Acolyte's Underworld

by Levi Jacobs

  Ella nodded. “Very well. You spoke earlier of blocking my thoughts off from him—is that something I can do without using the spear?” If the man happened to read her thoughts things would go bad very quickly.

  “You could,” Falena said, “with enough training. For now, I will just do it for you. Partially to protect you, and partially to protect myself—I cannot let him know of my involvement, or much of what’s happened here. It should protect you well enough to get in and out again.”

  “Give me one too,” Tai said. “Just in case.”

  “Very well,” Falena said, and her eyes grew distant.

  Ella’s mind… widened. She gasped, and Tai stumbled beside her. “What did you do?”

  “You cannot just block memories,” Falena said. “Your thoughts will still betray you. This will act as a filter, taking your actual thoughts and memories and revising them to match the history you give it. I’ve set it to a fairly standard past, but you can change that at any time by concentrating your attention on what you need your past and present story to be. It will take care of the rest, and should keep you secret to even the most accomplished of mindseyes.”

  “Thank you,” Ella said, marveling at the strange but familiar memories in her mind.

  “I want this to work as much as you do,” Falena said, “if for different reasons. Now I should go, before I foul your memories. Do not strike the full harmony again. If you need me, hold five of the six. I will come.”

  “Wait,” Ella said, suddenly feeling like they were doing exactly what the woman had wanted, instead of getting what they’d called her for. But Falena vanished in a clap of wind, leaving them alone with the moon and the breeze and a mission to kill a god.

  7

  The pact presents a number of challenges. The most interesting of which, how do I attack someone I have sworn not to touch? The answer, of course, is to get someone else to do it.

  —Archenault Teynsley, private letters

  Marea shed her heavy coat. Pulled off her heavy leggings for the lighter set underneath. Braided and tied her hair in the reflection of a haberdasher’s cast-glass window to reflect the latest fashion. Straightened her travel-worn clothes the best she could, scowling at her red-rimmed eyes in the reflection. This tired, travel-thin girl was not the person she wanted to be, but it would work for what she needed to do next.

  Money. Nawhin needed money, if she was going to hire that healworker before her daughter died. That was fine. Everything in the Councilate worked on money. Everything was up for sale. And if it wasn’t for sale, you could bet there were people ready to steal it.

  Enter a tired and travel-thin girl with pretty hair and tear-stained cheeks.

  Marea let her steps wander some, keeping her head down and senses up. The Racks was one of the safer districts in the city—too rich to harbor petty criminals, too middle-class to attract skilled predators—but every neighborhood in Worldsmouth had places a girl shouldn’t go. Marea knew them intimately from her mother’s warnings growing up, from the many times she had hurried past narrow alleys and dimly lit teahouses.

  Marea walked those alleys now, playing the lost and helpless daughter. Her mother would kill her if she saw, but her mother was already dead and Marea had her own murder to atone for.

  A figure detached from the wall ahead, features indistinct in the heavy shade. “You lost little one?”

  Marea snapped her head up, eyes feigning fear as she quickly read the surroundings: overturned barrel, shuttered windows, an argument coming muffled through stone walls. The place smelled of nightpails and mildew, with grimy cobblestones to match. She could use that.

  “Please,” she said, not having to work much to put the waver in her voice, “I don’t want any trouble. I just—I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  She could see the man’s smile despite the darkness. “I know somewhere we could go.”

  That was good enough. She doubted the man intended to bring her to an alms pantry, so he deserved what she was going to give him. Plus, she couldn’t give him enough time to lay hands on her, or this all would get stained fast. Instead as he approached, she created an alternate future in her mind: saw a foot misplaced on the filth-slick cobblestones. Heard his startled cry as he slipped backwards. Felt the impact through her feet as his body slammed down, skull first. Smelled the copper tang of blood from the minor wound in his head.

  And as the man reached for her, still cooing reassuring nothings, she struck resonance and willed it.

  His foot slipped. The man cried out. He fell backwards, but instead of the sharp crack of skull on cobblestone, his back made a wet thump. He cursed.

  Staining resonance never worked quite right. Marea darted in, pulling the heavy dagger she’d taken from the last man in an alley. She slammed it hilt-down between the thug’s eyebrows like Feynrick had shown her.

  Only instead of passing out the man howled, clutching his face where blood began to pour out. Scat, she’d hit his nose instead of his forehead. Not the resonance’s fault this time. Marea struck again, hard, but hit his left temple as the man rolled in pain.

  “Bottoms feed it girl!” he shouted. “I’m going to kill you!”

  Marea froze for a moment, determination wavering. She could just run. But no—she had work to do, and this man was obviously the right target. She could reverse the dagger and end him, but did he deserve death?

  Stop hesitating. Marea slammed the hilt down a third time.

  The man caught her wrist, growling deep in his throat, face a ruined mess.

  “Prophetstains!” Marea yelped, leaping up from the body and running down the alley. A roar sounded behind her and she ran harder, out of the narrow alley and into the late afternoon streets.

  At some point it registered that he was not behind her. She was safe. Plenty of people and lawkeeping stations around. Marea slowed, red fire coming into her cheeks as she felt the stares of a fyelocked woman clutching two children and a tailor leaning from his storefront.

  “What?” she barked to no one in particular, quickly checking herself for blood splatters or other signs of what she’d done. Nothing save a dark smear of alley filth along one leg of her wrappings.

  Marea washed it in one of the stone-lined drainage canals, sobs threatening to take her as she crouched bare-legged in the brackish water, avoiding the eyes of people passing by above. What was she doing? What had she been thinking, trying to overcome a grown man in a dark alley? She’d spent too much time around Ella and Tai, seen them do so many impossible things she’d started believing she could do them herself. And she could sometimes, when her luck was running right.

  She just hadn’t had much good luck in a while.

  Marea re-wrapped her legs and stood. It still left the problem of where to get money. She’d almost died trying to steal moons from a common thug, and while she wasn’t totally opposed to dying at the moment, it wouldn’t do anything to help Nawhin or Rena. Plus Nawhin’s doubt stuck with her. You seem like a nice girl. You don’t have to do this.

  Marea sighed, turning her steps toward Widow’s Hill. She knew another way to get it done. It felt about attractive as dying, but it would get her moons.

  She’d have to ask her family.

  8

  Marea walked The Racks’s long series of boulevards and bridges as the sun set in the west, inhaling the scents of charred fish and toasted rice in the air, feeling the damp descend as Worldsmouth’s nightly fog rolled in from the ocean, haloing the oil lamps hung along the street.

  How often had she dreamed of this moment, of showing up at House Fetterwel after living so long as an orphan among strangers? She remembered savoring the imagined expressions on her cousins’ faces, working long hours in the dark caves of Ella’s school in Ayugen. Dreaming of Lady Grena or cousin Cauleb wrapping her in their arms, saying they were so sorry for her loss and so happy to see her alive, telling her everything would be all right.

  It seemed so empty now. Everything wasn’t going to be all r
ight. She had killed someone since leaving. Knew herself for no better than the rebels that had killed her mum and dad back in Ayugen. Currents, she was friends with those rebels now. They were good people. Had risked their lives for her. Shown her things so strange and amazing there was no way her family would understand. Could understand.

  And so she felt like a foreigner even as the streets once again became familiar, The Racks’s clean lines blending into the wandering boulevards and manicured gardens of Widow’s Hill. Where street vendors would be calling out wares in the old city, or ringing chimes in The Racks behind their carts, here there was only austere silence, broken by music tinkling from walled compounds, the hushed conversation of the city’s elite taking spirits or early dinner on patios as evening mist replaced afternoon sun.

  She knew these streets less well, having only lived here a few years before transferring to the south, but still her feet carried her without fail. Would they even recognize her? She did not feel like the little girl that had left, no older than Rena back in Eyadin’s house. She didn’t feel like the orphan she had been in Ayugen, either—that was the strange part. Somewhere on the long wintry trek north chasing Semeca’s spear, she’d gotten over her grief, or her victimhood, or whatever she had been holding on to in the months following the rebellion. Had just been starting to stand on her own two feet, to feel like an asset instead of the liability she’d been her whole life.

  And then she’d lost everything again, and killed someone in the process. Now she was back, begging at her family’s House like a pretender to the bloodline. Hoping they’d scoop her up and fix her mistakes. A typical spoiled rich girl.

  Currents knew she wouldn’t do it if Rena wasn’t dying. But she was going to do something right for that family if it was the last thing she did.

  The gates were high and bound in ornate iron, though the wood needed oil and the iron brushing. Her father had always been the one to look after such things. What would the house feel like without him? Marea tried the gate—locked—then lifted the heavy knocker and pulled, imagining the sound of chimes inside, imagining who would hear, which of her family would be first to the gate. And despite herself, she felt a bit of cheer.

  But the face that opened the gate was strange, a woman ten or so rains older than Marea with a baby on her hip. She gave Marea a cold eye up and down. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I’m Marea Fetterwel,” Marea said, words coming out challenging. “Who are you?”

  The woman’s eyes widened in a satisfying manner. “Marea Fetterwel. But weren’t you—”

  “Killed? In the Ayugen rebellion? No. Mum and Dad were, but I survived. And I came back. I walked. So if you don’t mind, open the gates, huh?”

  The woman stepped back. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m Cauleb’s new wife, Lineila.”

  “Cauleb?” Marea asked, slowing in her footsteps. He was the closest of her cousins, born barely a month after her. He’d already married? “And that’s your—”

  Lineila nodded, bouncing the child on her hip. “This is your niece Ameila.”

  Cauleb had a child?

  Her surprise must have shown, because Lineila gave an apologetic smile. “A lot has changed since you left. Come. Most everyone is out, but papa and grandpa are here.”

  It felt strange to hear this stranger call her uncle papa and grandpa grandpa, but then, relatives by marriage were always strange at first. Still, she couldn’t believe Cauleb had married—at seventeen?

  The outer gardens looked little changed, though they were in need of pruning. That was something her mother had loved doing when bookwork allowed her time. Otherwise the help would see to it.

  The manor itself was a rambling three-story stone structure, not large by Widow’s Hill standards, but orders grander than their original estate in The Racks. Lineila lead her through the airing room, latticework walls and smoldering incense designed to keep the bugs out while letting the breeze in. Through the main sitting room with its high-backed chairs and gleaming teak floorboards. Up the spiraling staircase and to the right, the south wing having always been where her uncle’s family lived. Were her family’s things still in the north wing, she wondered, or were the rooms barren again?

  Lineila led her onto the rear patio, where the rise of the land created a protected sitting area edged with lime trees and wax-leaved allenbush, their delicate white blossoms fragrant in the last of the day’s heat. A single figure reclined in the large cushioned chairs there, sweat-beaded glass of dreamtea on an endtable next to him. Her uncle Brannel, head of House Fetterwel now that her father was dead.

  They’d never gotten on well.

  “Yes?” Brannel said without turning.

  “I,” Lineila started, obviously fearful of her father-in-law. Marea guessed the woman had come from a lesser House, married as part of some trading deal House Fetterwel had needed. Such was the lot of House daughters. “There’s a—”

  “It’s Marea, Branney.” He hated the nickname, but that way he’d know it was her. “Back from Ayugen.”

  “Marea?” The man twisted in his chair. He’d aged in the two years since Marea had seen him, white overtaking the pale yellow of his beard, cheeks grown softer. “But—we heard you were dead.”

  “I’m clearly not,” she said, thirteen-year-old sass coming out her mouth when what she needed was something more refined. Ella. She needed to be Ella.

  He started up from the seat. “And your father? Your mother?”

  “They’re gone.” She cleared her throat. “I tried to send word, but with the Councilate attacks and the rebels—”

  “Merciful gods, girl, did they harm you? Did they lock you up? Those savages.” He said the last word with anger, clenching a fist.

  They escorted me here, actually, when you failed to send help.

  “They didn’t,” she said aloud. “There was one other survivor in the city, Ellumia of House Aygla, and together we survived there until we could make our way back north.”

  “The Ayglas?” Brannel barked. “Well I suppose desperate times make for disparate friendships. But the river. Is it not still blocked at Gendrys? We lost tons of fiber to that cursed savage and his bottoms-feeding rapid.”

  Tai. Her uncle was talking about Tai. Better not to mention she knew the man, and had actually come around to respecting him. “It’s blocked and frozen,” she said. “We walked.”

  “Walked?” Lineila squealed. “In the cold? Across the Councilate? Currents girl, how long have you been afoot?”

  “About two months,” Marea said, reveling in their shock. This was more like it. No one in Tai’s party had seemed to think twice about it, but walking from Achuriland in the middle of their winter was insane. “We took a boat from the Yati hinterlands.”

  “The hinterlands?” Brannel spluttered, bushy eyebrows raising higher. “You passed through Yatiland?”

  “And spent a good deal of time in the Yershire as well,” Marea said. “I—a lot of things happened. But I am here now. I have nothing, but I’m a Fetterwel. I am ready to work for our House.”

  And to ask some things in return, she added silently. Asking anything from her uncle was going to be delicate work, no matter how impressed he was by her journey north.

  “Work,” Brannel snorted, then drank from his tea. “Plenty of that to go around these days, though it makes no coin.”

  “Losing the Ayugen contract must have been hard,” Marea said. Pulp for making paper was almost nonexistent this far north, and the southern forests had represented a fresh wave of cheap materials for her family’s paper mills.

  “Hard? It near ruined us,” Brannel said. “If I had your dad here again, I’d give him a good shake for abandoning us like this.”

  “Abandoning us?” Marea snapped. “He was cut down by rebels trying to get mom and I to safety. You know, fighting against savages? While you and yours were up here reading broadsheets and sipping dreamtea?”

  Brannel recoiled. It wasn’t the righ
t thing to say, but he deserved it. Her dad had done the best he could for their House and she would never let anyone say different.

  “We were working hard up here too,” Brannel said, setting his glass down on the wooden sideboard. “And have been doubly since the loss of that contract near shut down our mills. Now. What do you want?”

  Marea started. “I—want my rooms back. And money. I need money. But I’m willing to work for it.”

  “Oh, willing are you?” Brannel took another drink of iced dreamtea. “Things have changed since your father was alive, girl. What work we have we’re more than adequate to do ourselves. Eat up and brush up on your etiquette, if you want to do something for the House. Your marriage will be worth a lot more to us than anything else you can do. Balance out what your father lost us, maybe.”

  Marea bit back an angry remark and swallowed the revulsion at his talk of marriage. Marry was the last thing she wanted to do after her experience with Avery. But she needed this man’s help if she was going to hire Rena a healworker anytime soon.

  She schooled her voice to steadiness. “My father trained me in strategy and calculism and the major schools of economic theory. I can recite the primary through tertiary sources of income of the twelve Houses as well as all our competitors in forestry and milling. I can do more for us than get married.”

  “Strategy I can handle,” Brannel said, holding up a hand. “What I need from you is a pretty lighthaired face to get us some new forests. All the strategy in the world isn’t going to make enough pulp appear to keep our mills running.”

  “What of the Avensley tracts? Father purchased several forests on the south Ein specifically to shield us from instability around the yura trade.”

  “Mortgaged,” Brannel sighed, ticking a ringed finger against his glass. “Mortgaged to save us from the worst of the fallout, and no way Mattoy’s ever giving them back without twice what they’re owed.”