The Mirror Empire (25 page)

“I do not, Patron,” Maralah said.

“Nothing from Taigan?”

“No, Patron.”

“We’ve finalized our treaty with the Dhai,” he said. “They should arrive in a few weeks if all goes well. I’d like your counsel on who to send with them, if we’re all still alive by then.”

“Wraisau and Driaa,” she said. “Wraisau is already in Alorjan, and Driaa is on the way there for a reconnaissance mission. I need Kadaan here to oversee the patrols.”

“We’re spread very thin.”

“Yes.”

“How many dead on the coast?”

“The last skirmish? A dozen, as well as General Araalia.”

“Araalia, too? Who’s taking his place?”

“I’m promoting his son.”

“His son isn’t even eighteen.”

“There were only two hundred men left under Araalia’s command. I thought to combine them with what’s left of Aaraduan’s forces, but two hundred men with a boy to lead them will move more quickly, and I needed someone to begin shoring up our defenses in the south. Should it come to that.”

“I am sorry about your brother,” the Patron said.

“I had reason to send him there instead of Araalia,” Maralah said. “He would have been the smarter strategist on that field. We grew up there. But I understand your decision.”

“With your children dead, it benefits–”

“I understand your reasons,” she said, because if he used his warm voice to talk any longer about how the fate of her line now rested on her thirty-six year-old brother’s ability to seed heirs, she might betray her annoyance. Her brother’s interest in women was generally only incited by strong drink, and then only if there were no strapping men about bearing traders’ tattoos. No doubt he would settle in with a family eventually, but with events taking shape around them, odds were their line died with them. She had given up seeing anyone of her blood survive the season. Her hope now was far less – that when it was all over, a single Saiduan person still lived. Maybe even a whole village. Somewhere remote. It was possible.

“I apologize,” the Patron said. “I still treat you as a colleague, not a subject.”

“We won the contest for the seat,” Maralah said. “No doubt your sons would have treated mine differently if I had them.”

“You know I rely on your loyalty now,” the Patron said. “More than ever.”

“I promise you, Patron, whatever I do, I do with your interests at heart.”

“And what you keep from me?”

“If I were to ever keep information from you, it would be for your protection,” she said.

“But you would keep it?”

“To save you? And Saiduan? Yes.”

He walked to the fountain. He washed his hands, then his face. Murmured a prayer to Para, Lord of the Air. Para was not his satellite; he was a tirajista, but Maralah had caught herself praying to every god in recent days. She had never spent so much time calling Oma’s name.

“Are the Dhai meant to kill me?” the Patron asked. He still had his back to her.

“No,” Maralah said. “I’m sorry I set that in motion so quickly. It was a desperate effort. I knew Aaraduan was lost.”

He straightened. “The Maralah I know would have died on the wall at Aaraduan.”

She rolled that over. He had been distant and dismissive since she crawled back from Aaraduan alone, bleeding out from a wound that should have killed her. She might have died, even with the soul of the hold to keep her upright, if Kadaan had not come back through the upper tiers of the hold before their final retreat, doing one last sweep as she’d taught him, and hauled her out the rest of the way.

“I’m yours, Patron.”

“I wonder,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time one of these invaders replaced a woman I trusted with her shadow.”

“I’m the Maralah you know. No other. We’ve been over this.”

“Is Taigan yours or mine, Maralah?”

“We’re all yours,” Maralah said. “I burned that ward into Taigan to make sure Taigan was yours. If they replace one of us again, you’ll know.”

The Patron turned and pressed himself into her space. She held her ground, so their faces were inches apart. In her boots, she was nearly as tall as he. His beard tickled her chin. She felt the heat of him and smelled cloves and brandy on his breath, his afternoon repast.

She expected a knife in the gut. It would be a fitting way to end things. Unexpected, from his hand, but fitting.

“You killed a good many men to get me this seat,” he said. “I ordered more put to death to keep it.”

“Yes,” Maralah said. She dropped to her knees. It hurt. She wasn’t twenty, and her body let her know it. She gazed up at him. He towered over her now, and in his soft eyes she saw anger and something that unsettled her more – fear. “I was yours then, and I am yours now,” she said. “They can read ancient Dhai. We can’t.”

“Get up,” he said.

She did.

“You infuriate me,” he said.

“I told you I was not a soldier, nor a wife,” she said. “I am a sanisi. You’ve trusted me to get you into this seat. Trust me to keep you in it.”

He leaned into her again, so his lips brushed her ear. “I am afraid this is a fight we will lose.”

“I’m not,” Maralah said. She placed her hand over his left breast. She felt the spongy mass of his tirajista-manufactured heart there, warm and taut, but so terribly fragile.

He caught her wrist but did not pull her hand away.

She said nothing. Just rested her hand there, a reminder. Seven years ago, she and an especially skilled tirajista had built that bloodthirsty, plant-based organ when a bolt passed through his original heart, striking him down on the field. She still counted it among her greatest accomplishments.

“We’ll win,” she said. “All looked lost that day, too, when you dropped on the field. But we came back. We will always rally, Patron.”

He had become more short-tempered after Aaraduan. Four of his cousins had died when their retreating caravan was ambushed by a small force of invaders. She worried he was losing his faith in her and the sanisi who had risked everything to keep his heart beating.

He drew away. “Set things up with Driaa and Wraisau,” he said. “I’ll want to meet with these Dhai before we let them into the archive room, though. I want to be absolutely certain there are no enemies among them. We can’t have Caisau compromised.”

“I understand,” Maralah said.

“You can go,” he said.

Maralah relaxed and moved toward the archway.

“Maralah?”

“Yes?” She did not turn. There were times when she could not bear to look into his face, because she saw the young man he had been, the sparkling, handsome youth with the black eyes that everyone – man or woman – fell headlong into, until all they could see was his vision for Saiduan, for the restoration of a bloated empire stretched far too thin. Twenty years he worked to make them stronger. But it hadn’t been enough. Now, to her eyes, he looked tired and broken, and she feared that if she looked too long at him, too often, she’d see her own broken face reflected back at her.

“If you betray me,” the Patron said, “by twisting Taigan or anyone else, or if you are not the Maralah I know, I will have your hair, and then your life, however little that means to you now, and however much I cannot spare you.”

“I understand,” Maralah said, and left him.

She made her hand into a fist. He could take her life, but she would always have his heart.

 

 

22

Ahkio wore red, the color of mourning, and rode at the head of a procession of corpse-filled carts. Ghrasia Madah and Liaro kept pace with him. Two dozen militia took up the flank and the rear. Any journey by foot outside the temple required an Ora. Ahkio had brought a dozen of them, including Nasaka’s assistant, Elaiko, and Ohanni and Shanigan, two of the only senior Oras in the temple that Ahkio could stand. He also chose four novices, younger, less predictable choices like Caisa, and a boy named Jakobi, and a powerful parajista called Naori who was about the same age as Ahkio and also his third cousin once removed. She reminded him just enough of Kirana that he was willing to see where her loyalties lay after six years inside the Temple of Oma. He had specifically chosen a greater number of novices than senior Oras for this trip. They would begin in Garika but end in Osono, because Yisaoh was not the only woman he meant to meet with.

Meyna had still not answered his letters.

As they neared the clan square, Ahkio sent Caisa off with six militia to clear out Kirana’s quarters. She had kept a temporary house in Garika for long political visits; he only hoped Yisaoh had not cleared them out first.

“What if they fight us?” Caisa asked. She had been humming bars of a terrible Dorinah opera for the last eight miles that she’d picked up from a way house minstrel. Now she firmed her jaw and sat up a little straighter on her bear, and Ahkio was reminded of her age. He wasn’t much older than her, and he was sending her off to wrangle with an angry family who’d just tried to kill him.

“That’s why the militia’s with you,” he said. “I expect Yisaoh is going to be waiting for us in the square. They know we’re coming.”

“Why would she want to talk to you?”

“So she can tell me she’s right and I’m wrong,” Ahkio said. “If you go to my sister’s rooms or Yisaoh’s and you meet resistance, turn back.”

He watched Caisa and the six militia members break off from the group. Caisa started humming the opera again.

Ghrasia leaned over on her bear, said, “She’ll be all right.”

“She has a better chance than we do, certainly,” Ahkio said, and waved the procession forward.

The Garikas waited for them in the amber-tiled square of Clan Garika, tucked five miles inside the textured webbing that kept out the worst of the plant life. The massive, gnarled bonsa trees surrounding the square were draped in red. Garikas came out onto their doorsteps or stood under the awnings of their shops and trading places. The weather had turned, and a warm, drizzling rain fell. The sky was a gray wash, heavy and oppressive. Outside the square, fog moved among the trees. Ahkio was not ready for low autumn; he wanted summer to last forever.

Clan Leader Tir Salarihi Garika stood in front of the council house. He wore one red armband, all he had given over to mourning. His broad frame was clothed in a black tunic and dark trousers, and a gray overcoat stitched in silver. He had a thick beard and the same heavy brow Ahkio remembered.

Yisaoh stood just to the right of her father, smoking and smirking. Ahkio recognized Yisaoh’s mothers as well – Alais, Gaila, and Moarsa. All as formidable as their daughter. He felt like an animal being sized up for slaughter.

The militia Ahkio had brought fanned out ahead of him. Ahkio slid off his bear. Liaro said, low, “You sure you don’t want me next to you?”

“Just me,” Ahkio said, and patted Liaro’s bear. Liaro’s injuries from the week before had been minor. He had strutted about the temple with three stitches on his brow and some bruised ribs, but had otherwise escaped the fray unscathed. If anything, Ahkio suspected it had hurt his pride more than his flesh. Liaro was not a man made for conflict.

Ahkio saw none of Tir’s other sons, though they may have been among the crowds lining the square. His blood quickened. He wondered if he would be the first Kai torn apart by his own people.

Ahkio pressed thumb to forehead. “Clan Leader Tir,” he said. Because though he suspected Yisaoh and her mothers were the true instigators of this particular plot, it was Tir who bore the title of clan leader.

Tir did not return the gesture. “Ahkio,” he said.

“I’ve brought you your sons,” Ahkio said, “and your militia.” His voice sounded steadier than he felt. Summoning the courage to speak was like pitching himself from some great height.

Ahkio gestured to the militia. They unloaded the bodies. Lined them up neatly in the square. Four rows of five, including Lohin. As Ahkio watched the bodies laid out, he wondered how it had come to this. He had spent a decade hiding from Dhai politics while old wounds and rivalries festered until his sister was dead and half of the most powerful families in Garika lost kin.

“Those that survived have been exiled from Dhai,” Ahkio said evenly, “as set down in
The Book of Oma
.” He waited, but Tir said nothing. Ahkio did not look away, though his left hand started to tremble. He pressed the offensive hand into his tunic pocket.

Ahkio nodded to Yisaoh. “I’m certain your daughter told you when we spoke that if your house threatened mine, I would exile you and your kin. I am here to make good on that promise.”

“The Oras have given you much power,” Tir said.

“No,” Ahkio said. “The people did, and you sought to usurp them. This could have ended differently. I could have married into your family, Tir. We could have been friends and kin.”

“You will break ties of kin to keep to a code made for former slaves,” Tir said. “We are no longer those people who fled Dorinah five centuries ago. You must know by now that change is coming to Dhai. We will need strength. A new way of doing things.”

“According to–”

“Don’t quote the Book at me, boy.”

“I will quote the Book all I like,” Ahkio said. Every old person in the country wanted him to keep quiet, to take a seat and die for it, but do it quietly. “
You
broke our kinship with your betrayal. Tell me what other fate Faith Ahya and Hahko would have for you.”

“You are no Kai.”

“You think we need a new government,” Ahkio said. “You think I’m unfit for what’s coming. You aren’t the only clan leader to express such concerns. That’s why I’ve called for a circle of the clan leaders, in Osono. We’ll discuss changes peaceably, as Dhai do. Not like bloody Dorinahs.”

A flicker of something – surprise? – crossed Tir’s face. “I would sit in that circle.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” Ahkio said. “You will not be sitting in this circle. You and your family have forfeited that right. I’m exiling you to Saiduan, to the third degree.”