by Levi Jacobs
Lumo smiled. “It is not easy. Try again. You have to do it at the same time, not one after the other—like drinking with one hand and shaking dice with the other.”
Tai tried again, beginning by pushing down, then pushing up against it. He rose steadily into the air, but when he tried to reverse directions, he lost his upward push and slammed back down. “Son of a Titan!”
Lumo laughed. “You will get it, with practice. The same thing is true for going left and right in the air, or front and back. For weaker wafters it is not a problem, but you have too much power, so you have to balance it out.”
Tai nodded, trying another gentle push down as he nudged up. “That makes sense.”
Ilrick appeared at the entrance, rattling a dice cup. “Time’s a wasting, Tai, if you’re going to do it tonight—it’s already past starset.”
Tai nodded, lowering himself down with something like control. “Right. It always seems like night in here.”
Ilrick grinned. “You get used to it. C’mon, Weiland’s got a pot of stew on, full of wintermelon. You’re gonna need it, if you wanna have enough juice to get out of that compound in one piece.”
10
Smite the bone and beat the blood!
With iron will we tread the mud!
Fire coal in chimney stack!
With steel will we beat them back!
--Marching song, Seinjial Blacksmith Rebellion
They blindfolded Tai, leading him up a long set of stairs, Karhail in front, Ilrick behind. Their breath echoed in the narrow space, and Tai’s arms brushed cold, rough stone. His legs burned from the climb, and still they went on, up and up. Then Tai smelled fresh air, the alfalfa’s night blossoms and settling damp of an Ayugen summer. A nightingale sang somewhere in the distance. After untold hours or days in the caves, it was wonderful.
Karhail lifted him out of a narrow stone gap, walked him a ways on rough ground, then he and Ilrick spun Tai until he collapsed.
“That should do it,” Ilrick said, untying the blindfold. “Any idea where you are Tai?”
“Out,” he said, head spinning like the bends. “Out of the Prophet-cursed mines.”
“And any idea where you just came from?”
“No.”
Karhail grunted. “Good enough. Come to us once the delivery’s made, and we’ll see about getting your kids out.” He clapped Tai on the shoulders. “For the Ghosts.”
“For the what?”
“The Ghosts,” Ilrick said. “All the men locked down there, and all those that died. We call this the Ghost Rebellion, for them.”
“For what we would have been,” Karhail said, a fierceness in his gaze.
“For the Ghosts, then,” Tai said, clapping their shoulders in turn. “And for my kids.”
Tai went over what they’d told him as he trekked toward the Coldferth compound, a surprising distance away. House Coldferth kept their weekly harvests of yura on site, protected by mercenaries, then transported it once a week down to the docks for shipping. According to a snitch inside, the yura was stored in one of two stone houses on the east side of the compound. “Don’t matter which one they’ve got guards on, either,” Ilrick had said. “They like to switch ‘em, try to fool ya.”
“Have you stolen from them before?” Tai had asked.
“Tried.” Ilrick said, shaking his head. “That’s how we lost Erla. Too dangerous from the ground.”
The compound was lit up even at this hour, torches burning at regular intervals along high wood walls. The night was dark, moons down—the early morning dark of summer that meant a blessed reprieve from daytime heat. And from eyes. Tai stopped outside the ring of light and watched. As promised, the walls were patrolled by two sentries passing the torches at regular intervals, the gaps between them easy enough to pass through, if he could control his wafting.
Kind of a big if, isn’t it?
Hake had been against the idea from the start, had been arguing they go back to Marrem for the money and try something else, but it didn’t make sense. The rebellion was their best chance of getting an army—and if it failed, this was still a way to hire mercenaries, to get their kids.
The only way they had.
Tai struck his resonance, power thrumming through him—uai, Lumo had called it. Taking a deep breath, air thickening around him, he nudged up, the rush upwards disorienting in the darkness. He added some downward pressure when he seemed high enough, waiting for the guard to pass on the wall. Now to go forward.
Tai nudged ahead, shooting forward and dropping, then remembered to keep pushing up. He shot up, arcing above the high wood walls. He was going too high, too fast—Tai pushed the opposite direction, and jerked that way, down toward the walls. Stifling a cry of panic, Tai shoved in all directions at once.
He froze in place, air pushing on him like water in a deep lake, then eased off some, checking to make sure no one had noticed. He was still a pace or two above the sentries’ heads, safe so long as they didn’t look up. Below him, the compound lay in a perfect square: gates at the south end, barracks along the east side, mine gate in the middle, where Tai had gone down not so long ago.
It felt like a million years.
To the west were the storehouses, separated by a training yard. Two men sat in front of the south house, and as Tai hung he could hear them talking quietly, likely trying to keep awake. He strained for their conversation, for any indication they’d heard him:
“—be the end of poor saps like us. Rut ‘em all out, I tell ya.” The man spoke with a heavy Seinjial accent.
“I don’t know as the Councilate’ll bother,” the other answered, sounding as though he needed to clear his throat. “Ten years already they been leaving things t’way they are.”
Tai pushed gently for the north house, moving faster than he’d like, but concentrating on keeping a steady push from above and below as well, keeping himself level in air. It was like shaking dice and drinking at the same time, only with every new direction to push you added another hand, juggling or cooking or counting out coins. Watching the sentries, Tai let himself down, grateful for the darkness and the soft talk of the guards to cover his landing and moment of bends.
“Aye,” the Seinjial was saying, “but ain’t been rebels burning whole ships in the night up till now. Y’know what they did in Yatiland.”
Tai slipped past the front door with its heavy Seinjial key-lock, heart in his throat, around to the back. As promised, there was a small window there, high up.
“Piss if I don’t know!” the rough-throated one cursed. “Do ye see my red hair then? We all of us know what they did in Yatiland.”
With a start Tai realized it was the rough-voiced Yatiman who’d let him in the compound, when he’d first come. The one who’d given him the mavenstym.
Sorry friend, he thought. Hope they don’t dock your pay for this.
When the sentry passed above, Tai pulled himself up to the storehouse window, not daring to use his resonance here for fear they’d feel it. He pulled the inner wooden frame out, wincing at the sound, and set it back on the ground. Sentry returning, he dropped back down.
“Then ye know the Councilate’s capable of it,” the other guard was saying. “Round em all up and burn em like they did in Yatiland.”
“What do ye think the camp’s for? Making em into lords and ladies?” rough-voice answered. “All they want’s yura, just like they wanted our goats and barleycorns and copper mines—”
The first guard snorted. “Your goats or your women? I never could tell.“
Tai stuck his head inside the window. Too dark to see. He’d have to go in, let his eyes adjust.
As soon as the next sentry had passed, he eased himself up and over, pushing slowly through the window. If he got caught here, legs dangling outside—
But no cry came. He pulled himself through, catching a low shelf on the inside, then crouching there, letting his eyes adjust. It was full of mining equipment—but no yura. There was a second room to
the left, but Tai found only leather armor and helmets and weapons of all sorts. He sorted through this as carefully as he could, squinting in the dark, but there was nothing like a yura bale.
The other building then. Or, y’know, flying the meck out of here while we still can?
He eased himself out again, listening for the sentry steps, trying to make it out before the next one came. In his hurry, his shirt caught on the frame, and for a sick moment Tai dangled from the window, caught. He dropped, hitting the ground with a scrape and a thump.
A muffled “Huh?” came from the walkway above.
Tai froze, pressed in the shadow of the walkway.
“D’ye boys see something down there?” came a heavily accented call from the walls.
“Buncha dark!” rough-throat called back.
Silence, then: “Well if ye see something, kill it!”
“Aye aye!”
The sentry began walking again, and Tai let out a breath. If they found him, he’d have no chance against trained mercenaries like these.
Better make it fast, then. Tai slipped to the other house.
“Anyways,” the first guard was louder now, just on the other side of the building, “I say the army don’t need much excuse to come and start killing. Only twenty thousand of em, I read. Easier that way.”
Tai slipped in the rear window, timing it to what sounded like a long speech on rough-voice’s part. It was a scribe’s chambers, or looked like it, walls lined with desks and covered in parchments of various kinds. Nothing here.
If there was no yura at all—if Karhail had been misinformed, or lied to him…
“And puts us straight out of work,” rough-voice replied from the other side of the wall. “No rebels means no threat means no reason to be staying up the wee hours of the night listening to your pisstalk.”
“Pisstalk indeed. Never been a mental giant yourself.“
Tai slipped through a curtain into the smaller room, and was rewarded with the smell of yura, earthy and rich. He goggled. Woven baskets lined the walls, heaped with the stuff, more yura than he’d seen in a lifetime of selling it. Enough to buy the whole Councilate army, likely. He untied the sack from his waist and began stuffing fistfuls into it, sweat beading on his brow. There was so much.
He listened as he loaded, watchful for any disturbance. The men were still chatting out front, apparently unaware.
“—any left in the mines anymore.”
“Aye, but they can’t figure out how to farm the stuff, so we’ll keep pushing ‘em deeper. Poor bastards.”
Tai emptied one basket, started on another. There was so much more than he could take.
“—better’n those in the camp. Least those down below, they got a chance of striking it rich or finding another way out of here. Mecking hills are rotten with caves round here—”
The sack was full. Tai tied off the top, hands shaking just slightly. How much had he just taken--five hundred balls? A thousand? Three thousand? It was many times what he needed to break his kids out, that much he knew. Prophet knew how many weapons this would buy Karhail and the Ghosts.
He stepped back to the other room, thanking his luck, and climbed onto a desk, putting the bag before him out the window.
It wouldn’t fit.
The burlap was stuffed too full, catching against the wood frame. Tai took it in, cursing, and squeezed the air from it, cloying scent of yura rushing from the bag.
“—keep some of em around, now that no honest folk want to go down there.”
Tai tried again, pushing the bag against the window. Almost. He shoved a little harder, a little harder… This had to work.
With a burr of roughspun against wood, the bag pushed halfway out.
Conversation out front stopped.
“You hear that?”
“I did.” There was a clink of armor. “Sounded like the wall.”
“Or the inside of the storehouse.”
Tai jerked the bag back in—too late. “A thief! Got ourselves a thief boys! Tennets! Saw him pull his bag back in just now. Boys! Boys!”
The two men took up the call. Tai spun, looking for an exit. The window was out—they’d cut him down trying to get out, and the bag didn’t fit. This much yura, he couldn’t just leave it. The door?
Shouts were coming from outside, men and women stirring. A clanging came from the door, someone working the lock.
Think, Tai. Think. You’ve got one breath. Where do you go?
“Don’t bother with the lock!” rough-throat cried. “I’ll get im from here!”
A head appeared in the window, a hand with an axe. Tai ducked into the smaller room, heart pounding.
Think, Tai.
“In the other room!” “The slip! We need the slip!”
A timeslip. He was doomed. A screech came from the front door—they had it open. Tai struck his resonance, fire racing up his spine.
The door swung wide, the grizzled Yati man appearing with a heavy axe. “You!” he cried, meeting eyes.
Tai swung the bag above his head and shoved upwards, hard.
He slammed into the ceiling, strengthened skin absorbing some of the blow, wood and tiles cracking above him.
“Stop!” the mercenary roared. He lunged in, swinging his axe back.
Tai pushed harder, straining at the air. With a mighty crack the ceiling gave way and Tai shot up into open air, streaming yura behind him. The bag had ripped, but that was the least of his worries. A figure shot up after him, two, as he escaped the compound. Wafters.
Tai pushed forward, hard, and shot like an arrow toward the city.
Up. Skimming low to the ground he remembered to push up, and shot skyward.
Something whistled past—an arrow—and Tai turned to look. One of the wafters was far behind, but the other was only a hundred paces or so, fitting another arrow to her bow.
Prophets. Tai pushed harder, forward and up, willing speed. An arrow through the chest would kill him as sure as an axe-blade. The ground blurred past below, then houses. Looking back, Tai saw she was dwindling, but there, an arrow—
He watched it approach him in air, keep pace for a moment, and fall off. Prophets. He felt like the wind itself.
The wind if it had a king’s wealth in yura.
With a whoop Tai shot over Hightown, then the bluffs, the Bottoms, the river—he shot past it all, over the long fields, looking back for signs of pursuit. There were none, the second wafter lost in the dark. He’d never met a wafter who could match him for speed or strength. Tai pushed on anyway, loving the fingers of air in his hair, the open space after days in the mines. The sack billowed behind him, half-emptied, and he did what he could to gather it up, to roll it closed, then with another glance back eased off his push, letting himself slow, drop closer to the ground.
And none too soon. He could feel the hunger growing in his spine, that gnawing hunger that meant his power was almost gone. Tai slowed, let himself down, remembering with a grin to push down as he pushed up, uai fading as he dropped the last few paces.
He hit the grass exhausted, ravenous for winterfoods, and grinning. He’d pulled it off. He’d gotten away. He had a House’s wealth in yura and a safe place out of the mines and he was alive, despite everything that had happened.
Grinning an exhausted grin, Tai stuffed the yura sack under his head and let the bends take him.
11
Twighair, make em stare. Firehead, Yati red. Fine and black, Seinjial’s back. Light and thin, sure to win!
--child’s song, Worldsmouth
Ella woke to a strange room, air cool and damp. Mortised stone walls, a barred oilpaper window high on one side, light and the city sounds of Ayugen filtering in. She groaned, hurting in a hundred different places—her head, her wrists, her back. The room was bare, just two cots and a small table against the far wall, all wood and battered from long use.
Her memories of the night before were shadowy. Discovering the statue, fighting Odril, her yura running out be
fore his, getting tied up. Odril had gone for someone, and they’d dragged her through the streets kicking and shouting. And then—nothing. Dreamleaf. They must have forced her to drink dreamleaf, enough to push her into the dreamless sleep its users loved.
“Shattercocking meckstain,” she growled, sitting up. She could still feel the statue in her hand, still feel it clubbing Odril. It made her angry all over again to think that he’d won, that not only had he stolen from her but also gotten her kicked off the ship and signed into his contract and then shut in here—wherever here was. She balled her fists, wishing he was in front of her.
Instead there was a door, set into the far wall. Ella rolled out of bed and tried it.
Locked.
“No.” A knot formed in her chest. Unbidden came the image of a different room, a different locked door, a single window high up in a tower. The memory of long, empty days, light shifting from one wall to the other.
“No!” She pulled on the door handle, slammed her fists against the wood planks. “Let me out!”
There was no response. The meckshatterers.
Ella…
The window. She turned, but it was too narrow, too high—
Ella. You need to calm down.
The inner walls then. They were only wood—she could break through. Ella spun, searching for a hammer, a stick, anything to start beating on them. The cots—maybe if she could break a leg off—or get the door open, attack whoever was behind it—
Ellumia. Stop. We’re not in Worldsmouth. You’re okay.
She paused, both hands on the leg of a cot. Her heart was pounding like she’d run a thousandpace. “But—I have to get out. I’m locked in here.”
Yes. But you won’t do it by losing control. Remember? Control. Patience. Make a plan.
“Control,” she repeated, staring at the wood. “Patience. Make a plan. Right.”
She stood, paced the room, and only then realized how hard her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath, letting the panic ebb. “Gods. That hasn’t happened in a long time. Thank you.”