by Levi Jacobs
Anger flared in her as Ella pushed through the busy tables. She grabbed him by the arm.
“Wha—“
“Pruitt,” she said, her face inches from his. “Did you steal my money?”
Surprise registered in his heavy features. “Ella? What are you talking about?”
She searched his eyes. “My money. Six thousand marks. Did you steal it?”
“I didn’t steal your money. What the hell?”
Ella relaxed a bit—he looked genuine. “Someone stole everything I had on the ship. I’m trying to find them.”
“And you thought it would be me?” Pruitt frowned, mouth working. “You’re lucky I don’t press charges—you’re the thief.”
“Thief?” one of the other men at the table hooted. “What’d she take?”
“Your heart maybe, Pruitt?” another called.
“She took three hundred marks,” Pruitt said, coming into his own. “And since you’re here, I think I need a little interest on top.” He stood, taking a tighter grip on her arm.
Ella tongued the yura in her mouth, ready to bite down. “You got your books done for free. Consider that interest enough.”
“And if I don’t?” Pruitt grinned, glass beads in his beard parting with his smile. “How ‘bout it boys? Feel like a few rounds on the girl’s coin?”
Ella leaned in. “You wouldn’t want me to make a fool of you in front of these men would you?” she spoke in his ear. “Again?”
His grip tightened, and Ella was resigning herself to using the yura when three sharp metal clangs sounded. A wave of silence washed through the saloon, reaching their table last.
Ella turned to see an older man, tall and proud in Councilate livery, approaching their table. “What,” he said in measured tones, “is the problem here?” Ella noticed the sword at his hip was steel—real worked steel, not the black iron of a soldier.
“No problem,” Pruitt growled. “Just dealing with a thief.” The room went even quieter, every eye on them. “Sir.”
Ella knew she didn’t look like a thief, and drew herself up. “I don’t know what the man is referring to,” she said, using the elevated tones of a scholar. “I was simply inquiring after some of my things, stolen on the voyage here, when he accosted me this way.”
The officer met her gaze, eyes like flint. “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles, madame. Do you believe this man stole your things?”
Ella wanted to say yes. She wanted with all her heart to see Pruitt punished, but he hadn’t actually done anything, beyond being a faithless coward. And they’re all guilty of that. “No,” she said reluctantly. “No, I don’t.”
“Then I order you to stand down, citizen.” He turned to her. “May I offer you—“
“She’s a thief,” Pruitt spat. “A common thief pretending to be—“
Half of the room rose to its feet, ringing with the sound of iron pulled from sheaths. The officer raised a hand, and in the silence that followed repeated, “I order you to stand down, citizen.”
Suddenly surrounded with a sea of black iron, with his whole table looking like they’d rather be dead, Pruitt sank back to the table, eyes burning.
“At ease, men,” the older man called, and those who had risen began to take their chairs, turning back to drink and conversation. He turned to her. “I’m sorry for that, and to hear about your troubles. Are you new to Ayugen?”
She nodded, heart still beating. “I am. Ellumia Aygla.” She held out her hand in Councilium fashion, and he took it.
“Arten Sablo,” he said, leading her from the table. Something in her head registered his name—she’d heard it before. “What brings you to the city?”
“I—” There were so many possible answers. If ever there was a patron a calculor might want, it was a man who could get half the room to its feet with a word. But she was having second thoughts about lying about her status, and liar or had no money to go back seemed like bad answers. “—am a scholar, sir. I’m interested in culture, in the Achuri and their historical relationship to yura, and was hoping to do some research here, before I seek admission to the Thousand Spires.”
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 the highest rank in Ayugen, one of maybe fifteen 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 her mother’s words: Less speech is more. A man fills in silence with his own desires.
The High Arbiter. Descending gods.
Ella walked back into the sunshine with a bounce in her step. Suddenly a loss of six thousand marks 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, back to her, “that you have trouble following orders.”
Scat--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 mark
s? Added to the debt you already owe me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Three hundred marks?”
“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—she wanted to smash it out of them. “That’s seven thousand you owe me, eight including yesterday!”
“That’s fishscatter!” 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 to all of them.”
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 shifted 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 shattering 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.
“Mothershatterer!” 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 nothing on him but strength. And that was no advantage at all. “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 enough.
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.
She felt the resonance fade as she did, grabbed the bust, 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 bound her left hand, her right, something coarse, then her 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 blacken, 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 would have been a hundred easier ways for Ilrick to do that before, including leaving him to the Helpers. But why the crossbow?
And who were they?
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 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 Seinjial. “What?” The man must have mistaken his hair.
“You’re not Seinjial?”
“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 Helpers.” Tai glanced at his sword, a full pace of blackened pig 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 Helpers, 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 darkhair, 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.
The silence stretched, Karhail watching him with brooding eyes. “I will honor Ilrick’s offer of passage,” he said at last, “on two conditions.”
Tai’s stomach knotted. That doesn’t sound good.
“What conditions?” If worst 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 Seinjial 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.
