by L. W. Jacobs
“No. If they were, I wouldn’t be there. They’re trying to end this.”
The hope for that, the hope that the Achuri people could actually be saved, that they could make a real refuge from the Councilate here—it was almost too much to believe in.
Her inner skeptic said it was. “And you? Are you trying to end this?”
He rolled his shoulders. “I wasn’t. All I wanted to do was get my kids somewhere safe. But I’m starting to doubt there’s anywhere that’s safe, if the Councilate’s there. It’s just volunteering to be a spoke in the wheel, like you said.”
She thought of what had happened to Yatiland, Seinjial, the martial law there. “Sounds accurate.”
“I’m not asking you to fight, or even to put yourself in danger. Just to pass information. The things you can hear in the Tower could help us a lot on the ground.”
She chewed it over while they walked, afternoon light casting leaf-shaped shadows across the path. “It’s not like you’ll stop yuraloading if I say no.”
He glanced at her apologetically. “No. That dye is spilled. But I was thinking, with your interest in yura and all that, maybe you could help with the research side of it. Keep track of what we’re doing, help us make it better.”
The academic promise of it almost stopped her in her tracks. Researching on human subjects was illegal under Councilate law, yes, but the rebellion wasn’t exactly inside Councilate law, and besides, Tai had said they would do it anyway. She could justify her involvement as mitigation, as an attempt to reduce harm.
Though that would mean increasing harm for the Councilate. Hm. This was going to be tricky.
But she knew her answer even before Tai asked again. “Yes, then. I’ll do it.”
She grinned, and he grinned back at her, like two kids sharing a secret. A rebellion. She was part of a rebellion. A rebel.
What would LeTwi think if he saw her now?
21
One would think the sun had gone out, for the endless days of blue light in At’li winter. Only an orange glow on the horizon would shine, and yet the star and moon would wheel overhead, marking the regular progression of days. I admit to some relief when, with the spring melt, the sun began to rise higher and higher above the ice.
—Markels, Travels in the South: At’li and Achuri
Tai crouched in the bow of the rowboat, holding a damp cloth to Theron’s face. Behind them, a Coldferth ship burned and sank stern-first into the Genga, slave galley beached with men escaping.
The strike had gone well, better than expected, but someone always got hurt. Karhail, Weiland, Eddels and three other brawlers crowded in the back of the boat, while Eyna sat with feet braced against the prow. She had yuraloaded successfully, and her resonance thrummed as she pushed them upstream.
There was little likelihood of retaliation—the ship had no way to send a message upstream to Ayugen, and there had been no ships behind it in the river—but still the tension of battle hung over them. It had been a close thing for a while, Tai and Eyna feeding flames on one side of the ship while the brawlers worked to battle the scant crew and axe a hole in the far side. Still, they’d done it, sinking a valuable ship and all its cargo into the river. And they’d intentionally attacked on one of the shallower stretches of the Genga—the wreckage was likely to block river traffic until someone could get it moved.
And as soon as they did, the rebellion would sink another.
“Look a’ this!” one of the new brawlers, Eddels, called, digging in the bundles of weapons they’d taken. “Found it while I was in the hold!”
It was an oiled leather satchel, finely tooled and well sealed. Karhail took it from him, breaking the sealed knots. “Correspondence, no doubt.” He leafed through the pages inside, stony face impassive. “Some of this could be useful.”
Eddels snorted. “If you like reading love letters to lighthairs.” He was a farmer’s son, thick black hair shot with red, grown up somewhere along the lowlands between Seinjial and Yatiland.
“Quiet,” Eyna barked from the front. “Might be something ahead.”
They all stilled. Tai squinted, making out a group of people walking along the shoreline.
“Lawkeepers?” someone asked.
Tai shook his head, squinting. “No. Looks like—”
“Darkhairs,” Karhail said. “Achuri, most like. They look pretty beat-up.”
“Them and me both,” Theron groaned. His skin was hot red and blistered, with much of the hair singed from that side of his head. Apparently, someone had hit him with a burning board.
“Slow, Eyna,” Tai said, looking closer as they came into view. “They might need our help.”
“We need our help,” Beal said. “Or did you forget we’re full of contraband and Theron’s losing his face?”
Eyna slowed, and Karhail didn’t question it—a sign of the respect the rebels were giving Tai of late. The boat strike had been his idea, and much of the previous days’ raids had worked because his resonance was so much more powerful than the Councilate’s wafters.
“Ho!” Tai called in Achuri as they approached. “Spirit’s guidance on you, brothers. What happens here?”
Some of the group—about nine in all, a few limping or nursing wounds—shied away, but three of them, two women and a man, came down to the water’s edge.
“We come from the camp,” one of the women said, a hollow look in her eyes.
“Escaped,” the man said, face ashen and hand clamped to a dark spot in his side.
“Gods,” Tai said, then at a commotion from the rebels, only one of whom spoke Achuri, “Do you speak Yersh? My friends would hear your tale.”
“Who are you?” the wounded man asked, switching to Councilate standard.
“We’re the Ghost Rebellion,” Karhail answered. “And you?”
“Escapees from the prison camp,” Tai said, then turned to them, hope flickering despite their sorry state. “But how did you get out? Is the place not heavily guarded?”
“Dumb luck,” the hollow-eyed woman said. “The gates were open for a restocking, and there was some argument between the guards, and—” She choked off, eyes going distant. Tai knew that look—she’d lost someone.
The other woman, older and unhurt, laid a hand on her shoulder. “And we ran,” she finished. “Maybe a hundred of us in all. We’re all that made it out, as far as I know.”
“Any children escape with you?” Tai asked. “A mix-haired girl, about seven winters, or a curly-headed Achuri boy, or a teen girl who can juggle?”
The older woman shook her head. “It was impossible to tell in the moment. There were too many running, and it happened so fast.”
“Are the conditions so bad, then?” Eyna asked, face drawn from the bends. “Inside the camp?”
“See for yourselves.” The woman gestured behind her, the rest of their band looking hollow-cheeked and distant, skin dirty and hair stringy. “They feed us little, tell us less, and let any kind of trouble go on inside the walls. Most of us are in there for no reason at all. And it’s become so crowded…” She shook her head.
“’Twas worth it,” the wounded man said. “To get out. I’d have gone mad if I stayed. Might die now, but at least I’ll die out here.”
“Hoping to find a village,” the older woman said. “The city’s not safe anymore. They’ll find us. Do ye know one?”
“There are plenty of hamlets on the far side of the river,” Eyna said. “They might give you rest.”
“And you’ll find supplies aplenty just downstream,” Eddels put in. “There, where the smoke is. We sunk a Coldferth barge, full of fish and cheeses and who knows what all.”
Tai frowned, unable to ease the knot in his stomach. It sounded so stupid, to tell these people that they had sunk a ship, maybe cost a lighthaired House a few thousand moons. What did it matter to them? To the people in the camp?
“You can come with us,” Tai said, stepping off the boat. “We can fit more on the boat, and we have a h
ideout on the far side of the city, in the forest.”
Karhail said something, but Tai rolled over him. “There you’ll find rest and enough time to heal your wounds. And if you want, you might join our cause.”
“There ain’t enough room in the boat,” Eddels said, gesturing around. “We’re packed as it is.”
“Then I’ll walk.”
“Can’t do it; we need you to push when Eyna tires out.”
“Then you’ll walk,” Tai snapped, “or we all walk. I’m not leaving these people.”
Eyna met his eye—she had become a friend over the last few days. “They have valuable information,” she said to the rest. “They’ve been inside the camp; they know the weak spots. They can help us plan for our attack.”
Karhail worked at his knuckles, eying the ragtag bunch of escapees. “Eddels, Jemma, Welo, Eyna,” he said at last. “Out. Tai, you take these people and the loot and meet us back at hideout.”
Tai breathed a sigh of relief as the rebels disembarked and he helped the older woman explain the situation to the rest of the escapees, two of whom looked near death. They loaded them in, boat dangerously low in the water, and Karhail shoved them off, bending close to his ear. “They had better have valuable information,” he muttered as he shoved them out. “This is a rebellion, not a charity.”
“If we care about the people we’re supposed to be saving, it’s both,” Tai growled, and shoved them out into the current.
They reached the hideout near dark, pace painfully slow with the wounded hanging on their friends’ shoulders, and the rest helping to pull a sling with the looted weapons and papers. Tai considered sending some of them to Marrem, but he had already endangered her enough with Lumo—and the hideout had its own healworker now.
“This is it, then?” one of the escapees asked.
“Aye.” They straggled through a break in the trees, forest opening up to a natural bowl around a small stream-fed pond. The woods had been cut back about fifty paces on each side, and a few rough longhouses dotted the area. “A medic, dry beds, and likely some hot food if we’re quick.”
They all brightened at that, and Tai lead them down through the hamlet, nodding to men turning wood and women milking goats, a few children even playing amongst the houses. It could have been any rural Achuri village—save that many heads sprouted fine or salted hair, the buildings were all new, and shouts rang out from the clearing above the bowl, where new recruits would be training in resonances and combat.
Tai saw the escapees to the longhouses, the aged healworker Leyra hobbling out to meet them, then retired to his own straw mat. Exhausted as he was, though, sleep would not come. Instead, he thought over the stories the escapees had told of the camp—of violence between the people held there, of guards executing people at will, of the hierarchy the Councilate were building between some Achuri and others, trying to divide them, and the manual labor they were forced to do, digging trenches and felling trees for the expansion.
Where were Fisher and Curly and Pang in all that? Were they still alive? Were they being forced to work with the rest? Had Tulric lied, and the kids were already dead somewhere? Or half-starved, like the escapees?
He had to know. And with the runaways’ confirmation of just how heavily guarded the prison camp was, that meant only one thing.
“Absolutely not,” Karhail said, at the planning meeting next morning, under one of the tall needleleaves. “To attack now would be suicide.”
“We have soldiers now,” Tai said, gesturing to the others gathered there, and the recruits training in the clearing behind. “Yuraloaded wafters and brawlers that are stronger than anything the Councilate can muster. We can take them.”
A few nodded at this—Eyna, Theron, Weiland. The core of what he’d begun to think of as his group, when disagreements came.
“A tactical strike might serve where a full-on assault wouldn’t,” Theron said, voice muffled by the bandages across his face. “Rip a hole in their defenses, let the people do the rest.”
“And if we fail?” Karhail shook his head. “A serious loss now would set us back months and expose us to real retaliation.”
Something in Tai knew the man was right. Just like something else knew he couldn’t leave his kids in that camp any longer. “You promised me an attack. Have I not done enough for the rebellion? Taught you to yuraload? Fought in every battle? Helped in planning many of them?”
“Aye. Which is exactly why we can’t risk you. The things you can do with your resonance…” Karhail shook his head. “The people are beginning to look up to you, Tai.”
“And they will look up to this. Look at the recruits I got us yesterday! Imagine if we got the whole scatting prison camp on our side! We have the money now, have the yura to sell.” There were more murmurs of assent at this.
Karhail grimaced, glancing at the gathered rebels. “But this isn’t about the recruits, is it? Or even the whole prison camp? It’s about your kids. About saving the kids you were taking care of. I respect that, Tai. But the cause is bigger than your kids now. It’ll have to wait.”
There were murmurs of assent at this, too, but Tai shook his head. “I won’t wait. I can’t wait.” He looked at the assembled group, meeting some eyes, others looking away. “If you’re all too worried about strategy, about protecting yourselves rather than the people that we’re here for, fine. But I’m getting them out. Today.”
Karhail cracked his knuckles. “And if we don’t support you?”
“Then I’ll do it alone.”
22
Coldferth to dig the earth,
Alsthen for pigs and hens,
Galya for house and home,
Ergstad for ships to roam.
Byaldsen for worker might,
Sablos for men to fight.
Kellandrials’ dreamleaf and cane,
Deyenal for keisua fame.
Talhens for goods in trade,
Mettelken for debts repaid.
Fenril works to cut the trees,
Jeltennets for crafts you need.
—Council song, Councilate primary education
Tai walked the road to the prison camp. The sun shone right overhead, and the forest was quiet save for goldbeetle shrill. He was alone, unarmed, dressed in the same rags he’d worn on the streets. Desperate. Determined.
The guards hailed him when he was barely into the clearing. The space had grown, more trees felled around the log fortress of the prison camp, giant piles of cleaned lumber and kindling dotting the wide space. The scent of burning pine boughs filled the air. “Halt there, good man!” a voice yelled in educated Yersh.
Tai ignored him, kept walking. Achuri men and women were out, working the timber or digging foundations, many of them neck-deep in the trenchwork for a giant addition, nearly three times as large. A Titan fell from the sky, spear held threateningly, resonance humming, though not so loud as Tai’s could. “Halt, darkhair! Or find yourself on the far side of Councilate graces.”
Hake moaned at the sight of him, a muscular man clad in gleaming armor. Tai brushed past. “I have business with those inside.”
Two more Titans dropped in front of him, easily wafting higher and faster than anyone he’d known. Other than himself, that was. They crossed spears in his path. “Stop, darkhair,” one of them said in lower Yersh. “Hands up or I put this spear through your gut.”
Tai stopped. Held his arms up. “I’m unarmed. I have business with those inside.”
The guard sneered. “No one gets inside ’less we say so.”
“And no one who does gets out,” the other put in, a thick woman with uneven eyes. “So git.”
“And what do I have to do to get inside?”
“Something illegal,” the first one said.
Tai decked him.
They took him through a sally port near the main gate, into a stone building with scarred and stained walls, muted cries coming through a door to the left—the prison proper, most likely. A bored-looking lawk
eeper efficiently stripped and searched him, then thrust his clothes back into his hands. “You want to survive here, you do like we say. Got it?”
Tai didn’t bother to answer, eyes only on the far door. They shoved him through.
Into hell.
A hell of unwashed bodies. A hell of hollow, watching eyes. A hell of sweat stink stacking on privy stink stacking on exhaled air stink. The place was packed, darkhaired people knotted together in dirty clothing, mud squelching underfoot, releasing air fouler still.
“Gods,” Tai croaked, stomach clenching. He had expected it to be bad—but not like this. And Fisher had been here for weeks? Pang and Curly? The guilt was almost as bad as the stench, rolling off Hake as well as himself.
“Here now, brother,” a man said, snapping him out of it. He was Achuri, but looked better fed than the rest. He carried a polished wooden cane. “Just arrived?”
Tai’s instincts were up at once, emotions smothered for the moment. “Who are you?”
“One of the tenders,” he said, using an Achuri word that worked equally for guard, guardian, or shepherd. The man looked none of the three. “I’ll be needing a look through your things, little brother.”
Tai tried to pull his clothes close, realized he was still naked, then began pulling them on. “I have nothing.”
“That’s for us to decide.” He pulled at Tai’s shirt, the same holey roughspun he’d worn the last two years, and in a flash, Tai was angry.
Tai struck the man’s hand away, pulled the shirt back. “Get stained. I’m in no need of tending.”
The people nearby drew back, and Tai understood he’d made a mistake. This man must be some sort of local lawkeeping force. The kind that tried to steal from people.
The tender raised his cane, snarling, and Tai struck his resonance. He had not wanted to do this, not wanted to show he had the option, but neither did he want to fight this man.
