The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  A time to mourn, and a time to act…

  “Are you prepared to kill a child?” Nirata said. “A little girl like you?”

  “This isn’t my world,” Lilia said. “What do I care?” It sounded more certain than she felt. She was not a monster, not yet. Was she? She had grabbed this child, a child not her own, without permission. She was threatening harm, she was…

  “Dorinah!” Lilia said. The little girl’s blood trickled down the length of the karoi beak, onto Lilia’s hand.

  Nirata raised her arms. The air grew heavy. Lilia tightened her grip again, fearing betrayal. Nirata would try and rip the girl away with some tornado of air or seething plant.

  The world wavered. Lilia’s stomach dropped.

  Gian’s body jerked. A great gout of blood poured from her torso. The little girl squealed and squeezed her eyes shut. Blood rushed up into the air, coalesced. A black shimmer wet the sky. And then…

  The air tore open.

  Lilia saw a thunderous white plain of snow surrounded by vast mountain peaks. The sky was dark. Purple lightning seized the clouds. Was the sky different? She couldn’t tell through the cloud cover.

  “If you’ve tricked me –” Lilia said, inching her way toward the portal.

  “I have not,” Nirata said. “Give me my granddaughter. Hush, Esao. You’ll be all right.”

  Lilia limped to the edge of the gate. Peered through. Cold air buffeted her. “Where is this?”

  “The center of Dorinah,” Nirata said. “The only soft space in that vile country.”

  “Why is there snow?”

  “It’s Dorinah,” Nirata said. “You think all the world is as temperate as Dhai? Hurry.” She looked over her shoulder. Lilia wondered if there were more people in the house. “I can only keep it open a few moments.

  Lilia took a deep breath. She clung to the girl, and stepped through.

  “No!” Nirata said, and reached for her.

  Lilia stumbled onto the other side, into knee deep snow.

  Nirata grabbed the little girl’s arm.

  Lilia released her.

  The gate shut.

  Nirata screamed.

  Blackness.

  Burnt meat.

  What remained of the little girl’s body fell into the snow at Lilia’s feet. Lilia heard a terrible cracking sound. The girl’s head and half her torso – including the arm Nirata had taken her by – were missing. Her remaining limbs jerked limply in the snow. Lilia vomited.

  She stepped back – one step, two. She heard the groaning again, beneath her. She looked up. A great forest ringed the snowy plain. Cold bit her.

  And then she realized where she was. She had been ported onto a frozen lake.

  The ice beneath her gave way.

  She plunged into bitter cold blackness.

  I chose wrong, she thought.

  29.

  Roh got along with most people. He considered himself very friendly. But the stately old Saiduan dancing teacher, Ghakar, pretended he could not understand Roh’s accent, and the Patron’s dancers ignored Roh entirely for the first half hour he watched them from the archway.

  Ghakar’s instructions were biting; spoken far too quickly for Roh to fully understand. A musician kept time at the other end of the hall on a large drum. There was no singing in Saiduan dance pieces – and no poetry, unlike most Dhai performances. It was just painstaking movement set to music. And this piece was interspersed with snide comments about cannibals and maggots that Roh knew were meant to insult him. When Ghakar did not intervene, Roh decided to ignore them.

  After three hours of insults and getting shouted at in Saiduan for not lifting the correct foot, Roh still managed to smile and thank Ghakar before they left.

  Ghakar turned sullenly away from him. The others pushed past. One even shoved him. Roh clenched his fists and smiled harder.

  When they were gone, Kihin said, “So if they hate us, why did the Patron want you to dance?”

  “Because he can,” Roh said.

  “Then I’m glad Ora Dasai asked me to keep an eye on you,” Kihin said. “Because these people aren’t very nice.”

  “I want to figure out why the Patron would ask me at all. Is he trying to shame the others? Is one of them an old lover? Is he angry at Ghakar?”

  “So you did think about it.”

  “I’m not dumb enough to think everything’s about how pretty I am,” Roh said.

  “I think that came out less humble than you hoped.”

  They walked down the sinuous corridors of Kuonrada to the archives. After seeing the order and simplicity of the rest of Kuonrada, the archive room looked like a haphazard mess, an afterthought. Massive black lacquered bookshelves wrapped the enormous chamber, full to bursting with stacks of paper bound in twine, rotting leather books, and dusty heaps of journals bound in everything from fireweed cord to metal rings. The aisles between the shelves were obstructed by fallen books and records, some of them so fragile they had scattered into papery bits upon hitting the floor. Along the wall near the door were massive chests of books and records that looked like recent additions. At the center of the room, three tables were rooted to the floor with iron hoops. A mismatched collection of chairs ringed the tables.

  Roh saw Chali and Nioni arguing softly among the stacks. Dasai and Aramey worked at one of the tables with two Saiduan men that Roh took to be scholars. Another young man made his way to a separate table with a small chest of records. He was slender and very pale, for a Saiduan. It took Roh a moment to realize he must be Dhai. His hair was shorn short, like a slave, but he didn’t have the flat forehead of those who’d been born into service. Was he from Grania? Had he been captured? A little flutter of fear made Roh falter.

  Dasai looked up at their arrival and introduced Roh to the Saiduans. Short, balding Bael was the youngest - Aramey’s age - and the other looked to be a contemporary of Dasai’s. His name was Ashaar, and he wore his hair long and braided with red ribbons.

  “You’ll act as runners today,” Dasai said, and handed Roh a scrap of paper. “Get acquainted with the catalogue at the back.”

  “There’s no librarian?” Roh said.

  “This is what’s left from three cities,” Dasai said. “The librarians from those are dead, and Bael is acting as record keeper for the collection. As you can see, he is otherwise engaged. We are spread thin, Roh.”

  “Sorry,” Roh said.

  Dasai waved a hand at him, and called Kihin over to return a massive book made of what looked like some kind of reptile’s skin.

  The day became long and tedious. After, Roh was covered in dust and broken scraps of paper, delicate as ash. The day’s work pointed them toward two primary texts mentioned in secondary texts. One was a history of Isjahilde, a city far to the north already overtaken by the invaders. It was supposed to be written by a Dhai scholar nineteen hundred years before, just a few decades after the Saiduan completely conquered the continent. The other was called World-unmaker or World-breaker. It was listed six times in an account from a long-dead sinajista as he primary source for information on how omajistas manipulated portals between spaces.

  “So these people aren’t coming from boats,” Roh said.

  “No,” Dasai said. “I suspect the Saiduan already know that. Somehow they’re moving between... spaces. Great distances. Movement over great distances is one power Oma is known to bestow. We need to find out how to prevent them from doing it.”

  Roh had hovered over Dasai’s shoulder as he read one of the passages aloud, “The loss of this world lies at the feet of the Dhai unmakers who failed to save it, and the Saiduan unmakers who destroyed it. We who remain have undertaken a great task: to purge the world-unmakers from history, and deny the Saiduan the victory over another that they have achieved over us.”

  “Great,” Roh said.

  Dasai sighed. “I will read the rest,” he said. “But it doesn’t look promising, if there was a conspiracy to destroy the records we were looking for long
before we began our search.”

  “What’s the point of all this?” Kihin said. “The Dhai lost last time. How do they expect we’d know how to win this time?”

  “Patience,” Dasai said. But Roh didn’t hear much confidence in his voice. “We’ll look for the other texts referenced here. I’ll begin a list.”

  After dinner, Kihin climbed into his bunk above Roh and said, “I bet the other scholars won’t work with us because we’re Dhai. You saw they didn’t let Luna eat with us.”

  “Luna’s that other Dhai, the… slave?” Roh said.

  “Yes, Aramey told me,” Kihin said. “Luna was a Woodland Dhai. Some Dorinah raiding party caught him on the coast and sold him off to the Saiduan.”

  “Why would the Patron bring us all this way and then not have us all work together?” Roh said. “Do they want to save this place or not?”

  “That’s a matter of degree,” Dasai said.

  Roh turned. Dasai stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane. “How did the dancing go?”

  “They all hated me,” Roh said. “The same way all the scholars hate us. I thought all those stories were a long time ago. Why do they still hate us?”

  “Give it time.”

  “Time’s something we don’t have,” Kihin said, “if omajistas are dropping people into Saiduan.”

  “Why don’t the Saiduan do things that make sense?” Roh said. “None of this is logical at all. They should be nicer. We’re helping.”

  “Logic?” Dasai said. “People do not take actions based on logic. We make choices based on emotion. Every one of us. Then we use what we call logic to justify our choices. People don’t do things that make sense.”

  “I’m very logical,” Roh said.

  Dasai raised his brows. Roh saw a rare smile touch the corners of his lips. “You are one of the most compulsive people I know,” Dasai said, “and I have trained hundreds of novices and scholars.”

  Kihin snickered.

  “I just know what I want,” Roh said. “I do things that make sense.”

  “Whatever logic you apply to make sense of your decisions does not concern me,” Dasai said. “But I will caution you that acting impulsively is dangerous here.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want to bring me?” Roh said.

  “There were many reasons,” Dasai said. “But in the end that decision was taken from me. The Kai speaks with Oma’s voice. For good or ill.”

  “Sorry,” Roh said.

  “You are not,” Dasai said, “so I would prefer you stop saying that. I will bid you both good night.”

  “Goodnight,” Kihin said.

  Roh shut the door behind Dasai.

  “I didn’t know the Kai sent you specifically,” Kihin said.

  “It’s not important.”

  “You don’t think so? There must have been a reason.”

  Roh saw the Kai cipher in his head, an intricate pattern of rows and columns and twice-encrypted symbols. “I guess he just wanted another Garika to come.”

  “Chali is a Garika too,” Kihin said.

  “I don’t know, then,” Roh said.

  “That’s a bad lie.”

  Roh pulled off his shoes. It was too cold already to sleep without his clothes, even with the fire stoked. He kept them on and slipped into bed so he didn’t have to look at Kihin.

  “What does the Kai think we’ll find in those records?” Kihin said.

  “The same thing the Saiduan do, I expect,” Roh said. “He thinks there’s something that’ll save the world.”

  “Whose world, though, I wonder,” Kihin said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just not sure that a Kai who exiles my family is making a world I want to live in.”

  Roh let that lie for a long moment, considering his words. Dasai had just called him impulsive, and he didn’t want to prove him right so soon. “I think maybe he would have done the same to any family that did that,” Roh said. “You saw what happened in the Sanctuary. So many people were killed. People who didn’t do anything. Anyone responsible for–”

  “Maybe it was the Kai who was responsible,” Kihin said. “Did you ever think of that?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Kihin said. “Maybe there’s some truth to what my father said.”

  “Don’t say that, Kihin.”

  “Why? Would you tell them I’m like my parents? It doesn’t matter. I’m never leaving Saiduan, Roh.”

  “If you want to stay with your family –”

  “I won’t have a choice,” Kihin said. “You’ll see. Ora Dasai won’t let me go back.”

  “The Kai is very –”

  “He’s Kai,” Kihin said. “That’s enough. And I’ve seen how you look at him. But to me he just looks like Ora Nasaka. He looks just as scheming and power hungry as she does. I’m going to find a way to go back, Roh. I’m going to avenge my family.”

  Roh stared at the bottom of the bunk, trying to decide what to say. In truth, he wanted to crawl up into bed with Kihin and hold him and tell him everyone would be all right.

  “I’m sorry,” Kihin said. “I just want to go home. And I know that isn’t going to happen.”

  Roh wanted to say he missed home, too, but he didn’t. He liked being away. Even though the dancers didn’t like him, he knew he would win them over. He wanted to learn to fight with the sanisi. He wanted the Patron to take him for a lover. He wanted so many adventures, and for the first time in his life, he was in a place he could have them.

  But in the end, Roh was the one who would go home, and Kihin would be exiled. What was fair in that?

  As the long, cold weeks in Saiduan passed, the dancing did not get any easier. Roh moved from the more familiar forms to the vonov, which, as the Patron had told him, was much more fluid, and required a closer proximity to the other dancers. Despite the fact that the rest of the keep was drafty, an hour into practice, they all danced shirtless, and Roh found he moved with and among a throng of wiry, beautiful, dancers. He did not allow himself to dwell on that until after he finished a set, and then he gazed out at the dark-eyed, dark-skinned men and was slightly breathless, too warm. He had to avert his eyes, temper desire.

  One of the dancers, a sloe-eyed man called Abas, pressed a hand to the small of Roh’s back after one of the sets. Roh started. He was trying to get used to the casual, nonconsensual touching, but it still rankled.

  Abas said, “You are not so hopeless, boy. Does that chaperone never leave you?”

  “I’ve been told I’m dangerous without a chaperone.”

  “You should smile more often,” Abas said. “You could light the world with a grin like that.”

  While the dancing progressed, the work in the archives did not. Roh spent more and more of his time with the dancers, especially Abas. Abas showed him around the hold one cold afternoon and said, “You have a special love of sanisi, do you not?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You watch them like a hungry puppy,” Abas said. “It makes me jealous.”

  Below, Roh saw two fighters who appeared to be dancing, the only sound the scuff of their boots on the stones. They were sanisi, and they had drawn a sizable crowd of spectators.

  “Who’s that?” Roh asked.

  Abas came to the rail. “That is Ren Kadaan Soagan and Shao Maralah Daonia.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” Roh said.

  “I expect you have. She’s the Patron’s most trusted general.”

  “And Kadaan?”

  “Her best student. Not many men apprenticed to her, in the beginning. But he was smart. He saw her for what she was.”

  “Or she saw something in him,” Roh said.

  “Perhaps it required intelligence from both of them,” Abas said, and showed his teeth, an exaggeration of a smile that Roh had seen many Saiduan flash publicly. The real smiles came in private. Roh cherished those much more.

  The two sanisi moved in patterns too complex for Roh to follow, b
ut the movements were fast enough for him to recognize that they were anticipating one another’s forms. Roh knew that feeling.

  “You see Kadaan?” Abas said, and Roh heard the affection in his voice. “See how they keep pace with one another? A spar like this, between these two, can last hours. Kadaan is the best of them. He is not yet twenty-five, and has killed forty-three of the invaders. He gained us many weeks in the northern cities. It’s sad they will destroy each other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Abas shrugged and pushed away from the rail. “It’s how it’s done. She has lived a long time. Most think the only reason she still lives is because of the war. We lose too many sanisi. But before that… yes, Kadaan would have killed her, I’m sure. You haven’t seen it among the dancers, yet, but we do it too. The boy who had my place before me? He fell from this rail, here.” Abas rapped the railing. It came nearly to his chest. “You can see it would not be so easy to fall unaided.”

  “You took his place?”

  “Times were different. War has changed us. Now… well, now we have a Dhai dancing with us because we are so few. Things move quickly, don’t they?”

  “It’s a good thing you changed with them.”

  Abas gazed down at the sanisi again. “Some,” he said. “Not all. Come, your bug-eaters will be missing you.”

  That night after supper, Dasai and Nioni gathered in the sitting room and went over the day’s work. Luna and Kihin sat up in the room Kihin and Roh shared, arguing about old Dhai verb tenses. Roh sat in the main room on the armrest of one of the chairs and listened to the older men talk.

  “I cannot, in good conscience, force any of my scholars that far north,” Dasai said, “and I certainly doubt my own ability to survive such a journey.”

  “Someone has to go,” Nioni said. “I’ll take them, if I

  must. The records here are incomplete, and Bael says there was an untouched archive further north. If we find nothing here, we’ll have come all this way for naught.”

  “This may be all there is,” Dasai said. “It’s possible the invaders have already destroyed what they came for.”

  “Who’ll take them?” Nioni asked. “If the Saiduan escort us north -”