Zezili sucked her teeth. “Ah,” she said, and understanding blossomed like some dark flower in her mind. “So those slaves I’m killing
are
the twins of your people already, maybe even you. You can’t go through that gate unless the Dhai are dead.”
Kirana smiled. “Retain your focus, Zezili. Focus has never been your strong suit.”
“And the mirror? Why do you need one that big out there?”
“Impress me with your boundless intuition, and perhaps your fate will be brighter than your predecessor’s.”
Zezili thought it was meant to rankle, so she barked out a laugh instead. She half expected to wake up back in her tent, still smeared in dajian blood and ranting to Monshara about hallucinations. “You had my other self build it after she killed your family?”
“She had a few talents,” Kirana said, “but ultimately, she would not cooperate.”
“So you wanted to know if you should kill me, too?”
“You have her mouth,” Kirana said. “Let’s say this secret isn’t one that will be hidden long. Best to see how you took it. Some go mad.”
Zezili could understand that.
Kirana rolled up the map on the table, which Zezili recognized now as a map of Grania. Zezili saw neat lines of Dhai characters scrawled across areas of Dhai, Tordin, Dorinah, and Aaldia. Zezili spoke Dhai but had never studied the written language, so it was just scribbling to her.
Kirana held the map out and Monshara took it. “That’s your battle plan,” Kirana said. “Eight hundred dead to deliver that. Best not lose it.”
Monshara slipped the map into a leather sleeve attached to her belt.
“Who are you battling with next?” Zezili asked. “Wars on multiple fronts never go well.”
“You’ll know soon enough,” Kirana said. “You’re dismissed, Monshara.”
Zezili spared one last look at the Kai, then followed after Monshara down the long stairwell.
When they reached the bottom, Zezili walked out behind the tower, ignoring Monshara’s shout, and gazed down the hill toward the great construction she had spied from the window.
A vast silvery arch split the sky. Distant figures worked in the tattered shreds of some temporary camp near it. She saw long lines of workers carrying baskets of shimmering matter toward the structure. More workers dangled from the scaffolding that skirted its base.
“Why build a mirror?” Zezili asked as Monshara came up alongside her.
“To keep the gate between our worlds open,” Monshara said. “We don’t have enough blood or omajistas to keep a steady gate open without it. The rebels took two hundred of our most promising omajistas a decade ago and hid them across many worlds, but mostly yours, as it’s the closest to ours.”
“How do you lose that many children?”
“It’s a very long story. A few women made a nuisance of themselves, led by an upstart named Nava Isoail. But they’re nearly all dead now. We’re just mopping up.”
Above the arch of the mirror, the blasted black sphere of what should have been Para glowed ominously in the sky.
“Why would she pick me for this campaign,” Zezili said, “when she already killed me here?”
“I long ago gave up trying to understand her motivations. She is equal parts manic brutality and strategic fuckery.”
“There’s no chance she could fail?”
Monshara’s face was a grim mask.
“With a face like that, you’d be good at cards,” Zezili said.
“I am,” Monshara said. She sighed. “We won’t fail, Zezili. Our armies are vast. Saiduan was the largest enemy we had to face, and they’re nearly spent. When the mirror is finished, we can easily send through as many of our soldiers as we like. No need to slaughter more here or there to fuel it, or wait for random tears in the sky. The mirror will keep the rift open until we destroy it.”
Zezili remembered the mirror hanging over her own hearth, and the day she watched her mother sculpting the soft, warm metal. She wished she wasn’t blind to the power of the stars then. She wished she could do something to stop whatever mad thing was about to happen.
“The metal is most vulnerable now,” her mother had told her, “before it’s infused with the power of Tira that gives it this glow. After that, it will never shatter. It will outlive us, just like those everpine weapons the legionnaires wield.” The mirror in the distance did not glow. If it wasn’t yet infused with the power of a satellite, it could be broken.
“Come,” Monshara said, squeezing Zezili’s arm gently. “We need to go back before the gate closes.”
“How many omajistas will it take to infuse this?” Zezili asked. “I assume that’s who has to give it power.”
“I don’t know,” Monshara said, “and I don’t ask. We have a different task in all of this. Best concentrate on that.”
As they walked back across the scorched landscape to their mounts, Zezili understood the scope of her mission far more than she had before she passed through the gate. It wasn’t about offing a few dajians. It was about extinguishing the Dhai race in her world entirely. They would not stop with the dajians. They would come for the free mixed-race Dorinahs too, the ones like Zezili, and for the free Dhai people in their toxic slice of a country. They would replace the passive little Dhai Zezili knew with a conquering horde of overlords, Dhai who had never been defeated.
Zezili gazed out at the blazing, beleaguered world. Focus on the mission, Kirana had said. Keep your head down and don’t ask questions, the Empress would have said. One mission. One goal. They never wanted her to see past the next body, but from here, all Zezili could see were bodies – the bodies of the Dhai on her world, all laid out across these bone-chilling fields of char, opening the way for the conquering hordes of Tai Mora; she saw them crunching across the broken forms of their other selves and destroying Dorinah in a single day.
She had seen Dhai in armor now, and she could not unsee it.
As they crossed back into Zezili’s world, into the comforting blue sky and brilliant light of Para, Zezili said, “You know, there’s one thing I’ve always been good at.”
“Killing?” Monshara said.
“Killing Dhai,” Zezili said, and urged her bear onward before she could see the look on Monshara’s face.
18
Ahkio clung to the banister looping about the tongue of the grand stairway where Kirana’s husband, Lohin, had fallen. Gaiso huffed blood on the landing just above them, her attempt at joining Lohin and his band of Garika militia cut short by a snarling attack from Nasaka that happened so fast, Ahkio had barely had time to process it.
He felt the heartbeat of the temple beneath his fingers. His mother had told him the temples were living, breathing embodiments of the gods. Oma was already here, pulsing through this temple, bathed in the blood of militia from Clan Garika.
And to what purpose?
Lohin’s breath was ragged. He was a stringy young man with a twisted mouth and kind eyes. The weapon he carried was plain metal; only the militia were issued weapons infused with the power of the satellites.
Below, in the foyer, half a dozen dead Oras and more than twenty of the Garika militia lay dead or dying. Ahkio knew because he’d counted them as he came limping out of the Sanctuary after the novice, Rohinmey, incapacitated Almeysia. But one body he had expected was missing.
“Where’s Yisaoh?” Ahkio asked Lohin.
Lohin huffed at him, something like a guffaw. “I led this coup myself.”
“You’re the sort who doesn’t act without a stronger person’s backing, Lohin. It’s why you married my sister.”
“Kai?”
A young novice named Caisa stood below. She was a lean young woman, freckled and high of forehead, with an affinity for Para. She was the one who had pushed him toward the Sanctuary when the militia burst into the foyer. She may have saved his life from the Garikas. And the boy, Rohinmey, had surely spared him from Almeysia’s wrath – whatever that may have been. Almeysia was bound and drugged now, spirited off into the bowels of the temple at Nasaka’s order.
It should not have surprised Ahkio that novices would be more trustworthy than Oras. They’d had less time to choose sides, so they fell on the side of the divine Kai. It gave him an opportunity, and though he abhorred politics and twisted ethics, sitting here in this pool of death made him realize that however much he hated it, if he wanted to live, he had to embrace it.
“Do you have the physician for Lohin?” Ahkio asked. “He’s fading.”
“Ora Matias has been killed,” she said. “The physician.”
“I see.” Ahkio finally saw fear in Lohin’s pained face. “And my cousin?”
“Liaro’s in the infirmary. We’ve called physicians from Clan Sorila. But Liaro isn’t that bad, Kai. He’s just a complainer.” Her color deepened. “I’m sorry. I meant–”
“I know what you meant,” Ahkio said. “Thank you.”
Caisa shifted from foot to foot another moment, looking contrite, then stepped away to help with the bodies.
Ahkio noted the blood pooling on the steps. Lohin would not survive long enough for a physician to walk the three or four hours from Sorila. He wondered if Lohin knew that yet.
“Did Yisaoh tell you I’d marry into Rhin and Hadaoh’s family?” Ahkio asked. “It could have spared you this.”
“They won’t have you.”
“Why?”
His grimace was ugly. “They won’t.”
“You’re likely going to die here, Lohin.”
He whimpered. “Let me alone.”
“You killed Oras, Lohin. You nearly killed my cousin.”
“You aren’t Kai.”
“I’m Kirana’s brother.”
“Half-brother.”
“Is that so?”
Lohin hacked up a smattering of blood. He whispered, “Your mother’s babies all died, Ahkio. All but Kirana, and she was sick from the start. You aren’t Javia’s.”
“You’re saying my mother stole someone else’s child? You Garikas are all mad.”
“Not stole. Freely given.” Lohin’s breath was shallow.
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“My Aunt Etena?”
Lohin hacked out a laugh. “Stupid. So much stupider than your sister. Should have been you.”
“Nasaka,” Ahkio said.
Lohin snarled. “Her, with a stillborn baby?” he said. “Same week… Javia pushed you out… first to live since Kirana. No one believed it. No one.”
The hacking stopped. Lohin’s face softened. Ahkio saw the light go from his eyes; the tension left his body.
Ahkio slid down onto the steps, favoring his injured side, and sat quietly next to Lohin’s body. He remembered that story. Nasaka’s single pregnancy. Was there anything Nasaka wouldn’t do for the Dhai? Below, the militia Nasaka had called from the Kuallina Stronghold worked to clean and bundle the dead. He saw Elaiko and Caisa working among them, directed in the task by Ghrasia Madah, head of the militia at both the Liona and Kuallina strongholds. She was a fierce little woman, wading through blood and bodies like a person well used to death. He recalled her face from many a portrait – she had led the defense of the Liona Stronghold during the Pass War, when the Dorinahs tried to take the country twenty years before.
Ghrasia could have sided with the Garikas, but she’d chosen Nasaka and the temples instead. That loyalty, he knew, had been the only thing to save them today. Without her two dozen militia, they would have had to turn the gifted arts of jistas on the Garikas. That would have ended any hope Ahkio had of uniting the country. The ungifted would have turned on the temples. The day could have been much worse.
He stood, called down to Elaiko, “Where’s Nasaka?”
“Meditating in the garden, I think. Is Lohin-”
“He’s dead,” Ahkio said.
“I’m sorry, Kai.”
“He was no kin of mine,” Ahkio said.
Ahkio forged his way through the bloodied foyer, passing Ghrasia as he did. She gave him a brief nod, and he hesitated, asked, “When did Nasaka send for you?”
“This morning,” she said. “She suspected there may be… conflict. We arrived just in time.”
“Wish she would have expressed that… concern to me,” he said.
“Ora Nasaka’s methods of protecting the Kai tend toward less information, not more.”
“I’d like to change that.”
Ghrasia smiled, almost a smirk. He might have found it insufferable in a novice, but coming from this hard-faced leader of the militia, it was endearing. “I wish you luck with that.”
“Thank you for coming, regardless of why.”
“I would have done the same for your mother.”
“Noted,” Ahkio said. His mother. Yes. Either of them.
“Noted?” she said. “Is that all you have to say, when eight of my best lie dying here, and a good many of your kin by marriage?”
It was an unexpected punch. He rounded on her. “I have half the country out to kill me and anyone who stands next to me. I know
exactly
what happened here today.”
He strode away before she could reply; he wanted to remember the smirk, not what came after.
Ahkio found Nasaka in the gardens behind the temple, sitting within the stone circle dedicated to Sina, her star. A great violet orb hung suspended over a massive stone base. Tremendous red-and-purple flowers wound up the boughs of the weeping trees. She sat back on her heels, eyes closed.
He waited for her to acknowledge him. She did not.
“I’m going to bring the bodies to Garika,” Ahkio said. “I’d like Ghrasia to escort me.”
“I don’t recommend that,” Nasaka said.
“Blood’s been spilled,” Ahkio said. “I understand why it’s been done, and I need to fix it.”
“You have no idea,” Nasaka said.
The anger and betrayal bubbled up. Like being on fire. “I do have an idea,” Ahkio said. “It has something to do with dead babies.”
Nasaka raised her head. “What are you nattering about?”
“The Garikas seem to think I’m not Javia’s,” Ahkio said. He felt heat in his face and choked on his next words. It made him angry, because he knew. He knew without it being said. “You had a stillborn child, they said. The same week my mother had me. My father said it’s why you cared so much about our safety. It’s why he told you we were going to that camp in Dorinah, even though my mother wanted to go alone. You knew where we were, and that’s the only thing that saved Kirana and me that day. You’re my childless aunt. It made sense to me. Now I wonder if that was just the easier assumption.”