The Mirror Empire (36 page)

Dasai sighed. “I will read the rest,” he said. “But it doesn’t look promising, if there was a conspiracy to destroy the records we were looking for long before we began our search.”

“What’s the point of all this?” Kihin said. “The Dhai lost last time. How do they expect we’d know how to win this time?”

“Patience,” Dasai said. But Roh didn’t hear much confidence in his voice. “We’ll look for the other texts referenced here. I’ll begin a list.”

After dinner, Kihin climbed into his bunk above Roh and said, “I bet the other scholars won’t work with us because we’re Dhai. You saw they didn’t let Luna eat with us.”

“Luna’s that other Dhai, the… slave?” Roh said.

“Yes, Aramey told me,” Kihin said. “Luna was a Woodland Dhai. Some Dorinah raiding party caught him on the coast and sold him off to the Saiduan.”

“You best be using hir correct pronoun in Saiduan,” Dasai said, in Saiduan.

“I’m not an impolite person,” Kihin said, also in Saiduan. “I’m aware of hir pronoun.”

Roh sighed, and said in Dhai, “Ora Dasai, why would the Patron bring us all this way and then not have us all work together? Do they want to save this place or not?”

“That’s a matter of degree,” Dasai said.

Roh turned. Dasai stood in the doorway, leaning on his cane. “How did the dancing go?”

“They all hate me,” Roh said. “The same way all the scholars hate us. I thought all those stories were a long time ago. Why do they still hate us?”

“Give it time.”

“Time’s something we don’t have,” Kihin said, “if omajistas are dropping people into Saiduan.”

“Why don’t the Saiduan do things that make sense?” Roh said. “None of this is logical at all.”

“Logic?” Dasai said. “People do not take actions based on logic. We make choices based on emotion. Every one of us. Then we use what we call logic to justify our choices. People don’t do things that make sense.”

“I’m very logical,” Roh said.

Dasai raised his brows. Roh saw a rare smile touch the corners of his lips. “You are one of the most impulsive people I know,” Dasai said, “and I have trained hundreds of novices and scholars.”

Kihin snickered.

As the long, cold days in Saiduan continued to pass, the dancing did not get any easier. Roh moved from the more familiar forms to the vonov, which, as the Patron had told him, was much more fluid and required a closer proximity to the other dancers. Despite the fact that the rest of the keep was drafty, an hour into practice, they all danced shirtless, and Roh found he moved with and among a throng of wiry, beautiful dancers. He did not allow himself to dwell on that until after he finished a set, and then he gazed out at the dark-eyed, dark-skinned men and was slightly breathless, too warm. He had to avert his eyes, temper desire.

One of the dancers, a sloe-eyed man called Abas, pressed a hand to the small of Roh’s back after one of the sets. Roh started. He was trying to get used to the casual, nonconsensual touching, but it still bothered him.

Abas said, “You are not so hopeless, boy. Does that chaperone never leave you?”

“I’ve been told I’m dangerous without a chaperone.”

“You should smile more often,” Abas said. “You could light the world with a grin like that.”

While the dancing progressed, the work in the archives did not. Roh spent more and more of his time with the dancers, especially Abas. Abas showed him around the hold one cold afternoon and said, “You have a special love of sanisi, do you not?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You watch them like a hungry puppy,” Abas said. “It makes me jealous.”

Below, Roh saw two fighters who appeared to be dancing, the only sound the scuff of their boots on the stones. They were sanisi, and they had drawn a sizable crowd of spectators.

“Who’s that?” Roh asked.

Abas came to the rail. “That is Ren Kadaan Soagan and Shao Maralah Daonia.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Roh said.

“I expect you have. She’s the Patron’s most trusted general.”

“And Kadaan?”

“Her best student. Not many men apprenticed to her, in the beginning. But he was smart. He saw her for what she was.”

“Or she saw something in him,” Roh said.

“Perhaps it required intelligence from both of them,” Abas said, and showed his teeth, an exaggeration of a smile that Roh had seen many Saiduan flash publicly. The real smiles came in private. Roh cherished those much more.

The two sanisi moved in patterns too complex for Roh to follow, but the movements were fast enough for him to recognize that they were anticipating one another’s forms. Roh knew that feeling.

“You see Kadaan?” Abas said, and Roh heard the affection in his voice. “See how they keep pace with one another? A spar like this, between these two, can last hours. Kadaan is the best of them. He is not yet twenty-five and has killed forty-three of the invaders. He gained us many weeks in the northern cities. It’s sad they will destroy each other.”

“What do you mean?”

Abas shrugged and pushed away from the rail. “It’s how it’s done. She has lived a long time. Most think the only reason she still lives is because of the war. We lose too many sanisi. But before that… yes, Kadaan would have killed her, I’m sure. You haven’t seen it among the dancers yet, but we do it, too. The boy who had my place before me? He fell from this rail, here.” Abas rapped the railing. It came nearly to his chest. “You can see it would not be so easy to fall unaided.”

“You took his place?”

“Times were different. War has changed us. Now… well, now we have a Dhai dancing with us because we are so few. Things move quickly, don’t they?”

“It’s a good thing you changed with them.”

Abas gazed down at the sanisi again. “Some,” he said. “Not all.”

 

That night after supper, Dasai and Nioni gathered in the sitting room and went over the day’s work. Luna and Kihin sat up in the room Kihin and Roh shared, arguing about old Dhai verb tenses. Roh sat in the main room on the armrest of one of the chairs and listened to the older men talk.

“I cannot, in good conscience, force any of my scholars that far north,” Dasai said, “and I certainly doubt my own ability to survive such a journey.”

“Someone has to go,” Nioni said. “I’ll take them if I must. The records here are incomplete, and Bael says there was an untouched archive farther north. If we find nothing here, we’ll have come all this way for naught.”

“This may be all there is,” Dasai said. “It’s possible the invaders have already destroyed what they came for.”

“Then we’ve come all this way for nothing,” Nioni said, “and you know my time is precious.” Aramey hushed him.

Chali sighed. “We’ve hardly begun.”

“What do you think, Rohinmey?” Dasai asked.

“I think there’s a reason empires aren’t made by old men.”

“No,” Dasai said, “but they are certainly
maintained
by old men.” He waved a hand. “Enough for tonight. It’s too early to give our tongues to the cat. We have time yet.”

“And when we run out of time?” Chali said.

Aramey looked stricken. Roh imagined them all as great frozen bodies caked in ice and buried in some snow drift.

“There is time,” Dasai said. “Roh, take my arm and help me to my room, please.”

Roh took his arm and escorted him to his chambers. Dasai had been slowing down as the days passed. Every step he took looked painful. He complained often and bitterly about the cold, despite wearing warmer clothes than all of them.

“The dancing lessons are going well?” Dasai asked as he slipped off his shoes.

“They’re good,” Roh said, pulling back the blankets from Dasai’s bed.

“A clipped response,” Dasai said, “from one once so talkative. You could once iron my head with your chatter.”

“I don’t know what to say. We get along all right. They’re vain, but most dancers are like that.”

“I don’t like you wandering about the keep on your own,” Dasai said.

“I’m not alone,” Roh said. “Kihin goes everywhere with me.”

“You think I’m blind as well as arthritic? I know he doesn’t go
everywhere
with you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I’m just an old man,” Dasai said, pulling the blankets up over himself. He settled back on the pillows. The spill of his white hair trailed down one shoulder. “Go on, now, and sleep tonight. I want you to continue practicing your defense forms with Kihin. You’ve grown lax in that.”

“Ora Dasai, you’ve already got me dancing three hours in the morning and running errands all–”

“Obviously, such activities do not keep you well enough occupied,” Dasai said, “if you have so much extra energy that it must be expended running after dancers in the dark. I would prefer you employ such energies in something useful.”

“Yes, Ora Dasai.” Roh walked back to his bedroom. Luna and Kihin were still talking.

Luna looked much younger in the low light, slender and spry; his eyes were big and nearly black, the lashes long and delicate like a child’s. Luna slid off the bunk and said, in slightly accented Dhai, “I should go.”

Roh sat down at his desk to write a letter. It was time. He hunched over the low desk, working through the Kai cipher in his head.

“What are you writing?” Kihin asked.

“Nothing,” Roh said.

It was true. For all the scribbling, the only thing the note really said was:

 

But Roh had not had time to look for anything at all while dancing in the dark. His mornings in the archives, he merely acted as a runner, and Dasai didn’t talk about how much he learned from the book. Roh hadn’t read any more himself. Chali chided him for it, but Dasai seemed to prefer it. Dasai wanted him to get something of use from the dancers, he knew, but the more dead ends they ran into, the more resolute Roh became in why he was really here. He wanted to be a sanisi, not a spy. Because as hard as he tried, all he could think of was Abas’s smooth skin, and whirling sanisi in the courtyard, dancing with air and death.

 

 

30

“Did you sleep?” Liaro asked from the doorway.

Ahkio peered up at him from the stack of temple maps on the tea table in his rooms. Para was well above the horizon, and a hint of the double suns already kissed the treetops. He’d lost track of time. “No. Did you?”

“Not really,” Liaro said, shutting the door, “but I suspect I had a lot more fun than you did. What’s this?”

Ahkio turned the pages over. “A very old conversation between my aunt and my sister.”

“You mean Nasaka?”

“No. Etena.”

“Really? Well. That’s interesting. You know you have a bunch of clan leaders downstairs who want to keep talking government today.”

“I’m aware.” Ahkio rubbed his eyes. “I’m going to bathe and change. If Caisa comes in, tell her to leave these pages for me today. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Does this tell you what Kirana was up to in the temples?”

“I don’t know yet. It all makes me feel a little mad, to be honest.” He stood and pulled off his tunic. He’d confided in Liaro about the invaders and made him swear not to tell anyone else, including Caisa. He wasn’t sure how the country would take it. “There’s something you should know, though.”

“It gets better, does it? Have our mothers escaped Sina’s grasp and come spiraling back to life?”

“I’ve agreed to get married.”

“What?”

The look on Liaro’s face gave him pause. “Are you all right?”

“I… I thought Meyna was exiled.”

“She is. I’m marrying Clan Leader Hona’s daughter, of Sorai. Probably by the end of the week.”

“You say that so casually.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Did Ora Nasaka put you up to this?”

“I have to make hard decisions, Liaro. What did you expect? We’ll need the harbor.”

Liaro sat on the bed. “So we’re not getting married, then?” His tone was light, but Ahkio knew better.

“You know I’d like nothing better. You also know that’s not likely with a male Kai. A woman Kai like Kirana… she could have as many husbands as she wanted. It’s harder to determine parentage, with a man.”

Liaro guffawed. “You expect a Sorai to keep to one man?”

“She can take female lovers. It’s not unheard of.”

“You make like you’ve thought this through, but you haven’t.”

“Liaro, I’m tired. I don’t want to fight.”

“She was Ora Nasaka’s choice, right? Ahkio, Ora Nasaka doesn’t at all mean for you to carry on the blood of the Kai. She’s setting up Clan Leader Hona’s family to take the seat. Who knows whose baby it will be?”

“I wouldn’t care, Liaro. I’d be distantly related to just about any child, from any combination of parents.”

“You gave up so easily.”

“If you knew what I did, you’d understand why I gave up on this point.”

“Just like you give in to everything.”

“That was mean.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Get some sleep, Liaro. I’m not going to fight with you.” He grabbed a clean tunic and went downstairs to the bathing room.

After that were breakfast and more polite talk with the clan leaders. He didn’t get a break until midafternoon, and by then, his mood had soured completely. He called for a halt to the meetings for the rest of the day and went out to the clan square for a fresh breeze.

He found Caisa there, sweating through defense forms, and asked if she wanted to spar. An hour later, she had thrown him to the stones eight times, and he was exhausted and soaked in sweat. He peeled off his tunic and tossed it aside. Asked her to go again.