by Levi Jacobs
But who would attack the Blackspine? Tulric, apparently. The thug made it sound like everyone was starting to doubt his reputation. Ironic that the same system of street cred that had kept them safe was the reason they were in danger now.
No more ironic than a thug turned lawkeeper, Hake put in, sounding for all the world like he’d just woken up. Or a city getting rich off moss no one used to care about.
Tai took the eastern path down the bluffs, where houses faded into huts and forest. It looked like any morning in Ayugen—porters oiling carts in alleys, goodwives unearthing ashes or dumping chamber pots, bleary-eyed workmen making their way to the river to wash. And yet today he was leaving this place, the city he’d lived his whole life. Leaving it with the first real family he’d had, at least since Marrem had kicked him out at eight winters, saying she had too many mouths to feed. A family that in a few years had saved what would be a fortune to anyone other than a lighthair, begging coins and selling blackmarket yura.
Despite the danger, despite worries about life downriver, Tai couldn’t help feeling hopeful. Maybe Worldsmouth would finally be a home. Though it was the capital of the lighthairs, people said it had people from all over, red-haired Yati hillmen and sandy-headed Yersh peasants, and the fine darkhaired Seinjial so many people mistook him for. With that many kinds of people, maybe none of them would stick out, not Fisher with her speckled hair or Aelya with her tight curls. And with the money they’d make selling yura down there, they’d finally have choices. Pang could be a street performer, Curly could study math, and Fisher learn to do whatever she wanted.
And you?
He’d… do whatever he wanted too. Travel, maybe, on the way back and forth to Ayugen to restock yura. See the Seinjial mountain valleys. The broken glass towers of the old Yersh capital. Study with the highland monks who walked the cities, faces old and eyes young. See the Prophet’s waystones.
Good. You could use a rest.
The docks were a swarm of activity, even with the sun barely over the horizon. Porters hauled bales of sour-smelling mavenstym and earthy yura through the crush of merchants arguing prices, dogs sniffing at fallen scraps and gulls crying in the clear sky above. Further down miner crews worked with a massive team of elk, trying to clear the wrecked ships. The men were pale as ghosts, either arrested Achuri or criminals from other parts of the Councilate, working toward amnesty. Once the easy yura had been picked and the supply of men willing to work the mines slowed, the Councilate had declared the mines a special economic zone, where anyone who worked seven years would emerge forgiven of their crimes, no matter how bad.
What they meant was the mining Houses could get free labor. No one made it seven years down there.
Tai couldn’t find the captain he’d talked with last month, and so started making the rounds of ships that looked ready to leave, seeking passage. The docks were full, a wide bend in the Genga making Ayugen’s shore a natural port for barges and riverboats.
It wasn’t easy. At first the captains brushed him off, dressed in fraying roughspun as he was. When he flashed a handful of marks, they switched to weighing him with a calculating eye he knew too well from the streets—weighing how much money was in his sack, how much trouble it would be to get rid of one street tough. More than once Tai thought he’d have to jump overboard as captains motioned sailors over or invited him below decks, but he always managed to back out without trouble. He intentionally avoided the lighthair captains, sticking to Seinjial and Yati rivermen.
Finally a Seinjialese in heavy rings and worked leather agreed to passage without looking as though he’d try to rob them a day out of port. His was a merchant barge, carrying casks of salt fish and Yersh wine upriver, bales of mavenstym and yura back south. He didn’t have any regular berths, but as the dried flowers and moss took up so little space going south, he rented Tai a small part of the hold, on the condition he’d throw them overboard if they touched his wares.
“We won’t,” Tai assured him, trying at once to look confident and harmless. “My kids are good-natured, though you might have to put up with Pang doing some juggling on deck.”
“Juggling?” The thick man cracked a smile. “I think we could handle that. Though what’s your business downstream? Are ye a Seinjial lad? I could get you passage to Seingard for half the money.”
Tai fought down the urge to insist he was Achuri—people often mistook him for Seinjial, with his thinner hair. “Performers. We’re looking to find better rates downstream.” This was the story they’d concocted to hide their real business from prying eyes. As Tai spoke, something else the man said registered. “You can get us cheaper passage to Seingard? What about to one of the port cities further down?” Worldsmouth was the furthest, where the Ein emptied out into the great delta, and then the sea.
“Oh aye. I could get you to Ealmand for four hundred, Skarsdag for a bit over five, it don’t matter to me, can always find cargo from there to the Mouth.”
“Does yura go for an arm and a leg there too?” Tai tried to sound casual—honest-looking or not, it wouldn’t do to tip the man off that they’d be bringing their own yura. “We—use it in our performances.”
The captain’s grin widened. “Afraid it does. I’ve made a pretty penny selling down the whole Yersh plain, when I don’t feel like paying Worldsmouth docking fees.”
Excitement spiked in his gut. If they went somewhere closer, they could save enough marks on passage to buy a decent amount of yura, and maybe from there get to the capital cheaper, or with the next yura load. “Yeah,” he said, leaning back to look casual. “Maybe we’ll go to Ealmand for now, try our luck there.”
“Ealmand it is. You’ll want to bring your own beans and rice, though ye can use the galley’s fires. We ship at midday.” They clasped wrists in the Seinjial fashion, and Tai gave him half the marks in exchange for a writ of passage.
He left the docks with a spring in his step, lessened coin load wrapped around his waist. It was done. He would let the gang know they were leaving, find his contact outside the mines to buy some yura, and they would be off. Hopefully without ever seeing Tulric again.
The city had woken up while he’d been at the docks, streets filling with carts and workers, goodwives hanging laundry on lines above the street. Tai stuck to the quieter roads, still conscious of the coins on him, but it felt like a heavy weight was off his chest. They were getting out. They were finally getting out, and they had a plan to do it. He found himself humming an old Resistance song, the one they would sing on their way back from a successful attack.
No one was in front of Marrem’s place, so Tai took the stairs up to the smokehouse. They wouldn’t be able to take everything, but the cookpots at least they could bundle in their spare clothes. Everyone said the capital was warmer, hot even, so—
Something was wrong.
Blankets lay scattered on the path leading from the smokehouse, Fisher’s leafpaper rabbit face-down in the shards of a soup-pot. Fear hit like a hammer. “What—“
An arm stretched out the door. Aelya’s arm.
“Aelya!” He took the last stairs in a leap, found the girl lying face down in a stain of blood, one leg twisted under her. “Aelya, are you okay?”
No answer. Her body was limp—but there was a heartbeat. “Prophets,” he cursed. The smokehouse was a disaster—broken windows, holes in the thin walls, chimney bricks dislodged in what could only have been a violent struggle. Who would have—
Tulric.
Tai looked toward the door, toward the trail of belongings heading down the bluff, and rage rose in him. Black rage. Tulric did this. He would find him, hurt him—but no. Aelya first. He had to get her to a healworker’s, to Marrem, or she’d die here.
He slid an arm under her shoulders, another under her waist. It was wet with blood. Tai grimaced, but there was no time. He lifted, and she woke with a gasp, loud in his ear.
“Aelya hold on,” he said, fear for her riding the wave of anger in his gut. “I’m getting
you to Marrem.”
“No,” she moaned. “Not--asswater. Tulric. He—“
She was out again, but it was all he needed to hear. It had been Tulric. The rage rose again, threatening to overwhelm him, and he shoved it down. First things first. “Marrem!” he yelled, stumbling out of the smokehouse. Aelya was a dead weight in his arms. “Marrem I need help!”
She was out the door before he reached it, eyes widening for just a moment before she snapped, “In here. Don’t bend her spine.”
Marrem hustled him through the long hall, into the cool dimness of the infirmary, pointed to a bed. “There. Seti!” she barked, and a girl appeared. “Hot water. Bandages. Splints. Dreamleaf.”
The girl sped off and Marrem began prodding Aelya. The wound on her hip was worse than Tai had thought, her whole side soaked with blood, a ragged hole there still oozing in time to her heart. Prophets. If she died—
“What happened?” Marrem asked, not looking up.
“I—they must have been attacked. Aelya and the kids. I was gone, at the docks. I came back and they—“
“Foulsblood,” Marrem cursed. “I thought I heard something, but assumed it was Curly and Fisher playing.” She clucked her tongue. “Nothing for it now. Here, girl! Wad them up and press here.”
Marrem’s movements were quick and efficient—she was one of the best healworkers in the city, Achuri healworkers at least—but it did nothing to quell the fear clogging his throat.
He took a breath. “Is she going to die?”
Marrem pursed her lips, tying herbs into a bandage. “I don’t know. Depends on if they cut into her spleens. If they did…” she shook head, tying another bundle.
Tai’s stomach knotted. Aelya had been with him from the beginning, from the first week he’d hid out with Fisher in the forest. She’d been a refugee from the Maimers, too old to beg and too maimed to fight. She was the backbone of their gang. But the kids--
“Who was it?” Marrem asked, washing the wound with steaming water. “Any idea what weapon did this?”
Tai took a breath. “I think it was Tulric. A—lawkeeper. So a sword, then. Probably black iron.”
“Tulric. Used to be a Roughblood?”
“Yeah.”
Marrem clucked her tongue. “So they are hiring thugs.” She worked on all the gangs in town, her shop an unofficial neutral zone. He’d hoped her smokehouse would be too. Rage rose hot again--all this for one punch? For one chase through the market? But no—this was payback. Saving face. If it was me? he remembered Aelya saying yesterday, Yeah I’d come at us.
Payback. He would show Tulric payback.
Tai stood. “I have to go.”
“And stab more people? Kill some lawkeepers? You’re better than that,” Marrem snapped without looking. “Sit down.”
Her words almost carried through the anger. “They took the kids. I have to find them.” Tai unclasped the money sack, dropped it to the floor. “Keep this for me.”
She started to say something, but he was gone. He’d done what he could for Aelya. Now he needed to get the kids.
And Tulric.
Tai ran through the city on feet made of air. There was only one place they could have gone, one place they took every Achuri arrested in the city. The prison camp.
Tai don’t be stupid! Hake had been ranting at him since they left the healworker’s. Listen to Marrem. You can’t take on a whole group of lawkeepers!
Tai dodged farmer’s carts and palanquins on the way up the bluffs, lungs working like a bellows. A calm was coming over him, the old concentration he’d felt running for the resistance, the separation from body and mind he needed to run long distance. His rage was still there, his fear for his kids, but far enough away he could think.
I can take them on if I use my resonance, he thought back. He could already feel it, a quiet power humming through him, building.
Tai no. You can’t control yourself, that’s why you had to stop—
“I don’t need to control myself,” he said, topping the bluffs and running through the stone gates of Hightown. “Not this time. I can’t let him take the kids.”
And what happens when you lose it again, and end up killing someone you care about?
Guilt cut him deep, an old wound, but it was once removed. “I won’t let that happen. I can’t. Other people control their resonances. I will too.”
No one else has your power.
“Then I’ll just try harder,” Tai snapped, pounding past the stone shops, breath and feet in rhythm. Hake’s voice was just one more thing to consider: his rage, his fear, his friend, his life. “The stories talk of ancestors more powerful than me. They didn’t lose control.”
You’re not an ancestor, Tai, and you’re—
He ran through Sandglass Square and out of the crowds. The streets split here, beaten track to the prison camp heading southwest through fields into the trees. Tai let Hake separate like his thoughts and his feelings, one more thing to be noticed, but a step removed.
Tulric was on the road ahead, gang of lawkeepers at his back.
Returning from the camp.
Power hummed deeper in Tai’s bones. The kids weren’t with him. Tai let his mind work on it, feet flying over the footbridge. Tulric might not have taken the kids, or might not have taken them to the camp. He might be able to get them back. Talk. He needed to talk first.
Then payback.
The lawkeepers formed into a tight circle as he approached, hands on swords. Tai pounded to a halt, breath as calm as the breeze, power roaring through him. They could feel it, he saw. Saw the look of fear on Tulric’s face despite the ten men at his back. His resonance would be drowning out theirs.
“Where are they?” His voice resonated too.
Tulric smiled nervously. “Where are who?”
Tai kept his breath in rhythm, rage wanting to rise now that he was stopped. Control. He had to keep control. “My kids. Fisher. Curly. Pang.” Each name was a log on the man’s pyre. If he’d hurt them at all—
Tulric took a step back into the circle of lawkeepers. “No need to get ugly here, Tai. They’re in the camp, same as everyone else. They’re fine.”
“They’re not fine,” he gritted. “Aelya’s not fine. Bring them back.”
Tulric shuffled. “Bring them back? I can’t, Tai. No one gets out of the camp. Not without passing the education or going to the mines. That’s the law.”
Tai flexed his fists. “You’re a lawkeeper. Go get them.”
Tulric held up his hands. “Hey. Even I can’t do that, Tai. They’re Titans in there. Your kids are gone.”
Gone. Red rose in his vision, and his concentration broke, a glass bauble in a giant’s fist. His feet rose off the ground, air thickening around him, begging to be used.
To hurt something.
Tai no—
Tai shot forward, hands seizing Tulric’s throat, resonance lifting him off his feet and scattering the knot of lawkeepers. They flew a hundred paces back, two hundred, Tai screaming, the old rage burning.
Tulric threw him off, yura-powered arms shooting Tai into the air. Tai caught himself, then swung around to drive his foot at the man’s neck.
You said you’d keep control Tai don’t do this! Think of Fisher!
Control. Tai streaked groundward, ready to die, ready to kill this man. Fisher.
He slowed, a foot above the man’s head, power rattling out of him in waves. Distantly he noted the other lawkeepers, brawlers and wafters all, rushing toward them. “Get them back, or I kill you, here and now.”
Tulric glanced at the men, still fifty paces off, eyes wide. “I—I can’t! They’ll kill me.”
Tai gritted his teeth, holding off his rage. Tulric was telling the truth. He could still kill the man, but the lawkeepers would likely catch up and end him. And the kids were still out there—they needed him more than he needed Tulric dead.
“Then consider yourself lucky.” He allowed himself one kick, one resonance-driven boot into the
man’s ribs that sent him flying, then clamped down on his rage and turned for the camp. He had bigger stones to smash.
Tai flew up from the road, air whistling past him. Somewhere inside he registered how strange it felt to waft, to push himself around in air, after years of shunning his resonance. Registered how close he had come to losing it with Tulric. But I didn’t lose it, he thought. I can control it.
That once, Hake pleaded somewhere. Not again.
But he had to. Who knew how long they would keep the kids in there, what the lighthairs would do to them? Very few had come out since the arrests started, and the ones that did were changed—like Fisher’s eyes when she got shocksickness. Like something had died in them. He couldn’t let that happen. Not to his kids.
Okay but think about it, Tai. If Tulric couldn’t get in, if they’d kill even him—
“I have to try.” He was flying over forest now, following the narrow track of the road through the treetops. “It’s that or what? Give up? Let them die?”
Not give up. Just regroup. Make a plan.
Tai snorted, forest below falling away to reveal a massive clearing. You were a good runner, Hake, but you’re a shitty planner.
The clearing was stippled with tree stumps and downed logs, nearly as wide as the city itself. In the center rose the prison, high wood walls looking more like a fortress. Only this was a fortress meant to keep people in.
Figures rose up from the walls as Tai streaked closer, wafters armed with bows and long lances. People said the camp was defended by Titans, the infamous Councilate soldiers trained in fighting with resonances—soldiers who, it was whispered, had been able to use their resonances long before the discovery of yura.
