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

by L. W. Jacobs

  His heart lurched, wanting to go out there, to fight, and knowing he needed to stay here. Because the part of his mind that had kept him alive on the streets, that doubted everyone’s intentions and always looked for the reason behind the reason, said that Semeca was not only attacking to defeat the Achuri. She was attacking to distract him, because she knew he would react this way.

  Which meant if he overcame his voice, she knew he would have a chance against her.

  So he shut it all out, the screams, the fear, the panic, the ornate Councilate bedchamber. He either defeated Naveinya now, or they all died.

  63

  Ella flexed her resonance, looking for a completing third note, cursing her inattention in music lessons. There. The medium pitch of her resonance dropped in beside the deeper buzz and rattle of Tindwal and Arela, fitting somehow into a chord that felt… uplifting?

  She watched Tai for a response. It was hard, in slowed time, but he looked unchanged. How long would it take? How long could she stay in slip while he worked on it?

  Not long. She adjusted her resonance, slurring time faster to drop her pitch, though to her bones it felt more like Tindwal and Arela’s resonances rose. There—a different chord. More melancholy. Was that what he needed?

  Her theory was simple: the overcomings she’d seen on the walkway had been mostly at places where resonating pairs overlapped, and had consciously or unconsciously tuned with each other, creating a harmony with four tones instead of two, a chord, that carried mood as well as just order. And something about that mood matched the internal struggles of the resonators who overcame. Whether it was a melancholy chord for the melancholy struggles, or a happy chord that helped the melancholy ones out, she had no idea and no time to research. But with Semeca in the Tower and Tai too wounded to fight, she had to at least try. It was that or give up and wait for someone else to save or destroy them. And that went against everything in her to the core of her confused, not-Councilate not-Achuri being.

  She tsked in the basso silence of slip, noting no change. Maybe not melancholy either. What then? Ella flexed her resonance again, seeking a new chord.

  64

  Feynrick roared and hurled his axe, but the cursed woman was a force of nature. Fast as a slip. Flying like a wafter. Strong as a brawler. And dodging everything they threw at her like a mindseye deep in concentration. Was she a genitor finally come back to life? But no, no genitor would consent to anything other than properly red hair.

  The axe went wide and the revenant-genitor-thing smiled again, slamming another swathe of people into stone walls, himself among them. Stars exploded but he was already shouting, ordering more men up the walkways. He might be dreamleaf-addled and half-dead, but he wasn’t stupid. A general only charged the front lines if he was desperate for a hole to push his men through, and though this woman fought like no general he’d ever seen, she still wouldn’t risk it unless she needed an opening. In this case a way through the field of resonance harmony they were creating on the walkway, that somehow didn’t affect her.

  Which meant all this was a diversion to keep them on the ground, as she picked off pairs of resonators up above.

  Where the milkweed was.

  Her insane push against them stopped, people around him dazed but no one actually dead. Feynrick struck resonance—pissing dogs that was nice to be able to do without yura—and the surge of strength cleared his mind. Militiamen were running up the walkway, but they would need all the help they could get, and there was little more he could do down here.

  He barreled past them, wincing as the figure in white darted in up above, and a twin pair of screams told of a resonating pair gone. Of another hole in their delicate web of defense. “Out of the way! Sorry! Barking lizards man, move!” he roared, shoving his way higher up. Whatever the woman was, she wasn’t invicible, else she’d not bother dodging the shower of arrows and axes they’d thrown her way on first contact. Which meant one man could do her in, if he got lucky. Feynrick had never been lucky.

  Maybe this was his time.

  The revenant-god-woman dropped into view, striking towards the next pair of resonators, half a turn up the spiral staircase.

  Half a turn. He could do that.

  Feynrick sprinted, pulling his other axe. Semeca smashed in ahead, two quick slashes opening two throats. She would be pulling back now, which meant if he aimed about there…

  Feynrick took the railing in one stride and leapt off with another, brawler’s strength launching him like a spooked antelope over a ravine. He arced out in air—the woman hadn’t seen him yet, wafting back from the walkway. He pulled his axe back for a blow that would cut her right in half—

  Then a high-pitched cry cut through the chorus of screams and shouts. Her head snapped left.

  So did his. He knew that cry, though it sounded time-shifted like a slip—the milkweed.

  Semeca shot that direction, half a moment before his axe split the air where she’d been. He bellowed in frustration, momentum of the strike spinning him right around as he started to drop, courtyard full of debris a bone-breaking fall beneath.

  65

  Tai growled, groping and shoving and straining against Naveinya. It was beyond words now, beyond arguments about leadership or worthiness or any of that. It was beyond all the emotions that came up, the fear and pain and anger and doubt. None of that had gotten her out, and none of it mattered. He knew from the cheers of his people that he was the one they wanted to lead. Felt in his bones he would defend them even if they didn’t want him. And still the revenant clung on.

  So the fight wasn’t about words or thoughts or feelings. It was down to raw willpower now. And Naveinya was a mecking mule.

  He clenched his teeth, pulling at her like an old skin made of stabs, every fingerhold coming with pain, his very body seeming to resist her leaving even as he knew he needed it.

  Ella blurred above him, her resonance shifting in and out of phase with Tindwal and Arela’s, seeming to strike different harmonies he felt as much as heard, each one a new landscape beneath his feet as he fought Naveinya.

  The battle outside echoed through the open door, Tower shaking under him. Semeca would cut a big enough hole soon. He didn’t have time to waste.

  Give up give up give up give up Naveinya was chanting, ten hands forming for every ten he pried off.

  Get out get out get out he chanted back, determination growing with every passing second, the shifts in Ella’s harmony around them almost like tides, bringing Naveinya in or pulling her out. Ella struck a new one, deep and strong, and he felt the revenant’s grip finally, mercifully start to loosen.

  “There!” he roared, unsure if she could hear, unsure if he was even shouting out loud. “That one!” A few more seconds of this—

  But Ella wasn’t listening. Her face had snapped up, staring out the door with wide eyes. That could mean only one thing.

  Semeca.

  66

  Ella shifted resonance again, desperation growing inside. Was this even working? Was there something she didn’t see, some other clue she needed to get Tai free?

  He rolled and sweated beneath her, eyes wide and unseeing, mumbling then shouting as more screams and thuds sounded in the Tower’s central chamber. At some point she’d realized Tai was moving regular speed, his cries audible above the resonance-lowered rumbles of the world around them. She’d extended slip to him, like she had months ago in the Councilate prison—this must be the second resonance of a timeslip, something she’d never had time to explore. Good. He needed all the time he could get, even if it burned her uai faster.

  It was easier to read his cues this way too—and this chord wasn’t working. She sought out another one, trying to find something different than the ones she’d used. How many were there? If only Lumo were here, he could probably tell her. There—her resonance slipped into the others’ again, tenuously, this one feeling almost dissonant even as it was majestic.

  Tai sucked air. Did that mean it was working? W
ith her free hand Ella stuffed more mavenstym in her mouth, backbones burning. A particular rumble sounded above the others outside, almost familiar despite the lowered pitch. She looked out the open door to see Feynrick, drifting suspended in air above the yawning central space of the Tower. What was he doing? A leap like that was suicide.

  She understood when a lighthaired face crept into view, wicked scar creeping down her neck. Fear clutched her belly, at the same time as hope. Semeca was here, but Feynrick was going to kill her. Had sacrificed himself to do it—strike home or not, he wouldn’t survive that fall.

  His axe descended in slow motion, even as Tai roared something beneath her. Semeca’s eyes snapped to them, meeting Ella’s through the door.

  Fear and hope pounded her with each heartbeat, hammer and anvil to her heart. Was Tai overcoming? Would Semeca kill them before he finished? Would Feynrick kill her first?

  The last question was answered a moment later, as Semeca glided toward them and Feynrick’s axe made a lazy arc through the place the Councilate woman should have been.

  Sweet prophets. It was down to Tai now. Tai and this resonance she was holding. “Fare thee well, Feynrick,” she whispered in Old Yersh.

  No. It was not down to just Tai now. Feynrick had done what he could. She would too.

  Ella stood, moving achingly slow, doing her best not to give away that she was in sped-up time. She had fought Semeca once before, and failed miserably. She likely couldn’t beat her no matter what she did—she was not so foolish, or so brave, as Feynrick. But she could slow her down, give Tai as much time as she could.

  And that first meant not giving the woman any advantages. Holding the strange chord Ella made her way to the door in feigned slowness, hating every moment it took but knowing her slip was the only potential advantage she held against Semeca.

  That, and intelligence. She could be smarter. She would be smarter.

  She shut the door, letting herself return to normal speed. Semeca had been just a pace or two away outside, but that would give her plenty of time. She locked it for good measure, then grabbed Tai. He was right where he’d fallen, directly in Semeca’s path. Stupid on their part to leave him where he could be seen, but it had all happened so fast.

  She dragged him over the fine carpet, wincing at the purple discoloration in his left arm. He was still moaning and sweating, but was that a more positive tone to his moans?

  Impossible to tell. Fear struck her again at the thought of Semeca killing them. No, not fear—sorrow. There had always been something between her and Tai, something more than the resonances and the rebellion and the project of Ayugen, and there’d never been time to explore it. She hadn’t made time to explore it.

  And now they might all die. She positioned herself behind the door, about where she thought Semeca would hit. Scatwater, it seemed like every day they might all die, and here she’d been with her nose still in books the whole while. What had he said, at that campfire on the way to Gendrys? On the streets, you take every chance you get to enjoy yourself, because you never know when the next one’s coming.

  The door began to bulge inward, moving with the glacial slowness of true slip. Oh, hells. She was crazy but—

  “Turns out it’s not just true on the streets,” she said, running from the bulging door to drop a kiss on his lips. His cheeks were rough, and lips wet with something she thought might be blood, but it still made her heart race in a way entirely different and better than it had the last twelve hours.

  Ella ran back and pressed the sword to the door, grinning like a schoolgirl stealing sweets. At least she’d done that. She could explain later, if he remembered.

  She kind of hoped he did.

  Then the door exploded open, sword ripped from her hand, and she slammed against the back wall.

  67

  Tai awoke to a kiss. At least, he thought that’s what it was, Ella’s face hovering over his for just a moment, silken hair brushing his cheek. Thoughts sparkled in that hair, memories, sliding like beads of rain down each glossy strand to wet his cheek, to sink into his skin, bringing images and emotions and memories. Somewhere Naveinya screamed and cursed, gone now, or going, her cries drowned out in an incoming roar of uai.

  In those beads he saw a grand city built on a giant delta, island mansions gradually giving way to house barges and ornate boats. Smelled grapefruit rind and unwashed hair, pacing a room with a single window high up on one wall. Lived through endless days and lonely nights by candlelight, unable to sleep, reading book after book about a world denied to her.

  Ella. These were Ella’s memories, Ella’s life. Somewhere distantly he knew that, did not want to intrude, but could no more stop the flood of thoughts than he could stop the uai rushing into him like a broken dam of insight. A mindseye. Naveinya had been a mindseye, or given him that power when she left. And now it dilated his mind, uai driving his consciousness out into the world.

  Tindwal—he could sense the man’s thoughts too, read them through the floor, through the air he exhaled, bright memories of seven children and an open-walled carpentry shop in Riverbottom in the years before the Councilate came, of long treks through the southern forest to visit his grandparents in the outlying villages, of fist-fights and passionate lovemaking with Arela in the years before the occupation.

  Arela was there too—not just her physical form, eyes wide as the door swung open in comically slow motion—but her emotional body, the ache for children lost, the longing for simpler times, the fear for her husband and friends if Tai did not overcome.

  Tai. He recognized the name. That was himself. One eddy of emotions and thoughts in this river of many, that swelled out now as the uai current raged, sweeping up the ancient one pushing in the door, the comical one now falling to his death, the scared and breathless Achuri still holding resonance on the walkway, or awaiting death in the courtyard below. To include the hundred insane Broken minds slaved to a single master swirling in the darkness outside, their thoughts and memories a murmur under heavy blankets, not to be known, not to be given life.

  Insane. He was going insane. This was too much, too many, a flood of consciousness never meant for a single mind, splitting him wide open, pushing him outside time and space. He could sense the senses of animals sparking in the woods, the gray squirrels hopping cautiously into an abandoned city, the deer standing head raised in the forest scenting smoke, the pack of three children hidden in the back closet of a bluffhouse three chambers down from Marrem’s, afraid in the dark and silence.

  A mindseye. He was a mindseye now. A mindseye unable to close, unable to focus, flooded with light till the retinas burned, uai dilating till no color showed, just a raw flood of cognition.

  He gasped, grasped, reached out into it for anything to hold to. Even Naveinya was better than this. Even death.

  No. Not death. That was what all feared here, the same emotion beating in a thousand chests: death from the Broken, death from the Tower’s collapse, death from the fires, death from the master throwing them again and again into the face of danger.

  Among this torrent of fear one mind stood out. Not unafraid, no: she was as afraid as the rest. Her fear was just older, deeper, a thing ingrained through centuries of survival, millenia. Gods. Ancestors. She was an ancestor. Had watched children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren perish. Knew them even now, her descendants spread far across the world, a single dusty tome kept in a chest in her private mansion at estate Fenril, written in a dead language, updated every few decades as she ventured out and had a chance to meet them each in passing. The mixed sorrow and joy of a mother lived to see her children flourish a hundred generations, to become every shape and height and hair color and creed the world held, to have forgotten her and yet still be her, the potter’s third daughter in an age forgotten, who rose to conquer the world.

  Semeca. Semeca Fenril. Only that was not her name. There were many names, some forgotten, written over an even older one.

  Aymila. Her name was Ay
mila.

  Something lashed out at the name, trying to push against the current, but his uai was a springmelt torrent, flooding its banks, washing everything away with it. He saw whole cities built around standing stones, the people there buoyant and bright, speaking of the Prophet like a friend. Watched her father work bright red ochre into intricate designs on the sloping sides of giant pots.

  Get out a voice raged, shocked and offended under her constant baseline of fear. Aymila. This was Aymila, the experiencer of these thoughts. Distantly he knew she was coming into the room where he lay, a white clad figure with a livid scar down her neck—earned in the last true attempt on her life, in the mountains Brayglen now claimed—but she was moving so slowly.

  Laughter there, though it felt forced. The first thing a mindseye learns, young Tai. The speed of the body cannot match the speed of the mind. Just as a newly awakened eye cannot match the focus of one trained for long years.

  Aymila. She was talking, spitting that he not use that name, but he ignored her, following this new train of emotion, of outrage and derision and fear backwards, climbing it like a mountain stream toward its source, toward whatever ice birthed it in the high peaks. The fear—he knew it was important. Remembered that, from his time as just-Tai. That Aymila was afraid had been important, had been the key, but that felt lifetimes ago. Only curiosity remained now. Curiosity and wonder, at all these lives but most especially at hers, this single life longer than the rest combined.

  Outrage from her deepest memories being seen. Follow that stream back to years of loneliness, of never telling anyone the truth. Back to a time centuries earlier when she had had a lover, had told her everything and been understood despite the gap. Back still to the lonely centuries before that, to the very early days when she had still had her family around her, to the unspeakable loneliness of a child outliving her parents, then her brothers, then her children, and their children, until she could bear to have no more.