The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  Zezili unfolded the paper and read her mother’s neat script:

  Anyone making a mirror that large would require a very talented jista. Our best is Isoail Rosalia. She lives above the traveler’s house outside Lake Morta, doing special projects for Tulana. Tell her I sent you. She owes me a favor.

  Zezili crumpled the note and stuffed it into her tunic.

  She’d need to burn it later. Lake Morta. There was no dajian camp anywhere near there. It was remote, and this time of year, would already be cold. In another month, snow would start to block up the passes around the country there, and she’d have no way in or out until late spring.

  Zezili gazed along the clean, neat streets of Saolina. Women stopped under the awnings to chat. Lines of children sat outside the schoolhouse eating hasty lunches of rice and dried fish. Dajians cleaned out the bubbling fountain of amber colored stones in the square while traffic of all sorts – brightly colored carts pulled by bears and dogs, rickshaws, and the occasional ridiculous tirajista-trained organic tricycle – wove their way around the fountain, up and down the blue stones of the street. She loved her country. Loved it fiercely just the way it was, even when it hated her. Her Empress told her murdering dajians would save all of this, but she had heard that before, when her mother said that murdering Zezili’s father would solve all of their problems. “We’ll have a fresh start,” her mother said. “You can forget he had anything to do with you. You never have to look at his face and see your own. You’re only mine now. A real Dorinah.” But even without him working inside the house and around the grounds, even after he was many years dead and burned, she thought of him still, and how his face was so like hers, and how she could see his eyes staring back at her when she looked into a mirror.

  They had not been able to maintain her mother’s country estate after that. Her mother had tripped on a stair that should have been mended long before, and broken her arm, and lost her livelihood. A woman with only one good arm wasn’t called on as often to make mirrors.

  Zezili thought about those consequences, about the ripples, and wondered how powerful the ripples she made with the hundreds of deaths she was cutting out across Dorinah. Who would clean the fountains? Mend the stairs? Harvest the food? And how long would it be before they came for mixed-blooded women like Zezili, too? She was not so insulated as the Empress, maybe. She could see it because she had lived in the country her whole life. She knew the economy relied on dajians, and she knew that there were plenty of women in Dorinah who would happily burn her with them, as if she weren’t a human being at all.

  She thought of the day her mother fell, and how it changed everything. She thought of how that day would look for Dorinah, when it woke up from the genocide of its dajians, and found itself crippled… while a storm of invaders burst through the mirror connecting their worlds to the doubles.

  Zezili glanced back at the salon. She had hundreds more dajians to kill in the morning, and she needed to come up with a real plan on how to stop the madness of it all without forfeiting her own life.

  26.

  The clan leaders arrived by dog, by bear, by foot, by cart, by boat, by Line. They assembled in the council house of Clan Osono for food and tea and polite conversation. The tension in the room chilled Ahkio. It took all his courage to smile and greet each clan leader and their companions.

  After they settled in, Ahkio shut the windows in his room on the second floor of the council house and turned to face Liaro. Clan leader Saurika had had the rooms cleared for him; it was a spacious chamber overlooking the square.

  Liaro sat in the low divan at the center of the room, legs crossed, arms draped over the back of the divan. “I’m going to be a terrible audience,” he said.

  “That’s why I want you to listen to it,” Ahkio said. “If I can convince you I’m competent, maybe I can convince them.”

  “I know you too well.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

  “Well,” Liaro said, waving a hand. “Get on with it.”

  Ahkio cleared his throat, straightened, and began to recite the speech he’d prepared to give the clan leaders.

  Liaro interrupted. “That’s enough,” he said.

  “What? I haven’t even started.”

  “Exactly,” Liaro said. He came over and stood next to Ahkio. “You look like you’re at your sister’s funeral. And that’s over. Back straight. Chest out. And stop hiding your cursed hands. They’ve all seen them a thousand times. Nobody cares.”

  “I need to be serious.”

  “You’re plenty serious,” Liaro said. “That’s the problem.” He stood straight next to Ahkio, feet slightly apart, shoulders back. It was a supremely confident stance, the one Liaro adopted every night they socialized in the Osono council house, charming women and men alike with an easy smile. Ahkio, by contrast, stayed upstairs with Caisa, going through all of his sister’s and Yisaoh’s books and papers, uncovering old temple maps and ciphered communications that made his head hurt.

  “Oma,” Ahkio said. “I’m not you.”

  “Listen,” Liaro said. “I’ve seen you on your own, trying to charm people. You’re terrible at it. Far too serious. Nobody wants a brooding leader. They want somebody they can relate to. Somebody they can laugh with and have a drink with.”

  “No one wants that. They look at me and see a child.”

  “Your sister smiled a lot,” Liaro said. “Mostly when she was pulling something over on them. When it was time to be serious, she was serious. It’s not just about trusting you. It’s about liking you. They think you’re sucking at Nasaka’s breast, and I don’t blame them.”

  “Thank you for that image.”

  “You don’t need jokes in this speech,” Liaro said. “But you do need to be more relaxed, and less closed. You ever wonder why the women you courted were more likely to come home with you when I was on your arm? It wasn’t my good looks. It’s because people like to laugh. They don’t want to be with somebody who’s been mourning dead people for a decade. You understand?”

  Ahkio tried to tuck his hands under his arms. Liaro took his arms and pulled them away. “Deep breath,” Liaro said. “Look up. Not at the floor. It doesn’t look confident. Don’t be upset. This is what you asked me to do.”

  “I know,” Ahkio said.

  “If it was easy, you wouldn’t have asked. Now come on. Do the speech. I’ll be standing right here.”

  Ahkio met his cousin’s look. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t get soft now,” Liaro said. “I didn’t like sleeping without you either.”

  He and Liaro had shared a bed – on and off – since they were twelve. Ahkio had never gotten into the habit of sleeping alone; it was half the reason he spent so much time asking women to come to bed with him. The idea of sleeping in a big bed alone was… lonely.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ahkio said. “And for understanding. About Meyna and Rhin and Hadaoh.”

  Liaro’s mouth made a thin line. “I’m not happy about it, but I know why you did it,” he said. “Just… don’t burn anymore houses down behind you. They will hate you for turning your back on kin. It’s unforgiveable.”

  “All right,” Ahkio said. “Here’s what I’m going to tell

  them.”

  “Just keep in mind,” Liaro said, “they’re not going to remember the words. They’ll remember how you made them feel. Make them feel something.”

  Ahkio took a breath, and began, “We have reached a point –”

  “You’re looking at the floor again.”

  The last clan leaders to arrive were Asona of Clan Badu and Tir Salarihi’s apprentice, Isaila, acting for Clan Garika. With her were three members of the militia, come to tell Ahkio that Tir, Alais, Gaila, Moarsa, their children, and their children’s children had been successfully escorted to Asona Harbor. They had gone willingly.

  “And Meyna?” Ahkio asked.

  “By the time we came to escort them, they were gone,” the soft-f
aced leader of the squad told him. “Cleared out their house here. I don’t expect you’ll see them again.”

  Ahkio could have sent the militia out after them, could have sent them to tracking Meyna and her husbands, to ensure they left the country. Instead, he thanked the squad and dismissed them. Liaro said he was too serious, but more often than not, Ahkio worried he was too soft.

  Ahkio sat the clan leaders in the council house. Most brought their apprentices. The loose group drank tea and smoked Tordinian cigarettes and pipes, and the gazes they fixed on Ahkio were clear but wary.

  “I would like to speak to you about Tir Salarihi Garika,” Ahkio said. “There are rumors I would like to put to rest. And a way forward I’d like to discuss with you.”

  On the other side of the room, Nasaka slipped in. She stood at the back, leaning against a broad window frame. Ahkio wondered if she’d timed it just this way, to break his concentration. He had not called her from the temple, and wondered what she was doing here.

  “We have reached a point in our history much discussed, but never experienced,” Ahkio said, and then wondered if that even made sense. Liaro hadn’t critiqued his words as much as his delivery. He pushed on, hoping he didn’t botch the rest too badly. He tried hard to ignore Nasaka. Teaching ethics often required the gift of persuasion, but persuading a child and persuading a clan leader were two different things entirely. He straightened, and stood with feet slightly apart, the way Liaro had. “Our gifted Kai, my beloved sister, has been transformed, far too early, and before bearing children. I regret that I am not here to introduce you to one of her gifted daughters, a woman who could lead us through what will be difficult times. I was never intended to lead you. Many of you know I would have preferred it never came to this.”

  He paused, gauging his audience. When he was nervous, he talked fast. Keeping a measured tone was especially difficult when half the audience looked bored or angry, as this one did. Then he saw Liaro enter at the back of the room. Liaro leaned against the back wall, on the other side of the door from Nasaka. He nodded at Ahkio. Grinned.

  Ahkio screwed his courage and said, “Nearly any Dhai here could stand against adversity. I have watched us take on great challenges, and conquer them, from the Pass War to hundreds of Saiduanese blockades of our harbor. But Faith Ahya, the mother of our people, said that if you ever wanted to test a person’s character, you should give them great power. You may think I’m asking you to trust me with power. I understand the fear and uncertainty in that. The Book will tell you it’s Oma’s will, that as the child of the Kai I am divine. But I know what is within my power, and what is beyond it. You. Each of you together, make up the real power in Dhai. I am only your arm, the focus of your will. What you decide here today will shape the future of our country. I give my life to you, and my title to you, and our country’s future… to you. That’s what it is to be Kai. And no matter what you have heard or feared, it is your future I wish to help shape, if you will allow it.”

  His hands did not tremble. He stood a little straighter, in the end, because he realized as he gazed at the open faces before them that he had them.

  “Now let us discuss the future of Dhai,” Ahkio said as he took his seat among them, “as equals, the way Faith Ahya and Hahko imagined.”

  They spent the rest of the day in discussion. As afternoon turned to evening, Ahkio was finally able to excuse himself and find out why Nasaka had invited herself to his meeting.

  “What do you have for me?” he asked her.

  She drew him out into the fading light of the courtyard. “Ora Almeysia is talking. Are you ready to see her?”

  “You brought her here?”

  “I am, as ever, your servant,” Nasaka said coolly.

  “Don’t,” Ahkio said. “Let me get Liaro.”

  “I strongly suspect you speak to her alone,” Nasaka said.

  Ahkio glanced back at the council house. In truth, he didn’t want to wade back into the storm of them in search of Liaro.

  “Take me to her, then.”

  Nasaka led him to the outskirts of the clan square where two militia waited for them. For a moment, Ahkio feared Nasaka was leading him off to some bloody death, and his heart quickened. They followed the skirted women into a tangled clearing. A cart stood at the center of it, wrapped in transparent webbing. Six Oras made a broad circle around the cart. A sizable escort for a single old woman.

  “What did you do to her,” Ahkio asked, “to get her to talk?”

  “She’s been drugged to reduce her ability to draw on her star,” Nasaka said. “But that’s all. You should be able to speak to her peaceably.”

  Almeysia lay at the bottom of the cart, hugging her knees to her chest. Her tunic and trousers were filthy. The pungent smell of urine wafted up from her body. She did not look at them but stared straight ahead at the webbing wrapping the interior of the cart.

  “There are ways to destroy people without marking them,” Ahkio said.

  “Read that in books, did you?” Nasaka asked.

  Ahkio didn’t give Nasaka the pleasure of replying. He focused on Almeysia. “What can you tell me about Yisaoh?”

  Almeysia began to mutter. It took Ahkio a moment to realize it was Woodland Dhai she spoke in.

  “She’s not from the Woodland, is she?” Ahkio asked.

  “No,” Nasaka said.

  “She’s looks much thinner,” Ahkio said. “Are you feeding her?”

  “You have a very poor opinion of me,” Nasaka said.

  “That shocks you?”

  “No, but it does waste my time.”

  “Let me talk to her alone,” Ahkio said. “I expect she’s not keen to talk to you anymore.”

  Nasaka took a few steps back. Ahkio waved again. “Go on. Stand in the circle with the others,” he said.

  Nasaka narrowed her eyes, but obliged.

  Ahkio put his hands on the edge of the cart. “You know Nasaka would have exiled you by now,” Ahkio said, “or worse, if I’d said so.”

  She continued murmuring in her singsong dialect. Ahkio tried to puzzle out the words. Woodland Dhai wasn’t so different, but the inflections were sometimes confusing. After a few minutes, he recognized what she was saying – it was a passage from The Book of Oma, repeated over and over:

  “All of life is change. One cannot hold on to past glory or strife. All of life leads to death. When one is not afraid of death, there is nothing that cannot be achieved.”

  “What is it you sought to achieve?” Ahkio said. He folded his arms over the edge of the cart and gazed down at her. She looked very old, older than he remembered. Thin and wizened, like some wild crone come down from the Woodlands. Where was the woman who tried to kill him in the Sanctuary? The one who had attacked Roh? Was she just playing at being mad?

  “I’m going to tell you something, Ora Almeysia,” Ahkio said. “I have exiled Yisaoh’s family to the third degree. Unless you can tell me what you’ve been planning, for however long you’re planning it, I will exile your family too. I will send them straight to Dorinah, or perhaps Saiduan, so they can meet these invaders before we do. And you, well… I know you don’t fear for your life. But I’ll leave you with Nasaka, to do with as she wishes. Those are things far worse than death. Those are things to fear. You won’t die unless I speak it, Ora Almeysia, and I don’t kill people.”

  Almeysia quieted. Ahkio waited. Threatening her with a long life spent with Nasaka was the surest way he could think of to get her talking sense.

  “The gates are open,” she said softly.

  “Is that more nonsense?” Ahkio asked.

  She pressed her hands to her head. “Keep me from Ora Nasaka.”

  “I can do that, if you’ll help me.”

  Almeysia gave a little sob and said, “They’re here to kill you, and me, and others. The Tai Mora. Softening the way. They’ve already integrated themselves. They could be anyone. Everyone. They could be you.”

  “That would be a neat trick,” Ahkio
said. “How do you know what they’re called? Tai Mora? Are those the invaders? That sounds Dhai.”

  Almeysia snorted out something like a laugh. “It doesn’t matter now. She has what she wanted. This place, all of you, all of us – we’re all dead now.”

  “I’m very much alive in this moment,” Ahkio said, “and I want an answer to my question.”

  “She has what she came for. She wasn’t your Yisaoh anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was the other Yisaoh.”

  “The… other Yisaoh?”

  Almeysia laughed again. “She hasn’t told you? Ora Nasaka hasn’t told you?”

  “What?”

  “The other people,” Almeysia said, and she uncurled from the bottom of the cart. She got up on her hands and knees and pushed her head toward him, batting it up against the webbing, distorting her features. He saw, then, that her eyes were milky, clouded. She was blind.

  Ahkio recoiled.

  “The other people we’re fighting,” Almeysia said, “They’re not invaders. They’re not foreigners. They’re not some milky saffron Dorinah or meat-eating Saiduan. They’re us. We’re fighting ourselves.”

  “How is that –”

  “It was Yisaoh’s shadow you saw, not the Yisaoh you know. I had to murder our Yisaoh to do it, to let the other one come over, but Tir is clever, very clever. He has three omajistas, did you know that? And they saved Yisaoh’s life. She died, for a time, but they brought her back. And now you’ve exiled her, and we’ve lost her, and they are not happy, Ahkio. The other Yisaoh is stuck in her world, and she is not happy.”

  “This is very mad,” Ahkio said.

  “She’s speaking truth,” Nasaka said.

  Ahkio started. Nasaka stood just a pace behind him.

  “I told you to stay back.”

  “You’ve taken philosophy,” Nasaka said. “It’s posited that there are other realities that result when we make critical choices. There could be billions of other places just like ours, with people just like us, brought close enough to kiss by Oma. That’s who we face now. Not foreigners this time. Not Saiduanese. People from another version of our world, when our people made different decisions.”