The Mirror Empire (6 page)

“Lilia?”

“I wonder,” the sanisi said, “what does a pretty parajista with a fiery interest in death have to say to a plain-faced crippled girl?”

“You have a weird way of seeing people,” Roh said. “I don’t know why being plain matters. She’s very smart.”

“I suppose when you don’t seek to own a thing,” the sanisi said, “its beauty matters less.”

“Will you teach me to fight?” Roh asked.

Someone knocked at the door. “Permission to enter?” Dasai’s voice, speaking perfect Saiduan.

Roh sighed. It was the sewer dregs for a year, for sure.

“Do enter,” the sanisi said.

Roh stepped away from the door, and Dasai came in. They regarded each other for a long moment, then Roh looked at his feet.

“I apologize deeply for the impolite behavior of our young people,” Dasai said, in Dhai this time. “We are quite isolated. Unfortunately, that means our young don’t often engage foreign visitors. If this child caused offense–”

“Offense was given,” the sanisi said, “but can be mitigated. Thus far, I have been instructed to bathe in a great underground chamber, given flowery clothes smelling of rotten plant matter, and had rice thrown at me. Yet my purpose for this visit has yet to be fulfilled. I understand you heard word of my coming from my Patron. I should not have been unexpected.”

“The acting Kai is now prepared to meet you,” Dasai said. “I do apologize for the delay. Ora Chali is waiting outside to escort you.”

Dasai motioned for the sanisi to move into the hall. Roh saw his own older brother, Chali Finahin Badu, standing there with hands clasped, his too-long hair hanging into his eyes. Most people didn’t guess that Chali and Roh were brothers – they shared a family of two mothers and three fathers but were not blooded relations.

Chali’s eyes widened when he saw Roh, but he said nothing. Roh knew he’d hear about it later. Chali was always telling Roh how something or other Roh did hurt Chali’s chances of being Elder Ora of Tira’s Temple someday.

“Ora Chali, escort our guest upstairs, please,” Dasai said. “I will be but a moment.”

Roh half hoped Dasai would be so busy with the sanisi that he’d just send Roh downstairs.

Chali and the sanisi moved down the hall. Roh waited.

And waited.

“You’re angry,” Roh said.

“I am furious,” Dasai said. “There is a game here you don’t understand. You could be exiled.”

“Exiled? We were talking. Just
talking
!”

Dasai lowered his voice. “That is a Saiduan assassin. He has killed more people with his own hands than inhabit this temple.”

Roh wanted to correct Dasai on the sanisi’s gender but thought better of it. Dasai was still using the male-assertive pronoun, while Roh now thought female-assertive was more appropriate. The sanisi had carefully used none in reference to herself.

“One ill word from that man,” Dasai said, “and the Saiduan Patron sends one thousand men like him into Dhai. They murder every last one of us.
Every one
. They wanted us dead two millennia ago. They nearly succeeded. Don’t think they won’t look for a reason to come here and end it.” Dasai struck the floor between Roh’s feet with his walking stick. “And all because one vain boy could not stomach his fate.”

“I’m meant for greater things,” Roh said. “Anyone can see that.”

Dasai grimaced. Roh hated what he saw – disappointment, anger, disgust. Roh knew he was supposed to be like every other Dhai, like Lilia, just doing what he was told, having babies for Dhai, growing crops in the same spaces, fighting back the same toxic plants from the fields, using Para only to build, to defend, to grow. But to grow them into what?

“It’s not enough for me,” Roh said.

“Then maybe this temple is not the place for you.”

“No, no!” Roh said, because exile was worse. Exile meant Dorinah, to become a slave, or the woodland, to get eaten by some blinding-tree. And then he laughed, because maybe that’s how it would all play out – they would exile him, and he’d join some woodland exiles, and teach them farming. And he’d die a farmer.

“Sleep, Rohinmey,” Dasai said. “Tell Ora Almeysia I excuse your tardiness. Just… sleep. We’ll discuss atonement in the morning.”

Roh wiped at his face and hurried to the scullery stair. The risks he took were real, he knew. But the risk of being exiled still paled next to the risk of squandering his life. He pushed and pushed, and nothing ever changed. His parents had tired of his constant questions and boundless energy. It was almost a relief to them when the Oras who came to Clan Garika tested him for sensitivity to the satellites and discovered he could draw on Para.

But when Para was descendent? He’d be an unlovable burden again.

Roh sat on the scullery stair steps. He needed to think his way out, even though it wasn’t his strength. Lilia was the one good with strategy and problem solving.

The flame flies in the lanterns cast flickering light in the dark stairwell. He heard a voice from below, murmuring words he could not quite make out.

Roh leaned around the curl of the corridor to get a look at who was coming up.

It was Almeysia. Again. Talking aloud in the scullery stair. Again.

But she was not alone this time.

Almeysia walked up the stairs with a hooded woman. Roh knew the figure. It was Yisaoh Alais Garika, daughter to the clan leader of Clan Garika. Roh had seen her often enough there to recognize her generous shape and strong jaw, even with her face cowled in the dim light.

Roh stood. He expected Almeysia to admonish him. But when she saw him, she came up short. The expression that crossed her face was one he had never seen on an Ora – guilt mixed with a terrible fear. Yisaoh tipped her head downward, drowning her face in shadows.

Almeysia wet her lips and said, “Rohinmey. You should not be here.” They were three steps below him.

“Yisaoh,” Roh said, “I didn’t know you were in the temple.”

Yisaoh raised her head. She was a tall, handsome woman with knotted curls of dark hair tied back from her face, and a broad, slightly crooked nose, the result of a break many years before, the last time Para was ascendant. Roh remembered that because if it had been any other time, some tirajista or sinajista could have mended the bone before it healed wrong. But her face looked more hollowed, thinner than he remembered, and this close now, he saw the bulk of her figure was made up of her thick coat.

“Oh, child,” Almeysia said. “You always could see too much.”

Yisaoh moved up one step into the cramped space. Roh turned, to give her room to pass. She grabbed his arm.

He was so startled he froze. The Saiduan were dangerous people, but not Dhai. Not his own clan mate. Why would she touch him without consent?

Pain burned through his belly. It came so quickly and unexpectedly that he gasped. His legs gave out. Yisaoh cradled him. He saw her pull a blade from his stomach. Saw wet blood.

His blood.

Roh grabbed at her hand, smearing blood on his fingers. The blade came down again. He saw the stain of blood bloom across his tunic and apron. He made a half-hearted attempt to clutch at his wound, to stop the bleeding. Yisaoh’s hand came down again. Pain blotted out sense.

Almeysia knelt over him. She closed his eyes with her leathery hand.

“You didn’t tell me there were novices here who could see through hazing wards,” Yisaoh muttered.

“I didn’t realize,” Almeysia said. “Oma’s breath, I didn’t know.”

Roh saw himself standing in an apple orchard, holding the hand of a small child.

“They’ve arrived,” the child said.

 

5

The Temple of Oma grew from a knotted rocky spur at the tip of a mountainous peninsula called the Fire Thorn. They glided over the spur; Ahkio peered out from within a bubbled chrysalis that followed the giant living Line system connecting the temples and clans. The vegetation of the peninsula was burned out twice a year, so all Ahkio saw were the stubbly amber tips of newly seeded foraging grasses. It reminded him of the fields of Osono. They came in parallel to the peninsula. He had a view of the carved stone bridge that connected the spur of the temple to the greater land mass. As he and Nasaka passed inside their shimmering blue chrysalis, he heard the thundering roar of the river below them, continuing its quest to carve away the spur from its parent.

The translucent webbing that circled the gardens of the temple stretched from the bridge all the way around the spur. The webbing had caught many small insects. Captured flame flies and gleaming night dragons struggled in its grasp, lighting the web with a thousand twinkling lights. The temple itself was well lit, considering the time of night. Ahkio saw the telltale flicker of flame fly lanterns hung inside crystal chandeliers. The great dome of the temple glowed with a soft, ambient light, a beacon for weary travelers. Everything about the Temple of Oma was like a dream. He had not grown up in Dhai, and when he returned to it as a boy and saw the living temples and massive gonsa trees and delicate crimson spiders that patrolled the webs, he believed anything was possible. It made him want to cast off his parentage and board a ship at random in the harbor and head off to places unknown. What was the rest of the world like, if this was home? What wonders lay outside the great gates of the harbor?

“Bump here,” Nasaka said. Ahkio braced himself as the bubbled chrysalis of the Line met the open lip of the Line chamber in the Temple of Oma.

Four Oras already waited for them in the chamber. They had long, pained looks on their faces as if Kirana were already dead.

Elder Ora Gaiso, the plump woman who oversaw the management of the Temple of Oma, made a sweeping gesture as they arrived. Their chrysalis immediately burst.

Ahkio covered his head.

“Was that necessary?” Nasaka asked as the shattered bits of the chrysalis melted and flowed into the depression at the center of the floor.

“There’s more news,” Gaiso said. She was a broad, imposing woman with a dart of white in her black hair.

Ahkio also recognized Elaiko, Nasaka’s young assistant, and Dasai, the ancient Ora who had taught Ahkio history and governance before he left the temple. He was the same Ora who told Ahkio the story of the Saiduan who’d come to take away bad students. Dasai held out a hand in greeting. He had a mean face, long and narrow, and he kept his mouth pursed when not speaking. He had already lived well over a century, and though Dhai were known to live a hundred and fifty years or more, few retained their wits and stamina as well as Dasai had.

“The Kai asks for you,” Dasai said. Dasai had a slight Saiduan accent. He had spent many years studying in that country, though he spoke little of it.

Ahkio folded his arms.

“Like that, is it?” Dasai said.

“There’s another issue,” Gaiso said, moving her bulky body between them. “I tried to send you word before you got on the Line. We have a Saiduan sanisi here. He’s asking for the Kai. We can’t permit that. Not in her condition.”

“Where’s Ora Almeysia?” Nasaka asked. “I’m convening the Elder Ora council immediately.”

“She’s with Ora Masura,” Gaiso said, “trying to get her fit for company.”

“Is Ora Masura drinking again?” Nasaka asked.

“Like a drowning Tordinian priest,” Gaiso said.

“Will you ascend with me, Li Kai?” Dasai asked. “Your sister asked for you, and I’m not sure we can wait much longer.”

Dasai led him into the hall. Nasaka hung back to speak with the others.

“Nasaka won’t tell me what’s wrong with Kirana,” Ahkio said.

“It’s not known,” Dasai said.

“How’s it possible not to know what’s wrong with the Kai? Did someone poison her?”

“Eight physicians and four tirajistas have visited her. None can name the illness.”

“Someone close to her did it, then.”

“Let’s not start painting stories.”

“Nasaka thinks I’m in danger if I stay in Osono. She thinks whoever did this to Kirana is after the seat.”

“You should really use Ora Nasaka’s title. It’s respectful.”

“I’m aware,” Ahkio said. He hadn’t called Nasaka “Ora” in almost a decade.

Paper lanterns lined the corridor. The Temple of Oma, like the Temples of Para, Tira, and Sina in many of the holds in Saiduan, was a living thing, a slumbering beast created in some distant time. The walls were smooth and bore a greenish tint. If one tried to dig deep enough into the skin of the hold, it would weep and ooze a sticky amber sap. Whether plant or animal or some combination, no one knew. But the sinajistas said the holds had souls, vital energy that could mend wounds or melt flesh.

The Line chamber was on the eleventh floor of the temple. Ahkio expected they would travel up to the Assembly Chamber and Kirana’s rooms on the twelfth floor, but instead, Dasai took him down two floors to the novice practice rooms and Ora studies. They passed open archways where novice parajistas practiced moving objects: building small towers of stones and blocks with skeins of air, or creating little vortices and waterspouts in pails. Ahkio couldn’t channel their star, so he did not see the blue breath they manipulated, only its result. The novices barely glanced up from their work as Ahkio and Dasai passed.

Dasai brought him to the end of the hall, down a short stair, and through another corridor. Ahkio had never been to this area of the temple before.

“Why did you move her?” Ahkio asked.

Dasai raised his hand to a broad door of amberwood. Ahkio saw that the door was banded in thorn vines, the same kind that made up the thorn fences that protected livestock in the clans.

“We feared for her,” Dasai said.

“If you think she’s in danger from someone
inside
the temple, why bring me here?”

“Li Kai, if I had the chance to go back and bid my family farewell before their deaths, I would have leapt at the chance. This is yours. Don’t spoil it.”