Empire Ascendant

by Kameron Hurley

  She needed Rajavaa – the man of war – whole, no matter the cost. She needed him put back together before her people turned on her, and the false dream that she’d brought with her, only to discard as war devoured them.

  As a child, she yearned for control over the petty wars and local government squabbles that rolled through her village. Now that she ostensibly controlled it all, she had never felt so out of control. Huge forces moved around her, threatening to swallow far more than just a village.

  She tugged at the threads of the ward that bound Taigan to her, murmuring a litany, and activated the ward she’d seared into his flesh the day he betrayed Alaar. A simple ward, sent into fiery motion with the barest hint of Sina’s breath, was all she had now in its decline. No more waiting on messages, hoping for clear harbors. Driaa’s message had been very blunt:

  Put this house in order, or someone else will.

  She called Taigan home.

  13

  The Oras confronted Ahkio as he stepped back into the banquet hall from the gardens. He came up short. The air was heavy, like milk. He wore no weapon, and he was alone. He took a deep breath and looked into their faces. There were six of them, all his most trusted Oras – Shanigan the mathematics teacher, Elder Ora Masura of Tira’s temple, his third cousins Naori and Jakobi, Ohanni the dancing teacher, and a young novice, newly raised, named Silafa Emiri Pana, who wasn’t much older than he was.

  The heavy air, and the look on their faces, gave him pause. “Go ahead then,” Ahkio said. “I hope you’re prepared for the consequences.” He braced himself for a gifted assault.

  Shanigan shook his balding head, looking confused. “We’re here about Ora Almeysia,” he said.

  Ahkio let out a breath. “What about her?”

  “We want to know what happened to her,” Jakobi said. Her voice squeaked when she said it, and Naori gave her a look, as if her fear had endangered their cause.

  “That’s something you should ask Nasaka,” Ahkio said.

  “We have,” Masura said. She had, of course, been drinking, but she was not as yet drunk, best Ahkio could tell.

  “We found her body in the Fire River while you were in Kuallina,” Jakobi blurted. “She was killed by the gifted arts. A murder after–”

  “After all that death in Raona,” little Ohanni said.

  There was a long silence. All but Masura had fought beside him there.

  “Come upstairs,” Ahkio said. “We need privacy.”

  The seven of them met in the Assembly Chamber. Ahkio asked after Caisa, but no one could find her. He worried that she had run, but pursuing her now when he had this chance to rally these Oras would be foolish.

  After ensuring the door was closed to the hall and his own chambers, Ahkio faced the six of them at the broad table and said, “I mean to exile Nasaka, but I need a solid reason. We all know she took Almeysia into her custody, and while we were in Raona she worked here against me. I can’t tell you how I know that. I have no proof of it. But if we are going to root her out and any other against us here in the temple, I need your help.”

  “The emissary?” Ohanni asked. “If there’s peace with the shadow people maybe this won’t be necessary.”

  “They aren’t offering peace,” Ahkio said. “They’re offering to accept our surrender. That isn’t the same thing.”

  Masura stood. “I’m sorry, Kai, I can’t be part of this meeting.”

  “Why?”

  “I just cannot,” she said, and stumbled from the room.

  The others looked after her. “Are you all so fearful of Nasaka?” he asked.

  Jakobi fidgeted. “She is a powerful Ora.”

  “We fought Tai Mora,” Ahkio said. “She’s no more terrifying.”

  “There’s legal precedent,” Shanigan said. “Etena, your aunt, was exiled.”

  “Can we prove Nasaka is mad?” Ohanni asked.

  “I intend to find a way,” Ahkio said. “I’ll speak to Masura. But can I rely on all of you for this? We’ve united the country, but the Oras are still divided. As long as Nasaka is here there will be more bodies, more secrets.”

  A knock sounded on the door.

  Caisa peeked her head in. “Apologies Kai, I thought–”

  “No, let’s speak,” Ahkio said. “Excuse me,” he told the room. “Caisa has some information for me about our visitors.”

  He met Caisa in the hall. She made to speak there, but he shook his head and brought her into one of the libraries.

  “You didn’t run,” Ahkio said.

  “Where would I go?” Caisa said.

  Ahkio sat beside her on a hard yellow adenoak chair. The tables at the center of the room were piled with books and papers about governance. He moved toward the papers, wondering if Nasaka was ahead of him again. Was she going to figure out how to exile Ahkio now, after working so hard to get him in the seat? Her motives were inscrutable. She was always ten steps ahead. He rounded on Caisa.

  “So how did you know Hofsha, when you lived among them?”

  Caisa’s face was wet. Her hands were clasped so tightly he wondered she didn’t draw blood. “I served her. There were a lot of us. I wasn’t even sure she’d know me.”

  “Are you hers?”

  She raised her voice. “Did it look like it, Kai? Would I have killed those men, that man you couldn’t kill in Raona, if I had chosen that side? I’ve been here four years, Kai. I don’t know why I could suddenly come over. The wink stays open sometimes, after they leave. I snuck through. It was a long time ago. I’ve always been yours.”

  “I need information about them.”

  “I don’t have much,” Caisa said. “I wasn’t anyone important. It’s why they didn’t miss me.”

  “Who leads them?”

  “She isn’t your real sister,” Caisa said. “But she has your face, yes. You knew that though, didn’t you?”

  His gut roiled. He remembered his sister on her death bed, reaching for him. She had died so she could choose her heir, but by dying she made it possible for her shadow to come over, and her twin was no less than the empress of the Tai Mora. He was going to have to fight his own sister. Soon.

  What are you willing to sacrifice…?

  “Gaiso is one of her commanders,” Caisa said. “She leads the parajistas. I’ve met Lohin, too. She doesn’t like Lohin much.”

  “She never did,” Ahkio said.

  “She isn’t your Kirana,” Caisa said.

  “What else?” He needed to forget about the betrayal and squeeze her for information. “How large is her army?”

  Caisa looked into her lap again. “Her army is the whole world, Kai. They will come here. They won’t stop. Their world… our world is dying.”

  “Liaro thought you might not be ours, did you know that?” he said. He was angry now, and letting it rule his speech. He tried to rein it in, but his fear of Nasaka and the emissary was getting the best of him.

  “Oma,” she pressed her hands to her face. “Liaro.”

  “You put us all in danger.”

  “I chose my side, Kai. I’m sorry I didn’t do it the way you wanted, or do it bravely. Hofsha hates me. If I was some spy, you think I’d have run off?”

  “I think it best you’re reassigned to another temple,” he said, even as his gut told him that was a terrible idea. He had six – no, five – Oras in the Assembly Chamber he could maybe count on to subvert Nasaka. He needed Caisa.

  “Kai–”

  “Elder Ora Naldri will be happy to take you. You can continue your studies. We’ll need good parajistas on the front lines at the harbor, when that time comes.”

  “Please don’t do this. I’m yours. I promise–”

  “That’s all, Caisa.” He pointed to the hall.

  “Please, Kai… Ahkio, please–”

  “I have too many knives in my back,” he said. “I can’t risk another.”

  “Are you going to tell Liaro?”

  “Is there anything I don’t tell Liaro?”
>
  “Kai? Hofsha would have killed me.”

  “I know,” Ahkio said. “That’s what makes us different. That’s why we’ll win.”

  “The good people don’t always win, Kai.”

  “I know,” he said. He thought of Nasaka.

  * * *

  After dismissing his arguing coterie of Oras from the Assembly Chamber, no closer to a legal solution for his Nasaka problem, Ahkio found Liaro in the bathing room beneath the temple. Ahkio was still exhausted from his ordeal in the heart of the temple. He felt like an old man. The bathing room was relatively quiet. Two small novices shrieked and splashed at the other side of the broad room, but Liaro had a steaming little round pool all to himself. He read over the lip of the pool, some expensive book that Ahkio suspected would be difficult to replace if it fell into the water. That’s the least of my problems, Ahkio thought dully. Steam made a misty blanket across the surface of the water. The whole room was dim, lit by bioluminescent plants and great semi-sentient water lily spiders that glowed blue every time they puffed out their forms in the depths of the pools, filtering the water with every breath.

  “You look especially lovely,” Liaro said, raising his head from the book.

  Ahkio pulled off his clothes and sank into the water beside him. “And you’re especially complimentary. I wonder what you’ve done lately to offend someone,” he said. “You didn’t tell me about Almeysia’s body.”

  “Ah, that,” Liaro said. He closed the book and pushed it far from the edge of the pool. Ahkio glanced at the title. It was a Dorinah romance. “It’s in the notes I made while you were in Liona. I can put them on your desk, Kai, like a good little sparrow.”

  “I asked you to stay here because I trust you.”

  “And I’m glad you trust me, after I hauled you half dead out of the bottom of the temple. You know how stupid that was?

  “You’ve only told me twenty times.”

  “What did their emissary say?”

  “War’s coming if I answer too quickly,” he said.

  “Lovely. Lovely little time we’re having here.” Liaro rested his elbows on the stone rim of the pool behind him. He was thinner than he had been a month ago, his face haggard. Ahkio saw the scars on his torso from that day in Raona when he’d been wounded, tripping and falling on his own weapon. Ahkio might have poked fun at him about it, but he was tired. As tired as Liaro looked.

  “Do you have any good news, then?” Ahkio asked.

  “Well, everyone loves me,” he said, “so it’s been easy to ask around about vacant Ora positions being filled. With so many gone running around the clans playing at fighting with us, it’s opened up a lot of seats.”

  “Nasaka’s council?”

  “Elder Ora Gaiso was replaced by a person named Soruza Morak Sorai. Have you heard of them?”

  “Sorai,” Ahkio muttered. Liaro was using the ungendered Dhai pronoun in reference to Soruza, which narrowed down the number of people it could be. Ahkio went through the list of Mohrai’s kin in his head. Soruza, ungendered, an Ora – sibling to Mohrai’s grandmother? “Jista from…?”

  “Temple of Tira,” Liaro said. “One of Elder Ora Masura’s.”

  Ahkio rolled that over. Was Masura his or Nasaka’s or just trying to stay uninvolved? He needed to find out, and soon.

  “A good deal of your mother’s former lovers seem to like you,” Liaro said.

  “I’d call it jealousy, but you know where you stand in my heart.”

  “The left ventricle?”

  Ahkio made an expression that felt more like a grimace than a smile, and let the silence stretch. “I’m going to exile Nasaka. I’ve put things in motion.”

  “That’s… bold. Have you spoken to her since you got back?”

  “No, and I intend to avoid her awhile longer. Her star is descendent, Liaro. If I’m going to move, I must do it now, before this all goes to Sina’s heart. When I reject that emissary’s offer, we’ll be going to war. I want to delay my final answer to her as long as possible. That gives us time to move against Nasaka, clean up any of her appointments, and get the temples in order so we’re strong enough to face the Tai Mora. And I need to… visit the basements again.”

  “No,” Liaro said. He tone was deadly serious.

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Don’t do that again. I won’t go through that shit again,” Liaro said. “You were dead, Ahkio. Barely breathing. A week you laid in a bed. I won’t pull you out again. Whatever’s down there is mad, and it probably killed your sister. What if pitting herself against that thing is what killed her?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Is everything all right, Liaro?”

  “It’s funny, being cousin to the Kai, you know?” he said bitterly. “You’re never sure if someone’s affection is for you, or for the Kai. It’s like you’re the Kai-by-proxy. I’m the dog-faced Kai with the better sense of humor.”

  “Is that so horrible?”

  Liaro flicked water at him. Ahkio forced something more like a smile this time. The novices on the other side of the room had fallen into a panting, giggling embrace. Ahkio couldn’t help but watch them, and long for that kind of carefree afternoon.

  “I can’t lose you, Liaro.”

  Liaro shook his head. “You won’t, I just… this is too big for me, all right? I’m not… some smart hero. I’m just a smart-talking day laborer. That’s all. I wanted a bed full of friends and a drink in my hand. I don’t want this.”

  “I don’t either. But this is what we have.”

  The novices helped each other out of the pool and scurried off to the changing room. Two blue-lit lily spiders surfaced at the center of the pool, expelling their bladders of filtered water, and resubmerged.

  Liaro raised himself out of the pool. He mussed Ahkio’s hair and picked up the Dorinah romance. “I’ll go look in on Soruza for you,” he said, “and tell Caisa to set up a meeting with them tomorrow. As for this thing with Nasaka, and the basements… let’s talk about it later, all right? Preferably with a drink and some bad poetry.”

  Ahkio almost told him, then stopped. Let Caisa tell him. She had at least a week before Ahkio finalized her transfer to Para’s temple. “I’ll be a few more minutes,” Ahkio said.

  Liaro nodded. “You should have given them your clothes,” he said. “They’re going to get wet.” He walked back to the changing rooms.

  But Ahkio wasn’t really listening. He was watching the water lily spiders puffing their way through the water, content in the near stillness of the bathing house. Ahkio lingered there for another half an hour or more, watching the plants surface and dive, surface and dive, over and over again, the program for their behavior written into them from the time they were little seedling embryos growing on their parent’s back. They knew nothing else, no other way to conduct themselves. If Ahkio drained the water from the bathing house, they would flop around on the floor of it until all the water evaporated, and they would die. They could not rewrite what they were.

  He wondered if the world was like that, and the satellites in the sky, running some cosmic program that they were all fated to play out from birth, something Oma infused them with. So the Dhai came around and around and around again, killing other people, killing themselves, a long, unending cycle of violence and renewal.

  It wouldn’t stop until someone drained the pool.

  Who would move first, he wondered, him or Nasaka?

  He knew whose hand would be deadlier.

  14

  Spring in the mountains, like something Zezili had read about as a child – the smell of tree lupins and honeysuckle, wafting on a wind that carried with it the stink of her little army. She got a warm week of that, and then they descended into the Tordinian lowlands on the other side of the pass, hurrying just ahead of a pack of strange animals Zezili had no name for.

  The animals sprang on them their first night in the cold, foggy bottomlands, an attack so fas
t Zezili didn’t have time to pull up her trousers from the pit she was pissing in. She ran into camp with sword in hand, naked ass bared to the cold air. She hacked and slashed. Her blade found purchase. Slid home into some scaly backside. A yelp. Howling.

  Zezili pulled her blade from what looked to be a giant scorpion dog. She had no other name for it. She grimaced and wiped the violet blood on her boot, hoping it wasn’t anything poisonous. Rhea’s tears, how did anyone put up with living in such a vile place?

  The dogs took two of her women, and badly mauled another, so savagely Zezili suspected she’d die of the wounds. But leaving her there would be bad for morale, and sending her back with a couple of others would mean losing three women instead of one. So they pushed on, carrying her at the back of the train on a muddy litter.

  “We’re leaving the lowlands,” Jasoi said from her mount at Zezili’s side.

  Zezili glanced over at her. The fog was lifting. Jasoi’s expression was, as ever, blasé. She was smeared in scorpion dog blood from head to foot. The first slash of open water they found, Zezili wanted a dunk, no matter how cold. Her skin itched.

  “You all right with being in Tordin?” Zezili asked. She’d asked before they started, but suspected the answer she might give in Dorinah would be different than one back on the turf of the place she’d grown up.

  “Saradyn burned down my mother’s farm,” Jasoi said. “I’ve got no quarrel with burning down a few of his.”

  “Going to be more than a few farms.”

  Jasoi spit. She was chewing on some bit of bonsa sap. “Better than gutting chattel.”

  “Yes, the dajians were a nasty business.”

  “You think she’s going to kill the rest? Have someone else do it, now we’re gone?”

  “I don’t know,” Zezili said. “I’m not sure our… agreement with the Tai Mora is still on.”