The Broken Heavens (The Worldbreaker Saga)
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PRAISE FOR KAMERON HURLEY
“Hurley is one of the most important voices in the field.”
James SA Corey, author of The Expanse series
“Kameron Hurley’s writing is the most exciting thing I’ve seen on the genre page.”
Richard K. Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
“Kameron Hurley’s a brave, unflinching, truly original writer with a unique vision – her fiction burns right through your brain and your heart.”
Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
“The Mirror Empire is the most original fantasy I’ve read in a long time, set in a world full of new ideas, expanding the horizons of the genre. A complex and intricate book full of elegant ideas and finely-drawn characters.”
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time
“Hurley intelligently tackles issues of culture and gender, while also throwing in plenty of bloodthirsty action and well-rounded characters. This is a fresh, exciting fantasy epic that’s looking to the future and asking important questions.”
SFX
“Badass.”
John Scalzi, bestselling author of Old Man’s War
“Discovering Kameron Hurley’s work is like finding a whole new galaxy, and she is the star at its center.”
Chuck Wendig, NYT bestselling author of Star Wars: Aftermath
“Hurley reuses old tropes to excellent effect, interweaving them with original elements to create a world that will fascinate and delight her established fans and appeal to newcomers. Readers will blaze through this opening instalment and eagerly await the promised sequel.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Mirror Empire is epic in every sense of the word. Hurley has built a world – no, worlds – in which cosmology and magic, history and religion, politics and prejudice all play crucial roles. Prepare yourself for sentient plants, rifts in the fabric of reality, and remarkable powers that wax and wane with the stars themselves. Forget all about tentative, conventional fantasy; there’s so much great material in here that Hurley needs more than one universe in order to fit it all in.”
Brian Staveley, author of The Emperor’s Blades
“This is a hugely ambitious work, bloody and violent, with interestingly gender-flipped politics and a host of factions to keep straight, as points of view switch often. Although it is a challenging read, the strong narrative thread in this new series from Hurley (God’s War) pulls readers through the imaginative tangle of multiple worlds and histories colliding.”
Library Journal (starred review)
“With vividly inventive world building and a fast-paced plot, The Mirror Empire opens a smart, brutal, and ambitious epic fantasy series..”
Kate Elliott, author of the Spiritwalker series
“Astoundingly inventive.”
The Illustrated Page
“The Mirror Empire is a fast-paced and exciting read, and the start of quite possibly one of the greatest political dramas I have ever picked up.”
Coffee on My Keyboard
“Taking epic fantasy down challenging and original paths. Thoughtful and thought-provoking with every twist and turn.”
Juliet E McKenna, author of the Tales of Einarinn series
“The Mirror Empire is a fresh, vigorous, and gripping entrant into the epic fantasy genre, able to stand toe-to-toe with any of the heavyweight series out there. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.”
SF Revu
“There’s a powerful yet elegant brutality in The Mirror Empire that serves notice to traditional epic fantasy: move over, make way, an intoxicating new blend of storytelling has arrived. These are pages that will command your attention.”
Bradley Beaulieu, author of The Lays of Anuskaya trilogy
“The Mirror Empire takes look at epic fantasy patriarchy & gives it a firm kick in the balls… [It] will be the most important book you read this year.”
Alex Ristea, Ristea’s Reads
“In the two worlds of The Mirror Empire, we get Deadly Plants, Blood Magic, and yes, Brutal Women. The Mirror Empire is both a chance for fantasy fans to get to know Hurley’s writing, and for previous fans of her work to see what she can do in a new vein. And for readers new to her work, this is in many ways the best place to start.”
SF Signal
“For me [The Mirror Empire] did all the things a fantasy should do – holding our own societies up to the light by reflecting off worlds that are very different. Add in a magic system where the users are only powerful some of the time, and semi sentient vegetation that is possibly more of a threat than the magic users, and I happily sank into this book with a satisfied sigh.”
Francis Knight, author of Fade to Black
“The Mirror Empire is an extraordinary novel. The scale and invention here makes it essential reading but the characters make it remarkable. None of them are heroes and none of them have the comforting sense of having read the book they’re in. They’re all flawed, terrified people doing what they can to survive. Seeing them struggle even as the stakes are raised makes for a reading experience as packed as it is tense. Book two can’t get here fast enough.”
Alasdair Stuart
“Bold, merciless, and wildly inventive, Kameron Hurley’s The Mirror Empire begins an epic tale of worlds at war that will linger long in readers’ imaginations. If you’re looking for original and challenging fantasy, this is definitely the series for you.”
Courtney Schafer, author of The Whitefire Crossing
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE WORLDBREAKER SAGA
The Mirror Empire
Empire Ascendent
THE BEL DAME APOCRYPHA
God’s War
Infidel
Rapture
The Light Brigade
Stars are Legion
Meet Me in the Future
ANGRY ROBOT
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
Unit 11, Shepperton House
89 Shepperton Road
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An Angry Robot paperback original, 2019
Copyright © Kameron Hurley 2020
Cover by Richard Anderson
Edited by Amanda Rutter and Paul Simpson
Set in Meridien
All rights reserved. Kameron Hurley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
ISBN 978 0 85766 562 1
Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 563 8
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ International.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For those who dare to dream of better worlds.
[MAP]
[MAP]
“May your choices be shaped by your hopes, not your fears.”
– DHAI SAYING
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
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7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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17
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21
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23
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25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
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48
49
50
51
52
53
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
The gnarled old woman carried a box of bones up the mountain. She bent low under the weight. The winking eye of Oma watched her ascent, ever-present in the rippling cerulean sky. Its sisters – violet Sina and twinkling emerald Tira – burned just beneath its glaring red pupil; patient, waiting.
As she climbed, she cursed Oma. A habit from another life. Another world, before all the worlds began to crash together.
At her hip, she bore her weapon: a yellow bonsa branch as long as her arm, infused with the power of Para. It glowed faintly, though Para was still descendant. If the seers were to be believed, Para would enter the sky again sooner than it had in other cycles. Until then, her powers were… limited. Still substantial, but limited.
The bones were a boon. The sole find of any value from her long, disastrous trek over the Kalai Mountains and into the lawless wilderness of warring states in the Tordinian valley to find a bit of ephemera kept safe for two thousand years by a race of slavering, gold-skinned interlopers. The interlopers were dead, burned out, but their storerooms and altars and thrones and the like had remained intact. Whatever force obliterated them had not returned for a second encounter. Kalinda certainly did not blame them.
She had tumbled through a rent in the fabric between her world and this one the year before, eager to begin again after losing everything. She had been a powerful figure, once. A world had bent at her word. She had promised to save them from the sky.
She had failed.
Now she was the last of her people left alive. And there was some good she could do still. Where she had failed, another might succeed. Hope was a delicious drug; though it, too, could kill, the experience of dying hopeful was far better than the reality of dying in despair. She had seen enough people die of both to know that.
The wind picked up and pushed black thunderheads after her, swathing the satellites in their embrace. She tasted the storm on the air, and moved a little more slowly. The rain would sluice the sweat and dirt from her skin. If it rained long enough and hard enough, she might put down the box and scrub herself with a fistful of sand. It had been some time since she engaged in such civilized routines. It was easy to lose oneself during so much solitary travel.
But the thunderheads brought fine puffs of snow, not rain. The snowflakes clung to her eyelashes. Obscured her vision. Her feet ached. Her own bones protested. Snarls of lavender snowlilies bloomed along the rough path she followed, releasing little white tufts of seed into the drifting snow. The seeds were poisonous if inhaled, so she pulled her scarf over her nose and mouth and picked up her pace again.
The old woman made her way back up over the Kalai Mountains and across the charred fields of what had once been called Dorinah. She had been through here when it was still ruled by fleshy women wearing jaunty ribbons knotted in their hair while they tugged around their skinny, whimpering men, and slaves on short leads. A filthy people, certainly, like most people, but she missed their easy confidence and airy architecture. She passed villages still smoldering in the early morning light, great temples to their goddess, Rhea, smashed to dust; crimson shards of glass scattered about the wreckage.
She kept off the main roads, though they were certainly areas clearest of creeping plant-life, as the country’s new masters still burned away the vegetation from the roadsides to keep them clear. She rested during the height of the day, when Tai Mora patrols could be found on the roads and in the otherwise abandoned streets of the small settlements.
One evening she took shelter in an old hair salon, the mirrors shattered, tattered ribbons collecting in the corners with dust and mice droppings. She caught her broken reflection in one of the larger mirror pieces, and recoiled. Surely no one would recognize her, in this disheveled state? But the Tai Mora had been running reconnaissance on her world for years, as she had on theirs. A few would remember Kalinda Lasa the Unmaker, and how her world had crashed around her, tipped into disorder and ruin by the Tai Mora. She could not risk being recognized.
As Kalinda came to the great forked pass that raked a seam between the Liona Mountains that had once separated Dorinah and Dhai, two Tai Mora scouts riding great white bears called her to a halt. They were hale women, though not quite so fat and satisfied as Kalinda had imagined the Tai Mora would be here. Spring was a hungry time.
“Where are your papers?” the elder of the two barked.
Kalinda bent her head, and spoke in Tai Mora. “Here, in this box.”
“Open it then.”
“Alas, my fingers are stiff with cold.”
With a huff, the elder ranger slid off her bear and took hold of the box of bones. Shook it. The bones shuddered, making the box tremble. “That doesn’t sound like papers.”
“I have been collecting this and that.” Kalinda murmured the Litany of Breath, seeking the power of distant Para. Her sensitivity to the blue star was unmatched, but the effort it took to find a trickle of its power required the utmost concentration.
The ranger pulled open the box.
Kalinda mimed the Litany of the Spectral Snake and wrapped both rangers in skeins of air. The dark wounds on the women’s wrists bloomed with everpine weapons, snapping toward her, but they were too late. Kalinda crushed them both, pinning the weapons to their bodies. Their faces ballooned. Legs kicked. The old woman squeezed the vital juices from their bodies. They burst like spent melons.
The lifeless sacs of the rangers keeled over, spent.
Kalinda grew dizzy. Vomited. Her hands shook with the effort of summoning and directing all that power from a descendant star. For one less skilled than she, holding Para would have been impossible.
Hungry and shivering, she rooted through the rangers’ saddlebags and ate everything that appeared edible. The bears, their forked tongues wagging at her and paws churning up the soil, she sent on their way. Traveling by bear would be too conspicuous. She had only made it this far unmolested because few thought to question a poor old woman laboring around with a battered leather box. More fool the rangers, for being the first to tangle with her.
She slept for two days in a blackberry bramble, recovering her strength. When Oma blinked at her the third day, she continued her trek, winding through the ruins of the pass where once a great stronghold called Liona had sealed one country from another. The Tai Mora had carted off much of the building material to serve some other purpose. The Tai Mora were good at that, building their little hives atop the detritus of conquered civilizations. Even the timber here had been cut and loaded into wagons. She passed the corpse of a great bonsa tree lying on its side, the trunk so broad it would take three people standing fingertip to fingertip to span its diameter. The road here was well-trod, much busier than Dorinah, and smelled of tangy sap and moist, thawing soil. Great wagons pulled by mangy dogs and matted bears rolled over the hastily graveled road, moving to and from staging areas for troops and enslaved farmers. Kalinda suspected the Tai Mora were already regretting not bringing more farmers with the
m.
Kalinda kept her hood up and trudged across the country that was once called Dhai. Those around her called it Novoso Mora now: “Our People Reborn.” She passed newly tilled fields and charred groves being cut down by Dhai slaves and their Tai Mora masters, and she wondered how many of them would survive to harvest, let alone survive what the sky had in store for them. The air changed as she traveled through the toxic churn of wooded areas between old clan holds. Warmer, wetter, and yes, she smelled a hint of rot, still, as if the soil were so thick with the moldering dead that it could not help but stink of them.
Up and up she went, finding it more difficult to avoid the press of people: Tai Mora rangers on their white bears; retinues of jistas in purple and red, green and blue robes; Dhai slaves wearing leather collars as they cleared fields of toxic plant life; traveling merchants calling out their offerings, mostly baubles, not enough food; high, garish laughter and jokes about cannibals from mercenaries getting their rotten feet tended by tirajistas – a bustle of humanity far too large for the area to ever support. Where the forests and toxic woods had been, thousands of makeshift tents stood in neat rows along the roadsides, like grave markers.
Kalinda spent evenings sleeping outside the old wayhouses, eavesdropping on the travelers. Hunger was on their minds, and fear of the free Dhai who had taken up in the Woodland. She smiled to hear of that, because any people who could unsettle the Tai Mora were surely her allies. Her allegiance was not misplaced.
To avoid the crush of people near Oma’s Temple, she approached it from behind, up through the woodlands, hacking at poisonous balloon flowers with her machete, arms already prickled with a red rash caused by some terrible weed or other. After several hours, she reached a field of dead poppies overlooking the temple proper. The seams between the worlds were soft here; she had learned to sense it. She listened for other travelers in the woods, perhaps those she waited for, but heard nothing but the rustle of treegliders newly woken from their winter slumber.
Satisfied, she dumped the box at her feet and lay in the broken grass and withered flowers and slept another half a day. When did calling on the power of the satellites become so exhausting? Old age was ridiculous. This was a ridiculous time to be alive.