The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “You underestimate the landscape,” Dasai said. “You do not understand winter in Saiduan. The cold will kill you, and the darkness will drive you mad.”

  “Then we’ve come all this way for nothing,” Nioni said, “and you know my time is precious.” Aramey hushed him.

  Chali sighed. “We’ve hardly begun.”

  “What do you think, Rohinmey?” Dasai asked.

  “I think there’s a reason empires aren’t made by old men.”

  “No,” Dasai said, “but they are certainly maintained by old men.” He waved a hand. “Enough for tonight. It’s too early to give our tongues to the cat. We have time yet.”

  “And when we run out of time?” Chali said.

  Aramey glanced over at him. He looked stricken. Roh imagined them all as great frozen bodies caked in ice and buried in some snow drift.

  “There is time,” Dasai said. “Roh, take my arm and help me to my room, please.”

  Roh took his arm and escorted him to his chambers. Dasai had been slowing down as the days passed. Every step he took looked painful. He complained often and bitterly about the cold, despite wearing warmer clothes than all of them.

  “The dancing lessons are going well?” Dasai asked as he slipped off his shoes.

  “They’re good,” Roh said, pulling back the blankets from Dasai’s bed.

  “A clipped response,” Dasai said, “from one once so talkative. You could once iron my head with your chatter.”

  “I don’t know what to say. We get along all right. They’re vain, but most dancers are like that.”

  “I don’t like you wandering about the keep on your own,” Dasai said.

  “I’m not alone,” Roh said. “Kihin goes everywhere with me.”

  “You think I’m blind as well as arthritic? I know he doesn’t go everywhere with you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m just an old man,” Dasai said, pulling the blankets up over himself. He settled back on the pillows. The spill of his white hair trailed down one shoulder. “Go on, now, and sleep tonight. I want you to continue practicing your defense forms with Kihin. You’ve grown lax in that.”

  “Ora Dasai, you’ve already got me dancing three hours in the morning and running errands all –”

  “Obviously, such activities do not keep you well enough occupied,” Dasai said, “if you have so much extra energy that it must be expended running after dancers in the dark. I would prefer you employ such energies in something useful.”

  “Yes, Ora Dasai.” Roh walked back to his bedroom. Luna and Kihin were still talking.

  Luna looked much younger in the low light, slender and spry; his eyes were big and nearly black, the lashes long and delicate like a child’s. Luna slid down off the bunk and said, in slightly accented Dhai, “I should go.”

  Roh sat down at his desk to write a letter. It was time. He hunched over the low desk, working through the Kai cipher in his head.

  “What are you writing?” Kihin asked.

  “Nothing,” Roh said.

  It was true. For all the scribbling, the only thing the note really said was:

  Ora Dasai has found two texts. May be omajista guides. Says many records related to training omajistas may have been purged. Will write again when we find one of those texts. Invaders progress about the same. Patron says they will stay here through the winter.

  But Roh had not had time to look for anything at all while dancing in the dark. His mornings in the archives, he merely acted as a runner, and Dasai didn’t talk about how much he learned from the book. Roh hadn’t read any more himself. Chali chided him for it, but Dasai seemed to prefer it. Dasai wanted him to get something of use from the dancers, he knew, but the more dead ends they ran into the more resolute Roh became in why he was really here. He wanted to be a sanisi, not a spy. Because as hard as he tried, all he could think of was Abas’s smooth skin, and whirling sanisi in the courtyard, dancing with air and death.

  30.

  “Did you sleep?” Liaro asked from the doorway.

  Ahkio peered up at him from the stack of temple maps on the tea table in his rooms. Para was well above the horizon, and a hint of the double-suns already kissed the treetops. He’d lost track of time. “No. Did you?”

  “Not really,” Liaro said, shutting the door, “but I suspect I had a lot more fun than you did. What’s this?”

  Ahkio turned the pages over. “A very old conversation between my aunt and my sister.”

  “You mean Nasaka?”

  “No. Etena.”

  “Really? Well. That’s interesting. You know you have a bunch of clan leaders downstairs who want to keep talking government today.”

  “I’m aware.” Ahkio rubbed his eyes. “I’m going to bathe and change. If Caisa comes in, tell her to leave these pages for me today. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Does this tell you what Kirana was up to in the temples?”

  “I don’t know yet. It all makes me feel a little mad, to be honest.” He stood and pulled off his tunic. He’d confided in Liaro about the invaders, and made him swear not to tell anyone else, including Caisa. He wasn’t sure how the country would take it. “There’s something you should know, though.”

  “It gets better, does it? Have our mothers escaped Sina’s grasp and come spiraling back to life?”

  “I’ve agreed to get married.”

  “What?”

  The look on Liaro’s face gave him pause. “Are you all right?”

  “I... I thought Meyna was exiled.”

  “She is. I’m marrying clan leader Hona’s daughter, of Sorai. Probably by the end of the week.”

  “You say that so casually.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Did Ora Nasaka put you up to this?”

  “I have to make hard decisions, Liaro. What did you expect? We’ll need the harbor.”

  Liaro sat on the bed. “So we’re not getting married then?” His tone was light, but Ahkio knew better.

  “You know I’d like nothing better. You also know that’s not likely with a male Kai. A woman Kai like Kirana… she could have as many husbands as she wanted. It’s harder to determine parentage, with a man.”

  Liaro guffawed. “You expect a Sorai to keep to one man?”

  “She can take female lovers. It’s not unheard of.”

  “You make like you’ve thought this through, but you haven’t.”

  “Liaro, I’m tired. I don’t want to fight.”

  “She was Ora Nasaka’s choice, right? Ahkio, Ora Nasaka doesn’t at all mean for you to carry on the blood of the Kai. She’s setting up clan leader Hona’s family to take the seat. Who knows whose baby it will be.”

  “To be honest, Liaro, I wouldn’t care. I’d be distantly related to just about any child, from any combination of parents.”

  “You gave up so easily.”

  “If you knew what I did, you’d understand why I gave up on this point.”

  “Just like you give in to everything.”

  “That was mean.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Get some sleep, Liaro. I’m not going to fight with you.” He grabbed a clean tunic and went downstairs to the bathing room.

  After that was breakfast, and more polite talk with the clan leaders. He didn’t get a break until midafternoon, and by then his mood had soured completely. He called for a halt to the meetings for the rest of the day and went out to the clan square for a fresh breeze.

  He found Caisa there, sweating through defense forms, and asked if she wanted to spar. An hour later, she had thrown him to the stones eight times, and he was exhausted and soaked in sweat. He peeled off his tunic and tossed it aside. Asked her to go again.

  She gave him a long look, one he recognized, but he ignored it. If she meant to woo him, she would fail at it. That was one fight he did not want to have with Liaro.

  This time, he threw her, so hard he heard her shoulder crack against the stone. Sh
e rolled away and came up clutching at her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head. “Give it a minute. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Just working some things out.”

  “There are more productive ways to do that.”

  “Do you want me to call a doctor?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  He picked up his tunic and went to the fountain to wash up. Who was he, to tussle with a novice? What he really wanted was to pick up a sword and run Nasaka through with it, because she was only going to trade him the answers he wanted for some horrible thing she wanted.

  Ahkio undressed and dumped a bucket of water over his head. His clothes, bunched about his feet, got soaked, but he didn’t care. They would need washing anyway. As he turned, he saw Ghrasia Madah standing a few paces away, staring at him.

  Ghrasia came up into the council house from the rear entrance. The day was hot for it being so late in the season, and the bad news she carried made it all seem that much worse. She had more dead bodies to bring to the Kai’s attention, and a recommendation she already knew he was going to resist.

  She found Caisa flirting with Liaro near the hearth of the main room of the Osono council house. Caisa was bathed in sweat and laughing uproariously at something Liaro said. Ghrasia remembered how delightful it was the first few years she dressed in a red skirt and called herself a member of the militia. She recognized the girl’s easy confidence and open face. Chances were very good that Caisa had yet to kill anyone. She didn’t truly know what the sword meant, yet. It was just an ornament, like a particularly fine pair of earrings.

  “Have either of you seen the Kai?” Ghrasia asked.

  Caisa sobered. “He’s out training in the courtyard.” She rolled her shoulder. “Nearly dislocated my arm.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Liaro said, standing.

  “Don’t,” Ghrasia said. “I need to speak to him first.”

  “He should be by the fountain,” Caisa said. “That’s where he was headed.”

  Ghrasia stepped into the Osono square and walked purposely toward the fountain where Ahkio was stripping off his tunic. Her steps faltered as he pulled off his trousers. She stopped there for half a breath as he leaned over and splashed his face with water. Ghrasia tried to work some sense into her head, and some spit into her mouth. He’s just a young man, she told herself, but it had been a good long while since she saw a man with the proportions of some passionate sculpture dripping naked beside a fountain.

  “Am I keeping you from the fountain?” Ahkio said.

  She started. She hadn’t noticed him turn his head. Her gaze had been… elsewhere.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I wanted to speak to you.”

  “I’m just going up to change,” Ahkio said. “Come up.”

  Ghrasia weighed her response. Her hesitation must have disgruntled him, because after a short while he simply pulled on his wet trousers and threw the rest of his clothes over his shoulder. He began to walk into the council house.

  She made her decision. She followed.

  He opened the door to his room. Ghrasia expected to see a number of hangers-on there – she had seen him trailed by students and merchants and members of the clan leaders’ family since their arrival. There did not seem to be a moment where he wasn’t meeting with someone over a meal. But save for heavy furniture, riot of book-filled trunks and stacks of paper, the room was empty.

  Ahkio went to the wardrobe. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”

  “I’ve had small squads running patrols across the clans,” Ghrasia said, “in response to the recent murders and rumors about strangers in the clans.” She shut the door, turned back.

  Ahkio had pulled off his wet trousers and begun to dress in the dry ones.

  She realized her voice had trailed off. She cleared her throat. Heat bloomed up her face. Somewhere above them, captured within Sina’s soul, Javia was laughing. How old was he? Eighteen? Nineteen? Even her husbands would laugh. She preferred experienced, quick-witted men, not pliable young ones.

  “I apologize,” he said, and yanked on his tunic. “It didn’t occur to me –”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I have just been… more tense than I anticipated.”

  “I had a lover once who said desire is like –”

  Ghrasia suspected he was about to quote The Book of Oma at her. That indignity would be too much. “The patrols,” Ghrasia said.

  “Have they found something?”

  “I had them map out where each of the murders occurred, and follow-up with the local militia and safety ministers,” Ghrasia said. She stood on the other side of the tea table from him.

  “You found a pattern,” he said.

  “They did, yes.” She pulled a square of paper from her tunic pocket and unfolded it onto the tea table. She had to push some of the other pages out of the way. They looked like temple maps, and she wondered why he’d have any interest in those. “I know your sister’s death was strange. Since then, we’ve seen more. I purposely sought a connection, thinking it may circle back to these invaders the Saiduan are fighting. Before you take a country, you send small groups of scouts to soften the way.”

  He sat across from her and leaned over the map. Dhai was a narrow sliver of a country, bordered by the sea to the north, mountains to the east and south, and Mount Ahya and the woodlands to the west. The fifteen Dhai clans were demarcated by a series of dotted lines, some of which intersected. Clan territories weren’t about claiming land so much as organizing family groups. It helped reduce the chances of dangerous inbreeding, which had become an issue in the country’s early history and resulted in some terrible complications. Clans Sorila, Saiz, Saobina, and Raona clung to the south. Progressing north from there were clans Badu, Garika, Daosina, Taosina, and Osono. Further north still, the clans of Mutao to the west, then Alia, Adama, and Nako, and finally Daora and Sorai on the coast.

  Ghrasia made a circle at the edge of Clan Garika territory. The spot was already marked with a red dot. “This is where Kalinda Lasa, the way house keeper, was killed along with three still unidentified men.” She circled another spot on the edge of Clan Osono. “And here’s where Clan Leader Saurika found the body of a young shepherd named Romey.”

  “Romey?” Ahkio said. “Romey Sahina was one of my students in Osono.”

  “Yes,” Ghrasia said. She pointed to another mark in Sorila, near the woodlands. “This was the woman found at the bottom of a mine,” she said. “I suspect you may also know her name. She was a member of the Kuallina militia. Fouria Orana Saiz. She and two of her squad members were found here, Alasu Carahin Sorila and Marhin Rasanu Badu.”

  “Fouria,” Ahkio said. He touched the dot on the map. “I remember her, yes. She passed through Osono the day before Nasaka called me to the temple. The others, too - Alasu and Marhin were there. They spent the night with Liaro and I before heading back to Kuallina.”

  “They did not make it back to Kuallina,” Ghrasia said. They’ve been missing for some weeks.”

  “What were they doing in Sorila?”

  “That’s an excellent question,” Ghrasia said. “I hoped you might know. Only Kalinda Lasa was found in a place one might expect – her place of business. Romey did not work as a shepherd. His family were weavers. And that squad… should not have been in Sorila.”

  “Is there a connection between these people we’re not seeing?” Ahkio said.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to determine.”

  Ahkio circled the Temple of Oma with his finger. “If you include Kirana, all these deaths occur around Clan Raona. Have there been any deaths there?”

  “No,” Ghrasia said. “It may simply be coincidence. “I just want to make sure I’m looking at every option. If we have agents inside our country and we’re invaded by a larger force, they could sabotage the harbor gates, poison water supplies, or simply continue to assassinate key citize
ns.”

  Ahkio pulled the map closer. “I kept thinking Kirana was a singular case. But… all these deaths. If three were already killed at Kalinda Lasa’s...” He traced the rough circle the deaths made around Raona. “What’s in Raona?” he said. “They cultivate rice and wine.”

  “And sparrows,” Ghrasia said. “They raise most of the sparrows used by the temples.”

  “That doesn’t bring much commerce –”

  “No, but it’s key, here,” Ghrasia said, and took the map back. “If you have a diverse number of agents and needed access to sparrows to relay information, Raona would be a strong base.”

  “If you worked with the local militia to identify strangers requesting sparrows –”

  “We may get one or two of them in for questioning,” Ghrasia said. “It could help us track the others.”

  “That’s a start,” Ahkio said.

  “I’ll need the help of a half dozen Oras,” Ghrasia said. “By all counts these people are gifted.”

  “Nasaka can help you with that.”

  “This brings up another issue,” Ghrasia said. “Right now I have no authority in the clans. I oversee the militia posted at the Kuallina and Liona Strongholds. But working with local militia in places like Raona is… challenging.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be accommodating.”

  “The clans don’t like centralized authority,” Ghrasia said. “But being so decentralized makes us vulnerable.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I think we should organize the country’s militia under a single hierarchical structure.”

  “Out of the question,” Ahkio said.

  Ghrasia gestured to the door. “You have over a dozen clan leaders downstairs working on changing the government right now. Why not change this?”

  “We are not a dictatorship.”

  “This is nothing of the sort.” His implication offended her. She couldn’t keep the heat from her voice.

  “I only hold this seat because the clan leaders haven’t thrown me out of it,” Ahkio said, “and they only hold theirs because the people haven’t thrown them out. But what citizen can overthrow an armed militia? You might as well tell me to train Oras in martial combat.”