Pauper's Empire

by Levi Jacobs

  “Ready then, milady?” Feynrick asked, trotting up from where Tai and the rest had stopped within the forest so they wouldn’t be seen together. He wore a white soldiers’s jacket, twin rows of buttons down the front marking it as formal wear. With Feynrick’s unruly hair tucked into a crisp Councilate beret the man looked almost presentable.

  “You’re grinning too much,” she said, offering him her elbow. “No one in the Councilate’s that happy, remember?”

  “Aye,” he said, expression souring some. “That I do.”

  He was part of her cover: a loyal attache sent by her husband, a Councilate businessman who’d stayed on in Ayugen after the ousting to try and salvage the yura trade. He’d sent her to make contact with their House in Gendrys, as well as to ‘take some cultural air,’ which was Worldsmouth cipher for gathering to gossip and preen.

  Tai touched her arm. “Sure you’re okay with this?”

  “You’re the one doing the dangerous part. We’re just going for a walk around town.”

  And to hopefully infiltrate the army camp and discover how they were creating Broken—but no need to say that. Especially not here, where the scattered shacks and outbuildings of the town were likely to have ears.

  Tai nodded, though he clearly didn’t like her leaving. That was cute. Did he remember the part where she’d killed two Broken?

  The rebels and cart dropped back, allowing her and Feynrick to approach the town first. It wouldn’t do to look connected, and they both were counting on the element of surprise.

  Ella had a moment of vertigo on entering Gendrys proper. The air was chill, the forests on the outskirts undeniably southern, but there was something so familiar about the place after months in Ayugen. The oiled wood rafters and slate roofs, each doorframe carefully lettered with identifying numbers for tax collection and deliveries. The woman berating her child in low Yersh, the smell of bay leaf and smoked paprika from her cookpot, the stone-paved streets and shallow gutters clogged with kitchen waste. Gendrys was on the other end of the Ein from Worldsmouth, the other end of the world so far as most people were concerned, but it felt like home.

  She’d felt this way in Ealmand and Olsget too, in every port they’d stopped in on the three month journey from Worldsmouth to Ayugen. Every Councilate city was the same, gradually crushing out the flavor of local architecture, cuisine, and lifestyle, until what remained was a pale shadow of a thing not worth copying in the first place. It made her sick.

  Which also reminded her of home.

  The people felt familiar too, sallow-eyed Yershman with their colored-glass jewelry and loose leggings, come seeking fortunes or arable land, as the Yersh plains were so full of people farmers struggled to find plots to plant. There were richer lighthairs among them, walking with darkhaired retainers—as she was, Ella realized with a start—likely in Gendrys on House work and counting the days till they could return to civilization. Few of them gave her and Feynrick second glance, which was good. Much as she felt different, she wanted to look unremarkable.

  To their left a stone-bordered bakery displayed its wares on a large open counter, some of them still steaming from the ovens. That, at least, was not such an unwelcome sight. “Perhaps we’ll start here,” she said.

  “At a cake shop?” Feynrick raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Shush. Guards are not supposed to question their masters.”

  “Ain’t a guard, girl, I’m an attache. And next time you try to call yerself master, I’ll have a try at hog-tying my first timeslip.” His tone was light, but the man’s eyes never stopped scanning the street for trouble. She was glad to have him along.

  The proprietor of the shop, a mealy Yersh woman with a sweat-soaked headscarf, didn’t know much about the army or rumors of soldiers flying east, but she did make a delicious plum torte.

  “This how you gather information?” Feynrick asked after they had visited a second bakery, this one without tortes but offering a fine selection of macaroons. “By stuffing yourself with sweets?”

  “When I have to,” she said airily, finishing the last macaroon—almond and pear, she thought. Delicious. “This is what Worldsmouth women do, after all. Though I doubt there will be more than two bakeries in the town. Unless they have a chocolatier.” Unlikely, given that cacao was only brought in by Brineriders, and demand for it this far south likely wouldn’t support a whole shop. Still, a girl could hope.

  They stopped at a leatherworker’s next, Ella fingering a few filigreed belts and pearl-studded wristlets. “Where did you say you were from again?” the leathersmith asked, when she mentioned rumors of a secret project in the army camp.

  “The cove,” she said, still admiring the silver clasp on a wristlet. “Though the last six months we’ve been stuck in Ayugen. Phaw! My husband keeps saying the darkhairs will begin trading yura again, that they’ll need grain for winter. We’ll be rich, he says. Meanwhile I rot away, positively the only woman of culture left in the city. How much did you say this was again?”

  “Three hundred marks,” he answered, adjusting a hat over his fyelocke hair. “Forgive me saying so, but they haven’t killed you yet?”

  “Clearly not,” she said, setting the wristlet down. “The rebels aren’t so bad, for darkhairs. Still, I had hopes the army here had some plan to crush them, so I could finally enjoy good company.”

  “Not that I’ve heard of ma’am.”

  And so it went, down and back up Gendrys’s short main street, Ella shopping for everything she had a passing interest in, even attempting to get gossip from the fitting woman at an armory shop Feynrick insisted on visiting. No one seemed to know anything. Or they had been told not to talk, and were actually keeping their mouths shut, which seemed unlikely. Still, a town this small and this far south probably operated a lot differently than the docks had in Worldsmouth.

  “Ready to let me have a go?” Feynrick asked when they’d made a full circuit, and Ella was eyeing the torte shop a second time, trying not to feel discouraged.

  “What do you mean?” She was the one who knew the Councilate, could speak the language.

  “The army, is what I mean. They’re more likely to know something anyway.”

  Ella sat for a moment to rest on one of the stone benches thoughtfully arrayed along the main street. Her feet were beyond sore from four days of walking. “Would they talk to you? Aren’t Yatimen looked down on in the military?” They were the most recently colonized nation, meaning many Councilate soldiers had likely seen time fighting or patrolling in Yati territory.

  Feynrick snorted. “They’re just jealous, cause our shoulders are wider and backs stronger. Every legion’s got Yati in it these days.”

  “Will they be thrown off by the presence of a woman?”

  He grinned. “Hardly. We’ll be talking in Yati, y’understand, but I’ll make sure they stay polite.”

  She pulled the shawl closer over her bare shoulders. “I’m sure you will.”

  Humor aside, the walk across the open field from Gendrys town to the army camp was intimidating. It looked like a sea of beige tents from here, and the place crawled with Councilate soldiers cooking, training, and dicing in the afternoon sun. To think that all of them were here to take Ayugen back. That most of these men wouldn’t hesitate to kill both of them if they knew they were rebels. Ella straightened her back, adjusted her hair, and patted the pouch in her sleeve where she carried a packet of mavenstym blossoms, in case she needed more uai. They would be fine.

  Feynrick steered them off the main road to the camp as they approached, wandering instead between the sawed-off stumps of trees toward the east end of the tents.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from the high-ups. They’re always in the center of camp. Usually put the darkhairs on the outside, create a buffer against attacks.”

  Ella was unsurprised to find he was right—red and black hair thickened as they got away from the main road, and men began nodding at Feynrick, some of them glancing at her
and saying something in Yati or Seinjaliese.

  “What are they saying? Feynrick if you’re telling them I’m your wife…”

  “Relax, woman. Soldiers don’t bring their wives on campaign.”

  By the time she realized what type of women they would bring, Feynrick had waylaid another Yatiman, this one reedy with the bloodshot eyes of a dreamleaf addict. The two talked in the rolling tones of Yati, too fast for Ella to make out a thing. Markels had theorized that Yati and Achuri were related languages, stemming from a common mother tongue around the Prophet’s time. Then again, Markels had argued all languages were descended from the same tongue, lighthaired and dark—a thesis not well-received by Worldsmouth scholars.

  Feynrick spat and grinned, saying something to the thin man and clapping him on the back. He nodded at her and they kept walking. “Learn anything?” she asked in low tones.

  “Something’s afoot, that’s for sure. Officers been coming round the place a few times a week, asking for volunteers. Most of ‘em get sent back, apparently. Yrfet was one of em, said they just took him in a room and asked him a lot questions, then sent him back.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Pumped if I know. Something about his dreams, his feelings, scat like that. Yrfet wasn’t too specific.”

  “Well keep asking about it. The nature of the questions could be important.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, giving her a mock salute.

  They entered into the tents then, Feynrick exchanging a greeting here or a few words there. She had to give it to him, the man was good at what he did, at least among Yatimen. Where she had failed to get anything from the shopkeepers and townspeople, he quickly found out where the army’s secret project was located, the names of the officers in charge, and details about the kinds of questions volunteers were asked.

  “Whether they talked to their ylestigs or not—their voices, that is—and what kinds of things they talked of.”

  Ella frowned. They were sitting in the dim interior of a canvas tent while the Yatiman Feynrick had been talking to ran to a neighbor’s tent for a hunk of goat lard to melt in their tea. “And the Councilate is rejecting the ones who don’t talk much to them, or don’t argue with them?”

  “Just the opposite. The ones the boys’d seen arguing with themselves, or just talking a lot, they’re getting sent back, like Fellrig here. They send back the quiet ones too. Seems like they’re taking ones in the middle, who talk to themselves sometimes, but don’t seem too bothered by it. And none of em come back out to tell the tale.”

  Ella shook her head. “Why would they be taking the middling ones? The quiet ones usually failed yuraloads, yes, but the talkative ones were most likely to succeed. Surely they know that.”

  “And the ones in the middle?”

  “They’re the ones who died.” A coldness spread in her stomach. They were taking the ones most at risk? This was definitely something different than yuraloading.

  “Well, that’s all for you to figure out. I’m just a soldier. Fellrig!” he cried, greeting the man as he ducked back into the tent.

  The goat-lard tea was awful, and Ella sat through a few more cups of it before it seemed they’d learned all they could.

  It wasn’t enough.

  “We need to get in there,” she said, nodding to the large circular tent in the center, where the volunteers went.

  “Dangerous in there,” Feynrick said, leaning against a water trough in a small common area. “Hard to get out if things go wrong. Ye haven’t learned enough?”

  “No. All I’ve got are more questions. Look, plan A, we use my story to get in and see the process. Say my husband’s curious.”

  “And plan B?”

  “Plan B I use my resonance, timeslip in while you distract whoever’s at the gate, and see what I can see too fast for them to notice.”

  Feynrick’s eyebrows raised, still scanning the camp around them. “Plan B’s more dangerous yet. You sure you’re up for that?”

  “If we don’t figure out how they’re doing this, figure out how to stop it, then Ayugen’s dead, and all of us with it.” She took a deep breath, thinking about home, and what Tai said about fighting for it. “So yeah, I’m up for it. Let’s go.”

  22

  Tai couldn’t help feeling he was walking to the gallows. He was full of uai, had five solid militiamen at his back, and could fly faster than even the Councilate’s Broken—but still, this felt like an execution. A parley, on their front doorstep?

  Too late to stop now.

  They walked through the strange town in silence, light- and darkharied townspeople ignoring them, likely taking them for smugglers or traders. There were plenty of Achuri here, too, though for the most part the voices he heard drifting from windows and shopfronts spoke Yersh.

  The town of Gendrys was strange—here and there a familiar Achuri hut still stood, but for the most part it looked like Newgen had pushed beyond its walls and swallowed a small village in square-walled stone houses, precise glass windows, and the strange scents of lighthair food.

  “That was easy,” Dayglen said, scratching at his chin. “Maybe we should bring a few more men next time.”

  “You forget the giant army camped outside of town,” another spat, hands belying his casual tone as they kept tugging at the hilt of his sword.

  Tai tried to summon a confident voice. “It’s not going to stay easy. Dayglen, I want you with me. Mindread what you can. The rest of you, no reason to risk yourselves. Lay low in the town, see what you can learn. We’ll meet you back in the forest.”

  The other men melted away, and Tai finished the walk with Dayglen, two former street thugs turned rebels, about to parley with some of the most powerful people in the world.

  A pair of white-coated soldiers waited at the far end of the main street, where the land ended and the first of two long bridges arched over the confluence waters to the steep-walled Councilate fort.

  “Halt,” the lead man among the soldiers called, speaking in proper Yersh. “Who approaches the bridge?”

  “Freemen and militia of the New Republic of Ayugen,” Tai answered in the same proper Yersh, “on invitation of the Council for parley.”

  The speaker frowned. The other soldier gaped at them. “Say what?”

  “We are representatives of Ayugen,” Tai repeated, slower, “here to parley with the Gendrys Council, on their invitation. We will meet them on the middle island.”

  The man glanced at each other, and after a brief conference the gaper took off across the bridges. The other turned back, looking more uncertain. “You’ll, ah, need to remove your weapons.”

  “We’ll do no such thing,” Tai said. They’d briefly considered having Dayglen negotiate in his place, but Tai would need to make decisions quickly at the parley, and if things went wrong it would rapidly be clear who he was anyway. “But you can walk behind us, if it makes you feel safer.”

  The soldier did exactly that, leading them across the massive length of iron, their footsteps echoing strangely in the middle. He had never been on a bridge so long, or so high, and this one was wide enough for a wagon to cross. The Councilate was beyond them in so many ways.

  And beneath them in so many others.

  There was little but stonework railings on the central island, an oblong plateau perhaps twenty paces across jutting from the waters, and Tai settled in to wait. The view from here was dramatic, wide Ein flowing between forested cliffs to the south, eventually to the At’li ice sheet and the wide ice cave he’d heard the river originated in. To the east rushed the Genga, narrower and full of froth at the series of rapids he’d created on the day of the ousting. A crew was at work down there, men standing waist high in the water while others whipped a team of beasts hitched to one of the rocks near the shore, apparently trying to pull it out.

  Their harness broke and Tai grinned. At that rate it would be decades before the Councilate had the river clear again. Plenty of time to drop more stones.
>
  “Action,” Dayglen muttered, and Tai turned to see people issuing from the fort’s gate at the far end of the second bridge. He expected to see soldiers, but instead those were—

  “Achuri?” he asked aloud. “Carrying chairs?”

  That’s exactly what it was: a wave of darkhaired servants, arms full of tables and chairs and linens and trays of food and drink. They bustled across the long iron bridge under the command of a pinch-mouthed lighthair woman, who nodded to Tai curtly and began directing the servants how to arrange furniture, starting with a large ornate rug she had them lay directly over the grass and road.

  “Pardon, brother,” a servant said in Achuri, another saying, “Excuse us, friends.”

  Dayglen looked as bewildered as Tai felt. He glanced at the lighthair in charge, but doubted she understood Achuri. “You don’t have to be here, big sister,” Tai said to a stocky woman arranging an embroidered tablecloth over the long circular table at the center of the unfolding finery. “You can come and join us.”

  She spoke without looking up from her work. “That’s kind, little brother, but I have a family here, children to keep. My man went to you some months back and hasn’t returned. I can’t risk any more.”

  Tai’s stomach clenched. The Ghost Rebellion had lost a lot of good men in the days before the ousting. “I am sorry for your loss, older sister. We’re here to talk sense into the Councilate. Ancestors send after today Ayugen will be a safer place for you.”

  “Aye,” she answered, pulling an end of the immaculate white cloth. “Ancestors send it is.”

  In a few minutes the rocky island had been transformed into a strangely ornamented outdoor restaurant, full of frills and lace and surrounded by tables heavy with food. Was this intentional? Did they know Ayugen was struggling with food?

  “Not what I was imagining,” Dayglen said, pulling at one of the chairs.

  Tai nodded. “Nor I, brother. The Councilate is strange.”

  The servants left, a few of them casting backward glances, and were soon followed by a much stranger procession. Ten people, most of them silver-haired, left the wide gates of the fort and approached the island at a languid pace, stopping in places to gesture at something in the distance, a few of them sipping glasses of colored liquid.