Empire Ascendant

by Kameron Hurley

  Meyna stood. Nasaka watched her, waiting.

  “This won’t end well,” Meyna said.

  “Not for you, no,” Nasaka said. “But I might spare the child.”

  “You wouldn’t harm me. Ahkio will find out. What will happen then?”

  “What makes you think it wasn’t Ahkio who had you put here?”

  Meyna laughed. She threw her head back when she did it, a petty bit of theater that might have fooled a younger woman. But Nasaka saw the fear in her eyes and the slight tremor in her jaw. Meyna was good at games, for a young woman. But they were all games Nasaka had played for far longer, and with much more success.

  “Ahkio is just a boy,” Meyna said, “and only you would tell me to go find his mad Aunt Etena to take his seat.” She stepped forward. “I wonder, Ora Nasaka… what changed? You wanted him to be Kai so badly, but now you want to give it to someone else? Why? Because of me? My child?”

  Nasaka called on Sina; recited the Litany of Breath to call a glimmer of Sina’s power beneath her skin. It was difficult to draw on, now that Sina was descendent, but she noted a subtle shift in the amount she could pull. Sina would come around again, very soon. Nasaka trembled, just a little, in anticipation.

  Meyna kept walking toward her as she spoke. “I bound him to me,” she said. “He’ll walk through fire for me, if I ask it.”

  Nasaka bound the violet mist of Sina into a simple knot, and absently waved her hand, tossing the bundle of violet energy into the straw bundle.

  Meyna leapt at her.

  Nasaka side-stepped her neatly. Caught her by the wrist. Twisted her arm back, pushed her head down. Then she let out her breath, and the violet burst of Sina’s energy exploded. The straw ignited.

  The baby cried.

  Meyna yelled.

  Nasaka released her. Meyna ran to the child, pulling it from the flaming straw. She wrapped the child in her arms and kicked at the flames, throwing bits of burning straw into the air. Nasaka watched it all from the doorway. The child was screaming, screaming, far more than the fire warranted. Fear, not pain.

  Meyna pressed herself into a corner. The air was filled with the smell of burnt straw. Nasaka saw a few errant embers, but didn’t care much for them. There was only so much straw in the room, and certainly not enough to kill Meyna and her child if it all burned up.

  “Don’t think I’m as stupid as he is,” Nasaka said. “I’ve been running this country longer than you’ve been alive, and I’ll go on doing it long after you’re dead.”

  Meyna’s eyes filled, but instead of a sob, she grimaced. The child would not stop screaming. It was starting to rattle Nasaka’s nerves. She stepped out of the cell.

  “Ora Nasaka!”

  Nasaka hesitated; left the door open a few inches.

  Meyna remained in the corner, showing her teeth. The child screamed. Meyna shouted over it. “You don’t deserve this country,” Meyna said. “Neither did Etena.”

  “Nor do you,” Nasaka said. “Ahkio may not have seen through your ploy, but I did. You hoped to set a precedent. Hoped that child would be a way to a seat upstairs. But you will always be a mewling, insignificant little brat from Clan Mutao. A Mutao who will die here, alone and unremembered, unless you do as I say.”

  “Worse people have tried to make me do what they willed,” Meyna said. “You won’t have better luck. My mother said Etena cast herself into Mount Ahya.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  Meyna pulled her child closer. Then, “Give me a bath. Give me a bath, and I’ll tell you. It won’t matter if you find my mother anyway. She’ll never give up Etena.”

  Nasaka nodded. “Fair trade, then,” she said. “I may even give you a clean skirt.”

  Meyna stared into her child’s face.

  Sugar won more often than salt. Nasaka had forgotten that. “I’ll bring you a blanket and clean clothes,” Nasaka said smoothly. “You never did get on with your family, did you? What does it matter if I know where she is?”

  “Bring a map,” Meyna said.

  Nasaka shut the door.

  Elaiko stood outside, hands in the deep pockets of her tunic. “Should I make some tea?” she asked.

  “That would be lovely,” Nasaka said.

  Meyna yelled after them, “My mother will never give Etena up! Not for my life! Not for my child’s! Do you hear that?”

  They started back up through the corridor. There were other rooms here Nasaka had set aside for prisoner interrogations, her own semi-secret gaol, but when she brought in Meyna she had them cleared out, including Almeysia. She had found out enough about Almeysia to know that the one they had wasn’t theirs anyway. She was some agent of the Tai Mora’s, sent here for a dark purpose that Nasaka still wasn’t certain about. Almeysia would not speak for sugar or salt.

  Only six people knew Meyna was here, and that was three too many for Nasaka’s comfort. Already the temple was taking sides – her against Ahkio. But she was not fool enough to move her hand until she had Etena. Ahkio should have just let her be, but things were too far gone now. She needed someone she controlled who could get into those basements. Ahkio was turning into something else. If she could not control him, she could not protect him. She mourned that.

  “Has there been progress on Yisaoh?” Elaiko asked. “I know you had someone looking for her.”

  “Too inquisitive for your own good.”

  “Just looking to stay on top of things. We’ve had… some unfortunate incidents in Garika. And they are not improving.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Of course.”

  Nasaka kept the silence as they ascended into the upper tiers of the temple. Two barred and sealed doors – sealed by both sinajista and tirajista traps, just in case. Nasaka had always appreciated Elaiko’s silence. She had a gift for understanding when it was appropriate to speak, and when it was not, a virtue Nasaka did not often find in young people.

  They walked up into the hall outside the bath house, one story below the temple proper, and five floors above the gaol.

  “I have an errand,” Nasaka said. “Meet me in my study. An hour, perhaps. After your prayers.”

  “Of course. I’ll bring the tea.”

  It did help that Elaiko could make a very good cup of tea.

  Nasaka crossed through the Temple of Oma, and started up the grand stairway. Nasaka went up five flights to the guest quarters. Most guests were kept on the second and third floors; only Dhai were permitted up further. But in this instance, well... Nasaka supposed her guest more or less counted.

  She knocked on a banded door of amber wood.

  “Do enter!”

  Nasaka pushed open the door.

  A slim young woman stood silhouetted in the great window looking out over the brilliant green expanse of the Pana Woodlands. Her hair was chopped and crimped into some odd Dorinah style, as if attacked with a razor and burnt. Her grin split her face.

  “Greetings, Ora Nasaka, on this fine morning!”

  “Good morning, Sai Hofsha,” Nasaka said. “I’m sorry this has all taken so much longer than you anticipated.”

  It still unnerved her, how much Tai Mora like Hofsha looked like Nasaka’s own people. Clearly, their manners and postures were foreign, but in profile, at first glance, Hofsha could have been some Sorila businesswoman come to talk about tariffs.

  Hofsha’s grin never wavered. “That’s no matter,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll come to his senses in time. They always do. Generally.” She gestured back to the window. “Has that woodland always been so dangerous?”

  “It’s the world Faith Ahya and Hahko recorded when they first crossed over from Dorinah,” Nasaka said. “It has not changed much in all that time.”

  “We burned ours out,” Hofsha said.

  “I expected no less.”

  Hofsha picked up a hat from the bed. “Come, give me a tour of the temple,” she said. “My Kai has asked me to begin assigning quarters for her people. It won’t be long now.”


  18

  Ahkio told no one when he went to visit the heart of the temple again, despite the known danger. Liaro had told him the stone was broken, so what was the harm? After two weeks in the temple, watching Hofsha stride about the grounds as if she already owned the place, he was running out of reasons to put her off. A few days before, he had seen Nasaka escorting Hofsha around the temple, showing her every room like she was a loved and respected guest. He spent most of his days talking over paper, and he was tired of his own inaction. He needed the temple keeper’s advice. He needed to know what had happened to Almeysia. He needed to understand Nasaka’s plan for the temple, and how he would subvert it, and his Oras were too often bickering with one another to provide him many answers.

  He waited until he had sent Liaro on various errands, and Caisa was safely off at the Temple of Para. The only one who questioned where he was on occasion was Masura, who had taken up residence in the temple sometime after his ascension and had simply never left. When he asked Una why she tarried here, Una admitted that Masura had stepped down in all but name from her duties as Elder Ora of the Temple of Tira. He heard little from the harbor in all that time. Mohrai sent a missive that Lilia and the sanisi had arrived at the harbor and discussed strategy, but gave no details. He suspected that was prudent. Not even he knew how many in the temple were trustworthy. They were engaged in delay just as he was. Delaying the inevitable.

  He visited the heart of the temple the second time in the midafternoon as a heavy thunderstorm rolled in over the plateau. Novices and drudges rushed throughout the temple, shuttering windows and doors against the storm’s incursion.

  Ahkio moved from this eerie darkness to the black basements, and put his hand on the stone for the second time in the flickering light of a flame fly lantern. As Liaro had said, the stone was broken. Ahkio examined it, wondering what it was he hoped to find. Whatever ward Almeysia had set on the stone must have done this damage, but to what end? To silence the keeper? To keep him from going through?

  He raised his hand to the mark on the stone, just to be sure it was inactive, and–

  –And he fell through the stone, or through time, or into the seams between worlds, and there he was again, standing in the brilliantly lit room, unstuck in time.

  He had thought to find it ruined, or mired in darkness. But it was still broad daylight. The sky had not moved. The moon remained, and the double suns rode over the tongues of the mountains. He stood at the center of the room and waited for the keeper to appear. The whirling lighted numerals were gone now, though.

  And so was the keeper.

  He shivered. It seemed he wasn’t the only one playing with forces he didn’t understand.

  Ahkio explored the room, poking at the large pieces of furniture, the end tables and desks. He half expected he would be able to pass his hands through them as he had through her, but they were solid. He rifled through what looked like large desks, but they contained no papers.

  He called for the temple keeper, but received no answer. He began to feel vaguely alarmed, as if he trespassed on some sacred space. And perhaps he did. He found a set of double doors on the far side of the room, and tried to open them, but they were locked.

  “Keeper?” Ahkio called, again.

  Something wavered at the corner of his vision. He turned, but it blinked out. “Keeper?”

  Nothing.

  Ahkio tapped the walls, looking for some other way in or out. How did the keeper come and go? What was she, really?

  “I want to speak to you again,” Ahkio said. “I have more questions this time. I have–”

  The floor beneath him rumbled softly. Ahkio froze. He gazed out the great windows. Something flickered in the sky there, a flashing star. He walked to the windows and found a faint trace of lettering there, as if someone had pressed their fingers to the pane and written letters. It was in the Kai cipher. But how did a ghost write on a window?

  The same way a ghost became unstuck in time, perhaps.

  He had been writing in the Kai cipher for so long that he was able to work it out in his head:

  * * *

  The Guide will show you to the engines at the heart of the temples. We will deliver the Guide. But you must lead the army.

  Now go. She is coming for you.

  * * *

  A chill rose in the room. The floor rumbled again. The light went out.

  He woke suddenly on the floor next to the stone. He was sweating heavily. He stared up at the stone, and it was then he heard a noise, the sound of feet scuffling across the floor. Someone else in the basements. He shuttered the lantern and lay still on the floor, breathing softly. How long had he been out this time?

  He lay that way for an hour or more, listening to someone stumbling around in the darkness. He saw the light swinging somewhere in the tangle of the roots that made up this final basement of the temple, but it was far off, indistinct. Even when it was well gone, when he heard nothing else, he lay there in the dark for a long time after.

  She is coming, the keeper had said, but he didn’t know if she meant Kirana, or Nasaka, or Hofsha, or any number of other people he didn’t know about. Ahkio had spent a long time trying to avoid doing what he knew he needed to do, but it was time.

  He stumbled upstairs into the light, and asked what day it was. The novice he asked looked at him as if he were mad, but told him. She gave him a date that must have been wrong – the date she gave was the day before he had entered the basements. And it was clearly evening, not the middle of the day.

  “Are you… sure?” he asked.

  She cocked her head at him. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he said. He went to the scullery and asked a drudge. He found Shanigan in the banquet hall and asked the date. They all gave him the same date. He sat down next to Shanigan then, suddenly dizzy.

  “What is it?” Shanigan said.

  “We had a meeting today,” Ahkio said. “You called me a fool boy.”

  Shanigan laughed. “That meeting is in a few hours,” he said. “I thought you said you were going to rest upstairs? Why would I call you a fool? No, wait. I can think of several reasons.”

  Ahkio tried to work out why he would have gone back, and a terrible fear came over him. What if he wasn’t in the right world at all? What if he hadn’t gone through time, but he’d gone... somewhere else? Where was the “he” from the day before? He gazed at the staircase. Was he still up there, in bed? Were there two of him now?

  He sprinted upstairs and burst in on Liaro. He was in a dance class with Ohanni. The whole class startled at his appearance.

  “Liaro!” Ahkio said, breathless. He called him away into the hall. Liaro looked just the same way he had the day before. He asked him question after question. “Do I look the same? Are there two of me here? Who is Kai? Is Nasaka alive? What day is it, really? Who teaches mathematics?”

  “What in Sina’s name is going on?” Liaro said. “What did–” He came up short. Frowned. “You went down there again.”

  “I didn’t lose time,” Ahkio said. “I… I don’t know what I did.”

  “You’re going mad,” Liaro said.

  “I have an extra day, but… nothing of importance happened, not really. Why would I get an extra day that isn’t important? Why would–”

  “Because this is all mad,” Liaro said firmly. “Ora Nasaka warned me–”

  “When did you talk to Nasaka?”

  “Who do you think is talking to Ora Nasaka for you now that you threw Caisa out? I don’t care who she was, she was your ally – an ally to both of us – and that leaves me to ferry your little orders to Ora Nasaka while you avoid her.”

  Ahkio turned away from him and ran up two flights of stairs to the Assembly Chamber. He was out of breath by the time he reached his own quarters. He flung the doors open.

  The room was empty, but the bed was unmade, as if he had indeed been sleeping in it. He walked to the side of the bed and pressed his hand to the she
ets. They were still warm. He shivered.

  He had moved, somehow, between one time and the next.

  Liaro came into the room behind him, swearing and huffing. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not here,” Ahkio said.

  “You aren’t making sense.”

  “I have extra time,” he said. “Why was I given extra time? Why did I jump from one day to another and back again?”

  “Maybe it means nothing, Ahkio. It’s not all signs and portents. The sky is in chaos. There are people from other worlds running around. Everything is mad and means nothing.”

  “No,” Ahkio said firmly. “It’s time.” He turned to head back downstairs.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Hofsha. Call Ora Jakobi and Ora Naori. Have them meet me in the foyer.”

  “No, wait–”

  But Ahkio did not wait. He needed to put her out of the temple. She wasn’t going to walk around like she owned it any longer. He had delayed enough. The longer she was here, the longer she and Nasaka schemed. The one thing he had not done the day before was finish things with Hofsha. He had let her stay here, continuing her long and oppressive occupation of their temple. Now was his chance to act.

  He asked for and found Hofsha in the Sanctuary. The evening was warm. The light of the moons glittered against his skin. He moved as if he were in some dream. A day repeated. He had spent this day doing nothing but arguing over paper. He had spent the night alone while Liaro went out with Ohanni. A wasted day. He would not waste it again.

  Hofsha raised her head when he entered. “Kai,” she said, as he crossed the broad room. Her smile was large and ungainly, if only because it showed so many teeth. It put him in mind of the posturing of some predator.

  “I’ve come with a response to your offer.”

  “So soon? I’ve enjoyed the hospitality of your temple the last two weeks. We can wait a while longer.”

  “Your boats block our harbor. It gave the impression you would like a quick resolution.”

  She returned the book she held to the shelf. He made note of it – she was in the section containing the epic romances, the great early stories of Faith Ahya and Hahko forging their way across the wilderness from Dorinah to Dhai. They were operatic tales of alliances and betrayals, hardship and the tornadic nature of love.