resonant saga Four Preview: Ella's Homecoming
This excerpt was originally posted as a preview for newsletter subscribers. Please forgive any continuity or spelling errors as it is an unpolished work in progress, and may or may not reflect the final novel's content.
Ella stood at the prow of a six-oar river taxi, eyes closed, breathing in. Worldsmouth had a scent, no matter which channel you took through the city, day or night, rainy season or dry. It was sweat and swamp water and the stench of an entire city’s waste dumped into a sluggish delta of bottom-feeding fish who ate the waste and then were caught and eaten again in an endless cycle. That and the indefinable reek of a culture at the height of its power and pride. That was Worldsmouth.
And much as she had always hated it, always denied it, it smelled like home.
In her left hand she clutched a sheaf of papers, part of a long talk she’d had with Tai the morning she left. A talk about his vision and what they were fighting for, but mostly about how to fight. She’d told there was a way to fight they hadn’t been using, one perfect for the capital. Words. She’d started writing as soon as she booked passage south, and had four broadsheets ready to go, with more outlined.
In her right hand she held Semeca’s spear. The spear of second sight, [spoilers] had called it. An ancient magical device with the power to level the entire city of Worldsmouth, if she wanted to. A tool for the other kind of fighting. The irony that she needed its power to save the world from those who would abuse that same power was not lost on her. How did you stop a war without fighting it?
One answer was to convince the aggressors it wasn’t worth it—that’s what her broadsheets were for. Another was calling down the justice of higher powers, if such a thing existed.
That’s what she was here for.
The taxi lurched at the passing of a larger scow, helmsmen cursing, and her feet rolled as naturally as if she’d never left. It was a hot day, the middle of the dry season, which only meant that the rains stopped and the city was safe from storms for a while. It certainly didn’t mean it was dry—the delta’s humid air hung on her like a heavy blanket, pressing the clothes to her skin, squeezing sweat out without returning any relief from the heat.
The last time she’d taken a river taxi was too book her first passage on a rivership, a third-class passenger scow headed for Seingard, every mark and half-moon she’d saved from a year working the Sourbelly tucked into her clothes, eyes darting for thieves or family members or the lawkeepers who’d had a warrant for her arrest and execution since the day she’d escaped her House.
It seemed a lifetime ago, or a different life entirely, and yet this heat and reek and the slur-mouthed curses of the oarsmen in the clogged Einswater channel as they worked north felt comfortable in a way nowhere she’d been since had—not Ayugen with its glorious waterways and sweeping forests, not the fortified hills of Yatiland or the moldering grandeur of the Yershire’s shrines and cities. Something about Worldsmouth had stayed in her blood, like a bad case of the Rider’s Pox.
“Alla,” she barked, barely opening eyes to see the particular slanting pier she wanted, Stiltspeak coming back to her like she’d never spoken differently. The oarsmen responded, two or three other bedraggled Mouthians stepping out after her, throwing half-moons into the bargemaster’s worn leather bowl, water already widening as the oarsmen—indentured servants all—pushed off for the next stop.
Ella walked the worn planks like she was traveling backward in time, backward into the mold-slick footbridges and back-alley cookshops of the Brokewater, home to Worldsmouth’s poorest and most desperate. She’d fit both those bills after escaping her cell, even if her clothes marked her as someone from a very different part of the city. Those she’d sold first, the last traces of her heritage, lacking the money to leave the city and knowing the Brokewater was the last place her parents would look. That most lawkeepers and self-respecting private lawbinders wouldn’t even enter the half-water, half-mud warren, fearing for their lives as much as their purses.
She walked it now with the head-bent gait she’d learned just a few days in, pulling the moth-eaten wrap she’d bought in Cretshoal close around her. Zaza would happily trade her the rest of what she needed. Zaza, who’d known from the start she wasn’t who she said she was, and been happy to keep the secrets of a girl who knew how to keep her mouth shut and work. Zaza, whom she hadn’t seen in years. Currents send she was still alive.
The Brokewater was narrow here, just a low peninsula of huts connecting the lower marshes and the old city to the docks. She crossed it in a quarter of an hour, storefronts and desperate faces changed after just five years, even as cobbled construction and the desperation felt as familiar as she imagined the Merewil family estate would, with its washed white walls and gleaming picture glass windows.
Were her parents still alive there? What had become of their House?
A monger stood at the intersection of two alleys, where a series of stepping stones crossed one of the Brokewater’s thousand stagnant streams. Ella stopped to listen to the stories he was calling, unsurprised to hear wild rumors about Aran among them. Mongers were what passed for news in the poorer districts—with so few able to read, mongers would buy recent broadsheets and stand on street corners reading headlines until someone gave a half-moon or twist of dreamleaf to hear the news.
This one scowled at her where she paused. “Teha, sister, you wanting news or just me?”
The scrawny man puffed out his chest, red eyes marking dreamleaf addiction. Men in the Brokewater were either scurrying and broken things or full of false machismo. This one was apparently the latter. “News,” she said. “Got mine to share, teha? Who’s your runner?”
The monger laughed. “News you got to share, tauera?”
The word was stiltspeak for cleaning woman, literally meaning something like dirty water. Ella spat. “Nothing for you, hora. Come from Aran with fresher word.”
The monger laughed. “Aran? You come from that alley, tauera. I seen it.”
She’d expected this, knew she would have to do something a touch flashy to get her foot in the door. “Carrying these?” she asked, flashing her clutch of inked sheets at him. The title on the first would be clearly visible: A Citizen’s Tale of Aran’s Last Days, written in elegant letters with lines of her neat hand beneath.
He made a shee sound through his teeth. “And you wrote these?”
“Nah. But I got them to sell, teha? Need some moons.”
The crier’s eyebrows lowered, and he reconsidered her. Good—her story had gone from unbelievable, something a tauera could never do, to something she could: he thought she’d stolen the papers. Good enough—they would get published either way.
“That case,” he said, “best you give them to me, I see what I can get you.”
“Nah,” she said again, rolling them up. “Want your bossman or I try another hora and you don’t make nothing.” She made as if to leave.
“Peace, sister. You step back here tomorrow sunrise time and I get you bossman. And you get me moons, teha?”
“Wei,” she said, acknowledging a deal made. “Sunrise, teha?”
“And moons,” the monger said, already turning back to his wrinkled broadsheet.
Ella crossed the stepping stones, remembering how the third one wobbled, and hid a growing smile. That crier would be reading her words in a few days. And if they resonated at all with the poorest and most desperate of the city, getting into the richer broadsheets would be easy.
Ella stopped at a toolsmith’s, trading a quartermoon mark for a fistful of reed bristles and some twine. She began tying them to the end of the spear, still flush with her victory. One mission accomplished.
Now to track down a god.
And much as she had always hated it, always denied it, it smelled like home.
In her left hand she clutched a sheaf of papers, part of a long talk she’d had with Tai the morning she left. A talk about his vision and what they were fighting for, but mostly about how to fight. She’d told there was a way to fight they hadn’t been using, one perfect for the capital. Words. She’d started writing as soon as she booked passage south, and had four broadsheets ready to go, with more outlined.
In her right hand she held Semeca’s spear. The spear of second sight, [spoilers] had called it. An ancient magical device with the power to level the entire city of Worldsmouth, if she wanted to. A tool for the other kind of fighting. The irony that she needed its power to save the world from those who would abuse that same power was not lost on her. How did you stop a war without fighting it?
One answer was to convince the aggressors it wasn’t worth it—that’s what her broadsheets were for. Another was calling down the justice of higher powers, if such a thing existed.
That’s what she was here for.
The taxi lurched at the passing of a larger scow, helmsmen cursing, and her feet rolled as naturally as if she’d never left. It was a hot day, the middle of the dry season, which only meant that the rains stopped and the city was safe from storms for a while. It certainly didn’t mean it was dry—the delta’s humid air hung on her like a heavy blanket, pressing the clothes to her skin, squeezing sweat out without returning any relief from the heat.
The last time she’d taken a river taxi was too book her first passage on a rivership, a third-class passenger scow headed for Seingard, every mark and half-moon she’d saved from a year working the Sourbelly tucked into her clothes, eyes darting for thieves or family members or the lawkeepers who’d had a warrant for her arrest and execution since the day she’d escaped her House.
It seemed a lifetime ago, or a different life entirely, and yet this heat and reek and the slur-mouthed curses of the oarsmen in the clogged Einswater channel as they worked north felt comfortable in a way nowhere she’d been since had—not Ayugen with its glorious waterways and sweeping forests, not the fortified hills of Yatiland or the moldering grandeur of the Yershire’s shrines and cities. Something about Worldsmouth had stayed in her blood, like a bad case of the Rider’s Pox.
“Alla,” she barked, barely opening eyes to see the particular slanting pier she wanted, Stiltspeak coming back to her like she’d never spoken differently. The oarsmen responded, two or three other bedraggled Mouthians stepping out after her, throwing half-moons into the bargemaster’s worn leather bowl, water already widening as the oarsmen—indentured servants all—pushed off for the next stop.
Ella walked the worn planks like she was traveling backward in time, backward into the mold-slick footbridges and back-alley cookshops of the Brokewater, home to Worldsmouth’s poorest and most desperate. She’d fit both those bills after escaping her cell, even if her clothes marked her as someone from a very different part of the city. Those she’d sold first, the last traces of her heritage, lacking the money to leave the city and knowing the Brokewater was the last place her parents would look. That most lawkeepers and self-respecting private lawbinders wouldn’t even enter the half-water, half-mud warren, fearing for their lives as much as their purses.
She walked it now with the head-bent gait she’d learned just a few days in, pulling the moth-eaten wrap she’d bought in Cretshoal close around her. Zaza would happily trade her the rest of what she needed. Zaza, who’d known from the start she wasn’t who she said she was, and been happy to keep the secrets of a girl who knew how to keep her mouth shut and work. Zaza, whom she hadn’t seen in years. Currents send she was still alive.
The Brokewater was narrow here, just a low peninsula of huts connecting the lower marshes and the old city to the docks. She crossed it in a quarter of an hour, storefronts and desperate faces changed after just five years, even as cobbled construction and the desperation felt as familiar as she imagined the Merewil family estate would, with its washed white walls and gleaming picture glass windows.
Were her parents still alive there? What had become of their House?
A monger stood at the intersection of two alleys, where a series of stepping stones crossed one of the Brokewater’s thousand stagnant streams. Ella stopped to listen to the stories he was calling, unsurprised to hear wild rumors about Aran among them. Mongers were what passed for news in the poorer districts—with so few able to read, mongers would buy recent broadsheets and stand on street corners reading headlines until someone gave a half-moon or twist of dreamleaf to hear the news.
This one scowled at her where she paused. “Teha, sister, you wanting news or just me?”
The scrawny man puffed out his chest, red eyes marking dreamleaf addiction. Men in the Brokewater were either scurrying and broken things or full of false machismo. This one was apparently the latter. “News,” she said. “Got mine to share, teha? Who’s your runner?”
The monger laughed. “News you got to share, tauera?”
The word was stiltspeak for cleaning woman, literally meaning something like dirty water. Ella spat. “Nothing for you, hora. Come from Aran with fresher word.”
The monger laughed. “Aran? You come from that alley, tauera. I seen it.”
She’d expected this, knew she would have to do something a touch flashy to get her foot in the door. “Carrying these?” she asked, flashing her clutch of inked sheets at him. The title on the first would be clearly visible: A Citizen’s Tale of Aran’s Last Days, written in elegant letters with lines of her neat hand beneath.
He made a shee sound through his teeth. “And you wrote these?”
“Nah. But I got them to sell, teha? Need some moons.”
The crier’s eyebrows lowered, and he reconsidered her. Good—her story had gone from unbelievable, something a tauera could never do, to something she could: he thought she’d stolen the papers. Good enough—they would get published either way.
“That case,” he said, “best you give them to me, I see what I can get you.”
“Nah,” she said again, rolling them up. “Want your bossman or I try another hora and you don’t make nothing.” She made as if to leave.
“Peace, sister. You step back here tomorrow sunrise time and I get you bossman. And you get me moons, teha?”
“Wei,” she said, acknowledging a deal made. “Sunrise, teha?”
“And moons,” the monger said, already turning back to his wrinkled broadsheet.
Ella crossed the stepping stones, remembering how the third one wobbled, and hid a growing smile. That crier would be reading her words in a few days. And if they resonated at all with the poorest and most desperate of the city, getting into the richer broadsheets would be easy.
Ella stopped at a toolsmith’s, trading a quartermoon mark for a fistful of reed bristles and some twine. She began tying them to the end of the spear, still flush with her victory. One mission accomplished.
Now to track down a god.