by Levi Jacobs
Ella kept looking up as they talked, waiting for him to notice her, to say something. The fact that he didn’t somehow bothered her worse than him coming at all—wasn’t he even going to acknowledge her? Acknowledge the fact that he’d stolen her money, then locked her in some kind of calculism dungeon?
He turned to go and she stood. “Odril.”
Every face in the house turned to look—calling out the master clearly wasn’t done. Well it was now. “I would have a word with you.”
He gave her an oily grin. “Certainly. Arlo.” He motioned to the brawler, then lead her back to one of the sleeping rooms, leaving Arlo outside and closing the door. In the smaller space she could smell him, stale sweat and the acrid vinegar of the dyehouse. “Well then,” he smiled. “Reconsidered your little episode?”
“I haven’t reconsidered scat,” she spat, restraining the urge to attack him again. “But I have realized what this little shop is for. You’re illegally laundering books. Covering up Alsthen’s little mercenary habits, and probably making a tidy profit off it in the process.”
His smile never faltered. “How clever of you. A little more ambitious than just lying about one’s calculist license, isn’t it?”
She ground her teeth. “It’s dangerous, is what it is. One word of this to the courts, to the Arbiter, and you’ll be in prison so fast you’ll think you’d timeslipped.”
“Mmm. And who would give that one word? You, I suppose?”
He was supposed to be scared, to be threatened, but he just stood there smiling. “Damn right I will. So give me back my contract, let me go, and we’ll call it even. You know about my fraud, and I know about yours. Even.”
He gave an amused laugh, breath stinking of eggs. “And how would you get this word out, if I decline?”
“I’ll break out, if I have to.”
“Ah. But I see you haven’t yet. Arlo is actually quite good at his job.”
She held back a snarl. She needed to appear in control here. “Then I’ll pass word to someone who comes in. Slip notes into the street. Shout it out the windows, if I have to. Someone will hear.”
“Mmm.” He nodded. “And this kind and caring someone, when they bring it to the courts, do you suppose the Houses will let the motion stand? Do you suppose any of them have an interest in revealing their little habits?”
“Galya will. And Coldferth. They’ll jump on the chance to expose Alsthen.”
“And in the next breath Alsthen exposes them, and the whole trio loses, while other Houses swoop in to take advantage. And no one wants that.”
Ella ground her teeth again, knowing he was right. It was how the House system worked. Checks and balances of mutual fear. “I swear to the Ascending God if I ever get out of here, I will make you pay.”
He cocked his head. “You could get out of here, you know. Come back and be my loyal house servant. Do my books, my cleaning, attend me at night.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I thought we had a good thing. I would still consider it.”
Going back to his house would mean more freedom, more chances to escape, to get yura, to find the contracts—much as she hated the idea, this might be the best way. “Fine, then. I’ll do it.”
His grin widened. “Ah. But not just yet. I have to be sure I can trust you. Maybe another… year in here? Maybe two? If I don’t find someone younger and prettier than you by then.” He gave her a nose a little tweak, and it was truly all she could do to keep from decking him—but she knew where that would end, with Arlo outside.
She settled for silence, for a stony glare.
“Sound fair? Well then. I guess we’re done here.”
He snapped, and Arlo came, and the two left her glaring at the empty space he’d left. She would get free. She would get revenge on him. She would see him ruined.
“I swear it,” she muttered to the empty room.
Tunla was all smiles at lunch, joking with Ella, with the other ladies. Trying to draw her out of her shell, Ella knew. But determined as she was to get revenge, she couldn’t help feeling powerless after her talk with Odril. And she hated feeling powerless.
The numbers helped settle her in the afternoon, even if they were illegal numbers, even if they were numbers that eventually added to up to Odril’s advantage and not hers. Numbers at least she had control over, knew the rules governing them, could make them line up in neat rows. If only her life felt like that.
“Not a pleasant conversation this morning, then?” Tunla asked at supper.
Ella laughed without mirth. She had settled some, but the situation still felt bleak. “I wish. I tried to threaten him with legal action, and he didn’t even blink. Said the courts wouldn’t care even if I could get the word out.”
Tunla nodded. “And what do the ancestors say about it?”
“The ancestors?”
“I saw you talking with them this afternoon. What did they say?”
It took her a moment to realize Tunla meant LeTwi. “Oh he’s—not my ancestor. Just a voice.”
LeTwi took a tone of mock affront. Is that all I am to you?
Tunla shook her head, smiling. “I have heard of this thing, that you don’t think your guides are ancestors. But there are more than just blood ancestors. There are also land ancestors, mind ancestors. Those who have guided us on our path through life. Your guide can be any one of them.”
Ella perked up—Markels had written nothing of this. Imprisoned or not, she could still do research. “I guess that makes sense—LeTwi was a big inspiration to me, while I was locked up. I read every one of his books, and kept up with his broadsheets while he was alive.”
Tunla nodded. “Then he is a mind ancestor. They are good for helping you sort through problems, though they may not understand your heart or your deeper passions.”
Ella paused. She’d been thinking this was just a cultural belief system, but that sounded right on target.
Oh please. Are you really believing this? It’s like the fortune tellers in Yarlen Square--say anything vague enough and it will sound accurate.
Well it’s still interesting, she thought back. And you do help me sort through problems without understanding me deep down. Over his indignant reply she said, “And which kind do you have?”
Tunla huffed a laugh. “Mine? Henla, my mother’s sister. A blood ancestor. Impossible to please.” She grimaced, likely being told otherwise inside.
To please? “Do you—mean the winter festivals? I’ve heard they are held for the deceased.”
“For the ancestors,” Tunla corrected.
“Right.” Thinking back to accounts of the festivals made her remember something else. “Markels—one of the first northerners who visited here—said that people there were using resonances without yura. Is that true?”
Tunla nodded around a mouthful of soup. “Oh I imagine so. Wanting to show how they’ve pleased their ancestors. Show off, though, more like it.”
Ella frowned. “Are the two connected? Resonances and—pleasing your ancestors?”
The Achuri woman put her spoon down. “You are studying yura and you don’t know this? The ancestors are the ones that control the resonances. Please them, and they release the power as a reward. Give it to you, as they pass on to the next life.”
Ella shook her head, trying to parse it. “So if you—please your ancestors, you don’t need yura anymore?”
“Exactly. Yura is just a way to cheat. In the past, no one used it—we saw it as shameful. If you couldn’t even act right by your ancestors, you didn’t deserve to use the resonances. But these days,” she snorted, “everyone and their mule is eating moss and acting like they’ve done something well. Though their resonances are never as strong as if they’d done the real work.”
Ella’s hands itched for a notebook, but she would remember this. “And what is the real work?” If she could find out how to resonate—if this were all true—maybe she could get out of here without needing yura.
And if an elk had gills it could breed unde
rwater.
Tunla shook her head. “It’s different for everyone. And never easy. The ancestors like to test us in strange ways. Not that I would know—I’ve had Henla since my first moon, and still no clue what she wants.” She winced, likely hearing about it from Henla right then. “My mother used to say they played on your weaknesses, tested you to rise above them. She’d pleased her own guide long ago, before she even had me. I wish I could tell you more, but each one is different.”
Ella nodded, trying to wrap her mind around Tunla’s explanation. It was so different from Worldsmouth, from a culture that adored yura and thought internal voices were make-believe, the last vestiges of childhood to be gotten over before one become an adult. “But somehow, some way you need to find out what the ancestor really wants? Or what they are testing you for?”
“That’s the idea. Wish I could say I’ve done it.”
But the street tough, Tai—he had. And others, apparently, according to rumors about the Achuri. And Kellandrials’ dobby woman—though she’d used yura. Ella shook her head. “Can I—grab a sheet of paper? I want to write all this down.” Ella ran back to her room. Whether this panned into an escape plan or not, it was academic gold, exactly what she needed for her entrance papers.
And if it was true, this had the potential to change everything—the yura trade, religious understandings of the voices, the military balance of power with the Councilate’s Titans—it would change the Councilate itself! This could be the key that she was looking for—if she could figure out how to use it.
Or it could be total garbage, LeTwi argued later that night, as she lay alone on her cot in the tiny room. The exact kind of nonsense that has Yershmen tying beads in their hair, Yati scarring themselves over open fires, and the Seinjial worshipping their voices as God-sent challenges. It’s religion, Ella, nothing more.
“And what’s wrong with religion?” she muttered into the darkness, starlight casting the stark room in blues and blacks.
LeTwi sighed. Did you read nothing I wrote? The problem is that it’s not true. That there never was a Prophet, or if there was he didn’t ascend into the skies on a flaming lance, and he’s not going to descend to take us all to the Yersh holy land. Those were just stories told to keep people in line, keep them striving for an impossible moral goal—just like the Councilate has made a religion of money. It’s another lie about perfect happiness that you can get if you just work hard enough and obey the laws, or the morals. That much, at least, I know you agree with me on.
She sighed. “I do agree with you. The Councilate worldview is fishscat. And Yersh eschatology and all those other ones probably are too. But this is testable. It’s provable. What if the voices really are guiding us? What if they are they secret to the resonances?”
Be direct, Ellumia. You’re asking if I am testing you, if our relationship is somehow the key to the resonances. And I’m telling you it’s not. Or have you forgotten the basic creed?
She sighed. “That there is no Prophet, that there is no truth, that we have to make our lives here on earth because there is nothing more.” It was the creed he began all his books with. “Yeah, I still think that’s true, I just… I don’t know. What’s wrong with them believing in ancestors, if it makes them miss their family less? If nothing’s true anyway?”
What I’m worried about is if you start believing in it.
“I won’t believe anything without proof.” Ella turned on her side, gazing at the muted forms out the oilpaper window. “But there was something so nice about the way Tunla talked about it. Like her entire line of mothers and grandmothers were there with her, guiding her steps.”
LeTwi snorted. Like you’d want that.
“That’s not what I’m saying. The Achuri beliefs are part of a lifeway that makes sense to them. They can live their whole lives not seeing a contradiction in their beliefs. Moneymen of the Councilate, even if they make it to the top, they run into contradictions—instead of being happy, they worry about losing it, or think if they had even more, then they’d be happy. Think about Lestrad.”
Lestrad had been head of House Coldferth until he abruptly left his position and the city to live in one of the highland monasteries. “Maybe real lifeways are answers that make sense, for people who live them.”
But from the outside, you can see through it—see it’s just more lies.
“I don’t know,” Ella said, shifting to see the star out the window. “I can’t see through Tai’s ability.”
You haven’t even seen it. It’s likely just a hoax—really, how coincidental is it that the people famed for their resonances also live near the only known source of yura? Tai likely fakes it to get coins on the street, or social influence, or whatever having ‘pleased your ancestors’ means to the people in this belief system.
She sighed. “You can be a real downer sometimes, you know that LeTwi?”
He gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. Reality often is. But isn’t that better than the alternative?
There was another scraping at the door the next morning as they worked. Ella glanced up, but Arlo looked unperturbed. The sound came again from the window next to her desk. She looked up, and saw a figure crouching outside.
It was the street tough, Tai.
He was right next to her desk—that must be why no one else had heard. She met his eyes, and thinking quick motioned him toward the back, toward the sleeping cells. Hers was on the opposite side, but she slipped into Tunla’s, and a moment later Tai’s face appeared at the window. She opened the oilpaper frame. “Tai?”
“Yeah. You’re—the woman from the market? With Tulric?”
“Ellumia,” she said, extending a hand through the bars. “Call me Ella.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I—ran into some trouble.” She noticed through the bars that he was dressed much better than the last time she’d seen him. “I could ask the same of you—working for House Coldferth now?”
Tai started. “This? No, I—it’s a long story. Look, is Odril around?”
Her face clouded. “What do you want with him?”
“Part of the long story. I have something for him, and I’d rather not keep wandering the town with it, if he’s in.”
She took a deep breath. “He comes by every couple days, but the manager here can probably help you.” She saw him start to close up, mentally moving on to the next thing. “Tai, wait. I—need to ask you something.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”
“On the street back there, you said you could resonate without yura. Or at least, your boy said it.” He looked troubled at this, but she pressed on. If she could find out from him how he did it—if it was Tunla’s pleasing of the ancestors, or the dobby woman’s yura overload, or something different, whatever—she could break out of here. “Is it true? How did you do it?”
“It’s true,” he said, working at his shoulders. “And—I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”
She drew in a breath. It was true. “Did you please your ancestor? Is that the secret?”
“I—don’t think so. It was in the middle of a battle. There was no time.”
He looked more troubled yet, but she had to know. “What about overdosing on yura? Did you take a whole handful of yura?”
“No.” Tai frowned. “Is that possible?”
“It’s… something I read about,” she said, face falling. “Someone in the capital did it.”
“And you need to do it now.”
She looked up. “Yes. I signed a bad contract with Odril, and he’s got me locked up here with a bunch of other people, forcing us to work or he’ll cut off food. If I just had some yura I could get out, but I can’t get any down here.”
He hesitated, looking at her a moment, then seemed to make a decision. “I have some yura.”
She caught the scent then: dry, earthy, mossy. Gods. For it to smell like that— “You have a lot of yura.”
He winced. “Yeah. Which is why I ne
ed to find Odril. I can’t keep walking around with this.”
Ella took a deep breath. “I know you have no reason to help me, no reason to even like me, but I’m asking you, please, can you give me some yura? I will pay you back when I get out.”
He looked at her a moment, then glanced behind him, as if to someone else on the street. “I can see you’re in a bad situation, and I would help you out of it, but I am too.”
Her heart fell. Of course he wouldn’t help her—she was a lighthair, part of the people that ruined his city.
“On the streets we say rumors are money,” he went on, digging under his shirt. “This overdosing thing, it’s real? Anyone could do it?”
Her heart leapt. He was getting her yura. That had to be what he was doing. “I don’t know. A cleaning woman did it, in Worldsmouth. I’m going to try.”
He nodded, still working under his shirt. “How much did she take?”
“I’m not sure. I think about twelve balls.”
“Twelve balls,” he said, like a curse, then kept digging. He came out with a handful of yura. “I’m lending you this, alright?” He counted out balls into his other hand. “Twelve. Enough for you to do this thing, if it’s real.”
She goggled. She’d only been counting on one. “Thank you, thank you so much, I—“
“I need to hear if it worked,” he continued. “And I need to get paid back. Meet me on the Sanga bridge in three days’ time, noon. If you’re not there, I’ll check on you here.”
He leaned in, their hands barely meeting to exchange the balls.
“Thank you,” she said, tears unexpectedly springing to her eyes. “I—”
The door creaked behind her. Ella spun, jerking her hand closed. It was Prula. She took in the situation at a glance. “What’s going on here?”
Ella thought fast. “Prula, this is Tai. Tai, Prula. She’s the one I was telling you about. Prula, Tai has a delivery for Odril, and I was just saying how you might be able to take it for him.”