The Mirror Empire (32 page)

“Thank you for that thought.”

“You don’t need jokes in this speech,” Liaro said. “But you do need to be more relaxed and less closed. You ever wonder why the women you courted were more likely to come home with you when I was on your arm? It wasn’t my good looks. It’s because people like to laugh. They don’t want to be with somebody who’s been mourning dead people his whole life. You understand?”

Ahkio tried to tuck his hands under his arms. Liaro took his arms and pulled them back out. “Deep breath,” Liaro said. “Look up. Not at the floor. It doesn’t look confident. Don’t be upset. This is what you asked me to do.”

“I know,” Ahkio said.

“If it was easy, you wouldn’t have asked. Now come on. Do the speech.”

Ahkio met his cousin’s look. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t get soft now,” Liaro said. “I didn’t like sleeping without you, either.”

He and Liaro had shared a bed – on and off – since they were twelve. Ahkio had never gotten into the habit of sleeping alone; it was half the reason he spent so much time asking women to come to bed with him. The idea of sleeping in a big bed alone was… lonely.

“And thank you for understanding,” Ahkio said. “About Meyna and Rhin and Hadaoh.”

Liaro’s mouth made a thin line. “I’m not happy about it, but I know why you did it,” he said. “Just… don’t burn any more houses down behind you. They will hate you for turning your back on kin. It’s unforgiveable.”

“All right,” Ahkio said. “Here’s what I’m going to tell them.”

“Just keep in mind,” Liaro said, “they’re not going to remember the words. They’ll remember how you made them
feel
. Make them feel something.”

Ahkio took a breath, and began, “We have reached a point–”

“You’re looking at the floor again.”

 

The last clan leaders to arrive were Hirosa of Clan Badu and Tir Salarihi’s apprentice, Isaila, acting for Clan Garika. With her were three members of the militia, come to tell Ahkio that Tir, Alais, Gaila, Moarsa, their children, and their children’s children had been successfully escorted to Asona Harbor. They had gone willingly.

“And Meyna?” Ahkio asked.

“By the time we came to escort them, they were gone,” the plump leader of the squad told him. “Cleared out their house here. I don’t expect you’ll see them again.”

Ahkio could have sent the militia out after them, could have set them to tracking Meyna and her husbands to ensure they left the country. Instead, he thanked the squad and dismissed them. Liaro said he was too serious, but more often than not, Ahkio worried he was too soft.

Ahkio seated the clan leaders in the broad common room of the council house. Most brought their apprentices. The loose group drank tea and smoked Tordinian cigarettes and pipes, and the gazes they fixed on Ahkio were clear but wary.

“I would like to speak to you about Tir Salarihi Garika,” Ahkio said. “There are rumors I would like to put to rest. And a way forward I’d like to discuss with you.”

On the other side of the room, Nasaka slipped in. She stood at the back, leaning against a broad window frame. Ahkio wondered if she’d timed it just this way, to break his concentration. He had not called her from the temple and wondered what she was doing here.

“We have reached a point in our history much discussed but never experienced,” Ahkio said, and then wondered if that even made sense. Liaro hadn’t critiqued his words as much as his delivery. He pushed on, hoping he didn’t botch the rest too badly. He tried hard to ignore Nasaka. Teaching ethics often required the gift of persuasion, but persuading a child and persuading a clan leader were two different things entirely. He straightened and stood with feet slightly apart, the way Liaro had. “Our gifted Kai, my beloved sister, has been transformed, far too early and before bearing children. I regret that I am not here to introduce you to one of her gifted daughters, a woman who could lead us through what will be difficult times. I was never intended to lead you. Many of you know I would have preferred it never came to this.”

He paused, gauging his audience. When he was nervous, he talked fast. Keeping a measured tone was especially difficult when half the audience looked bored or angry, as this one did. Then he saw Liaro enter at the back of the room. Liaro leaned against the back wall, on the other side of the door from Nasaka. He nodded at Ahkio. Grinned.

Ahkio mustered up his courage and said, “Nearly any Dhai here could stand against adversity. I have watched us take on great challenges and conquer them, from the Pass War to hundreds of Saiduan blockades of our harbor. But Faith Ahya, the mother of our people, said that if you ever wanted to test a person’s character, you should give them great power. You may think I’m asking you to trust me with power. I understand the fear and uncertainty in that. The Book will tell you it’s Oma’s will, that as the child of the Kai, I am divine. But I know what is within my power and what is beyond it. You. Each of you together make up the real power in Dhai. I am only your arm, the focus of your will. What you decide here today will shape the future of our country. I give my life to you, and my title to you, and our country’s future… to you. That’s what it is to be Kai. And no matter what you have heard or feared, it is your future I wish to help shape, if you will allow it.”

His hands did not tremble. He stood a little taller in the end, because he realized as he gazed at the open faces before him that he had them.

“Now let us discuss the future of Dhai,” Ahkio said as he took his seat among them, “as equals, the way Faith Ahya and Hahko imagined.”

They spent the rest of the day in discussion. As afternoon turned to evening, Ahkio was finally able to excuse himself and find out why Nasaka had invited herself to his meeting.

“What do you have for me?” he asked her.

She drew him out into the fading light of the courtyard. “Ora Almeysia is talking. Are you ready to see her?”

“You brought her here?”

“I am, as ever, your servant,” Nasaka said.

“Sarcasm does not become you,” Ahkio said. “Let me get Liaro.”

“I strongly suggest you speak to her alone,” Nasaka said.

Ahkio glanced back at the council house. In truth, he didn’t want to wade back into the storm in search of Liaro.

“Take me to her, then.”

Nasaka led him to the outskirts of the clan square, where two militia waited for them. For a moment, Ahkio feared Nasaka was leading him off to some bloody death, and his pulse quickened. They followed the skirted women into a tangled clearing. A cart stood at the center of it, wrapped in transparent webbing. Six Oras made a broad circle around the cart. A sizable escort for a single old person, even an Ora.

“What did you do to her,” Ahkio asked, “to get her to talk?”

“She’s been drugged to reduce her ability to draw on her star,” Nasaka said. “But that’s all. You should be able to speak to her peaceably.”

Almeysia lay at the bottom of the cart, hugging her knees to her chest. Her tunic and trousers were filthy. The pungent smell of urine wafted up from her body. She did not look at them but stared straight ahead at the webbing wrapping the interior of the cart.

“There are ways to destroy people without marking them,” Ahkio said.

“Read that in books, did you?” Nasaka asked.

Ahkio didn’t give Nasaka the pleasure of replying. He focused on Almeysia. “What can you tell me about Yisaoh?”

Almeysia began to mutter. It took Ahkio a moment to realize it was Woodland Dhai she spoke in.

“She’s not from the Woodland, is she?” Ahkio asked.

“No,” Nasaka said.

“She looks much thinner,” Ahkio said. “Are you feeding her?”

“You have a very poor opinion of me,” Nasaka said.

“That shocks you?”

“No, but it does waste my time.”

“Let me talk to her alone,” Ahkio said. “I expect she’s not keen to talk to you anymore.”

Nasaka took a few steps back. Ahkio waved at her. “Go on. Stand in the circle with the others,” he said.

Nasaka narrowed her eyes but obliged.

Ahkio came to the edge of the cart. “You know Nasaka would have exiled you by now,” Ahkio said, “or worse, if I’d said so.”

She continued murmuring in her singsong dialect. Ahkio tried to puzzle out the words. Woodland Dhai wasn’t so different, but the inflections were sometimes confusing. After a few minutes, he recognized what she was saying – it was a passage from
The Book of Oma
, repeated over and over:

“All of life is change. One cannot hold on to past glory or strife. All of life leads to death. When one is not afraid of death, there is nothing that cannot be achieved.”

“What is it you sought to achieve?” Ahkio asked. He folded his arms over the rim of the cart and gazed down at her. She looked very old, older than he remembered. Thin and wizened, like some wild crone come down from the Woodlands. Where was the woman who tried to kill him in the Sanctuary? The one who had attacked Roh? Was she just playing at being mad?

“I’m going to tell you something, Ora Almeysia,” Ahkio said. “I have exiled Yisaoh’s family to the third degree. Unless you can tell me what you’ve been planning, for however long you’re planning it, I will exile your family, too. I will send them straight to Dorinah, or perhaps Saiduan, so they can meet these invaders before we do. And you, well… I know you don’t fear for your life. But I’ll leave you with Nasaka to do with as she wishes. Those are things far worse than death. Those are things to fear. You won’t die unless I speak it, Ora Almeysia, and I don’t kill people.”

Almeysia quieted. Ahkio waited. Threatening her with a long life spent with Nasaka was the surest way he could think of to get her talking sense.

“The gates are open,” she said softly.

“Is that more nonsense?” Ahkio asked.

She pressed her hands to her head. “Keep me from Ora Nasaka.”

“I can do that if you’ll help me.”

Almeysia gave a little sob and said, “They’re here to kill you, and me, and others. The Tai Mora. Softening the way. They’ve already integrated themselves. They could be anyone. Everyone. They could be you.”

“That would be a neat trick,” Ahkio said. “How do you know what they’re called? Tai Mora? Are those the invaders? That sounds Dhai.”

Almeysia snorted out something like a laugh. “It doesn’t matter now. She has what she wanted. This place, all of you, all of us – we’re all dead now.”

“I’m very much alive in this moment,” Ahkio said, “and I want an answer to my question.”

“She has what she came for. She wasn’t your Yisaoh, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was the other Yisaoh.”

“The… other Yisaoh?”

Almeysia laughed again. “She hasn’t told you? Ora Nasaka hasn’t told you?”

“What?”

“The other people,” Almeysia said, and she uncurled from the bottom of the cart. She got up on her hands and knees and pushed her head toward him, pressing it against the webbing, distorting her features. He saw, then, that her eyes were milky, clouded. She was blind.

Ahkio recoiled.

“The other people we’re fighting,” Almeysia said. “They’re not invaders. They’re not foreigners. They’re not some violent Dorinah or meat-eating Saiduan. They’re
us
. We’re fighting
ourselves
.”

“How is that–”

“It was Yisaoh’s shadow you saw, not the Yisaoh you know. I had to murder our Yisaoh to do it, to let the other one come over, but Tir is clever, very clever. He has three omajistas, did you know that? And they saved Yisaoh’s life. She died, for a time, but they brought her back. And now you’ve exiled her, and we’ve lost her, and they are not happy, Ahkio. The other Yisaoh is stuck in her world, and she is not happy.”

“This is very mad,” Ahkio said.

“She’s speaking truth,” Nasaka said.

Ahkio started. Nasaka stood just a pace behind him.

“I told you to stay back.”

“You’ve taken philosophy,” Nasaka said. “There could be billions of other places just like ours, with people just like us, brought close enough to kiss by Oma. That’s who we face now. Not foreigners this time. Not Saiduan. People from another version of our world, when our people made different choices.”

“How long have you known this?”

Nasaka shrugged.

“
How long
?” Ahkio said.

“Some time,” Nasaka said.

Ahkio remembered Kirana’s body rising from her death bed. He remembered what she said: “They’re coming, Ahkio. The shadows are here.”

“How long did you and Kirana know? Really, this time. A real answer. You not only knew Oma was rising, you knew who we fought!” Ahkio stopped shouting. Looked back at Almeysia. “Why did you bring her here? You could have killed her, and I’d never know.”

“Because you thought me a liar,” Nasaka said. “It’s true I’ve kept things from you. For your own protection. But we must work together now, Ahkio. It’s time you knew.”

“And any of us could be from the other world?” Ahkio said. “Wearing someone else’s face?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“You, me, Almeysia, anyone.”

“Yes, but both versions cannot exist in one world at one time.”

“Oma’s breath,” Ahkio said. He rubbed his face. “Kirana was killed because there are two of her. Just like Yisaoh. Why didn’t you tell me someone tried to kill Yisaoh? I’d have wasted less time accusing her of crimes!”

“I’ve been piecing this together,” Nasaka said. “It’s a complicated tapestry, and I’ve only now put together Yisaoh’s role in it.” But she was not looking at him. She was looking at Almeysia.

“Who killed Kirana, Almeysia?” Ahkio asked. “Was it you? Were you doing it on the order of some other Yisaoh, some other Almeysia?”

“We did,” Almeysia said. “We all did.”

Ahkio moved away from the cart. “Take her back,” he said.