The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  In truth, it had been twelve years since he sat with these people. He could have gone a lifetime without sitting here again.

  Gaiso dismissed her assistant and rounded on Ahkio. “Has the Kai passed, then? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Are you questioning my right to be here?” Ahkio said softly.

  Gaiso looked taken aback. “What did you say?”

  “I’m so sorry, Ahkio. No one wanted this,” Masura said.

  “I wanted twenty babies,” Gaiso said. “I was made Elder Ora of Oma’s temple instead. We don’t all get what we want.”

  Masura made a sound of distress. “Don’t speak as if your life decisions were not made just as politically as your cousin Tir’s.”

  “For a clucking, drunken little bird,” Gaiso said, “you spend far too much time aggravating cats.”

  “I see you’re all getting along as expected,” Nasaka said from the doorway.

  “Who else is coming?” Ahkio asked. He wanted to see the reactions of the other Elder Oras to Kirana’s death.

  “Just Ora Almeysia,” Nasaka said. “Elder Ora Koralia of Sina’s Temple and Elder Ora Saraba of Para still haven’t sent a response. Ora Dasai will be here, of course. He’s bringing up the sanisi now.”

  “It’s curfew for the novices,” Gaiso said. “Ora Almeysia will doing a bed check. Let’s start without her. I don’t want to keep that sanisi waiting any longer.”

  Nasaka nodded to Ahkio. “I see you found your seat.”

  “I expected you wanted me in another.”

  “That will do,” Nasaka said.

  Ahkio glanced next to him at the seat of the Kai, his sister’s seat. He wanted to sit there just to spite Nasaka, but though he made to press himself out of his chair, the rest of his body would not obey him.

  He heard footsteps in the hall.

  A young Ora entered – one Ahkio did not know - and made a sweeping gesture as the sanisi pushed up ahead of him. The emissary’s rudeness was shocking.

  “May I present Shao Taigan Masaao, a sanisi messenger from Saiduan,” the Ora said.

  The sanisi was tall, taller than Ahkio expected. He easily towered a head and shoulders above Ahkio, like some giant. For all that, he moved like water, with a slightly hunched posture that made Ahkio wonder if he bore some old wound on his back.

  “Which of you is the Kai?” Taigan asked.

  Ahkio put his hands on the table, and made to stand.

  Nasaka waved him back, said, “I’m afraid you’ve reached us at a difficult time.” She had not yet made it to her chair, the one at the right side of the Kai seat, reserved for the Kai’s religious and political advisor. “Let us sit–”

  “What I have to say is for the Kai,” Taigan said. “We have very little time to chatter on about complications and niceties and backward Dhai customs.”

  “Excuse my tardiness,” Dasai called from the hall. He limped in, leaning heavily on his cane. “Thank you, Ora Chali,” he said, dismissing the sanisi’s escort.

  Chali looked more than happy to leave them, and ducked past Dasai into the hall.

  Taigan peered at each of them in turn. His gaze settled on Ahkio. “You’re no Ora,” the sanisi said. “What is your function?”

  “I am the Kai’s brother,” Ahkio said.

  “Ah,” Taigan said. “A boy. Yes, this explains much. You’re not gifted, though, are you? You’re not who I was looking for. Is this all there is? No other relation to the Kai? I have no time to be politic.”

  “Let us be rested,” Dasai said. He clutched the top of his walking stick tightly. Ahkio wondered how many polite rituals and welcomes they had already trampled past.

  Ahkio was too tired to pay it much mind. No doubt this meeting was important, but what he wanted more than anything was to go sit by his sister’s side. He should have been here when she got sick. She should have called him. They could have uncovered, together, who cursed her with the illness that took her.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Taigan said. “Oma is rising.”

  Ahkio raised his head. “What?”

  “Not according to our stargazers,” Nasaka said.

  “Then they are ill informed,” Taigan said. “Oma, just like any other star, has been known to appear suddenly. One cannot always track its path. Now I tell you it’s effect is being felt across my country. With Oma come invaders. Such is as its always been. This time, they’ve found a way to come through before Oma’s full appearance.”

  “Who are these invaders?” Ahkio asked. “What do they have to do with us?

  “The last time Oma rose,” Nasaka said, “two thousand years ago, the Saiduan invaded what was then Dhai, when we ruled the continent. There is always a great power that unseats another during Oma’s ascent. Always. I do not contest that. But I see no proof of Oma’s rise here besides your word.”

  “If you had seen what I have seen, you would not question it,” Taigan said.

  “Shao Taigan,” Dasai said, “we respect you greatly. Yet you do not use the speech we have come to expect of the Patron’s emissaries. What is it we can do for you, sanisi, during your time of trouble?”

  Ahkio saw four figures dressed in red come into the Assembly Chamber. They were members of the militia posted to the Kuallina Stronghold; he knew them by the pins at their collars. The temple itself had no standing militia. They must have traveled in on the Line behind him and Nasaka. A bit of fast thinking on someone’s part. But not mine, Ahkio thought. They told me as little as they could. He glanced at Nasaka, and wondered how much she’d kept Kirana in the dark, too.

  The sanisi laughed at the militia. “You think yourselves safe?” Taigan said. “You may be able to hold for a time, it’s true, with your defendable pass, and the mountains to the west, and that harbor wall to the north, but they will devour you eventually. Oma is rising. These people will route you.”

  “What can we possibly offer in assistance?” Dasai said.

  Taigan gritted his teeth. “Scholars,” he said.

  “Eh?” Gaiso said. “Book people?”

  “Your best translators of ancient Dhai,” Taigan said. “That is what my Patron requests of you. It may help turn the tide.”

  Nasaka folded her arms. “You have Dhai records that predate the last Rising, then,” she said. “Records that could help you find out how to turn these people back. But of course they’re all in ancient Dhai, aren’t they, and you’ve killed all the Dhai in your empire who can read them.”

  “Yes,” Taigan said. “The invaders destroy our archives. Strange, no? They could target supply lines, terrorize civilians. They do that, yes. But the archives are first.”

  “So send the records here,” Ahkio said. “We could find –”

  “Impossible,” Taigan said. “We have two thousand years of records. Do you know how many holds we pillaged to collect it? We can’t risk putting it on a cart to some indefensible country.”

  “So we must travel to Saiduan,” Dasai said.

  “It was a very long time ago,” Taigan said. “All this death and killing of the Dhai people. You speak as if it was I who did this thing. We have let you alone here. Imported your infused weapons. Are we not friends now?”

  “What do we get in return?” Nasaka asked

  Ahkio thought that a bit bold. He wondered if she’d been bold enough to kill Kirana… but to what end? He rubbed his face. And now, Oma. He couldn’t imagine Nasaka was as ignorant of that as she pretended. Kirana talked often of Nasaka’s obsession with Oma’s rise in prior ages.

  “In return?” Taigan said. “In return, you will live. Is that not enough? In return, we may be able to push back these invaders on Saiduan’s shores, instead of seeing them spill all across the world the way they have in the past. When Oma rises, the world breaks. This is written in every holy book.”

  “We should have a treaty,” Ahkio said. “Kirana would request it.”

  “Papers?” Taigan spat. “You would ask for papers when the very world is bein
g ripped apart – “

  “The Li Kai is right,” Nasaka said.

  “Paper,” Taigan said. “It means nothing.”

  Nasaka leaned toward him. She was as tall as Ahkio, wiry, but though the sanisi dwarfed her, she stood before him like a woman twice his size. Ahkio saw her again in the Dorinah camp, slaying legionnaires with a weapon he had only before seen her used to chop wood.

  “It means something to us,” Nasaka said.

  “It will take weeks,” Taigan said.

  “So it will.”

  Ahkio glanced up at the representation of the heavens above him, and the dark stain of Oma. Oma was an embodiment of the gods, the Book said. It was not supposed to be a true star. A philosopher-astronomer once said that Oma’s rise was actually just an eclipse of the satellites, a brief moment when all three stars crossed paths in the sky.

  “These invaders,” Ahkio said, “where are they coming from? Which direction?”

  “Boats,” Taigan said, but Ahkio saw something in his expression that troubled him.

  “From the east, then?” Ahkio said. “Or the south?”

  “They come from…” Taigan muttered something in Saiduan. “They come from the sky, sometimes.”

  Masura spoke for the first time, her tone incredulous. “The sky? Have you been drinking, sanisi?”

  Ahkio heard someone running in the hall outside. The militia turned toward a blue-clad Ora, who burst through the door. One of the militia members held up a hand. The Ora stopped, bowled over, gasping for breath.

  Gaiso stood. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Murder,” the Ora said. Ahkio recognized her as Nasaka’s assistant, Elaiko. She wasn’t much older than Ahkio.

  Ahkio saw Nasaka tense. He was keenly aware of the weapon at her hip. She had yet to bare it, but he was waiting. It felt like an inevitability now. He missed Meyna. He missed his house. But most of all, he regretted running from this temple just when his sister had needed him most. Now he was left alone amid a sea of scheming Oras, murder, and rising stars. He was not ready. But he stood anyway. His sister once affectionately called him a coward, and it was true. He wanted a quiet, honest little life.

  Oma, it seemed, had other plans.

  “There’s blood all over the scullery stair,” Elaiko said, “like bad tea. He’s in a storage room.”

  “Who?” Dasai asked. “Let’s not make a bear out of a fly.”

  “Rohinmey,” Elaiko said. “I’m not making up some fish story, Ora Dasai. Roh is dead.”

  7.

  Lilia sat on the edge of the soft bed in the infirmary, waiting to hear the worst. The temple doctor, Ora Matias, pressed two cool fingers to her chest. He watched her face as she took a deep breath. Halfway through her exhale, she began to cough. She kept coughing for several minutes, even after he gave her a sip of water.

  Above, the dome over the infirmary let in the light of the triad of moons. The flame flies in the lanterns filled the darker spaces. The soft organic walls here had been smoothed over in lavender plaster. Lilia found the temple infirmary very soothing. Though most were kind to her in the temple – when they noticed her – it was the Oras in the infirmary who brought her relief from pain and discomfort, whether from her twisted leg or labored breath.

  Matias was new to the temple, though, and she had not been in since his appointment. He was an agreeable enough person with plump, ink stained fingers and a habit of smoothing over his eyebrows.

  “It’s a very mild case of asthma,” Matias said, “as I’m sure you know. A girl with lungs like yours should be a seamstress or a typesetter, not a laborer. I always wanted to be a typesetter, you know.”

  “Then why are you a doctor?”

  “Well. Talent cannot be wasted. Tirajistas must serve Dhai. It’s not a terrible profession, and it still impresses my mothers.”

  “I know I don’t look very strong,” Lilia said. “But I like the exercise. My leg’s worse when I don’t use it.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said, “But be careful. Let’s give you something to ease the constriction. Have you been given wax wraith before?”

  “Ora Shotai always gave me mahuan.”

  “Let’s go with what you know works, then.” He went to the vast wall of medicinal jars at the far end of the room. “You’ve been like this all day?”

  “The scullery master sent me here after bed check. I was coughing so much it bothered the other drudges.”

  “Ora Matias!”

  Lilia heard fear in the cry. She was on her feet even before the woman entered. It was Ohanni, the temple’s dancing teacher. She carried a limp form in her slender arms. The body was lax, like a doll. But it was the blood that made Lilia’s stomach seethe.

  The body was covered in blood. Soaked in it. One arm hung free. Drops of blood collected at the ends of the fingers, spattered the floor.

  Matias stood frozen at the wall of medicinal jars, mouth agape.

  Ohanni carried the body into the room. Behind her were two novices. Their aprons were rusty with blood.

  It was only then that Lilia realized the body was Roh’s.

  She choked on a cry. Adrenaline flooded her. She watched the infirmary as if from a great height.

  Ohanni set Roh onto Lilia’s bed. A blooming tear ran across his gut; she saw the wet glistening of his intestines beneath bloody clothing and torn skin. More rents in his clothing indicated numerous wounds. Blood pumped profusely from one of them.

  “Ora Matias?” Ohanni called, but Matias was still standing, shocked, by the shelves.

  Lilia tugged off Roh’s apron. “Help me get his tunic,” she told Ohanni. She was surprised at how calm she felt. His blood smeared across her own scarred wrists, and a terrible thought bubbled up from a long time ago – we are wasting so much blood.

  Ohanni helped with the tunic, her breath rapid, fine beads of sweat bathing her face. Lilia wondered how long Ohanni had carried him. She was not a large woman.

  “Press here,” Lilia said. She put Ohanni’s hands onto Roh’s thigh. “Press hard. To the bone.”

  Ohanni did. The flow of blood eased from the worst of the wounds. Lilia wadded up Roh’s novice apron and pressed it against the major wound itself. Blood and death. A hungry thorn fence. She remembered bleeding out into a shallow dish, to protect her village from harm.

  Matias joined them at Roh’s side. He wiped at his eyebrows. “Oma,” he said. “This injury is too much. Tira is descendent. I can’t fix this.”

  Lilia gritted her teeth. She had seen worse, hadn’t she? With her mother’s patients long ago. She knew the major arteries in the body. She had learned basic anatomy with everyone else in the temple. But closing a wound as bad as Roh’s was beyond her.

  “Please, Matias,” Ohanni said. “You must try. This violence… someone did this to him. It’s not as if he tumbled off the stage during some grand jete.”

  “I’m sorry, Ora Ohanni. He’s dying.”

  Ohanni made as if to draw her hand away from Roh’s thigh.

  “Don’t!” Lilia said. “He will bleed out.”

  “There are no tirajistas with the skill to fix this,” Ohanni said. “Ora Almeysia is the most sensitive, but she doesn’t specialize in matters of the body. Can you ease his pain?” she asked Matias.

  “He is nearly gone,” Matias said. He pressed his hands to Roh’s wrist. “There is nothing to ease.”

  “Try!” Lilia said. “Won’t you try?”

  “Child, I’m sorry,” Matias said.

  Ohanni drew her hands away.

  “No,” Lilia said. She pressed her hands there instead, hard. “Close the artery. Stop the bleeding.”

  “He has lost more blood than I can replace,” Matias said. “Even if I could find every source of damage –”

  “Is this him?”

  Nasaka’s voice. She strode in ahead of a young man, handsome, with scars on his hands. Lilia had not seen him before.

  “I’m sorry, Ora Nasaka,” Matias said. �
��He’s lost too much blood.”

  “Sina’s breath,” Nasaka muttered. She came up next to Matias. She wore a willowthorn sword. “This boy can’t die, Matias.”

  “The blood –”

  “I don’t care about the blood. He cannot die. Wash your hands. Are you a doctor or a soap maker?”

  Matias hurried to the stone sink at the center of the room.

  Roh’s breathing was almost imperceptible. Matias was right. Lilia knew that, but she pressed hard anyway, though her hands ached and her chest still burned. She coughed and coughed.

  Matias pulled the apron away from the wound He carried sinew, needle, and a delicate knife.

  “I cannot see for all the blood. Mop this up,” he told Lilia.

  She grabbed a cotton towel as he widened the wound to find the nicked artery. Blood dripped from the towel down her fingers, to her elbow, to the floor. Lilia didn’t notice the arrival of others in the room until sometime later, when their voices became loud and angry.

  “This is not his fate,” Dasai said, arguing with Nasaka. “Call another surgeon. He’s the one child in a hundred for whom the seers saw a peaceful fate. We cannot lose this boy.”

  “There is not a tirajista in the world powerful enough to turn this,” Nasaka said.

  “Not a tirajista,” said the tall, dark man in the doorway. It was the sanisi Lilia had seen in the foyer, Taigan.

  “He’s gone, I’m sorry,” Matias said. His face was covered in sweat. He was spattered with blood.

  Roh’s face was slack.

  Lilia’s fear and terror finally bubbled up from the dark place she had hidden it. Her throat closed. She coughed harder; her head swam, and her vision was going dim. Blood covered her arms to the elbows. With enough blood, all things were possible.

  She pointed to the sanisi. “Are you a blood witch?” she said. “A blood witch can save him. My mother could save him.”

  The others, the Oras, looked confused. She suspected they thought her mad. But she knew the look on the sanisi’s face. Wonder. Recognition.

  “Save him,” Lilia said.

  “There’s a price,” Taigan said.

  “He’s dead,” Matias said.

  “No,” Lilia said.