The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “I will,” Roh said. “Just, be careful, Kihin.”

  “Ora Dasai always thought it would be you who ran off. He’s going to be really surprised.”

  Surprised wasn’t the word Roh would use.

  Kihin went to bed.

  Roh lay awake another half hour. Even Kihin was making his own fate. But Roh’s world was spinning back to Dhai again, back to some orchard, the life of a farmer. And he didn’t know how to stop it.

  Roh woke from a dream of sparrows. They swarmed his body, pecking at his flesh, tearing away strips of meat until they flayed him alive.

  Kihin shook him. “We’re summoned, Roh,” he said.

  “What? By who?”

  “The Patron’s summoned us,” Dasai said from the doorway. Nioni and Aramey were behind him, arguing.

  Roh rubbed his eyes. “But why –”

  “Come, get Ora Chali,” Dasai called. “We have sanisi waiting on us.”

  Roh threw off his blanket. He slipped on his boots and ran into the common room, expecting to see Kadaan. But the three sanisi weren’t familiar.

  “Is this all of you?” the eldest sanisi said.

  Chali stumbled into the room, pulling on his coat.

  “He’s the last,” another of the sanisi said. “Let’s proceed.”

  Roh’s stomach knotted. Why did the Patron want to see them? He glanced at Dasai. Had he shared the book they got from Shodav with the Patron yet?

  The sanisi led them on a winding route through Kuonrada, down narrow corridors and up twisting stairwells. They went up and up. Finally they came to an amberwood door banded in iron. The sanisi in the lead opened it.

  They walked into a broad room with a stunning view of the tundra and the hulking mountains in the far distance. The room itself was lush, dominated by a massive bed. He saw Saiduan writing on the ceiling, and around the tops of the walls, all gilted in gold. Despite the bank of windows, the room was warm. A fire crackled in the massive hearth opposite the windows.

  The Patron stood with four more sanisi at the center of the room behind a long, narrow table. The table looked out of place. It was battered and nicked; made of hard, black wood. On the table was a single piece of paper.

  As the sanisi herded Roh and the others forward, Roh tried to make out what was on the paper, but it had been turned over.

  “Stop there,” the Patron said. Roh was within spitting distance of the table. The Patron looked weary. He spread his arms and leaned toward them.

  “I will give you one opportunity to speak truth,” the Patron said. “Then I will begin killing you.”

  Nioni let out a little cry.

  Roh looked at the sanisi’s’ faces. He didn’t know the four in the room, either. Eight sanisi felt like a lot of trouble for a handful of Dhai.

  “My Patron,” Dasai said, pushing his way gently to the front of their group, “we would be most pleased to answer any question you have of us.”

  “Which of you wrote this?” the Patron turned over the paper.

  Roh winced. It was the letter he had written to the Kai, the ciphered letter that, on the surface, looked like nothing more than banal talk of the weather and how terrible the food was, but once untangled with the cipher said… well, not much more. Only that he had not found what he was looking for. He thought it would be obvious who wrote it, but as he stared at the page he saw that in tearing open the letter, the signature had been smeared and part of it ripped away, leaving no record of its creator.

  Roh opened his mouth to tell the Patron everything – about the Kai cipher, the book they’d gotten from Shodav, his training with Kadaan -

  “I wrote it,” Dasai said.

  Roh started.

  “You?” the Patron said. “Did you think me a fool?”

  “Not at all,” Dasai said. “I accept full responsibility for this correspondence, and accept whatever justice, vengeance, or mercy you choose to grant me.”

  “Do you understand what it is to rule a people?” the Patron said.

  “I do not,” Dasai said.

  “Ruling a people means you are responsible for them,” the Patron said. He slowly made his way toward the front of the table. “It means that when they suffer, you suffer. When you retreat, they retreat. It is a heavy burden.”

  “I cannot imagine,” Dasai said.

  “No, you cannot,” the Patron said. “My intelligence officers know a ciphered letter when they see one. Give me the cipher.”

  Roh reached for Dasai’s sleeve. Dasai moved his arm away, turning it into a shrug. “I’m afraid I can’t share the cipher with you,” Dasai said. “It is not mine to gift. But I can tell you the correspondence did relate to the number of Saiduan here in Kuonrada. The Kai wished to understand how thinly your forces were stretched, so that we may assess the threat the invaders will pose to us. We know they will come to our shores soon.”

  “I invited you here,” the Patron said, low, “I fed you. I clothed you. I invited you to my own table!”

  Dasai handed Roh his cane. Roh tried to meet his look, but Dasai’s gaze was downcast. Dasai slowly, and with great effort, began to get to his knees. Roh offered his hand. Dasai leaned on him. The old man grimaced. Once he reached his knees, he extended the full length of his body before the Patron and lay prostrate.

  “I am yours,” Dasai said.

  Roh watched Aramey and Nioni. They looked at Dasai with expressions of naked horror. Kihin and Chali stood close to one another. Roh thought Kihin was trembling. Chali met Roh’s look, eyes wide, and gave a single shake of his head. Roh knew that look, that gesture – shut up, he was saying. Don’t run into this. Don’t make a mess of it.

  Roh gazed at the sanisi. He called up the litany he would need; a vortex about the size of the room, a vortex whose heart he and the other Dhai could stand safely within for...as long as he could hold them.

  “I will not have traitors in my house,” the Patron said. He made a cutting gesture with his hand.

  The sanisi beside him stepped forward. They took hold of Chali, and pushed him against the table.

  “No, no!” Roh said. Kihin grabbed his tunic. Held him back.

  The sanisi made Chali put both of his palms on the table.

  “You’re the lucky messenger,” the Patron said to Chali. “You are spared for one purpose. You will go back to your scheming Kai and tell him I uncovered his treachery and meted out justice. Tell him his spies are all dead, and I look forward to seeing these invaders destroy his country as they have destroyed mine.” He gestured to the sanisi.

  They cut off Chali’s hands. Chali screamed.

  Roh tried to charge forward, but a blue curtain of Para’s breath came down in front of the table.

  “Take him out,” the Patron said.

  The sanisi dragged Chali from the room, screaming. Roh heard his screaming from the hall. Dasai held out his hands to the Patron.

  “This is not necessary,” Dasai said. “These are children –”

  Roh pulled on Para, so much so quickly his head buzzed and his skin burned.

  A wall of air thumped into his chest. He was flying. Roh smacked hard into the far wall. The breath left his body.

  The blades came down quickly. They took Dasai’s head from his body. Roh saw a great gout of blood. Nioni and Aramey were run through by the sanisi flanking them.

  Kihin bolted between them to the doors, toward Roh. Roh clawed toward him, gasping for air. The air around him trembled. He recited the Litany of the Palisade to create a shield of air to cut off the sanisi from him and Kihin.

  Kihin slammed into another wall of air. Not Roh’s. Roh heard Kihin’s head crack on the floor. Saw blood. The sanisi descended on him. Black coats flapped. Blades flashed.

  Roh yanked the doors open. Four more sanisi burst in. Roh scrambled away. It was like something from a terrible dream. He saw Kadaan at the head of them, blue blade drawn. He moved Roh out of his way with a broad motion of his hand, sending a gout of misty blue air his way. It knocked R
oh to the floor.

  The Patron’s sanisi met Kadaan’s group with a heavy whump of air and clash of blades and maelstrom of blue haze.

  Kihin lay on the floor, bleeding out. The air in the room condensed. It was like swimming through honey.

  Roh pulled Kihin into his arms. Blood pumped from multiple wounds in his chest. He remembered holding his own wounded belly, the way Kihin was grasping now at his own.

  “Don’t die,” Roh said. His voice sounded deep and syrupy in the thick air.

  Kihin’s blood pooled across the floor. A dead sanisi thumped beside him. Roh flinched.

  Kihin struggled. His mouth moved, like a gasping fish. “Please don’t die,” Roh said. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  Kihin went still.

  Kadaan still stood, along with two of his sanisi. They had cornered the Patron. Ten dead sanisi littered the room, more than Roh ever thought could die. They were speaking too fast for Roh to understand.

  Roh looked across the bodies of his friends. Dasai, who had escaped this place and then died in it, Kihin who was spared exile and then run through, and Aramey and Nioni tangled together in a twisted heap, their work cut short. All for nothing. They had achieved nothing.

  Roh crawled over to the dead sanisi beside Aramey and Nioni. The man’s blooded blade still lay in his hand, glowing with a faint blue light.

  The voices of the sanisi thundered in his mind.

  Roh took up the infused blade. Pain burst up his arm. He saw his skin blister. It was not his weapon, and he suspected it would punish him for it. He hefted it aloft. A cold litany burned in his mind. He wrapped the weapon in Para’s breath and threw it with all his strength.

  The blade flew straight and true. It split the sanisi next to Kadaan, then buried itself into the Patron’s chest. The Patron took flight. He careened across the room and was pinned to the wall above the bed. He huffed out a great spray of blood.

  “Kadaan!” a woman’s voice, from the hall.

  Kadaan met Roh’s gaze. It was a hot, terrifying moment.

  Kadaan’s blade came up. He jumped onto the bed. He tore open the Patron’s shirt. The Patron pushed at him weakly, grunting.

  Maralah burst into the room, blade drawn.

  She was just in time to see Kadaan yank the Patron’s fibrous, pulsing heart from his chest.

  “Lord of Unmaking!” she said.

  Kadaan threw the Patron’s spongy heart to her feet.

  They stared at one another across the long length of the room, the bodies of the sanisi and Dhai between them. Roh dared not move.

  “You can’t take the title any more than I can,” Maralah said. “Was this your plan all along? Because you won’t ascend that seat.”

  Kadaan leapt from the bed. His blade was still out. The Patron’s body hung behind him, limp. Kadaan pointed to Roh. “I claim the boy as a victory spoil,” he said, “He’s under my protection.”

  “You have no victory,” Maralah said. “The victory is my brother’s. He’ll sit this seat before a sanisi ever will.”

  “I will support Captain General Daonia,” Kadaan said, “and you, as I have in all things. But this boy, this one thing, this is mine, Maralah.”

  Something passed between them. It was a look Roh had seen them give one another in the courtyard, before a spar. Roh realized he was trembling. Waves of pain still ebbed and flowed across his hand, fire.

  “So be it,” Maralah said.

  Only then did Kadaan sheath his blade.

  “How long do we have?” Kadaan said.

  “His army is at the gate,” Maralah said. “You’ve made things much worse. We’ll have to purge the harem, now. The nursery. I’ll have Driaa activate our people below. And you – “ she narrowed her eyes, “you meet my brother with me at the gate. Come. Now. Leave the boy.”

  Maralah ran out of the room.

  Kadaan came to Roh’s side. His hands were smeared with the Patron’s blood. He took Roh by the shoulders. His look was intense.

  “I’m sorry I–” Roh began.

  “You belong to me,” Kadaan said. “Do you know what that means?”

  “No,” Roh said.

  “It means if they hurt you, they hurt me. If we are successful downstairs, that may mean something. If not, and I’m dead, well... someone else will try to claim you. If that happens, run. Go to Anjoliaa. Find a ship to Dhai.”

  “I can help you downstairs. I’m a fighter, I –”

  “Stay here. No matter what happens. This murder, what you see here? These bodies are nothing compared to what is about to happen below. Stay here, puppy.”

  “But, my brother –”

  “You can do nothing for him now.”

  “I need to find Chali.”

  “Go now and you’ll die with him,” Kadaan said.

  “Why did you protect me?” Roh said.

  “If she knew it was you who killed him…” Kadaan shook his head. “By law you’d be Patron. And she would have killed you for it.”

  “Instead you own me? Is that better?”

  “One can escape slavery,” Kadaan said, “But death is permanent.”

  “You can’t keep me from going after Chali,” Roh said. “You try it. You try and –”

  “You won’t run,” Kadaan said.

  Roh pushed past him, to the door.

  “If you run,” Kadaan said, “if you die with your brother, you’ll never learn to be a sanisi. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? More than anything. Even now. It’s why you came to watch me fight. It’s why you came to Saiduan. You are not a boy of books.”

  Roh pressed his hands to the door. His eyes filled. He wanted to call on Para and burn himself into nothing. He had made his own fate, and this is where it led him. To die with his brother… or become a Saiduan slave. He said, “Why, Kadaan?”

  “You remind me of someone.”

  “Someone you killed?”

  “Nothing so romantic,” Kadaan said. He came up behind Roh and gently pressed his hands to Roh’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but this is what can be done now. What happens after is up to you.” He released Roh and slipped out the doors.

  Roh went back to the center of the room and stood amid a pool of blood and bodies. He sagged to his knees. He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered. He was better than this. Stronger than this. He took a deep breath, and forced himself to look at Dasai’s headless body.

  Dasai’s head lay beneath the table. The letter Roh had written to the Kai had fallen to the floor beside Aramey’s body, tangled with Nioni’s just to the left of Dasai. The letter was speckled in blood.

  Roh crawled forward and took up the letter. “Why did you do that?” Roh whispered to Dasai’s still form. Roh still believed he could have talked the Patron down. He could have made up a better story. He could have been witty and charming. Somehow, he could have made this all right. He thought of Chali’s horrified face. Saw his brother’s hands still on the battered table, forgotten.

  Roh felt something tugging at his trousers. He jerked his leg back.

  Aramey’s bloody fingers reached for him.

  Roh dragged himself forward and took Aramey’s hand. “You’re alive!” Roh cried. “We’ll find Chali and -”

  “Caasa Mingaaine,” Aramey said, and his fingers went lax. He lost consciousness again.

  “Who is that?” Roh said. He shook him. “Who is that? Aramey?”

  Silence.

  It took another hour for Aramey to die.

  Some part of Roh died with him.

  Lord General Rajavaa Daonia expected to hear a good many horrible things from his sister Maralah. She had been the harbinger of terrible news since he was three years old, when she told him their mother had drowned herself in drink and again in the icy river that bordered their equally icy village.

  When he saw her face as she descended the thorny spiral of the stairwell in Kuonrada’s drafty main hall now, he recognized the look. The year before, she had borne the same look
when she told him that their village had been inundated by foreign invaders with the faces of Dhai. They had butchered what remained of their extended family, including the grandparents who had raised them after their mother’s death.

  Maralah was an ugly woman, which was a blessing in her chosen profession, but he still winced when he saw the look on her ugly face. Perhaps it reminded him that he was less handsome than he believed. Or perhaps it just made her death-look more distasteful. He had seen far more distasteful things in the field these last four years, but that face… that face still made him cold.

  They met at the bottom of the stair. His best friend and second, Morsaar Koryn, stood with him. Rajavaa rested the flat of his hand against his hip, and canted his pelvis forward. It was a southern affectation he had picked up at parties with titled lords in the south. Maralah turned her nose up at him every time he did it. But if it annoyed her now, she gave no sign.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “Alone,” she said.

  “Anything you can tell me –”

  “Alone,” Maralah said.

  Rajavaa sighed and waved Morsaar away. Morsaar grimaced. Rajavaa knew he’d hear of it later. Morsaar gave a little bow.

  “I’ll see that the men are settled in,” Morsaar said.

  “Thank you,” Rajavaa said. When he was gone, Rajavaa said to Maralah, “I’m exhausted, can we make this –”

  She took his arm, and pulled him to her. She lowered her voice.

  “You’re about to become Patron of Saiduan,” she said.

  He stiffened.

  She continued, “Alaar is dead.”

  “Whose hand?”

  “Yours.”

  “Who, Maralah? This has your smell on it.” The Patron’s Minister of War had been killed six seasons before, and that left the Patron with Maralah as confidant. Rajavaa always wondered if that was her doing, or just happy circumstance.

  “One of the sanisi.”

  “An oath breaker? Didn’t you cast out the last sanisi to break his vow?”