The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

“No wiser than anything else I’ve done,” Ahkio said. “Honestly, both of you. Stay here. “This is something I need to do on my own.”

  “We’ve had enough funeral feasts!” Liaro called after him.

  Ahkio started the long walk to Meyna’s house. He had not slept well since he left, and his pace was sluggish. He did not expect to sleep well for some time. He walked up the spongy ramp to the house. Everything looked the same. He cracked open the door and called, “Meyna? Rhin? Are you home, Hadaoh?”

  No answer.

  Ahkio pushed open the door.

  All was in order. He saw row upon row of carved eating sticks laid out on the table where Meyna had left them. Rhin’s boots, caked with mud from the sheep fields, sat by the back door. Ahkio called into the house again.

  He walked onto the back porch. Stared down into the community green behind the house. A dozen children played there, shrieking as they pelted one another with sticky thorn flowers. He saw Mey-Mey sitting away from the group, surrounded by a pool of the purple flowers. She smashed their faces into one another, and threw them half-heartedly at the other children.

  He recognized big, broad-shouldered Hadaoh speaking to a neighbor across the green. But Rhin and Meyna were nowhere to be seen.

  Ahkio walked back into the house, calling for Meyna. He heard movement upstairs. A heavy thumping. He went up the stairs that curved around the inner core of the tree, to the second level of the house.

  Meyna stood at a long table in the open room at the center of the second floor. Her hands were covered in black soil. On the table, little semi-sentient orb-blood plants squiggled in the piles of dirt. Meyna brought up a hatchet and severed the red cylindrical head from the stem of one of the plants, then tossed both pieces into a foaming bucket of salt water at her feet. Ahkio had seen her cull the plants before, but recognized this as something different. She was murdering all of them.

  Meyna glanced up at him, hatchet raised, fingers clasping another wriggling plant. “I wondered how long you’d be,” she said, and brought down the hatchet.

  “I hoped you’d still be here. I sent you letters. Did you get them?”

  “The Soarina sisters are coming for the plates, and Rhin’s unsold ceramics,” Meyna said. “You’d be surprised how much Afara Soarina wants them now that they come so cheaply. But the plants… well, no one wants the plants.”

  “The letters, Meyna?”

  She laughed. The laugh grew louder and deeper, until she doubled over, clutching her belly. She had to set down the hatchet. “Marry you?” she gasped. “After what you just did?”

  Despite the hatchet in her hand, he wanted to hold her. He wondered if he was mad for feeling it. But this woman had held him and comforted him. She’d welcomed him into her home, made love to him, done everything but marry him.

  “If you’d just answered -”

  “You don’t love me or my husbands. You love power,” she said. She held up one of the wriggling plants. “Do you want one? I have thirty, and thirty more after that. Not much use for them, where we’re going. They breed like flies in the woodlands. Beautiful but troublesome little things, liable to bite off a hand at maturity. But so sweet before they become deadly.”

  “They killed my sister, Meyna.”

  “You know that isn’t true. Is that what Ora Nasaka told you?”

  “Yisaoh was seen in the temple –”

  She lay down the hatchet. Leaned toward him. Her face softened. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said. “Come with us, Ahkio. Ora Nasaka is turning you into something horrible. I do want to marry you, Ahkio, but I don’t want some Ora’s puppet. Give your title to some other scheming madwoman.”

  Ahkio’s heart raced. How long had he waited to hear her propose? Years. The dying plants wriggled on the table. He saw her hand covered in their sap. She knew what he wanted. She had always known. She offered it now because she’d run out of options. The more Dhai talked of love, the more all he could see was politics.

  “It’s too late for that, Meyna.”

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, Ahkio,” Meyna said. “Your sister had a good many irons in the fire. She was obsessed with that temple, and kept you out of it for a reason. She asked me to take you into my home. And I did come to care for you Ahkio. I did. But I can tell you that whatever she was doing there had nothing to do with the Garikas, and everything to do with her own obsessions. Be careful you don’t become just like her.”

  “Kai?” someone called from downstairs. Ahkio recognized Caisa’s voice.

  “Here,” Ahkio said.

  Caisa mounted the steps. She had one hand on the hilt of her sword. She eyed Meyna’s hatchet.

  “Is everything all right?” Caisa asked.

  “It’s fine,” Ahkio said. “This is a personal matter.”

  “You shouldn’t wander around alone,” Caisa said, “especially not now.”

  Meyna set down the hatchet. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Oh, I see,” she said, sparing a long look at Caisa. “I understand, now.”

  “Meyna –”

  “No,” she said. “I understand what politics is, to you. You’ve done a fine job of ingratiating yourself in the temple and with its… inhabitants. I wish you the best.”

  “Caisa, could you please let me –” Ahkio began.

  “No, let her hear it,” Meyna said. “Let her know how you treat kin. Family.”

  The anger he’d kept so well in check in the temple struck him, then. He stopped fighting it. “Family?” he said. “You took me into your home and your bed to tie me to you. And to Kirana, from what you’re saying now. Did you pity me? Did she? If you’d loved me, you’d have married me. You wanted the ear of the Kai’s brother. You’re as bad as the Oras. At least they don’t pretend their interest is affection.”

  “You’re monstrous,” Meyna said.

  “Only because it’s the truth,” Ahkio said. “You pack up your family, and you go. I don’t care where. But you and Tir and all his kin have no place here. I won’t have civil war. Not now. Not ever. And I’ll have justice for Kirana.”

  Meyna placed her hands on the table. Her look was icy. “Ora Nasaka has won this bout, Ahkio, but there is a war coming. And I don’t intend to lose that.”

  He started down the stairs. He half expected to feel a hatchet in his back. But Caisa came down behind him, blocking him from Meyna’s reach.

  Ahkio got halfway out the front door before he realized this was the last he would see of Meyna, and Mey-Mey. He wanted to turn back, ask to see Mey-Mey, so he could tell her that whatever Meyna would said about him, it wasn’t true. But that wasn’t something a Kai would do.

  He rubbed his eyes with his fists, and walked back toward the square.

  Caisa trailed behind him. She kept the silence until they were just a few steps from the square.

  “That was a very formidable woman,” Caisa said.

  “I seem to know a good many of those.”

  “And you have a terrible habit of angering them,” she said.

  23.

  What impressed Roh most about the Saiduan port city of Anjoliaa was the color; bright streamers of purple, crimson, verdant green and gold tied to soaring windows and feathered awnings. Saiduans dressed in the same bright colors – billowing robes with wide sleeves, long headscarves and vests with broad collars embroidered in silver. Most men wore long ankle-length tunics and short coats, and many had their dark ears pierced at least half a dozen times. Their hair was long and black, knotted with colored ribbons like Dorinahs. There were smaller, paler men dressed in drab colors whose hair was cut short or shaved bald, their faces tattooed in black. They were slaves, ancestors of Dorinahians imported from Dorinah before the Saiduans retreated eight hundred years before. They were darker than most Dorinahs. Roh even saw some men decked out in the clothing and markings of slaves who looked completely Saiduan. He knew the Saiduan enslaved others, but for some reason it had never occurred to him that they might enslave themse
lves.

  Anjoliaa was tucked into a wide bowl cut into a craggy plateau jutting out from the spur of the continent. The land looked immensely old, buffeted by strong wind, scoured clean.

  Roh felt as if he had come to the end of the world.

  Kihin stood with him one long moment at the end of the pier when they arrived. Great blubbery harbor seals with toothy snouts and broad, delicate fins that looked more like plumage, pushed themselves off the iron mooring rings where they lay in the sun, entering the sea with a great splash. The smell of dead fish and offal, and something altogether spicier, stranger, filled the air.

  Kihin gazed across the busy pier. He shifted his weight forward, as if he wanted to stand on his toes so he could see over the crowd. “My parents are here,” he said.

  “What, do you see them?” Roh asked. Passage across the Sea of Haraeo to Saiduan had taken several days. They had left the Temple of Oma in advance of the Kai’s mission to Garika, but Dasai had already told Kihin what was coming.

  “No,” Kihin said, “But they’re here. Somewhere. Now the Kai has the power to do whatever he wants now.”

  “He’s Kai,” Roh said.

  “Titles don’t confer power,” Kihin said. “People do.”

  Roh was not in the mood to argue. The other scholars disembarked behind them. Big Aramey and soft-eyed Nioni walked together, their heads almost touching as they spoke. Chali had spent much of the trip brushing up on his Saiduan, and carried a book even now down the gangplank. Dasai set the pace with his shuffling walk, moving past Roh and Kihin and calling for them to follow. Roh was never sure if he should admire Dasai or fear him, but he did pick up his pace.

  At the end of the pier, two black-clad sanisi waited for them. The taller one was a woman, with long frizzy hair knotted back into a braid that touched the middle of her back. She had a dark complexion, but it wasn’t like the other Saiduan. A smattering of freckles bruised her face. The other was a lean man with a massive beak of a nose and hair even longer than the woman’s. His was wound with a fine string of bells that seemed terribly impractical, for an assassin.

  It wasn’t until the man moved toward them, soundlessly, that Roh realized the bells had no clapper.

  Dasai bowed at the waist. It was a strange thing to see. Dasai was a grizzled, petite man with a face like the gnarled confluence of some ancient tree. Roh found it difficult to watch him show deference – even respectful deference – to anyone. The sanisi made no gesture of deference in kind, not even a nod. Roh found it very impolite.

  Instead, the sanisi exchanged pleasantries with Dasai, which Roh decided were boring. So he pushed his way ahead, and stood next to Chali.

  Chali gave him a stern look. Chali had spent the whole boat ride telling Roh how much he disapproved of Roh’s presence among the group.

  “I’m Rohinmey Tadisa Garika,” he told the sanisi. “You can call me Roh.”

  The man exchanged a look with the woman. “They’re Dhai,” he said, in Saiduan, as if it were an apology. “I’m Ren Wraisau Kilia,” he said, in very bad Dhai. “This is Shao Driaa Saarik.”

  “You’re a woman,” Roh said, “like that other sanisi.”

  “Not a woman,” she said, as if disgusted. “I’m ataisa.”

  “Oh,” Roh said. “I’m sorry.” The Saiduan had three sexes – male, female and ataisa. Ataisa were in-between people, those who lived between the seams of things, not quite male and not quite female. There was no equivalent term in Dhai, but it was just as rude to call someone by the wrong pronoun in Saiduan.

  “You must be talking about Taigan,” Driaa said. “There are dozens of ataisa among the sanisi, but Taigan is not ataisa and not male, not female. Taigan changes often.” She shrugged. “Taigan is just Taigan.”

  Wraisau said something that sounded like a curse. Then, in Saiduan, “Taigan is not a sanisi. And he shouldn’t be a woman again for a season yet.”

  “You know he can speak Saiduan?” Driaa said, in Dhai. “They didn’t send these ones along for their looks. Though they are terribly pretty. For cannibals.”

  “We’d be pretty too if we danced around in circles all day singing to plants and fucking each other,” Wraisau said.

  “Your most fervent desire, I know,” Driaa said.

  “One can dream.”

  Roh found their wry tongues and loose manner confusing. It wasn’t at all like he imagined they’d be from books. “Aren’t you deadly assassins?” he said.

  “I apologize,” Dasai said. He leaned forward. Despite his small stature, his mean face and the deep tenor of his voice got their attention. “No doubt we all have much to say to one another. But perhaps not on this pier? We have traveled many days.”

  Wraisau bowed, finally. Roh stood a little straighter. Maybe the Saiduan would be less rude. “Of course,” Wraisau said. “I apologize. Things are difficult. I suggest you all stay close. Foreigners are often kidnapped in Anjoliaa. They do like pretty boys, especially.” He looked at Roh.

  “Thanks,” Roh said.

  The sanisi procured them bears and supplies and led the party overland around the base of the big plateau and out onto a dusty flatland. Roh marveled at every moment of it. The sky looked bigger here, vast, like the world went on and on forever. They trekked for two days across the flatland and entered a wide valley cutting through a low rise of smooth-topped mountains. Rice paddies and red grass fields draped the valley and the gentle base of the mountains.

  It took another week to cross the valley, and as they turned north the weather became cooler. The trees were different: tall and many-limbed with big leaves the size of Roh’s head, their bark rough and knotted, the color of burnt cream. He had no Dhai name for the trees, because they didn’t exist in Dhai. Most of the vegetation was that way the further north they went; familiar, but other. The grass was tall and leathery, brown-gold, or topped in bunches of dark seeds.

  When they arrived in sight of Kuonrada, it was high autumn in Dhai, but here, the trees had already shed their leaves, frost covered the ground in the morning, and a cold wind came in off a tangle of craggy mountains framing the city. From a great distance, Roh saw a massive glacier wedged into the maw of the mountains above the city from which sprang the cold, clear river their caravan followed.

  Roh had expected to see more evidence of fighting as they traveled. Wasn’t Saiduan under siege? But the landscape was pristine, virtually untouched. They passed a few small villages and towns lined in red stones, but no one came out to greet them or challenge them. Stranger still, the plant life here was somewhat tame. Roh spotted what must have been a herd of walking trees in the far distance, but the roads and undergrowth were clear of snapping, deadly things. Driaa still burned the area where they slept every night, but the sanisi seemed remarkably unconcerned about being eaten by plants in the middle of the night.

  “Where’s the fighting happening?” Roh asked Wraisau.

  “What?” Wraisau said, “Disappointed not to see us gutted and laid out?”

  “Why would I want that?” Roh said.

  Wraisau frowned. Driaa said something to him sharply in Saiduan, too fast for Roh to make out.

  “The fighting is further north,” Wraisau said. “They haven’t reached us here yet. We just abandoned Caisau to them, and retreated to Kuonrada.”

  “With luck, you can stop this before we move again,” Driaa said to Roh, but her tone was bitter.

  “Why don’t you want us here?” Roh said. “We’re fighting the same enemy. We should be friends.”

  Wraisau grinned, and glanced over at Driaa. “You must admit,” he said, “he grows on you.”

  “It’s dumb talk,” Driaa said.

  “It’s the way we all sounded before the war,” Wraisau said.

  “I never sounded like an illiterate Dhai,” Driaa said.

  “I can read,” Roh said.

  “She means you lack wisdom,” Wraisau said. “But to be honest, I could do with some company who has a little more hope than sense th
ese days.”

  Kuonrada was a mountain city, a city built for cold weather and defense. It was the first big city Roh had seen since Anjoliaa. The defensive wall reared a good fifty feet above the grassy plain, an impassive face to the dark city. The gate was also stone, a slab of rock that moved on runners. Big, hairy animals with broad paws and shaggy crown-like manes, their ears and snouts similar to that of dogs, pulled the gate open. When Roh asked Wraisau what they were, he said they were the ubel, a kind of giant bear-dog indigenous to Saiduan.

  As they crossed over the threshold of the stone gate and into Kuonrada, Roh rode up near the front between Nioni and Dasai, just behind the sanisi. The ground beneath them was bare stone, worn smooth. The city buildings, too, were of stone, fit with the same precision as those of the defensive wall. Where were the famous living holds of Saiduan?

  The city felt as old as the mountain. Its residents wore much darker colors than those in Anjoliaa. Instead of sandals they wore boots and heavy coats lined in fur. Their hair was braided back in three long braids, one on either side of the head, another along the top, knotted with dark ribbons. They seemed taller than their southern counterparts, darker-skinned.

  Passers-by stopped to stare at them. When Roh looked up, he saw the open wooden shutters of the apartments above. Veiled children peered out at them.

  As they approached, the great gates of Kuonrada opened.

  Roh kept pace with Chali and Dasai through the gates and into the main yard of the keep. At the bottom of a double-stairwell that led up to the main door a tall, thin man stood. He was dressed in a black ankle-length tunic stitched in silver, the sleeves wide, the collar high. He wore over it a short coat lined in white fur. His white hair was wound around his head and pinned close. Behind him stood three young men with shaved heads, dressed in drab gray tunics and short coats. They kept their gazes averted.

  “Ora Dasai,” the white-haired man said as the riders entered the yard.

  Roh dismounted. He and Nioni helped Dasai dismount.

  “It has been some time,” the white-haired man said. He held out his hands and clasped Dasai’s forearms without permission. Roh winced as they did it, though Dasai didn’t protest. The sanisi had largely kept their distance from them while traveling. But now that they were going to be among so many people who tried to touch him without asking, Roh was suddenly uncomfortable.