“No, of course not,” Rigai said. The silence that followed hung leaden in the air. Mirei hated not being able to talk with him. Their partnership on the commission had reminded her how well they worked together, and he’d been her main support during the long days when she fought not to kill herself. She missed him fiercely, and the knowledge that she might be responsible, however indirectly, for his death… that burned like poison.
Rigai said, “I’m sure you’ll find an answer soon.”
She wasn’t at all sure, and they both knew it, but Mirei appreciated the words nonetheless. Lies of that sort were the only comfort she had these days.
Two Cousins followed her as she went through the corridors. Their presence drove Mirei up the wall, and she was grateful that Iseman and Terica had refused to allow her a permanent escort in Haira; otherwise, Satomi would have given her a pair of babysitters there, too. Mirei wasn’t sure what the point of their presence was, other than to make her feel like an idiot. If someone attacked her, she had more ways of defending herself than the Cousins did. But while she was at Starfall, Satomi refused to let her go unattended.
At least they stayed outside her quarters, taking up sentry positions on either side of the door. And there was one perk to Satomi’s concern for security: Mirei had been given the rooms vacated when Shimi fled from Starfall. Keys and Primes always lived under at least a minor guard, just in case, and the rooms were much more defensible than the usual quarters allotted to new witches.
Mirei tossed her pack on a chair. She still wasn’t used to having a Cousin serving as her personal maid, but at least there she could see the point of having one. There were other things demanding her time and attention, things that a Cousin could not take care of.
Like Satomi’s little spying program.
The latest message from Eikyo was discreetly buried in a stack of unrelated papers. Satomi had assigned Mirei to work with her friend, but there wasn’t much “with” to it; Eikyo sent messages, Mirei translated them out of code, and Satomi presumably did something with the information. Mirei couldn’t risk translocating messages directly to Eikyo, and anything sent with the usual packets to the Cousins had no guarantee of getting to her friend. In all likelihood, Eikyo didn’t even know that Mirei was the one reading her messages.
Bit by bit, the information had dribbled in. Some of it wasn’t of much use. They complained about their work, but no more, it sounded like, than normal people would. Some of them were mildly resentful of witches, but some weren’t, just as people felt about their Lords. Nothing in particular there.
But of late Eikyo had begun to uncover things that looked much more important. The Cousins had a distinct hierarchy among themselves, it seemed, that did not necessarily follow the tasks the witches gave them. They were
very
aware of those among them who were failed witch-students—not just “Kyou,” but women far older than her, too—and though those women weren’t necessarily at the top of the hierarchy, they received a certain odd respect.
It was maddening, trying to tease meaning out of the terse messages Eikyo could transmit; Mirei wasn’t sure what to make of everything her friend said. The Cousins
had
arranged for the survival of doppelgangers in the past—but why? For that, she had only one cryptic reference to “hope.” Hope for what?
She scanned the newest note quickly, picking the code out of its surrounding, unrelated text with the ease of practice. Perhaps she would get that answer this time.
They suspect me.
The words lay there, buried in their protective camouflage. It was the only complete sentence Eikyo had ever sent, and it chilled Mirei to the bone. If Eikyo meant that her charade was in danger of being uncovered…
Then what? Mirei had no clue what the Cousins would be likely to do. Stop working for the witches? The thought was unfathomable, but she couldn’t rule it out.
Satomi should never have done this. Eikyo’s no good as a spy, and if they know Satomi set her to watch them
—
She grabbed a scrap of clean paper and scrawled a quick note for Satomi. Perhaps now she could persuade the Void Prime to recall her friend. That might look diplomatically awful—how in the Goddess’s many names had Satomi ever planned to bring this to an end?—but there might not be a better choice. Note completed, she sang it to Ruriko’s desk. The one time she’d sent a message to Satomi directly, the Prime had verbally flayed her alive. Ruriko was there for a reason.
By then she was running late. Mirei stripped off the embroidered long coat she’d put on for her politicking in Haira, changing instead into something she found far more comfortable: loose pants, sash, and a jacket, all modeled on the outfits worn by the training-masters at Silverfire.
Her escort of Cousins followed her downstairs as she left her quarters and went outside to a small, level clearing just east of the main part of the settlement. The buildings there were storehouses, one of which had been given over to Mirei’s use, but today her charges were waiting for her on the pounded dirt outside, breath steaming in the autumn air.
There were six of them. Only Amas, Indera, and Lehant were technically old enough for Hunter training, which began at ten, but Mirei had decided to bend that; she had been put into physical training as a
The work she was putting them through was a mix of Hunter and Dancer that would have given any proper teacher from either tradition a fit. Even some of her students complained—mostly Indera, but occasionally Lehant. They thought of themselves as Hunters, and didn’t see why they should learn things that weren’t about combat. To Mirei, though, it was all of a piece. The faith drummed into her as a Dancer had gotten her through the trials of Hunter training; she had come to view the movements of fighting as their own kind of Dance. And that faith, expressed through her body and voice, had saved her life and made her whole again. More than anything, she needed these girls to understand that.
She reached the clearing just as the bell on the main building, hidden now behind trees, began tolling High. The air today had a real bite, hinting at winter to come, but by now they all, even little Ranell, knew better than to complain.
The first part of their work needed no discussion. While the Cousins stood sentinel nearby, Mirei led the six doppelgangers through their usual warm-up. When she was away, Ashin oversaw their practices; the Air Key couldn’t teach them the way Mirei could, but she could at least make sure they worked out. It was better than having them sit around and do nothing. The girls had morning exercises with those Cousins who were being taught to fight, training themselves for strength and flexibility, and then afternoon drills with Ashin. And every day Mirei was at Starfall, she set aside time to work with them.
Warm-up completed, she divided the girls into groups. The younger trainees practiced basic tumbling, rolling back and forth in the dirt, while the ones who had been at Hunter schools worked on kick forms.
It plainly drove Indera up the wall that Mirei was not having them spar. The decision was a deliberate one: They were all far too focused on the idea of combat and the potential for exerting force against others. That was a part of the Warrior’s nature, of course, and they would come to it eventually, but before that, Mirei needed them to understand their own bodies.
The question of why movement was a Void focus had much occupied Hyoka’s theory witches when Mirei first returned to Starfall. Answering that had been Rigai’s big contribution to the group. The Void was traditionally seen as the opposition of the world, the antithesis of concrete existence. Rigai had speculated that, while that was true, the Void was also emptiness
in
the world: that was to say, the space between objects. And movement defined space by bridging it and passing through it. Tajio, her main rival, still argued that the space was filled with Air, and therefore wasn’t empty, but most of the other theorists seemed to think Rigai was on to something.
More importantly,
Mirei
thought she was on to something. Which meant that her young protégées needed to understand movement, and how to express it with their bodies. There was a relationship between the flow of a spell’s music and the flow of a body in motion; Mirei was working on her own in what few spare moments she had to try and integrate the two as closely as possible. If the trainees could learn that now, rather than working it out the hard way when they came of age, so much the better.
Hence the forms. The same limited set of kicks, the same punches, the same grapples and pins against an imagined opponent, executed at a whole range of speeds, with Mirei singing as they moved. Not spells; she just wanted them to get used to relating movement to music. She’d tried to have
them
sing, but it had been exactly as painful as she expected.
There was another way around that, though, and they shifted to it as the bell rang the third hour of High.
Ashin arrived with seven more girls in tow. Mirei was finally used to the sight of them, but at first it had been so very strange, seeing them all lined up. Amas with her red-gold hair grown long, no remaining dyed ends—but it wasn’t Amas, it was Hoseki. Sharyo, showing what Indera would look like if her face weren’t so permanently bitter these days. Owairi, who had cut her copper hair short even as Lehant’s grew out, so that only Lehant’s harder build made them distinguishable from each other. The witch-doubles of the three younger girls. And thin-faced Urishin, the only one who stood alone, the other half of the missing Naspeth.
This was the point at which the Hunter aspect of training went more or less out the window, and Mirei started inventing wholesale.
There were some
So far as she knew, there was only one spell in the world designed to be performed in that manner, by two people, one singing, one dancing. It was the spell that brought those two back together into one body. Each of these girls would have to perform it some day, and the thought that she should teach it to them had led Mirei to invent this practice.
Ashin came over to stand at her side as the witchstudents began to stretch—an activity they had taken to far less naturally than their doubles, but they had learned. “How are things going?” Mirei asked her, eyes on the now-sizeable herd of girls scattered around the clearing. Her headache hadn’t quite gone, even with Rigai’s help.
The Air Key sighed. “About as usual. They told Ukotto to pack her bags yesterday; they’re sending her to Razi. Which means the students need a new teacher for political history.”
“Razi? Why, what’s happening?”
Ashin shrugged. “Nothing special, I think; just that Ukotto was once very friendly with the domain chronicler there. Had two children by him, in fact. That was years ago, but Satomi is hoping she’ll be of use.”
Once again, the demands of the political war against the dissidents had created a gap in the teaching staff at Starfall. Mirei remembered the orderly, well-regulated progression of her own childhood education, and wondered just what impact this chaos was going to have on the current students. She did not envy them, when the time came for them to face the fifteen Keys and prove their knowledge.
Assuming everything’s still running that way by the time they make it that far.
Another witch-student had been tested since Eikyo’s supposed failure; much to everyone’s relief, she had passed without incident. Otherwise, the faction insisting that they suspend all testing until the full complement of Primes was restored might have grown to the point where they won their case.
But that was Satomi’s problem, not Mirei’s. “Do you think this is doing any good?” she asked Ashin, nodding at the girls.
The witch didn’t answer immediately, which Mirei appreciated. Ashin’s honesty would do her more good than the platitudes so many people gave her. “Yes, though the degree depends on what kind of good you’re talking about,” Ashin said.
“Oh?” Mirei glanced at her, curious.
“As a morale-booster, it’s fine,” the Air Key said. “Plenty of witches here look at these sessions and say, you see? She’s building our new way of life.”
“Don’t tell them I’m making this up as I go along.”
Ashin grinned. “Of course not. You’re also encouraging the girls, giving them a structure to hold on to. It’s a strange education, by our usual standards, but they can tell themselves it’s preparing them for their future. It’s a comfort.”
For most of them, anyway
. Mirei found herself looking to where Sharyo was stretching. Indera was several paces away, repeating the kick forms while she waited for practice to resume. Her technique was sloppier now; the energy behind it suggested she was vividly imagining herself in a real fight.
But she wasn’t in a mood to deal with Indera’s resentment today, and she no longer wanted to hear Ashin’s assessment of how little
real
good these exercises were doing. Mirei stepped forward and clapped her hands sharply to get the girls’ attention.