The Broken Heavens

by Kameron Hurley

  “No, no,” Elaiko said. “That isn’t how the wards work. The wards that keep us from injuring the Tai Mora… those are written into our skin. These are simply a marker that it’s been done. A shorthand, you could say. If you attract no attention, they will look away, assuming you are warded.”

  Dressed and collared, the little party started off after Elaiko. “Go back to the fence!” Lilia called to Avosta. He hesitated another moment, but finally complied. She let out a sigh of relief. She needed their love, yes, but more than that, she needed their faith and their loyalty. Love was more fickle than faith. It worried her that Avosta might love her more than he feared her.

  Elaiko led them through the bone tree maze and into the rear temple garden. Here, the way was lit with flame fly lanterns. They came inside through the kitchens. The heat and noise assailed them; the drudges were preparing the evening meal. Rice and tender spring shoots, and meat – the smell of the meat made Lilia recoil a little. What animal were they cooking? The Tai Mora love of flesh outside the funerary still disgusted her. They went in pairs, Elaiko and Harina up front, and Lilia behind.

  A passing cook yelled at Elaiko, “She wants tea upstairs! Where have you been?”

  Elaiko started. Froze. Babbled, “Yes, of course,” and went for the tea tray on the big table at the center of the kitchen. Harina lingered with Elaiko. Lilia did not want them going in groups larger than two.

  Lilia kept walking, and Harina came with her. The temple layouts were all virtually the same, but she had gone over a rough map of this temple’s interior provided by those in the camp who had been there. She was confident she could wait for Elaiko in the foyer if they ducked into the scullery stair. They needed to pick up laundry, and it was a good place to rest and get a sense of their bearings.

  Lilia stepped up into the foyer and headed right, passing under a low arch and into the scullery stair. The mouth of the laundry staging area lay open; all the drudges brought laundry from the levels above here, where another set of drudges were usually tasked with bringing it to the proper laundry facility in the basements.

  Two drudges were already inside, dropping off laundry. They nodded as they headed out, but one narrowed her eyes, clearly suspicious that she had not seen them before.

  Lilia went to the back of the room where it was darker. She shifted a load of laundry toward Harina as she entered. “Let’s get ready.”

  But just as he cleared the threshold, a dark figure blotted the light. A Tai Mora soldier blocked their path. Pointed at Harina. “You, there. Come with me!”

  Lilia froze. She needed a very quick story.

  Harina, though, was already moving, so fast Lilia did not catch the flash of the knife, though she saw the blood immediately. Harina bumped into the Tai Mora and whirled him around, so now the Tai Mora stood in the laundry room. It was a solid hit that could still have been construed as accidental.

  “My apologies, so sorry,” Harina said, wiping at the Tai Mora’s shoulder, a sleeve. The Tai Mora pushed her away, still so flustered that he was oblivious to the blood pumping onto the floor.

  Lilia became alarmed at the amount of blood. She backed up against the bundles of dirty laundry along the rear wall.

  “Out of my way!” the Tai Mora insisted, but then Elaiko was there, with the tea, her mouth a wide O.

  The Tai Mora slipped in his own blood and went over. He became aware of the pump of blood. His eyes widened. He gasped. But he was already bleeding out. Even as he pressed at the pumping wound, he was going into shock.

  “Stay out of the blood!” Lilia hissed at Harina, but it was too late. She was on her knees, holding the Tai Mora down. Blood soaked through her trousers and smeared her hands. A few drops peppered her face.

  Lilia hefted what was left of the laundry bag with her good hand and gingerly stepped across the piles of blood-soaked laundry.

  Harina became aware of her own bloody clothing. “Sina’s maw,” she muttered.

  “You can’t go out like that!” Elaiko said, gaze darting back into the hall. “Quickly! Someone else is coming.”

  “Stay here,” Lilia said, low. “Clean up. Change your clothes. You know where we’re going. Follow us.”

  Harina grimaced, but nodded.

  Lilia went into the corridor with Elaiko and closed the door to the laundry closet, leaving Harina with the body.

  “If anyone walks in–” Elaiko said.

  “I know,” Lilia said. “We must keep moving. Ah, your shoes!”

  Elaiko made a little peeping sound. Lilia handed her a towel from her bag, and Elaiko scrubbed at her bloody shoes.

  Elaiko hissed something. Lilia turned just in time to see two more drudges heading toward them, up the scullery stair. Lilia moved out of their way. The two gave them an interested look, but kept moving.

  Elaiko bustled out of the scullery stair and into the foyer. Lilia hurried after her as fast as her limp would take her. The basement doors had a single guard, who opened it to them after asking the day’s password. When the door closed behind them, Lilia murmured, “They change the passwords every day?”

  “Yes,” Elaiko said. Her hands trembled so hard the teacups on the tray rattled. “All the temples now, at the Empress’s command. You can’t get down here without the daily password. There’s been a great deal of activity. Are you… are you sure we can–”

  “Courage,” Lilia said.

  Elaiko pursed her mouth and said nothing. The teacups still rattled.

  Lilia dropped the laundry off inside the steamy laundry bay on the first basement level, then continued after Elaiko to the second set of doors.

  “Here,” Elaiko said, gesturing to an open storage room. “Stay here until I call. There’s never more than one person bringing tea. Only authorized people here.”

  “Still your trembling,” Lilia said. “It will be all right. Try not to look at them.” Lilia wanted to add, “Because you will give it away!” but did not. Elaiko was already too shaken. What if they didn’t drink the tea? If they needed violence here, Lilia would have to turn back. She did not think she had the strength in her one good hand to injure, let alone kill, anyone.

  Lilia ducked into the storeroom. But she could not help but peek out and watch Elaiko taking the last long walk to the two guards at the second set of doors. Elaiko offered up the tea tray to the two guards. One gestured at her to set it on the pedestal near them. Elaiko set it down, clanking and trembling only a little, and started back down the hall. She met Lilia’s look.

  Lilia turned back to the storeroom. She looked through the barrels and boxes until she found the plain burlap bag that Caisa had Elaiko smuggle in the day before. Lilia was relieved to find it. She opened it and dug through the tubers until she found all three of the plain, shelled hazelnuts at the bottom of the bag. She stuffed them into her pockets.

  Elaiko met her there and shut the door. She let out her breath, and began to cry. Lilia did not know how to react. She made a comforting noise, but stopped when Elaiko continued to sob.

  “It will be all right,” Lilia said.

  “No, it won’t! What have I done?”

  Lilia recognized it, then, but still had no time for it. Elaiko had never committed violence before.

  “Maybe they won’t drink it?” Elaiko said.

  “You need to hush.”

  “What if they drink it?”

  “That was the plan.”

  “I have to–”

  Lilia could not help it. She grabbed Elaiko’s sleeve. “No. We stick to the plan.”

  The clatter of teacups. Someone swearing. A cry.

  Lilia held Elaiko’s sleeve and met her look, daring her to try to pull herself away.

  A thump and crash in the hall. Elaiko finally slipped from her grasp and went to go and see what had happened. Lilia limped after her.

  The guards lay heaped upon one another. Broken teacups and poisoned tea lay spilled all around them.

  Lilia grabbed the keys from the belt of the neare
st one, who was still moaning and retching. Doors in the temples were not built with locks. This one had been attached to the door by the Tai Mora, a simple padlock. Lilia unlocked it, but the door resisted her.

  “It’s warded,” Elaiko said.

  Lilia pulled one of the little hazelnuts from her pocket and shoved it under the door jamb.

  “Stand back,” Lilia said.

  Elaiko moved behind her.

  The innocuous looking hazelnuts were fused with a powerful twining of sinajista and tirajista spells. One meant to explode with great force when triggered.

  A whisper of power made the air heavy. Lilia’s ears popped. She shifted back on one foot, unsure herself of what she would unleash.

  A low pop. A thread of searing red light. When Lilia looked back, a quarter of the door had sheared away. Lilia pressed at the door and it swung open. The light from the hall illuminated a short flight of dark stairs.

  Lilia pocketed the keys and grabbed the nearest guard. He was heavy. Elaiko just stared at her.

  “Help me!” Lilia said.

  Elaiko stumbled forward. Together, they pulled the comatose bodies down the short stair and rolled them into an open storage room. These rooms were usually overflowing with barrels of goods, but were now empty; the Tai Mora had far more bellies to feed than the Dhai.

  Their movement awoke the flame flies in the lanterns hung just inside the doorway. When the bodies were pushed aside, Lilia took up a lantern and headed further down the corridor to the next set of steps. Elaiko hurried to catch up with her.

  “What if they–”

  “Keep moving,” Lilia said. “One more level. I’ve seen the temple diagrams.”

  The next door required only a key. She found the right one and stepped into the cavernous space. No more corridors, just a massive chamber filled with what appeared to be tangled tree roots, great fibrous monstrosities. Lilia swung the lantern toward another source of light coming not from above, but below.

  Some industrious force had torn up a great section of the floor, and a soft blue light emitted from the gaping hole.

  “How did she even get down here?” Lilia said. “This took them so many months.”

  “It was terrible,” Elaiko whispered. “When they broke through the floor the temple… moaned. And bled! I thought it would fall around us!”

  Lilia poked her head through the hole in the floor to confirm there was no one in the chamber below. She handed Elaiko the lantern and climbed down the ladder precariously pushed against the rim of the wound in the floor.

  “Come down!” Lilia called. “I need a light.”

  As Elaiko came down, swinging the light with her because she had two good hands, the great room came into focus.

  Lilia gaped.

  The chamber was far larger than her descent made it seem. The ceiling stretched far above her, a perfect dome decorated with twining vines and figures that she thought were geometrical until Elaiko raised the lantern. The twining designs were stylized Dhai characters, glistening wetly as if made of something organic. The air here was much warmer than above. The walls themselves pulsed as if alive.

  A massive pedestal took up the center of the room, ringed in four more, all skinned like the walls and trembling faintly.

  “Well, here it is,” Elaiko said. “You wanted to see it. You need to be quick, though. The guard makes rounds again in an hour. We need to be well gone ahead of that.”

  Lilia placed her hand on the shimmering green walls. Where the Tai Mora had breached the floor, the wound oozed with a gooey amber sap. Lilia sniffed at some of it that had dropped to the floor: tangy everpine and something more fetid, perhaps fungal. She dared not taste it, but the thought occurred to her. She stepped away from the wound and turned, lantern high.

  The pedestal at the center of the room glowed an eerie blue-green. Had her light triggered something within it? She approached and gazed at the great round face of it. There, at the center, was the Dhai word for Kai. Was the Kai supposed to stand here to trigger… whatever was supposed to happen? Surely they would only want… But as she rubbed away the dust and dirt, the symbol became clearer. Not Kai, but something far more abstract: a simple circle with two lines through it. Where had she seen that symbol before? Lilia sneezed at the dust. Tira! Yes, it was the symbol for Tira’s Temple that she had seen on the mosaic map of Dhai laid into the round table in the Assembly Chamber.

  The puzzle drew her. The intricate symbols, the niches, the glowing light: it was a strategy game.

  Lilia dug into her pocket. Pulled out the little container of the child Kai’s blood. She rubbed again at the Tira symbol at the center of the pedestal, looking for instructions of some kind. Instead: an intricate pattern of raised metal tiles. As she ran her fingers over them, they lit up, bright blue. She moved her fingers the other way, and they lit up, bright green. She tried a few combinations, tapping at the tiles as if they were keys on some instrument. The pattern was easy to recognize. She tapped in the correct sequence her third try, and all the metal tiles sank into the pedestal. The center, too, sank with it, and from beneath each side a shiny device rose. It clacked together: two plates of some substance much like that of the temple walls. The two plates formed a human face devoid of detail, as if stretched from the mold of a newborn babe. Lilia was not entirely sure what to do next.

  She pressed her hand to the face.

  It glowed green, faintly, then dimmed.

  Nothing else happened.

  Elaiko made a little startled noise behind her. Lilia glanced back to see the woman already had one hand on the ladder, as if ready to flee. She did not blame her.

  Lilia uncapped the canister of coagulated blood, which was now the sticky consistency of thick mud, and rubbed each of her right fingers into it, then smeared some on her palm for good measure.

  She pressed her hand to the face.

  A brilliant blue light blinded her.

  Lilia yelped. Leapt back. Pressed her hands to her face.

  A shushing roar, like the opening of a great dam, filled her ears. Elaiko screamed.

  Then silence.

  Lilia opened her eyes.

  The face, fully aware now, animated, the ghostly features dancing across the mold, peered at her. Said something in a language Lilia did not recognize.

  “Get away from it!” Elaiko cried.

  Lilia waved her away. “Who are you?” Lilia asked the face.

  “Who are you?” it countered. The voice did not come from the mold, but from all around them. It made Lilia shiver.

  “I…”

  The face trembled. The misty countenance blew away, like a cloud in a storm. The rushing of water sounded again, and the face disappeared back into the pedestal, which closed behind it.

  “What was–” Elaiko began.

  A shimmering form grew out of the pedestal. Lilia took another three steps back until she bumped into Elaiko.

  The ghostly specter wore a long flowing robe and had knotted hair tangled with green ribbons and bits of glass or stone. It did not stand on the pedestal, but floated just above it, and the gaze it gave Lilia was glacial.

  “Who are you to try and destroy me?” it demanded.

  “We weren’t,” Lilia said. “You are… you’re… what are you? A temple keeper? Like… Ti-Li? The woman unstuck in time?”

  “I am the creature. The temple keeper is no more. With Oma’s rise, the temple keepers were no longer captive here. They were able to escape to their own times. They have left only the creatures, the beasts. I am the Creature of Tira. What are you? You are not Kai, though you have summoned me.”

  “Just… Lilia. We were here… you know how to stop people coming here? From other worlds? These worlds are all coming here and killing. They are–”

  “Oma has risen.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why have you injured me?”

  Elaiko said, “The Tai Mora broke in here, not us! They’re trying to stop others from entering our world. They’re go
ing to use you to do it.”

  “I wanted to speak to you,” Lilia said, “to see if it was really true, that the temples were alive.”

  “Of course we are alive,” the creature said. “More so now that Oma is risen. Why are you still tangling with other worlds when you could simply send them back to their world yourselves with the power of the engines?”

  Lilia came forward again. “We could… send back the Tai Mora? To their dead world?”

  “Of course. All things are possible, if the creatures work together. We could sink the continent, if you willed it. If the Kai… but… No, you are not the Kai.”

  “No, but I know where she is,” Lilia said.

  “You can do anything you like,” it said, waving a hand. “You could reshape oceans. Break the world. Sear the sky.”

  “But I don’t want to do any of that,” Lilia said. “I want to get rid of the Tai Mora.”

  “And you could do that,” the creature said, curling a lip. “But that is far less imaginative than I’d hoped. All they ever want to do is kill.”

  “How?” Lilia asked.

  A great amber light filled the room, bright as daylight. Lilia shielded her eyes.

  A roiling mist bubbled up from the floor and slowly formed a massive series of elliptical rings on which rode twinkling orbs of all sizes and types: greens, blues, reds, swirling with orange waves and flaky white patchwork. The orbs moved along the elliptical orbits, all spinning and sparking. It was like a massive orrery, so tremendous that its dimensions clearly exceeded the size of the room. Many of the misty parts ended abruptly in the walls and ceiling.

  “When they made us,” the creature said, “we broke the worlds apart. This was not their intended purpose, but it was the final result. Infinite worlds. Infinite timelines. So very many choices. Things go wrong in many of these worlds. What none of them understood, then, was that when their worlds began to break, they would feel compelled to come home, to Raisa, here, where it all began.”

  A misty blue-green orb was faintly visible all around the creature, as if she were standing now inside a soap bubble. “No single person has the power to move and shape the worlds,” the creature said. “There are five great machines, our engines. These temples. Each driven by the power of those who can call on each satellite.”