The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

Taigan frowned. “I cannot contest that. The world was a seething wasteland after you people came into it, that much is certain. It took four thousand years just to become half-habitable again.”

  “It wasn’t just us,” Lilia said. “You’re no better.”

  Taigan paused. He gazed at the wriggling tendril of a creeper spitting green, acidic bile into the dirt. “No,” he said, “We are not.”

  Lilia leaned forward in the saddle. “Why did you save him?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Roh. Why did you save him? Why trade him for me? I’m nothing. I’m nobody.”

  The sanisi shook his head and tugged the bear forward. It caught up the wriggling tendril with its tongue and ate it.

  “I think you know,” Taigan said.

  Lilia looked away.

  They traveled until midday, and stopped for rest on a scorched patch of ground that had been prepared for the purpose. The sanisi tried to feed her some kind of meat, which she refused. She foraged for fleshy tubers and the fat rose cones her mother had taught her to find. The sanisi turned up his nose at her fare, and ripped into his meal of dead animal flesh. After letting the bear graze, they moved on. North. To the sea.

  In the early afternoon, they came to a crossroads. She only knew Dhai by maps. She hadn’t left the temple since Kalinda left her there. But maps told her that northwest lay clan Sorila, populated mostly by timber farmers and plant sculptors, and northeast was clan Garika. She knew from the letters she received from Kalinda that she kept a way house on the road to Garika.

  Taigan began to pull them northwest, to Sorila. She bit her tongue, wondering if he would uncover the ruse. She waited a few minutes before she said, “I’m glad we’re going to Sorila. I have family there.”

  “You said you have no family.”

  “My mother is dead. But I have an aunt and cousins in Sorila.” Lilia had told many lies in her life, but telling that one, to a sanisi, felt the boldest by far.

  He drew the bear to a halt.

  “Never lie to me,” Taigan said. “It is a useless endeavor.”

  “You could be nicer,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Everyone could be nicer,” she said.

  “And what a world that would be.”

  “You build the world through your actions,” Lilia said. “Yours are very poor.”

  “You argue like a mewling toddler,” he said. “The last girl was less talkative.”

  “What girl?”

  “Let me sit a moment in peace.”

  This was the second longest conversation they’d had. She wondered what a rollicking noisy night in Saiduan sounded like.

  “How did you know about the symbol on my wrist?” Lilia asked as Taigan started forward again.

  “I can see it.”

  “How?”

  “Because I draw the breath of the same star as the person who made it,” Taigan said, “the blood witch you call mother, yes? Blood witches, ha. Only one people calls them that. Wards are complicated things, stitched together with litanies created just for the purpose. But yours is one I recognize. It’s a simple hazing ward. It makes it difficult for people to see and remember you. Useful, I imagine, in your state.”

  “What’s my state?” Lilia asked.

  “Don’t you know by now, little bird? Why would anyone try and protect you, a little nameless drudge?”

  “Because she loved me,” Lilia said. “My mother put this ward on me, and she loved me very much.”

  “Your mother wanted to save you for someone else,” Taigan said. “She was an omajista, based on the color and composition of that ward, and she likely suspected you would be the same.”

  “There aren’t any omajistas,” Lilia said.

  “Not many,” Taigan said. “Not yet. We’ll take off that ward tonight. I suspect it plays a role in reducing your sensitivity to Oma.”

  Lilia gripped her wrist. “I’m not an omajista, or a blood witch, or anything like that.”

  “Nor are you a woman grown,” he said, “but you will be.”

  “I’m nearly three years past the age of consent!”

  “In Saiduan, you’d still be a veiled child. Please, your chatter hurts my head.”

  Lilia considered him the way she might a kinder piece on a board. What was his strategy? Surely the Saiduan didn’t want to kill her. But she couldn’t imagine they would keep her in their care when they found out she wasn’t gifted.

  Dusk came much sooner under the massive canopy of the trees. Lilia only saw the dim lights of the way house when they were nearly on top of it. The way house was a large, sinuous thing hollowed out of a vine that wrapped its way up the trunk of a bonsa tree that must have been a thousand years old. For the last hour, Taigan’s pace had quickened. He glanced back more often. Now that the way house was in sight, she worried he might go past it.

  “Are we stopping?” Lilia asked.

  “Someone is following,” he said.

  “So we aren’t stopping.”

  “We must. They’re worse at night, and harder to sense.”

  “Who?”

  He led the bear into the light of the way house. “Come now, get down.” He called up at the way house. “Hello there, send someone out!”

  Lilia thought it was very rude.

  Taigan reached up to grab her.

  She batted his hands away. “Ask first!”

  “Do you want help off the bear or not?”

  “Yes,” she said, and held out her arms.

  When he pulled her off, she dropped to the ground and said, “See? Was that so difficult?” It took her a moment to find her balance. Her legs were sore. She clung to the side of the bear.

  The sanisi muttered something in Saiduan, and she wished she’d paid more attention in Dasai’s classes.

  Lilia walked toward the light of the house. She heard the hiss of the sanisi’s blade.

  She expected to see something terrible as she turned – a rogue walking tree, or some slithering night-walker. Or, worse, the sanisi’s sword impaling her. But the attackers were human. Three men stepped out of the shadows, moving so quickly she did not have time to scrutinize their faces. They bore the blue-glowing bonsa blades of parajistas in their fists. As they raised their arms, though, she saw the hilts were not wrapped around their wrists the way the militia’s did.

  No, these blades protruded from the men’s wrists – hungry, snarling brambles that grew from some dark seed implanted in their flesh.

  She panicked.

  She’d seen those weapons before.

  Lilia dropped beneath the bear and scrambled toward the way house, dragging her bad foot behind her. She heard the hissing kiss of the blades and the roar of the bear. But instead of going inside, she ran around to the other side of the way house. The ground immediately outside the house was scorched and safe. She crouched there and waited, listening to the fighting.

  The sanisi could not save her from those men. Only one person had kept her safe all this time, and only one woman would believe her about those strange blades. Could Kalinda help her again?

  Taigan cursed. Lilia saw a burst of blue light.

  She darted further into the woods, away from the purls of blue light. Her breath came fast. She tried to slow her breathing as she slogged, fearful of her poor lungs. She limped through snaking creepers and sticky pox tendrils and emerged again on the road, behind the sanisi and his attackers. She saw the bear snuffling off back the way they had come, spooked by the fight.

  She hobbled forward, making soothing sounds, and – with great effort - climbed onto its back again. She glanced behind her only once. She saw the blue arc of the weapons, still whirling, the battle still undecided between Taigan and… who? The same people who’d come for her before, so many years ago. She had made a promise, and she intended to keep it. But things were spiraling out of hand, and she didn’t think she could do it alone.

  “We’ll make our own fate,” she murmured to the bear,
and urged him forward, back to the crossroads, back to Kalinda Lasa.

  10.

  Ahkio stood at the western wall of the Assembly Chamber, staring out the wall of windows overlooking the Pana Woodlands. Para’s bluish light kissed the horizon, herald of the double-dawn, which was just a few hours off. The light washed over deep green adenoaks and clumps of pale lime-colored bamboo and less savory things that rolled out across the plateau and into the distance. Clouds boiled over Mount Ahya, obscuring the summit. It was a rare day when one saw the peak.

  He had come up here to be alone after the disturbance with the sanisi downstairs, but as ever, Nasaka found him. He knew the footsteps behind him were hers, even before she drew a breath and said, “They’re getting ready to prepare your sister. I suggest you spend your grieving hours with her.”

  “If Oma isn’t rising, that sanisi made a good show of it,” Ahkio said.

  Nasaka held a green sheaf of papers in one hand; the other rested on the butt of her willowthorn sword. “We hoped it was a century distant,” Nasaka said. “But as with all things as they pertain to the gods of the satellites, our calculations can only be approximate. They bend us to their own will.”

  “He came here looking for omajistas,” Ahkio said.

  “That’s a grand leap in logic.”

  “Is it? He asked for Kirana first. She’s a powerful channeler, Nasaka. I’m not. And that girl…”

  “We test every child in Dhai,” Nasaka said. “Could we have missed one, especially one not able to draw on a star we haven’t seen in two thousand years? Certainly.”

  “And Kirana?”

  Nasaka sighed. “We… speculated she may have some power besides that of a tirajista. The last few months, things were… strange, with her.”

  “Do you think she was killed for it?”

  “Perhaps.” Nasaka set the pages on the table and came to his side, gazed with him toward Mount Ahya at the creeping dawn. “Do you want a part in saving all of this, Ahkio? Or will you run home to Meyna?”

  “You’re giving me a choice?”

  “With or without you in this seat, we are headed for civil war,” Nasaka said.

  “War? In Dhai? That’s not possible.”

  “The Garikas will contest your right to the seat. The Raonas will ask that I find your mad Aunt Etena and put her in it. And then there’s the matter of Oma…” Nasaka shook her head. “I suggest you sit with your sister now, before her body is prepared. The rest can wait until morning. But think clearly on this, Ahkio.”

  “What changed?” Ahkio said. He peered at her, but she did not meet his gaze. “You called me here to make me Kai. Now a sanisi tells us Oma is rising, and you say I can go home and pretend none of this happened?”

  “I hoped having you here might spare you,” Nasaka said, “from whatever fate befell Kirana. But now… Now I worry that harm will come to you no matter what way I move you.”

  “Like a piece on a board?”

  “No. Like an ungifted man trying to fill a seat that’s only been held by gifted women.”

  Ahkio referred to himself with the male-passive pronoun, and it was the same identifier Nasaka used when he said “man.” Ahkio always thought the pronoun very accurate, even complimentary – he was a teacher, a lover, a man who wanted four spouses and dozens of children, but somehow, the way Nasaka said it, it felt like an insult.

  “Why does being a man matter?”

  “To some, it matters,” Nasaka said. “More importantly, with Oma rising, having an ungifted man on the seat is even worse. They will tear you from this temple with their teeth, and insist on a politically savvy and gifted woman.”

  “Who killed her, Nasaka? Who wanted civil war now, of all times? The Saiduan?”

  “That’s a question I can’t answer yet,” she said, “let alone prove.”

  “But you suspect the Garikas?”

  “I always suspect the Garikas. Yisaoh will come for your seat soon, I guarantee that. I’ve already set things into motion in preparation for that.”

  “They’ll come for me whether or not I’m here.”

  “Not if you renounce the seat.”

  Ahkio had nothing to say to that. He watched Para bubble up over the horizon like a great bristling urchin. He thought of Kirana downstairs, her final words a mad cacophony of nonsense. He did feel very young, very small; Kirana had happily seen him off to Osono, away from Nasaka’s poisonous influence, and the ongoing headache of Dhai politics.

  “I’m going to go and sit with Kirana,” Ahkio said. He turned away, crossed the room.

  When he looked back, Nasaka still stood at the window, her lined face made brilliantly ominous by the blazing blue light of Para.

  Ahkio walked downstairs. He grabbed a flame fly lantern from its niche in the hall, shook it, and brought it with him to Kirana’s room, where the curtains were still closed. All was blackness.

  He moved to the stool by the bed. He saw Kirana’s slack face staring back at him. She seemed smaller. The smell of her voided body wafted up from the bedding, mixed with the smell of her sickness, but he still paused there, and gazed at the body of the woman who was once his sister.

  He looked behind him, so he wouldn’t miss the stool as he sat to pay his last respects. He remembered when he and Kirana did the same over their parents’ bodies. Huddled together, trying to understand the loss. This wake was for kin only; a few hours of stillness before the funerary attendants arrived to perform her final rites, the washing and liturgy, ensuring her soul was well gone before preparing her for the funerary feast.

  As he turned, he heard a noise behind him, a rustling sound.

  He thought perhaps one of the windows was open, letting in a soft breeze to stir the curtains.

  The curtains remained motionless.

  But his sister was sitting up in bed.

  Ahkio’s gut went icy.

  Bodies sometimes moved. Even after death, they could move. They…

  Kirana turned to look at him. Her eyes were glazed over, unfocused. Her hair fell into her gaunt face. She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Stood. She wore a thin white dressing gown that clung to her skinny legs.

  Ahkio couldn’t move. “Kira,” came out in a strangled whisper.

  “Listen,” she said.

  She took hold of the front of his tunic in her clawed hands, and pulled him forward. She was nearly a head shorter than he, her face awash in the light cast by the lantern he still clutched.

  “The heart is for you,” she said. “She’ll let you through, but you must find her. You will see me again, but not as I am. They’re coming, Ahkio. You must meet them.”

  He gasped; he was suddenly short of breath. The air felt heavy, like soup. He feared some sinajista had called her back from death. If that was so, or if she’d pulled herself back from Sina’s maw, he didn’t have much time.

  “Who was it?” he said. “Was it Nasaka? Kirana, who killed you?”

  “I did,” she said, and released him.

  The lantern fell from Ahkio’s hand.

  11.

  When Lilia came to the crossroads, she did not halt the bear, though foam lathered its snout. She pulled out a short blade sheathed behind her with the sanisi’s other supplies, and used it to cut back the worst of the plant life that barred their path. Her wrists and ankles were covered in red welts and broken thorns. A giant swinging vine nearly knocked her from her seat. She untied the sanisi’s supplies and used the cord to tie herself to the saddle.

  She sent Kalinda letters six times a year, on the major festivals and religious holidays. Kalinda had her address them – Way House Hyacinth, Mark 21, Oma to Garika. It meant Way House Hyacinth was at the 21 mile mark on the road that ran from the Temple of Oma to Garika. Dhai had no regular mail service; it was all taken up by traveling merchants and delivered along with other shipments.

  When she came to the door of the way house, she was bleeding and exhausted from her tangle with the hungry plant life along the r
oad. She slid from the bear, filthy and aching, and climbed the steps of the porch with great effort. The door – as all doors were in Dhai – was not locked.

  She stepped inside.

  Kalinda Lasa sat at one of several round wooden tables at the center of the room, speaking to two older women and a boy. Another young woman stood to the rear of the room, leaning easily in the doorway between the main room and kitchen. She moved immediately forward when Lilia entered. The others stayed seated.

  Kalinda cocked her head at Lilia. She was much older than Lilia remembered. Her white hair was wound about her head in one easy spiral, as if some tornadic wind had shaped it. She wore a bright red skirt and purple blouse beneath a leather vest buckled at the front with three large, eye-shaped silver buttons.

  “Are you all right, child?” Kalinda asked as she rose.

  Lilia had a terrible fear that Kalinda did not remember her. Oma, she had come all this way, and given up the only friend she had for nothing.

  “I’m Lilia Sona, and there is a sanisi coming here for me. Maybe something worse.”

  Lilia saw recognition pass across Kalinda’s face. Lilia’s relief was so sharp that her eyes filled with tears. There is a time to mourn, and a time to act, the sanisi had said. She wiped her eyes.

  “It’s all right, Gian,” Kalinda said.

  The tall woman who had been standing far across the room was now within just a few paces of Lilia. The woman, Gian, took a step back and crossed her ropy arms. Her long dark hair fell nearly to her waist in a thick braid. Lilia found herself a little jealous of it. No one in the temple had long hair.

  “Get inside,” Kalinda said. “Gian, bolt that door. You remember how? Lilia, come with me.” She gestured to the others at the table. “You two, go home. Quickly and quietly. Wake our guests and send them on their way. We need the house clear.”

  Kalinda came forward. Her plump, round face was heavily lined, very serious, the thin lips pressed tightly into something that was not quite a frown.

  “When did they come?” Kalinda asked.

  “A day… two days ago. He wanted me to go with him.”

  “You specifically? Did he forcibly take you?”