by L. W. Jacobs
Tai barely kept from goggling. House Coldferth’s entire production for a week? That would be hundreds of balls—thousands! “And where would I get that?”
Ilrick grinned. “From House Coldferth, of course.”
“Their mine compound,” Karhail added. “We have information on where they store their yura, and when they send it to the docks.”
“The mine compound. Meaning the place I came through with twenty mercenaries guarding it?” Tai remembered the grin on the red-bearded man’s face, anticipating a fight with Tulric and the lawkeepers. They’d looked veterans all. “Why would I try to take them singlehandedly when all of you together can’t?”
Ilrick grinned. “Because you can waft.” The sandy-haired man shifted behind him, and he scowled. “Aye, you can waft too, Beal. But not high enough to get over their bloody walls.”
“We’ve tried,” Karhail said. “Three times. If we were able to get that yura…” He shook his head. “What we need is real money to get arms and feed people, so that we can start recruiting in earnest. We already have an arms shipment in town, but it’s held up on payment.”
“But one good wafter could do what all of us together can’t,” Ilrick said, to more scowls from Beal. “Swoop over those walls and snatch a bale of yura.”
A bale of yura. Prophets. But Tai shook his head. “I’ve been in that compound. There are way too many guards to get through.”
“During the day,” Ilrick said. “At night, they run a skeleton crew on the walls and a couple in the middle, half-dozing. Problem is, the rest of ’em are sleeping a couple paces away. Raise the alarm and you’re dead.”
“So, you want me to waft in, grab a bale of yura, and waft out again without being seen?”
Karhail cracked his knuckles. “You look like you might have some experience getting in and out of tight places.”
“And then what, I keep the yura?”
“No. We need that yura. You can keep a handful, but the dealer’s expecting a full bale. What you get is information. Where they keep it, how to get in. Another week goes by, two, and you hit them again.”
“And that yura’s all yours,” Ilrick said, sounding wistful. “You could dice for a year on that much moss.”
Or hire an army.
But something else had occurred to Tai. “And you’re serious about recruiting? You want to what, push the Councilate out of the city?”
“Aye,” Karhail said, “to begin with. And then we take the fight to them, rally Seingard and the hilltribes to us, the Yersh if they’ll have us, and take Worldsmouth itself.”
Tai rolled his neck. It was a grandiose plan. “How many are you now?”
Karhail grimaced. “Five here and another ten in the forest. That’s why we need the yura, to start real recruitment, start training real soldiers.”
Tai eyed the man and his friends. “And you know how to train soldiers, to run an army?”
Karhail’s face was stony. “I do.”
Tai nodded. “Then I’ll take your proposition, but I don’t need the money.”
Karhail and Ilrick both frowned at this. “What do you need?”
Tai smiled. “I need an army.”
After some negotiating, they agreed Tai would steal the yura, proving himself loyal and capable, and funding their initial recruitment. In exchange, when their numbers were big enough, the rebels would help him take the prison camp, freeing his kids and hopefully the rest of the prisoners with them. In the meantime, Tai would work with them, fight with them, recruit with them. “And,” he said, “I may have a few more friends to bring with me.”
“They are welcome,” Karhail said, “if they’re loyal and able to fight.” They were seated on fallen rock pillars, Ilrick passing around a skin of mulled dreamtea.
Tai held down a wince. Aelya had been a fighter—he didn’t even know if she was okay now. “They will be.”
“Well,” Ilrick said, setting down his cup. “Might as well make introductions. Me you know; I’m the resident mosstongue for recruiting and talking our way out of tight spots. Karhail you met, and—”
“He ain’t part of us yet,” the other wafter put in, wide-set eyes and thick lips looking vaguely fishlike.
“—this is Beal,” Ilrick went on, pointing at him, “previously our best wafter. He keeps us all in good spirits—”
Beal scowled.
“—and the giant man to your left is Lumo, our resident brawler and yura expert.”
Lumo held out one massive hand. “How are you?” he asked, mountain accent clipping the r.
Tai’s hand was swallowed in his. “I’m…fine.” He’d never spoken to a Minchu before—they tended to keep to themselves, rarely coming into the city. “And you?”
Lumo shrugged. “Eh. Not so bad.”
“What he means to say,” Ilrick cut in, “is that his life’s shattering terrible and his only friend is his pipe. Isn’t that right, Lumo?”
The giant man inclined his head left. “More or less, yes. Tai, is this true, that you don’t need yura to waft?”
“It’s true.”
Lumo’s green eyes grew serious. “We will speak more of this after.”
Ilrick cleared his throat. “And the man at the back”—he gestured to a thin man sprawled on a far stone—“is Weiland, the laziest timeslip you’ll ever meet.”
Weiland gave Tai a nod, eyes half-lidded. Tai didn’t buy it—lots of kids on the streets used the appearance of laziness to put potential attackers off guard. And Weiland looked like he might know something of the streets.
“And you’re the ones who burned Galya’s ships last week?”
At this, Karhail grinned, as much malice as mirth in it. “Us and a couple more. Heard about it, did you?”
“More than that,” Tai said. “The lawkeepers doubled their watch in the Bottoms afterwards, looking for somebody to blame. Probably the reason I ended up on their bad side.”
That, and Aelya cold-cocking Tulric.
“You’ll get revenge soon enough,” Karhail said, drinking deep of the skin.
“Is that why you’re all wearing Coldferth uniforms? To sneak in?”
“Aye,” Ilrick grinned. “Ye’d be amazed what a little costume can do. We’ll get you one before you go.”
“Speaking of which,” Weiland said, taking a long draw of sage, “he ain’t gonna do much good if we keep him up, tired as he is. Still ten hands or more till dark.”
“Ten hands?” That meant he’d been in the mines all night and most of the morning. Exhaustion hit him like a lead blanket. “Sleep, yeah. Sleep sounds good.”
Tai woke to the sound of a plucked lute, air dark and smelling of sage. He sat up, for a disorienting moment having no idea where he was. Then a giant man across the cave from him said, “You are awake. That is good.”
Lumo. “Is it time to go?”
“Not yet. But I saw that you had some trouble wafting, and I wanted to help.” The wiry-haired Minchu shifted, lute looking comically small against his wide chest. “Is it true you can resonate without yura?”
Tai stretched, a single lantern next to the giant man illuminated sheets of hanging smoke. “I can.” No reason to deny it now.
The Minchu leaned forward, eyes intense. “How did you do this thing?”
Tai shrugged. “I don’t really know. It was a long time ago.”
“But you overcame your revenant?”
“My revenant?”
“Yes, the…spirit guide, I think you call them.”
Tai thought back to the end of the resistance. “My mother was my first spirit guide. I’d only had her for about six months, but then during the battle—when I started wafting—yeah, she never came back. Is that connected?”
Lumo exhaled smoke. “Yes. The one you call a spirit guide is not a guide at all. They only want your uai.” At Tai’s questioning look he said, “Your power. The power your resonance uses—we call it uai.”
“Okay. But you’re saying spirit guides are using that power?”
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“Yes. They are not ancestors, or friends, or famous people, or whatever personality they claim. They are the hungry spirits of people who died without satisfaction, and they walk the earth still, looking for ways to live again. Without their bodies, they cannot use physical energy. But as spirits, they can survive off uai.”
“So, my mother was just a...random ghost?”
You’re not seriously believing this.
Lumo nods. “I am sorry, my friend. I do not mean to offend your beliefs. But the revenants are attracted to uai shining from infants—even we can sense it in babies—and as we grow, they form a personality from our memories, someone we will care about or feel tied to. They usually begin speaking after puberty.”
That much was true, at least—people gained their spirit guides around the time their blood came or voices changed. But hungry spirits?
“How do you know all this?”
Lumo drew from his pipe, green eyes reflecting the orange coal. “It is part of my religion, my people’s religion. But please, do not believe me. Try these words out, and experience if they are true for you. That is the real test.”
Hake snorted. That’ll be easy.
“So, you’re saying that sometime during that battle I…overcame my mother, and that’s how I got access to my resonance without using yura?”
“Yes. She was feeding off the uai you would use for wafting. Do your people not know this?”
“We know that when a guide, or a revenant, when they leave, we don’t need yura anymore. But we say it comes from pleasing them, not overcoming them.”
Lumo nodded. “For us, it is a battle, it is fighting and overcoming. But we have shamans and age mates who help us with this. To do it alone…” He shook his head, eyes gleaming in the low light. “It is remarkable.”
Tai tried to remember the battle when he’d gained his resonance, to remember what exactly had happened, but it was all a blur, ending in the Blackspine.
“So, I could actually waft the whole time, but my mother was feeding on my pow—my uai?”
“Yes. But she was not your mother, Tai. Probably, you recognized that in the end. She was a revenant. Are others here overcoming their revenants too?”
“Not really. Not that I know of. There are old stories of people going to the caves—these caves—to talk with their ancestors, and sometimes they’d come back with powers. But most of the people who told them died in the resistance. I never heard of any lighthairs or Seinjialese who’ve done it.”
Lumo nodded. “Uai comes from winter plants. In the north, the sun is too strong to grow these foods, so they do not have much uai. I am surprised you have enough winterfood here. In the mountains, it is almost all we can grow.”
Tai leaned against the rock wall, trying to sort it all out. “So, if we all already have our resonances, what does yura do?”
Lumo tapped his pipe out against the stone, then began refilling it from a pouch in his breast pocket. “Think of it like dreamleaf for revenants. When they are awake, the revenants are feeding off your uai, preventing you from using it. Yura makes them drunk, giving you access to your uai and resonance for a short time. When they wake up”—he shrugged, leaning in to the lamp to relight his pipe—“they begin eating your uai again and you cannot resonate until you get more yura or overcome your revenant.”
“You’ve overcome yours?”
He pulled deep, sage crackling. “Oh, yes. We all overcome our first revenant at sixteen winters. But to do it without aid…” He shook his head.
“Could it be connected to madness? I—wasn’t myself, for a while, after the battle.”
That’s an understatement.
The giant man looked at him thoughtfully, smoke drifting from wide nostrils. “I do not think so. Perhaps it was only stress and grief from that time. Has the madness continued?”
Tai popped his back, thinking about the fight with Tulric, his attack on the prison camp. “Hard to say. I haven’t used it for a long time, but yesterday I had to, and it seemed fine.”
It wasn’t fine. Tai, he just wants to convince you it’s okay, so you’ll use your powers for the rebellion.
“Then I think you have nothing to worry about.”
Hake snorted. He hasn’t seen the Blackspine.
Lumo shifted. “I noticed you have some trouble wafting.”
Tai rubbed his back ruefully, raw from where he’d slammed into the ceiling earlier. “Yeah. Like I said, it’s been a while.”
“Maybe I can help with that. You will need to waft better if you are going to sneak into that compound.”
“You’re a wafter too?”
“I am a worker. A—brawler, you call them.”
“Then how do you know about wafting?”
Lumo shrugged. “Everyone knows the basics. I could have been a wafter, if my parents had chosen differently.”
He sounded wistful, but Tai decided to let that one go. “So, what can you tell me?”
Lumo drew from his pipe. “Your resonance is strong, so you have different problems than others. Usually, it is a question of how to get stronger. For you, it is about control.”
Tai grimaced. “About not running into walls at high speed.”
Lumo shared. “Yes. Though you made a very comical figure. But let me ask you this: when you are wafting, do you push in just one direction, or two directions?”
Tai thought about it. “Uh, when I want to go up, I push up, I guess.”
Lumo nodded. “And so, you bounce into the sky instead of going up slowly and stopping where you want to.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s never mattered, because I haven’t tried wafting inside buildings before.”
“Well, try this, my friend. When you push up, also push down. Not as hard, but push a little, to balance it out. Try it now.”
“Okay.” Tai struck his resonance, trying to push up and down at once. He shot up, then slammed down, barely keeping his feet.
Lumo smiled. “It is not easy. Try again. You have to do it at the same time, not one after the other—like drinking with one hand and shaking dice with the other.”
Tai tried again, beginning by pushing down, then pushing up against it. He rose steadily into the air, but when he tried to reverse directions, he lost his upward push and slammed back down. “Spirit’s teeth!”
Lumo laughed. “You will get it with practice. The same thing is true for going left and right in the air, or front and back. For weaker wafters, it is not a problem, but you have too much power, so you have to balance it out.”
Tai nodded, trying another gentle push down as he nudged up. “That makes sense.”
Ilrick appeared at the entrance, rattling a dice cup. “Time’s a-wasting, Tai, if you’re going to do it tonight—it’s already past starset.”
Tai nodded, lowering himself down with something like control. “Right. It always seems like night in here.”
Ilrick grinned. “You get used to it. C’mon, Weiland’s got a pot of stew on, full of wintermelon. You’re gonna need it, if you wanna have enough juice to get out of that compound alive.”
10
Smite the bone and beat the blood!
With iron will we tread the mud!
Fire coal in chimney stack!
With steel will we beat them back!
—Marching song, Seinjialese Blacksmith Rebellion
It turned out marching up stairs blindfolded wasn’t much better than swimming in the dark. The rebels blindfolded Tai and led him up a long set of stairs out of the cave, their breaths echoing in the narrow space. His legs were burning before he smelled fresh air, the alfalfa blossoms and settling damp of a summer night. A blue garbler sang somewhere in the distance. After untold hours or days in the caves, it was wonderful.
Karhail lifted him out of a narrow stone gap and walked him a ways on rough ground, then he and Ilrick spun Tai until he collapsed.
“That should do it,” Ilrick said, untying the blindfold. “Any idea where you are, Tai?”
“And any idea where you just came from?”
“No.”
Karhail grunted. “Good enough. Come to us once the delivery’s made, and we’ll see about getting your kids out.” He clapped Tai on the shoulders. “For the Ghosts.”
“For the what?”
“The Ghosts,” Ilrick said. “All the men locked down there, and all those that died. We call this the Ghost Rebellion, for them.”
“For what we would have been,” Karhail said, a fierceness in his gaze.
“For the Ghosts, then,” Tai said, clapping their shoulders in turn. “And for my kids.”
Tai went over what they’d told him as he trekked toward the same compound he’d flown into yesterday morning. House Coldferth kept their weekly harvests of yura on site, protected by mercenaries, then transported it once a week down to the docks for shipping. According to a snitch inside, the yura was stored in one of two stone houses on the east side of the compound. “Don’t matter which one they’ve got guards on, either,” Ilrick had said. “They like to switch ’em, try to fool ya.”
“Have you stolen from them before?” Tai had asked.
“Tried.” Ilrick said, shaking his head. “That’s how we lost Erla. Too dangerous from the ground.”
The compound was lit up even at this hour, torches burning at regular intervals along high wood walls. The night was dark, moons down—the early-morning dark of summer that meant a blessed reprieve from daytime heat. And from eyes. Tai stopped outside the ring of light and watched. As promised, the walls were patrolled by two sentries passing the torches at regular intervals, the gaps between them easy enough to pass through, if he could control his wafting.
Kind of a big if, isn’t it?
Hake had been against the idea from the start, arguing they go back to Marrem for the money and try something else. Tai disagreed—the rebellion was their best chance of getting an army that’d go against the Councilate.
Their only chance that wouldn’t take months.
Tai struck his resonance, power thrumming through him—uai, Lumo had called it. Taking a deep breath, air thickening around him, he nudged up, the rush upward disorienting in the darkness. He added some downward pressure when he seemed high enough, waiting for the guard to pass on the wall. Now to go forward.
