The Mirror Empire (41 page)

The dancers portraying the Dhai pulled back from the circle of Talamynii who lay motionless on the floor behind Roh and Abas. The dancers playing Dhai moved into the final set, ending in a uniform pirouette that became a long bow of the body toward the long tables.

There was a long silence before the Patron stood to thank the dancers. The audience tapped their plates with their long soup spoons.

“My captive for the night,” the Patron said to Abas, “do bring yourself and your chosen to my table.”

Roh glanced at Abas. Abas gave him a trifling smile and held out his hand. Roh took it.

Abas led Roh up the purple carpet to the high table. He passed Wraisau and Driaa sitting at one of the lower tables. Wraisau stood as he passed and slapped his shoulder. Roh jumped, and they all laughed. Servants brought two extra chairs to the dais. Three women – wearing torques, and belts of silver loops – hung back behind the Patron. They held silver basins of water and wine. The feasting was over, so the drinking had begun. The women did not speak, but their kohl-ringed eyes took in Abas and Roh with something more than polite interest. Roh saw calculated study in those gazes, measuring the two dancers for what they were worth.

Roh met their gazes and noticed, with a start, that one of them had green eyes. She was dark-skinned as a Saiduan, yes, but there were the Talamynii eyes. If one measured the death of a people in blood, it was never complete. What the Dhai had eradicated was the Talamynii culture, their memories, their dreams. As Roh gazed at the Patron, he wondered what parts of his own people had been erased when the Saiduan murdered them in droves and exiled them from the continent.

The servants set the chairs just behind those at the Patron’s elbow. Roh gazed long at the sanisi at the high table. The sanisi sitting to the left of the Patron was not as tall as the others, even sitting down. He had a mass of inky, oiled hair knotted back in a braid like a rope. He did not look at Roh or Abas but continued to talk in a low voice to the sanisi at his right, whose beardless face and manner of sitting made her Shao Maralah Daonia, the woman he had watched spar in the courtyard. She had a lined, weathered face that put Roh in mind of the creased leather spines of old books. She looked far older than forty. He saw silver hairs in her mane of black.

The Patron motioned for Abas and Roh to sit. The Patron smelled heavily of aatai liquor and cloves and some sort of lavender oil that made Roh’s eyes water.

“Abas,” the Patron said, gesturing to the imposing sanisi at his right, a tall but very young sanisi who could not have been much past twenty. “You’re familiar with my eldest son, Shas Chaigaan Taar?”

“I am,” Abas said, inclining his head to Chaigaan. Chaigaan had the same build and broad cheekbones as his father. Roh had heard all but seven of the Patron’s sons were dead at the hands of the invaders. He wondered why this one was spared. Because he was a sanisi?

“You did not choose the prettiest of the dancers this year, Abas,” Chaigaan said. “I always thought Mhor the prettiest.”

“No,” Abas said, “I chose the best.”

“We have different tastes,” he said, and laughed.

The laugh attracted the attention of Maralah and her conversation partner. The sanisi at the Patron’s left glanced back at Roh. There was nothing immediately compelling about him. Next to Maralah, he was dark as fired clay. His lean face was lightly bearded. His eyes were a deep blue-black. A long scar began just behind his left ear and disappeared beneath the collar of his tunic. The hilt of his infused blade stuck up along his left shoulder.

Roh chanced a look at the backs of the other sanisi at the high table and saw that they, too, remained armed in the presence of the Patron. They were sworn to the Patron, but to trust all of them, all sixteen, at such a table… The Patron owned these people: blood, skin, bone.

The sanisi at the Patron’s left looked once at Roh, dismissive, then turned away. But Maralah gazed long at Roh. Her flat, squashed nose looked as if it had been broken many times.

“Surely this isn’t one of our scholars?” she said.

Roh felt like one of the servants, one of the women standing behind him: completely visible, displayed overtly, an interesting possession.

“It is,” the Patron said.

“You are using him most… wisely,” she said.

“He is Ora Dasai’s assistant,” the Patron said, and to Roh, it sounded as if he was trying to justify himself. “Rohinmey Tadisa Garika. Rohinmey, this is Shao Maralah Daonia, Blue-Blade Soul Stealer and Sword of Albaaric. Beside her is Ren Kadaan Soagan, Shadow of Caisau.”

Roh stared at Kadaan, who had emptied a glass of wine and now turned back to Roh and the Patron. He should have recognized him as Maralah’s sparring partner.

“Rohinmey?” Kadaan said. “A soft, Dhai name and a mouthful. I think their names get longer over the centuries as they look to configure new ones.”

Maralah turned away from Roh, another dismissal. “Perhaps each time they eat one of their dead, they add a name,” she said, and laughed. She seemed a little drunk.

“Nearly as grotesque as Dorinahs,” Kadaan said. He picked up another glass of wine, turned, eyed Roh. Kadaan dipped a finger into his wine cup. “Tell me, what does that mean, your name? Rohinmey. What does that mean in Dhai?”

Roh hesitated. Abas and the Patron and his son watched them with amusement. Maralah turned to her other dinner companion, and said something that made him snort.

“I would ask you what Kadaan meant,” Roh said, “but I’ve done my studying.”

“Have you? I’ve never met a dancer with a mind that matched his body.”

“You haven’t met many Dhai,” Roh said.

“I’ve killed a great many Dhai,” Kadaan said. “You all look the same.”

“I’ve killed a great many bugs,” Roh said. “It doesn’t mean I understand them any better.”

Maralah coughed into her glass and shook her head. “They don’t know, Kadaan.”

“Don’t they?” Kadaan frowned. “I suppose that’s wise.”

“What don’t I know?”

“You know little of… death,” Kadaan said.

“Death is less extraordinary than a sanisi would have people believe.”

Kadaan finally chuckled. “I tire of foreigners cluttering our table.”

Roh sat back, only a little wounded. He looked longingly down at the table where his friends sat. Luna and Kihin were lost in conversation. Aramey and one of the Saiduan scholars were locked in a heated discussion. Only Chali appeared melancholy. He brooded over his clean plate and empty liquor glasses. After a moment, he caught Roh’s look and smiled wanly.

Roh saw someone moving behind Chali, a spry man with dark hair and a pinched face. He was not a Saiduan, from the look of his tawny skin and small stature; he looked like a Dhai. He did not have the shaved head of a slave, though he wore a short coat and trousers as the slaves did. Roh saw more movement at the corner of his eye. Another man, similar to the first, walked along the opposite wall. Roh had not noticed them during the dance. Seeing those two, he became aware of others – four more ahead of the first, five ahead of the second man on the opposite wall. They walked without any particular urgency, weaving among the slaves, pacing themselves with the ebb and tide of the crowd. They were making their way toward the high table. The other dancers sat around the lower tables, laughing and joking with soldiers and lower-ranking sanisi. No one paid any heed to the men along the walls. Were they some underclass of people Roh hadn’t seen before? One he hadn’t read about?

Kadaan was looking at him again. The first of the unknown men reached either end of the high table. Kadaan followed Roh’s stare, and said, “What are you looking at, boy?”

“Those men,” Roh said. “Who are they?”

“Which men?” Kadaan asked.

“The ones there,” Roh said, and pointed. He felt a chill. “Don’t you see them?”

Kadaan looked again. Something in his expression hardened. The first of the men reached the ends of the dais and mounted the steps.

Roh felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The tips of his fingers tingled.

The men advanced across the dais. A woman stepped past them. Roh watched one of the men slide his hands behind his back. Roh felt Abas lean over, put his hand on Roh’s knee.

Abas snickered, said, “Roh, did you–”

Roh started to speak–

–and Kadaan pushed himself up, brought his hand back over his shoulder, and gripped the hilt of his infused blade. The blue breath of Para surrounded him.

Kadaan’s piercing yell, merging with the hiss of the blade, “Ohkair!”

Maralah moved first. Hers was the only order of movement Roh was certain of afterward. She and Kadaan leapt up as if attached to a string, like they knew one another’s movements three heartbeats before they began. She fell back out of her seat, tucked into a backward roll, and Kadaan leapt over her, hurling a twisted skein of blue mist at the nearest attacker. Only then did the other sanisi move, a fraction of a second later than Maralah, a full second after Kadaan, but enough time for the strange men to note their detection and leap for the Patron at the center of the high table.

Everything changed in the space of a breath.

Someone clipped Roh’s ear; he felt the kiss of a glowing blade. Then he was on the floor, gasping. Abas lay against the wall, the skin over his skull split, oozing blood. His eyelids flickered.

Roh looked over at Abas’s broken chair. One of the women lay heaped next to Abas. A dark pool was forming beneath her. Roh’s head spun. A slow spread of blood moved over the stones toward him. He was shivering. Someone was next to him, making rasping sounds, the way Lilia did when she had trouble breathing, only these sounds were wetter, choking, as if he did not drown on air but blood.

Roh tried to see who was making that sound. The Patron’s chair was overturned, empty. Crumpled beneath the table was the inert form of his son, the sanisi. Chaigaan lay four feet from Roh, cheek pressed to the stones, staring at Roh with wide, glassy eyes. It was dark beneath the table, but Roh saw a wet, glistening mound heaped against the sanisi’s belly – the spill of his insides, leaking onto the floor. Roh’s hands were sticky with blood; the blood of the Patron’s son, flowing along the runnels in the stone, mingling with the blood of Abas, and the dead woman, bleeding past Roh.

He heard muted cries, the scuffle of boots, leather, and above that, the hissing of infused weapons. He looked under the table, toward the main room, and saw wispy tails of Para’s breath streaking through the air. He tried to find Kihin and Dasai, Nioni, Chali, and Aramey, but he saw only a mass of fighting figures, a stir of fleeing slaves.

Roh crawled toward Abas and cradled Abas’s head in his lap.

Abas murmured something but did not move. Cold sweat stung Roh’s eyes. He heard the rasping breath of the Patron’s dying son.

Roh choked. He clutched at his stomach and pulled away from Abas. He wouldn’t vomit. Not here. He looked back under the table and saw a way through. It was three feet from the top of the dais to the floor. He was too small to drag Abas. He had to wake him up or leave him. He lay on his belly beneath the table. The dying sanisi was whispering now, something that sounded like a prayer.

Someone cried out. Blades burst and hissed.

A man grabbed hold of Roh’s ankle. Dragged him out from under the table.

Roh gurgled a cry. He clawed at the stone with his bloody hands, kicked out.

The grip relaxed. Roh tried to hop away, too late. One of the strange men gripped Roh’s shoulder and brought one hand back. A blue blade flashed – it sprouted from the man’s wrist like a living thing. Roh crossed his arms. The air around him grew heavy, condensed. He recited the Litany of the Gale.

He tensed. Not himself but the blue particles of Para’s breath. The air around him pulsed, contracted. He expelled the breath from his lungs and pushed the wall of condensed air outward.

His attacker shivered. His blue bonsa weapon lodged in the coagulated air.

Roh parted the air and caught the man’s hand in a deceptively simple grip. He twisted. The weapon wrenched free.

The misty blue breath around him dissipated. The man reached through the broken defense and jabbed toward him, impossibly fast, a kill strike. Roh saw the strike just as the man formed it. Roh pivoted. He still gripped the man’s hand in a crippling hold.

Roh stumbled over one of Abas’s arms. He fell to his knees and pulled his attacker down with him.

He saw something moving at the corner of his eye. A blue weapon flashed. The length of a sanisi’s infused blade arced across Roh’s field of vision, neatly splitting the man in two. For one still moment, the man grinned at Roh. A thin line of blood appeared across his face. Half of his head slid away.

Roh still held the man’s warm hand, his grip welded to the flesh like a vise, terrified to let go, his body still telling him that to let go meant death.

Blood gushed. The body tottered, balanced upright only by Roh’s grip.

A figure bent over the leaning body. Clad in black, spattered in glistening blood. A lean face, an ugly scar. For a long moment, Roh did not recognize him.

“You can let him go,” Kadaan said.

Roh’s fingers were numb. The dead man’s hand felt cool. Roh let his grip relax. The corpse fell to the floor.

Kadaan’s infused blade hovered over the still body, black with blood. As Roh watched, the blood seeped into the branch. A single drop escaped from the tip, dripped to the floor.

Kadaan held out his free hand to Roh. “Up,” he said.

Roh couldn’t move.

Kadaan gripped his hand, pulled him up. Roh found his footing. He was too shocked even to protest Kadaan’s grip.

“That was the last,” Kadaan said as Roh looked back to either end of the table. Fewer sanisi moved among the dead, perhaps only a half dozen standing. How many had been seated at the table?