by L. W. Jacobs
Tai nudged ahead, shooting forward and dropping, then remembered to keep pushing up. He shot up, arcing above the high wood walls. He was going too high, too fast—Tai pushed the opposite direction and jerked that way, down toward the walls. Stifling a cry of panic, Tai shoved in all directions at once.
He froze in place, air pushing on him like water in a deep lake, then eased off some, checking to make sure no one had noticed. He was still a pace or two above the sentries’ heads, safe so long as they didn’t look up. Below him, the compound lay in a perfect square: gates at the south end, barracks along the east side, mine gate in the middle, where Tai had gone down not so long ago.
It felt like a million years.
To the west were the storehouses, separated by a training yard. Two men sat in front of the south house, and as Tai hung, he could hear them talking quietly, likely trying to keep awake. He strained for their conversation, for any indication they’d heard him:
“—be the end of poor saps like us. Rut ’em all out, I tell ya.” The man spoke with a heavy Seinjialese accent.
“I don’t know as the Councilate’ll bother,” the other answered, sounding as though he needed to clear his throat. “Ten years already they been leaving things t’way they are.”
Tai pushed gently for the north house, moving faster than he’d like but concentrating on keeping a steady push from above and below as well, keeping himself level in the air. It was like shaking dice and drinking at the same time, only with every new direction to push you added another hand, juggling or cooking or counting out coins. Watching the sentries, Tai let himself down, grateful for the darkness and the soft talk of the guards to cover his landing and moment of vertigo.
“Aye,” the Seinjialese was saying, “but ain’t been rebels burning whole ships in the night up till now. Y’know what they did in Yatiland.”
Tai stood and examined the back wall. As promised, there was a small window there, high up.
“Piss if I don’t know!” the rough-throated one cursed. “Do ye see my red hair, then? We all of us know what they did in Yatiland.”
With a start, Tai realized it was the rough-voiced Yatiman who’d let him in the compound when he’d first come. The one who’d given him the mavenstym.
Sorry, friend, he thought. Hope they don’t dock your pay for this.
When the sentry passed above, Tai pulled himself up to the storehouse window, not daring to use his resonance here for fear they’d feel it. He pulled the inner wooden frame out, wincing at the sound, and set it back on the ground. Sentry returning, he dropped back down.
“Then ye know the Councilate’s capable of it,” the other guard was saying. “Round ’em all up and burn ’em like they did in Yatiland.”
“What do ye think the camp’s for? Making ’em into lords and ladies?” Rough Voice answered. “All they want’s yura, just like they wanted our goats and copper mines—”
The first guard snorted. “Your goats or your women? I never could tell.”
Tai stuck his head inside the window. Too dark to see. He’d have to go in, let his eyes adjust.
As soon as the next sentry had passed, he eased himself up and over, pushing slowly through the window. If he got caught here, legs dangling outside—
But no cry came. He pulled himself through, catching a low shelf on the inside, then crouched there, letting his eyes adjust. It was full of mining equipment—but no yura. There was a second room to the left, but Tai found only leather armor and helmets and weapons of all sorts. He sorted through this as carefully as he could, squinting in the dark, but there was nothing like a yura bale.
The other building, then.
Or, y’know, flying the meck out of here before they skewer us?
Ignoring Hake, Tai eased himself out again, listening for the sentry’s steps, trying to make it out before the next one came. In his hurry, his shirt caught on the frame. For a sick moment, Tai dangled from the window, caught. He dropped, hitting the ground with a scrape and a thump.
A muffled “Huh?” came from the walkway above.
Tai froze, pressed in the shadow of the walkway.
“D’ye boys see something down there?” came a heavily accented call from the walls.
“Buncha dark!” rough-throat called back.
Silence, then: “Well, if ye see something, kill it!”
“Aye aye!”
The sentry began walking again, and Tai let out a breath. If they found him, he’d have no chance against trained mercenaries like these.
Better make it fast, then. Tai slipped to the other house.
“Anyways,” the first guard was louder now, just on the other side of the building, “I say the army don’t need much excuse to come and start killing. Only twenty thousand of ’em living here, anyway. Easier that way.”
Tai slipped in the rear window, timing it to what sounded like a long speech on Rough Voice’s part. Long and racist, but that was typical of the Councilate. It was a scribe’s chambers, or looked like it, walls lined with desks and covered in parchments of various kinds. Nothing here.
If there was no yura at all—if Karhail had been misinformed, or lied to him…
“And puts us straight out of work,” Rough Voice replied from the other side of the wall. “No rebels means no threat means no reason to be staying up the wee hours of the night listening to your pisstalk.”
“Pisstalk indeed. Never been a mental giant yourself.”
Tai slipped through a curtain into the smaller room, and was rewarded with the smell of yura, earthy and rich. He goggled. Woven baskets lined the walls, heaped with the stuff, more yura than he’d seen in a lifetime of selling it. Enough to buy the whole Councilate army, likely. There were no bales, but he doubted he could get one out of the window anyway. Have to make do, and make do quick.
Tai untied the sack from his waist and began stuffing fistfuls into it, sweat beading on his brow. There was so much. He listened as he loaded, watchful for any disturbance. The men were still chatting out front, apparently unaware.
“—any left in the mines anymore.”
“Aye, but they can’t figure out how to farm the stuff, so we’ll keep pushing ’em deeper. Poor bastards.”
Tai emptied one basket, started on another. There was way more than he could take. It was maddening.
“—better’n those in the camp. Least those down below, they got a chance of striking it rich or finding another way out of here. Mecking hills are rotten with caves round here—”
The sack was full. Tai tied off the top, hands shaking just slightly. How much had he just taken—five hundred balls? A thousand? Three thousand? It was many times what he needed to break his kids out; that much he knew. Prophet knew how many weapons this would buy Karhail and the Ghosts.
He stepped back to the other room, thanking his luck, and climbed onto a desk, putting the bag before him out the window.
It wouldn’t fit.
The sack was stuffed too full, rough material catching against the wood frame. Tai took it in, cursing, and squeezed the air from it, cloying scent of yura rushing from the bag.
“—keep some of ’em around now that no honest folk want to go down there.”
Tai tried again, pushing the bag against the window. Almost. He shoved a little harder, a little harder… This had to work.
With a burr of roughspun against wood, the bag pushed halfway out.
Conversation out front stopped.
“You hear that?”
“I did.” There was a clink of armor. “Sounded like the wall.”
“Or the inside of the storehouse.”
Tai jerked the bag back in—too late. “A thief! Got ourselves a thief, boys! Tennets! Saw him pull his bag back in just now. Boys! Boys!”
The two men took up the call. Tai spun, looking for an exit. The window was out—they’d cut him down trying to get out, and the bag didn’t fit. This much yura, he couldn’t just leave it. The door?
Shouts were coming from
outside, men and women stirring. A clanging came from the door, someone working the lock.
Think, Tai. Think. You’ve got one breath. Where do you go?
“Don’t bother with the lock!” Rough Voice cried. “I’ll get ’im from here!”
A head appeared in the window, a hand with an axe. Tai ducked into the smaller room, heart pounding.
Think, Tai.
“In the other room!” “The slip! We need the slip!”
A timeslip. He was doomed. A screech came from the front door—they had it open. Tai struck his resonance, fire racing up his spine.
The door swung wide, the grizzled Yati man appearing with a heavy axe. “You!” he cried, meeting Tai’s eyes.
Tai swung the bag above his head and shoved upward hard.
He slammed into the ceiling, strengthened skin absorbing some of the blow, wood and tiles cracking above him.
“Stop!” the mercenary roared. He lunged in, swinging his axe back.
Tai pushed harder, straining at the air. With a mighty crack, the ceiling gave way, and Tai shot up into open air, streaming yura behind him. The bag had ripped, but that was the least of his worries. A figure shot up after him, two, as he escaped the compound. Wafters.
Tai pushed forward and shot like an arrow toward the city.
And the ground. Cursing, he remembered to push up, and shot skyward.
Something whistled past—an arrow—and Tai turned to look. One of the wafters was far behind, but the other was only a hundred paces or so, fitting another arrow to her bow.
Prophets. Tai pushed harder, forward and up, willing speed. An arrow through the chest would kill him as sure as an axe blade. The ground blurred past below, then houses. Looking back, Tai saw she was dwindling, but there, an arrow—
He watched it approach him in air, keep pace for a moment, and fall off. Prophets. He felt like the wind itself.
The wind if it carried a king’s wealth in yura.
With a whoop, Tai shot over Hightown, then the bluffs, the Bottoms, the river—he shot past it all, over the valley fields, looking back for signs of pursuit. There were none, the second wafter lost in the dark. He’d never met a wafter who could match him for speed or strength. Tai pushed on anyway, loving the fingers of air in his hair, the open space after days in the mines. The sack billowed behind him, half-emptied, and he did what he could to gather it up, to roll it closed, then with another glance back eased off his push, letting himself slow, drop closer to the ground.
And none too soon. He could feel the hunger growing in his spine, that gnawing hunger that meant his power was almost gone. Tai slowed, let himself down, remembering with a grin to push down as he pushed up, uai fading as he dropped the last few paces.
He hit the grass exhausted, breathless, and victorious. He’d pulled it off. He’d gotten away. He had a House’s wealth in yura, a safe way out of the mines, and he was alive. That was the biggest miracle.
Grinning an exhausted grin, Tai stuffed the yura sack under his head and let the bends take him.
11
Twighair, make ’em stare. Firehead, Yati red. Fine and black, Seinjial’s back. Light and thin, sure to win!
—child’s song, Worldsmouth
Ella woke to a strange room, air cool and damp. Mortised stone walls, a barred oilpaper window high on one side, light and the city sounds of Ayugen filtering in. She groaned, hurting in a hundred different places—her head, her wrists, her back. The room was bare, just two cots and a small table against the far wall, fixtures wooden and battered from long use.
Her memories of the night before were shadowy. Discovering the statue, fighting Odril, her yura running out before his, getting tied up. Odril had gone for someone, and they’d dragged her through the streets kicking and shouting. And then—nothing. Dreamleaf. They must have forced her to drink dreamleaf, enough to push her into the dreamless sleep its users loved.
“Shattercocking sowstain,” she growled, sitting up. She could still feel the statue in her hand, still feel it clubbing Odril. It made her angry all over again to think that he’d won, that not only had he gotten her kicked off the ship but now he’d shut her in here—wherever here was.
One way to change that. Ella rolled out of bed and tried the door set in the far wall.
Locked.
“No.” A knot formed in her chest. Unbidden came the image of a different room, a different locked door, a single window high up in a tower. The memory of long, empty days, light shifting from one wall to the other.
“No!” She pulled on the door handle, slammed her fists against the wood planks. “Let me out!”
There was no response. The sowstains.
Ella…
The window. She turned, breathing fast, but it was too narrow, too high—
Ella. You need to calm down.
The inner walls, then. They were only wood. She could break through. Ella spun, searching for a hammer, a stick, anything to start beating on them. The cots—maybe if she could break a leg off—or get the door open, attack whoever was behind it—
Ellumia. Stop. We’re not in Worldsmouth. You’re okay.
She paused, both hands on the leg of a cot. Her heart was pounding like she’d run a thousandpace. “I have to get out. I’m locked in here.”
Yes. But you won’t do it by losing control. Remember? Control. Patience. Make a plan.
“Control,” she repeated, staring at the wood. “Patience. Make a plan. Right.”
She stood, paced the room, and only then realized how hard her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath, letting the panic ebb. “Gods. That hasn’t happened in a long time. Thank you.”
LeTwi gave a characteristic throat-clearing. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? To teach you reason, as I once tried with the Councilate of Worldsmouth.
Ella smiled despite her shaking hands. “Well, let’s hope I’m a little easier than them, at least.”
Sometimes, I wonder. Now sit and calm yourself, and let’s think.
A knock sounded at the door before she could. Ella looked up to see a pinched old woman look in, black hair bound in a thick knot. She barked something in Achuri, then, “Awake, are you? Well, get up, there’s work to do.”
“Who are you?”
“Prula. I run this house. Now get up.” She spoke with the clipped liquidity of a native Achuri.
Ella’s eyes narrowed. “What work?”
“Books. Stacks and stacks of books. If you can even do them.” She eyed Ella doubtfully. “Trouble if you don’t.”
“For Odril?”
“Aye.”
“Never.”
Prula tsked. “Your pyre if you don’t.”
She shut the door. Ella was after her a moment later, but the door was locked again. “Stains!” she cursed, slamming a fist against the door. “Let me out!”
Easy, Ella. Easy. Focus on what we know.
Books. The woman had said something about books. Ella looked around the room, putting together the cots, the simple desk. Calculism. Hadn’t Odril said he had other calculors? This must be where they worked. Where he wanted her to work, now, behind a locked door.
Ella laughed without mirth. “We’ll see about that.”
When the door opened again, she was ready, and flew at the old woman. Only, it wasn’t an old woman this time—it was a thick young man who resonated power.
He stopped her dead with an arm. “You,” he barked in basic Yersh. “Do these.” He dumped some books on the desk, watching her for another attack. Ella held herself back—without yura, she was no match for a brawler.
The door closed again, leaving her alone with the books. Ella didn’t bother looking at them—ledgers, no doubt, records of purchases and sales needing tidying and calculation. She had no doubt the numbers would make her feel better, too, would settle her mind. And it was what was expected of her. What Odril expected of her.
Which meant she couldn’t do them.
Instead, she waited, back to the wal
l, watching the door, watching the light change out the window. Shadows passed above, and she realized it was a basement, that the window opened out just above the ground to let in light. The bars made it impossible to get out, but the street sounds, the rumble of carts and chatter of men and women, gave her something to listen to.
After some time, a few hands maybe, she heard the lock scrape. Ella stood—it was the old woman, with the brawler behind her. Damn. “Well?” the woman asked. “Finished?”
Ella just stared at her.
The woman tsked, leafing through the ledgers on the desk. “You don’t work and you don’t get fed, understand? This isn’t a charity.”
Ella balled her fists as the woman left. A charity. “A prison is what it is,” she gritted. She let the ledgers sit. There was no way she was playing into Odril’s game.
The woman came back at dusk, tsking again at the untouched pile of books. “Master’s not going to like this,” she said, gesturing for the brawler to gather them up. Ella considered making a break for it while he was occupied, but the man would catch her in a heartbeat.
If only she had some yura.
Night fell. Her stomach ached—she hadn’t eaten the night before, either—but Ella took grim satisfaction in it, knowing every hour she went without was an hour she resisted Odril, showed she wouldn’t be cowed by a locked door or threats of starvation. This was all old hat—he didn’t realize she was an expert at this game. She smiled grimly, curling up on the bed. The past was good for something, at least.
She was asleep when the lock scraped again. Ella rolled up, surprise then anger pushing her to her feet.
A familiar face appeared above a wavering candle.
Ella squinted. “Tunla?”
“Ella,” the woman said, sitting on the cot across from her. “Heard you had a rough day.”
“What are you doing here? Do you—work here?”
