The Mirror Empire

by Kameron Hurley

  “Many things can happen to a man on the road.”

  “My husband is loyal. He meant to meet me here. If he’s not here, it’s possible he’s on the other side, isn’t it?”

  “Many things are possible. But why would you think that?”

  “He… there was an incident at our house. I thought it meant nothing at the time. Thought it was some trick. But maybe, with all these people showing these gifts now… maybe he opened a door by accident.”

  “Ah,” Isoail said. “That is… something.”

  “Have you ever tried to go to the other side, through one of these doors?”

  “I’m more than a double channeler,” Isoail said. “I thought for a good long time that’s all I was, until I saw the disturbances here. I could see them – the red breath of Oma. I shouldn’t have been able to.”

  “Triple? Ha. End times, indeed. I can fairly feel the fiery eye of Rhea.”

  “Who can say what will be rare in a year’s time? Maybe all jistas will be able to call on Oma, in addition to their ascendant star. We don’t know. Oma hasn’t risen in two thousand years. Everything is strange now.”

  “You figured out how to open the gate.”

  “Yes. I tried to copy some of the patterns I saw on the lake. But it always opened to the same place, some blasted vista, and I could never pass through. It was like trying to get through a window made of steel.”

  Zezili nodded. Isoail did have a double, then. Someone on the other side, possibly building that mirror? And if Anavha was there, too… She took another drink. Saw the head stamped on Monshara’s coin again. Monshara had lost her world and become a frightened tool, but Zezili was no one’s slave.

  “So you can open a door on your own,” Zezili said.

  Isoail looked away, to the window where they had watched the creature from the other side. “Ryyi Tulana has been very careful about revealing the existence of omajistas in Dorinah. She feared panic.”

  “And when you opened the gate?”

  “Lives were lost,” she said, “beyond the lives we spent just getting it open. We thought the art lost, but interrogations of some of the subjects who’ve come over have helped speed our search. What are you getting at?”

  “There are things coming into this world that shouldn’t,” Zezili said. “You know that. You see it. I think there’s an easier way to stop them besides just pulling wreckage from a lake, or murdering dajians at their order.”

  “If you’re about to talk treason, I won’t hear it.”

  “Not at all,” Zezili lied. “Have you ever built an infused mirror? One as big as a building?”

  “That would be something,” she said, “but no.”

  “If you had, could you destroy it?”

  “Destroy an infused mirror?” Isoail said. “Yes. You unravel the pattern. Each channeler has a distinctive pattern. I’d know if it was mine.”

  “My mother said you’re the best at what you do,” Zezili said. “The best in Dorinah at making infused mirrors. So if we apply this double logic here, that means your twin over there, she’s probably going to be good at building mirrors, right?”

  Isoail shook her head. “That’s a large stretch. I can’t cross over anyhow. And I suspect you’re pushing treason.”

  “I received a letter from Syre Kakolyn,” Zezili said. “You’ve heard of her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know what the Empress has her doing?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “Purging Seekers from Dorinah. Seekers like you. She cleared Tulana and Sokai and the rest from the Seeker Sanctuary.”

  “That’s madness. We’re her best defense against them.”

  “You can check out that story,” Zezili said, and stood. “Then if you want to help me, you let me know. I leave in the morning, but I’ll be at a camp in Aloerian for a week or so, if you want to join me.”

  “The Empress would never –”

  “I didn’t think she’d wipe out two million dhorins worth of slaves, either,” Zezili said. “It sounded fine, at first, but the more you think about it, the more the whole thing unravels. The Empress is planning something with these strangers, something that isn’t meant to benefit Dorinah.”

  “If you mean to betray –”

  “I don’t,” Zezili said, and she found the conviction in her own voice very comforting. “Ask about your Seeker Sanctuary. Ask where your friends are now.”

  Zezili went to bed. She lay awake for hours, staring at the spiders crawling across the ceiling, each as big as her palm. She should have known Isoail would have a living double on the other side. If she couldn’t destroy the mirror, perhaps she could still help Zezili find Anavha. They could open a door here, and Zezili could spend… how long? How long would she look for him, before her Empress gave her up for dead or had her friends over there murder her for treason?

  No. If she went out now, she needed to take something with her.

  When she finally slept, Zezili dreamed Anavha was scratching on the door, his head covered in a hood of fine spiders’ silk. When she woke, a hooded form stood over her. Fear seized her. She grabbed the sword next to her bed.

  Isoail threw back the hood of her coat. She looked pale and distraught in the early morning light.

  “They took that girl to the camps this morning,” she said. “and brought me a message by sparrow, from the Sanctuary. It had died on the way. A tirajista with the enforcers kept it in tissue paper.”

  “And?”

  “I want to know what the Empress really has planned for us.”

  “I thought you might,” Zezili said. “But if we’re going to destroy the new world they’re building, we need to figure out how to get there.”

  “How would I know where this mirror is?”

  “You don’t have to know. I know where it is.”

  “Do you?”

  “Right here,” Zezili said. “You said you always open a door to the same place? You say the easiest place to come through is here? Maybe the easiest place for you to build a gate to over there is the best place for them to put a mirror, too.”

  “That is a great leap in logic.”

  “I’m full of leaping, today. But the bigger question is how we get you over there. I can’t unravel anything.”

  “We don’t have to get me over,” Isoail said.

  “Why not?”

  “The girl,” Isoail said.

  “What, from last night? What about her?”

  “The girl could break the mirror, if she knew the pattern.”

  “Why?”

  “She may not be my daughter here, but there… well. I went over our conversation many times last night. You believe my double made the mirror. If that’s so, I can untangle it. And so can a very close blood relation, if they are gifted and know the pattern I used to create it. Sometimes they are able to see the pattern and unravel –”

  Zezili threw off her blankets. The room was cold. “Let’s get her, then.”

  “We can’t,” Isoail said.

  “What do you mean? She’s in the next room!”

  “I told you. The enforcers came for her this morning, before I woke. That was six hours ago. I don’t know where they took her. There are eight camps between here and the mountains.”

  Zezili grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and grunted. Isoail could open the gate. The little dajian could destroy the mirror. And Zezili could use the ensuing chaos to find Anavha. Rhea had handed it to her all in one night, and she’d tossed it away.

  Zezili stood. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m purging every last one of those camps in the coming weeks,” Zezili said. “The girl’s bound to be in one of them.”

  Zezili swept into Monshara’s tent completely sober. She was cold, but already had her helm under her arm and her gloves off. It showed a measure of trust, she thought.

  Monshara stood bent over a field table with a steaming cup of tea clasped in her hands. He
r hair was knotted atop her head in a loose tangle. A heavy woolen scarf that had once been blue and was now a washed-out gray swaddled her neck. If she was surprised at Zezili’s appearance, she did not show it.

  “I expect the purging of the last camp went well,” Zezili said.

  “Has your husband been rounded up and whipped? I understand that’s your way.”

  “It’s cultural, not personal.”

  “Indeed. Your desertion was reported.”

  “You knew where I was, and why. We share command. I answer only to the Empress.”

  “She isn’t pleased. Nor is the woman I answer to.”

  “I’ve spoken with my Empress personally,” Zezili lied. “She understands.” She pulled a piece of paper from her belt and unfolded it on the table. It was a rough sketch of the girl from the lake. Isoail knew an artist in the neighboring town who created it based on their shared memory. She’d passed it on to enforcement offices along the way, but to the enforcers, every dajian looked alike. “She’s asked me to find a dajian thought to be hiding in one of these final camps. We’ll need to circulate this before we run each purge.”

  Monshara set down her tea and squinted at the page. “What’s she done?”

  “I didn’t ask. You and I only follow orders, remember?”

  Monshara leaned toward her. “If you think I’ll forget your desertion –”

  Zezili thumped her helm on the table. Planted her hands before her, and leaned in as well, so their faces were a hands breadth apart. “If you think you’re my superior, you’re sorely mistaken,” she said. “My business is my own and I answer only to the Empress of Dorinah. My Empress. So watch your tone, and do as she tells you.”

  Zezili snapped up the page and her helm. She walked out.

  Monshara called after her, “Don’t think that’s the end of this, Zezili.”

  “We have a lot of killing to do,” Zezili called over her shoulder, and slid her helm back on. “Best give your full attention to that.”

  She had two full weeks, she guessed, before Monshara confirmed her story was hash. What happened when she found out, well...the world was ending anyway, wasn’t it?

  36.

  “I should have told them the boy could see through wards,” Dasai said. He stood on the great wall of Kuonrada and gazed north. The days were getting shorter, and colder. He huddled in a thick coat, but his feet were cold and his knees ached. It had been months since he woke without pain. He was a hundred and twenty-eight years old, and felt a hundred and fifty.

  “Not even the boy knew,” Nioni said. “It was still best left unspoken.”

  “There it is,” Dasai said, and pointed to the shimmering amber blur in the sky. A flash, a moment, and it was gone. The wrong color for the northern lights.

  “I thought it would be more dramatic,” Aramey said. He sat next to Nioni on the cold stone of the ramparts.

  Dasai had yet to find another part of the hold where he felt he could speak freely. Most of the hold’s lookouts staffed the great spiraling thorn of the watchtower that grew from the center of the hold. Even so, he’d had Nioni construct an air bubble around them here to muffle sound. He had spent much of his youth in Saiduan. It’s why his bones hurt so much now.

  “In a few weeks the snow will be bad enough that it will be too late to send the boys home,” Nioni said. “We should do it now, before the Patron takes any more interest in how Rohinmey or any of the rest of us fit in his wider campaign. I’m dying, but these boys have their whole lives ahead.”

  “I know you meant to protect him, Ora Dasai,” Aramey said, “but this much interest could harm him. And us.”

  “If things go badly here, the Patron’s interest in that boy may save him,” Dasai said. “Rohinmey is many things, but not stupid. You see how much he impressed those sanisi? They are taken with him. If they love him, they love us. It’s relationships that save us, in the end. If I have to manipulate people to achieve that, I will.”

  “You need to tell him,” Aramey said.

  “I will discuss Rohinmey’s ability with him,” Dasai said. “He and the boys may require it on the way home. I admit I wished his brother had the talent he has. Ora Chali has a less passionate disposition.”

  “That’s not always an asset,” Aramey said.

  Nioni sighed. “Ora Chali has ambitions.”

  “I wish to see him achieve them,” Dasai said. “So does Ora Nasaka. They must go back.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” Nioni said.

  “Not until we’ve prepared for our escape north,” Dasai said. “Ora Nasaka trusted my memory of what lies waiting for us in Caisau. Two of my colleagues are already in the city, but we need our sinajista before we proceed. She is at least another week away. We hold until then.”

  “If Rohinmey hadn’t seen those men –” Nioni said.

  “If he had not, we would be dead,” Dasai said, “along with the Patron. Or we’d be sold off among his possessions to his successor. The terror and madness that sweeps across Saiduan when a Patron is killed would have ended our task before it began. Now we can get to Caisau and wake the creature there. We must merely endure more intense scrutiny.”

  “Are we going to tell the boys who the invaders really are?” Nioni said.

  “We continue to do what the Kai sent us to do,” Dasai said. “I made inquiries about the books mentioned in that screed from the Dhai scholar. I have an old colleague who may have found one of them for us. Let’s wait to tell the boys about the invaders. It’s too much.”

  Aramey folded his arms. “We are putting a lot of faith in old books.”

  “All of my faith is in a book,” Dasai said. “The Book of Oma. Books have great power, Aramey.”

  “Only as much as we give them,” Nioni said. “The Saiduan are hoping for a book of miracles.”

  “We may have one,” Dasai said, “but I prefer to keep a number of switches in my basket.”

  “I hope it’s worth sending the boys out for it,” Nioni said. “If they’re caught –”

  “They won’t be caught,” Dasai said. “It’s still festival season. The Saiduan have a festival every week during the winter, even now. Especially now. They have very little to hope for. Sending the boys out to enjoy themselves won’t seem amiss.”

  “I’m just very uncomfortable with this,” Nioni said. “These are Saiduan we’re betraying.”

  “I know that better than anyone,” Dasai said, “But now is a time for calm.” For the second time in as many weeks, he questioned his decision to bring Nioni here. He needed men he could trust who could speak Saiduan, and whose families were large enough that they could afford to lose them. And Nioni was dying of stomach cancer. He would not survive the year. Aramey, his large-hearted husband, had wanted to die with him. Their situation was ideal for his purpose. But he worried they did not have the strength for what needed to be done.

  “We’ll wait,” Aramey said. He pointed to the sky. “I just worry they won’t.”

  Dasai found Kihin and Chali working in the sitting area outside their shared quarters. The group had turned it into a library and study space. Dasai saw stacks of books from the archives on Saiduan culture and ethics, all books the Saiduan librarians only agreed to part with because they had copies.

  “Where’s Rohinmey?” he asked. The slaughter in the banquet hall had occurred the day before, and Roh had been sick most of the night. The endless vomiting told Dasai that the boy’s queasy stomach likely had to do with food poisoning or some stomach ailment instead of fear or visceral terror. He had almost hoped the killing had sobered the boy instead of invigorated him. But he understood the sort of boy Roh was early on. The Kai had not.

  “Still in bed,” Kihin said.

  “Did he eat?”

  “A little. No more vomit.”

  “Good,” Dasai said. He walked to Roh’s room and opened the door, announced himself.

  “I’m awake,” Roh said. He sat on the bottom bunk, huddled close to the fire. Two candles
burned brightly in iron lanterns.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Saiduan stories about the Dhai,” Roh said. “Did you know Grania was once part of the larger land mass of Saiduan? The whole continent stretched unbroken from here down to Hrollief.”

  “I did,” Dasai said.

  “When the breaking came – they called Oma’s rise last time the breaking – it unleashed huge forces across the world. It broke up the whole continent. Imagine how that must have been. It was so powerful it broke continents. There were earthquakes and terrible storms.”

  “Yes,” Dasai said, “and very powerful omajistas who knew that breaking up the continent would break up the Dhai’s line of supply. Not all of these phenomena associated with Oma’s rise are caused by Oma. The gods grant us many gifts, and they guide us on how to use them, but they do not force our hand. They make no moral judgments on the use of those powers. What one woman believes is evil, another thinks is for the greater good of her country.”

  “I just didn’t realize how big Dhai was,” Roh said. “We learn a lot, but not… Not all the things they have here.”

  “There is fear we may become as we once were,” Dasai said. “No one wants us to be those people again.”

  “We would be so powerful –”

  “We would be murderers and dealers in flesh,” Dasai said. He felt his temper flare, and allowed it to cool a moment before continuing. He feared this boy sometimes, feared what someone so passionate, with so much gifted potential, would become. “We have chosen another path.”

  “Sorry,” Roh said.

  “Let me tell you a story about a slave,” Dasai said.

  “Ora Dasai, I’m sorry –”

  “Quiet now. Be respectful for a moment of your exhausting life, please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There was once a Dhai slave owned by the Patron of Saiduan. Not this Patron, but the one four Patrons before this one. He was captured very young, when the fishing boat his mothers took him out on was overtaken. This slave was a dancer like you, and a powerful sinajista. He was so powerful that for much of his life he was paired with a flat-headed slave with greater talent who prevented him from tapping into his full abilities.”