The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “Those are brave words from a shepherd.”

  “I teach shepherds. I’m not one.” Ahkio stood. “It has been an occasion, Yisaoh Alais Garika.”

  She moved reluctantly to her feet. “I am disappointed. I hoped you would show sense. Your sister understood what was coming, even if the Oras covered their eyes. She kept a house in Garika and listened to my father and our stargazers when no one else would. You could have learned much from her.”

  “You’re talking of Oma?”

  “Ah, so they’ve purported to figure that out themselves now, have they? My father told Kirana and Ora Nasaka about Oma’s rise nearly a decade ago. We knew it was twenty years from rising, at best. Not a century.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it?” Yisaoh gestured at the desk. “I suspect you know very little about your sister, and her alliance with us. Perhaps you should learn more for yourself, and stop relying on lies from scheming Oras.”

  “I’m not going to take that apple, Yisaoh. I know how divide and conquer politics work. The Oras are mine.”

  “The Oras belong to themselves. Don’t you ever forget that. You’re just a means to an end.”

  Ahkio called out to the militia posted at the doors. “Will you please escort Yisaoh Alais Garika from the Temple of Oma?”

  Yisaoh’s eyes were black. He saw her father’s strength in her, a hardening of the jaw, blind purpose.

  “We did not kill your sister, Li Kai,” she said, “however convenient that would be for you. But you are ill prepared for what’s coming. My family is ready. We’ll take this seat any way we must.”

  “I invite you to try.”

  “Go eat your sister,” she said.

  The militia took her away.

  13.

  Kalinda Lasa had fought many battles, with many people, but this was the first she fought against her own people.

  As she came to the top of the steps, she saw the door smashed in, and three men standing in the remains of it. The men were indeed hers, not the local version. She knew them immediately, though many Dhai would not be able to spot the difference on sight. Those with lazy minds got themselves caught up in the cut of a coat, or the cast of a stranger’s skin, or the cant of one’s nose, but that told her very little. What she looked for was the way they held themselves and interacted with others; how they approached a problem. All Dhai here were proud, but passive. They exuded a calm politeness that tested Kalinda’s patience. But it was their open, friendly approach to each person they met – as if they were all intimate family members – that was the biggest tell. These men stood on her broad flat stoop with shoulders straight and chests puffed out. They watched her with the alert, wary gazes she saw on war veterans, not the open faces of a rural militia.

  “I suspect you aren’t here for a room,” she said.

  The dark wounds at the men’s wrists bloomed; two glowing blue bonsa blades and one everpine branch sprouted from their arms. They gripped the more pliable ends with their fists, and marshaled forward.

  Kalinda already held Para’s breath beneath her skin; the Litany of Breath played at the back of her mind. She shifted to the Litany of the Spectral Snake, and wrapped the men in skeins of air, trying to force their blades back into their bodies. But they had anticipated her. Blue mist bloomed around them.

  Para suddenly fled from her grasp. Fickle Para. She yanked it back, and opened herself again to its breath. She rebuilt her spectral sword and lashed out.

  Her twisted skeins of Para’s breath met a misty wall that engulfed the figures. The waves of blue emanated from the men on the left and the right – the parajistas. The middle one was likely a tirajista, based on the everpine weapon. Kalinda stepped away from the doorway and grabbed a sturdy club from the bin of canes and walking sticks she kept near the door. When Para’s breath was unstable, it was good to have a solid backup weapon in case of failure.

  The men advanced, weapons out.

  Kalinda held her ground. Giving more of it showed weakness.

  The men surrounded her. She pulled on Para and condensed the air around her into a solid blue bubble, reciting the Litany of the Chrysalis. The men were young, but well-trained. Yet they had not knifed through her defenses immediately, which meant she had a slim chance of outwitting them.

  Kalinda wrapped spiky protrusions of hazy blue air around her club. She thrust it forward, testing the bounds of their barriers. Their blades sliced through her defenses. She batted them back. Sealed the tears. The Litany of Sounding was a burning brand in her mind, and her defenses were a manifestation of that – concentrated thought made real. The patterns they used to create their wall were intricate. It was difficult to find a way to untangle it.

  But as with any task that required perfect concentration to maintain control of a notoriously inconsistent power, there would be errors. Kalinda switched to another litany. Focused slivers of air zipped outward from the contours of her body, hammering their barriers.

  One got through. She saw the man rocket back. Drop his blade.

  Her reaction was instant.

  Shaping the power of Para took concentration, and breaking it, even for a moment, left a certain softness, an incompleteness of form, a corrupt pattern of Para’s breath that was easy to cut if penetrated at the right moment. She focused her next blast at the weak point her sliver had penetrated. Their barrier burst. Para’s twisted breath broke into a thousand unbound particles.

  Blades buckled. Snapped.

  She squeezed the air around their limbs. Bones cracked. Screams. The air pressure in the room eased. Their concentration, like their bones, was broken.

  She cut into them again, thrusting forward with the spikes of air that lengthened the reach of her club, bashing open their heads. Blood spattered the room, clinging to the surface of the condensed air she wielded, giving further form to the instruments of death and protection they had battled with. A portion of one of their barriers still stood, protecting the torso of the man nearest her feet. She saw the blood and brain matter of the man’s companion stuck to it. She hammered the man’s knee twice, and the barrier crumbled. The blood and matter dropped to the floor with it.

  She pummeled the man’s head until it was unrecognizable. Stepped back. She walked to the third man, the one injured by the initial spike of air. He clutched at his side. She heard him murmuring a litany; saw snaking tendrils of some poisonous creeper plant tunneling up through the boards of the floor. She sliced off the tails of the plant with a buzz of air. Then she crushed the man’s head.

  Kalinda closed the door behind the bodies. Only then did she drop her barrier. Para’s misty essence evaporated. She was wheezing hard. Cold sweat soaked her body. She slid to the floor. Sat against the door. The bodies bled out across the living boards of the floor. The floor had been shaped by some long-dead tirajista, created to soak up organic matter and allow heat from the thrumming heart of the tree beneath them to flow freely. She watched the boards darken.

  And she remembered a time, very long ago, when killing people was as routine to her as birthing them.

  Kalinda pushed herself to her feet.

  Gian pushed in from the kitchen, her blue bonsa weapon out. “Kalinda!”

  “Hush,” Kalinda said. “They’re through. Hurry downstairs and wait for me. I have a few things to gather upstairs.”

  “Who are they… were they?”

  “The Kai’s,” Kalinda said. “My hope is they were trailing Lilia, and didn’t come specifically for us. If the Kai knows we’re here… well. We have far greater concerns. I want Lilia taken to the other side as quickly as possible.”

  “She doesn’t want to go.”

  “I didn’t want to kill these men,” Kalinda said, “but my only other option was our deaths. She will come around when she realizes what her choices are. Go.”

  Gian pounded down the stairs. A good girl, Gian. Kalinda had chosen than one well. It was difficult to keep a gifted girl out of the temple system, but Kali
nda had done it, and never regretted it. Gian’s loyalty was hers now, not the temples’.

  Kalinda walked up the curl of the stair and into her room. Pulled a trunk from beneath her bed. The lock had no key. It had to be removed by force. She used a simple burst of air to break the lock. Inside was her blued blade; a length of steel as long as her arm, infused with the power of Para. An implanted weapon here, in this world, would have given her away. All that remained of the retractable weapons she once wielded was an old twisted scar on her wrist. She pulled her knotted baldric over her vest and sheathed the blade. She scratched at the little glass bead embedded on the inside of her arm, reassuring herself it remained intact. The night was cool, but not cold, so she left her dog hair coat. She shed her skirt and pulled on more robust traveling pants, dark as the leather of her baldric.

  She had a number of people to speak to, and plans that had to be set in motion. It was too early for this kind of fighting, far too early. Nava’s child, Lilia, should have had another decade to prepare. By then, her studies at the temple would have been finished. One more year, and Kalinda would have taken her aside and begun her formal training. She could have revealed everything more slowly – the coming together of the worlds, and the bitter war on the horizon - but now… all was in ruin.

  Kalinda tugged on the pack stored in the trunk, and knotted the long ends of it around her torso. She started downstairs, quickly. If they went now, they might be able to make it to the Line station at the Kuallina Stronghold and arrive at the coast by dusk the next day.

  She came into the main room.

  A blast of air took her off her feet. Threw her back onto the stairs. She cried out. The pain and shock muddied her reflexes. She reached for the Litany of Breath, too late.

  Long whips of air pulled her back up. Threw her against the wall again. Her head knocked back. She saw a splash of blackness across her vision. For a moment she thought she had lost all sense, because though she knew it was air that held her, she could not see the blue particles of Para’s breath. Whatever power this was, she was blind to it.

  A tall, dark man approached her, dressed all in tattered black. He wore a long coat and an expression to match. It had been many years since she last saw a sanisi, but the look he gave her was familiar.

  “Neat work you did here,” the sanisi said, walking across the bloodied floor.

  Her head ached. She tried to focus. Still, she saw no breath of Para. Poor time for the star to elude her.

  “Stop that,” he said. “I’m stronger and better trained, and Oma gives me access to the power of every satellite. You’ll exhaust yourself to no purpose. Where is the girl?”

  Saiduan had omajistas then. Things were progressing very fast indeed. She caught a hint of Para. Drew deep, battered at his barriers. Her concentration faltered. She dropped the litany once, twice, a third time.

  “I told you to stop,” the sanisi said softly.

  “This game is bigger than you,” Kalinda said, “played between many different worlds far more powerful than this one. You will lose.”

  “She’s just one,” he said. “There are others.”

  “Among how many millions?” she said. “How long did it take you to find her? And how much longer do you have until it’s all over, until they’ve decimated you so totally that you become as we are here?”

  “Ah, but you aren’t from here, are you?” the sanisi said. “You’re one of them.”

  “It’s a long contest.”

  The sanisi walked toward her. Leaned in. They were separated only by a sheet of tangled, translucent air. “A contest I am better suited to, in this moment. Let’s discuss.” He drew his weapon, a plain steel blade.

  “Crude,” Kalinda said. But she did not doubt his ploy would be effective.

  She gritted her teeth and hissed out one final litany. The air she had trapped within the glass bead embedded in her arm burst, spilling the poison it carried into her blood.

  Her body began to tighten and seize. They had told her there would be no pain.

  The sanisi did not drop his barrier. She remained caught against the wall while her muscles tightened. Her jaw locked.

  She wished, then, that her final words had been better. She wanted to sing of her own life. Her battles, and her babies. She wanted to tell the last person she was to ever see the journey that brought her to this world, and how terribly hers was broken. She wanted to spin long about the horrors this sanisi would encounter in the coming months. Words of anger, and warning. Portent.

  Her vision blurred. The sanisi’s face was unreadable.

  “A peculiar game,” the sanisi said. “I wonder. Are you saving her life to ensure your world survives, or ours?”

  Kalinda felt the darkness coming. Her stomach began to clench. Pain radiated through her torso. But she had been told there would be no pain.

  14.

  When Anavha Hasaria - then Anavha Lasinyna - was four years old, he hit his sister on the mouth. She had called him something - a name, an insult - he couldn’t remember. She bawled and punched him back, in the throat, and told him he was unnatural.

  Then she told his mother.

  His mother took him by the ear and brought him out to the chopping block outside the kitchen, scattering the dajians. She took one of the big, bloody knives left there from the gutting of chickens, and pushed up his skirt. Her big hand covered most of his thigh. She cut him, there on the inside of his thigh, a cut that surprised him more than it hurt. He screamed as the blood welled.

  “This is the way Rhea rewards violence in boys,” she told him. “Commit enough of it, and she will bleed you dry. You touch any of your sisters again, and I will cut you piece by piece, and feed you to the dogs.”

  The wound had healed slowly but completely, and did not even leave a scar. It taught him how deeply he could cut.

  Anavha did not understand, at first, his difference. He looked like his sisters, longhaired and thin. One could not tell them apart unless they were dressed up to go somewhere and his mother made him wear a girdle and coat, and belled trousers, usually white. He hated the color, because he always got it dirty. It did not matter when his sisters got their own clothes dirty. That was natural, his mother told him. Girls did such things. They spoke with loud voices.

  When Anavha turned ten, his mother brought him to the religious quarter, and the priests said Rhea had spared him for her service. He was to be owned by a woman and her kin, to bring them pleasure, and children, for the good of Dorinah, the will of Rhea.

  The men in the mardanas told him he was blessed. Boys who survived to puberty were restricted from brute physical labor. They did not cook, did not clean, and were not to be engaged in any strenuous education beyond the sexual. Men led a life of leisure, never to worry about money, subsistence; no need to question their self-worth. The fact that he still breathed proclaimed Anavha’s importance to the world. Yes, young boys coveted what Anavha and the other men were. They envied the endless preparation: the dressing, the washing, the oiling, the styling, because it meant they were alive.

  Anavha learned his purpose in the mardanas. He began at fourteen, awkward and unsure, encouraged to learn from poor women seeking children or pleasure who paid the temple eight dhorins for the privilege. He couldn’t become erect. He was introduced early to a philter drunk with wine that kept him hard for hours; he would lie in bed at night, still in pain from three hours of copulation and an induced erection that could not be fulfilled, merely worn off. His body was not his, they reminded him. It belonged to Rhea.

  It was in the mardanas, his first year, that he began to cut himself. Small cuts on the insides of his arms. Just enough to release a thread of blood, leave no scar. He would sit in his room in the mardana listening to the sounds of pants and cries coming through the walls. He sat naked in front of the mirror, studying his every pore, the angles of his body. The blood would come, and he’d dab at it with a little kerchief he kept in a drawer. When the kerchiefs got too stained, he bur
ned them.

  At fifteen, he was wed to a woman whose name he knew by reputation: Syre Zezili Hasaria, the most passionate and devastating of the Empress’s commanders.

  He did not meet Zezili Hasaria until the day of the wedding in Rhea’s temple in Daorian. He felt very small in the immense temple, cloaked in white, coat and hood, tunic, belled trousers. Zezili’s four sisters were also there, eyeing him over; though there was some resemblance among them, he did not mistake any of them for her.

  Zezili dressed in Rhea’s purple - purple trousers, tunic, lavender short coat. She wore a black leather belt and ornamental sword, a jeweled dagger. She was, indeed, handsome; tall and broad-shouldered, boldly feminine, with a spill of straight dark hair knotted with purple ribbons. She was a little dark, being half-dajian, and her brows nearly met over large, dark eyes. Zezili held herself defensively, as if she expected a fight to break out at any moment. When Anavha stood next to her, he found he was a hand shorter than she. He liked the solid bulk of her, the steadiness.

  She will take care of me, he thought. She will protect me.

  His first night with Zezili, she made him strip in her bedroom in her country house. She cuffed him across the mouth, drawing blood. She told him to kneel. He was so startled, he did not even cry out.

  She took his chin in her hand and said, “You’re mine. All of you. Every bit of you. You’ll service my sisters, because it’s proscribed. But never forget you’re mine.”

  She took out a blade and cut her initials into the flesh between his shoulder blades. When she finished, he was trembling. He heard her set the knife down at her feet deliberately, with a solid thud. He saw the sheen of his blood on the blade. She licked at the blood of his wounds. He gasped. She reached for him, and found him, absurdly, embarrassingly, erect.

  “Well,” Zezili said with a laugh, “they paired me well.”