The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “No. He saved my friend. I agreed to come with him.”

  “Come downstairs. Gian, you too.”

  Gian re-entered from the kitchen, carrying a large beam with her. It was a knotted thing, silvery with some still-living plant compound that Lilia did not recognize.

  “Why does he want me?” Lilia said. “Why are there people chasing me?”

  “Come,” Kalinda repeated.

  Lilia followed her into the cellar. It was built among the roots of the massive tree that made up one wall of the way house. The large roots bore carved compartments for storing foodstuffs and supplies. Lilia passed row upon row of pickling jars and fibrous, knee-high seed pods that held water and wine.

  Kalinda walked to one of the tree roots at the back of the cellar and released a catch that let a chunk of the root pull away. Inside was a dark space. She held a flame fly lantern ahead of her. As they entered, Lilia saw that the room was a perfect sphere lined in the decayed skin of an old bladder trap plant. Lilia recognized the shape from her classes in ecology and vegetal manipulation. She had heard they grew beneath the soil of trees like these, feeding on bears, giant shrews, and careless people, but it was the first one she’d seen up close.

  Kalinda set the lantern on the carapace of some giant dead thing, its form lost as it was digested by the bladder trap. Whatever the bladder trap secreted, it kept this creature more or less mummified.

  “Tell me precisely what happened,” Kalinda said.

  Lilia told her. Not just about the sanisi, but about the mark on her wrist the sanisi said he could see, the map on the Assembly Chamber table, and the familiar weapons of the sanisi’ attackers.

  She saw Kalinda and Gian exchange a look.

  “Why did you go looking for that?” Kalinda said. “The symbol?”

  Lilia straightened. “I made a promise to my mother.”

  “You were a child.”

  “I’m not a child anymore.”

  “No,” Kalinda said, eyeing her over. “You are not.”

  “What happened all those years ago matters,” Lilia said. “I thought I was mad, or misremembering, but whatever happened that day is the reason these people are after me, isn’t it?”

  “You should tell her,” Gian said.

  “Your mother led a resistance against the Kai,” Kalinda said, “and powerful people wanted to destroy her, and take you. They thought you might be powerful too, someday.”

  “The sanisi thinks that too,” Lilia said. “But I’m not gifted.”

  “Maybe not now,” Kalinda said. “But someday you might be. Your mother was supposed to send you and six other children here that day, so we could protect them. But only you showed up. I came back to look for the others again after I brought you home, at the appointed time, but there were no others. I suspect the other side has them now. You’re all we have here.”

  “We?” Lilia said.

  “The resistance,” Gian said. “Against the Kai.”

  “But what’s the Kai done?” Lilia said.

  “It’s complicated,” Kalinda said.

  “It’s not the Kai you know,” Gian said. Kalinda shushed her.

  “We need to hide you again,” Kalinda said. “The sanisi will easily find you here.”

  “No more hiding,” Lilia said. “Take me to the place on the map.”

  “We can’t do that,” Kalinda said. “There’s nothing there.”

  Lilia got angry. She was exhausted and bleeding from her flight, and it felt like a betrayal. “I came here for your help. If you can’t help me, then I’ll go back to the sanisi.”

  “You’re as stubborn as –” Kalinda broke off, started again. “This isn’t some duck chase, child.”

  “I’m not a child. I’m far past the age of consent. I won’t consent to go anywhere, or do anything, until you take me to that place on the map. That was my home, Kalinda.”

  “It’s not what you think it is,” Gian said.

  “That sanisi may be just behind you,” Kalinda said, “or, worse – his attackers. Let’s leave this place together and we can discuss our destination on the way.”

  Lilia hesitated. It was her best option. She nodded curtly.

  “Good girl,” Kalinda said.

  But as Kalinda withdrew, Lilia felt the same way she did when the sanisi asked her to trade her freedom for Roh’s life. It was as if she had been offered a choice that was not a choice at all.

  Kalinda and Gian moved around Lilia as if she wasn’t there, busying themselves with packing and preparing. They left her alone with the flame flies. Lilia had felt less alone on the road with the bear than she did now. Standing in the dark while the world moved around her, while others made decisions about her fate, had been a constant her whole life. She felt pulled in every direction, with no control over any of them.

  She picked up the lantern and moved toward the back of the bladder trap. At the far end, the spiky protrusions that kept those trapped from exiting had been cut away, so the long tube of the trap that led to the surface could be reached freely from either direction.

  If she left alone, now, she would eventually be eaten by something unsavory. And where would she go? The Woodlands? The coast? Where could a hunted Dhai go when it was not only foreigners who hunted her, but her own people?

  Trapped. No matter which way she turned.

  Lilia set the lantern onto the table. She heard a commotion above her. Pounding at the door. Loud voices.

  She looked again to the bladder trap’s tiny exit. She had no map but the one from her memory, and no gift but the knowledge of woodland plants her mother had passed on to her.

  But she’d made a promise, to her mother and to herself. She was done with doing other people’s laundry, and being pushed around in service to other people’s causes.

  Lilia hooked her good foot into the side of the bladder trap and pulled herself up through the kill hole. When hauled herself forward on the nubs of the old spiky protrusions. They dug into her chest. She had to let out her breath to squeeze through. For one horrible, black moment, she thought she was stuck. She huffed out more air, and pushed out into the open air.

  Outside, dawn was still only a promise on the horizon. This time, she did not look back, not even once. She located the blue blush of Para as it rose through the trees in the pre-dawn sky. She stumbled out onto the road heading east, to the woodland, to the sea.

  12.

  Yisaoh Alais Garika came to meet with Ahkio the next day, just as Nasaka predicted. Ahkio stood in the kitchens, watching his sister’s body prepared, as Nasaka told him of her arrival. The funerary attendants washed Kirana’s body in rose water and cardamom. They laid it on a stone slab in the temple kitchen on a blanket of fragrant bonsa leaves. Funerary chefs from the temples of Sina, Para, and Tira joined the scullery master of the Temple of Oma to carefully split open the Kai’s torso and remove all vital organs. The heart, liver and intestines were set aside, and given to novice attendants. The intestines were cleaned and soaked in salt water. The liver and heart were washed with saffron; the liver was prepared with garlic, onions, and hasaen tubers. They divided the heart into sections and fried it with leeks and butter. They drained the blood into a broad silver bowl, and used it to make blood soup and sausage. The head was reverently removed and reserved for interment in the bowels of the temple catacombs.

  Ahkio had never seen his parents prepared in this way, and had always regretted it. Seeing someone die and accepting that death were far different things. Watching her prepared, smelling the savory aroma of her flesh and organs cooking, helped wash the memory of her post-death awakening. Had it been a vision? Or had she truly been strong enough to reclaim her soul from Sina for a few stolen moments… only to tell him she’d manufactured her own death?

  “Did you hear me?” Nasaka asked. She stood at his elbow, grim and surly as ever.

  “I heard you,” Ahkio said.

  “Have you met Yisaoh before?”

  “Not since before I wen
t to Dorinah.” In fact, he had a very difficult time remembering her face. She would have been twenty or so back then. He remembered pining after her for at least a year; a cool, aloof figure, witty and capable. He had always liked her strong hands.

  “I’ll need an answer, then.”

  “About?”

  “Will you eat your sister’s heart tonight and take her seat, or shall I set another plan in motion?”

  “Your only other option is to find my mother’s sister Etena,” Ahkio said. “But my mother didn’t want her on the seat, and Kirana didn’t either. She’s probably dead in the woodlands by now.”

  “I have several options,” Nasaka said. “Etena is not one of them. She disappeared a long time ago.”

  “They’ll all lead to civil war.”

  “You could save us all the trouble and simply agree to marry Yisaoh.”

  “She wants to be Kai,” Ahkio said. “Not the Kai’s Catori. I don’t think she’ll settle for second.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “I’ll marry Meyna.”

  Nasaka’s laugh was bitter. “Over my rotting corpse.”

  “Noted,” Ahkio said. He turned away. “Is Yisaoh upstairs in the Kai’s study?”

  “Ahkio, you can’t be serious about Meyna.”

  “It’s the best solution,” Ahkio said. He’d been thinking about it all morning, remembering that warm night around the table before Nasaka came for him. “Her husbands are Yisaoh’s brothers.”

  “If you won’t marry her you had best be prepared with a very smart way to pacify her.”

  “I intend to ask her about Kirana.”

  “Oma’s breath, Ahkio don’t go accusing the Garikas of murder. I’ll come up with you.”

  “No. They hate Oras far more than they hate me. Stay here.”

  “I don’t advise it.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” Ahkio said, and walked back through the massive banquet hall, past drudges and novices and the occasional Ora sitting down to the midday meal. He considered Yisaoh kin. Her brother Lohin had married Kirana. But the link that decided him was her kinship to Rhin and Hadaoh. She could not contest her own family marrying him; with Meyna came Rhin and Hadaoh. He thought of the spill of Meyna’s hair, and her broad smile. He wanted her here beside him, more than anything. Even she could not argue the logic of it.

  Ahkio mounted the stairs and went up to Assembly Chamber. Two militia flanked the archway leading into the waiting room outside the Kai study. But the waiting room was empty.

  The door to the Kai study stood open. Ahkio saw Yisaoh sitting on one of the padded chairs in front of his sister’s desk.

  Yisaoh rose at his appearance. She was solidly built, wide in the hips. Her long blue-green skirt and tunic were plainly made, unfrivolous. She had a long face and heavy brow. He found her crooked nose endearing. She took him in with a steely gaze.

  “Yisaoh Alais Garika,” he said.

  “Li Kai Ahkio Javia Garika, kin,” she said.

  It was, indeed, a mouthful.

  His sister's portrait gazed at him from the far wall, one of eight women’s gazes to stare back at him from the portraits of five hundred years of Kais. His mother’s most contentious action as Kai had been to break the line of succession. For five hundred years, the line of the Kais had followed that of the most gifted male or female. It just so happened they had all been women. But his mother’s older sister had been gifted to the point of madness, and his mother had taken it upon herself to change the rules. His mother, not his Aunt Etena, took the title of Kai. And now he was left with it.

  Ahkio sat in the guest chair opposite Yisaoh. Sitting

  behind the big desk reminded him too much of Nasaka. Yisaoh was already formal and defensive. More hierarchy among Dhai rarely resulted in anything but increased defensiveness.

  She resumed her seat.

  He had forgotten to order tea. Had Nasaka thought to send someone for it? She would take it as an affront. He had lived in a proper house with Meyna and her family for so long that he had no idea how anything got done inside a temple.

  “Pardon, Li Kai, I know I come at a troubling time,” Yisaoh said. She rubbed the yellowed ends of her fingers together. He forgot she smoked. Tordinian cigarettes, likely. He sister had loved them.

  “I expect you aren't here to talk about taxes,” Ahkio said.

  He fished around in his sister’s desk, looking for her smoking box. It would have been comforting indeed if Yisaoh came to him about taxes. He knew all about tax law.

  “No,” Yisaoh said. “With your sister being prepared downstairs, I –”

  He found the cigarette box; a black lacquered box as big as a ledger. “Can I offer you a cigarette?”

  She hesitated. “No, thank you.”

  “I don’t smoke, and my sister is dead.” He pushed the box toward her. “Is this enough, or is there something else of my sister’s you’d like?”

  Yisaoh steepled her fingers. “A mouthy ethics teacher. That’s what Kirana called you.”

  “And where is my sister’s husband?” Ahkio asked. “Your brother Lohin? I expected him.” Ahkio sat across from her. He adopted an open posture, arms on either side of the seat, legs uncrossed. It took a great deal of effort not to snap up like a morning glory at midday; but she was here to find weakness.

  “He sends his regards,” Yisaoh said coolly.

  “Thoughtful.”

  “I see there’s no sense in dancing around,” Yisaoh said. “I never was a good dancer.”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  “I am here to ask you to renounce your claim to the seat.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve chosen not to do that. It’s not what Kirana would have wanted.”

  “So you’re doing this for Kirana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not Ora Nasaka, of course?”

  “It’s no secret Nasaka and I don’t get along.”

  “There have been questions about your right to the seat,” Yisaoh said, “based on your true parentage.”

  “My… what?” He folded his hands, realized what he was doing, and released them again. He tried to look at ease while pondering what she meant. He could think of no legitimate issue with his parentage except for lost, mad Etena. Had the Garikas found her after all? When his mother exiled Etena, Tir’s family all but declared an open campaign against his mother’s family, and Kirana had fought it off with a great deal of diplomacy and, it was rumored, an inordinate amount of affection for Yisaoh.

  “People talk, Ahkio. Kirana and the three dead babies before you were all obviously your mother’s children. But you look nothing like your mother.”

  He laughed. “Is this all you have? Yisaoh, there are far more important things at issue here. First, who poisoned my sister with some gifted charm that no tirajista could cure? Who wanted his seat badly enough to commit murder for it, even with their brother wed to the Kai?”

  Yisaoh shrugged. She looked at his sister’s portrait on the wall. “An interesting question,” she said. “Perhaps this was done by someone who knew that times in Dhai are about to become very dire, and we needed someone of strength on the seat.”

  “Someone like you?”

  “I would offer you a seat as my Catori, my consort, but really, a boy not of the Kai’s womb has no right even as consort.”

  “You’re less charming than I supposed, based on the amount of courtesy Kirana showed you.”

  “Should I be charming? No. I hold the might of clans Garika and Badu in my fist. What do you have, but the backing of some nattering old Oras?”

  “Oras who can call on the power of the stars? I’d say I have a great deal.”

  Yisaoh leaned forward. “You’d threaten me with the power of the gods? You’d use Oras against your own people? Are you truly so monstrous?”

  He, too, leaned forward, so they were just a fist apart. “If this is about power for Garika, I’ll marry Rhin and Hadaoh and Meyna. But if this is abou
t you, I cannot help.”

  Yisaoh grimaced and sat back. She was rubbing her fingers again. “They are the weakest of my brothers. You think I’d stand for some honey-headed sheep herder in this seat?”

  Ahkio heard a clatter from the waiting room. Elaiko entered carrying a tea tray. “I’ve brought cinnamon-orange tea,” she said. “My family’s most popular blend.”

  “Ah, yes,” Yisaoh said. “Elaiko. My father buys your family’s tea. That’s my favorite blend.”

  “Oh, is it?” Elaiko said.

  “But of course you knew that.”

  “Thank you,” Ahkio said. Elaiko placed the tray on table.

  Elaiko pressed thumb to forehead. “I’ll be just outside if you need anything,” she said, and left them.

  “That is a coy little bird,” Yisaoh said.

  “A gentle description,” Ahkio said.

  “You misunderstand my intent with this meeting,” Yisaoh said.

  “Do I?”

  “My father seeks to give power back to all clans, not just Garika. Assuming –”

  “Your father, if you’ll pardon, is a liar,” Ahkio said. “I know precisely what your father wants, and I’ll burn down the temple before I see your father pronounce you Kai of Garika and rename our country after one of his children. You’ve been trying to get this seat into your family’s hands for decades. I’m offering you a fair compromise.”

  “My father said you would speak of tradition and history and say only, `it’s always been done this way.’ He said –”

  Ahkio quoted from the Book of Oma, “Our country could see a thousand years of peace before the rising of Oma. That peace does not forfeit our strength, but disciplines it. We must rely on that peace and our lines of kin to survive. When Oma calls us to defend-”

  “And he said you would quote the Book at me,” Yisaoh said.

  “I think that’s enough,” Ahkio said. He had been fair. He talked sense. Why wouldn’t she see it? “Tell your father I can’t grant his request. Tell him that any soldiers or sons or daughters or spouses or cousins of his he sends here will be treated with the utmost courtesy, but if another one threatens me, and in so doing threatens this country, I’ll exile his entire family. Spouses. Sons. Daughter, and all. I’m not pleased to be in this seat, but I respect the words of the Book. And what you and your father are proposing is heresy.”