by L. W. Jacobs
Sablo arched his eyebrows as they reached the doorway. “Across the ocean? That’s a dangerous journey for a young woman.”
Ella arched an eyebrow. “I would be the first from the Councilate, but what of that? We have a woman on the Council now, and I read women are plentiful among the local scholars in the Thousand Spires.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Well, if there’s any help I can offer you, let me know.” He held a hand to her as she stepped onto the bridge.
She turned to him and smiled. “I will. Thank you…” She looked for a word. Colonel? “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your rank.”
“Arbiter.”
Ella almost dropped her handbag. It was the highest rank in Ayugen, one of maybe a hundred in the whole Councilate. No wonder the men had responded to him. “Arbiter Sablo. Thank you very much.”
He nodded. “And if you need any help recovering your goods, or anything else”—his eyes lingered on hers a moment—“my rooms are in the tower.”
She nodded and, with a squeeze of his hand, took her leave, remembering a line from a keisua memoir: Less speech is more. A man fills in silence with his own desires.
The Arbiter. Descending gods.
Ella walked back into the sunshine with a bounce in her step. Suddenly, a loss of six thousand moons didn’t seem like a big deal—calculors worked their whole lives to take on patrons of his rank. “If you need anything,” she mouthed, arching his eyebrows, “just let me know.”
Ella, you’re not a calculor. I thought we’d established that.
“Still,” she shrugged, “doesn’t hurt to have friends.”
She looked around and made a few more inquiries, but Odril had left her another thick stack of books, and she spent the bulk of the afternoon as a dutiful calculor, working figures and collating files. Tunla came late in the afternoon to cook supper, and they talked on little things, but generally, there was a feeling of waiting, of the house being on hold until Odril’s return.
It was stifling.
When Odril did arrive, he went straight to his study and worked another hour while Tunla cooked on the roof. He seemed more disturbed than usual when he came out, and the meal was unbearably quiet—not the content quiet Ella might share with Captain Ralhens but the tense quiet of children afraid their father was angry.
“Ella,” Odril pushed his plate away half-finished. “You will attend me in my chambers.”
Tunla shot her a look and Ella winked back. If nothing else, she had her yura.
“It has come to my attention,” he said, once they were in the cluttered space, “that you have trouble following orders.”
Stains—he’d seen her. Play dumb. “I’m sorry?”
“Orders.” He turned back, sallow face angry. “I gave you a specific set of orders today, to stay indoors and await my return. Instead, I hear you are walking the streets of Newgen like a free woman.”
“I—I’m sorry, but I am a free woman. And I’ve done all the work required of me today.”
“What’s required of you is that you obey the terms of the contract, and they require you to stay here until I say different!”
Ella kept a firm check on her anger. “Then perhaps we need to discuss the terms of the contract. I am grateful for your help, but there’s only so much you can ask in return.” And if he asked too much, she now had the favor of Ayugen’s arbiter to help her through.
“There’s nothing to discuss. You signed it. You agreed to it. It’s all there, the law’s there, and the law is on my side. Or have you forgotten I’m the only thing keeping you out of a Councilate prison for licensure fraud and theft, and now contractual violations?”
Anger rose up again, harder. “I haven’t forgotten.”
He cocked his head. “Well, you seem to have trouble remembering. So, from now on, every one of your little violations is going to cost you. Let’s say…three hundred moons? Added to the debt you already owe me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Three hundred moons?”
“Not enough? Too much? Five hundred, then, let’s say. I can do it; it’s within my rights in the contract.”
“To hell with your contract!”
“A thousand, then!” There was a perverse glee in his eyes, and the urge arose to smash it out of them. “That’s seven thousand you owe me, eight including yesterday!”
“That’s fishscat.” It took everything she had not to bite down on the yura, to attack him with whatever she could get her hands on. “You can’t do this to me!”
His grin was sick as he approached. “Oh, I can do whatever I want. You don’t get it, do you? Didn’t study this in whatever backwater school taught you to add numbers? I own you, little girl. Your books, your money, your pretty little body, it’s all mine.” He was right against her now, smell of fish on his breath. “Mine mine mine.”
Blackness swam in her vision. Ella ground yura between her teeth, swallowed, felt the energy rise, and struck her resonance.
She felt the air thicken, and Odril’s breath slowed against her cheek. Ella looked around for a weapon, anything to—
Ellumia. Slow down. What are you doing?
She was halfway across the room, rifling through his desk. “I’m teaching him he can’t control me,” she said, voice low and mean. “Like I should have done years ago.”
No. You’re being stupid. If you hurt him, he will turn you in. If you kill him, someone else will turn you in. Either way, the Arbiter’s no help, and you have the lawkeepers actively hunting you.
“Just a little hurt, then. Enough to teach him.”
No. Think about it. Did you hear what he said?
“That he owns me.”
And what else?
Her money. He said he owned her money. “What the hell?”
What if he’s your thief?
“Motherscatterer!” Ella turned to the drawer with new purpose. What if Odril was the thief? It made a certain kind of sense—he’d been a client, knew that she had money on the ship. And the contract—he’d had the contract already written up. For his other calculors, he’d said, but—
There was nothing in the drawers, the piles of documents near the bed. He could have deposited the money already, though—put it in a Newgen bank, or just hid it out of the house somewhere. She rifled through more piles of documents, checked under furniture, felt down all the clothes in the wardrobe.
Not here. Ella slipped out of his room, air thick around her, Odril barely moved from when she’d struck her resonance. The room down the hall was for storage, a total mess of boxes and clothes and luggage and furniture. Ella started working, knowing her resonance would run out, knowing she should get back, but she had a gut feeling now. It just made too much sense—the contract, the possessiveness, the snide way he treated her. And if it wasn’t him, she needed to know so she could keep searching tomorrow.
She sorted through clothes and papers and books and trunks, getting more desperate now as time grew short. Ella spotted a brown trunk she recognized from leaving the boat, opened it, rifled through clothes.
And there it was. The ceramic bust of Markels, gazing at her with his stately eyes, as though she’d never lost it. Empty, save for a few shreds of cotton wadding.
Odril was her thief.
“Currents stain it!” she cursed again, something dark rising inside. She would kill him. She would smash the bust against his head, smash it until he bubbled and bled and begged to give her money back. Then she really would kill him.
A light appeared in the hallway. It moved at regular speed, not the quarter- or eighth-speed of someone in nonslipped time—but she was still resonating, still felt the rush.
Before she could put it together Odril was there in the door, candle flame bent backwards by the speed of his approach.
He grinned. “Found your little statue, did you? You might as well have it back.”
Odril was timeslipping. Odril was a timeslip. Which meant she had no advantage on him “Prophet curse you!”
> He smiled again. “What a funny coincidence—somebody steals all your money, and then somebody else tells just the right person—that old moralist Olgsby—that you’re not a real calculor at all, and then Ralhens has to throw you off the ship, and you’ve got no money at all, and no one will take you. No one but little old Odril, who happened to have a contract all written up and ready.” He snorted. “And you fell right into it.”
Darkness swirled in Ella’s vision. He was talking again, saying something, but she couldn’t hear the words. She had no advantage on him now—none but anger.
It was plenty.
Ella ran at him, statue in hand. He held up a hand to stop her, but she swung hard, weight of the heavy bust forcing his arm back to slam against the side of his head. Odril bellowed, stumbling, and she struck again, black anger rising.
He caught her blow this time, slapped her hard with his other hand. The bust flew from her hand, bouncing along the floor, and she clawed for his eyes with her left hand. He caught it, and they struggled for a moment, his physical size against the force of her anger. Then she kneed him in the crotch and he howled, doubling over. She scrabbled for his face, caught her hand in his hair, and slammed him into her knee, again, again. Ella dropped him and went for the bust, possessed with anger, with revenge.
The resonance guttered out as she did, and she spun to see Odril recover in triple time, then she was pinned against a pile of coats, slapped, slapped again, head bouncing faster than she could follow, his words a high-pitched garble of rage. Droplets of blood flew, at least, and even in her desperation, she smiled, knowing they were his. Then something coarse bound her hands and feet.
Odril dropped out of timeslip, panting, furious. “—sow. Whore sow. I was going to keep you for a while, play with you before I turned you out. No matter. You’re going now.”
Ella snarled, pulling at her bonds. They were tight as iron. “Going where?”
He grinned, eyes beginning to swell, blood running from both nostrils. “Where you belong.”
9
Tried copper, iron, Achuri cave moss. Gave up on it all, taking my loss.
—inscription on cave wall, Ayugen
Tai froze, giant man aiming the crossbow at his chest.
“Shoulda warned you about this,” Ilrick said, toweling off to one side. He flashed a smile. “But don’t worry; we’ll settle you soon, one way or another.”
Tai wanted to ask more questions, but the big man gestured for him to move, and he decided maybe it was the wrong time. They probably weren’t going to kill him, at least—there’d been a hundred easier ways for Ilrick to do that earlier, including leaving him to the colliers. But why the crossbow?
And who were these people?
They marched Tai down a long, narrow passageway, crossbow at his back, Ilrick running ahead. They came out into a tall chamber, lit by a ring of glassed-in lamps. Two men lounged on cushions there, another standing near the door next to Ilrick.
“Stop there,” the man near the door commanded. He was big—not as tall as Tai but broader through the arms and chest, with a long head of silken black hair pulled into a silver band at the back. He looked Tai up and down with the practiced eye of a fighter, naked sword in his right hand. “Grundsten allerjial?”
Tai’s mind raced—it sounded like Seinjialese. “What?” The man must have mistaken his hair.
“You’re not Seinjialese?”
“I’m Achuri,” he said, maybe too forcefully, given the circumstances. He held out a wrist. “Tai.”
The man nodded. “And I’m Karhail. What are you doing here?”
“I ran into some trouble with the colliers.” Tai glanced at his sword, a full pace of black iron. “After running into some trouble with the lawkeepers. Ilrick offered me a safe passage out.”
Karhail’s scarred face stayed impassive. “What trouble with the lawkeepers?”
Tai hesitated just a moment. If these were normal Councilate citizens, they’d be on the side of the lawkeepers. Ilrick didn’t like the colliers, but then, who would? Tai took a gamble. “They took my—some kids I’m taking care of. Payback for a fight I got into with one of them. Locked them in the prison camp. So, I tried to get them out—”
Karhail raised an eyebrow. “You tried to get past the camp guards? Those are Titans.”
“Yeah, well, obviously it didn’t work, and I flew here with the last of my resonance.”
“But you survived.” Karhail seemed to weigh this, the other men watching with interest. One had silky dark hair, like Karhail’s, the other sandy locks like Ilrick’s; both had the look of soldiers. Tai realized with a start they were wearing Coldferth uniforms like the mercenaries at the front.
The silence stretched, Karhail watching him with brooding eyes. “I will honor Ilrick’s offer of passage,” he said at last, “on two conditions.”
That doesn’t sound good.
Tai’s stomach knotted.
“What conditions?” If worse came to worst, he still had his resonance, restored now with the mercenary’s mavenstym. Hake probably wouldn’t even complain about him using it here, in a hidden cave surrounded by soldiers.
“First, answer me this: could you find this place again, on your own?”
Tai tried to laugh, to look relaxed. “Definitely not. Not sure I could find my way back through that pool.”
Karhail nodded, eyes dead serious. “Second”—he pointed at a large rock on the floor, apparently a rock icicle that had fallen—“try to lift that stone.”
“What?”
“Lift the stone,” the bulky Seinjialese said. “You’re a wafter, right? I want to see what you can do.”
The stone was huge, easily twice the size of a man. “I— Okay.”
“He needs yura,” the giant man with the crossbow rumbled. Looking behind him, Tai realized he was Minchu, their distinctive wiry red hair covering him from a low widow’s peak down through bushy eyebrows to a full beard, this one carefully trimmed.
“Ah, no, actually, I don’t,” Tai said, not wanting to put himself any more in their debt.
“But you are not using,” the Minchu said.
Inwardly, Tai cursed. He’d hoped to keep that secret. “You can tell?”
The Minchu grinned, a pipe clamped in one corner of his mouth. “I was not born under a false star.”
Tai gripped the stone around the middle, too thick for his hands to touch. The real question was, would it be better to show them his strength or feign weakness? But there would be no masking the power of his resonance. Strength, then.
Tai struck his resonance, power vibrating into him, washing away his exhaustion. His skin tightened, arms stronger against the stone, back straighter. One of the side effects of resonance, any resonance, was strengthening the body, making it able to take more punishment. His arms would need it, to lift this thing. Tai breathed in and pulled upward, willing the air to lift him and the stone.
The stone lifted under his body, not as fast as he would alone, but still a pace or more off the floor. Tai’s arms screamed from the weight, but he willed them strength for just a little longer. Curses sounded behind him, and a gasp, and Tai’s head snapped over to see what was happening, if this was the excuse they would take to kill him.
Instead, he saw bluff-faced Karhail, jaw hanging open.
Tai dropped the stone in surprise. The stone smashed into the ground with a crack. Tai shot upward, no longer weighed down, and slammed into the ceiling. Tai dropped his push in surprise—and started falling toward the floor, twenty paces below.
“Meck!” he shouted, bouncing himself back up—then finally managed to come down, not much more gracefully than the stone.
You shouldn’t be doing this.
Karhail had sheathed his blade. “You did this without yura?”
Tai nodded, wary.
Someone whistled, and the Minchu said, “No one is meant to lift the first stone. There were others…”
Tai squared his shoulders, resonance
still thrumming through him, like the blood of life. “You said you’d give me safe passage if I did two things. I answered your question and wafted your stone. So, let’s go.”
Karhail regarded him for a moment, flexing his neck. “I have a proposition for you,” he said at last, “if you’re willing.”
“A proposition?”
Ilrick grinned. “Looks like you’re in, kid.”
“In?” Tai looked to him, shoulders tensing. “To what?”
“What else?” Ilrick gestured at the men around him. “The rebellion.”
“The rebellion?” Tai echoed, then the pieces fell into place: Ilrick’s dislike of the colliers. The secrecy about their location. A bunch of soldiers hidden in a cave. These were the rebels who’d burned ships on the docks.
“Yeah,” Ilrick said. “With an ability to waft like that, you’re definitely in.”
“If he takes the proposition,” Karhail said, looking more interested now that he’d seen Tai waft.
Tai rolled his shoulders. “What proposition?” The last thing he wanted was to get involved in another doomed rebellion.
“A burglary,” Karhail said, “something we’ve been wanting to do a long time but haven’t had the manpower.” The sandy-haired man glared at this. Did he look—jealous? Another wafter, then.
“And you want me to do it?” He let his resonance drop, wanting to save his power in case he ended up needing it. The bends hit but not nearly as badly after such a short use.
Karhail nodded. “Alone. Prove yourself.”
Tai laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a bunch of friends locked up in the prison camp, and the longer I spend in here, the longer they’re in there.”
“There could be a lot of money in it for you.”
That stopped him. Money could get him an army. And an army could get Fisher out. “How much money?”
Karhail rubbed his chin, and Tai could swear he saw a hint of humor in the dark man’s eyes. “As much as this mine can produce in a week.”
