Pauper's Empire: An Epic Fantasy Saga (Empire of Resonance Book 2) Page 3

  “Or maybe a trial run. Either way we can’t go back to yura production. Every ball we trade downriver is another chance for them to yuraload somebody, or do whatever new thing it is they’re doing.”

  “Speaking of which.” She turned and yelled back to the militiamen, “See anything, boys?”

  “Nothing,” one barked back, “not in the woods neither.” There were another ten men or so ranged out to either side of them. Tai figured they had walked three or four thousandpace from the edge of the city, the path well-trampled underfoot. Still, Feynrick was right—there would be no getting an army down this path with any speed. The Councilate had always used rivers, but with the series of rapids Tai had put in they had no good way of reaching Ayugen.

  Were the bodies some new experiment in how to cross the forest?

  They came to a few huts set up around a wide patch in the road. A weathered Achuri woman sat next to a smoking cookfire, watching a naked toddler play in the dirt.

  “Ho, grandmother,” Tai called in Achuri. “Any strange happenings in these parts the last few days?”

  The woman eyed him head to foot, then the men behind him. “You the Blood?”

  Tai suppressed a grimace. There were men as tall as he was, but no one had a neck scar like his. “Aye, but my given name’s Sekaetai. We’ve heard tell of strange noises out here, of bodies and things happening in the wood.”

  “Oh aye, been some of that. Mostly trader talk, but you want to find a body, I been smelling one bout a thousandpace that way.” She pointed south and west, where the trees grew thicker up a rise.

  Tai made the traditional gesture for thanks, a hand over heart. “If you hear or see anything in the future, send word to Ayugen, and we will send what aid we can.”

  “Aye,” she said again, clicking her tongue at the boy who, noticing the group of militiamen, stood and watched with round eyes, a line of pee stuttering into the dirt. “Spirits keep ye.”

  They struck into the forest then, men to either side pulling a little closer in. “Looks like you’re famous even out here,” Aelya murmured, both of them scanning the trees. It was mainly oak and leatherleaf, trunks thick this far from the city.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  He smelled it a finger later, when the wind shifted directions. “Spirits,” one of the militiamen coughed. “How many of them died out here?”

  Tai pushed through the branches of a newly fallen oak, something bothering him about the situation. He’d spent a fair amount of time in the woods as a boy running messages for the Achuri resistance, and ran into bodies before. Nothing ever stank this strong.

  They found the body past the next cluster of trees. The stench was intense, some of the men gagging and Tai fighting an animal urge to get away. It lay in a clearing of uprooted trees, their stumps ragged and the earth torn in great clumps, as though a beast with giant claws had descended in a fury.

  “What did this?” Aelya choked.

  “And why didn’t it take the body?” Tai asked a moment later. Something in the forest was always willing to eat the dead, whether it was bears or wolves or vultures or insects. This one was untouched: bloated beyond recognition, skin a mottled purple and black, foul fluid seeping from its eyes, ears, and anus. Not even the heavy flies of late summer, desperate at this time of year for a place to lay eggs, buzzed in the air.

  “Meck if I know,” one of the men cursed with his collar over his mouth. “Not sure I want to.”

  The wind changed direction and Tai drew a grateful lung of clean air. “Look for the trail,” he called to the men. “Does anyone see hoofprint or sign of other animal crossing?”

  The men spread out and Tai did the same. The breeze gusted, orange leaves chittering from the tall leatherleafs surrounding the clearing. “What of human mark?” Tai called over the wind. “Any shod prints or sign of tool?”

  A boom sounded to the west, reverberating underfoot. Tai frowned, meeting Aelya’s eyes. “What—“

  The breeze swelled to a gale, leaves and sticks flying. Aelya yelled something, but her words were lost in the groan of trees.

  Tai looked up, confusion changing to horror as a line of massive leatherleafs cracked and toppled toward them.

  4

  Tai struck resonance, uai roaring to life within him. He thickened air against the trees, shoving backward with his own wind. They hung halfway down, balanced between his push and the unnatural gale—another wafter?

  “Run!” he yelled at Aelya and the men. “I don’t know how long I can hold it!”

  His words were lost in the roar. He pushed harder against the trees, unable to tip them back. Just as he was thinking he might need to run too, the gale died and his shove shot the trees the other direction, crashing into the forest beyond.

  Men shouted and drew swords around him, ichor and stench welling from the body where a stick had impaled it. Aelya grabbed his arm, pointing upwards with her iron fist. “Tai!”

  Something black hung in the sky. His stomach dropped. It was another wafter then. A Titan? And as strong as he was. This must be the Councilate’s new weapon. The thing that killed the body below.

  And the end of any idea he could defend the city, if they had more. He’d be lucky to save Aelya and the men.

  Tai shoved his fear down and pushed into the sky. Street instincts kicked in: no time for fear. Do what you can. Lead the wafter off, like he’d led off so many lawkeepers. Give the others time to escape.

  It flew for him as he rose up, fast but definitely not a Titan. Titans wore shining steel armor. This wafter was covered in dirt and blood—like the body Arkless had brought in.

  Had the two fought each other?

  Tai wafted the other direction. The wafter gave chase, thank the ancestors. The forest spread out below him, a lumpy carpet of green, and the wind howled past his ears.

  No, not just the wind. The wafter was howling too.

  What in ancestors?

  Tai looked back to see the figure still streaking toward him with sword in hand. They were already a thousandpace or more from his friends. Good enough. Run Aelya, the thought as he struck his higher resonance. For once in your life don’t be stupid.

  Air thickened around his hands. Tai imagined a giant fist of air punching into the wafter’s back.

  Their—her?—howl changed to one of pain and it crashed into the treetops. At that speed, she had likely broken most of the bones in her body.

  At least it was over quick.

  He scanned the green canopy, trying to find a place to descend and look for the body.

  The body came to him, shooting up from the trees shrieking, sword gone, leaves a swirl around her.

  She’d survived that?

  Air buffeted him like she was trying to imitate his fist of air. She had a second resonance then, but didn’t know how to use it. Or was too broken to control it well—the way she flew at everything top speed, it almost seemed like she was using her resonance for the first time.

  He dodged back. Control or not, she was as powerful as he was. More powerful, maybe. So he’d have to be smarter, and use her lack of control to his advantage.

  Tai shot away, pouring on speed. As soon as she followed he dove for the trees.

  It was insanity. Leaves and needles tore at him as he plunged through the canopy, then the understory opened up to long bare trunks. At this speed any one of them would break his neck. He was counting on it, actually.

  The wafter crashed down nearby and Tai sped away, weaving through thick trunks, dodging fallen trees and broken branches, mind totally taken up in staying alive. Behind him, the wafter screamed.

  And he grinned. This, at least, he knew how to do. This he was good at. Forget leading the city or being someone people looked up to, or even solving the city’s food shortage. He was a wafter. A good one, even if he would never defeat an entire army again. And wafting at the limits of his ability, uai raging inside, felt good. It felt right.

  The wafter screamed again behind him
, a crack sounding. He looked back to see her bouncing off a trunk but barreling on with one leg flopping limp.

  Ancestors, could she not die?

  He sped ahead, barely missing a leaning trunk himself, his spine starting to ache from all the uai he was using. He didn’t have much more.

  What about the wafter’s? It had to run out soon. More screams and cracks sounded from behind. He spun around a giant leatherleaf, shooting south instead of west. A heavy thud sounded and the wafter’s almost constant screams died.

  Tai slowed, spine aching, listening for any hint of attack. Ancestors, what was it? A wildly strong, half-controlled yuraload gone bad? That couldn’t die? He had been sure he was the strongest wafter in the Councilate, but this wafter was a match for him in strength. But it seemed animal somehow, its screams and cries more primal than a human would make, even in battle.

  The silence continued for ten breaths, twenty. Tai dropped to the earth, damping his uai despite the bends that hit. The hum would give him away. The world bent and spun, his stomach threatening to leave him, and still he listened, counting to sixty.

  Nothing. Had he killed the thing? Maybe it had run out of uai.

  Tai chewed a hunk of dried bittermelon and risked a look around the tree. The forest lay silent, ferns swaying in a light breeze. He tried a yell, ducking back to avoid attacks, but nothing came.

  Tai crept out to scan the area. Leaves crackled underfoot so he bounced into air, grimacing at the resonance and the ache in his bones. He hadn’t used this much uai since the final days of the rebellion.

  Tai skimmed toward the giant leatherleaf, shafts of sunlight dappling the forest floor, alert for a sudden attack.

  He found the wafter crumpled in a heap, almost unrecognizably mangled. Again like the body Arkless brought in. He shivered.

  What was going on?

  First things first. Make sure she’s dead. He dropped to the ground and threw a stone. It bounced from the figure’s leg with no response. Tai walked closer, uai at the ready.

  It was another Councilate soldier, white coat still visible under the dirt and blood. The lemonpepper hair of a mixed blood spilled from a tight-fitting helmet pushed askew. A woman. She’d broken multiple limbs and blood seeped from her mouth as well as a gaping tear in her stomach.

  He listened for a breath, heard none, and crouched down over her.

  “What happened to you?” he whispered, feeling for a pulse at the neck.

  She screamed, back arching, and the forest pulled down around them.

  Tai shoved back with everything he had, trees cracking and uai burning up his spine.

  Fast as it had come her shove eased and the trees burst outward. She collapsed, and Tai used his last bit of uai to break her neck.

  He collapsed next to her. “Prophets,” he panted, “what are you?”

  5

  Aelya crashed through the forest, resonance burning, slamming trees aside with her iron fist. “Tai!” she yelled, echoed by the militiamen spread out in the trees. Mecking idiot, flying off where she couldn’t help. Where was he?

  There, maybe. That tree looked freshly broken.

  What if he’s dead, Aels? Curly’s voice was a squeak inside her head, like he’d been a year ago, before they joined the resistance. Before the Councilate ambushed their camp and gave him the wounds that took his life.

  “If he’s dead I’ll kill him,” she muttered, cracking off a branch in her path. He was always doing this, trying to protect her when he was the one who needed protection. He should know by now how mad it made her.

  Mecking idiot.

  Whatever that thing was, it better still be alive when she found it, because she needed a fight. Fights were how she worked out her feelings. That’s how she’d always been, even on the streets. Get angry, fight something, feel better. Tai knew this. And still he flew off.

  She found him on the far side of a giant leatherleaf, collapsed next to a bloodied body. Fear hit like a logger’s axe. “Stains,” she cursed, dropping to feel his neck.

  A heartbeat. He was alive. Thank the elders.

  Anger came back a second later. She slapped him. “Wake up, stainring.”

  His eyes opened. “Wha—Aelya?”

  “Yeah, Aelya. The meck were you thinking, flying off like that?” Good thing he looked pretty beat up. Otherwise she’d punch him.

  Tai pushed himself up, wincing. “I didn’t want to fight her and worry about you all getting hurt.”

  “Worry about me? You didn’t think maybe I could help you?” Still, he was alive. She could pound some sense into him when he healed up. “Who is this meckstain anyway?”

  “Looks like another Councilate soldier.” He prodded at his side. “A mecking strong one.”

  “You’re telling me. I just about got crushed by one of those trees.”

  “No, I mean strong.” There was a look in his eyes, like when the Roughbloods would come looking for protection money.

  Aelya swallowed. “Like, stronger than you?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Meckstains.” She took a step closer to the body and squatted down. “She looks so… broken.”

  Tai squatted next to her and a few militiamen approached. “That’s a good word for it. Broken. Like she was… broken inside too.”

  Aelya poked the body with a stick, half cautious and still half wanting to kick the shatters out of it. “You think they sent this broken lady after you?”

  “Maybe. But how would they know I was out here?”

  Aelya glanced at the men. Not great to make them start worrying, but nothing for it. “They must have. Why else would they wait until now?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m thinking she’s the new weapon Sablo was talking about.”

  Aelya poked the thing again. “That’d make sense. Pretty dead now though.”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t easy.”

  He looked exhausted, like he used to look coming back from battles in the rebellion. He must have burned a lot of uai. She fished him out a stick of wintermelon from her belt. “So how’d they break her? Drug her up on yura? She didn’t seem to be making much sense.”

  “Maybe. That’s what she reminded me of, she and the body Arkless brought in.”

  “Of what?” Tai could be mecking vague sometimes.

  “The yuraloads—the first ones.”

  A gory scene came into her head, of a wafter smashing himself to death against cave walls. “Matle.”

  Matle was the reason they’d started tying people up before they yuraloaded them. Because a few of the loaders would go crazy, screaming and losing control of their powers. “But they always killed themselves in a few minutes,” she said. “This one seemed like she had better control.”

  “Or like she was being controlled. She broke her leg and kept coming, Aels.”

  Aelya poked the body in the nose. “Anyways, you beat their new weapon, so we’re good, right?”

  Tai rolled his shoulders. “That’s the thing. If this really is something like yuraloading, then those other bodies were probably Broken too.”

  “Meaning there’s more coming.”

  He nodded.

  Aelya sighed. Being angry was so much better than worrying. You couldn’t fight out worry. “Well we’d better pack her up. The circle’s gonna want to see this.”

  6

  There was a music to our gatherings, then. A song our ancestors would sing in winter. I haven’t heard it for many years now.

  —Ellumia Aygla, Interviews with Achuri Elders, unpublished

  Ella pulled her knit shawl closer over her shoulders. The wind swirling across the square had a bite, and she recalled Markel’s passages on Achuri winters so cold no one would go outside for days. It wasn’t even properly fall yet. Ayugen was exciting but she missed Worldsmouth’s constant heat. The caves were warm at least, but Gil had insisted on meeting here, at an open-air kitchen on Sandglass Square, to talk through his overcoming yesterday.

  He was talking now a
bout the details of his voice—he’d understood it as a former lover, not the divine challenge of Seinjial belief. Tunla was there too, sipping a steaming cup of mavenstym tea and tutoring her daughter in Yersh letters. In the square children screamed and chased each other, and scents of roasting buttersquash and seared elk wafted from the kitchen. Ella breathed deep. It was refreshing to see sunshine. Maybe she should work outside air into the students’ routine…

  Gil trailed off. “Or is this not what you are wanting?”

  Ella realized she’d stopped taking notes some time ago. “No, no! I guess we are just more curious as to what happened in the final moments, any insights you have as to how you overcame your voice.”

  “Oh.” The young man still spoke in clipped sentences, but there was a vibrance to him that was new. The pockmarks on his cheeks from acne in his youth were also gone, healed in the overcoming. “Honestly I don’t know. I had been fighting with my lover since I woke up. Then you came and it was like she got confused. Or that I could see it wasn’t her talking. That she was something else. Something that didn’t care about me, whatever she said.”

  Ella nodded. “Do you think the isolation helped?”

  “Yeah. I missed seeing people, but I could… hear her better, down there. Or it. Whatever it was.” He laughed and took a sip of his thick tea. He wore the red necklace that marked cult members, scarlet beads on a black strip of hide.

  “Was there anything shocking or stressful that happened while I was there?”

  He shook his head. “The opposite. It was nice having company. I think your presence helped.”

  So much for the shock trials theory. Ella scribbled in her book—from what she could tell of Titan’s memoirs, extreme stress was the method the Councilate used to get their soldiers to overcome voices, though it resulted in a high casualty rate. “Was it something I said? Something I did?”

  Gil shook his head. “No. Really, I think it was just having you there.”

  Ella glanced at Tunla. The elder they’d visited yesterday, upriver from Ayugen, had said most went into the caves with a guide, someone who had gotten ‘the boon’ from their ancestors, as Tunla translated it. Did Ella have some kind of boon now that she’d overcome both her voices?