burned, pulling against his sealed lips, and he willed them still a little longer. Footsteps faded in the other direction—three seconds—four—
With a muted gasp Tai drew in air, feeling the dark swim. He risked a glance back at his lamp. Still lit. Okay. Tai sat back and breathed, letting the man get away.
Well, forget about getting out the front entrance.
I could still do it.
You’d just, y’know, have brawlers behind as well as in front.
Well yeah, there’s that. But we’re alive, at least. I kept you alive.
To witness the further chronicles of Tai the Unreasonable.
Now that’s just unfair, he thought, sliding out of the chimney and down the wall. He sat and listened at the bottom, wary, but heard nothing. If the brawler was waiting for him somewhere, he’d just have to deal with it. Though he couldn’t imagine someone waiting around that long for a mecking lamp.
The first few paces back were easy—he remembered enough to climb down and take the tunnel as it curved left. From there, Tai followed what seemed the most obvious way out, stopping every now and then to look for footprints. In the porous scree of the tunnel floor, it was hard to read tracks, and Tai had never been good at reading trail. Still, he thought he could make out his footprints, lengths between them long enough for the kind of running he’d been doing. At a junction with another, narrower passage, he found the heavier, soled prints of the brawler, saw where he’d moved around, trying to decide which way Tai’d gone. From there it was easier, following two sets of prints up and over tight humps, narrow spaces and little rooms, always wending upward.
Confidence returning, and Hake once again silent after his claim to remember directions, Tai nearly stumbled into the miner.
It was the song that saved him—the man was humming some kind of song under his breath. Tai stopped midstep, then carefully set down his lantern. A drinking song, if he placed it right. Lighthaired workers sang it in taverns, about a young sailor’s addiction to roses. He crept ahead, and looked around the bend, hoping it wasn’t the brawler. Not that he knew what the brawler looked like.
A man in his middle years squatted facing the wall, lamp beside him, tapping a chisel against what might have been remnants of yura. He was lighthaired, but the sandy head of the Yersh, not the platinum of Worldsmouth. Still, it was funny for a lighthair to be--
The whistle stopped. “You can come out from there, lad, whoever y’are.”
Tai started. The man didn’t sound ill-willed, and there was no resonance about him. “Apologies. I—don’t really know my way around, down here.”
The man nodded, patchy blond beard catching the lamplight. “You were the one the helper was chasing a while back?” He spoke with a true Yersh accent, higher and clipped than Worldsmouth speakers.
“Ah, yeah. You saw that?”
“Couldn’t hardly not, running past like that. Y’nearly knocked my lamp over.”
“Sorry, I—“
“No need to apologize to me when it’s the Helpers, boy.”
“The Helpers?”
“Aye, the ones that run this mine.”
“I thought Coldferth ran this mine.”
The man cracked a smile, revealing wide-set teeth. “Coldferth’s what runs the mine up there. Down here, it’s the Helpers. Y’must be new here?”
“Just today, actually.” If it was still today.
The man held up a forearm, surprising Tai with the old Achuri resistance form of greeting. “Ilrick.”
Tai locked arms with him. “Tai.”
Ilrick dropped his arm. “What are you in for?”
“Got into some trouble with a lawkeeper,” Tai said. Dislike of the Helpers or not, it was probably better not to tell a lighthair he’d attacked a group of Councilate soldiers.
Ilrick nodded. “Doesn’t take much these days. You’re Achuri?”
“Yeah. Most people don’t see that.”
“Easy guess. About all they send down here anymore, what with the camp filling up.”
Tai’s stomach knotted. The camp. His kids were in there. “How long have you been down here?”
Ilrick shrugged. “I come and go.”
Come and go? “How—“
He cut off, Ilrick holding up a hand. Sounds echoed from up the passage, two or three men’s voices. It was hard to tell what they were saying, but Tai thought he caught ‘lamp.’ Of course.
Ilrick was suddenly all business, tucking away his tools. “Looks like you got company. And if you got company, I do too. You know how to fight, Tai?”
Tai hesitated. Yes, but not in tight spaces? No, but my resonance is stupid powerful?
Ilrick nodded as if he’d answered. “Then we’d better run. Come on!” He ran.
Tai hesitated just a moment, then followed.
Ilrick took a different path down the caves, splitting into a warren of narrow passages, sometimes climbing walls, others stooping nearly to all fours, never hesitating at a fork or an apparent dead end. Tai followed as best he could, shadows dancing as the lanterns swung madly in their haste.
Have you thought at all that we don’t really know this guy? Hake asked, out of breath as though he’d been running too.
Yes, Tai thought back, but we do know what those brawlers—the Helpers—would have done to us back there. I’d rather take one on than three.
While you’re lost?
It was a valid point. “Where are we going?”
“The backdoor,” Ilrick said without turning. “A backdoor, at least.”
Tai stumbled. “There’s another way out?”
Ilrick nodded, slowing. “Lots of ways out, if you know where to look.” He held up a hand and they listened, caves quiet behind them. “Might
have run em off. Not many Helpers what could follow that path without a guide.”
Hake grimaced inside. I know I couldn’t.
“Well—thank you, for taking me with you.”
“Don’t sweat it. Pool’s ahead.”
“Pool?”
Ilrick nodded, starting to walk again. “Aye. This backdoor’s through a pool. S’why they haven’t found it, is no one likes to swim in the dark.”
Apprehension rolled off Hake. Ah, Tai?
Tai shrugged it off. They were in it now, one way or another. Get out or die.
Ilrick stopped a ways ahead, at a narrow pool like any other they’d passed, depths impenetrable in the lamplight. “It’s a quick swim,” the miner said. “Have to leave our lamps here, but I got more on the other side.”
Tai exhaled. He was already lost. “Alright.”
“You’ll want to strip,” Ilrick said, stuffing his clothes in a hole high up in the wall. “There’s no light down there, so you’re gonna have to follow me, but it’s pretty simple, just one turn.”
“A turn? Underwater?”
“Aye. Deep breaths now.” Ilrick took his lantern, placing it with the other one next to the clothes, then blew it out.
The darkness was immediate, total, Ilrick’s voice loud and close. “It gets deep quick boy, but just stay near the top and follow the feeling of me swimming. All the air out?”
Tai exhaled with him, heard the man suck in air, then a splash of water. Tai took a breath and jumped in after, not wanting to get left behind.
The water was warm, almost too warm to feel. A foot kicked him and he took off after it, ducking under the water. If the darkness had seemed complete before, it seemed doubly so now. Tai’s head scraped rock and he froze, wanting to go back, needing to go back. He pushed himself on, swimming lower, trying to feel Ilrick’s strokes. There. Maybe. He swam, hard, lungs wanting to hitch, knowing he should still have plenty of breath.
It’s just fear, he told himself. Just fear, it’s not real. Ilrick has to live too, just follow him, you’ll be fine.
Except he couldn’t follow him. Tai slowed, trying to feel a water current, but the water was still. Hadn’t he said there was a turn? Had he missed it? Was he going to drown down here? Fear seized him again, threatening to open his lungs, wanting to scream.
There—Tai thought he heard something, a scrape, swam after it. Ran into rock. Left, maybe left more. He swam that way. Rock. Tai opened his eyes, the water stinging slightly, lungs starting to hitch in earnest. Darkness.
You got this, Tai. You got this. Stay calm. There was only darkness. Darkness, and maybe—there.
Tai swam toward it, whatever it was, a faint glow, brushed against rock, followed it around to a stronger glow. Prophets! It was a real glow, that meant lamp light, that meant air. Tai kicked, lungs burning. The light was still so far off. His head hit rock, he kicked harder, then there was nothing above, his forehead cool—
Tai broke the surface, gasping, the water bitter in his mouth, the air sweet. He heard voices, Ilrick calling to him, but for the moment could only breathe, treading water.
“You made it! Over this way, then, there’s a place to get out.”
Tai calmed down, began swimming over, breath catching up. He found rock underfoot and pulled himself out.
To a loaded crossbow.
“Wha—“
“Sorry, boy,” Ilrick said, standing behind a giant of a man. “Standard procedure.”
8
And by virtue of being the noblest and most upright man the world had seen, on the day the Prophet defeated the last Archdemon, he arose into the sky on a flaming lance, promising one day to return, when we had learned to follow in his stead.
--Yersh book of Eschatology
Odril was taking breakfast when Ella rose the next morning. He looked up from his plate with a dribble of egg on his lower lip. “Did you finish the books?”
“I did.” She laid them on the desk near his office. They’d taken most of the night.
“Good. I’m leaving for the day. Business in Newgen. Don’t go anywhere, hear me? I have people watching this place.” He turned back to his food, sucking air through his nose. A strange pendant hung from his neck, a circle pierced with nine spears.
Ella let out a deep breath. “With all respect, Odril, the terms of patronage don’t go this far. A calculor should be free to come and go as she pleases, so long as the patron does not require her work, and even then only for a reasonable amount per day.”
Odril snorted. “Calculor. It’s in the contract. You don’t go anywhere.”
“What?”
He shrugged, taking down another forkful. “You signed it. Look, one of these days I’ll take you to Newgen, show you off. Till then, just relax. Read your books. There’s nothing worth seeing here anyway.”
Ella’s mouth worked. The contract. He could scatter his scatter-stained contract. “Yes my lord. Is there anything else my lord requires at this time?”
He took no notice of her tone, waving her off. Ella stalked back to her room, pulling down the braids she’d so carefully tied. Like hell she would stay here all day, waiting to wait on his every beck and call. She wouldn’t do that for ten times the price. It was why she’d never accepted patronage, even from a pushover like Olgsby.
A few minutes later she heard his footsteps in the hall, then the door closing. Ella changed clothes and waited, not wanting to run into him on the street. He worked in New Ayugen—Newgen, they called it—and that would be the best place to find her thief. Men of the Swallowtail’s class would live and work there, not here in what she guessed were the slums of the city. She needed to find her money fast, if she was going to find it at all, and that meant risking Odril seeing her. But if she found the money or at least the thief today, it wouldn’t matter.
Plus she swore she’d never let anyone lock her in again. This was close enough she couldn’t let it slide. Ella gummed her ball of yura and went out.
Ayugen was another riot of unfamiliar sounds and smells, darkhaired people muttering to themselves as they went about their work. The Achuri apparently felt no shame in talking to their inner voices.
Not like you do either.
“But I’m a strange one, remember?” She smiled at Tunla’s words. She hoped to see the woman at least once more before she left.
Newgen was a hulk of wood and stonework, set a few hundredpaces away from the regular city, walls easily ten times her height, with fabulous glass and stone buildings rising behind. Four men guarded the thick stone gateway, blue bands on their arms marking them as Councilium-licensed yura fighters. “Ho, miss,” one called. “What’s your business here?”
She put on her best air of nonchalance. “Come to see an acquaintance.”
He nodded, her fine silver hair and olive skin all the proof he needed that she belonged.
The road changed to a finely-jointed wood walkway on the other side of the gate, watercourse gushing out beneath her to a shallow lake that filled the walled interior. The buildings sat on separate islands, as they did in the Worldsmouth delta, ornamented towers and high stone walls connected with bridges of iron and stained glass. The pale blue waters made a pleasant sound running underneath her, and she was amused to see a few pleasure boats plying the shallow waters of the enclave. A touch of Worldsmouth, Tellemsworth wrote, only without the grime.
At the far end of the enclave, perhaps five hundred paces, a giant spiral pyramid rose from the water, walled entirely in glass, spiraling higher and narrower as it climbed to its peak, well above the enclave walls. That would be the Tower—half Councilate statehouse and half luxury quarters for the single and elite, it was House Galya’s stake in Ayugen’s booming economy, said to be the most expensive building ever built. Galya’s seven-armed squid stood at the top, worked in shining steel.
Ella made herself start walking. Money was clearly thick—six thousand marks would be small change to many of these people. The broadsheets spoke of fortunes bein
g made in the south, but it was another thing to see it. Couples strolled in the latest finery, and imported incenses of candlewood and clove drifted in fragrant sheets across the water. With the high walls blocking any view save sky, she could easily pretend she was back in the capital.
Yuck. The sooner she was out of here the better. Where was her thief in all this?
Between the islands of shops bordering the walk, she could see bridges arching back to private residences and boarding houses. He could be anywhere. Grinning to himself at the money he’d made off a stupid Worldsmouth girl working without a license.
Ella felt her anger rising, forced herself to think. What would a thief do with six thousand marks? “Waste it,” she muttered. “He would go and spend it on drink.” Captain Ralhens allowed no dreamleaf on his ship, citing too many casualties from people falling overboard—a practice much-lamented by his passengers. She’d already narrowed the list of her customers to those poor enough to care about six thousand marks. Three of the four she’d come up with were also Councilate military, escorts to higher officers on the ship. They were likely to be drinking at the veterans saloon, a fixture in any Councilate port or city.
And what will you do when you find them, ask them pretty please if they stole your money?
“No,” she muttered. “I’ll either get a reaction out of them or an address, and go search their place.”
Better hope your yura holds out.
She interrupted a stiff-looking man’s self-talk to ask after the veteran’s saloon. He red-facedly directed her down a side street, and within a few hundred paces she found the place, a water-level establishment open to the breeze, scent of sage and pungent dreamleaf wafting from within.
Ella took the bridge over, eyeing the crowd. The place was packed with light- and mix-haired men, many in Councilate white and gray. Darkhaired girls passed from table to table with platters of steaming dreamleaf or fragrant infusions, some with hair lightened or cut short, to appear more lighthaired. There were few other women in the tavern, and Ella caught the proprietor giving her a sharp eye as she scanned the crowd. There—Pruitt was seated with a group of Yersh conscripts around a large jug of dreamtea. Dreamtea he’d bought with her money?