Pauper's Empire Read online

  “I’ll have to try that.” Tai nodded ahead. “Don’t talk too loud. We’ve got an audience.”

  Sablo had sat up as soon as Tai struck resonance, and was eyeing them curiously above the thick gag stuffed in his mouth.

  “Don’t need him passing all this on to the Councilate,” Tai said, slowing his steps to drop away from the wagon. Mindseyes could mentally hear about as far as someone could physically hear—no sense taking chances.

  “Prophets no. This may be our only chance at defeating the Broken.”

  Hope rose in his belly. He hated the feeling. He’d hoped too many times on the streets, in the rebellion, only to be disappointed after. Better not to hope. “Think you can really repeat what happened with Sigwil?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. This is the only thing I can point to that changed for him. He said he wasn’t fighting it much—his ma, he called his voice—but he hadn’t taken any yura. Seems like too big a coincidence that he’d overcome right when we harmonized for it not to have something to do with it.”

  “We need to test it on someone.” Tai raised his voice. “Feynrick.”

  “Aye, my milkweed.”

  “Ready to quit eating all our yura?”

  “Oh aye, unless you’re ready to let us start picking our own. Shatting balls are expensive.”

  “Have you ever tried yuraloading?” Ella asked, pulling her notebook out again.

  “Can’t say as I did.” Feynrick nodded to his men and dropped back to join them. “Wish I had.”

  “Feynrick came to us late in the rebellion,” Tai said. “He used to be the head of the mercenary corps guarding Coldferth’s mining compound.”

  “Saved yer butt from a pack of lawkeepers, if I recall correctly,” Feynrick grinned. “Then ye showed up and made us look bad, stealing a bag of our yura.”

  “Shouldn’t have been sleeping on the job,” Tai grinned back.

  “Ye damn milkweed.”

  Ella cleared her throat. “Well. We have a new process that might work without yura, but I need to ask you a few questions first.”

  “Fire away, lassie.”

  “How’s your relationship to your voice?”

  “Oh just fine. I got Gleesfen, the lecherous old bastard.”

  “Gleesfen?” Tai asked.

  Ella cleared her throat. “Yati believe their voices are one of twenty-five or so reincarnations of saints from their past, guiding them to power. Right?”

  “Saints would be an awful rough translation lass. If you heard some of the things Gleesfen says—” Feynrick chuckled. “We call em genitors.”

  “How is your relationship with him? Have you been arguing at all? Disagreeing?”

  “Oh aye, plenty enough of that, but I’ve learned to ignore him. Wants me to fistfight every man I see, and bed—er—court every woman, and I turn him down. Mosta the time.” He gave Tai a wink.

  “Alright, well. Do you have any yura?”

  “Rotting right. Got to carry it all the time, just to keep up.” He pulled a small sack from under his belt. “Just a few balls mind. These things are pricy.”

  “One’s enough. Take it, and strike your resonance. And—disagree with Gleesfen, if you can. Get him angry.”

  Feynrick frowned, glancing at Tai, but he took the yura. “As ye say.”

  Tai felt Feynrick’s resonance a moment later, not as strong as Sigwil or Lumo, but the familiar brawler buzz. Ella’s high-pitched hum struck a moment later, and Tai listened closely, feeling for some change in his bones. Their resonances synced up a moment later, and his eye widened. It felt like Lumo had strummed a chord, then stuck the instrument against the bone of Tai’s knee, the vibration traveling all the way up his spine. A few of the militiamen glanced back, obviously feeling it too.

  Feynrick’s eyes went wide. “What in hells?”

  “Fight it,” Tai urged. “Your voice. Gleesfen. Get him out.”

  “Out? But I—” He broke off, eyes losing focus, likely listening to his voice.

  “Push. Get him out.”

  Ella unblurred a moment later, gasping, rubbing her back. “Nothing?”

  “I felt something,” Feynrick said, letting his resonance drop too, “but I don’t think I’m ready to fight a pair of Broken, if that’s what ye mean.”

  “Damn.” Ella looked crestfallen and exhausted, lines standing out under her eyes. What were the bends for timeslips? He knew it for wafters and brawlers. Did slips just get tired?

  “We’ll try again,” Tai said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Feynrick’s too thick-skulled for this kind of thing.”

  “Thicker’n yours anyway, laddie,” the Yatiman agreed, winking. They turned at the sound of steps to see a militiaman trotting from the front of the wagon, where he’d been taking point.

  “News, sir.”

  “Figured as much,” Feynrick grunted. “Spill it.”

  “Men approaching, maybe a thousandpace off.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Smugglers, sir, from the looks of them.”

  Feynrick glanced at Tai. Looking for orders, as if the man wasn’t more than capable of giving them himself. Why did everyone turn to him?

  “Good,” Tai said. “Let’s tighten up around the wagon, but continue as planned. Maybe we can learn something from them.”

  A finger later five men came into view, all of them carrying thick packs on their packs, heavily bearded and clearly used to the burden. They stood off to the side of the trail to let the wagon pass.

  “Awoyo,” Tai said, greeting him in Achuri. “Headed for Ayugen, big brother?”

  “Fuck else would I be going,” the man said pleasantly, his Achuri placing him from one of the rural villages.

  Some of the militiamen bristled and Tai held up a hand. The smuggler went stiff at the sight. “Just wanted a word.”

  The man’s eyes widened then narrowed, looking at the scar on his neck. “You’re him.”

  “Doesn’t matter who I am, or who you are, friend,” Tai said, using Achuri’s casual form. “Just looking for news uproad.”

  “If ye don’t want your name to matter, that news’ll cost you.”

  “We can pay,” Tai said, keeping the same pleasant tone. It was a familiar one from the streets, the tone you took when you were keeping your options open. “Any whitecoats uproad? Any trouble?”

  The smuggler spat. “Few soldiers bringing wagons. Mostly fly overhead and don’t bother us down here. Fucking lighthairs like their pissing rivers, y’know.” He glanced at Ella, who evidently wasn’t following the conversation.

  “Aye. And the port? Army still camped there?”

  “For all the good it does em. Sittin in fucking tents in the fucking cold, all their ships ready to sail. Couldn’t pay me enough to do it.”

  “Any word what they’re doing in there?”

  The man’s eyes shifted from Tai to the militiamen. “Cost ye more for that.”

  “Big cost your backpack,” Feynrick grunted. “Maybe we try.” His Achuri was broken, but he got his point across.

  The smuggler scowled. “Fuck off, all a’ye. Word they’re taking volunteers and killing em in there. For research, see? That’s what I heard anyways. Stay out of it much as I can. Just an honest trader, like.”

  Tai cracked his neck, thinking it through. “Right then.” He pressed a few coins into the man’s hand. “Hint to the honest trader, friend: smells like ye got dreamtea in your packs. Next time you pass through you might make more on barley or maize. On with ye.”

  The smuggler went, scowling, and talk turned to more general things, Sablo laying back down in the wagon. They were making Broken in the army camp. Why else would they keep a legion in Gendrys and not attack, especially if the fort wasn’t even big enough to hold them inside? The smuggler said they had boats to carry them downstream—they would go, if they weren’t going to attack.

  Tai hitched the pack he carried on his shoulders, hating the weight he still felt there. They were going to the r
ight place, then—but would Ella and Feynrick really be able to find out what they were doing inside the army camp?

  And if they were making scores of Broken, would he really be able to stop them before those Broken woke up?

  18

  They walked most of the rest of the afternoon. Ella’s feet were unused to the exercise, but she’d be damned if she was going to ride on the cart with Sablo. Or take Feynrick up on his offer to carry her, for that matter. She was wearing a skirt, for prophet’s sake.

  The southern forests were beautiful. She had gazed at them from the decks of ships before this, but it was different to be in them. Totally different. The trees were majestic, old, uncut, the forest floor wide and spacious and alive with the calls of birds and insects and winterplants beginning to push their shoots up through the browning, dying stalks of summer growth. What would it look like in winter, with blue-green shoots pushing through white snow? Or would all the snow collect in the canopy, leaving the forest floor clear?

  She was interested in the houses they passed too, most of them humble shacks built to accommodate travelers, more than a few of them expanding, with piles of fresh timber cut and long houses going up. It was clear the road was getting more traffic than it ever had, with the river blocked and the blackmarket booming in Ayugen. They stopped to talk to other travelers, but learned little more than the first man had told them.

  When Feynrick called the evening stop, however, it wasn’t at one of the inns spouting along the smuggler’s path, but in an unremarkable stretch of forest. “So we don’t raise eyebrows,” the red-bearded man said, tipping her a wink. “Best to lay low.”

  They pulled the cart thirty paces off the road, threading it through trees, then covered it in brush before hiking their gear and prisoner another two hundredpace into the woods, on the other side of a small rise that would hide them from the road.

  Supper was dried elk and bittermelon—soldiers’ food, but she ate it readily enough. There was always something more important to do, but someday Ella wanted to write broadsheets just on food, and the culture of food. You could learn so much from a people by what they ate and how they made it, not to mention food’s connection to uai and the systems of belief everyone held around their voices. It was fascinating.

  They built a small fire when the air got chill, six men passing a wineskin around the fire while a seventh guarded Sablo, bundled in blankets some forty paces off. Feynrick was taking no chances with the man’s mindseye abilities.

  A militiaman passed a steaming pot of dreamtea to her—Dayglen, she thought his name was—and she passed it on. The men were involved in some sort of boisterous game or story in Achuri, so she was left alone to her thoughts.

  “Not drinking?” Tai asked in Yersh, taking the skin and passing as well.

  “I still want to work on my notes some,” she said, even as she was glad for the distraction. It was a strange experience, to be left out linguistically. “You’re not either?”

  The fellow next to Tai took the pot and sipped. “Old habit. In the streets, people who drink end up dead.”

  “Aelya drinks like a Yati shaman.”

  Tai smiled, features handsome in the firelight. “And it’s a miracle she’s still alive. What are you working on?”

  “I just want to write what I remember from the militiamen.” She’d tried the resonance harmony on all of them, even though they had all yuraloaded in the past. It hadn’t worked—she suspected overcoming was harder with a second voice, and some of them hadn’t even heard theirs yet—but still she wanted to record it all.

  “It must be nice,” he said, gazing into the fire.

  “What?”

  “Having something to do. A purpose.”

  “You have something to do. You’re leading the world’s newest independent nation.”

  “Yeah. I just wish I had the passion for it you did. When you work, you’re totally caught up in it.”

  She cocked her head. “You’re not passionate about the city?”

  “I’m passionate about protecting it, not leading it.”

  “What if you protected the city better leading it?”

  He shrugged. “There are just so many people more qualified than me. I mean look at Marrem, or Arkless, or even Feynrick. They have experience, wisdom. What do I have? I’m just the street kid who happened to overcome when the army attacked, like Sigwil happened to overcome yesterday morning.”

  Ella frowned. “You’re more than that. There was no denying it at the last meeting. Whoever disagrees with you, you end up convincing them you’re right. And people like following you. You have a way with them.”

  “With the cultists you mean?” He tossed a stick into the fire. “They think I’m some kind of god.”

  “Oh stop being muddy socks,” she said, elbowing him. She hadn’t seen him that much since the ousting, hadn’t known him that long before it even, but she felt an ease with him. “Regular people do too. I do. You make good decisions.”

  He laughed, one of the militiamen glancing at them. “Like my decision to come to your room that night in the Tower?”

  It had lead to the Councilate trying to arrest her for treason. “That one maybe not so much. But they never would have suspected if Sablo hadn’t been a mindseye.”

  Tai looked toward the former arbiter. “Do you think he’s safe? If he’s gotten any winterfoods at all, he could be trying to listen in. Ready to tell the Councilate all our secrets.”

  Ella shrugged. “I trust the men who’ve been taking care of him, yeah. I think we’re safe from him reading our thoughts. But safe in general? No. The man is a snake, and an intelligent one. Speaking of which. I saw the man with the fox yesterday.”

  Tai looked at her, gaze suddenly intense. How could he say he didn’t have passion for this? “You did? What happened?”

  She told him about the meeting in the fields, the man’s curiosity about Sigwil’s overcoming, the careful way he’d come to her when she was out of uai and no one else was near.

  “He knows we’re looking for him then. And he has something to hide.”

  “Something’s not right about him, for sure. Or his fox. And there’s another thing. Something I noticed on his arm.” She told him about the circle with nine spears tattoo, how she had seen Odril and Sablo wearing necklaces with the same design.

  “Wait, Odril had it too? The guy who had you locked in the calculism dungeon?”

  She nodded. “Sablo had books about it in his personal library. Strange ones. I only read a page, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.”

  “And you don’t know what it is?”

  “Some kind of secret society is all I can guess. It’s not the sign of any major or minor house, or related to any religious iconography I’ve ever come across.”

  “But they’re all men of power, in their own ways.”

  “And all confirmed liars.”

  Tai looked thoughtful. “You know, Sablo’s books might still be there. Not all of the Tower was looted after the ousting, and I doubt the people looting it were interested in books.”

  “They could,” she said, getting excited. “That’s a great idea. If nothing else, maybe we could use them to figure out what this fox man—Nauro—what he wants.”

  “Well I’m on next watch, so I’ll keep an eye on Sablo. And I need to find this Nauro when we get back.” He glanced at her. “You probably want some sleep. I’ll go check on Sablo.”

  “No,” she said, instinctively laying a hand on his arm. “It’s nice to just—talk. It’s been a long time since I felt like I had enough time to just sit and talk.”

  He laughed. “I feel like that’s all we ever do, in council.”

  “Yeah well it’s funny. You say you wish you had passion like mine, and sometimes I feel like I’ve got too much. Like all I ever do is work. That’s what Tunla said anyway.”

  “Why are you so passionate anyway? I mean, I’m glad you are. None of this would have happened without you, but Ayugen’s no
t your home. Or, it only has been for a couple months.”

  Ella sighed, feeling an old wistfulness. “I never had a home. Not one that felt like it, anyway. Worldsmouth didn’t, and I don’t have people there anymore. So I guess I’m trying to make one here.”

  “That’s what we were doing on the streets too, was trying to escape to someplace safe, but we never could. And then when my kids got taken, I realized we couldn’t just run. There’s nowhere to go. That if we wanted someplace safe we’d have to fight for it.”

  “And so you’re passionate about it. Just like me.”

  “I just wish I had something obvious to work on. Something I was good at.” He rolled his shoulders. “With the circle I feel like I chase people around all day and get nothing done.”

  Ella gazed at the fire, fresh log hissing and popping. “Tunla says there’s no point in working for others if you can’t do something for yourself now and then.”

  “On the streets, you take every chance you get to enjoy yourself, because you never know when the next one’s coming. That’s why Aelya drinks so much.”

  “And you?”

  “I was never good at it. I guess I always had something to worry about.” He laughed, tossing long black hair out of his face. “Still do.”

  She sighed, warmth of the fire nestling in her bones. “Well it’s nice to be here with you anyway. I’m glad I came.”

  “Me too. I miss our weekly meetings, like we used to have during the rebellion.”

  “Well maybe we should have them again. Do something just for ourselves. You can tell me about life on the streets, and I can bore you with tales of Worldsmouth.”

  He smiled. “I’d like that.”

  She leaned into him, ignoring the wink Feynrick sent Tai’s way from across the circle. “It’s a plan then. Assuming we survive the next couple days.”

  19

  They started the next morning at first light, Feynrick wanting to make the abandoned village before dark. Tai had dreamt of Ella, of her fighting with Aelya and Marrem, all of them wielding giant spears and hammers, the back room of Marrem’s infirmary a bloodbath. He was running between them, defenseless, trying to make peace. Ella had been beautiful despite the blood, and something felt different as he walked next to her today. Their talk remained unchanged, introspection on politics and the resonances with a touch of humor, but she walked a little closer to him. Or maybe he walked closer to her, feeling drawn by her despite the fact she was a lighthair from a completely different world.