The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “How long have you known this?”

  Nasaka shrugged.

  “How long?” Ahkio said.

  “Some time,” Nasaka said.

  Ahkio remembered Kirana’s body rising from her death bed. He remembered what she said: “They’re coming, Ahkio. The shadows are here.”

  “How long did you and Kirana know? Really, this time. A real answer. You not only knew Oma was rising, you knew who we fought!” Ahkio stopped shouting. Looked back at Almeysia. “Why did you bring her here? You could have killed her, and I’d never know.”

  “Because you thought me a liar,” Nasaka said. “It’s true I’ve kept things from you. For your own protection. But we must work together now, Ahkio. It’s time you knew.”

  “And any of us could be from the other world?” Ahkio said. “Wearing someone else’s face?”

  “Theoretically, yes.”

  “You, me, Almeysia, anyone.”

  “Yes, but both versions cannot exist in one world at one time.”

  “Oma’s breath,” Ahkio said. He rubbed his face. “Kirana was killed because there are two of her. Just like Yisaoh. Why didn’t you tell me someone tried to kill Yisaoh? I’d have wasted less time accusing her of crimes!”

  “I’ve been piecing this together,” Nasaka said. “It’s a complicated tapestry, and I’ve only now put together Yisaoh’s piece in it.” But she was not looking at him. She was looking at Almeysia.

  “Who killed Kirana, Almeysia?” Ahkio asked. “Was it you? Were you doing it on the order of some other Yisaoh, some other Almeysia?”

  “We did,” Almeysia said. “We all did.”

  Ahkio moved away from the cart. “Take her back,” he said.

  “As the Kai commands,” Nasaka said.

  Ahkio turned away.

  “Ahkio?”

  “Let me be.”

  “We have other tasks to tie. Like your marriage. Meyna is exiled. We face a very formidable enemy. You have gathered the clan leaders to unite the country, but you haven’t done the one thing sure to bring you a powerful clan’s loyalty.”

  “And you’re here because you have a woman in mind?”

  “She was at your ascension. I meant to introduce you then, but things… got away from us. Clan Sorai holds the harbor, and their clan leader, Hona, has a very smart and capable daughter named Mohrai who is interested in becoming Catori.”

  Almeysia was a peace offering, then. Nasaka gave him a piece of information now, before he found it out in Kirana’s papers and distrusted Nasaka even further. She must have heard he cleared out Yisaoh and Kirana’s libraries. He hated that they all thought him so stupid – Nasaka, Meyna, Yisaoh, all the rest. But it gave him an advantage. He could take a woman Nasaka chose or wait until she tried to kill one he chose himself. His choices felt cloying.

  “Set it up, then,” Ahkio said. “Bring her here and we’ll make a fine show of Sorai’s loyalty.”

  “You won’t fight this?”

  “We need Sorai,” he said. “If these Tai Mora try to invade, it will be through the harbor. This meeting with the clan leaders may not work. If it doesn’t… we’ll have Sorai, at least.”

  “Wise choice.”

  “I’m my mother’s son,” he said stiffly. Then, “Exile Almeysia to Dorinah. That’s my wish as Kai. Disobey it and I’ll charge you with treason.” He did not turn. He did not want to see her face. But she did not call after him. She did not stop him.

  Ahkio made his way back to the clan square. What now? Where to go, and who to trust? He could exile Nasaka, but then he would lose all of her knowledge with her. She knew too much to be thrown out; she had made sure of that. The less she told him, the more he had to rely on her. He could only solve so many things through exile. Right now, he wanted to do violence against a good many people, even knowing it solved nothing. Fighting their own people… Oma. How was he going to handle that?

  He went around the back stair of the council house and up to his rooms, avoiding most of the clan leaders in the common area. He entered his rooms and found Caisa sitting on the divan, laughing with Liaro. Kirana’s effects from Garika were spread all around, trunk after trunk of them. Kirana had loved a good many books.

  Liaro grinned. “You look like death.”

  “I’m glad that puts you in fine spirits.”

  “We were just finishing,” Caisa said. “Liaro invited me to dinner.”

  Lovely, Ahkio thought. That was just what he needed – his cousin and his assistant starting some torrid affair. “Enjoy it,” he said. “Any progress here?”

  “Still no progress on the ciphered papers,” Caisa said. “Funny book here, though. Dorinah romances. Didn’t think much of it, but she has a lot of… odd notes in the margins.”

  Ahkio took the slim volume from her. It appeared to be bound in snakeskin. The embossed title on the front was indiscernible, the ink long since rubbed away. He turned to the fronts pages. Inside was his mother’s sister’s name, scrawled in sloppy character: Etena Mia Sorai. The book’s title wasn’t in Dhai, though. It was in Dorinah and read: “Fifteenth Century Dhai Romances.”

  “She liked reading these,” Ahkio said, tracing the title with his fingers. He’d learned Dorinah as a child in the camps. “We’d sit with stacks of these while our mother went out.”

  “Nice binding for something in a slave camp,” Liaro said.

  “She’s rebound it,” Ahkio said. The Dorinahs wrote all sorts of stories about the Dhai; their history as written by their captors. He opened it to the first page, and found another line scrawled at the bottom, this time in his mother’s neat, formal handwriting. It read:

  Remember all the roads.

  “Roads to where?” Ahkio said.

  “It gets weirder,” Caisa said. She stood. Liaro scrambled up as well, and pressed past Ahkio.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” Liaro told Caisa.

  Caisa pulled on her coat and went after him. She paused in the door, and smiled.

  “What is it?” Ahkio asked.

  “You’re getting better,” she said.

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “When did you give up?” she said.

  “Give up what?”

  “Ever going back?”

  “Back to where?”

  Caisa’s smile faded. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was mistaken.”

  “No, what did you mean by that?”

  “Nothing. I misspoke. Goodnight, Kai.” She pressed thumb to forehead and left him.

  Ahkio stared at the book. He paged through and read the scrawled notes in the margins. Not just his sister’s handwriting, but Etena’s, too – it matched the scrawl of her name on the front. The notes were in some kind of shorthand. It took him a moment to work out that they must be in the Kai cipher.

  He sat down and picked up a bleeding pen; the sort made from the stamens of claw-lilies, and turned over one of Kirana’s stack of temple maps. She had an inordinate number of them, mostly of the six levels of basements beneath the temple proper which contained the great bathing rooms, massive storage rooms and the old garrison.

  As he worked out the first of the margin notes, he noticed a familiar symbol from the reverse side of the map. He turned the map over.

  It was a map of the lowest level of the temple, roughly circular, just like every other layer, divided into a labyrinth of rooms that spiraled out over the page like a small city.

  At the center of the labyrinth was a square with a double circle inside. Where had he seen it? The Assembly Chamber table. The map of Dhai. That was the same symbol on that old map, inlaid in the table about the same time Faith and Hahko took up residence there.

  He assumed the symbols for the temples were some hold over from Dorinah, something the Dhai had used instead of writing. Many would have been illiterate when they came over the mountains. But it was odd to see it replicated in the map, because outside the Assembly Chamber table, no one used them anymore.

  Ahkio turned the paper back over
, and finished translating the first margin note, which was in Kirana’s handwriting.

  The sentence made him pause. He must have made some mistake. He translated the next one, the one at the bottom of the page, in Etena’s handwriting.

  His breath left him. He stared at the page. Everything he thought he knew fell apart.

  Yisaoh was right. He was not as clever as he thought.

  Kirana had written:

  The Temple’s heart is barred to me, Etena. She says she will only speak to a Kai. Why close all the roads to me?

  And Etena’s reply:

  Because if you can open the way, so can your shadow.

  27.

  Zezili sat at the back of the public house outside Ladiosyn, writing a response to Daolyn’s letter about her house finances. Zezili’s sister Taodalain had asked for a small loan – they always ended up being gifts, but she still called it a loan – and Daolyn needed Zezili’s permission to grant it.

  Give her no more than 50 dhorins, she wrote, and hesitated before continuing: I will be at Lake Morta later this month. If she has any other urgent requests, have her send post to me there.

  Zezili sealed the letter with a bit of noxious gonsa sap and called over one of the lazy pages at another table to run it to the post general. As the girl opened the door to leave, Monshara came in. The girl held the door open for her, and the girl’s eyes were big as apples. Ever since Monshara’s people opened the portal on the slaughtering field, Zezili’s women had all taken a reverent shine to her. Oma was on everyone’s minds, now. Zezili heard the talk at every village and town. Seeing that bloody gate open was enough to make even a non-believer zealous. Zezili had prayed to Rhea eight times since the gate opened, expecting Oma was close enough that she might even hear Rhea respond. But no. Things were just the same. Rhea was quiet. Waiting.

  Zezili ordered another drink. Monshara sat across from her.

  “I’m still not used to the liquor,” Monshara said. “Can you get me watered wine?” she called to the house matron.

  “What do you need?” Zezili said.

  “Do you play cups?” Monshara asked, nodding at the stack of three round wooden cups at Zezili’s elbow – detritus from her afternoon of imbibing.

  “The card game?”

  “No, the gambling game,” Monshara said. She took up the cups and set them upside down on the table in a neat row.

  Monshara opened her hand to reveal a small silver coin. On it was the head of some monarch, but not the Empress Zezili knew. Monshara placed the coin under the middle cup.

  “Now tell me where the coin is,” Monshara said, and began to push the cups about the table in a series of figure eights.

  “You must be very popular at children’s parties,” Zezili said.

  “Humor me, Syre. It’s been a long day.”

  Zezili idly tracked the cups. She had played games like this often, and knew the trick of it.

  When Monshara ceased her cup spinning, Zezili pointed to the center cup.

  Monshara lifted it. As she did, Zezili lifted the other two cups as well. There was no sign of the coin beneath any of the cups.

  Zezili dropped her cups. They clattered loudly. “Shocking,” she said.

  “It surprises me very little that you have no friends,” Monshara said, retrieving the overturned cups.

  “I just don’t care for games made to part stupid people from their money.”

  Monshara put the cups back on the table, upside down. “I suspect your choice was right the first time.” She lifted the center cup again. The silver coin appeared beneath it.

  Zezili snorted. She took up the coin and examined it. The writing was Dorinah, “Freedom from tyranny and want,” was written along the edge. The portrait was of a bold nosed woman with large lips and a noticeable overbite. Her mane of hair was knotted and beribboned in intricate bows.

  “Is this your empress?” Zezili asked.

  “Was,” Monshara said. “She was killed fourteen years ago. The country was scoured soon after.” She gently took the coin from Zezili’s hand. Her fingers were warm. “You used to like–” she began, and stopped.

  Goosebumps rose on Zezili’s arms. Hearing about somebody else with her face still chilled her. “Whoever that person was you knew, she wasn’t me,” Zezili said. “No more than the empress on that coin is mine.”

  “I have no illusions,” Monshara said.

  Zezili stared at the coin again. “How’s it possible things are so different there, compared to here? How did you lose to those slaves?”

  “They were never slaves,” Monshara said. “They have always been powerful. We just made different choices over there. Small choices that grew large over time.” She shrugged. “I’m not a philosopher.”

  The bar matron brought over Zezili’s three fingers of hard lemon liquor, and Monshara’s watered wine.

  When the woman left, Zezili asked, “What do you want?”

  Monshara played idly with the coin, flipping it across her knuckles like some cheap backstreet conjurer. “Can we not sit and drink together?”

  “Considering your people are about to wipe the world of mine? I see no need for us to be friends.”

  “My people?” Monshara grimaced. She pocketed the coin. “The Tai Mora are not my people.”

  “I think you’ve done a pretty good job of being Tai Mora.” Zezili leaned back in her broad-backed chair.

  “I came to you with a warning.”

  “From your masters?”

  “From me. I know your mother lives in Saolina. I heard you visited her.”

  “You heard, did you?” Zezili expected the woman had a number of little birds in the camp, especially after the business with the gate, but she was as yet uncertain how many.

  “I can suspect what you visited her about.”

  “Can you?” She took a long swallow of her drink.

  “I didn’t survive the end of my people because I was slow,” Monshara said. “No doubt your mother had interesting things to say about how she would build a mirror, maybe even one that could focus Oma’s power. I think you should forget all that.”

  Zezili forced a laugh. “Forget? Forget walking into that star-blasted wasteland you call home? If that’s what you people will make of this world –”

  “Not my people,” Monshara said firmly.

  “They bleed,” Zezili said.

  “And they kill,” Monshara said. “They’ve killed you once. And I… don’t want to witness that again. That’s why I’m warning you, instead of stringing you up myself.”

  “How did you know me?” Zezili said. “The other me?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re planning, the Kai is eight steps ahead of you. Let’s finish these last few camps. Then you can go back to your empress, and I’ll go back mine.”

  “But that’s not what’s really going to happen, is it?” Zezili said.

  Monshara gulped her wine. “Truly? No, probably not.”

  “They haven’t told you their full plans.”

  “You thought you’d torture it out of me?” Monshara laughed. “I’d like to see you try. They only tell me a piece at a time. I didn’t know I’d be working here with you until the day we traveled over.”

  “But you saw their battle plans. She gave them to you.”

  “Did she? You really think they’d give over something like that to a woman who could read Dhai?”

  “You can’t read Dhai?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What the Kai turned over to me was likely in some cipher,” Monshara said. “I can’t even say with absolute certainty that it was an invasion plan. It wouldn’t be the first time the Kai sent me on a fool’s errand, telling me I had something important that turned out to be garbage. It’s how she tests loyalty.”

  “And you passed?”

  “She put me with you, didn’t she?”

  “You make it sound like that was a prize.”

  “It was…” Monshara finished her wi
ne. “It was what it was.”

  “Who did you deliver that map to?”

  “You think it’s like that, do you? You think we’ll have some drinks and I’ll betray the Kai? You listen, Zezili –”

  “You keep using my name like you think I forgot it.”

  “I’m reminding myself of it,” Monshara said. “The woman I knew was much more compassionate than you are. Merciful. And hygienic. You’re… something very different.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Zezili,” she lowered her voice, “leave this thing about the mirror alone. If you interfere, I’ll report it.” She pulled the silver coin from her pocket, and placed it on the table. “This woman on the coin, she was my mother. You understand?”

  Zezili stared at the coin.

  Monshara stood. “You can keep that,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning. It’s a long way to Janifa from here, so I expect you should turn in soon. Can’t go off killing people with a belly full of liquor and no sleep.”

  After she left, Zezili reached across the table and picked up the coin. The figure looked nothing like the empress Zezili knew – the bronze-skinned, cant-legged woman with the big yellow eyes and wasp-like waist. The Book of Rhea said that Empress Casanlyn’s line had crossed into Dorinah from Rhea’s seat, a very long time ago when Rhea’s world and their own came together. Her people came bearing great gifts of fertility and abundance to the people of Dorinah. Zezili always thought she was the remnant of some eastern race, but now she wondered if her empress was from another world altogether that had failed to cross over completely during the last rise of Oma. On the other side they had no bronze-skinned god leading their country. Empress Casanlyn’s people had never crossed over to that world. Never tried to take over. Never toed a hole in Dorinah big enough to hide in. They had only Monshara’s mother, and she had lost.

  “But she is my empress,” Zezili muttered, and left the coin on the table. She bought another piece of paper from the bar matron, and began writing a letter to Empress Casanlyn.