The Mirror Empire (35 page)

Lilia gripped Nirata’s hand with her good one. Nirata helped ease her off the table.

“Hurry,” Gian said.

“Hurrying gets us mistakes,” Nirata said. “I’ve already made far too many here.”

“Give her the poppy.”

“No,” Lilia said. She tried to stand. Leaned heavily on Nirata. Both legs hurt now. Her good ankle had been mangled in the fall. She wondered what she looked like. She touched her face. Felt puckered, still-healing flesh where the karoi had pecked at her. As she stood she noticed something dangling from her neck. It was the karoi beak, tied on a long string.

“What’s this for?” she said.

“For luck,” Nirata said. “Gian kept it for luck. You know all about luck, don’t you, Gian? The karoi are lucky. To be eaten and to live, that is a boon, child. Gian was eaten, once, but I pulled her from the jaws of death. Just as she’s done for you.”

Gian held out a hemp tunic and trousers. “Let’s get her dressed.”

“Where are we going?”

“Nirata is opening a gate,” Gian said. “It’s a faster way to get to the camp. The people following will overtake us if we try to walk out.”

“A… gate?” Lilia remembered the field of poppies and the tears between the worlds. She remembered the amber sky. Why did they want to take her back if bringing her here was supposed to save her? “You won’t be going?”

Gian did not look at her. “No.”

“Gian knows the price,” Nirata said. “Let me help you dress, child.”

“All right,” Lilia said, because she could barely raise her left arm to stuff it into the tunic.

Nirata dressed her. They led Lilia outside, into a cold, brilliant morning. Lilia smelled mountain everpine. The living stick-and-vine shelter behind them was just an outbuilding next to the proper house, a soaring construction built into the bubbling bark of a massive weeping tree so large, they stood on the broad back of just one of its roots jutting out from the mountain.

As they walked into the light, Lilia saw Nirata gaze up toward the larger house, as if they had an audience. Lilia saw nothing at the windows. She felt a deep unease.

“Stand here,” Nirata said, and released Lilia.

Lilia tottered. She grabbed at a broad, broken branch behind her for balance.

“Are you ready?” Nirata asked Gian.

Gian came forward. She knelt in front of Nirata.

Lilia saw movement from the house. A small child, maybe five or six, stood in the now open doorway.

Nirata drew a blade from her hip, a simple dagger meant for eating and chores. But the blade was freshly sharpened, shiny. She tilted Gian’s head back.

Lilia realized what was going to happen. She remembered her mother’s bloody dress, and the dead riders, and the tear in the world. Was it the blood that opened the way between the worlds? Blood witch.

“Gian, don’t–” Lilia said.

Nirata drew the blade across Gian’s neck. Blood gushed.

Lilia’s stomach heaved. “No, no, no,” Lilia said. “I saved you, Gian. I saved you!”

“Gran?” the little girl called from the house.

The girl ran toward them. Gian’s body jerked and trembled in the pooling blood.

“Go back inside!” Nirata called. She had dropped the dagger. She held Gian’s body in her arms. Blood stained her hands and arms to the elbow.

“Is she all right?” The little girl hesitated, not a dozen feet from them.

Lilia gripped the karoi beak that dangled against her chest. Nirata’s arms were full.

The girl came forward. “Let me help!”

A price, Lilia thought. There was always a price. Gian chose death to get Lilia to the other side.

But Lilia, too, had a choice.

Lilia sidled toward the girl, shuffling behind Nirata. The girl was just a pace away. Another day, another girl, seeing the woman who raised her covered in blood. It was like a circle, like a sign.

Lilia held the karoi beak so tightly her hand hurt. The girl was just an arm’s length away now. Gian’s eyes were glassy.

Lilia reached out with her good arm and snatched the front of the girl’s tunic. The girl kicked her, and the two of them fell. Lilia’s heart thudded loudly. A child, a child, she’s just a child… But Lilia wrapped her bad arm around the girl’s neck, and jammed the karoi beak against her throat with the other, hard enough to draw blood. The girl screeched.

Nirata turned. Gian’s body fell from her arms.

“Let her go,” Nirata said. Cold voice.

“I can kill her before you stop me,” Lilia said, jabbing the girl’s neck again. She was trembling so hard against Lilia’s body that it made her teeth chatter. “Try your gifted tricks, but I will choke her or stab her first, or toss her off this tree altogether.”

“Gian just sacrificed her life to save you.”

“And she still will,” Lilia said. “Get me to Dorinah. The capital.” She didn’t know where she would find her mother, but if she was some important person there like Gian said, she would live in the capital.

“Impossible.”

“It’s not,” Lilia said. “If you can open a gate between worlds, you can open one across the same world. Don’t try any tricks. I know the difference. The sky is different there.”

“I can’t just whisk you anywhere you want to go in Dorinah.” Nirata looked behind her, at Gian’s body. “We’re losing time.”

“Dorinah,” Lilia said. “Any part, then.”

“There is only one soft spot in Dorinah,” Nirata said, “and it’s nowhere near the capital. You’ll be killed before then.”

Lilia tightened her grip on the girl. “Dorinah. You aren’t going to use me like a game piece anymore.”

“So you’ll use my granddaughter?”

“The way you want to use me?” Lilia said, and her voice broke. “Dorinah. Now.”

“You’ll only have a few seconds,” Nirata said. “Let her go.”

“When I’m through the gate.”

“There won’t be time–”

“When I’m through the gate!” Lilia said. The girl cried out. Lilia held her so tight, she feared the girl would stop breathing. Now Lilia was trembling, too. Monster, she thought. I’m a terrible monster.

A time to mourn, and a time to act…

“Are you prepared to kill a child?” Nirata said. “A little girl like you?”

“This isn’t my world,” Lilia said. “What do I care?” It sounded more certain than she felt. She was not a monster, not yet. Was she? She had grabbed this child, a child not her own, without permission. She was threatening harm, she was…

“Dorinah!” Lilia said. The little girl’s blood trickled down the length of the karoi beak, onto Lilia’s hand.

Nirata raised her arms. The air grew heavy. Lilia tightened her grip again, fearing betrayal. Nirata would try and rip the girl away with some tornado of air or seething plant.

The world wavered. Lilia’s stomach dropped.

Gian’s body jerked. A great gout of blood poured from her torso. The little girl squealed and squeezed her eyes shut. Blood rushed up into the air, coalesced. A black shimmer wet the sky. And then…

The air tore open.

Lilia saw a thunderous white plain of snow surrounded by vast mountain peaks. The sky was dark. Purple lightning seized the clouds. Was the sky different? She couldn’t tell through the cloud cover.

“If you’ve tricked me–” Lilia said, inching her way toward the portal.

“I have not,” Nirata said. “Give me my granddaughter. Hush, Esao. You’ll be all right.”

Lilia limped to the edge of the gate. Peered through. Cold air buffeted her. “Where is this?”

“The center of Dorinah,” Nirata said. “The only soft space in that vile country.”

“Why is there snow?”

“It’s Dorinah,” Nirata said. “You think all the world is as temperate as Dhai? Hurry.” She looked over her shoulder. Lilia wondered if there were more people in the house. “I can only keep it open a few moments.”

Lilia took a deep breath. She clung to the girl and stepped through.

“No!” Nirata said, and reached for her.

Lilia stumbled into the other side, into ankle-deep snow.

Nirata grabbed the little girl’s arm.

Lilia released her.

The gate shut.

Nirata screamed.

Blackness.

Burnt meat.

What remained of the little girl’s body fell into the snow at Lilia’s feet. Lilia heard a terrible cracking sound. The girl’s head and half her torso – including the arm Nirata had taken her by – were missing. Her remaining limbs jerked limply in the snow. Lilia vomited.

She stepped back – one step, two. She heard the groaning again, beneath her. She looked up. A great forest ringed the snowy plain. Cold bit her.

And then she realized where she was. She had been delivered onto a frozen lake.

The ice beneath her gave way.

Lilia plunged into bitter cold blackness.

I chose wrong, she thought.

 

 

29

Roh got along with most people. He considered himself very friendly. But the stately old Saiduan dancing teacher, Ghakar, pretended he could not understand Roh’s accent, and the Patron’s dancers ignored Roh entirely for the first half hour he watched them from the archway every morning.

Ghakar’s instructions were biting, spoken far too quickly for Roh to fully understand. A musician kept time at the other end of the hall on a large drum. There was no singing in Saiduan dance pieces – and no poetry, unlike most Dhai performances. It was just painstaking movement set to music. And this piece was interspersed with snide comments from the other dancers about cannibals and maggots that Roh knew were meant to insult him. When Ghakar did not intervene, Roh decided to ignore them.

After three hours of insults and getting shouted at in Saiduan for not lifting the correct foot, Roh still managed to smile and thank Ghakar before they left.

Ghakar turned sullenly away from him. The others pushed past. One even shoved him. Roh clenched his fists and smiled harder.

When they were gone, Kihin said, “So, if they hate us, why did the Patron want you to dance?”

“Because he can,” Roh said.

“Then I’m glad Ora Dasai asked me to keep an eye on you,” Kihin said. “Because these people aren’t very nice.”

“I want to figure out why the Patron would ask me at all. Is he trying to shame the others? Is one of them an old lover? Is he angry at Ghakar?”

“So you did think about it.”

“I’m not dumb enough to think everything’s about how pretty I am,” Roh said.

“I think that came out less humble than you hoped.”

They walked down the sinuous corridors of Kuonrada to the archives. After seeing the order and simplicity of the rest of Kuonrada, the archive room looked like a haphazard mess, an afterthought. Massive black lacquered bookshelves wrapped the enormous chamber, full to bursting with stacks of paper bound in twine, rotting leather books, and dusty heaps of journals bound in everything from fireweed cord to metal rings. The aisles between the shelves were obstructed by fallen books and records, some of them so fragile, they had scattered into papery bits upon hitting the floor. Along the wall near the door were massive chests of books and records that looked like recent additions. At the center of the room, three tables were rooted to the floor with iron hoops. A mismatched collection of chairs ringed the tables.

Roh saw Chali and Nioni arguing softly among the stacks. Dasai and Aramey worked at one of the tables with two Saiduan men that Roh took to be scholars. Another young man made his way to a separate table with a small chest of records. He was slender and very pale for a Saiduan. It took Roh a moment to realize he must be Dhai. His hair was shorn short, like a slave, but he didn’t have the flat forehead of those who’d been born into service. Was he from Grania? Had he been captured? A little flutter of fear made Roh falter.

Dasai looked up at their arrival and introduced Roh to the Saiduans. For the last week, he’d spent all his time dancing and none in the archives. Short, balding Bael was the youngest – Aramey’s age – and the other looked to be a contemporary of Dasai’s. His name was Ashaar, and he wore his hair long and braided with red ribbons.

“You’ll act as runners today,” Dasai said, and handed Roh a scrap of paper. “Get acquainted with the catalogue at the back.”

“There’s no librarian?” Roh said.

“This is what’s left from three cities,” Dasai said. “The librarians from those are dead, and Bael is acting as record keeper for the collection. As you can see, he is otherwise engaged. We are spread thin, Roh.”

“Sorry,” Roh said.

Dasai waved a hand at him and called Kihin over to return a massive book covered in what looked like some kind of reptile’s skin.

The day became long and tedious. After, Roh was covered in dust and broken scraps of paper, delicate as ash. The day’s work pointed them toward two primary texts mentioned in secondary texts. One was a history of Isjahilde, a city far to the north already overtaken by the invaders. It was supposed to be written by a Dhai scholar nineteen hundred years before, just a few decades after the Saiduan completely conquered the continent. The other was called World-unmaker or World-breaker. It was listed six times in an account from a long-dead sinajista as the primary source for information on how omajistas manipulated the way between spaces.

“So, these people aren’t coming from boats,” Roh said.

“No,” Dasai said. “I suspect the Saiduan already know that. Somehow they’re moving between… spaces. Great distances. Movement over great distances is one power Oma is known to bestow. We need to find out how to prevent them from doing it.”

Roh hovered over Dasai’s shoulder as he read one of the passages aloud, “The loss of this world lies at the feet of the Dhai unmakers who failed to save it and the Saiduan unmakers who destroyed it. We who remain have undertaken a great task: to purge the World-unmakers from history and deny the Saiduan victory over another that they have achieved over us.”