by Levi Jacobs
Tai struggled for an answer. But instead of words, he saw the Achuri inside the prison camp, the ones taking on the roles the lighthairs used to do, like the Helpers down in the mines. Oppressed people trying to oppress others to rise up. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m just saying that you have to think further than getting the Councilate out, we have to, and think less about fighting people than fighting the ideas that have made them this way. That’s the only way to really win. Otherwise we’ll just end up imitating the thing we’re fighting against, becoming the Councilate we hate, whether we win or not. It happened to the Seinjial, in the years between contact and eventual conquering. Either way the Councilate wins.”
Tai took a slow breath in and out, and nodded his head. “I think I see what you’re saying. And I think maybe you’re best person to help us with that, even if you’re one of them.”
She laughed. “Maybe because I’m one of them. You need someone from the top to see through it all.”
“Are you from the top?” She seemed like she came from money, and was educated, but he actually had no idea how to tell. Most lighthairs seemed like that.
She bit her lip. “You could say that.”
“And you’re still with us? Willing to try to fight ideas like you were talking about?”
She nodded. “Gods yes I’m still with you. Scats yes. I want an alternative to the Councilate as much as you do. Maybe more. But if the rebellion’s not going to do that, I’ll go back to my old plan.”
“What was that?”
“Becoming smart enough and indispensable enough that they have to make me an advisor to the Councilate. Then working to change it from the inside.”
Ancestors. Advisor to the Councilate? He looked at her in a new light, despite her Yati sackcloth dress. “I hope we can live up to that.”
“Well I think I can help with the ideological side. I would love to, actually. But you guys still have to actually defeat them, militarily.”
“Right. I think we can. Your information has been helping. And yuraloading changed everything. People are coming to us now, more and more.”
She gave him a long look. She was actually quite beautiful, for a lighthair. “Well be careful, Tai of the Ghost Rebellion. And think about what I said. If we’re going to be different than the Councilate, we have to start now.”
That evening found him crouched at the edge of the woods, after a recruiting run with Ilrick into the mines. They’d won over a mercenary band down there, the Red Elks—all eight of them now tied to trees in the Gauntlet.
“I don’t like this,” Theron said, squatting next to Tai at the edge of the woods. Across the plain a convoy of wagons was leaving Hightown, rolling into the fields between Ayugen and the mine compounds. “It’s too open. If we’re outnumbered, there’s nowhere to go.”
“Tenlihar’s maxim,” Karhail replied from Theron’s other side. “If you have overwhelming numbers, use them.” Thirty or more recruits crouched behind them, watching the wagons leave. They’d chosen their position carefully: the setting sun would be at their backs and in the enemy’s eyes, hiding the extended dash they would have to make across the fields.
“I don’t know,” Tai said, eyeing the fourth and final wagon as it crossed the Sanga bridge. “Five men for four wagons? It seems too lightly guarded.”
“They don’t know that we know,” Karhail said. “That’s why they are moving at sundown, to try to sneak past.”
“Or if they do know,” Theron added, pulling at his green band “maybe they just don’t have the men to spare. Prophet knows we’re recruiting enough of them away.”
Karhail raised his voice. “On my word: quiet, fast and deadly. Remember, we are here for the wagons, but don’t hesitate to kill if they fight back.”
“Or incapacitate,” Tai added.
The muffled clink of twenty bodies answered him, men shifting weapons and readying stiff limbs, those who hadn’t successfully loaded taking yura to access their resonances. A muted call from Karhail and they were off, pounding down the hill and across the valley.
The brawlers were fast: no regular soldier could keep up with them. Wafters were faster, most of them—Tai zipped ahead, Eyna and the Maimer wafter following as quickly as they could. But slips were fastest of all, Weiland and one other burning uai to reach the wagons unseen, binding hands and blocking spokes to halt the wagons. One of the House guards blurred out, and a brief and unseen battle followed. Had Weiland been their only slip, he would likely have burned all his uai fighting the timeslip guard. Numbers. Having numbers made such a difference.
Tai reached the wagons as the slips slowed, appearing next to the bleeding form of a man, Weiland wobbling slightly and the other slip nursing a cut leg. A brawler they’d tied up ripped free of his bonds, and Tai swooped low to deliver a club to the head. The main force arrived a moment later, and it was over before it had begun.
“Well,” a wafter spat, “that was easy enough. I guess we—“ His mouth opened in shock as an arrow punched through his chest.
Arrows fell like rain.
“The wagon!” someone shouted as Tai shoved upwards, an arrow lodging in the meat of his right calf. He turned to see the canvas cover coming off the third wagon to reveal two tight ranks of archers, pumping shafts into the rebels.
Ambush.
Tai cursed, watching men and women cut down from above. Few rebels carried shields; those that did had several fighters crouched behind them, one making a slow advance on the wagon. Weiland appeared fifty paces off, panting and red-faced, and Tai saw his opening. He zipped down to the man as others fled in all directions, picked him up and after a brief conference flew them both directly above the archer wagon.
Then dropped straight down.
It was a second slaughter: Tai clubbing heads, Weiland cutting throats, archers realizing too late the enemy was behind them. The rebels rallied and charged back—to another wagon of archers.
Tai cursed and laid flat under the initial rain, then heard a roar and a massive groan of wood. He looked up to see Karhail and Theron physically tipping the side of the second wagon, a third rebel holding a shield above them as they took fire from all sides. With a roar of splintering wood and bone and human fear the thing tipped on its side, then all the way over, wood frame crashing down on a confused jumble of bodies.
The rebels—what was left of them—made quick work of the archers caught under the wagon, then began stabbing in through the planks, rewarded with shouts and screams, eyes wild with battle rush.
Tai turned away, only to find the fallen bodies of the rebels in the field, arrows sticking from chests and eyes and stomachs. Dead. And for what? It had been an ambush. There was nothing in the carts, no prisoners saved. The only result here had been death, on both sides.
Was this what Ella was talking about?
“Enough!” Theron called when the cries of the trapped archers had stopped, but a few men still hacked at the wagon with manic intensity. “Load our wounded in the wagon and let us away from here before worse trouble comes.” They were only a few hundred paces from the Sanga bridge, Hightown on the other side, and the city had a too-dead look to it. Trouble would come if they dallied, and they were ill-prepared to face it. Barely half their fighters still stood.
They pulled bodes from the first archer wagon, replacing them with their own, both living and dead, while someone got the elk team moving, headed for the trees a thousandpace distant.
“Trouble!” someone shouted, and Tai looked to see men running over the Sanga bridge, wafters and brawlers in Coldferth’s blue and gray, far too many for their weakened force to handle.
“What in hells?” someone breathed. The whole thing suddenly had the feel of a well-designed attack to it: the information Karhail got, the lightly-guarded wagons of archers, and now this.
“Get these moving!” Theron balled. “Go, go! Follow with the bodies! Able-bodied men to me!�
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What followed was a brief and bloody battle, Tai and the remaining rebels leading the mercenaries away from the wagon of wounded, as it slowly made its way toward the forest. The Coldferth fighters were well-trained but weak in resonances, and through sheer will and uai the rebels held them off, air crackling with power, Tai covering the gaps wherever needed.
“Enough!” he shouted at last, wagon trundling into the forest in the distance. Two more had fallen in the fight, a bare handful left. “Theron let’s go!”
It was then that he saw a familiar face, way at the back of the Coldferth force. Tulric. The thug-turned-lawkeeper locked eyes with him, grinning, some sort of special plume on his helmet. And it all made sense: this was his force, had been his attack. He’d somehow played his connection with Tai off into a separate band of soldiers designed to hunt the rebels.
His own gang, like everyone wanted on the streets.
“Away!” Theron bellowed. “Wounded to Tai!” The worst wounded reached for him—Tai was surprised to see Theron among them—but there was no running for the rest, with the mercenaries right there. They needed a break, a diversion.
Tai pulled a ball of yura and started chewing. This had better work. He’d been practicing Lumo’s breathing, but—he breathed in, out, feeling his resonance shift. In, out. The red-shirts bore down on the six or so men left—they’d be slaughtered if they tried to run now. Tai drew a deeper breath, uai seeming to stream in with air. Felt the contact.
Breathed out and pushed.
Some of the redshirts stumbled.
Good enough. “Go!” Tai shouted, summoning what uai he had left and shoving into the air.
Wafting four grown men was nothing like three children. They wobbled upwards, his shoulders screaming, just four paces or so high. Enough. He shoved them west, across the fields toward Newgen. “Tai what are you doing?” Theron called. “Hideout’s the other way!”
“They’ll follow us!” he called back. “The wagons need more time! But I can’t hold this many!”
He dropped, two hundred paces or so ahead of Tulric’s force. “Kelvin, Sendyal, go! Just the wounded!”
Two of the fighters ran for the city, their wounds not as bad, leaving Theron and one other, arrows sprouting from their bodies. “Prophets,” Tai cursed, shoving up again with ease, though the ache in his spine was growing. He shot them high and wide over the fields, south of Newgen and over the wooded hills, intending to make a wide loop back to their hideout. Below them the prison camp came into view, work beginning on the expansion despite the piles of burnt timber, people packed like salt cod inside the original fort walls.
“Descending Gods,” the other brawler breathed. You could smell them, even this high.
“Aye,” Tai answered, putting all his effort into keeping them afloat.
“Did you know that man back there Tai? The commander?” Theron asked, arm a dead weight around his shoulders. His blood left a fine mist in the air behind them.
“Yes. Though I don’t know where he got the fighters.”
“You’ll need to watch him. He’d have thrown more men at you if he could.”
The prison camp passed beneath them, a mass of darkhair surrounded by guards. “I think we’ve got hotter irons in the forge.”
24
The philosophical depth there truly lead one to quail. Should I have brought back the hundredth of their skill with metaphysics, material craft, or divination, we should be far beyond what we are. And yet, they lacked even the beginnings of political subtlety.
--Ablen Ergstad, The Thousand Spires and Back Again
Ella grimaced over her steaming cup of milk tea. Defeated again. Sablo always had some counter-argument, some deeper knowledge of Councilate law and how the courts worked. The trouble was, her research always proved him right. At least she was learning something.
“Alright then,” she said, shifting in her chair. They were back in The Inn of Seven Doors, sharing the spiced and sweet tea forever popular in the capital after a light afternoon lunch. A pleasant breeze blew in the windows, carrying the babble of water and gentle notes of a windlute. “Let us try another. This time I am a representative of House Galya, challenging you of Alsthen over alleged proxy funding of attacks on my House.”
Sablo steepled his plucked eyebrows. “Still this about the proxy wars? I thought we’d agreed it’s not a suit you can win.”
“And I won’t try, in the courts. But it may help with practice. Unless,” she raised her eyebrows, “you are afraid you’ll lose this one?”
The older man grinned. “Never. What are your allegations?”
“Not allegations but proof, sir, in the form of ledgers fixed with your House seal, beginning a paper trail that leads back to falsified sources, known to Councilate lawkeepers as fronts for local mercenary groups.”
“Ah. In that case I would have filed a countersuit on seeing the suit.”
Ella paused, tea halfway to her mouth. “A what?”
“A countersuit, of course. You cannot bring charges against me if you yourself are not a citizen in good standing. So the courts process the countersuit first, to be sure the accusing party is in fact in good standing.”
She frowned. “And what would be your charges?”
“Why, funding of proxy forces, of course.”
“My House is innocent of all such dealings.”
“Ah. But what if I said I had proof you were not? That in fact your own paper trails lead back to similar known mercenary groups?”
“I—would protest you are at least as guilty. So perhaps neither of us are fit to accuse the other.”
Sablo dipped a sweetcake into his tea. “This is where knowledge of the court comes in. Galya has had the temerity to file against Alsthen, and thus has implied its own good standing—and must suffer the consequences if it appears you are in fact guilty yourselves.”
“But Alsthen is too! I have proof!”
“And in the right hands, perhaps that could lead to a conviction. But that would need a third party in absolutely good standing.” He took a bite, then gave her a wry grin. “You see why improprieties shared by all the Houses go unpunished?”
“But that’s—it’s unjust! Unfair!” Even as she got angry, a voice inside said she ought to know better, to have expected less of the system.
Sablo swallowed. “Agreed. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to find a third party willing to champion causes that might change some of the ways the Houses do business. But with House-hired assassins and frequent boating accidents…” He shrugged. “A hero never appears.”
Ella shook her head, fresh breeze tainted not only by her failure to win a single mock arbitration so far, but the corruption of the system. “And what of all the Councilate subjects who aren’t even citizens? What of the Achuri, should they wish to file against the Houses fighting proxy battles on their soil, with their resources?”
He nodded. “A sad incongruity of progress. Until new subjects are sufficiently educated and informed, they don’t even know to file such suits.” He leaned forward to take another cake from the tray, heavy pendant pressing against his shirt from the inside. “And until they are found to be citizens in good standing, either by the incorporation of their protectorate or their own efforts in Worldsmouth, they have no legal foundation on which to challenge citizens and Houses.”
“An incongruity?” Ella took a hold on her anger. It would do no good to reveal her sympathies too baldly here—not when she had the ears of the city’s most powerful man. “It seems an injustice against the people we are purportedly trying to help.”
“Yes. But it’s the best we can do.” Sablo sipped at his tea. “It’s inevitable that peoples will collide as civilization grows. At least we intend to uplift them, instead of making them into serfs, as the Yersh did.”
Ella lifted an eyebrow. “The mines and camps here do not look so different to me.”
“Ah—but that is the essential difference between the Councilate
and the Yersh--we are economically driven. They brought only a new system of governance—a king—while we bring innovation as well as a better form of rule. Innovation the Achuri crave just as much as the Yati did, as much as the At'li and Minchu likely still do. So they choose themselves to work so hard, to try to catch up with modernity.”
“That may be. But years of service and cultural erasure seems a steep price to pay.”
He took her hand, voice pedantic. “Ella, I understand scholars of your persuasion are apt to see erasure here. But no one is forcing them to it—it’s the Achuri themselves that want draft boats, blast forges, the secrets of Seinjial metalwork and Yersh glassmaking. It is not our fault if their own handcarts and earthen huts begin to pale in comparison.”
This was not likely a battle she would win. At least today. Time for conciliation. "Well, let's just hope they don't lose all of what makes them Achuri as they also become Councilate."
If they become Councilate, she added inside. The thought gave her a secret pleasure.
Sablo smiled. "But how nice to discuss such high topics! There are few in my office who dare think or talk so big. Let's hope that one day our Achuri brothers join us at the table."
She inclined her head. "Let’s hope they do. For now, I believe your ledgers are calling."
“Right. I’ve an associate meeting me here in a few minutes. If you don’t mind walking back unescorted?”
Councilate chivalry. Oppress the masses but Descending God don’t let the women walk unescorted. She smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
Ella took the narrow wooden bridge back toward the busier part of the enclave, making a mental list of the laws Sablo had referenced to research later that night.
Should have taken me up on those law classes.
Ella stopped in her tracks, head coming up. The walkway was empty except for a young darkhaired page hurrying somewhere. But she could have sworn—