Hollow Empire

by Sam Hawke

  “What is it like, then? If people do not simply take liberties. What … what do you say, to show another that you want, or that you wish for…” She lifted her chin and met my gaze. Her eyes were very black and her body very still. The warmth in my face spread down into my stomach, and deeper. The lap of the water against my skin sounded so loud, or was that my heartbeat in my ears?

  “Well. You might say something to show that you admire them. That you are attracted. Perhaps, if you’re poetically minded, you might say that their smile is like the sun through the clouds. Or that their voice is finer than birdsong.” My tone was meant to be light, but it hadn’t come out that way. I cleared my throat. “You might compliment their gentle heart, or the way their laughter makes you feel. If you are feeling sentimental.” Her lips curved, just a fraction, the suggestion or promise of a smile. Something shifted or loosened inside me, something I hadn’t realized was there before, and all of a sudden I did not feel uncomfortable or uncertain. “Or you might say that you have longed to touch the skin of their neck, to see if it feels as smooth as it looks. Or that they make you feel better, and braver, than you are, because their regard elevates you.” Very slowly, very deliberately, I moved closer; not so close as to be within her space, but closing the distance between us so that if I had reached out a hand I could have touched her. “And then you would wait, to see whether they felt any of those things also. If not…” I shrugged, and made to slide backward through the water.

  Her hand snaked out and caught my wrist, stopping my retreat. Then she released it, and wound her fingers in mine, instead. “And if so?”

  “Well then.” Suddenly it felt difficult to get a full breath. My skin felt so hot. A knot of wanting, deep inside me, tightened, tightened. “Then I would ask if I could please kiss her, and hope that she says—”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  Abae squeezed my hand, and pulled, just the tiniest bit, drawing me in without resistance. “Please,” she whispered.

  So I did. Gently, tentatively at first—her eyes were still so wide, so dark—just her soft lips on mine, then deeper as she sighed, softening against me. The fingers of her free hand traced down my back in the water, and I touched her face with mine, feeling the soft curve of her cheek. She trembled and I pulled back from the kiss. “And then in case there’s some doubt, it’s easy to ask: Do you want me to stop?”

  “Kalina,” she whispered, and then her face broke into the crooked smile with the dimple that I now could admit to myself made me want her with quite mad intensity. “I don’t think I will want you to stop, ever.”

  And this time her fingers on my back were not so tentative, and our bodies pressed together under the water, warm skin on warm skin, and all the panic and fear and guilt and cold were nothing but distant memories of a passing storm. There was only this. There was only her.

  * * *

  Dom looked somewhat puzzled when I told him that I would be staying overnight in the accommodation.

  “Credola, won’t you want to tell the Chancellor? Report on what happened?”

  “I don’t want to be out on the streets tonight,” I said, trying to look worried. “I’m exhausted. The owner has space for me here and I’ve got some thinking to do. Can you or Lara head back to the apartments and let my family know I’m safe, just following something up. Just—keep us safe here, for now, all right?”

  The proprietor, true to her word, had brought clean, dry clothes and fresh tea to Abae’s room, where we had briefly enjoyed the latter and completely ignored the former.

  Abae was older than me, but in many ways she seemed younger; there was something pure and full of wonder about the way she looked at me, and her touch had a gentle reverence that invoked a confusing jumble of emotions in me that I wasn’t quite ready to unpack.

  “I have never been with a woman before,” she whispered. Dom waited outside, on my request, and occasionally, and with muffled giggles, I reached a toe out and chinked the cups against each other in what I hoped was a convincing show of an ordinary friendly meeting.

  “I assumed not,” I told her. We lay sprawled out on the floor, legs tangled together, and her head rested on my chest. Her fingers stroked my scar with soft, tingly brushes.

  “It is not allowed. I would be banished if anyone knew that I … that I wanted these things.”

  I kissed the top of her head. Enough westerners had fled to Sjona for failing to meet their country’s religious or government decrees about sexuality that it was no surprise to hear, but I couldn’t pretend to understand how it would feel to live that way.

  She twisted to look up at me, her expression shy. “I was a great disappointment to my husband. I tried to be a dutiful wife, but I could not make myself want him. His skin was rough and hairy, and he would lie on top of me so I could not breathe. I would close my eyes and think about the pretty cook downstairs, who was fat and sweet, with round cheeks and a merry laugh.…” She sighed. “Such a celebrated beauty, he would say, yet a corpse in bed. When he took a mistress I pretended to be ashamed but in private I wept for joy.”

  I ran my hand over her smooth stomach, then up, tracing her ribs, and she half-closed her eyes in pleasure. “You,” I told her with a smile, “are no corpse.”

  And we set about firmly establishing the truth of that statement in as many creative ways as we could divine.

  When the light of predawn crept into the room, I woke more rested and comfortable than I had for as long as I could remember. With some reluctance I rose and picked up the spare clothing that the proprietor had left for me.

  “Must we get dressed?” Abae asked plaintively, opening one eye reluctantly. “Could we not stay like this forever?”

  “Don’t you have to go to morning prayers?” I peered outside at the sky.

  “I’m afraid I feel very poorly this morning,” she said, flopping back onto the pillow, and I laughed.

  “I do have things to do, I’m sorry,” I said. Dee and Sjease would be worried, regardless of the message Lara had delivered. And in the light of day, the attack last night seemed a thing from a dream, and my actions here reckless and indulgent, the product of relief and trauma rather than sound judgment.

  As she tied her shirt over her chest, I retrieved my belongings and tucked them into the various pockets of my borrowed clothes. The horrible poppet I didn’t know what to do with, and I stopped to stare at it, feeling the remnants of the comfort and pleasure of the last night leaking out of me. Abae was suddenly at my shoulder, her lips pressed into the side of my neck. “What is that?” she asked.

  It took a moment to realize she meant not the doll but the book underneath. I tensed involuntarily and she stepped back. “I am sorry,” she said, “I did not mean to pry. If it is personal…”

  I clutched the book, saying nothing. It felt like there were some kind of storm inside me, with wind and tide pushing and shifting and raging. Did I trust her? I wanted to trust her, honor-down, I did. She’d saved my life. I felt, deep to my core, that she was good, that she would never harm anyone, that I had been right to leave myself vulnerable to her. Didn’t Jov and Tain both speak of my judgment? Didn’t they both trust my read of people?

  Or, a little voice inside me whispered, do you just want to believe that because you let her in, and you don’t want to admit that you succumbed to a flattering manner and a beautiful face? Haven’t you always wanted to be admired like she seems to admire you?

  But many people had seen this book. Within my Guild, within the Council, and beyond. We already knew from Merenda’s last act that someone in the inner circle was informing on us. Chances were good that person had seen this or at least knew what we knew about it. And that was precious little, and only a few of us seemed to regard it as overly significant in any case. What would I really be giving up by showing her?

  I took a breath. My judgment was good, and I didn’t have to share what I thought about the contents. I could just see what she said. So I unclenched
my fingers and turned around, offering it to her. “Here,” I said. “It’s not personal. We took it off the assassin, the one who murdered the people at the arena after the explosion.”

  Her eyes widened, but she accepted the book. “What is it?” She read out the title, flipped through a few pages. “Oh! This is not Sjon. Not quite.” Her face folded into a frown, but it was one of concentration, not displeasure. In fact her eyes were bright, interested, and she sank cross-legged to the ground, fingers tracing the words. “How fascinating!”

  I had forgotten. How had I forgotten? “You’re a linguist,” I said, feeling stupid.

  “Yes indeed,” she said. “That is my field of study. Most of my work is in translation, of course, because there is the demand for it. But my true love is not for diplomacy. It is for the languages themselves. How they develop, how they change. There are as many variations of Doranite dialects as there are clans, and Talafar has had a very colonizing history, with so many regional languages that are supplanted by the Imperial requirements, but which survive in all kinds of forms.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked up at me. “Language is rebellion, Kalina!”

  “Our linguists couldn’t tell me where this came from,” I said. “I thought if we knew where the assassin was from, that could tell us who hired him. But it’s all been dead ends.” I wished I had thought to ask her earlier.

  “Well, the content is certainly not reflective of Sjona, is it?” Abae wrinkled her nose in a few places as she skimmed. “Some of this sounds like things that the Church might like to do in Talafar, but even it is not so powerful and daring and oppressive, yet.” She hummed under her breath as she read. “Do we think it is a translation? But these are not mistakes, they are too consistent.” She was clearly talking to herself more than me. Her left hand twitched, suddenly, making a pinching motion, and I almost laughed at the familiar gesture. I must have supplied Etan with a pen in response to that movement a thousand times. I retrieved both pen and a sheet of paper from the small desk by the window and she took them without looking up, and began scribbling symbols. “Sjon is fascinating too, you know. One of the most interesting languages in the world, and one of the most difficult to master because of your disconnect between written and spoken—” She looked up and gave me a sheepish smile. “You know this, of course.”

  I waved her on, letting her go back to murmuring, scribbling, sometimes exclaiming something. At one point I ducked out and found Dom relieved from his shift by Tamarik, and ordered some more tea and morning refreshments from the proprietor. Abae ate them cheerfully and gracefully one-handed while continuing to work. If this was a book she had seen before, her ability to feign excitement and enthusiasm while purportedly solving its mysteries was a masterpiece of deception.

  “I am sure you have already concluded this, but this is an internally consistent language,” she said after a long period referring between her notes and the book. “If you gave me enough time, I think I could probably come up with much of the missing material. But I am not sure that would help you with what you need, would it?”

  “Probably not, unless there’s a helpful description of where the author comes from in there,” I said with a sigh. “What I want is to know if there’s a link between whatever culture this assassin came from and the people who are attacking us. If you were looking at this, what would be your best guess about where it came from?”

  “Linguistically? A related population,” she said promptly. “A culture with a shared linguistic root. This is absolutely a language which either developed parallel to Sjon, or predates it.”

  “And have you ever seen anything like it? You’ve traveled and you pay attention to language. Is there anywhere you’ve seen this?”

  She sucked in a deep breath, stretched her back, and cracked her knuckles. Then she settled again, lips pursed, thinking. “Not really,” she said at last. “Well…” She looked conflicted, but at my impatient eagerness, she added almost reluctantly, “Not precisely, but this expression … obey to ascend. I have seen something like that before, a long time ago, I think. Do not be excited! It is not such a helpful thing. I only remember because at the time I had not yet been to Sjona and I had not seen a population which uses tattoos in a widespread fashion, the way you do here.” She seemed to be getting muddled; I put a hand on hers and she took a slightly quavering breath and returned it, then went on more clearly. “It was in Izruitn, when I was there ten years ago. There was a group of merchants doing business in the trading district, and they were dark, but not western, and they had tattoos on their arms. I admit I was being nosy, and was likely being rude, staring. But their tattoos … I am sure that that was the expression.” She lifted her arm up and traced a line down the soft underside, from armpit to elbow. “Here.”

  My breath caught excitedly in my chest. Exactly as it had appeared on the assassin’s arm.

  “One man caught me staring and I went to apologize for the rudeness because he looked offended. They were such fierce-looking men! And no women among them. But I thought myself clever, and I had been learning Sjon, so I attempted to apologize in Sjon, and they did not understand.” She spread her hands. “They were not Sjon, you see, it was my mistake. They did not understand me. And I asked one of the officials where they came from, because I was curious, and he just shrugged and said they were from the far east.” She frowned prettily. “So you see, it is not much help to you.”

  But I was sitting very still, and for a moment it was like I was drowning again, because my head swirled, my vision spotting, and I could not seem to make my leaden lungs take a breath.

  “What did you say?” I whispered, barely able to choke the words out. “A related population? A language which developed…”

  “Parallel to Sjon,” she supplied, looking utterly bewildered at my reaction. “Or an earlier iteration of it.”

  I stumbled to my feet, my body clumsy and slow, struggling to balance.

  What do the Iliris, the Lekas, and the Oromanis have in common?

  Tain had asked me that and I’d been so caught up trying to think of business deals or Guild politics or poisonings that I’d forgotten the most fundamental connection of all, the thing that our families had in common with one another and not with the other three.

  “From the far east…” I said it out loud, and felt like I might cry with the sheer stupidity, the sheer stubbornness and illogic and willful ignorance of it all. We’d had it all backward. Two years ago, ignoring our country’s history had almost cost us everything, and we hadn’t learned from it. We’d just made the same mistake again.

  “Honor-down,” I whispered. “Oh, no. I know who they are.”

  INCIDENT: Fatal poisoning of Credo Jaco Ash, heir to Ash Council Seat

  POISON: Praconis

  INCIDENT NOTES: C. Jaco discovered dead in Ash family apartments, diagnosed with heart failure. Servant witness noted presence of praconis plant in Ash gardens, physic confirmed C. Jaco had been taking mild nightly dose of praconis leaves to assist with difficulties sleeping. Family cook confirmed to this proofer that C. Jaco’s sister and heir, C. Bela, next in line for the Ash family Council seat, had requested household meals featuring unusually large quantities of lavabulb and pepper seasoning. Suspect C. Bela of dosing brother’s meals with praconis seeds. Desirable to ensure C. Bela not ascend to Ash seat. Further note: subsequent use of leverage by Iliri family resulted in C. Bela being returned to family estates and cousin C. Kristen taking Ash seat.

  (from proofing notes of Credola Para Oromani)

  23

  Jovan

  We headed into my own family’s lands, next, northwest and still using the country roads. There was an unsettled air about our travel. No more attacks on the road, and no mysterious animals appearing to follow us, but the story we’d heard in Ista had troubled us both. The spirit at the tree was gone, as we’d already known, and Hadrea had found no clues at the site to explain it. “It is gone,” she’d told me, her hands in the dirt beside the whitene
d trunk and her face bleak. “It is as we found before. There is no sign of a neglected spirit grown fallow. It is just a dead tree.”

  Our speculation as we left Ista and headed to the next village was wide ranging. Hadrea had finally abandoned the vestiges of her sensitivity to speaking about fresken, and took no offense at my questions. It was easy to see now, observing her out in the open country, how stifled she had been in Silasta, how poorly her studies and the lifestyle she had been forced into by her actions during the siege and her mother’s new Council position had fit her. Little wonder she had been unhappy.

  “So this man and the women,” I wondered out loud as we sat, jostled together companionably on the back of a wagon on which we’d hitched a ride. “Did they kill it somehow? Are they … I don’t know, murdering people and somehow murdering spirits at the same time? Is that a thing that’s possible?”

  “I have never heard of such a rite,” she said. “Some kind of sacrifice?” Once, the very question would have angered her. But holding on to the idea of Darfri magic being used solely in traditional and respectful ways was foolish in the face of everything we’d seen and learned, and Hadrea, whatever her faults, was no fool.

  “Spirits feed on our energy,” she mused. “Could the energy of a murdered person have a different quality, something that could harm a spirit?”

  “People were murdered at the lake that day, and it didn’t seem to hurt Os-Woorin,” I pointed out.

  “No. But he was very mighty, and being fed energy from thousands of people. If they found a way to connect only one person … but why? What is the point? If it is to harm us, why choose these remote places? Trees and creeks and little rock formations?”