by L. W. Jacobs
PAUPER’S EMPIRE
©2018-2021 LEVI JACOBS
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Contents
ALSO IN SERIES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Epilogue
ALSO IN SERIES
From the Author
Acknowledgments
ALSO IN SERIES
BEGGAR’S REBELLION
PAUPER’S EMPIRE
APOSTATE’S PILGRAMAGE
ACOLYTE’S UNDERWORLD
To Mac,
For waves and screeches when Da goes out to write. Hope you read this someday.
1
As the lowliest must always keep their weapons close, so must the highest heads be ready for axes.
—Unknown, Book of the Ninespears
Ayugen lived again. Tai climbed the cobbled road from Riverbottom, chill breeze in his hair, feeling the renewed pulse of his home. It was in the directness of a merchant’s gaze, or the casual way women set up roadside stands where once they’d need to watch for Councilate lawkeepers. It was in the proud bearing of an Achuri shoemaker, and the newly-conscious gaze of a light-haired Yershman who walked without dark-haired attendants. It was in the buildings themselves, reshingled or roofed and coated in fresh oil, signs of the Councilate gone in a flurry of resettlement. Everything had changed in the month since they pushed the Councilate out.
Everything but him.
“Good morrow, Tai.” A man in a leather vest nodded to him—the same sort who might’ve gripped his hoe tighter at Tai-the-street-tough just a few weeks ago. Tai nodded back, unsure how to take him, almost nostalgic for the days when all he had to watch out for were rival gangs and lighthaired lawkeepers. Now he had to watch for everyone--the scarred woman nodding to him from the far side of the street, and the teenage girls in her yard who eyed him and whispered, needlework forgotten in their hands.
They pretty much summed up the first two kinds of people: those who now felt they knew him because they’d fought together, and those who’d heard enough about him that spotting him on the road was enough to inspire commentary.
They were bad enough for someone used to being avoided, but there was a third kind. One stopped ahead of him on the road now, a man with a fox on a leash, palm pressed to his red necklace in respect. The Blood. At least, that’s what they called themselves—the Cult of the Blood, a new movement grown up around a Yersh preacher who thought Tai was some sort of saint. He’d like to have the man banned, but Ayugen was a home for everyone now, and Marrem said the people needed someone to look up to after the horror of the camps.
Apparently that was him. Why not Lumo, the one who’d taught him his powers, or Ella, who’d broken him out of prison, or Karhail, who’d founded the rebellion, and was too dead to care if they made an idol out of him?
Because Tai was the one they’d seen floating in the sky, driving back an entire legion of Councilate soldiers with an unstoppable wave of uai. Because he was the one who’d given them their city back, and he was the one they thought would save them when the army came again.
What would they think if they knew he couldn’t do it?
Tai crested the hill, the Sanga river rushing milky blue beside the road, and took the shortcut through Wintersmarket, stone stalls and merchants’ cries and the reek of dried fish reassuringly familiar. The children clustered around the edges were familiar too, orphans from the rebellion. That had been him ten years ago, orphan of a different rebellion. It had been Pang and Curly and Fisher five years ago, when he’d started his gang. Now the streets had a new generation.
Tai swallowed hard and handed a millet cake to the youngest of them. These orphans weren’t his fault, exactly—he wasn’t going to fall into that trap, not after the thing-that-wasn’t-Hake manipulated him with guilt for years. But they were proof he wasn’t right for the role everyone wanted him to be in: leader. Ruler. Holy man, or something. He didn’t even know what the Blood wanted him to be.
But he knew he was the one who had turned the Ghost Rebellion from a few faithless mercenaries into a real t
hreat to the Councilate. His strength in flying and experience in street tactics had led to more deaths on both sides, the rebellion winning even as Ella convinced him it was winning the wrong way. He’d kept fighting despite that, despite nearly losing his kids.
Tai brushed past a pair of darkhaired merchants arguing over saltfish. So, leader of his people, now that they were finally free? Probably a better job for someone else.
Raised voices snapped him out of his reverie. Ahead in the crowded lane of stalls three men scuffled over a spilled sack of millet. “Hey!” Tai called, pushing through to them. This was a job for a militiaman, but he saw none. “What are you doing?”
A darkhaired man looked up—Seinjial, from his thin black hair and filigreed bracelets. “Lord Tai!” he said, almost an oath, and stopped beating the man he held—a sandy lighthair, likely Yersh. “This man was stealing from my stall.”
The other merchant also left off beating, looking abashed. “He stealing the crop,” the man said, Achuri but doing his best to speak the common Yersh tongue.
“Is this true?” Tai demanded of the Yershman, anger rising despite knowing he should wait to get all the facts.
The lighthaired man hung his head, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. “Aye, milord,” he said after a pause. “But my wife, she’s hungry, and—”
Meckstains. Food had been short since the Councilate boats stopped coming. The man was thin.
The Seinjial felt no such compassion. “And so you think you can steal from us, like old times?” He raised his fist.
Tai caught it. “Hold, friend. Theft is against the law, but we don’t punish it with beatings in the street. Where are the militiamen assigned to the market? Why not call them?”
“Likely off putting out other fires,” the Seinjial waved his free hand. “Figured we could handle this ourselves.”
“By beating the man bloody? This man admits the crime. Bring him before the Circle and have him given a fee, or assigned labor to work it off.”
“Please,” the Yershman said, head still low. “I just—there’s no work. No one willing to give it. I fought in the rebellion, sir, at the end. I’m just looking to get by.”
“Well theft is not the way to do it. We could use more men in the militia. Report to the old prison camp after you help these men clear your mess. Feynrick will have work for you.”
Tai turned to the darkhaired men. “Understood? We don’t give beatings without involving a third party. It’s my fault there are not enough militiamen, but you know better than this. Lighthaired or dark, we all fought together, and we work together now that the fighting’s done.”
The Achuri merchant nodded, eyes taking on an uncomfortably religious light. The Seinjial looked more sour about it but nodded too. “As you say, Lord Tai.”
Tai winced. “Just Tai, if you would. Good day, sirs.”
Tai walked through the rest of the market expecting trouble. Instead he saw lighthaired merchants set up alongside dark, working together in places where before the darkhair would have worked for the light. Good. They’d had all colors in the rebellion, and he wanted all colors in the city.
Still, old feelings died hard, especially when food was scarce. He knew that from the streets.
Tai took the west gate toward Newgen, the enclave’s steep stone walls and thick gates rising from the empty plateau. Built by the Councilate to keep darkhairs out, Newgen was ironically now full of them. It stood empty for awhile after the Councilate left, but people had gradually been moving in as buildings in the city proper filled up.
The Tower’s cavernous central space was another irony of the ousting. Formerly the stage for lighthaired actors and bards, and still the largest meeting space in the city, it was now the gathering place for Ayugen’s loose ruling circle.
Two men in green stood guard outside the azure glass doors, part of the defense force Aelya and Weiland had made from the remnants of the rebellion. A burlap-wrapped bundle sat between them, too large to be provisions or arms.
“Big brother,” the left one said in Achuri, though he was at least five winters Tai’s senior. "They’ve already started inside.”
Tai nodded. “Good. Thanks, Dayglen.” He nodded to the bundle. “What’s that?"
“Don’t know,” the other one said in broken Achuri. “Merchant brought here.”
“Sigwil!” Tai laughed. “You’re studying Achuri?”
“Required,” the timeslip said. “No more Yersh girls Ayugen. Except that of yours.”
Tai glanced inside, where Ella was sitting in one of the front rings of seats, golden hair in a simple braid. He swallowed and answered in Yersh. “She’s not mine, Sigwil. We’re just friends.”
“Sure.” Sigwil winked and stepped aside. “I keep study.”
Marrem had the floor inside, pacing the polished wood of the stage, her voice echoing in the vast space. The Tower was like an inverted funnel with a two hundredpace wide bottom, slowly spiraling smaller as the walkways wound up toward the glass peak, the entire thing supported with massive stone columns. The floor was soft with fine carpets, and the air still smelled of exotic incense underneath the more everyday smells of smoke and sweat.
“—they can get the winter crops in,” Marrem was saying, “but word is the summer harvest is already running low.”
She broke off as she saw Tai, then everyone else had to look too. Aelya was there, next to Weiland and Feynrick, idly chewing a plug of dreamleaf. Lumo sat in the row behind, dwarfing the Achuri merchants next to him.
“Tai,” Marrem said, in disapproving tones, “we were to be here a finger ago.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s not like I need to be here for every debate.”
“You do, actually. The people look to you for guidance.” Her tone made it clear she did not.
“Right,” he said, wanting to forestall that line of talk. “What of the summer harvest?”
“It’s mecking low, is what it is,” Aelya said. She wore her black hair cropped close, as always, and today had pearl blue silk wrapped around her roughspun vest—spoils of Newgen. “Farmers weren’t planning for all these lighthairs we have to feed.”
Arkless nodded, the wealthy Achuri merchant dressed in fine leather and silver. “Prices are higher than they’ve ever been,” he said, “and when the markets sell out blackmarket prices go through the rafters.”
There wasn’t supposed to be a blackmarket anymore, but Tai of all people knew it would likely never go away. “What of trade overland? Wintersmarket has sugarleaf today—how do we have northern sweeteners but no grain?”
“Grain is heavier than sugarleaf,” Arkless said, adjusting an inlaid cuff. An Achuri arms dealer, he’d reinvented himself as a food importer following the rebellion. “Those willing to risk smuggling out of Gendrys are likely not going with carts and elk teams.”
Gendrys was the Councilate settlement downstream from Ayugen, the last stop for river trade now that Tai had blocked passage upriver with a long series of rapids. “But they would if it made them money, right?”
“And it would, if it didn’t take so long,” the merchant answered. “That road was made from smuggler’s feet and farmer’s carts. Moving something as wide and slow as a pack of wagons down it would take weeks, without some serious work clearing the forest.”
“And thank the dogs for it,” Feynrick put in. Tai had first met the grizzled Yatiman when he was captain of the mercenary team guarding Coldferth’s mine complex. He’d changed sides toward the end, and now organized the city’s militia. “That little path’s the reason the whitecoats haven’t sent their army after us again. It’d take weeks to fit an army down that path, and expose them on all sides.”
So the same thing that protected them was slowly starving them out. Great. Pearly.
“Oh, they’ll come for the right motivation,” Arkless said. “Maybe not for marks, but they’d do it for yura.”
The circle had put a stop to mining and selling yura after the ousting, th
ough Tai didn’t doubt some still slipped through the black market.
“We could do this thing,” Lumo rumbled. They’d given him Coldferth and one of Galya’s mine complexes to experiment with yura cultivation. The other cave complexes were nearly stripped clean. “We are having some success with the gardens. But the moss needs time to grow. If you harvest it now, then I fear in a few months we would have nothing at all.”
Tai shook his head. “The Councilate needs yura to access their resonances. Trading it downriver is like selling them weapons. I say we strip the mines and stop production entirely. Maybe then the Councilate will leave us alone.”
“They’ll never leave us alone,” Marrem said, hands busy tying herbs into small paper packets. “This is about pride now, like your scuffles on the streets. And men can’t let pride rest.”
“With respect Marrem, this is about money,” Arkless said. “If we run out of yura, we run out of money. If we run out of money, we run out of food, and fighting men soon after. And I don’t think any of us want to be here when that happens.”
