The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  The dajian camps in Janifa lay on the other side of the country, on the coast. A week of hard travel brought Zezili’s angry, spitting legionnaires to within shouting distance of the eastern sea. Her women were wearying of blood, and she could feel their frustration. They bickered more. Got into bloody fights amongst one another. Brute slaughter was bad for morale. Only the most sadistic took any pleasure from this game. The rest were ready to go home. She began to consider rotating out these women with another crew.

  The further east they went, the more hilly the way became. They passed through hills tiered with rice paddies, little dajians working up to their shins in the shallow water. They passed fields of sunflowers whose heads had already been cut off, and spent two days in the coastal town of Jovonyn, where a late summer masque was held. Jasoi danced drunkenly with Monshara all night, and Zezili pretended not to notice Jasoi coming out of Monshara’s tent the next day. Zezili found the mardana men of Jovonyn intriguing, and spent a night herself entwined with the young bodies of three boys who could not have been a day over sixteen. What they lacked in experience they made up for in stamina.

  They climbed steep hills, and Monshara asked to stop for a day and explore colorful caverns and the great ruins of the old city that had been razed by the Saiduans a thousand years before. Zezili watched her picking through the remnants of old temples and fountains and other, stranger structures. A good deal of twisted glass littered the streets. Monshara and the four legionnaires Zezili sent with her came back with cuts on their hands and faces.

  Every night they camped, Zezili lay awake in her tent, listening to the squeal and cry and crackle of the camp all around her. She waited for a letter.

  Finally, as they camped outside Janifa, the letter came.

  Zezili broke the royal seal on the purple envelope and read:

  Dearest Zezili,

  I am well aware of our friends’ intentions. You will do all they ask, and more.

  With all sincerity,

  Empress Casanlyn Aurnaisa of Dorinah, Eye of Rhea, Rhea’s Regent, Lord of the Seven Isles.

  Zezili burned the letter.

  The next day, she slaughtered six hundred little dajians so sick and starved they could barely raise their hands. The Empress had stopped sending out rations to the camp. If Zezili did not kill them, they would starve anyway.

  Zezili spent that night getting drunk at a mardana two miles away. She stumbled back into the bar area after vomiting for the second time to see Jasoi waiting for her at her card table, looking nervous among so many half-clothed young men.

  “What you want?” Zezili slurred.

  “Syre Zezili,” Jasoi said, bowing her head stiffly. “I have news from your house.”

  “My house?” Zezili said, and moved away from the table. She took Jasoi to a darker corner of the room where the tables were empty. “What’s happened?”

  Jasoi pulled a leather wrap from her coat, unfolded it, and produced a wax-sealed letter. Syre Zezili was written in Daolyn’s neat hand, and sealed with Zezili’s house seal.

  “Why you rush this?” Zezili asked as she opened the letter.

  “Monshara said to give it to you right away,” Jasoi said. “Any news from your house must be urgent, she said.”

  Zezili read the letter. Muttered an oath.

  “I must go,” Zezili said. “Jasoi, you’ll have to take First. Tell Monshara… I had to go. There’s an emergency at my house.”

  “Your house is a week away,” Jasoi said. “You aren’t leaving the legion to –”

  Zezili said, “Can make it in four days on my own. Have to go.” Zezili hurried outside into the cool air, trying to will herself to sober up.

  As she mounted her dog, she glanced once more at Daolyn’s letter before bunching it up in her fist and stuffing it into her coat:

  Tanasai Laosina is dead. Your husband is missing. You must come home immediately.

  28.

  The yellow eye of the matted black raptor blotted out Lilia’s vision. Lilia huffed out a sound of distress. Pain rocked her anew. She’d only closed her eyes a moment, just a moment… The feathered raptor hopped back, and flexed the claws at the ends of its winged arms. It opened its hooked beak and hissed at her. The wormy red tongue lashed out. Smacked her cheek.

  Lilia fought fresh waves of pain with every breath. For hours, she had watched a tanglevine creeping toward her bloody leg, exposed through her torn trousers. She saw red welts on her ankles now, in the bright light of the moons. Out in the sandy creek bed, she was completely exposed.

  The raptor was a karoi, one of the four kinds of nighttime scavengers. This one stood as tall as her knee. A pack of them could tear the flesh from her in a few hours, and unlike their daytime counterparts, they didn’t always wait until their food was dead before they started eating it.

  Lilia watched the bird. Her tongue felt large and thick; her throat parched. The moons were up and Para had set. She had spent twelve hours enduring the pain in her torso and increasing numbness in her limbs. She was so thirsty. Death would be welcome. But being ripped apart… no. Not that. Fear, panic, terror… Now she lay exhausted, staring dumbly at her broken left wrist. The blood had clotted. If she didn’t reset the bone soon, she might lose her hand. She may have already. But the one time she had tried crawling back into the trees to find a broken branch, the pain was so intense she blacked out.

  And that left her here.

  The raptor hissed.

  Lilia watched it lever its long tail. Most bones in the tail were articulated, like the spine, but not the bone at the base of tail. It was as sturdy and straight as any splint.

  She closed her eyes. Flexed her good hand. Waited.

  She heard the scuffle of the karoi’s claws in the sand. Felt its wingtips brush her arm.

  Lilia shot out her arm. Gripped the karoi’s neck. Pain jolted through her broken body. She screamed. The raptor drove its beak into her cheek. It flapped its wings and raked at her face and hand. Lilia tried to get up. Kept her grip on the bird’s neck. She felt the neck snap.

  A mistake, moving. She was too broken.

  Her stomach heaved. Darkness swam across her vision. The bird screamed and screamed.

  Blackness took her.

  Finally.

  But she had beaten the bird.

  “You know the price.” Not her voice. Someone else.

  Lilia woke to the smell of wood smoke. The hungry claws of a bone tree dangled in front of her, and at their end – the hooked beak of a karoi. She realized the claw of the bone tree was not attached to a tree; it was just a severed limb from one, hanging now from the end of a long stick driven into the ground.

  She tried to roll over. Pain blossomed across her chest. She hissed. Tried to raise her left hand. It was bound from shoulder to wrist, wrapped securely around a long, straight branch neatly cut in two. Pain stabbed up her shoulder.

  “Drink,” the voice said. She knew it.

  Lilia could not raise her head. The pain was too much. But the speaker bent over her. Long dark hair brushed her cheeks. The clawed wounds burned. Her face felt puffy.

  Gian brought a warm cup to her lips; it smelled of poppy and everpine.

  Lilia drank.

  “You’ll heal faster with a tirajista,” Gian said. “We don’t have one at the camps so I’m taking you to a friend, but –” she looked behind her, and Lilia saw they were in a low cavern. It smelled of damp beneath the smoke. “We’re being followed. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep us hidden.”

  “How did you find me?” Lilia rasped.

  Gian nodded at the karoi beak. “I followed the birds,” she said. “They circled for hours, I expect. Had to beat six of them off you.”

  Gian pulled the cup away. The warmth spread from Lilia’s throat and stomach, engulfing her throbbing torso. The edges of the pain blurred, retreated. The absence of pain was shocking. Like freedom.

  “Followed me,” she said.

  “Yes,” Gian said. “I c
ould ride a bear just fine with this leg. You didn’t think I’d give you up to some Saiduan, did you?”

  “Pushed me,” Lilia said.

  “Did he? I hoped you’d run from him, and fallen. Why was he so angry with you?”

  “Wanted me to fly.”

  “I expect he did.”

  “Gian,” Lilia muttered. “I’m sorry.” Speaking was becoming more difficult. The world was swimming, now, warm and pleasant. The tide of blackness would take her again, and she was glad.

  “You saved my life,” Gian said. “Nothing to be sorry about. Except going back on your promise to me.”

  “Won’t go to your people,” Lilia said. She tried to move again, but the darkness was taking over. It was so nice. “I promised… my mother.”

  “I keep telling you you don’t have a choice about that,” Gian said. “I wish you’d stop being so stubborn. I just hope I can get you to my people before… before we end up with what’s behind us.”

  “You know the price.” That voice, again. Gian’s? No, this was another. “She lives, then?”

  An old woman bent over her. Lilia stared down the length of her own body, covered over in a hemp cloth.

  “Where… how long?” Lilia said. “Gian?”

  “I’m here,” Gian said. Lilia saw her outlined in the doorway. Lilia was not lying on the floor, but set up on some kind of slab or table. She looked up, and saw a great vent in a nest of dead boughs above them. The seams between them were filled with living stranglethorn and purple-blooming fire vine. It was the sort of house only a tirajista could make.

  “We’re further up the mountain,” Gian said. “This is Nirata. She’s a friend from… where I’m from.”

  “Friend! Ha. We are kin,” the old woman said.

  Lilia was aware of the muzzy promise of pain, as if it lurked there at the edges of her fingertips.

  “I did the best I could,” Nirata said, “but I’m afraid we need to move you now.”

  “But I’m –”

  Nirata drew the hemp cloth from Lilia’s body. Beneath, she was naked; thin and knob-kneed, with great yellow bruises pin wheeling across her chest.

  “Give me your left hand,” Nirata said.

  Lilia raised her left arm. A knife of pain hammered up her torso. She cried out. Her arm only moved a few inches.

  Nirata took Lilia’s left hand. Lilia remembered seeing the broken wrist, the mangled fingers. It was still bruised. She saw puckered red scars where the bone had splintered through the skin.

  “Rotate that for me, child,” Nirata said.

  Lilia tried. She could not bend it back. But it did come forward a little, with great effort. And pain. Sina, why was there so much pain?

  “Make a fist.”

  “I… can’t,” Lilia said.

  “You can.”

  Lilia tensed her fingers. They would not meet her palm.

  “We don’t have time,” Gian said. “Can she walk?”

  “It’s not the walking that worries me,” Nirata said. “Eight days is not long enough for a woman with a descendent star. If you gave me eight weeks, I could heal her properly.”

  “Your star isn’t descendent,” Gian said. “It’s rising. I expected more.”

  “I’m a woman with a great many stars,” Nirata said. “Oma knits flesh more easily than bone.”

  “Eight days?” Lilia said. “That long?”

  “Should have been longer,” Nirata said. “You won’t have much movement in that shoulder. Your collarbone was broken. It may still hurt to breath. Don’t injure your torso. You broke seven ribs. It’s a wonder none of them punctured a lung. Your ankle was broken, too. Take my hand. Let’s get you up on that now.”

  Lilia gripped Nirata’s hand with her good one. Nirata helped ease her off the table.

  “Hurry,” Gian said.

  “Hurrying gets us mistakes,” Nirata said. “I’ve already made far too many here.”

  “Give her the poppy.”

  “No,” Lilia said. She tried to stand. Leaned heavily on Nirata. Both legs hurt, now. Her good ankle had been mangled in the fall. She wondered what she looked like. She touched her face. Felt puckered, still-healing flesh where the karoi had pecked at her. As she stood she noticed something dangling from her neck. It was the karoi beak, tied on a long string.

  “What’s this for?” she said.

  “For luck,” Nirata said. “Gian kept it for luck. You know all about luck, don’t you Gian? The karoi are lucky. To be eaten and to live, that is a boon, child. Gian was eaten, once, but I pulled her from the jaws of death. Just as she’s done for you.”

  Gian held out a hemp tunic and trousers. “Let’s get her dressed.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nirata is opening a gate,” Gian said. “It’s a faster way to get to the camp. The people following will overtake us if we try to walk out.”

  “A… gate?” Lilia remembered the field of poppies, and the tears between the worlds. She remembered the amber sky. Why did they want to take her back if bringing her here was supposed to save her? “You won’t be going?”

  Gian did not look at her. “No.”

  “Gian knows the price,” Nirata said. “Let me help you dress, child.”

  “All right,” Lilia said, because she could barely raise her left arm to stuff it into the tunic.

  Nirata dressed her. They led Lilia outside, into a cool, brilliant morning. Lilia smelled mountain jasmine. The living, stick-and-vine shelter behind them was just an outbuilding next to the proper house, a soaring construction built into the bubbling bark of a massive weeping tree so large they stood on the broad back of just one of its roots jutting out from the mountain.

  As they walked into the light, Lilia saw Nirata gaze up toward the larger house, as if they had an audience. Lilia saw nothing at the windows. She felt a deep unease. How were these women any better than Taigan? Roh would tell Lilia to make her own fate.

  “Stand here,” Nirata said, and released Lilia.

  Lilia tottered. She grabbed at a broad, broken branch behind her for balance.

  “Are you ready?” Nirata asked Gian.

  Gian came forward. She knelt in front of Nirata.

  Lilia saw movement from the house. A small child, maybe five or six, stood in the now open doorway.

  Nirata drew a blade from her hip, a simple dagger meant for eating and chores. But the blade was freshly sharpened, shiny. She tilted Gian’s head back.

  Lilia realized what was going to happen. She remembered her mother’s bloody dress, and the dead riders, and the tear in the world. Was it the blood that opened the way between the worlds?

  “Gian, don’t –” Lilia said.

  Nirata drew the blade across Gian’s neck. Blood gushed.

  Lilia’s stomach heaved. “No, no no,” Lilia said. “I saved you, Gian. I saved you!”

  “Gran?” the little girl called from the house.

  Lilia watched the girl run toward them. Gian’s body jerked and trembled in the pooling blood.

  “Go back inside!” Nirata called. She had dropped the dagger. She held Gian’s body in her arms. Blood stained her hands and arms to the elbow.

  “Is she all right?” The little girl hesitated, not a dozen feet from them.

  Lilia gripped the karoi beak that dangled against her chest. Nirata’s arms were full.

  The girl came forward. “Let me help!”

  A price, Lilia thought. There was always a price. Gian chose death to get Lilia to the other side.

  But Lilia, too, had a choice.

  Lilia sidled toward the girl, shuffling behind Nirata. The girl was just a pace away. Lilia stared at the girl. Another day, another girl, seeing the woman who raised her covered in blood. It was like a circle, like a sign.

  Lilia held the karoi beak so tightly her hand hurt. The girl was just an arm’s length away now. Gian’s eyes were glassy.

  Lilia reached out with her good arm and snatched the front of the girl’s tunic. T
he girl kicked her, and the two of them fell. Lilia’s heart thudded loudly. A child, a child, she’s just a child… But Lilia wrapped her bad arm around the girl’s neck, and jammed the karoi beak against her throat with the other, hard enough to draw blood. The girl screeched.

  Nirata turned. Gian’s body fell from her arms.

  “Let her go,” Nirata said. Cold voice.

  “I can kill her before you stop me,” Lilia said, jabbing the girl’s neck again. She was trembling so hard against Lilia’s body that it made her teeth chatter. “Try your gifted tricks, but I will choke her or stab her first, or toss her off this tree all together.”

  “You’re a fool,” Nirata said. “Gian just scarified her life to save you.”

  “And she still will,” Lilia said. “Get me to Dorinah. The capital.” She didn’t know where she would find her mother, but if she was some important person there like Gian said, she would live in the capital.

  “Impossible.”

  “It’s not,” Lilia said. “If you can open a gate between worlds, you can open one across the same world. Don’t try any tricks. I know the difference. The sky is different there.”

  “I can’t just port you to Dorinah.” Nirata looked behind her, at Gian’s body. “We’re losing time.”

  “Dorinah,” Lilia said. “Any part, then.”

  “There is only one soft spot in Dorinah,” Nirata said, “and it’s nowhere near the capital. You’ll be killed before then.”

  Lilia tightened her grip on the girl. “Dorinah. You aren’t going to use me like a game piece anymore.”

  “So you’ll use my granddaughter?”

  “The way you want to use me?” Lilia said, and her voice broke. There is a time to mourn, Taigan had said, and a time to act. “Dorinah. Now.”

  “You’ll only have a few seconds,” Nirata said. “Let her go.”

  “When I’m through the gate.”

  “There won’t be time –”

  “When I’m through the gate!” Lilia said. The girl cried out. Lilia held her so tight she feared the girl would stop breathing. Now Lilia was trembling, too. Monster, she thought. I’m a terrible monster.