The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  Then she was still.

  It took Anavha some time to move. He crawled toward Daolyn’s crumpled body. She was breathing, but not conscious. An ugly black bruise was forming on the right side of her face. He went to Zezili’s room where the big tub was and ran some water. He washed his hands and face. His hands were trembling.

  He had done violence. He had done violence against a woman. She had died. Would those women call the enforcers? Or the priests? Karosia Soafin had already been called in once because of something he might have done. This… this was much worse. Zezili was away. She could not protect him from Karosia, or the enforcers.

  But he could go to her.

  Once he made the decision, it seemed so easy, so obvious. He would go to her. She wasn’t far, if her letter to Daolyn about visiting Lake Morta was true. The lake was just a four or five day journey away, southeast. He had been there before during high summer with Zezili. The dog Zezili let him use was still in the kennels. The dajians would put on the tack. He would pack food. He would… But he would be a man traveling alone. Someone would stop him, ask for his papers, his chaperone. He might be able to pass as a woman, though, if he wore a coat and hood, left the girdle behind….

  Zezili would understand.

  He walked to Zezili’s wardrobe. Her clothes were too big for him, but he managed to tie on women’s straight-legged trousers, and an under tunic. He found a dark coat with a hood. He would have to wear his own boots. Bring gloves. It would be cold at the lake. Daolyn kept a little petty money in a box in the high cupboard in the kitchen for everyday things. He retrieved this, pocketed it, and went back to where Daolyn lay. He put a pillow from his bed beneath her head, and draped her with his own quilt. The dajians had gathered in the doorway to the kitchen, and stared at him as he moved about. He did not speak to them until he was dressed and walking to the door.

  “Care for Daolyn,” he said. “Tell her I’m coming back with Syre Zezili.”

  He shut the gate behind him. One of the dajians saddled his dog, silent and obedient as the mount. As the dajian handed over the reins, Anavha saw her brand in the light of the kennel lanterns. A raised scar of tawny flesh, Zezili’s initials branded onto the back of her hand.

  He remembered his own mark, Zezili cutting her initials into him. You are mine. I own you.

  He got up onto the dog, and whistled him forward.

  Zezili arrived at her estate four days later, well after dark. She let Dakar’s reins fall. The dajians weren’t expecting her. She pounded on the gate and called for Daolyn.

  The door opened. Pale light spilled onto the walk. Daolyn held a lantern. She had a yellowish bruise along one side of her face.

  Zezili pulled off her helm and pushed past her. “What’s happened?” she said.

  “Your near-cousin ordered entrance,” Daolyn said. She called for dajians to tend to Dakar and shut the gate after them. “Half a dozen women arrived with her. They asked to see you. When I said you were not home, they turned on Anavha.”

  Zezili swore. “Where is he?”

  “I do not know,” Daolyn said, and Zezili saw her flinch. “The women assaulted me. When I woke, your husband and the women had gone. Tanasai was dead in your husband’s room.”

  “Did the other women take him? I will have them hunted down for thieves! If they’ve so much as touched –”

  “No, I spoke with the dajians. They said your husband went alone.”

  “Alone?”

  “Took one of the dogs.”

  Zezili let out her breath in one long puff. “Did you alert the priests, the enforcers, any of the others?”

  Daolyn shook her head.

  “Good girl. And the body?”

  “Outside, in the barn,” Daolyn said.

  “I must think,” Zezili said. She walked to her room, unshuttered the lanterns. She paced. Daolyn hovered in the doorway.

  “He read your last letter,” Daolyn said. “He may have gone to Lake Morta to find you.”

  “Why’d you let him read that?”

  “I read him your letters,” Daolyn said. “You did not say to keep correspondence from him.”

  Zezili rubbed her eyes. The journey had been wearying, and what she found here at the end of it only deepened her exhaustion. Her near-cousin had come here with the intent to use or perhaps harm one of Zezili’s possessions. If it had been Dakar, and Dakar bit Tanasai, killed her even, could the dog be faulted? No, that argument would not hold, not if the priests were called into the matter. No priest would speak of mercy for an act of violence, committed by a dumb beast or no. Would he be foolish enough to travel all the way to Lake Morta?

  “Did he take money?” Zezili asked.

  “A bit from the petty jar,” Daolyn said. “Not enough for a sea passage.”

  “The roads are not safe for an unescorted man. He will not have gotten far.”

  “Should I alert a hunter? Someone to track a missing man?”

  “No. His disappearance coincides with Tanasai’s. A hunter would figure that out. She might ask questions.” Zezili stopped pacing and stared at her shuttered window. “He would not leave me,” she murmured. “Get me pen and paper. He may have gone to my sisters, seeking assistance. I’ll have Taodalain and her wife make discreet inquiries at the mardanas. Quickly, go!”

  Daolyn moved into the dark courtyard.

  Zezili crossed to her window, opened the shutters. The room was cold, but the outside air was colder, and spilled onto her face like a slap.

  She could send letters to her sisters and go to Lake Morta herself. It was on the way back east to the coast. She owed an explanation to Monshara though, and, perhaps, the Empress.

  Daolyn returned. Zezili penned the letters to her sisters and Monshara. But as she began the letter to the Empress she could think of no words to justify her actions. She had deserted her post to run after her absent husband, a man who had committed violence against a woman. If she did not get to him first, he could be killed or sold into slavery. If the Empress never knew, if Monshara kept the confidence… a few days more. Monshara could slaughter that camp without her, and Zezili could join them at the next. It’s what she wrote in her letter to Monshara.

  As she handed off the letters to Daolyn to post, she was suddenly drenched in a sheen of cold sweat. If she did not get to Anavha before the local enforcers… if the Empress found out… but those were a fool’s fears. She would sort this out the way she always had.

  Zezili went to her desk and opened a handful of correspondence Daolyn had yet to forward to her, many of them addressed from Daorian. Three were letters from her sisters, likely relating gossip or asking for more money, and another was from Syre Kakolyn.

  Zezili broke the seal on Syre Kakolyn’s letter. There was a signature at the bottom that was not Kakolyn’s. Kakolyn had her Second pen all of her correspondence, as she herself could not pen a word much beyond her own name.

  Syre Zezili,

  I heard about your campaign to purge the camps, which is not unlike my own enigmatic campaign. I was just dispatched to the S. Sanctuary by the Empress to eliminate the Seekers.

  I thought it a strange order. How were we going to kill our own satellite-wielding assassins? But she sent a bunch of foreign magic users with us. I wanted to relay this to you because when we got to the Sanctuary, the Seekers were gone.

  That means we have magic-wielding seers the Empress wants dead running around, led by your old friend Tulana. Keep a watchful eye. Send word if you have it.

  I remain,

  Syre Kakolyn Kotaria

  Zezili set the letter aside. Killing Seekers? How much more madness could the country take? Zezili’s legion would be worthless against the Tai Mora without the aid of Tulana’s Seekers. Zezili cursed. She opened one of the missives from her sister Taodalain, and read about the news from Daorian. She skimmed most of it until she came to a particular passage:

  Already, Daorian has seen increasing violence against both private and publicly owned dajian
s. The Empress has denounced them as having caused a wave of infertility in Castaolain, and linked their indulgences to increasing food prices. I have enclosed some papers from Daorian, sheets circulating to this effect, blaming dajians for numerous ills, including an outbreak of yellow pox in eastern Kidolynai. I heard news of your legion purging the dajian camps. Does this mean the reports of the dajians’ role in these matters are true?

  Zezili pondered both reports and looked through the papers Taodalain had sent. They were poorly printed, sloppy, on low quality paper, and full of propagandic ranting. Zezili had not thought the endeavor would be on such a grand scale. Did the Empress truly seek to eradicate all dajians? Even the privately owned ones? Killing all of them, every last one… Monshara had told Zezili to stay out of things. Told her she knew nothing and understood less. But even Zezili could see that eradicating the entire country’s labor would result in famine and strife. The Tai Mora would coax them into destroying themselves.

  And no one stood in their way.

  Zezili stood and stretched. She moved, of habit, toward Anavha’s room. She stopped halfway across the courtyard, realized her error, and turned back to her own room. No, she could not summon him from sleep. Tanasai had stolen him from her.

  She got into bed, alone. Daolyn had turned down the sheets, but not warmed the bed; an understandable oversight, considering the circumstances. Zezili lay awake, staring at the canopy hanging from the posts of her bed, listening to the stillness of the house. The fountain had been turned off for the winter. She heard laughter, somewhere. The dajians’ quarters, likely. She closed her eyes and saw a tide of blood, a field littered in dajian bodies.

  She pushed back her blankets, and walked across the courtyard. She pushed open the door to Anavha’s room, and unshuttered one of the lanterns by the door. Whatever mess had been done by Tanasai, there was no immediate trace of it. Anavha’s bed was made, his dressing table in order. His dog-eared copy of The Book of Rhea lay at his bedside table. Zezili walked to the book, pressed a finger to the hard leather cover, and moved away, to the dressing table.

  She leaned over and looked at the bottles of scent, the containers of gold powder, rouge and kohl. She opened the big standing wardrobe and gazed into the interior. It smelled heavily of everpine, and the musky scent of Anavha, mixed with saffron and lemon grass. She tugged at the white sleeve of one of his coats. She had the ridiculous urge to press it to her nose and inhale the scent of him lingering on the clothing.

  Zezili curled her lip, disgusted at her own sentiment. She left the room, closed the door. She would have Daolyn lock it until Anavha’s return.

  She walked back to her room, opened the shutters again, and stood leaning out into the air, inhaling cold like a drowning woman first tasting air, her head thrown back, fingers gripping the sill.

  She wanted her husband. She wanted the world back the way it was. She wanted the Tai Mora dead, and their mirror smashed to dust.

  32.

  Anavha was lost. He had passed the previous two nights in dodgy way-houses along dark roads. The dog was hungry; whenever Anavha dismounted, it pushed its nose into his hand. He hadn’t shaved in three days, and his face itched. Daolyn would have had time to alert the priests and the enforcers by now, and he trembled to think of what would happen if they found him before he found Zezili.

  He got back onto the dog and turned it round the way he had come. He had no idea what direction that was. Didn’t the moons rise in the west where the sun set? He had located himself by the cobbled road in the beginning, but he didn’t know a lot about roads. He had never seen a map of Dorinah.

  He urged the dog down a dirt track. He clung to the dog with numbed hands, and prayed to Rhea to help him find the right way. The moons moved across the sky. His dog halted once, to sniff at the frozen body of a big spotted rabbit lying in the ditch.

  Anavha nodded off in the saddle sometime later, and woke to find that the dog had paused again at the edge of a vast snowy expanse ringed in jagged mountains. He thought perhaps he had come to Lake Morta at last, but it was too small, and not the right shape. Where on Rhea’s face was he?

  Anavha saw a flicker of light on the other side of the crooked lake. His dog barked. The sound echoed eerily across the lake. Anavha whistled the dog forward. They followed the snowy path around the circumference of the lake.

  It was another hour before Anavha reached the porch of the inn, but by that time, the thought of finally finding Zezili had invigorated him. He would need a bath, a shave, a change of clothing. He could not allow her to see him this way.

  He slid off the dog’s back, so sore he could barely walk. No one came out to greet him. He pulled his hood low over his face and walked up to the porch, tried the door. It was open.

  He walked into the common room. The light was bad; most of the lanterns had been shuttered. Candles threw shadows. A woman sat behind the bar counter, reading a battered copy of a book he recognized called Guise of the Heart, a romantic political thriller set in Daorian a century prior. Taodalain had loved that book.

  The stout woman put the book down. Candles drooled great runnels of wax along the edges of the bar.

  Anavha stayed a step away from the light.

  “A little late, isn’t it?” the woman asked. She could have been his mother, with her big squared shoulders and disgruntled mouth.

  “I would like a room, if that’s all right,” Anavha said, careful about the pitch of his voice. “Maybe a bath. And… my dog is outside.”

  The woman nodded at an arched doorway near the stair. “Bath’s through there. How many nights?”

  “One, I think. Is Syre Zezili Hasaria here?” he asked. He could not keep the trembling from his voice.

  “No Syres here, child.”

  “Which lake is this, matron?”

  “Which lake?” she said. “Are you so lost? This is Lake Orastina.”

  “Is that close to Lake Morta?”

  “Morta’s another two days south of here. Where are you coming from?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just need a room.”

  The woman demanded payment. Anavha fumbled through his purse for the correct amount, and paid over the last of his money. The woman handed over a key.

  “You’ll have number eleven, last door on the left, second floor.”

  The tubs in the bathing room were separated by painted wooden screens. He bathed in privacy, and wondered what to do next. Another two days along snowy roads sounded horrible.

  Warm, clean, and exhausted, he made his way upstairs with the hood of his coat pulled up. He fumbled with the key. None of the doors were numbered.

  He put his key into the lock of his room at the end of the hall, and waited for the click, but the door was unlocked. He pushed it open.

  There was already someone in the room.

  Anavha thought he had interrupted some scene of sexual congress. He must have chosen the wrong room. The blankets of the large bed had pooled around the floor at the foot of the frame. A large woman lay half on and half-off the bed, naked. A naked man sat astride her, big hands gripping either end of a silken cord twisted around the woman’s long neck. Her face had taken on a violent purplish cast. The head lolled back. The eyes bulged, and the pool of her black hair puddled across her bare shoulders.

  Anavha did not move. His mind reassembled the images.

  The man standing above the woman glanced over at Anavha. He was lean and angular; strong, square jaw, dark stubble, shadows under the eyes. His hair was tangled, short at his shoulders, auburn-brown. Anavha saw the stringy mass of a black wig on the floor. The light of the lanterns rippled along the length of his muscular body; wide shoulders, powerful forearms, a chest too broad to have ever worn a girdle, a torso so firm Anavha imagined he could throw fruit at it and watch it bounce off without any perceivable disturbance of flesh. Men in the mardanas did not look like that. Anavha most certainly did not look like that. The man could have been a creature from another world.
r />   The man’s gaze caught Anavha’s, held him. The man let go of the silken cord. The woman’s body slumped. The man stalked toward Anavha, took his arm. Jerked him into the room. He kicked the door closed.

  “Whose are you?” the man said softly; a deep voice rendered all the more ominous by the hushed tone.

  “Syre Zezili,” Anavha said quickly. “I won’t… I don’t… Zezili’s coming for me, she –”

  “What are you to her?”

  “Her husband,” Anavha said.

  The man released him. Anavha fell to the floor. The man as he began to dress, covering – bit by bit – his fantastic body, the sort of body only seen on Saiduan statues lining old roads in Daorian, their faces and genitals defaced.

  “I’ll go,” Anavha said. He made to stand, but the man, dressed now, crossed to him in three long strides, and gripped his arm again.

  “You’ll stay,” the man said.

  “I won’t say anything, please… Zezili will come for me. She knows I’m here. You don’t want Syre Zezili Hasaria after you!”

  The man cuffed him.

  Pain burst across Anavha’s face. Black spots blotted his vision.

  The man crouched in front of Anavha. He took him by the collar of his coat, and leaned into him. He smelled of sex, and himself, a sharp, bitter scent like the inside of an empty wine barrel. His skin was the bronze-brown of a Tordinian, his eyes a gray wash.

  “You’re going to be silent,” the man said.

  Anavha opened his mouth. “What will you –” but the man had the silk cord in his other hand. He stuffed a kerchief into Anavha’s mouth, and knotted the cord around his head. The cord was so long that he could twist it around Anavha’s hands. The man pulled the cord taut, and knotted it well. Anavha’s fingers were numb. His mouth hurt.

  The man opened the window. A blast of cold air stirred the room. He hauled Anavha to the window.

  Anavha tried to struggle. The man’s grip tightened. The man kicked out the window onto the snowy roof of the verandah. He slid to the lip of the roof and faced the yawning darkness of the drop. He managed to claw himself to a stop with his bound hands, just in time to see the man leap easily over the sill and onto the roof beside him. The man kicked Anavha, once.