Pauper's Empire Page 2

  A bulky man near the entrance ducked out and came back struggling under the strange bundle Tai had seen outside.

  “This… may not be an easy sight for everyone,” Arkless said as his man set the bundle down on the stage and began unwrapping it. “Some of my traders have been reporting strange things between here and Gendrys. Sounds at night, areas of broken trees, and… these. One of Tai’s faithful brought this to me. A man with a fox.

  People leaned forward, trying to get a better look. It looked like… an animal? Uncured skins?

  Arkless’s man pulled back the last layer of cloth to reveal a body, locked in the fetal position.

  It was a nightmare. Tai thought at first the man had been flayed, but his skin was still there, it was just so scratched and cut and crusted with blood as to be almost unrecognizable. And his body—

  Ella gasped, and Aelya ran coughing from the room. Crusted bones stuck from the skin, and other parts of the body were sunken, or deformed, as though he’d been crushed in several directions. Teeth marks covered his shoulders, and even in deathseize it was clear the man’s spine had broken.

  Tai’s stomach wrenched, despite all the blood he’d seen during the rebellion. “What did this?”

  “We don’t know,” Arkless said, pointedly not looking at the body. “We suspected the Councilate at first, but the victims are mostly lighthairs.”

  “Marrem? Have your patients been looking like this?”

  The stout woman’s face was a shade paler, but her voice was steady. “Nothing like this. No one could survive this.”

  “Torture?” Eyna asked.

  “But who would be torturing lighthairs in the forest?”

  Several heads looked at Aelya, face pale but back in the room. She glared back. “I said I wanted them out of the city, not tortured and crushed to death. Prophet’s piece.”

  “Is this a message?” Ella looked around. “Does anyone recognize him?”

  “No, but that’s a Councilate uniform,” Tai said, picking out the seven-armed squid of Galya under the blood and dirt. “If they wanted to send a message they’d string up one of ours, not theirs.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Arkless said, “which is why this troubled me so much. My partners really haven’t encountered much resistance in the forests, but this is the third body they’ve reported, with more likely smelled along the way.”

  “Well, it’s not pleasant,” Eyna said, flipping a layer of cloth over it with her foot, “but until they start doing it to us I don’t think we need to worry about it.”

  Others made noises of agreement, happy to get back to their seats, but something about the body nagged at Tai, and he’d long ago learned to trust his gut. “I don’t know. As short as we are on trade, I’d like to take a closer look. If we lose the route to Gendrys, we’ll only have the villages to trade with, and they’re stretched as thin as we are.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Aelya said. “If this is some kind of attack I want to know more about it.”

  They returned to discussion of other matters—rations for the militia, tax evasion in the markets—but the mood was somber, and the meeting broke up a few fingers later, as the sun was cresting in the sky.

  2

  Ella left the meeting in a muddle of feelings. Worry at the attacks on lighthairs and the body Arkless had found. Frustration that post-independence Ayugen still had so many problems. Anger that Aelya or anyone else could question her loyalty or what she was doing for the city. And determination to prove them wrong, like cold steel in her stomach.

  She marched up the steps out of the amphitheater, day’s tasks unfolding in her mind: checking on the students in the caves, writing up notes from last night, trying to get more interviews with Achuri elders. Sablo had been petitioning her for a meeting from jail too, but he was the last person she wanted to see.

  The path to the caves was still trampled from the rebel’s mass retreat a month ago, slowly becoming its own kind of road. The tangle of bittermelon vines to either side, so green and lush just a few weeks ago, was browning and dying now, wide leaves falling back to reveal thick fruit.

  Prophet send there was enough of it for the winter.

  The School for Natural Overcoming, as she’d taken to calling it in her notes, was in the caves just under the former Coldferth mine complex, now just a charred patch of earth in the fields. The caves were dark and damp, but smelled better than when she’d first come down. As part of the memorial services for those who’d died, Tai had come down with some of the other rebels and walled off the area where Coldferth had dumped the bodies of dead workers. A pleasant side effect of that was the gradual decline of rodents and evil smells.

  Lumo was already there, checking on a patch of yura in the far corner, still in the silhouette of the student who created it when he overcame. The circle had put him in charge of cultivating yura, and her in charge of learning to access resonances without yura. If both of them failed, and Tai couldn’t repeat what he’d done a month ago, they would have little hope against the Councilate’s next attack.

  Lumo walked over shaking his head, pipe leaving a trail of fragrant smoke in the torchlight. “It is too dry here,” he rumbled. “The yura is very particular—it won’t grow in caves which are too wet, or those at the top which are too dry.”

  She took a lamp from the wall. “But you’re sure the student area is good for growing?”

  “It should be ideal.” His efforts at transplanting the moss had totally failed, so it still required someone overcoming their demon to start a new garden. If conditions were right, the patch would spread from there. It was how the original caves had become covered in yura, as generations of Achuri came down here to ‘commune with their ancestors,’ and those who overcame their voice left patches of yura.

  The area he’d chosen for her students was down a set of handholds, just at the point where the air started to warm. Lumo split off from her to tend his yura patches, all started by former students. They’d had some success in natural overcoming, she just couldn’t find the pattern.

  Ella ducked in to a small chamber to check on the first student, a Seinjial woman with gray in her hair. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Fine.” She looked up from the strands of reed she was weaving by candlelight. “Though I don’t notice any change. I start to wonder what I’m doing down here.”

  Ella crouched and took her hand. “You’re doing service to the rebellion. Every one of us that overcomes gets us closer to understanding how it works.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know what I’m doing down here, moment to moment.”

  Ella pursed her lips. “Focus on your voice. Don’t deny it. Talk with it, listen to it. I know this goes against your beliefs, but that voice is not a challenge sent by the Prophet to give your life meaning. It’s just a voice, trying to get you to believe in it, to feed it energy. If you concentrate hard enough, you should be able to see that. That’s how I overcame mine, anyway, by realizing what emotional or rational trick they were using to get me to believe in them, and it’s a pattern I’ve seen in most people’s stories.”

  The woman shrugged. “Maybe you should just yuraload me and have done with it.”

  Yuraloading was a method Ella had come up with to force overcomings, taking a massive dose of yura to try and force the voice out. It had been the key to her escaping a calculism dungeon, and the edge the Ghost Rebellion needed to fight back against the Councilate. The only problem was, it didn’t always work. And when it didn’t there was a good chance it would drive you suicidally insane.

  Ella squeezed her hand. “Trust me on this one. You can do it. I’ll be by later with lunch.”

  The next student was much the same, a lanky Yersh shepherd who’d come since the ousting, drawn by tales of Tai’s power. His doubts were about his own capacity, that maybe he wasn’t smart enough or strong enough. A few paces down a Councilate orphan sat in the dark, her lantern having gone out, her face determined in the light Ella’s cast.
“You okay, Marea?”

  Marea’s eyes shone with tears. She had only started hearing her voice a few months back, on coming to Ayugen, and soon after lost her parents in the fighting, but there was a strength in her. “I’m fine. I can do this.” Her fingers worked at each other, her jaw flexing. The girl actually looked close to overcoming her demon, if Ella’s observations of others were any guide.

  Ella gave her a squeeze on the shoulder. “Good. I’ll be by in awhile with lunch.”

  So it went, making the slow rounds to the thirty or so students she had currently, asking about their progress, offering what wisdom or encouragement she could. They all suffered from their voices, and all had trouble letting them go. Ironic.

  The last student on her list, Gil Veyen of Seinjial, was one of the many faithful she had in her group, there because she’d asked Tai for help when the school’s attendance started dropping. He had shouted at a group of cult members nearby to attend her school and they all had, persevering where others fell off. Gil seemed to be an intelligent young man, though he looked feverish in the low light. “Everything okay, Gil?”

  “Fine.” He had a clipped way of talking. “Talking to my voice. Talking to my voice a lot.”

  She nodded. “Anything you want to talk to me about?”

  “No. But.” He hesitated, and she nodded encouragement. “Could you stay here awhile? I don’t know how long I’ve been down here, but… a little company would be nice.”

  Ella needed to make notes on her students—she might as well do it here. “Sure.”

  She settled onto the floor a few paces away, and positioned her lamp to cast light on the journal. Despite most of the Achuri elders she talked to claiming people came to the caves to commune with their ancestors, the location didn’t seem to be helping much. Twenty-two of her thirty-one students showed no change over the last day; another four looked worse rather than better, which is to say they looked bored or complained of feeling like nothing was happening. Only five appeared to have gone deeper, to be muttering to themselves or distracted, physically shaking or sweating.

  Gil was among these, muttering to himself now that she had settled down to her work. Unconsciously, she struck resonance and began speeding and slowing her time, raising and lowering the pitch of Gil’s voice, a habit she had when she was trying to concentrate.

  Plus, it meant she could squeeze more hours into the day.

  Still, these results were better and more reliable than some of the other things they’d tried. In the first days after the ousting, after Tai had convinced the council to stop yuraloading both for the scarcity of yura and the danger it posed to those who did it, they had tried all kinds of things. Talk therapies, to help them reason free of their voices. Interviews with people who also knew the voice’s persona, to try to catch it in a lie. Mummer performances, where someone would act the part of their voice, to try to get them to see it differently. And creating moments of extreme danger, to try to snap them out of it, as both she and Tai had overcome their voices in moments of danger.

  Gil’s voice rose and fell with her flexing of time, his muttering seeming to increase. She’d thought about trying to incorporate the last method—shock trials, they’d called them—by having someone appear down here as though threatening, or to get them purposefully lost in the dark, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Still, if isolation didn’t start working better, they’d have to make more changes.

  Something pushed on her chest. Ella looked up, snapped out of her reverie. She was deep in slip, Gil’s mouth frozen in an ‘O.’ What? There—it came again, almost a slap against her chest, her whole body. Again—but no one was there.

  Ella stood, looking around. Could a wafter be pushing air against her? But no one could move that fast in slip, and Gil was a brawler, able to get faster and stronger with uai. She muted her resonance a bit and the waves came faster, slapping against her in time, then almost chattering, slurring up to a buzz as she released uai. As she did another sound slipped from basso notes up to a yell—Gil.

  “Out! Out!” he was yelling, eyes closed and mouth wide. “Get out!”

  And she realized what she was feeling—an intense, almost unbearable resonance coming off the man.

  He’d overcome his voice.

  “Gil!” she cried. “Gil you did it! You’re free!”

  “Get out!” he shouted once more, then seemed to hear her, eyes opening. “She’s gone,” he said, a smile creeping onto his face. “It’s gone.” A load of tension went out of the man, and he stood, air thrumming with power.

  Ella threw her arms around him. “Congratulations!”

  His hug back nearly crushed her. As he let go, a cry sounded further up the caves, and a second resonance hummed through the walls, seeming to strike a harmony with Gil’s.

  Ella pulled back. Another overcoming? “Congratulations,” she said, slipping out of his grip. “I’ll be back.” Ella ran up the cave toward Marea’s chamber. Gil overcoming while she was there was coincidence enough—but two at once? What was going on?

  3

  How long and long I have longed for you, my children, my grandchildren, my endless generations of grandchildren spread over this world. How I have longed you would know me, when we met face to face.

  --Aymila Reglif, private journals

  Tai walked the smuggler’s path west of the city, fallen leaves crunching underfoot. A chill breeze rustled the tops of the trees, and light dappled them through the canopy. The forest smelled of damp leaves and needleaf sap, trickling from eyes in the trees. Aelya walked beside him, and five militia fighters in green bands trailed behind, not willing to let them go alone. Aelya had scoffed at them wanting to escort her, but agreed in all seriousness when they said Tai was too important to send without protection. Funny how he was at once their only hope against the Councilate, and too fragile to let walk alone in the woods. He said as much to Aelya.

  She snorted. “You’ve always needed someone to watch your back. How many times did I save you from getting your meckring kicked because you were too busy watching the kids to see a Maimer or lawkeeper coming down the street?”

  “We’re walking in the woods. What could happen?

  She shrugged. “You could end up all shattermecked like that guy Arkless brought in.”

  “Right.” It was the reason they were out here, to look for more bodies, or for what was killing them. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t really want to meet whatever did that to him, even if it is targeting lighthairs.”

  Tai glanced at the militiamen a few paces back. “So you really didn’t have anything to do with it?” As much as she disliked lighthairs, it wouldn’t totally surprise him. He’d been that way too, before Ella and the rebellion.

  “No, Tai! Stains. I wouldn’t spend that long on ‘em.” She smirked. “Anyways, if I found a live Councilate soldier that close to Ayugen, you’d hear about it.”

  Tai rolled his shoulders. “I keep thinking about the Titan I met after the ousting, the one who brought the first parley offer. He said they’d taken yuraloading and improved on it.”

  “You think that body was their improvement?”

  “Or maybe a trial run. Either way we can’t go back to yura production. Every ball we trade downriver is another chance for them to yuraload somebody, or do whatever new thing it is they’re doing.”

  “Speaking of which.” She turned and yelled back to the militiamen, “See anything boys?”

  “Nothing,” one barked back, “not in the woods neither.” There were another ten men or so ranged out to either side of them. Tai figured they had walked three or four thousandpace from the edge of the city, the path well-trampled underfoot. Still, Feynrick was right—there would be no getting an army down this path with any speed. The Councilate had always used rivers, but with the series of rapids Tai had put in, they had no good way of reached Ayugen.

  Were the bodies some new experiment in how
to cross the forest?

  They came to a clearing, a few simple huts set up around a wide patch in the road. A weathered Achuri woman sat next to a smoking cookfire, a naked toddler playing in the dirt nearby. “Ho, grandmother,” Tai called in Achuri. “Any strange happenings in these parts the last few days?”

  The woman eyed him head to foot, then the men behind him. “You the Blood?”

  Tai suppressed a grimace. There were men as tall as he was, but no one had a neck scar like his. “Aye, but my given name’s Sekaetai. We’ve heard tell of strange noises out here, of bodies and things happening in the wood.”

  “Oh aye, been some of that. Mostly trader talk, but you want to find a body, I been smelling one bout a thousandpace that way.” She pointed south and west, where the trees grew thicker up a rise.

  Tai made the traditional gesture for thanks, a hand over heart. “If you hear or see anything in the future, send word to Ayugen, and we will send what aid we can.”

  “Aye,” she said again, clicking her tongue at the boy who, noticing the group of militiamen, had stood and was watching with round eyes, line of pee stuttering into the dirt. “Prophets watch ye.”

  They struck into the forest then, men to either side pulling a little closer in. “Looks like you’re famous even out here,” Aelya murmured, both of them scanning the trees. It was mainly oak and leatherleaf, trunks thick this far from the city.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  He smelled it a finger later, when the wind shifted directions. “Gods,” one of the militiamen coughed. “How many of them died out here?”

  Tai pushed through the branches of a newly fallen oak, something bothering him about the situation. He’d spent a fair amount of time in the woods as a boy, running messages for the Achuri resistance, and ran into bodies before. Nothing ever stank this strong.

  They found the body past the next cluster of trees. The stench was intense, some of the men gagging and Tai fighting an animal urge to get away. It lay in a clearing of uprooted trees, their stumps ragged and the earth torn in great clumps, as though a beast with giant claws had descended in a fury.