Pauper's Empire: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 2)

by L. W. Jacobs

  “Good,” Tai said, raising his voice over the conversation that had started to bubble up. “Now we need someone to do the actual information gathering. Someone who can blend in.”

  “I’ll do it,” Ella said, as heads started to turn her way. “I—have some experience at playing a role in polite society.”

  “And ye can slip faster than a toad blinks,” Feynrick said, nodding her way. “She killed half the Broken today, and she don’t need yura to do it. She gets in trouble, she can get out again.”

  “Yes, good,” Marrem said. “A sensible choice. She can go.”

  “Except that she’s a lighthair,” Aelya said.

  Ella bristled. “And?”

  “And to be blunt, they’d be looking for a darkhair,” Arkless said. “Which makes her perfect.”

  “Good,” Tai smiled at her. “It’ll be good to have you along.”

  It would be good to get some time with him. Even if it meant leaving her students for a while. Tai was calling for someone who could infiltrate the army camp.

  Feynrick held up his hands. “Kicked me out long ago. Never fit in, I didn’t.”

  Tai frowned. “But you’re military through and through. Why’d they kick you out?

  The thick red-haired man rubbed his beard. “Cuz I knew better’n my captains, and they hated to admit it.”

  “Think you can suck it up for an afternoon?”

  “Oh, aye. Wouldn’t even mind seeing some of those same lighthairs, if they’re around.” He grinned, cracking his knuckles.

  “Good,” Tai said. “The three of us, plus our prisoner.” The man many of his friends had died trying to capture.

  “And an escort,” Aelya said. “You’ll need someone to watch your back in the forest. We’ve been feeding Sablo only summer foods, so he shouldn’t have any uai to fuel his resonance, but don’t forget he’s a mindseye.”

  Not to mention whatever connection he had to Odril, Ella thought, remembering the pendants they both wore, a circle pierced by nine spears. Maybe she could learn more about it from him on the road.

  The circle moved on to discussing logistics, how many men to take, which paths would be safest, etc. Ella let them, mind spinning instead about returning to lighthaired society for a time, about discovering how they were making Broken, and her questions for Sigwil. If they could discover a way to time their overcomings, even the Broken wouldn’t be that difficult to defeat.

  If they couldn’t, on the other hand, and they couldn’t find a way to stop the Councilate from making more, she doubted the information they gathered would matter much. The Councilate would swallow them whole, like it had every other nation in the world.

  16

  Ella found Sigwil at the edge of the Tower’s cavernous lobby, the baby-faced young man doing his best to scrub away the blood and gore that covered his clothes. “Ah, Miss Ella!”

  He spoke fluent Yersh with an accent she put somewhere between Seinjial and the Worldsmouth delta. His fyelocke mix of sandy blond and black hair spoke to the mixed parentage common there. She gave him a smile. “Sigwil. Have a moment for that talk I mentioned?”

  He bolted upright. “Oh, aye. Sure enough. Where to?” The words came out stacked on top of each other.

  “My apartment, I think. Tai and I have decided to go to Gendrys, to see what we can learn from the Councilate and possibly trade for food, so I’ll need to pack.”

  “Your apartment? Sure thing. It’s not here?”

  Some of Ayugen’s people, lighthaired and dark, had moved into the Tower’s giant spiral of empty rooms, but it held too many memories for her, too much of her past. “Hightown, actually. I’ve always loved the native Achuri stonework.”

  He pursed his lips at this. “Oh, it’s nice. Nothing like Ridgeback stone, but nice enough.”

  “That’s right! Your area is known for quarries and stoneworks, isn’t it?” House Galya had originally come from there, and the best manses in Worldsmouth were still made of the Ridgeback Hills’ marbled quartzite and granite.

  Sigwil smiled, obviously pleased. “Oh yes. Famous for it. And strong men.”

  An odd comment. They passed through the thick gateway in Newgen’s outer walls. “You certainly showed strength back there. How are you feeling now?”

  The gore-covered brawler shrugged. “Fine. Pearly. Actually can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to get rid of me ma. She’s been hounding me ever since I was old enough to catch snatches of her in my teens.”

  He didn’t refer to his voice as kid-talk, the Councilate understanding, or as a pious challenge, like the Seinjial would. Interesting. “Did you want her gone before now? Have you two been arguing?”

  “Oh, we argued even when she was alive. That’s what we do. But yeah, last few years, ever since I came to the mines, y’understand, she’s been on me about my friends, about the Red Elks, then the Ghost Rebellion, now Tai’s thing—and your thing, no offense—but she was never happy with it. Always wanting me to go my own way.” He glanced at her beneath lowered brows. “Not much heroic about it, I suppose.”

  Ella shrugged, tugging her shawl tighter against the autumn air. “Nothing unusual about it either. The voice you heard wasn’t your mother—we don’t know what they are, exactly, but they always lie about their identity. It was feeding on your uai to stay alive, and at some point they all begin pushing their hosts to separate from society, from their friends, in order to get more attention, more reliance, and from that more uai. You’ve heard of hermits?”

  “Oh aye,” he nodded quickly. “Had a few in the hills. Used to try stealing from our larders come winter.”

  “Right. Well, they’re the ones that let their voices separate them. The other choice is to see through whatever lie your voice is using to manipulate you—in your case, sounds like it might have been that none of your friends were good enough for you. And when you do that, you overcome your voice without yura, like Tai and I did.”

  “Sounds real nice, Miss Ella, but I don’t know as I saw through my ma’s lies or what have you. I mean, I was tired of her, yeah, but I was tired of my ma long before she passed.”

  Ella nodded, trying to unobtrusively pull out her notebook. “So what happened?”

  He glanced at her. “Well it was all chaos on the battlefield, as you know, and I was in the middle of it. I mean, Broken here and there,” he tossed his hands left and right, “and all coming at me. And then I see Tai falling from the sky like he’d been shot or something, and I make for him. To save him, y’understand. And in the middle of that, boom, I’m buzzing and sparking like I just ate a wagon of Coldferth yura, and I see you take the flying Broken down, so I turn around and face the other two. Now they was real mean looking, y’understand—”

  “Yes,” she said, sensing the man gearing up for a long tale, the kind men liked to tell women who they thought didn’t know better. “But in that moment, do you remember anything else? Anything that might have triggered what happened to you?”

  Sigwil cut off, then frowned. “Not as I can really say. Not much but the buzzing, y’understand. I’m not a religious man as such, but,” he shrugged, “maybe Lord Tai had something to do with it.”

  She pursed her lips. “Well, I felt something then too. I was running past you in slip, on my way to Tai, and it was like our resonances—harmonized for a moment. That’s the only way I can think of to describe it.”

  He gave her a strange look. “Might be they did. Maybe it was supposed to happen.”

  She tapped her quill against the page. “And your conversation with your ma hadn’t been any different that day? Or once the battle started?”

  “Oh, she was nagging at me like usual, and I was nagging back, and yeah she was shouting I needed to get out of there, but I understood I needed to protect Tai, y’see, so I yelled right back at her and kept fighting. Now when those Broken came at me—”

  “Yes, I saw most of it. Do me a favor, Sigwil. Do you have enough uai to strike your resonance?”

 
; Sigwil’s gaze went distant, then uai began to resonate off of him. Not the intense slaps of power she had felt in slip, but something more like a normal brawler’s buzz, if a strong one.

  Ella struck too, just a trace still in her system. Time slowed down, and she listened for what she’d heard in the battle. For some kind of harmony. Without all the noise she could hear their two tones clearly, but they didn’t harmonize like they had. Then again, she’d been slipped as deep as she could go when it happened. Ella struck harder, aching shooting up her back.

  The breeze stilled against her cheek. Sigwil’s face froze in a mask of concentration. And she felt something. Ella was no musician, but the tone of his resonance and hers felt close to fitting, somehow. Like street musicians on the docks of Worldsmouth, whose instruments weren’t quite right, but were still good enough to earn marks from drunk dockworkers looking to dance. She tried speeding time a bit, slurring up the tone of his resonance, and they matched perfectly.

  Ella gasped, the vibration gentle but shaking her whole body, and Sigwil’s mouth began to open in an O. She lost her resonance, uai vanishing, and as time sped up he dropped his, face twitching with the breaks, the pain that followed using a brawler’s resonance.

  “What was that?” he asked, eyes wide.

  She shook her head. “I think that’s what happened. That our resonances harmonized somehow. Right at the time you got rid of your ma.”

  She would need to test it with someone who still had a voice. If she could get her resonance to harmonize with theirs. Or maybe only certain people could harmonize with others? Or certain types of resonances with others? Timeslips with brawlers and wafters with mosstongues?

  Her head was so full of the implications she missed what Sigwil said. “Sorry, what?”

  He blushed. “A spot of lunch, I was saying. I’m famished from the fight, and seeing as you’re leaving on a long journey, well, I thought you might want a spot of lunch. On me! Of course.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that there’s time. Tai wanted us all back quickly.”

  His face fell. “Tai! Right. Well, maybe after you get back. We can—practice our resonances. See if they still harmonize.”

  He was working his fingers together, looking at her with puppy dog eyes. Ella frowned, then understood. Right. Stupid. Sigwil was a man, she was a woman. She forgot these things sometimes. How attractive she might be to a northern man living in a town of mostly southern people. How he might interpret her talk of harmonizing resonances, or misinterpret her asking him for a chat, and what happened just now.

  Say something. He was still staring at her, eyes full of hope. Too much to crush outright. “Sigwil, that’s sweet. Yes. When I get back, let’s talk. I may—want to do further research. If you get time, you might even visit my school?”

  “Your school. Right.” He looked crestfallen, but not totally rejected. Good. “Well, let me see you back to your rooms, at least.”

  He did without further awkwardness, and she hurriedly folded things into a fine travel case, one of many things left by Ayugen’s elite when they fled. She was going back into that society, if only for a few days. She would need real clothes, hair pieces, shoes—part of her got excited, even as the rest of her dreaded going back to the vapid, money-obsessed culture she’d been trying to escape all her life. It would be nice to have a reason to wear nice clothes again. Though Councilate fashion had surely moved on in the three months or so since she’d first disembarked at Ayugen.

  From there she headed for the caves, hoping to give Tunla instructions on watching the students and talk to Lumo about the resonance harmony. The Minchu was frustrating sometimes, in how much knowledge his culture seemed to have about resonances, but how little he personally knew of it other than brief snatches. She would visit his homeland someday. Ella smiled. What an entrance essay that would make. No one had ever written an ethnography of the Minchu.

  “Ellumia?”

  She started, spinning on the rutted farmer’s path. A man stood behind her, tall and darkhaired with lively eyes. He held a leash with a fox tied to it.

  A bolt of fear shot through her. The man with the fox. The one everyone wanted to talk to. Here, alone, and her without uai. Ella kept her face calm. “Yes. And you are?”

  This man had known about the Broken bodies before they did, had lied to Arkless, and come running just before the Broken attacked. He had some secret, and she needed to find it. She just wished she had her resonance to rely on. Stupid not to replenish it after the attack.

  “Nauro,” he said, inclining his head. “I heard about the disturbance today, at the fort.”

  “And I heard you knew of the attack before it happened. That you were running for the granary site with your fox howling.”

  Nauro smiled, without much real pleasure, and rubbed his fox’s head. It looked up at him. “Illyen here knows things. Can sense danger. I was coming to help.”

  There was something strange about the fox. Something too intelligent in its green eyes. There was something strange about the man too. His accent was from nowhere. “You are one of the faithful?” She saw no red necklace, but that’s what Arkless had said.

  His smile grew a touch pained. “No, and I apologize for that mistruth. I needed a reason to get close to your man Arkless, and the cult was convenient.”

  The very harmlessness of the man made him feel dangerous. Ella felt inside for uai, but she was completely empty. “How did you know? About the bodies?”

  “The Broken, as you’re calling them? Illyen found them. As I said, he can sense things.”

  He smiled again, mostly teeth, and squatted down to rub the fox’s head. As he did, a sleeve pulled up far enough to reveal the bottom of a tattoo: a circle with nine spears.

  Ella sucked in air despite herself. The mark on Sablo’s books. The pendant Odril wore.

  He followed her eyes and stood. “A mark of my trade. Something happened today, between you and that brawler. I would know what it was.”

  They were alone in the field. She could call out, but without uai he would likely overpower her before anyone found them. Fine. This was not her first touchy situation. “Yes, but I don’t know what. Do you live here? I could seek you out when I understand it better.”

  This smile had no pleasure at all in it. “Don’t bother, I’ll find you. Good day, Ellumia.” He turned and began jogging with the fox for the eastern forest.

  Ella raised a hand as if to stop him, but relief warred with her desire to know more, to get someone here to detain him and get real answers. He had chosen this meeting carefully—an isolated place, plenty of escape routes for himself, a time when she was likely to be out of uai.

  Very clever. But who was he?

  17

  My mother said her mother said she heard there was a time when there weren’t moss down there. That it’s taken all these long years to grow. And they come and strip it in a handful of winters? No wonder the ancestors don’t give gifts anymore, if we can’t appreciate what they already left.

  —Ellumia Aygla, Interviews with Achuri Elders, unpublished

  Tai walked the smuggler’s road next to Ella and Feynrick, ridgebarks and needleafs leaning over the winding dirt path. Sunlight filtered through the canopy high above, dappling light onto curling ferns and rounded stones thick with moss. A cart rattled thirty paces ahead of them, axle creaking over the uneven road, pair of elk snorting and occasionally slowing to crop at the green undergrowth crowding the road. The air was still, though a breeze rustled the treetops. It felt good to walk, to get some distance from the city. Things felt clearer out here. Simpler.

  They would go to Gendrys, figure out what they were doing, and stop it. Simple.

  Only it never was.

  Arten Sablo lay in the bed of the two-wheeled cart, tied up next to their camp supplies and provisions. It seemed a fitting end for the man who had ruled Ayugen at the height of Councilate power, and indirectly caused the death of many of Tai’s friends. He was now just another
kind of supply, stacked in the back of the wagon for the journey ahead. Tai would not be sad to see him go.

  “Quite the meeting back there,” Ella said, closing her notebook. She had been reading and scribbling in it since they left, quite the feat while walking.

  “Yeah. Reminded me of when we’d give our kids a choice of what they wanted for dinner. Everyone shouting, no one listening.”

  Ella wrapped a leather cord around her book, cover worn and stained. “They were just worried. That attack could have been a lot worse.”

  She had such a proper, dainty accent. Some days Ella seemed like the down-on-her-luck lady he’d helped escape from Odril’s calculism dungeon, and other days like lighthaired royalty visiting from afar. Hard to remember she’d killed two Broken yesterday.

  “Yeah. Thank the ancestors you showed up.”

  She smiled, olive skin spotless, like she had never been buried under the bleeding corpse of a Broken. “I only finished off the ones you started.”

  “Well, you may have noticed I was having trouble doing it myself.”

  She laughed, a tinkling sound, but he couldn’t escape the weight he felt, the worry for the next attack.

  He swallowed. “If it wasn’t for Sigwil we might both still be back in that fortyard.”

  “It was fortunate timing.”

  “He tried to yuraload during the rebellion, you know. It didn’t work.”

  Ella broke off a curling fern stem. “Some people just need time. The more I work with my students the more I think no amount of yura, or time, or isolation, or whatever we try is going to work until you’ve gotten somewhere with your voice. That we could have predicted who would fail and succeed at yuraloads if we’d interviewed them first.”

  “And predicted which ones would die?”

  “That too. Though oddly enough I’d say those are the ones in the middle, who’ve started having trouble with their voice, but don’t know what to do about it. It’s the unreflective ones who would just go through a yuraload unfazed.”