“To test your spell on.”
Mirei almost swallowed her tongue. “I’m not going to experiment on some helpless Cousin.”
Eyes wide in puzzlement, Hyoka said, “Why not? Who else are you going to experiment on?”
“Me,” Ashin said, with the same confident blandness she had used before.
“But you’re a witch,” Hyoka said. “And a Key. What if it goes wrong?”
Ashin shrugged. “Then it goes wrong. I’m volunteering.”
Mirei didn’t much want to lose Ashin, but she hoped not to lose anybody. And no way in the Void did she want to conscript somebody who wasn’t even a part of this. “If you can find another volunteer, I’ll use her. But no Cousins. We can’t even be sure it would work on one of them the same as it would work on a witch. And I need to know if I can move a witch.”
Unsurprisingly, there were no other volunteers. Hyoka looked ill at the thought of using a Key as the first subject of this experiment, but Ashin was doing a good enough job of projecting an assured demeanor that the other theory witches gathered in the room were willing to let it happen. Satomi and her fellow Primes watched in silence. And if you don’t look too closely at them, you won’t even notice how tense they are.
Before Satomi had begun sending Mirei out on diplomatic missions, the translocation room had been where the theorists observed her casting the spell, so they could see how it worked. It was a long hall, and she’d blinked from one end of it to the other more times than she could count, performing obediently—if grudgingly—on command. Now they would repeat the process, but with a new twist.
“Do you want to send her alone, or try to take yourself and her both?” Rigai asked, since Hyoka was exhibiting less than the usual enthusiasm for this latest trick.
Mirei glanced at Ashin. The other woman shrugged. She was as far from a theorist as it was possible to get. “Together, I think,” Mirei said. “I’d rather pull her through with me than go flinging her around without a chaperone.”
They stationed themselves at one end of the long room, and Mirei took Ashin’s hands. “You sure you want to do this?” she asked in a low voice.
Ashin gave her a strangely blissful smile, and Mirei realized with a jolt of fear that she’d seen that look before. When she was Miryo and Mirage, and Ashin told them she was confident they’d find an answer to the problem of doppelgangers.
It was the look of faith that was perhaps a little too trusting.
Goddess, Mirei prayed, Warrior, whose Void we’re about to go dancing through—please let me not be about to kill her.
Then she looked down at their hands. Okay, first hurdle. How do I do the movements while holding on to her? I’m pretty sure I want to hold on.
Maybe those bizarre exercises with the doppelgangers and witch-students would be good for something after all.
“Let’s try it like the girls do in practice,” Mirei said to the Key. “I need to move to cast this, and I don’t want to lose contact with you, so give me your hands. I’ll push or pull to show you where to go. Okay?”
Ashin nodded.
Mirei closed her eyes and centered herself, then began.
She did it more slowly than normal; tempo wasn’t a factor in spells. They could be rattled out in mere heartbeats when under attack, or stretched out into ritual choruses with long, sustained notes. What mattered was the flow, the relative durations of the notes, the way the parts compared to each other. She wanted to be sure she did this right, and so she sang slowly.
And moved slowly, guiding Ashin as she did, the two of them performing an odd, improvised dance at one end of the long room, with the power building around them, a blend of all five Elements, but most of it Void power that Ashin couldn’t even feel—
The spell ended, and they were pulled into the Void.
IT WAS AS IF MIREI’S EARS had popped, as if she’d been deaf and then suddenly could hear again. One minute, the concluding note of her spell; the next, Ashin’s screams.
The Key’s hands pulled free of hers before she could stop them, but it was all right; they were back in the room, at the far end, and Ashin looked like she was in one piece, even if she had crumpled into a huddle on the floor, hands clutching her head.
But she kept screaming.
There was a generalized stampede in their direction, theory witches racing over to offer help or ask technical questions, depending on their bent. But Satomi must have begun moving to that end of the room before the spell was even done, because she was there before anyone else.
She took Ashin in her arms, a rare gesture, and began soothing her. “It’s all right, it’s all right—you’ve felt it before. It’s all right. I wondered if this would happen.”
The words penetrated the headache and dizziness that had overtaken Mirei with the conclusion of the spell. “If what would happen?”
From where she knelt on the floor, holding the slowly calming Ashin, Satomi looked up at Mirei. “Do you remember your test?”
Vividly; it had ended in the most excruciating pain she’d ever experienced, far surpassing even the times when she had died. “I don’t see the connection.”
“The trial of Void,” Hyoka said, having arrived at their sides. Understanding was dawning in her eyes. “We all scream like this.”
“Not this badly,” Mirei said, still unsettled. Ashin had stopped screaming, but her breath was still coming in heaving gasps.
Satomi shook her head. “You weren’t this bad. And neither was I. I should have known your doppelganger was alive, just from that—but I didn’t make the connection.”
Mirei finally saw what the more metaphysically inclined witches had already figured out. “Wholeness of self. That’s what the Void trial tests. What you put us through isn’t actually the Void—”
“But it mimics it,” Satomi said. “I wondered if this would have a similar effect. Do you enjoy translocating?”
“Not exactly. But it’s not bad.”
“Since you are complete. It’s harder on Ashin, it seems. As it would be for the rest of us.”
The various observing witches suddenly looked less interested in this entire experiment, as if afraid they’d be asked to experience it firsthand.
Cousins might do better, then, Mirei thought. Those who weren’t born witches weren’t ever split. I think I’m glad I tried it with Ashin. Better to find this out now then when we showed up in Kalistyi.
Ashin had recovered enough to join the conversation. “This is worse than the test,” she said raggedly, pulling back from Satomi to meet her gaze. Her eyes glittered from the depths of her high-boned face. “I remember it well enough. What you use there is an imitation of the Void. This is the real thing. It’s worse.”
Mirei began calculating whether or not to mention her Cousin theory. She wasn’t sure she wanted them as backup—if she couldn’t have more magic on her side, she’d rather not worry about other people at all—but if Satomi would only let her go if she had company, then it was worth suggesting Cousins.
But Ashin was rising to her feet, refusing all helping hands. She wasn’t quite steady, but she made it. Satomi rose with her. “How bad?” the Void Prime asked.
Ashin didn’t try to quantify the awfulness; she answered the question Satomi was really asking. “I’ll go,” she said. “I may need recovery time on the other side, but we’re jumping to Lyonakh, not directly to Tungral. I can do it.”
Mirei almost asked if she was sure, but if it had been her in Ashin’s place, she would have been insulted by the question. So instead she looked at Satomi. “Aken, I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”
ONLY THE THREE PRIMES were there to see them off.
Koika looked the two women over and finally nodded, looking impressed. “You told the truth about the disguises.”
With the help of tea leaves, Ashin’s hair had darkened to a brown that looked more appropriate to her dark eyes. Not that anyone could see much of it; it was braided tightly to her scalp and mostly co
vered by an embroidered kerchief Mirei had commandeered from an elderly witch who had spent most of her active years in Kalistyi. Carefully applied cosmetics downplayed Ashin’s bone structure and gave her a sallow, pinched look.
Mirei’s hair was also brown, but its length had posed a problem. There were no good wigs at Starfall— nothing she would trust to withstand even a minute’s encounter with anyone—and short hair on a woman was rarely found outside of Hunters, mercenaries, and guards.
So she’d decided to be a man instead. She wasn’t a very large man, but her tough build helped sell the image, and her breasts were small enough to bind flat easily. Men’s clothing was in shorter supply in Starfall, but Mirei had decided they would be vagrants looking for work; some practical clothing from the Cousins, strategically frayed and rubbed with dirt, suited the image. And vagrants were expected to look patched and makeshift; the lack of properly Kalistyin styles wouldn’t be noticeable.
Mirei didn’t like having her weapons stuffed into a bundle of oddments and rags, inaccessible if she should happen to need them, but the disguise would keep them safer than her blades would. The main lack was horses. Not for the Ladyship of an entire domain would she attempt translocating those with them, not to mention that vagrants rich enough to ride would look odd.
“I don’t think I need to give you specific instructions,” Satomi said. “You know the situation as well as we do, and you know what we want to accomplish and avoid. As for how you’ll carry it out, you’ll have to decide that as it happens.” She smiled at both of them, but especially at Mirei. “Fortunately, you’re well-qualified for that kind of responsibility. So I’ll merely remind you to be cautious, and promise that we will pray for your success.”
“Thank you, Aken,” the two chorused, and repeated their thanks as Koika and Rana added their own well-wishes.
Ashin shouldered the bundle; Mirei didn’t want to try to work the spell movements with it getting in the way. Straightening from picking it up, Ashin caught her eye and grinned. “No, I’m not reconsidering. Cast the spell.”
Mirei swallowed the question unasked, grinned back, and did.
Chapter Fifteen
ONCE MIREI AND ASHIN WERE GONE, Satomi went to her office and tried to get work done. Her mind kept wandering, though, ricocheting endlessly between the problem of Eikyo and the question of what was happening in Kalistyi. Two days yet, before Mirei and Ashin were supposed to meet Kekkai. She had to be patient. What was she going to do about Eikyo and the Cousins if they’d discovered her ruse? Soon a message appeared on one of her many sheets of enchanted paper: Falya’s description of Lyonakh was good, and Mirei and Ashin had arrived safely. Satomi exhaled a sigh of relief, and tried to make herself concentrate on other things.
The question she and Koika had debated privately was, why did Kekkai want to leave? And why so abruptly? Koika pointed to that as a sign that this was a trap; Satomi wasn’t so sure. It might be that Kekkai had asked Arinei or Shimi about Tari’s assassination, and that the response she had received had so appalled her that she felt the need to leave. Or that asking had led to a confrontation that made her fear that her life was in danger. It had to be something extreme; less than a day had passed between their secret conversation and the arrival of the note.
I should have tested whether Mirei could take multiple people with her, Satomi fretted, pacing her office. Unpleasant as the experience seems to be, she would be safer with a larger guard. Her one comfort was that, if it was a trap, Ashin knew full well that she had better sacrifice her own life to save Mirei’s. The Key had seemed insulted that Satomi thought it even had to be said.
Ruriko knocked at the door, then came in. “Aken, Tajio would like to speak with you.” Casting an ironic eye at the untouched stacks of paper on Satomi’s desk, and then at the Prime, standing next to the window with her fingers twisted together, she added, “If you’re not occupied with something else.”
Sometimes Ruriko knew her too well. But Satomi welcomed the distraction from her worries. “Send her in.”
Tajio entered and bowed. She was a fairly young witch who had come to the Void Head after Satomi left her position as Key to become Prime. Satomi recognized her, mostly by her hooked, prominent nose, but didn’t know her well. One of Hyoka’s research group. But not here because of that, or Hyoka would have come.
“Aken,” the witch said, straightening from her bow. “I wanted to speak to you about the doppelgangers.”
The word was an effective distraction. “Oh?” Satomi said, crossing the room and seating herself behind her desk.
“I was wondering who’s overseeing their training, with Mirei and Ashin gone.”
Satomi hadn’t given it any thought. “They still have their lessons.”
“I meant their physical training. I assume their morning work with the Cousins is continuing. But has anyone planned to take up their afternoon practices?”
“Not as far as I’m aware,” Satomi said. “We don’t have anyone qualified. The training Mirei’s been giving them is not like the Cousins’.”
Tajio nodded. “Of course, Aken, we don’t have anyone with Mirei’s skills. But I thought someone might at least oversee the practices, the way Ashin does, and make sure the girls keep on with their work. That wouldn’t take much expertise. From what I’ve heard, they’re eager to practice; it shouldn’t be hard to keep them at it. And I expect Mirei would prefer for them not to be left at loose ends while she’s gone.”
“She won’t be gone more than a few days,” Satomi said absently, reviewing in her mind the roster of witches who had taken up various teaching tasks, wondering who could be spared for those hours.
Tajio’s voice broke into her thoughts. “If it’s not presumptuous of me, Aken, I’d be willing to take on that task.”
Satomi glanced up at her where she stood before the desk, hands clasped demurely behind her back. “I thought you were working with Hyoka.”
“I am, but she can spare me.”
It was an elegant solution. Satomi nodded. “Very well. Tell Hyoka, and ask Ruriko to give you the doppelgangers’ schedule. Just make sure they do their usual practices; don’t try to add or change anything.”
“Of course not,” Tajio said, and bowed again. “Thank you, Aken.”
LATER THAT MORNING Satomi had her usual meeting with Nae, which of late had been more than usually tense.
The business they handled in these meetings was a routine that had remained essentially unchanged since Satomi took the office of Void Prime; for all she knew, it hadn’t substantially changed in the last few centuries. Primes and Cousins might come and go, but the task of keeping people fed and clothed remained the same.
Today, she could hardly keep her mind on the matter, and when it was done, she spoke impulsively to the old Cousin.
“Nae,” she said, “if I should ever . . . give offense . . .”
The Cousin waited impassively for her to finish, face no more expressive than a rock.
Satomi couldn’t bring herself to admit her charade with Eikyo. Not directly. She tried another tack. “My hopes have always been for good relations between witches and Cousins,” she said. “I hope I have done well. But if there is anything more I can do—some boon I can grant you, that would better your lives—then you have but to ask.”
She said it on instinct, and for a moment she hoped that she might finally get some reaction from Nae.
But the old woman merely nodded, said “Thank you, Aken,” and departed. Leaving Satomi wondering whether she had just made matters worse or better.
WITH ALL THE DEMANDS on Satomi’s time, her day was scheduled from the moment she woke up until the moment she fell asleep, and no one got in to see her without going through Ruriko first. So she was startled to hear the door open and see, not her secretary, but Nenikune.
Nenikune, her normally rosy face white and sick, and marked with tears.
Satomi rose to her feet and moved swiftly around to the front of her desk. “W
hat’s wrong?”
The head of Starfall’s healers sank into a chair without asking permission. She was blinking rapidly, as if trying to stop fresh tears. “Anness—”
The two-year-old doppelganger had suffered a bout of sickness the previous night; Nenikune had brought her into the infirmary for care. “What happened?” Satomi whispered.
The healer looked up, devastation in her eyes. “She’s dead.”
Dead. But she was a doppelganger. She’d died before, when her mother tried to sacrifice her as was custom, and then had come back to life, because she shared a soul with Chanka. She would come back again.
“She wasn’t sick,” Nenikune whispered. “It was Chanka. They put her through the ritual. Two years old, and they opened her to power. It killed her—her and Anness both.”
Satomi’s own knees gave out; she barely reached a chair in time. Chanka was in Kalistyi. Captured by Shimi’s people, along with several doppelgangers. They couldn’t kill the doppelgangers while their witch-halves were safe at Starfall—but Chanka was not safe.
“She’s two years old,” Satomi whispered, unable to believe it.
Nenikune nodded, mute.
It was unforgivable. Whatever Shimi thought of the doppelgangers—this had to have been her idea—killing a child, someone that young and helpless . . .
A cold voice in the back of Satomi’s mind murmured, Can you use this against her?
Satomi’s stomach heaved in revulsion at the thought. To sit here, with two children dead, and think about using it for political gain . . . and yet she had to. It was one thing for Shimi to fight against the changes that had come to Starfall. But if she was willing to go this far, then Satomi had to stop her, and sooner rather than later. Before she could find a way to kill the rest of the children, too.
And she knew, with icy clarity, that Kekkai had better have been honest in asking for help. Because if the Key was lying, and was captured anyway, then she would find no mercy here in Starfall.
CONSTANT TENSION HAD WORN AWAY at Eclipse; between a lack of appetite and a disinclination to train, he’d lost more than a little weight. If he really wanted to pretend that he was going to kill Mirei, he knew he should throw himself into practice, to build himself back up again. But there were other things occupying his time.
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