by Levi Jacobs
The door sucked open, torn from its hinges, wind and light roaring in. A figure floated in the maelstrom, black against a brilliant sky.
“Tai!”
42
A descendant will come who conquers not one, or two, but all six demons in all twelve manifestations. You will know her for she conquers without aid, for the sake of others, and the world will be as shadows before her gaze.
--Minchu diaphones
Tai shot from the jail, wind and remains of his cell a blur around him. The prison camp below was jammed with people, an ocean of black hair bounded by wood walls. Across the clearing, whitecoat soldiers streamed from the city toward the camp. “Ella!” Tai called, voice the wind itself, and sucked in air.
A section of roof tore from the prison, peeled back like melonskin. Tai tossed it into the whitecoats, tore back another, until the door of the torture chamber came clear. He shot down, Ella’s screams audible on the wind.
Tai sucked the door open, uai raging inside, broke it off its hinges, and dropped to the exposed prison floor. People were circled inside, Ella tied to a table in the middle. “Tai!”
Rage boiled in him. He drew in air—
And cracked against the floor, a blurred spear descending for his throat.
“Tai!” Ella cried, unsure if she was dead or alive, the figure out the door a man or the Prophet himself come for her.
He descended to the ground in slow motion, dust and stone and chunks of ceramic suspended in slowed rotation around him. The men drew their weapons, shouting, and Ella saw he was very much real. He had come for her.
He touched down, mouth open in a shout that was almost subsonic, more felt rumble than human voice. All the sounds from outside the room were, she realized. As though the entire room were in slip.
The men ran for him, maybe realizing this too, and something clicked in Ella’s mind, a line from a Kellandrials: Now and then I could almost swear my powers extend beyond my own body.
She was extending her slip to include all the men. All the men but Tai.
A soldier slammed a fist into Tai’s head, sending him backward as though through honey. Fear clutched her stomach. She had to extend the slip to him too—but how?
The soldier raised a spear.
“Tai,” she whispered, urgent. “Move!”
The blurring spear slowed above him, and Tai twisted, iron scraping into the ceramic where his head had been. Tai let out his breath, rocketing the man backward into air, out the opening in the roof.
The other men were running for him, four, maybe five whitecoats. Tai extended a hand, breathing out, and they slammed against the back wall of the room, cracks spidering from their bodies.
He stood, holding them there effortlessly as a breath. “Ella. Are you okay?”
“Tai!” Her smile was beatific. “You came for me!”
He smiled. “Like you came for me.” He was over her now, blood on the stone but her face perfect, eyes crystal blue. “Are you alright?” The restraints holding her snapped open.
“I’m fine, I—pleased my ancestors, I guess. What about you?”
“After they took you I figured some things out. Saw through something that’s been holding me back a long time.”
She smiled. “Me too. And I might have put us both in slip.”
Tai looked around. “That’s amazing.”
Ella smiled. Someone groaned behind them, and Tai lifted them up, table and all, like two motes of dust. Like the uai in him would never end.
“Oh Prophets,” Ella said, face paling. “Are we in the middle of the air?”
That’s right, she didn’t like heights. “No! Not at all. Sorry.”
He swung them into the fields, world still frozen in slip around them. Whitecoats filled the road from Ayugen, speckled with dark gray metal forms that could only be Titans.
Ella glanced around. “Tai. We need to get out of here.”
“No,” he said, feeling dead certain at last. “They do. Will you be safe here?”
“I can handle myself. But what are you—”
He squeezed her hand, warm and smooth and wonderful. “I’m going to find a better way.”
Tai shot into the air. Ayugen was awash in whitecoats, swinging back into motion as he left Ella. Boats were tied along the docks, lines of white soldiers like ants still disembarking, threading through Riverbottom and up the bluffs to Hightown, merging with white coats from Newgen in a stream flowing to the southwest. The prison camp.
He shoved that way, wind moving with him, screams and shouts and the heavy tromp of boots reaching him from below. The soldiers were forming a ring around the camp gate, screams of the panicked Achuri inside a single wail.
“Go.” Tai wafted above them, voice booming on the wind. “Go now.”
Gray forms shot up to meet him, Titans moving faster than he’d ever seen wafters move. Tai sucked in air, breathed out four single streams, slamming the men back down. They crashed into the sea of white coats, ripples of men falling back from them like water from stones.
“Go!” he repeated, dropping closer. Then he saw what was happening.
The Achuri had been released, pushing out in panic against the ring of whitecoats. They were being cut down, men and boys giving what resistance they could. It was a massacre.
With a cry Tai breathed out, shoving a wall of air between them. Shouts rose, cries, and Tai forced a line through the whitecoat army, men and bodies and swords lifting in the winds as he cleared a path.
Dark-haired figures poured through it, and Tai spread the gap wider, pushing the army back toward the water. More figures rose to meet him, and arrows and spears and knives. Tai stopped them with lines of air, uai an unending tempest inside. He pushed back on the army, away from the camp, creating a wall of air a thousandpace long, two thousandpace, forcing the whitecoats back toward the Riverbottom.
Men screamed, turning to flee, pushing against each other, discipline of the army breaking. Tai lifted them all, pushed them like ants through a maze, his breath the wind itself. They flowed down though Hightown, carts and cobblestones and rooftops caught in the current, over the side of the bluffs and down the face of the hillside, men tumbling and spinning with the winds, a foaming tide of humanity rolling back to sea. Tai pushed individual walls of air through the streets of Riverbottom, the town familiar as his own flesh, cries of the men below him rising in a single roar. He pushed them through the Iron Market, along the docks, lines of men spilling back onto their boats, or into the river itself. Tai lifted these on individual jets, piling them on the decks of the ships, more and more pushing from behind.
There were too many, the ships too disorganized to hold them all. With a crack Tai broke the docks from the earth itself, shoving them into the river like so many more barges. Men screamed and he pushed the flotilla downstream, rage like a thunderstorm inside him, parting the waters of the Genga itself to make a single wave of air, pushing the boats downstream. Sunken ships and burnt dockhouses were swept away in the tide, and Tai followed above them in air, uai rushing from him like there was no end.
He swept them past the ruins of Newgen, past the bluffs to the west of the city, further, downstream, batting Titans and arrows and spears from the sky like insects. They pushed past Stoneforger’s Bend, past the end of the farmland and the clearings of hermits, Genga like a living thing under his breath.
They came finally to Gendrys, to the Councilate fort rising out of the confluence with the Ein. Tai let the ships go, pulled downstream in the rush of current, men and docks and Iacquered ships a human flood coursing downriver.
Tai felt his breath leaving him, felt a vicious ache beginning in his spine, but drew in more air. “Not yet. Ancestors stay with me.” He pulled on the ground, digging boulders from the bluff, drawing the ribs of the earth itself out, and slammed them down into the river.
The Genga roared, water foaming around the giant rocks. Tai pushed backward, drawing more stones, dropping them higher up the river’s co
urse, a thousandpace, two thousand, three—
Then with a gasp the uai left him, and Tai fell from the sky like a stone.
43
No flower blooms without roots.
--Achuri proverb
Rebuilding a city was hard work. Ella grunted as she pushed a mass of shingles off a rooftop. “Lumo,” she panted. “Sure you can’t do this alone?”
“Ha,” the heavy Minchu laughed, catching the chunk easily and heaving it into a wagon. “I am not Tai, to solve the world’s problems by my self.” Up and down the street other teams worked, clearing away the rubble and remains of fighting.
“I had help,” Tai said from the roof next to her, eyes focused as he wafted a broken timber down to the trailer. “If it wasn’t for Ella I’d still be trapped inside that prison.”
Lumo pulled at his pipe, waiting for the next load of shingles. “What about me? You do not mention me, Tai.”
“Or me,” Aelya put in, air crackling as she pulled a ruined handcart from the alley. “None of you meckstains would have even met Tai if I hadn’t kept him alive the last seven years.”
Ella cocked her head, and Tai laid a hand on her shoulder. “You all helped equally.”
Aelya snorted. “When did you start talking like a lighthair?”
“When the whole city started treating me like I was the Prophet returned from his grave.” He was getting stares even now from the other work crews.
“Try not defeating a whole army in an afternoon.”
“And then disappearing for days so we thought you were dead again,” Ella said.
“As I recall neither of you were disappointed to find me alive.” Tai set the timber down.
Ella blushed, remembering the way she’d ran to him like some longlost lover. “Hey,” she pointed a finger, trying to change the topic. “Isn’t that Marrem?”
The stout Achuri woman had taken charge of much of the clean-up process, organizing infirmaries and work crews and mass kitchens under Tai’s guidance. Tai leapt from the rooftop, seizing air just enough to land on the street in front of the stout healworker.
She shook her head. “Ancestor’s teeth boy, you’ll give an old woman a heartseize.”
Tai grinned. “But not this one.”
Marrem pursed her lips. “I wanted to talk you about the food stores.”
Tai nodded. “Aye. Any luck finding the Councilate’s supply?”
She shook her head. “Still nothing. Seems most of Newgen and the mines were relying on weekly shipments from downstream.”
“Okay. So we harvest a little early.”
“Aye, and we are doing, but there isn’t enough food in those fields for Ayugen plus our guests for the whole winter.”
Tai sighed. “They’re not guests, Marrem. The rebels are here to stay, lighthairs or not. They fought with us and died with us and deserve a place in our city.”
“Well maybe you can ask them write home for some food supplies. Though I don’t reckon the shipments would make it past your new set of rapids.”
Tai grimaced. “We’ll think of something. Everything else okay?”
“Aye. Though we’ll need to find a longer-term solution for the fighters than keeping them in the camp. Some of the people are saying we’re no better than the Councilate, to shut them up in there.”
“Right. Maybe we can use the Tower. Or just give them a few boats and send them downstream to Gendrys.”
“As you say.”
Tai ran a hand through his hair. “You know, you don’t need to run all these things by me, Marrem. I trust you to do the right thing.”
Marrem smiled, taking her younger girl around the shoulders. “I do. But the people don’t. It’s been years since we had a real circle of elders, and till we do, you’re it. Fool boy or not.”
Tai heart clenched, meeting the daughter’s wide-eyed gaze. She reminded him too much of Fisher, and of all the pyres they’d built in the fields above town. “Right. I’ll think more on that. Maybe we can call a meeting when the cleanup is done.”
“You might not want to wait that long.”
“Tai!” Ella called from the roof, note of urgency to her voice. Tai looked up, hearing other calls from down the street. “Something in the sky!”
Tai struck resonance, shooting above Hightown to get a better look. There was indeed a figure in the air, sun glinting off metal plate. A Titan. Tai breathed in, hoping this wasn’t the first wave of another assault. It was too soon, and he wasn’t as strong as he’d been. He pushed himself forward to meet the man.
Half a league off the Titan held up two flags, crossed in the sign of peace. Tai continued on more slowly, breath at the ready. “Ho, soldier,” he called, letting the air carry his voice in booming waves.
“Ho, rebel,” the Titan replied, drawing up his mask to reveal a hard face under a grey-peppered beard. “You are the one?”
Tai stopped a few paces from him. “I am. What do you want here?”
“I bring a message from the Council.”
Tai’s eyebrows raised. “News travels fast.”
The Titan withdrew a scroll from his belt and extended it. “You can read?”
“Well enough.” Tai took the document, resonance ready, but the armored man made no move. A breeze ruffled the paper as he broke the seal and read:
Rebel Leaders,
Your victory is short-lived. The Council has more soldiers than you have trees in your forests. Enhanced abilities or not, our numbers will eventually destroy you. But it need not come to blows. We extend an offer of parley in one week’s time, at the Yati port Olsget. You need our food and we need your yura. We trust an agreement can be made.
It was signed in twelve different hands, Tai recognizing many of the family names—Alsthen, Coldferth, Galya, Ergstad. The most powerful names in the world. He considered the paper a moment, then let the wind take it. “I refuse the offer of parley. You can extend my own greetings to the Council: You have seen the power we hold. Whether you come by river, or by land, or by the air itself, we will smash you time and time again. We showed mercy on the lives of your men the first time, but try us again and we will not be so lenient.”
The Titan nodded. “I had expected as much. Your strategy holds little weight in the face of our numbers, but we have not yet faced a power such as yours. It may be an interesting combat.” He paused, a hand to his visor. “I will add one thing to the Council’s message. We do not have numbers alone. We have taken your yuraloading process and improved upon it. We have a weapon you cannot deal with.”
Tai narrowed his eyes, gauging the man. “We’ll be the judge of that. May the Prophet guide you on your way, sir.”
The Titan lowered his visor, voice muffled through the burnished steel. “And you on yours.”
With a breath of wind the man pushed away toward the west. Tai rose in the air, following his course as he dwindled, relieved to see him drop to earth after the first few ridges of hills, impressed the man had stayed airborne as long as he had. After watching him a time further, to be sure there were no others, he returned to Hightown, to the street where Ella and the others still cleaned debris.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“He wanna fight you?” Aelya put in.
“He offered parley,” Tai told them. “The Council wanted to make some sort of treaty. I refused.”
Marrem worked at her jaw. “You might have waited for a second opinion. We can’t handle a war with the lighthairs.”
“We don’t have to!” Aelya slapped his back “We’ve got Tai.”
Ella straightened her back. “I’d rather he not fight armies alone, if need be.”
“I will face them with him,” Lumo rumbled from the street.
“And me,” Aelya said, holding her one fist up in the rebel salute. Even Marrem nodded.
Tai smiled. “With an army like you guys? They don’t stand a chance.”
Thanks for reading! The story obviously isn’t over—things get more intense in Paup
er’s Empire, coming March 20th in ebook and paperback!
In the meantime, if you want more of the Resonant Saga world, I have a free novella set in Ayugen a year before Beggar’s Rebellion, only available if you sign up for my mailing list, about how Aelya reacts when a lawkeeper arrests her and forces her to infiltrate the Maimers…
The list will keep you updated when Pauper’s Empire comes out (and its sequels; number three is coming in April), and every month I give you a little peek into the unseen parts of the Resonant Saga. Plus, if you just want the novella and not the updates, you can unsubscribe immediately! I won’t take it personally. Though Aelya might.
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More soon. Keep drinking mavenstym, rebels, the battle’s not won yet!
