The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  Anavha lost his hold on the tiles and fell. He tried to cry out, but gagged on the kerchief. He landed on his side in a powdering of snow. The air rushed from his lungs.

  Before he caught his breath through the clotted kerchief, the man landed beside him. He dragged Anavha out to the kennels. A big black dog was already saddled and harnessed. The man whistled to it. The dog came forward, sniffing and snarling.

  The man hauled Anavha up in front of him onto the dog. The man’s body was warm and tense behind Anavha. One strong arm held Anavha against him. The other gripped the reins.

  Anavha expected to see Zezili stride out onto the road, draw her sword, hamstring the dog, and cut open Anavha’s assailant with one clean strike.

  But the dog was trotting off at a quick pace, the road streaking behind them. Clouds covered the moons completely. It began to snow.

  Anavha was already sore from days of riding, and being jarred in the saddle as the dog leapt forward at a clipped pace was agony. He imagined blisters forming on his thighs.

  The hours stretched. Anavha’s whole body hurt. The snow continued. The dog was padding now not across a road, but winding through low-lying everpine trees. Anavha’s feet and hands were numb.

  They stopped sometime well after dawn in a ring of everpine trees. Anavha’s captor tossed him out of the saddle and onto the snow as if Anavha weighed no more than a rag doll. The man unsaddled the dog, but kept its harness on.

  The man unpacked food from the saddle bags, and fed the dog dried meat. Anavha followed his captor’s progress until the man squatted before Anavha, reeking now not only of himself, but of dog.

  “You going to be silent?” the man asked.

  Anavha tried to nod.

  The man unwrapped the silk cord from Anavha’s hands and mouth. He pulled out the wet kerchief.

  Anavha’s mouth was unbearably dry. He sat up, painfully, and rubbed at his numbed hands. Red welts marked his wrists.

  “It won’t be long,” the man said, turning away from Anavha. He handed Anavha a small piece of bread and an onion from his supply pack. Anavha tried to hold out his hands to receive the offering, but his fingers wouldn’t work.

  The man set the food in front of him, and walked back to his seat in the snow. He continued eating.

  Anavha tried scooping up some snow. The snow felt good as it melted in his mouth. He sat quietly.

  “You say your wife will come after you?” the man said. He was looking at Anavha as he ate.

  Anavha nodded.

  “I don’t doubt it,” the man said. He had a strange accent, one Anavha could not identify. He continued to gaze at Anavha. Uncomfortable under the close scrutiny, Anavha looked away.

  “We’re two weeks from Tordin,” the man said. “Someone else will decide what to do with you once we cross the border.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Anavha said softly. He had seen this man kill a woman. It was like sitting with some sort of dangerous animal. But then, Anavha had also killed a woman. Did that make him like this man? Anavha hugged his knees to his chest. He was terribly cold. We’re just animals, he thought. The enforcers will find us. Zezili will cut both of us open.

  “It’s not a matter of what you will or won’t say,” the man said.

  “Who are you?” Anavha asked.

  The man smiled, but it was a tight, forced smile that did not touch his eyes. “They’ll know me as Natanial Thorne of Yemsire.”

  Natanial. A Tordinian. And he had killed a woman in an inn in Dorinah.

  “You work for the King of Tordin,” Anavha said.

  “I work for a lot of people,” Natanial said, “but he’s the one who’ll decide whether or not you’re useful.”

  “Zezili will come for me,” Anavha repeated, with conviction. Zezili would always come for him.

  Natanial wiped his hands on his trousers. “I certainly hope so,” he said. “You’re worth a nice penny, I’d wager. Get some sleep now. We have a long day ahead.”

  Anavha lay on his side, hands bound. He didn’t think he could sleep, but it came, eventually. He started awake not long after, and froze. Something stared at him from across the remains of the fire. A creature moved in the undergrowth. He heard the huff of its breath, and saw its eyes reflecting the moons’ light.

  “Natanial?” Anavha whispered. But he could not see Natanial. He began to tremble.

  The beast crept into the moons’ light. It was a giant, mangy wolverine; wild and slavering. Anavha had only seen the things in the papers, drawn up to accompany a story about some horrific mauling. Anavha tried to sit up.

  The wolverine growled, and pounced.

  Anavha shrieked. He rolled just in time, so the beast latched onto his arm instead of his neck. Jagged needles of pain burst through his arm. A blood-red haze cloaked Anavha’s vision.

  The undergrowth shivered again. Anavha screamed. Natanial leapt toward him, sword raised, as the wolverine shook Anavha like a straw pillow.

  Natanial’s sword struck the wolverine. It hissed and snapped at him, releasing Anavha.

  Anavha shook so violently his teeth chattered. Blood soaked his arm, his torso. He saw a bubbling gush of it pumping from his arm, and felt suddenly light-headed. The air around him grew heavy. He saw a blinding sheen of glittering red mist boil down from the sky and cling to his body like a lover.

  It was happening again.

  “Help me,” Anavha said.

  Natanial skewered the wolverine with his sword. Looked back.

  “Please,” Anavha said. He could not keep the panic from his voice. The mist collected his blood into a syrupy whirlwind. The air condensed. He felt a terrible pressure.

  Then the world opened up.

  “Fuck,” Natanial said.

  And Anavha fell into the void.

  33.

  The world outside lay hushed under a heavy curtain of snow. Darkness ate the mornings and the evenings. One day soon, Roh knew, daylight would be but a moment between sunrise and sunset, turning day into one dusky evening. Winter’s grip was relentless.

  Inside Kuonrada, in a small cramped room brimming with preening dancers stepping through bad brazier lights, Roh decked himself in a long skirt and billowing trousers. His eyes were rimmed in kohl, shadowed in green, his lower lip painted red, his hair lengthened with braids of human hair. It was the Festival of Para’s Ascendance. Today was the day the world’s parajistas would reach the full measure of their power. Or, at least, the day the stargazers had given as their best guess. After today, Para was in decline. Roh and the others who shared his star would lose just a little bit of power every day. Roh expected he would feel different today, but he had not yet tried to draw on Para. He was a little afraid to.

  Abas caught him gazing at his own reflection and said, “You could almost be a dancer.”

  Roh forced a smile. It was the closest Abas would get to saying he’d become one of them. He and the other dancers waited outside the massive eating hall at the center of the hold. The hall was a stir of voices and low laughter. It was a great honor to dance at any festival, but for Roh this one meant a great deal. It marked the end of something. There would be no more dancing after this. No more distractions.

  The Saiduan celebrated and mourned the day as well, with a dance that Roh had at first thought was a little strange. It was the story of the Dhai and their annihilation of the talamynii. When Roh asked Abas if this was the dance they usually did, he said no – on Para’s Day of Ascendance they chose more uplifting pieces. But the Patron had requested this one specifically.

  To remind us we’re not so different, Roh thought, but he dared not say that out loud.

  When they were announced, Roh and the dancers purled into the room. Roh took note of the room as he swept in, aware that he would not have time to measure it properly again until after the dance. There were three long tables adorned in sinuous carvings: the heads of snarling men, fanged wolves, and other creatures Roh only knew from books. The high table stood on a dais
of pale stone. Seated at the lower tables were dozens of northern soldiers with purple ribbons at their collars. A dozen lower-ranking sanisi sat with them, marked by their blooded blades and dark clothes. The Dhai scholars were there as well, though Roh’s gaze did not take in individuals, merely the blur of their paler faces. At the high table was the Patron. Sitting with him were the most prized of his sanisi. Slaves removed empty dishes and replenished loaves of bread.

  And then Roh was dancing.

  Roh lost himself to it. He was no longer himself, but one of the talamynii fighting foreigners from a distant shore – fighting the Dhai, the empire that had once stretched from Saiduan all the way south to the opposite pole, before the middle of the world sank into the sea. Abas was not his friend but his enemy, a shadow in black, his face a stony crag of cruelty; he played the Dhai emperor. Green eye shadow licked the faces of the dancers playing talamynii from eyelid to eyebrow.

  Roh’s people were overwhelmed. They retreated to the hearth, ducking and cowering as the sanisi approached. Abas was supposed to pull one of the other dancers, Taralik, from the stir of others before the sanisi put them to the sword. Taralik was to be the last living talamynii, all that remained of the brown, green-eyed race the Dhai had purged from this continent four millennia ago.

  But as Roh and the other talamynii crouched by the hearth, Roh watching as the paint melted from the faces of his fellow captives, Abas’s hands fell not to Taralik’s shoulders, but Roh’s.

  Abas pulled Roh from the condemned. Behind them, the dancers playing the Dhai circled the talamynii, and the talamynii gave great cries. Roh and Abas continued to regard one another, Roh breathless, Abas’s gaze filled with mirth.

  The dancers portraying the Dhai pulled back from the circle of talamynii who lay motionless on the floor behind Roh and Abas. The sanisi danced the final set, ending in a uniform pirouette that became a long bow of the body toward the long tables.

  There was a long silence before the Patron stood to thank the dancers. The audience tapped their plates with their long soup spoons.

  “My captive for the night,” the Patron said to Abas, “do bring yourself and your chosen to my table.”

  Roh glanced at Abas. Abas gave him a trifling smile and held out his hand. Roh took it.

  Abas led Roh up the purple carpet to the high table. He passed Wraisau and Driaa sitting at one of the lower tables. Wraisau stood as he passed and slapped his shoulder. Roh jumped, and they all laughed. Servants brought two extra chairs to the dais. Three women – wearing torques, and belts of silver loops – hung back behind the Patron. They held silver basins of water and wine. The feasting was over, so the drinking had begun. They did not speak, but their kohl-ringed eyes took in Abas and Roh with something more than polite interest. Roh saw calculated study in those gazes, measuring the two dancers for what they were worth.

  Roh met their gazes and noticed, with a start, that one of them had green eyes. She was dark skinned as a Saiduan, yes, but there were the talamynii eyes. If one measured the death of a people in blood, it was never complete. What the Dhai had eradicated was the talamynii culture, their memories, their dreams. As Roh gazed at the Patron, he wondered what parts of his own people had been erased when the Saiduan murdered them in droves and exiled them from the continent.

  The servants set the chairs just behind those at the Patron’s elbow. Roh gazed long at the sanisi at the high table. The sanisi sitting to the left of the Patron was not as tall as the others, even sitting down. He had a mane of inky, oiled hair knotted back in a braid like a rope. He did not look at Roh or Abas, but continued to talk in a low voice to the sanisi at his right, whose beardless face and manner of sitting – a woman’s center of gravity was lower than a man’s – made her Shao Maralah Daonia, the woman he watched spar in the courtyard. She had a lined, weathered face that put Roh in mind of the creased leather spines of old books. She looked far older than forty. He saw silver hairs in her mane of black.

  The Patron motioned for Abas and Roh to sit. The Patron smelled heavily of aatai liquor and cloves and some sort of lavender oil that made Roh’s eyes water.

  “Abas,” the Patron said, gesturing to the imposing sanisi at his right, a tall but very young sanisi who could not have been much past twenty. “You’re familiar with my eldest son, Shas Chaigaan Taar?”

  “I am,” Abas said, inclining his head to Chaigaan. Chaigaan had the same build and broad cheekbones as his father. Roh had heard all but seven of the Patron’s sons were dead at the hands of the invaders. He wondered why this one was spared. Because he was a sanisi?

  “You did not choose the prettiest of the dancers this year, Abas,” Chaigaan said. “I always thought Mhor the prettiest.”

  “No,” Abas said, “I chose the best.”

  “We have different tastes,” he said, and laughed.

  The laugh attracted the attention of Maralah and her conversation partner. The sanisi at the Patron’s left glanced back at Roh. There was nothing immediately compelling about him. Next to Maralah, he was dark as fired clay. His lean face was lightly bearded. His eyes were a deep blue-black. A long, paler scar began just behind his left ear and disappeared beneath the collar of his tunic. The hilt of his blooded blade stuck up along his left shoulder. Without his coat on, the black leather sword and daggers were visible on the baldric. This sanisi wore four. With his sword hilt slightly skewed over the shoulder, he could fit two more daggers beneath it, sheathed parallel to the sword. The chairs they sat on were padded stools, backless, to accommodate their weapons.

  Roh chanced a look at the backs of the other sanisi at the high table and saw that they, too, remained armed in the presence of the Patron. They were sworn to the Patron, but to trust all of them, all sixteen, at such a table…. The Patron owned these people: blood, skin, bone.

  The sanisi at the Patron’s left looked once at Roh, dismissive, then turned away. But Maralah gazed long at Roh. Her flat, squashed nose looked as if it had been broken many times.

  “Surely this isn’t one of our scholars?” she said.

  Roh felt like one of the servants, one of the women standing behind him; completely visible, displayed overtly, an interesting possession.

  “It is,” the Patron said.

  “You are using him most… wisely,” she said.

  “He is Ora Dasai’s assistant,” the Patron said, and to Roh it sounded as if he was trying to justify himself. “Rohinmey Tadisa Garika. Rohinmey, this is Shao Maralah Daonia, Blue-Blade Soul Stealer and Sword of Albaaric. Beside her is, Ren Kadaan Soagan, Shadow of Caisau.”

  Roh stared at Kadaan, who had emptied a glass of wine and now turned back to Roh and the Patron.

  “Rohinmey?” Kadaan said. “A soft, Dhai name, and a mouthful. I think their names get longer over the centuries, as they look to configure new ones.”

  Maralah turned away from Roh, another dismissal. “Perhaps each time they eat one of their dead, they add a name,” she said, and laughed. She seemed a little drunk.

  “Nearly as grotesque as Dorinahs,” Kadaan said. He picked up another glass of wine, turned, eyed Roh. Kadaan dipped a finger into his wine cup. “Tell me, what does that mean, your name? Rohinmey. What does that mean, in Dhai?”

  Roh hesitated. Abas and the Patron and his son watched them with amusement. Maralah turned to her other dinner companion, and said something that made him snort.

  “I would ask you what Kadaan meant,” Roh said, “but I’ve done my studying.”

  “Have you? I’ve never met a dancer with a mind that matched his body.”

  “You haven’t met many Dhai,” Roh said.

  “I’ve killed a great many Dhai,” Kadaan said. “You all look the same.”

  “I’ve killed a great many bugs,” Roh said. “It doesn’t mean I understand them any better.”

  Maralah coughed into her glass and shook her head. “They don’t know, Kadaan.”

  “Don’t they?” Kadaan frowned. “I suppose that’s wise.”


  “What don’t I know?”

  “You know little of… death,” Kadaan said.

  “Death is less extraordinary than a sanisi would have people believe.”

  Kadaan finally chuckled. “I tire of foreigners cluttering our table.”

  Roh sat back, only a little wounded. He looked longingly down at the table where his friends sat. Luna and Kihin were lost in conversation. Aramey and one of the Saiduan scholars were locked in a heated discussion. Only Chali appeared melancholy. He brooded over his clean plate and empty liquor glasses. After a moment, he caught Roh’s look, and smiled wanly.

  Roh saw someone moving behind Chali, a spry man with dark hair and a pinched face. He was not a Saiduan, from the look of his tawny skin and small stature; he looked like a Dhai. He did not have the shaved head of a slave, though he wore a short coat and trousers as the slaves did. Roh saw more movement at the corner of his eye. Another man, similar to the first, walked along the opposite wall. Roh had not noticed them during the dance. Seeing those two, he became aware of others - four more ahead of the first, five ahead of the second man on the opposite wall. They walked without any particular urgency, weaving among the slaves, pacing themselves with the ebb and tide of the crowd. They were making their way toward the high table. The other dancers sat around the lower tables, laughing and joking with soldiers and lower-ranking sanisi. No one paid any heed to the men along the walls. Were they some underclass of people Roh hadn’t seen before? One he hadn’t read about?

  Kadaan was looking at him again. The first of the unknown men reached either end of the high table. Kadaan followed Roh’s stare, and said, “What are you looking at, boy?”

  “Those men,” Roh said. “Who are they?”

  “Which men?” Kadaan asked.

  “The ones there,” Roh said, and pointed. He felt a chill along his spine. “Don’t you see them?”