The Mirror Empire (8 page)

Ahkio saw four figures dressed in red come into the Assembly Chamber. They were members of the militia posted to the Kuallina Stronghold; he knew them by the pins at their collars. The temple itself had no standing militia. They must have traveled in on the Line behind him and Nasaka. A bit of fast thinking on someone’s part. But not mine, Ahkio thought. They told me as little as they could. He glanced at Nasaka and wondered how much she’d kept Kirana in the dark, too.

The sanisi laughed at the militia. “You think yourselves safe?” Taigan said. “You may be able to hold for a time, it’s true, with your defensible pass, and the mountains to the west, and that harbor wall to the north, but they will devour you eventually. Oma is rising. These people will rout you.”

“What can we possibly offer in assistance?” Dasai said.

Taigan gritted his teeth. “Scholars,” he said.

“Eh?” Gaiso said. “Book people?”

“Your best translators of ancient Dhai,” Taigan said. “That is what my Patron requests of you. It may help turn the tide.”

Nasaka folded her arms. “You have Dhai records that predate the last Rising, then,” she said. “Records that could help you find out how to turn these people back. But of course, they’re all in ancient Dhai, aren’t they, and you’ve killed all the Dhai in your empire who can read them.”

Taigan said, “The invaders destroy our archives. Strange, no? They could target supply lines, terrorize civilians. They do that, yes. But the archives are first.”

“So send the records here,” Ahkio said. “We could find–”

“Impossible,” Taigan said. “We have two thousand years of records. Do you know how many holds we pillaged to collect it? We can’t risk putting it on a cart to some indefensible country.”

“So we must travel to Saiduan,” Dasai said.

“It was a very long time ago,” Taigan said. “All this death and killing of the Dhai people. You speak as if it was I who did this thing. We have let you alone here. Imported your infused weapons. Are we not friends now?”

“What do we get in return?” Nasaka asked.

Ahkio thought that a bit bold. He wondered if she’d been bold enough to kill Kirana… but to what end? He rubbed his face. And now Oma. He couldn’t imagine Nasaka was as ignorant of that as she pretended. Kirana talked often of Nasaka’s obsession with Oma’s rise in prior ages. Oras’ powers were ruled by the fickle stars. Many were consumed by the study of their erratic appearances.

“In return?” Taigan said. “In return, you will live. Is that not enough? In return, we may be able to push back these invaders on Saiduan’s shores, instead of seeing them spill all across the world the way they have in the past. When Oma rises, the world breaks. This is written in every holy book.”

“We should have a treaty,” Ahkio said. “Kirana would request it.”

“Papers?” Taigan spat. “You would ask for papers when the very world is being ripped apart–”

“The Li Kai is right,” Nasaka said.

“Paper,” Taigan said. “It means nothing.”

Nasaka leaned toward him. She was as tall as Ahkio, wiry, but though the sanisi dwarfed her, she stood before him like a woman twice his size. Ahkio saw her again in the Dorinah camp, slaying legionnaires with a weapon he had only before seen her use to chop wood.

“It means something to us,” Nasaka said.

“It will take weeks,” Taigan said.

“So it will.”

Ahkio glanced up at the representation of the heavens above him, and the dark stain of Oma. Oma was an embodiment of the gods, the Book said. It was not supposed to be a true star. A philosopher-astronomer once said that Oma’s rise was actually just an eclipse of the satellites, a brief moment when all three stars crossed paths in the sky. Two thousand years. Who knew what it really was?

“These invaders,” Ahkio said, “where are they coming from? Which direction?”

“Boats,” Taigan said, but Ahkio saw something in his expression that troubled him.

“From the east, then?” Ahkio said. “Or the south?”

“They come from…” Taigan muttered something in Saiduan. “They come from the sky, sometimes.”

Masura spoke for the first time, her tone incredulous. “The
sky
? Have you been drinking, sanisi?”

Ahkio heard someone running in the hall outside. The militia turned toward a blue-clad Ora who burst through the door. One of the militia members held up a hand. The Ora stopped, gasping for breath.

Gaiso stood. “What is it?” she asked.

“Murder,” the Ora said. Ahkio recognized her as Nasaka’s assistant, Elaiko. She wasn’t much older than Ahkio.

Ahkio saw Nasaka tense. He was keenly aware of the weapon at her hip. She had yet to bare it, but he was waiting. It felt like an inevitability now. He regretted running from this temple just when his sister had needed him most. Now he was left alone amid a sea of scheming Oras, murder, and rising stars. He was not ready. But he stood anyway. His sister once affectionately called him a coward, and it was true. He wanted a quiet, honest little life.

Oma, it seemed, had other plans.

“There’s blood all over the scullery stair,” Elaiko said, “like bad tea. He’s in a storage room.”

“Who?” Dasai asked. “Let’s not make a bear out of a fly.”

“Rohinmey,” Elaiko said. “I’m not making up some fish story, Ora Dasai. Roh is dead.”

 

Lilia choked on a cry. Adrenaline flooded her. She watched the infirmary as if from a great height.

Ohanni set Roh’s body onto Lilia’s bed. A blooming tear ran across his gut; she saw the wet glistening of his intestines beneath bloody clothing and torn skin. More rents in his clothing indicated numerous wounds. Blood pumped profusely from one of them.

“Ora Matias?” Ohanni called, but Matias was still standing, shocked, by the shelves.

Lilia tugged off Roh’s apron. “Help me get his tunic,” she told Ohanni. She was surprised at how calm she felt. His blood smeared across her own scarred wrists, and a terrible thought bubbled up from a long time ago –
we are wasting so much blood.

Ohanni helped with the tunic, her breath rapid, fine beads of sweat bathing her face. Lilia wondered how long Ohanni had carried him. She was not a large woman.

“Press here,” Lilia said. She put Ohanni’s hands onto Roh’s thigh. “Press hard. To the bone.”

Ohanni did. The flow of blood eased from the worst of the wounds. Lilia wadded up Roh’s novice apron and pressed it against the major wound itself. Blood and death. A hungry thorn fence. She remembered bleeding out into a shallow dish to protect her village from harm.

Matias joined them at Roh’s side. He wiped at his eyebrows. “Oma,” he said. “This injury is too much. Tira is descendent. I can’t fix this.”

Lilia thought him a fool. She had seen worse, with her mother’s patients. She knew the major arteries in the body. She had learned basic anatomy with everyone else in the temple. But closing a wound as bad as Roh’s was beyond her.

“Please, Matias,” Ohanni said. “You must try. This violence… someone did this to him. It’s not as if he tumbled off the stage during some grand jeté.”

“I’m sorry, Ora Ohanni. He’s dying.”

Ohanni made as if to draw her hand away from Roh’s thigh.

“Don’t!” Lilia said. “He will bleed out.”

“There are no tirajistas with the skill to fix this,” Ohanni said. “Ora Almeysia is the most sensitive, but she doesn’t specialize in matters of the body. Can you ease his pain?” she asked Matias.

“He is nearly gone,” Matias said. He pressed his hands to Roh’s wrist. “There is nothing to ease.”

“Try!” Lilia said. “Won’t you try?”

“Child, I’m sorry,” Matias said.

Ohanni drew her hands away.

“No,” Lilia said. She pressed her hands there instead, hard. “Close the artery. Stop the bleeding.”

“He has lost more blood than I can replace,” Matias said. “Even if I could find every source of damage–”

“Is this him?”

Nasaka’s voice. She strode in ahead of a young man, handsome, with scars on his hands. Lilia had not seen him before.

“I’m sorry, Ora Nasaka,” Matias said. “He’s lost too much blood.”

“Sina’s breath,” Nasaka muttered. She came up next to Matias. She wore a willowthorn sword. Lilia had never seen an Ora with a sword. “This boy can’t die, Matias.”

“The blood–”

“I don’t care about the blood. He
cannot die
. Wash your hands. Are you a physician or a soap maker?”

Matias hurried to the stone sink at the center of the room.

Roh’s breathing was almost imperceptible. Matias was right. Lilia knew that, but she pressed hard anyway, though her hands ached and her chest still burned. She coughed and coughed.

Matias pulled the apron away from the wound. He carried sinew, a needle, and a delicate knife.

“I cannot see for all the blood. Mop this up,” he told Lilia.

She grabbed a cotton towel as he widened the wound to find the nicked artery. Blood dripped from the towel down her fingers, to her elbow, to the floor. Lilia didn’t notice the arrival of others in the room until some time later, when their voices became loud and angry.

“This is not his fate,” Dasai said, arguing with Nasaka. “Call another surgeon. He’s the one child in a hundred for whom the seers saw a peaceful fate. We cannot lose this boy.”

“There is not a tirajista in the world powerful enough to turn this,” Nasaka said.

“Not a tirajista,” said the tall, dark man in the doorway. It was the sanisi Lilia had seen in the foyer, Taigan.

“He’s gone, I’m sorry,” Matias said. His face was covered in sweat. He was spattered with blood.

Roh’s face was slack.

Lilia’s fear and terror finally bubbled up from the dark place she had hidden it. Her throat closed. She coughed harder; her head swam, and her vision was going dim. Blood covered her arms to the elbows. With enough blood, all things were possible.

She pointed to the sanisi. “Are you a blood witch?” she said. “A blood witch can save him. My mother could save him.”

The others, the Oras, looked confused. She suspected they thought her mad. But she knew the look on the sanisi’s face. Wonder. Recognition.

“Save him,” Lilia said.

“There’s a price,” Taigan said.

“He’s dead,” Matias said.

“No,” Lilia said.

“A beat or two of his heart remains,” Taigan said. “I can save him. But I have a price.”

“I will pay it,” Dasai said.

“Let’s not be irrational–” Nasaka said.

“We will pay your price,” Dasai said. “This boy has an important fate. Remake him.”

“I expect he does,” Taigan said. “You have seers. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Your little dance upstairs was less than convincing.”

Nasaka and Dasai exchanged a look. Nasaka said, “We know that our seers do not see peaceful futures for this generation of children. But this boy has a peaceful fate. He should not die this way.”

The sanisi pointed at Lilia. “You are the price. Give her to me and you can keep the boy.”

All gazes turned to Lilia. She pushed herself away from Roh’s body, gasping for air. She could hardly breathe, hardly think. He knew what a blood witch was. Now he knew what she was, too.

“Our people are not for sale,” Nasaka snapped. “We are not chattel. Save the boy because it is right. There need not be a price.”

“That is my price,” the sanisi said. “The boy for the girl.”

Lilia stared at her bloody hands. Then Roh. She remembered watching her mother’s body crumple. Too small to stop it. Too powerless to do anything at all.

“We won’t,” Nasaka said. “Find another way.”

Lilia said, “Do it. I’ll go.”

The sanisi made a sweeping gesture with his hand. The pressure in the room increased, like being underwater. Roh’s body shuddered. His back arched. For one blazing moment, Roh’s body was suspended above the bed, screaming. The blood that smeared the room peeled away from the floor, their clothing, their skin, and burst into the air. It clung to Roh for one terrible moment like a second skin.

Lilia put her hands over her ears.

Taigan dropped his hand.

Roh fell back to the bed. Lilia smelled burnt meat. She broke into another fit of coughing.

Matias ran to the medicinal shelf and brought back a cup of foul-smelling water.

Lilia choked it down as the Oras gathered around the bed.

“Oma,” Dasai said.

“Yes,” the sanisi said. “One does not need to believe a thing is true for it to be fact. Oma is rising. I’ve channeled Oma since I was a child, and my power gets stronger each season. You are looking for an omajista? There is your proof, and your little ward-unmaker back to you. Fully formed.”

Roh’s skin was no longer broken; there was no sign of injury but his torn clothing. Lilia grabbed at his tunic. The blood that coated him was gone, eaten up as hungrily by the power in the room.

“How did you know he can see through wards?” Nasaka asked. “Not one Ora in twenty here knows that.”

Lilia lay still next to Roh as her breathing eased. They paid her no attention, as if she were only some dying fish.

“He saw through mine,” the sanisi said. Now he looked at Lilia. “And he saw through yours, too, didn’t he?”

Lilia felt cold. She remembered Kalinda’s words:
“We’ll be ready for them next time, won’t we?”
But she was not ready. Not at all.

“You asked what I’m really here for,” the sanisi said. “I’m here for the girl. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Lilia?”

 

7

Zezili Hasaria, Captain General of the Empress of Dorinah’s western legion, paced the damp hall outside the Empress’s audience chamber in wet boots and a set of clothing she could not remember ever being washed. She wore her chain mail and her metal skirt knotted in dajians’ hair. Her battered sword and dagger hung at her hip, both solid metal. She didn’t trust infused weapons. She cradled her helm under one arm.