The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  Nasaka rose from her place at the table and picked up the silver plate which bore his sister’s preserved heart. She brought it to the dais, and offered it to Ahkio.

  Ahkio took a sliver of Kirana’s heart. He sent up a prayer to Oma, then, because in all likelihood Oma was close enough to hear him, now: if I’m not the right person for this cowl, you need to show me another path.

  He swallowed the flesh of his sister’s heart, and became Kai.

  The funerary chefs and kitchen drudges brought in the dishes prepared from his sister’s well-salted body – blood sausage and blood pudding, fried liver, sweetly seasoned ribs and delicate finger bones slathered in lemon juice and butter. The meal was complemented with honey wine and blackberry liquor, as well as other delicacies such as roasted fiddleheads, bracken tops, and nasturtiums.

  When the ceremony was finished, he made polite talk with the clan leaders and Oras. Nasaka stayed at this side, too close for his comfort, and after an hour of too much wine in the too-warm Sanctuary, he evaded her by escaping to the privy at the end of the hall outside.

  He sat there listening to the rush of water running underneath the bank of stone seats and purling down the washing sinks until three novices burst in, eyes bright, voices loud – already a little drunk.

  Ahkio pushed out of the privy and nearly fell into Elaiko.

  “Kai,” she said, and he winced. He wished he were as drunk as the novices.

  “There’s a man here for you,” Elaiko said. “Your cousin?”

  “There he is!”

  Ahkio knew the voice. He hurried past Elaiko, toward the great foyer.

  Liaro waved to him from the bottom of the stairs, a lumpy pack slung over one shoulder.

  Ahkio held out his arms, and Liaro stepped into his embrace.

  “Oma, cousin,” Ahkio said. “You don’t know how good it is to see you.”

  “I came as quickly as I could,” Liaro said. “Sina, look at your hair! Is the ascension over?”

  “I would have liked you here sooner. Where’s Meyna?”

  Liaro cleared his throat. “Ah. Meyna. Well, about that-”

  “What are you doing out here?” Nasaka asked, pushing her way out of the Sanctuary.

  Ahkio sighed. “Can I have two minutes of peace with my cousin?” he said.

  “Are you expecting Lohin to come in this late?” Liaro said, gesturing back toward the foyer. “I passed him and some Garika militia on the way in. Seemed odd they didn’t show up sooner.”

  “Kirana’s husband?” Ahkio asked. “With… militia? We invited Tir’s whole family – Lohin, Yisaoh, just as I invited Meyna and her husbands. No one responded. Are you sure it was him?”

  “Could have been some dancing minstrels dressed like militia, I suppose,” Liaro said, “but I expect that’s even less likely.”

  “How close?” Nasaka asked. She gripped the end of her willowthorn sword, and the branch snarled itself around her wrist. Ahkio’s stomach dropped. He knew what was coming; knew it and still tried to deny it.

  “They’re just a few minutes behind me,” Liaro said. “On the plateau. What? Is that bad?”

  “Blood and ashes,” Nasaka swore.

  Roh woke in the infirmary, rattled awake by a seething tide of nightmares. The black spill of light trailing Oma clawed at him, engulfed him. The world was a sea of red rain that strangled the fields and washed away the Temple of Oma, cracking the great dome, showering jagged glass onto novices and Oras, severing limbs and making ribbons of their organs.

  It was the smell he noticed first, like burnt black tea. Para’s light spilled through the glass ceiling – which he was surprised to see whole, after the dream - blinding him in blue light.

  “Roh?”

  His brother Chali stood over him, round face scrunched with concern.

  “Where’s the sanisi?” Roh asked.

  “He left some time ago. Are you all right? The whole family came to see you. Ora Nasaka sent them away yesterday.”

  “I need to talk to Ora Dasai.”

  Chali held out a hand. Roh took it. Chali was almost thirty, and acted like he knew everything, but Roh had never seen him look so scared. “Stay in bed,” Chali said.

  “I feel fine,” Roh said. Hunger pinched his stomach. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in bed. “What day is it?”

  “That new Kai’s day of ascension. You’ve been out almost two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? The Kai… is Kai Kirana dead?”

  “I’m sorry,” Chali said. “You’ve missed a lot. Yes, she passed. Her brother, Kai Ahkio, as taken her title.”

  “Where’s Li?” Roh said. “Was Lilia here? My friend.” She was always in the infirmary. He had a memory of her next to him.

  “You mean the girl who went with the sanisi?” Chali asked.

  “He took her and not me?”

  “You should rest.”

  “I need to see Ora Dasai. The sanisi should have taken me.”

  “You were nearly dead. Rest. Ora Dasai is taking a group of scholars north. He wanted to make sure you were all right before then. I think he feels responsible.”

  Roh clutched at his stomach, searching for a wound that was no longer there. He pulled at the front of his tunic, and realized it wasn’t his. He wore a white tunic and trousers, like an invalid, instead of his novice clothes. When he raised up the tunic, he saw no wound, no scar.

  “I was hurt, wasn’t I?”

  “Someone attacked you,” Chali said. “We hoped you could say who it was.”

  Roh searched his memory. He remembered pain and surprise; a deep betrayal. “I don’t know,” he said. “Chali, Ora Chali, I need to go north with you.”

  “That’s not my decision, Roh.”

  “But you’re going,” Roh said. “Ora Dasai asked you, didn’t he?”

  “If I want to be an Elder Ora, travel abroad would help my case,” he said. “In eighty years –”

  “Eighty years!” Roh said. “I don’t care about what happens in eighty years. I care about today.”

  “I’m going to get Elder Ora Gaiso,” Chali said, and stood. He left Roh’s side before he could say any more.

  Roh sat at the edge of the bed, staring at his hands. Something terrible had happened after Dasai sent him downstairs. Why couldn’t he remember?

  He found a clean set of clothes on the other bed. They were drudge clothes – gray tunic and trousers, and no green apron. He expected to feel weaker, but his legs held his weight, and he did not tremble. It must have been a very skilled tirajista who saved him. He dressed carefully, and waited. And waited.

  Loud voices came from the hall. He crept to the door, barefoot, and opened it. The corridor outside the infirmary curved before reaching the foyer, so he couldn’t see anything from there. But he heard the strange sound of hissing weapons; the same sound two infused swords made on meeting. It was a sound he had never heard outside a practice yard.

  Roh recited the Litany of Breath. He held the breath of Para close, just beneath his skin, and ran into the corridor, toward the sound of the fighting. He ran headlong into a massive clutch of whirling bodies – red-wrapped militia, green-aproned novices, and full Oras, all coming together in a violent melee. He saw the blue mist of Para’s breath suffusing the parajistas he knew, but saw no structures being built; no woven weapons. Using gifted arts against the non-gifted was the gravest of crimes. But as Roh watched blood spattering the temple floor, it seemed like a terrible prohibition.

  He ran into the sprawl to see if he could figure out who they were fighting. As he did, he saw the Kai’s brother, Ahkio, run past him, back toward the Sanctuary. Roh knew him from his early days at the temple, when the Kai’s brother visited her more often. Ahkio’s hair was matted with blood; the ascension ceremony, Chali had said. Was someone trying to take the country now, before the Kai came into power? Three militia members sprinted after Ahkio.

  Roh did not hesitate. He grabbed the nearest militia woman by the collar of her tu
nic and yanked her back. He jabbed her twice in the kidneys, just as he’d learned in their defense classes. He took her everpine sword. The hilt curled around his wrist. He ran after the others. Ahkio entered the Sanctuary just as the two militia turned to see what had become of their companion.

  Roh jumped up and jammed the hilt of his sword into the face of the one closest to him. He felt bone crunch. Blood spattered. He swung his blade just as the second man thrust forward. Their blades met. Roh rolled smoothly away, ducked behind him, and hacked at the back of his legs. The second man fell.

  Out of breath, his blood already pounding with adrenaline, Roh pushed into the Sanctuary – and stopped short. He still held Para beneath his skin. He itched to send an attacker spinning off into the void.

  Almeysia stood at the center of the Sanctuary, facing Ahkio.

  She raised her gaze to Roh’s, and he knew.

  It was not a full memory. It was not some arcane knowledge. Just instinct. Something terrible passed between them in that moment. It was her fault. She had attacked him in the hall. Closed his eyes, so he could not see.

  Almeysia was a tirajista, but a very sensitive one. It meant she could draw more deeply on Tira than many of her contemporaries, even in decline. Roh knew that, but he shook off his sword and channeled Para anyway.

  The floor of the Sanctuary shook. Roh spun up a vortex of air as a slithering fanged vine burst from the floor of the temple, cracking through stones and overturning tables.

  Roh pressed forward, unfazed, as the vine lashed at him, battering itself against the whirling winds. He ignored Ahkio’s defensive stance, and focused more intently on his creation, intensifying the howling winds. He had never felt so powerful.

  The fingers of the vine burst apart. The trunk split in two.

  Another vine surfaced. Then another.

  The third one nearly broke his concentration. Roh stumbled back. The vine caught him around one leg.

  Ahkio stepped forward, grabbed Roh’s discarded sword–

  –and sliced Roh free.

  Ahkio was yelling something at him, but Roh knew the minute he lost his focus, Almeysia would conjure something to eat him. He pressed forward across the cracked stones and shattered bits of the tables, the burst vegetal matter and broken thorns.

  He hadn’t mastered the ability to hold a shield and deploy an offense at the same time. Almeysia hounded him with more and more attacks. He broke a stout rattler tree, and severed woody varga vines, all the time advancing on her position.

  Almeysia had to work harder for her manifestations, though. As he came forward he saw she was drawn and trembling. Sweat soaked her tunic.

  He was younger, fitter, and his star was ascendant.

  The Sanctuary doors burst open behind him.

  A blast of air took him off his feet. He created a fast bubble of air to cushion his fall, and landed lightly on the other side of the Sanctuary.

  Almeysia took the full force of the attack. The great stone lanterns of the gods ringing the altar smashed against the far side of the Sanctuary. Almeysia went with them, tossed to the floor like a tangle of seaweed.

  Roh let go of Para. The tension that had held him upright left his body. Exhaustion rolled over him. He sank to his knees. Started shaking.

  On the other side of the Sanctuary, Nasaka and Ohanni stood with Ahkio. Ohanni was a parajista, and still had a whirling cone of air circling her, churning up dust and debris. Roh could see the misty blue shape of it, sapphire streamers whirling from her fingers.

  The Sanctuary was a ragged mess of twisted, seeping plant flesh and broken tables. Tattered paper lanterns tumbled across the floor. The tiles of the floor were broken, jagged in places where Almeysia’s plants had torn through.

  “Oma’s breath,” Ohanni said. “Did you do this, Roh?”

  Nasaka strode across the Sanctuary to Almeysia. “She’s alive,” Nasaka said. “Bring a draught, Ora Ohanni. I want her drugged. And you –” Nasaka turned to Roh. “You stay where you are. You have much to explain.”

  Roh stared into his hands. He had never been in a fight before. Not a real one.

  He fell to his knees, trembling. He should be retching, he knew. He should be horrified at causing harm.

  But he had never felt so alive.

  16.

  The boar spiders swarmed Lilia at the edge of the Woodland. Each spider stood as high as her knee, and whispered forward from deep burrows hidden by floxflass nests. Lilia froze, the way her mother had taught her. The spiders clamored up her trousers. One perched on her head. She closed her mouth and breathed through her nose, trying to stay calm. Boar spiders were like hornets – they only bit when provoked – but she was hungry and exhausted, and the fear that roiled over her was paralyzing.

  The swarm continued to gain strength. She must have stepped on a nest. Nests were often connected, and her misstep had triggered others in the area. She closed her eyes, so she did not have to look at their fangs.

  A poor way to die, she thought, before even stepping foot in the woodlands.

  She began to count her breaths. Something heavy, much larger than a spider, crunched in the undergrowth.

  A vortex of air blasted her from above. She flailed, barely kept her feet. The tendrils of air bundled up dozens of spiders and propelled them into the dark woods around her. Lilia heard them land in the trees and crunch in the undergrowth. Several smashed wetly into massive tree trunks.

  She opened her eyes.

  Gian stood before her, just a dozen steps down the path, blue-glowing bonsa sword in hand. She looked much taller out here, formidable, like some historic hero from a tapestry come to life. A bear snuffled behind her, licking its snout.

  Lilia patted herself down, skin still crawling with the memory of the spiders. “I was all right,” she said.

  Gian smirked, and came forward. “Of course you were.”

  Lilia scrambled away from her, back into the hanging ivy that flanked the path. “I’m not going with you.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. Tell Kalinda –”

  “Kalinda’s dead.”

  “Oh no.”

  “A sanisi,” Gian said. She sheathed her weapon, putting out the blue glow of it, surrendering them again to the dim light that filtered through the forest canopy. Lilia wasn’t sure of the time of day. She’d been walking for hours, and her bad leg throbbed. Her breath came so heavy she’d had to stop four times and take her mahuan powder.

  “Taigan killed her?”

  “Is that his name?” Gian surveyed the woodland around them, as if looking for more spiders.

  “Shouldn’t you be an Ora? You can channel Para. All the jistas become Oras.”

  “Not all,” Gian said. “Some become healers and seers, those with poorer gifts.” She leaned in to Lilia, peering at her as if she were a mystery that needed unraveling. She had broad cheekbones and black, black eyes. Lilia thought she might stumble into them. “And some of us believe in freedom of the individual over the tyranny of the common good.”

  Lilia wasn’t sure what that meant, but let it lie. “What are you going to do, now that you’ve found me?”

  “Lot of things I could do, couldn’t I? Wrap you up in a vortex and cart you back to my safe house. Maybe just cut you in two and leave you here.”

  “You sound like the sanisi,” Lilia said.

  “Don’t try and shame me,” Gian said. “It was my aunt killed back there. The woman who saved you, and me, and at least a hundred other children from that hungry war and the Kai’s army back home.”

  “What war?” Lilia said. The Dhai had no armies. She shook her head. “You’re trying to confuse me.”

  “Maybe,” Gian said. Lilia wasn’t sure she liked the way Gian looked at her. “How far away is this place you think you lived?”

  “It’s on the coast. The other side of the woodland. In the northeast. There’s a peninsula that juts into the sea.”

  “Fasia’s Point. Yes, I know it.
”

  “It has a name?”

  “Most things do.”

  “We can lose the sanisi in the woodland,” Lilia said, trying quickly to come up with a rational reason to plunge ahead. “He’ll know every road. Take me to Fasia’s Point. By the time we come back he’ll have lost us.”

  “What happens after Fasia’s Point?”

  “Then, I’ll… I’ll go wherever you want.” She held out her scarred wrists, an old habit. “I swear it.”

  Gian stared at her outstretched arms. “Your mother was a blood witch, wasn’t she?”

  Lilia dropped her arms. “Where did you hear that? No one says that.”

  “In the valley they don’t,” Gian said. “In the woodlands, they do. And… other places.” For the first time, Gian pulled her hand away from her bonsa sword. The branch loosened its hold on her wrist, retracted. “I’ll take you to Fasia’s Point, so you can see what’s there. But you won’t find your mother.”

  “I promised I’d go back.”

  “Then make me a promise. After I take you there, and we lose the sanisi, and you see what you can see, you go where I want. No fuss. No arguing. No running off into the night alone.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “Because I made a promise, too, to Kalinda. I promised no harm would come to you, and I’d deliver you to her people. I make good on my promises. In that, we’re alike.”

  “I’ll go,” Lilia said. Roh’s life for hers, fulfilling her promise for Gian’s… she was trading a good many things these days, all of which involved her freedom. She was done bargaining, but Gian didn’t need to know that yet.

  They spent the rest of the day climbing up into the hills. Lilia knew they entered the Woodland proper at dusk because that’s where the formal road ended. They traveled instead on a mossy path lined in red roses and fireweed. The trees, too, changed, from elegant and well-groomed bonsa trees to tangled rattlers and stinging foreshore. The trees grew twisted and massive, like a maze constructed by a mad giant with a very perverse idea of how to channel Tira. But it was the bone trees that evoked the Woodland the most, for Lilia. She saw her first in many years as they climbed through a tangled crush of rattler trees that grew across the path, Gian’s bear chomping through what they could not clear themselves. The bone tree stood alone in a little clearing, no taller than Lilia. Its dirty yellowish trunk and spiny branches were made of literal bone, the remnants of the small mammals and birds it caught in its clawed branches. The creatures were drawn by the sweet smell of the poisonous sap it secreted. The sap killed all nearby plant life, too, hence the patch of dead ground ringing the tree. A dozen long-toothed, grinning skulls making up one branch of the tree, twisted together with amber sap and a shimmering silver webbing of organic matter. The skulls were no bigger than her palm. They were tree glider skulls.