The Mirror Empire (57 page)

“Things change.”

The man chuckled. “You think you’ve cornered us, Kai. But it’s us who’ve cornered you. We’ve softened the way for an army that will overwhelm your harbor come spring, and you’re too late to stop it.”

“Ghrasia–” Ahkio said.

But Ghrasia was already looking around the room – the windows, the door.

Caisa took a step back. Ahkio felt a prickling across his shoulders, but that could just as easily have been the presence of the other Oras in the room, keeping the shadow bound. The room went quiet. The air was heavy.

“Did you drug him?” Ahkio asked Caisa. “They’re gifted.”

“Of course,” Caisa said.

Ahkio’s ears popped. “Get this man out of here,” Ahkio said. “The rest of you, out!”

Ohanni and Shanigan grabbed the man. Hauled him out. A wave of air shuddered through the room.

Then all of the others were moving. Ahkio heard a groan of timber above. A creaking of glass.

The windows of the council house imploded. A spray of glass shot past Ahkio’s head. A wall of air buffered his path, but it was not solid. He pushed through it, like walking through water. He came out on the other side, stumbled.

“Ghrasia?” Figures streamed past him.

His voice was swallowed in the groan of timber, the cracking of adenoak beams. The floor shook violently.

“Kai!” Caisa said. “The maps!” She bolted back upstairs.

Ahkio ran after her. He got halfway up the stairs before the whole house groaned and heaved sideways. He fell. Caisa appeared at the top of the crooked stairway, Kirana’s maps of the temple under one arm. She’d grabbed four books. She threw them down. Half her face was covered in blood.

The lanterns in the hall were dimming and flickering as the flame flies moved in frantic circles.

Ahkio threw the books out the front door. He had no idea which ones she’d grabbed. He reached for her hand. She stumbled down the steps.

With three paces left to tread, the ceiling collapsed.

Ahkio looked up too late. He tried to cover his head. Dust misted his face. He took a breath, coughed, opened his eyes.

An arm’s length above him, splintered wood hovered in the air. He looked back at Caisa. She lay on her back on the floor, one hand gripping the maps, the other crooked over her head. She had summoned some shield of air to halt the collapse of the ceiling, but Ahkio wasn’t sure how long she could hold it. Sweat beaded her brow.

Wooden planking, straw insulation, bits of plaster and broken ceramic tiles littered the floor. Ahkio saw Ohanni and Naori at what remained of the door, calling for them to come forward. The shadow man lay on his side on the porch, cackling.

“Ora Ohanni,” Ahkio said, pointing back at Caisa. “Can you keep that ceiling up?”

Ohanni held out a hand toward the stair. The air rippled. He choked on it. Air like soup.

Ahkio grabbed Caisa by the ankles. He pulled her out onto the porch. Caisa coughed out the dust and pushed the maps away from the house. He let her go, and she crawled out onto the stone of the clan square.

“Watch yourself!” Ohanni said coldly. “There are more outside.”

The Tai Mora. Their shadows.

All dozen of the assassins? More? Ahkio didn’t know. They’d come hunting Ahkio, encircling his people here. Eight steps ahead of him.

Ahkio caught his breath. The air outside choked him. Too many jistas drawing power. He heard shouts from the yard, muted and distorted. Behind him, the ceiling above the stair collapsed as Ohanni dropped her shield of air. The sound was oddly dulled, distant.

The lanterns of the square flickered. Oras stood in the center of the courtyard in a circle, their backs to one another. The militia – including Raona’s militia – stood with them.

And on the edges of the flickering lights, at the edges of the square, were the shadows. They bore metal weapons, not the glowing infused brands of the militia. It made them far harder to see in the dark. All around the square, violet, blue, and green bursts of color bloomed against the night as the militia took up arms.

Ahkio looked over at the council house and saw a yawning gulf of black. He looked up at the formerly moons-lit sky. Boiling clouds had rolled over their faces, smothering them in darkness. A heavy wind made the treetops creak, but he could feel none of it in the square in the thick, sticky air.

“How many are there?” Ahkio asked.

“I do not know,” Ohanni said. “Ghrasia went to rally the forces we have here, but… Ahkio.” She glanced back at the council house. It had utterly collapsed into a splintered mass of shattered glass and broken timber.

“Ahkio,” Ohanni said, “If it’s all the dozen of them at once, we’re lost. They may have… they may be omajistas. We have no defense against omajistas. In the dark, we can’t see them. They’ll have abilities we don’t and use talent we won’t expect.”

Caisa took hold of the railing and drew herself up. Her blade, unlike those of the militia, was bare metal, too.

Someone from the circle of Oras cried out.

There came the sound of breaking glass.

One by one, the lanterns in the square shattered.

“Light,” Naori said.

Ghrasia’s voice, from the other end of the meeting house, “Weapons out!”

And there, in the light of the last lantern, in the instant before it shattered, Ahkio saw Ghrasia rushing into the courtyard, at least a dozen Oras and militia behind her.

The last lantern in the square flickered and died. Someone screamed.

The darkness was complete.

“Stay with these documents,” Ahkio said to Ohanni and Naori. “Caisa, come with me.”

“I’m here,” she said. Her voice said she was very close, nearly at his elbow.

“We need to go around the other side of the council house,” he said. “You’re from Raona. This is your clan. Can you lead me from memory?”

“I’ll try,” Caisa said. “Take my hand.”

He took her fingers.

“Take me to the door of the cellar,” he said.

She led him down the short alley that went behind the council house. His footsteps sounded loud. For her part, Caisa stepped as softly as a cat.

“There are barrels of oil under the house,” he said. “If the floor didn’t collapse, we can ignite what’s down there and give the militia some light.” He wondered, briefly, where Liaro was. He’d been the one to move the barrels here. Ahkio hoped he was tucked safely in someone’s bed.

Ahkio groped forward for the cellar door. Opened it. They stepped down. Ahkio ran into something. Caisa hissed. Just a chair. The house above had not collapsed into the cellar.

When they reached the far wall, Ahkio said, “Start at the room on the end. We’re looking for oil barrels. I’ll head down the other side.”

He had never liked the dark. It helped if he closed his eyes. He knew these rooms. He had stored things in cellars just like this, worked as a laborer just as Liaro did during long summers in Osono, loading and unloading carts whose owners used the council houses for temporary storage. Ten steps across the first room, six deep. He found the outlines of trunks and crates, a couple sacks of what must have been hasaen tubers. No barrels.

He felt his way over to the next room and bumped into something. He gasped.

“It’s just me.” Caisa’s voice. “They’re in here,” she said. “They’re heavy.”

She led him into the room. The barrels were only knee-high but as wide around as Ahkio’s arms.

“We need to roll this out,” Ahkio said. “Break them open in the stair.”

“We could burn down the whole square.”

“Better to burn down the square than die in it,” Ahkio said. “It’s cold and there’s no wind. The council house will burn because of the oil. Rolling these outside will take too much time. I can rebuild the council house, but I can’t save lives lost. Help me.”

She said something that sounded like a curse.

He tipped over one of the barrels and pushed it across the floor to the stairs. As they came to the stairs, Ahkio heard the sound of shouting grow louder. When he looked up in the direction of the sound, he saw bursts of color as weapons met.

Ahkio rolled the barrel into place at the bottom of the stair.

He heard Caisa behind him, rolling her barrel. “Caisa, set it here.”

He felt her settle the barrel against his opposite hip. Ahkio unstopped his barrel. He pushed it over. The oil glugged out. He stepped to the other side, fearful of getting his feet in the oil. He had a sudden, terrible image of his body aflame. He took a deep breath.

“Caisa, you have some scorch pods?” Ahkio asked. “I know you smoke. Check your pockets.”

“I don’t have any.”

Ahkio patted his tunic pockets. The Dorinah book, a pen nib. But there, deep in his trouser pockets, were two scorch pods. In his haste to dress, he had grabbed Liaro’s trousers instead of his own. Ahkio tore one of the end pages from the Dorinah book and twisted it lengthwise.

He heard Ohanni yelling.

Ahkio smashed the pods and touched the end of the twisted paper to them. He blew gently. A tiny flame flickered. Grew. He flinched in the face of it. Burning the council house had seemed like a fine idea until he lit a flame. Ahkio glanced across from him at Caisa.

But the figure squatting across from him was not Caisa.

Ahkio cried out. The paper fell from his hand and into the oil. The flickering fire licked at the oil and became a gluttonous flame. Smoke stung his eyes. He remembered his mother shrieking.

Ahkio fell back away from the stair. On the other side of the river of oily fire was a wiry, dark-haired man. The man grinned. Caisa’s height. Caisa’s slender build. His eyes glinted gold.

He spoke with Caisa’s voice. “Kai, what’s wrong? Not who you expected?” He drew his sword. “Have you not fought an omajista?”

Ohanni screaming, “Kai!”

Light burst up toward the sel oil barrel. Fire licked at the wood. Ahkio recoiled from the heat. Smelled burning flesh. He tucked his hands under his arms, terrified.

He tried to bolt for the stair, but the shadow was over the oily fire in one leap. The man grabbed hold of Ahkio by the collar. Leaned into him. This close, his eyes were like looking into the sun.

“Your victory was going to be a sloppy one,” the shadow man said, still in Caisa’s voice. “A dozen of us dead? What does that matter? There are millions of us, boy. We will swarm this world like sparrows.”

Fire leapt behind them, curled up the length of the beam. Smoke filled the cellar. Ahkio realized he feared the fire more than the man.

The shadow man lifted Ahkio by the collar. The heat was unbearable. Oil caught the floorboards – the close ceiling, the straw insulation, the old wooden timbers, were perfect tinder. The fire ate, crackled, spit. I’m on fire, Ahkio thought. I’m going to burn up. Just like my mother.

The column of fire cast a great, long shadow. The man’s eyes caught the light of the flames, like a mirror.

The shadow grunted. Spasmed.

Ahkio saw the glistening blade of a sword protruding from the man’s chest. The sword withdrew.

The shadow dropped Ahkio and crumpled.

Ahkio fell onto the burning floor. His breath came in ragged gasps. He sounded the way his mother had, when he’d hooked her under her arms and hauled her burning body from their blazing house. He panicked then. His stomach roiled. He grabbed at his hair, terrified that it burned. But he still had his hair. His face. His hands.

Ahkio rolled away from the burning wood and oil. He rolled until he hit the opposite wall of debris. He uncovered his face. The back of his tunic had caught fire. He took either side of the tunic and pressed the fabric together to smother the flames. The flames went out. His breath came easier. Ahkio stared at the charred fabric. Kirana would tell him to get up.

Get up, Ahkio. Or all this death and madness is for nothing.

He choked on smoke. He saw Caisa ducking away from the shadow man she had skewered, ducking from light to shadow, dancing around flames as the ruined ceiling began to burn, loose bits of straw and char falling like flame flies from the ceiling. The shadow had dropped his sword and punched at her with a dagger now. Caisa’s forearms bled.

The shadow’s sword was just three paces from Ahkio, ablaze in a puddle of oil. Ahkio yanked off his tunic and wrapped it around his hand. He plunged forward, into the blazing oil, and snatched out the flaming sword.

As Caisa ducked and parried the knife, Ahkio held the sword tight in both hands and swung. Not for the man’s head or torso, the places the shadow would anticipate and set up gifted defenses, but his legs.

The man yelled, leaping away from Ahkio’s strike, and turned. Ahkio knocked into him with his own body; pushed him over.

Caisa took up her weapon in both hands and drove it into the man’s back, pinning him to the floor. Ahkio got as close to the burning wall as he dared. His clothes were smoking. He raised the fiery sword as high as he could and realized what he was about to do.

Murder. At his hand.

He could not bring down the sword.

Caisa pulled her sword free and hacked a second time. Blood sprayed them. Her third stroke freed the head from the torso.

Ahkio dropped his own sword, throwing the flaming tunic with it. “Out!” Ahkio said.

Caisa stumbled over the body. She had one arm clutched to her chest. Ahkio saw more blood there beneath her arm. Her face was drawn.

“Kai,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Quiet, now,” he said. “You did well. Let me help you out.”

When she consented, he took her in his arms. His hands did not tremble.

They stumbled up the flaming stairs and into the cold, murky air.

Ahkio released her, and Caisa sagged against him. Ahkio felt the heat at his back. He helped Caisa into the courtyard, near the fountain. The fire blossomed up through the house and spread out over the wreckage, an enormous bonfire that licked at the cold sky and sent out a wave of heat and light. Other people lined the square, those living in the houses above their market stalls, those in nearby community houses, some hovering in the shadows, but others…