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

by L. W. Jacobs

  What was the lady’s problem? “I’m just putting out ideas.”

  “We could hide,” Tunla said. “The caves are deep. I doubt the Broken could find all of us. Maybe one of us would find the backdoor, even.”

  Ella nodded. “I had a similar thought. That maybe if we just waited long enough, the Broken would run out of uai. But what if there are more coming? It looked like a lot out there.”

  “A mecksweight,” Aelya said. “And they’re smart. They’d hunt us down.”

  Silence descended, and she was aware of all the people in the cave, watching them. Somehow leadership had fallen to them again. Tai would be so much better at this than they were. He was always coming up with solutions to things, stuff she hadn’t thought of. And she was there to tell him when they were stupid. That’s how it had always been. They were a team.

  And now they were going to die in separate places. If he wasn’t dead already.

  “It’s so frustrating,” Ella said. “The harmony was working so well. If we just had more uai, we could hold them off for days. Have enough time to figure something better out.”

  Aelya sighed. “It was a good idea. Thank you. We’d all be dead already if you hadn’t figured it out.”

  Ella looked at her, eyes widening. “You’re welcome,” she said, the words coming out more like a question. “I—should thank you, too. You’re always the first to a fight. There’d be a lot more people dead if not for you, too.”

  Aelya huffed a laugh. “For all the good it did. Now we’re all going to die.” Ella gave her the ghost of a smile, and for the first time she saw the lady for what she was: just an awkward, book-smart person, not perfect but not evil, no matter where she came from. If she’d dyed her hair black Aelya probably would never have thought twice about her.

  “I’m sorry,” Aelya said, surprising herself. “Sorry I’ve been such an ass. I just—the world used to be simple. Us against them. Me and Tai and our gang versus the world. Now it’s Broken and ninespears and—and people like you, who look like lawkeepers but act like friends, and I guess I was just holding on to the past. Wanting things to stay the same, but they never do.”

  Ella smiled, like she’d said the nicest thing in the world. “Well, if we’re all going to die in a bit anyway, we might as well end it friends, right?”

  She held up her forearm in the old style of the Ghost Rebellion, and Aelya hooked it. “Friends, then.”

  Shouts sounded from above and Tunla barked off orders, sending a fresh pair up the stairs. Sigwil came down as Aelya and Ella dropped their arms, blood spattering his face and walking with the too-delicate motions of a brawler in the breaks.

  “How is it up there, man?” Aelya asked, rising to help him and feeling like an ass all over again for how she’d treated him yesterday on the bluffs.

  How many people did she need to apologize to?

  “Not good,” the baby-faced fyelocke wheezed. “They started aiming wafters at the entrance. The harmony confuses them, but they still slam in at full speed. One of ‘em got my partner.”

  The old woman who’d come up with him. An elder. That made her sad, despite not really even knowing the woman. Elders were precious.

  “How is Feynrick?” Sigwil was asking, looking at the spear-stuck man with concern.

  “Dying,” Tunla said. The woman was blunt. Aelya admired that. “Talking to his voice more than to us.”

  “Probably triggered by all the harmonies,” Ella said absently. She still sounded like a know-it-all, but Aelya couldn’t really blame her. That was probably how everyone sounded in Worldsmouth, and Ella did actually know a lot. “He’d be ready to overcome his voice, if he wasn’t dying.”

  Tunla sat back on the stone bench, Sigwil collapsing beside her. “Speaking of which,” he said, “we might want to reorganize into groups of three for the gate, instead of two.”

  “Why’s that?” Ella asked, eyes sharpening.

  “When the last pair came up, they tuned to each other and to me, and the harmony of three—it was more powerful, somehow. Pushed the sound out further, so the Broken were getting confused before they even got to the entrance. Gave us a little more room to fight.”

  Ella pursed her lips. “That would be great, if we had more winterfood. We could even try four resonances, or all five. But as it is, burning more uai for the same amount of time might not be the best option.”

  “It’d get us dead faster, you mean,” Aelya said. She shrugged. “All going to die down here anyway. Might as well make it interesting.”

  “Wait,” Ella said, biting a finger. “Maybe that’s it.”

  Friends or not, the woman could still be annoying. “What’s it? Dying with a bang?”

  “No. Pushing them back with the harmony. Maybe we don’t just wait for them down here. Maybe we push ourselves out.”

  “Still sounds like dying with a bang.”

  “Except maybe we don’t die. Think about it.” The tall woman started pacing, still gnawing on a finger. “The more resonances in a harmony, the further it pushes them back, right? Not just in one direction, but in all directions. Like a bubble.”

  “Or a shield,” Aelya said, starting to see it. “A big shield, of resonance. And when they get inside—”

  “They lose their coordination. Or run off.”

  “Or get dead,” Aelya said. She could still be up for killing some more Broken. Especially if it meant getting out of here.

  Sigwil shook his head. “But where do we go? Ayugen is crawling with Broken. There must be, I don’t know, a hundred of them out there.”

  “Newgen,” Ella said decisively. “That was Feynrick’s plan, and he said the city was already evacuating. Once we get the gates closed, only the wafters can get in, and they’ll be easier to deal with.”

  “And there’ll be winterfood,” Tunla put in.

  “Newgen?” Sigwil asked. “But that’s a thousandpace or more from here.”

  A thousandpace of Broken. Still. “Better than waiting to die, right?” Aelya said, then nudged him in the ribs. “Maybe you’ll finally impress that girl you were working on.”

  He blushed, and despite the situation Aelya barked a laugh. Tunla and Ella joined in after a moment, making him blush even more, and for a second they were just friends having a laugh, instead of desperate strangers cooking up a way to not die.

  In the pause that followed Tunla said, “Will this really work? I mean, they’ll still be coming at us from all sides.”

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Tunla shrugged.

  “I’m in,” Sigwil said, still recovering. “Better that than spend our last hours in the dark, waiting to die.”

  “So we’re going to walk out into the middle of a storm of Broken?” Aelya asked, getting excited. “Ella, you’re one crazy biawelo.”

  “Someday you’re going to have to teach me what that means,” the woman said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Maybe later.” Aelya stood, flexing her fist. “Where do we start?”

  48

  It took Ella a while to get everyone organized, to sort out those who could tune from those who couldn’t and pair them off. It would have taken longer to talk down everyone who was too afraid, but Tunla and Aelya started snapping at them in Achuri, and by the time they needed to send another pair up the stairs, the room was nearly organized into a ring of fighters and people who could tune around a core of those who couldn’t. Ella passed out handfuls of yura to everyone, grateful they’d at least kept the moss down here, and made sure everyone understood the plan.

  That left just Feynrick, face white as snow but still breathing, stubborn as ever.

  “We’ll have to leave him,” Tunla said.

  “Better to mercy kill him now,” Aelya said, face grim. “I’ll do it.”

  “No,” Ella said, hoping she was right. “We carry him, at least for the first few hundredpace. Get Sigwil or one of the other men to do it.”

  “That will kill him just as easily,” Tunla said.


  “Just do it,” Ella snapped, channeling her mother for a moment.

  It worked, and with Feynrick slung over Sigwil’s shoulder, spear jutting to one side, they were ready. “Okay!” Ella shouted over the worried chatter filling the room. “On three we go up the stairs. Stay in formation—this first part will be the most dangerous! Once we’re up, wait for the whole group before we start going. And—good luck!”

  It wasn’t a great way to end a speech. Ella was still looking for something else to say when Aelya shouted something in Achuri that got them all moving. Ella’s Achuri still wasn’t great, but she thought it meant Fight like hell or die!

  Eloquent.

  She ran to the front and counted down, then ran with the first of them up the stairs. Resonance swelled behind her, first as a chaotic blend of uai, then as they approached the guards fighting at the top the tones started to blend, power resonating up the long stairway like a giant flute. They went from rattling her bones to strengthening them, the way songs gave you strength or sadness you didn’t know you had, pulling it out from some hidden well within, and pushing it now up the hallway in a glorious, roaring chord.

  She was first out of the mines, still waiting to strike her own resonance, knowing it could be crucial later.

  The sky was full of Broken, swirling like a massive flock of ravens. Brawlers covered the earth, the force of their resonance almost a match to the chord coming from the caves. She could see nothing but enemies driven mad by uai in all directions.

  Ella braced herself as more students pushed up behind her, ready to strike resonance, ready for the coordinated rush of Broken that would decide if they all died here or had a chance.

  But they didn’t attack. The wafters hung in the sky, flights stilling, and the brawlers paused in a ring around the mine entrance, faces wild but bodies motionless, as if waiting, belying the thunder of uai rolling off them. For a moment, as her people flooded from the caves, resonances singing like the music of the gods, the whole earth seemed to stand still.

  Then the Broken screamed as one, wafters and brawlers and the timeslips surely among them, and struck.

  Ella struck too, time dilating, roar of uai slurring to a deep rumble. As the world slowed, three or four figures sprinted out from the honey-slow line of brawlers surrounding them, moving at normal speed. Far more timeslips than she could take alone, even if she wasn’t exhausted and mostly out of uai.

  But she wasn’t alone. Not this time. Pendra and Gelrig and two more stepped from the crowd beside her, moving slower than she but still enough to make a difference. Pendra, crucially, held a bow, and fired shots as fast as her regular-speed bowstring would allow. The rest of them braced, Ella clutching the spear she’d scrounged in both hands, knowing she would be the fastest of them. The one to lead the charge.

  “For Ayugen!” she shouted. “For Tai!”

  They ran, Pendra’s arrows zipping by, one of them finding a home in the eyesocket of a Broken. Then the nearest was near enough and Ella thrust and it dodged and she stepped back, drawing it in, swiping again and again, until the moment its eyes lost focus, a good twenty paces out from the people still running from the cave at a snail’s pace.

  “Now! They’re confused!” she shouted, and thrust for real, spearhead slipping across the Broken’s metal-plated vest before slicing a gouge in its neck. The others around her struck as well, Pendra’s arrow taking another eye—the woman was good—and then Ella’s spine was burning and her resonance slipped.

  Wind, sound, and time snapped back into motion, the Broken slips falling in fast motion around her, other slips zipping back to the group as the Broken brawlers charged and the wafters descended.

  Ella ran back, sprinting deeper inside the protection of their harmony, still thrumming like the bands of a giant harp. “Hold position!” she yelled. “Trust the harmony! Focus on the wafters!”

  Those descended from the sky in a single awesome wave, like a murder of crows all bent on the same mouse, with steel claws and iron beaks.

  “Hold resonance!” she shouted once more, then the wafters slammed into them. Some of them veered off as soon as the harmony hit them, while others hurtled down under their own inertia, crashing into the forming ranks of her people.

  The crowd writhed, soldiers and brawlers chopping and slashing, wafters flying up screaming, others looping back around in the sky.

  They were going to break. People climbing from the caves were starting to panic, trying to push back down. If they split now they were dead.

  Then Aelya was there, shouting insults in Achuri and waving her iron fist, forcing them into ranks even as more wafters smashed down, even as the inevitable injuries dropped strength from the harmony and the circle of protection shrank, brawlers on the very edge going insane and attacking themselves or others, but those behind them pushing implacably in, driven by whatever intelligence ruled them.

  Because there was no doubt something ruled them, a part of her mind noted even as the rest swung between panic and worry and rage: no one in their right minds would attack as suicidally as these Broken were doing. Someone or some thing was behind this, and to truly defeat the Broken they would likely have to defeat it, too.

  The brawlers pushed closer, then pushed back as more people swarmed from the caves, volume of their massive chord rising, wafters still smashing down from the sky but not with the intensity or coordination of that first assault.

  Ella smiled, grim and determined, even as she barely dodged a wafter, even as the woman next to her went down screaming, blood gushing from a ruined abdomen. Whatever controlled the Broken, it clearly hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t prepared for it and didn’t know how to react.

  And that meant they might have a chance.

  The last of the students pushed out of the caves, the panicked mass of people holding together only from Aelya’s continued bellowing. Prophets bless the woman.

  “Now MOVE!” the girl shouted in Achuri, raspy voice drowning out even the cries of the Broken, and Ella took up the cry.

  “Move! For freedom! For Tai!”

  They moved.

  There was no question of following the roads, or avoiding the vine-covered squash fields, or even really of anyone leading. Newgen rose in the distance, imposing stone walls with the Tower’s glittering spire rising above it, and they headed straight for it, ironically on the path the defeated rebels had made retreating a month ago.

  The Broken followed, wave of harmony driving the brawlers before them mad as it released bloodied fighters behind them to gather their wits for a moment, then be thrown back into the protective resonance by whatever force drove them.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t giving up: wafters still dived at them from the sky, brawlers still hurled themselves into madness and self-destruction, but the harmony was working. Ella felt a wave of excitement, of vindication, of power finally after so much frustration. It was working. They were surrounded by an army of Broken, and they were winning.

  Then a wafter dove for her, and Ella was only saved by the thing shooting sideways once it was within the harmony field, close enough she felt the wind of its passing. Others dropped for Aelya and Tunla.

  Ella’s heart pounded, fear rising afresh. Targeting. They were targeting the leaders of the group, just as they’d targeted Tai before. Whatever drove them, it was intelligent, and could either see what the Broken were seeing, or was up there with them in the skies.

  Either way she had to be smarter. Had to find a way to stop it from stopping them, or they were all dead. Worse yet, everyone else in Ayugen would die—for yura. For a stupid plant that offered only the shadow of real power, a power they were finally beginning to understand. And worst of all, the knowledge they’d discovered in the last few days would die with them. The key to defeating the Councilate, and so much more.

  No wonder the enemy wanted them dead.

  Ella pushed herself deeper into the crowd, found Sigwil and shouted at him to help her, to watch the skies for atta
cks. She also dug in her belt pouch for the last crunchy scraps of mavenstym blossom and ate them. If ever there was a time for more uai, it was now.

  More attacks came, Broken screaming down from the sky with swords and lances aimed at her chest. One of these nearly found its mark, Sigwil pushing her out of the way then spinning to strike his axe into its chest with the strength only an overcome brawler could muster.

  That’s when the weapons started flying. Her people were nearly out of the melon fields, more than halfway to Newgen, when a young man a few paces up from Ella in the churning, uai-rattled mass that was their escape formation sprouted a knife in one ear.

  He fell, screaming, and then knives and swords and spears were raining on them like hail, the Broken hurling weapons at them from all sides.

  It was devastating. The first to go down were the fighters on the edges, where the mindseyes and mosstongues were concentrated, the ones who could tune their harmonies. For the first time since the initial coordinated attack Ella felt their harmony falter, saw the sudden drop in protection as the brawlers surged five paces closer.

  That only made it worse, as their throws got shorter and their aim better. “Shields!” Aelya was shouting. “Use your arms, weapons, bodies, anything! Resonators to the middle!”

  But they had no shields—there’d been no use for them in the caves. They barely had weapons—not that it mattered now. There were plenty, if you wanted to pull them out of dying friends.

  Ella tittered a laugh, then recognized she was losing control. Bring it back. Focus. This was the enemy winning. The brawlers were pushing closer, the people around her starting to panic. As soon as their formation broke, and the harmonies split into individual resonances, they were done.

  She had to be smarter. Think past this strategy. They had no shields, so…

  “Wafters!” she yelled. “Take your yura, push the air! Push the weapons out!”

  Her voice was just one in a crowd, but Gil took up the cry beside her, and others. At some point Aelya heard and picked it up. About that time a wind rose around them, chaotic and swirling, but pushing mainly outward, against the grounded Broken, against their hail of daggers and spears.