The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “Wait,” Zezili said. “Your world? You mean your country. Your country’s dying?”

  Monshara raised her hand in greeting to the riders. The riders made a similar salute. Best Zezili could tell, the riders were three women and one man. The man trailed after the women, as was proper in Dorinah.

  The riders arrived and exchanged a few words with Monshara in a language that sounded a lot like Dhai. Was it some dialect?

  “Should I step back or something?” Zezili asked.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Monshara said.

  The five riders formed a broad circle. They raised their arms.

  The air thickened. A massive boom rocked the field. Zezili’s legionnaires cried out. Raised their hands to their ears. Zezili wondered, then, if this was all some fun ruse – have the legionnaires slaughter the camp, then slaughter the legionnaires in turn with some great trick. But that thought was short-lived, because it was at that moment that the ground around Zezili’s feet began to harden.

  Bloody mist roiled up from the soil and filled the sky. Zezili took a breath and gagged on coppery, blood-soaked air. Beneath her, the ground cracked and heaved. Zezili stumbled forward, and caught herself on a fresh body. Blood burst from the corpse. She rolled to the side. Gazed across the field. One by one, the corpses burst and split apart, sending great gouts of blood into the already saturated air.

  She gagged on another breath.

  The air began to clear as the blood coalesced into a single shimmering sphere at the center of the riders.

  Zezili dry heaved onto the churned-up ground.

  Above her, the flat disk of the sphere became a thin-skinned bubble. Violet light burst from its center. Zezili turned away, blinded.

  Her ears popped. The pressure eased.

  She wiped at her eyes. Black spots juddered across her vision. Where the bloody bubble had been, a perfect disk of amber sky bled through from… some other place.

  Zezili’s stomach heaved again. She vomited. She heard someone laughing, and looked up. It was Monshara. She was looking through the hole in the sky.

  Zezili didn’t know what she expected. The sky on the other side was a burnished auburn, not blue-lavender. The hourglass suns were brilliant crimson, not yellow. The whole horizon glowed red, as if the ground itself emitted some wavering heat. She could not see Para, only a black mass in the sky where Para should have been, and long tails of misty black particles trailing it; the tail of an ebony comet.

  The landscape it rained upon was a sea of charred hills. Zezili thought at first it was barren, but then she saw a squat, round tower in the distance, pulsing with a faint blue light.

  “Are you coming?” Monshara asked.

  Zezili started. “What?”

  “Your second can clean things up here,” Monshara said. “My sovereign wishes to meet you, as I’ve said.”

  “I can go through?”

  “Yes. We’ve ensured that.”

  “Ensured it? How?”

  “That’s not important. Come through. You’ll need a mount.” She called to one of the omajistas – well, there had to be such a thing, didn’t there, if they could do this? - who slid off her bear and handed the reins to Zezili.

  Zezili grimaced. She hated the smell of bears. She mounted anyhow. She didn’t want to make a habit of arguing with women who used blood magic to open doors between spaces. She remembered Anavha crouched on the floor of his room again, and her heart clenched. A cold sweat broke out between her shoulder blades. It was someone else, she reminded herself. He didn’t do anything at all. Maybe it was one of these people, opening spaces to nowhere on accident. Maybe… Zezili sat straight and tall atop the bear. She needed to ask Tulana about omajistas. If the Empress had known all along people could do something like this, she would have hidden them away with Tulana. Zezili understood, now, why her local priest had wanted to take Anavha away immediately.

  Monshara began to move through the gate.

  “Will it stay open behind us?” Zezili asked.

  “Eight hundred dead should keep it open at least two hours,” Monshara said. “We have time.”

  “And if it closes?”

  “We’ll be done by then,” Monshara said. “We’re going to the tower.”

  Zezili firmed her jaw. She thought of her fine estate, and Dakar, her dajians and Anavha. If these people wanted her dead, there were far easier ways to do it.

  She hissed at the bear beneath her, and followed Monshara onto the other side.

  Dirty bones littered the field around the glowing blue tower. The air here was dry, and smelled strangely of sulfur. Zezili put a kerchief over her nose, but it did nothing to keep the strange air from her lungs. She gave up, and tucked the kerchief back inside her cuff.

  “Who were these people?” Zezili asked.

  “We had to remove a good many people,” Monshara said, “to gather enough blood to open the way between the worlds. Blood witches have known how to intensify the power of the satellites through the power of blood for centuries. It was only natural we apply those same strategies to intensify the tenuous power of Oma.”

  “Blood witches? Worlds? Are we on the moons or something? Because you’re talking nonsense to me.”

  “Not the moons, no,” Monshara said. “It’s… like looking at a series of reflections, you understand?”

  “No.”

  Monshara sighed. She looked around the charred, shattered ground, and pointed to a fetid pool of standing water in a ditch along the beaten track they followed. “When you see the sky reflected in that pool, is it the sky you know, truly? Or some blacker version, some mirror version? Pretend that beneath every reflecting pool is some other version of that sky, layer upon layer of them, with slight differences in each. The deeper you go, the more different things are.”

  Zezili wasn’t too keen on that analogy, but understood something of what she was getting at. “So let’s say you peel up enough layers, and in some reflection, the Dhai aren’t slaves anymore?”

  Monshara grimaced. “To put it mildly, no. The Dhai are not slaves here.”

  “There’s something I’ve been trying to figure out,” Zezili said. “Why kill a bunch of slaves on another world, especially if they look like you? I mean, you’re working for Dhai who are killing their… what, reflections? Isn’t that like killing your yourself?”

  “You’ll have to ask the Kai,” Monshara said.

  “The Kai?” Zezili said. “You have got to be joking.”

  Monshara did not answer. She slid off her mount and tied off the reins at a broad silver hitching post outside the tower. The tower itself was not as grand as it appeared from the other side. Just four stories tall, ringed in silver-rimmed windows that shimmered with little rainbows of light, as if inlaid with the wings of dragonflies.

  Zezili followed Monshara up three broad flights of stairs. The tower was empty of possessions. Zezili saw a spot of blood near the door. The rest of the interior was scoured clean. Not even any dust.

  As they came to the top of the tower, Zezili heard voices. Four figures dressed in chitinous red armor stood around an amberwood table. A large map lay at the center. Four red vases sat next to each leg of the table.

  It took Zezili a moment to realize she actually understood what they were saying. They spoke Dhai.

  The woman furthest from Zezili glanced up at their arrival. She was a dour, hard-faced woman a handful of years younger than Zezili, with a strong jaw and sloped nose. She looked vaguely familiar. Her companions turned. Two men, two women.

  “Welcome back,” the hard-faced woman said to Zezili, in Dhai.

  “Do I know you?” Zezili asked.

  “I’m sure of it,” the woman said.

  “You have me confused with someone else, then.”

  “I think not,” the woman said.

  Zezili tried to remember where she had seen this woman – the title, Kai, decided her. Zezili had killed any number of dajians over the years, and interacted with hundr
eds more. But something about this one reminded her of burning flesh. And she remembered a man she murdered one day calling for his wife, calling for the Kai, the honorific for the Dhai leader.

  “You’re the girl from that camp uprising I put down,” Zezili said. “That was… twelve, thirteen years ago? You pulled your brother out of that fire. He was lit like a torch. I remember.”

  “Is that what happened?” the woman said. She looked amused. “Perhaps that’s what happened where you’re from. It was different here. We met very differently.”

  Zezili glanced back at Monshara. “Is this a joke?”

  Monshara shook her head.

  “I’m the Kai,” the woman said, “of the Tai Mora. You’ll know me as Kirana Javia Garika, if you remember my name at all. You were a rebellious little trouble maker here, rousing your people against mine, about that time.”

  Zezili had been a snot-nosed young recruit in the Empress’s legion back then. She had killed a good many Dhai during that year; there was an uprising in the camps caused by some religious zealot from Dhai who had decided to play prophet in the camps. Those never ended well.

  “No, I was murdering your parents in the camps,” Zezili said, “as a member of the Dorinah legion.”

  “Interesting,” Kirana said.

  Zezili glanced over at Monshara. “What’s going on? Why’s the Kai in some other world?”

  “There are two of us, of course,” Kirana said. “Two worlds. Mirrors of each other.”

  Zezili started. “What?” She remembered Monshara’s talk about reflections. It hadn’t occurred to her she didn’t just mean countries and places that were the same, but actual individuals. Two of everything? Two of Zezili? That hurt her head.

  Kirana grinned. “You were never one for philosophy or astronomical theory,” she said, “so I’ll use small words. You’re fighting Dhai here. The same Dhai you fight in your world, with some key differences.” She waved her hand at the window. “Such as the scenery. And, of course, the fact that we’re winning.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “I wish it were,” Monshara said.

  Zezili stared at the Dhai woman in armor. She had never seen a Dhai woman in armor, she realized. The dajians in the camps were soft things, even during the uprisings. At most they wore heavy leather and maybe carried a staff or battered sword. She struggled with her slim knowledge of Oma – long referred to in scripture as Rhea’s Eye – and the people she saw before her. Rhea walked the world the last time Oma rose, bringing with her the Empress’s people, and the Saiduan. Those invasions eventually led to the end of the Dhai empire. But fighting themselves? Fighting… reflections?

  “There’s no logic to what you’re saying,” Zezili said. “My mother is a titled Dorinah. My father is a dajian – a Dhai slave. You’ve just said you’re the leader of the Tai Mora, whatever that is, not the Dhai, and I’ve seen no Dorinah here. So I couldn’t exist. I’d have no double.”

  “The people are the same,” Kirana said. “But small things make the difference. Our people go by many names, and Tai Mora is just one of them. We still had a handful of Dorinah left for some time until just recently, working as clerks and translators for landed families. So your father was still the same Dhai. Just not a slave. Your mother was, perhaps, less free to do as she wished here. But the result, you, is… mostly the same.”

  “Scripture says –”

  Kirana sighed. “We could sit here all day philosophizing about the nature of the link between our worlds, and between our other selves. I know philosophers, hundreds of them, who do just that. I do not expect we will solve the riddle any sooner or more satisfactorily than they will. I am not looking to solve philosophical problems, but immediate concerns of survival.”

  Zezili clenched her fists. She wasn’t feeling terribly well. It was the armor, she realized. Dhai people in armor. It made her sick. “But I should know –”

  “What you need to know is that my people will take your world,” Kirana said. “We can do it with or without your aid, but without will take longer. That black star will continue to decay, raining death and poison until not one of us is left living. I assure you, I am very motivated.”

  “So what,” Zezili said. “You’ve outsourced your killing over there to me and my legion?”

  “We’re busy people,” Kirana said. “You’ve seen how many resources it takes to send our people through. It’s easier to rely on native faces to eliminate the Dhai on the other side.”

  “What?” Zezili said. “All of them?”

  “Your mission is the dajians in the camps,” Kirana said. “Let’s focus on that.”

  “But you’ll want to kill the Dhai, eventually,” Zezili said. “Your double. Her family. The ones I didn’t kill, anyway.”

  “Focus on your mission. I’ll focus on mine.”

  Zezili gazed out the rainbow-gloss of the broad windows behind them, and saw a great construct along the horizon, in the valley behind the tower.

  “What’s that?” Zezili asked.

  Kirana glanced back. “Ah. You noticed it. That’s the mirror.”

  “Hard to miss.”

  “Your predecessor worked on it.”

  “My predecessor? What, so I do have a double?”

  “You did,” Kirana said.

  “Where is she?” Zezili asked.

  “She was no longer of interest to me,” Kirana said. “We needed you to come through, and you can’t come through if your double still breathes.”

  Zezili sucked her teeth. “Ah,” she said, and understanding blossomed like some dark flower in her mind. “So those slaves I’m killing are the doubles of your people, already, maybe even you. You can’t go through that gate unless the Dhai are dead.”

  Kirana smiled. “Retain your focus, Zezili. Focus has never been your strong suit.”

  “And the mirror? Why do you need one that big out there?”

  “Impress me with your boundless intuition, and perhaps your fate will be brighter than your predecessor’s.”

  Zezili thought it was meant to rankle, so she barked out a laugh instead. She half expected to wake up back in her tent, still smeared in dajian blood and ranting to Monshara about hallucinations. “You had my double build it after she killed your family?”

  “She had a few talents,” Kirana said, “but ultimately she would not cooperate.”

  “So you wanted to know if you should kill me, too?”

  “You have her mouth,” Kirana said. “Let’s say this secret isn’t one that will be hidden long. Best to see how you took it. Some go mad.”

  Zezili could understand that.

  Kirana rolled up the map on the table, which Zezili recognized now as a map of Grania. Zezili saw neat lines of Dhai characters scrawled across areas of Dhai, Tordin, Dorinah, and Aaldia. Zezili spoke Dhai, but had never studied the written language, so it was just scribbling to her.

  Kirana held the map out, and Monshara took it. “That’s your battle plan,” Kirana said. “Eight hundred dead to deliver that. Best not lose it.”

  Monshara slipped the map into a leather sleeve attached to her belt.

  “Who are you battling with next?” Zezili asked. “Wars on multiple fronts never go well.”

  “You’ll know soon enough,” Kirana said. “You’re dismissed, Monshara.”

  Zezili spared one last look at the Kai, then followed after Monshara down the long stairwell.

  When they reached the bottom, Zezili walked out behind the tower, ignoring Monshara’s shout, and gazed down the hill toward the great construction she had spied from the window.

  A vast silvery arch split the sky. Distant figures worked in the tattered shreds of some temporary camp near it. She saw long lines of workers carrying baskets of shimmering matter toward the structure. More workers dangled from the scaffolding that skirted its base.

  “Why build a mirror?” Zezili asked as Monshara came up alongside her.

  “To keep the gate between our worlds
open,” Monshara said. “We don’t have enough blood, or omajistas, to keep a steady gate open without it. The rebels took two hundred of our most promising omajistas a decade ago and hid them across many worlds, but mostly yours, as it’s the closest to ours.”

  “How do you lose that many children?”

  “It’s a very long story. A few women made a nuisance of themselves, led by an upstart named Nava Isoail. But they’re nearly all dead now. We’re just mopping up.”

  Above the arch of the mirror, the blasted black sphere of what should have been Para glowed ominously in the sky.

  “Why would she pick me for this campaign,” Zezili said, “when she already killed my double?”

  “I long ago gave up trying to understand her motivations. She is equal parts grim brutality and strategic fuckery.”

  “There’s no chance she could fail?”

  Monshara’s face was a grim mask.

  “With a face like that, you’d be good at cards,” Zezili said.

  “I am,” Monshara said. She sighed. “We won’t fail, Zezili. Our armies are vast. Saiduan was the largest enemy we had to face, and they’re nearly spent. When the mirror is finished, we can easily send through as many of our soldiers as we like. No need to slaughter more here or there to fuel it, or wait for random tears in the sky. The mirror will keep the rift open until we destroy it.”

  Zezili remembered the mirror hanging over her own hearth, and the day she watched her mother sculpting the soft, warm metal. She wished she wasn’t blind to the power of the stars, then. She wished she could do something to stop whatever mad thing was about to happen.

  “The metal is most vulnerable now,” her mother had told her. “Before it’s infused with the power of Tira that gives it this glow. After that, it will never shatter. It will outlive us, just like those everpine weapons the legionnaires wield.” The mirror in the distance did not glow. If it wasn’t yet infused with the power of a satellite, it could be broken.