The Mirror Empire (13 page)

But she’d made a promise to her mother and to herself. She was done with doing other people’s laundry and being pushed around in service to other people’s causes.

Lilia hooked her good foot into the side of the bladder trap and pulled herself up through the kill hole. She hauled herself forward on the nubs of the old spiky protrusions. They dug into her chest. She had to let out her breath to squeeze through. For one horrible, black moment, she thought she was stuck. She huffed out more air and pushed into the open air.

Outside, dawn was still only a promise on the horizon. This time, she did not look back, not even once. She located the blue blush of Para as it rose through the trees in the pre-dawn sky. She stumbled out onto the road heading east, to the woodland, to the sea.

 

 

11

Yisaoh Alais Garika came to meet with Ahkio the next day, just as Nasaka predicted. Ahkio stood in the kitchens, watching his sister’s body being prepared, as Nasaka told him of Yisaoh’s arrival. The funerary attendants washed Kirana’s body in rose water and cardamom. They laid it on a stone slab in the temple kitchen on a blanket of fragrant bonsa leaves. Funerary chefs from the temples of Sina, Para, and Tira joined the scullery master of the Temple of Oma to carefully split open the Kai’s torso and remove all vital organs. The heart, liver, and intestines were set aside and given to novice attendants. The intestines were cleaned and soaked in salt water. The liver and heart were washed with saffron; the liver was prepared with garlic, onions, and hasaen tubers. They divided the heart into sections and fried it with leeks and butter. They drained the blood into a broad silver bowl, for use in making blood soup and sausage later. The head was reverently removed and reserved for interment in the bowels of the temple catacombs.

Ahkio had never seen his parents honored in this way and had always regretted it. Seeing someone die and accepting that death were far different things. Watching her prepared, smelling the savory aroma of her flesh and organs cooking, helped wash the memory of her post-death awakening. Had it been a vision? Or had she truly been strong enough to reclaim her soul from Sina for a few stolen moments… only to tell him she’d manufactured her own death?

“Did you hear me?” Nasaka asked. She stood at his elbow, grim and surly as ever.

“I heard you,” Ahkio said.

“Have you met Yisaoh before?”

“Not since before I went to Dorinah.” In fact, he had a very difficult time remembering her face. She would have been twenty or so back then. He remembered pining after her for at least a year; a cool, aloof figure, witty and capable. He had always liked her strong hands.

“I’ll need an answer, then.”

“About?”

“Will you eat your sister’s heart tonight and take her seat in two weeks, or shall I set another plan in motion?”

“Your only other option is to find my mother’s sister Etena,” Ahkio said. “But my mother didn’t want her on the seat, and Kirana didn’t either. She’s probably dead in the woodlands by now.”

“I have several options,” Nasaka said. “Etena is not one of them. She disappeared a long time ago.”

“They’ll all lead to civil war.”

“You could save us all the trouble and simply agree to marry Yisaoh.”

“She wants to be Kai,” Ahkio said. “Not the Kai’s Catori. I don’t think she’ll settle for second.”

“You have a better idea?”

“I’ll marry Meyna.”

Nasaka’s laugh was bitter. “Over my rotting corpse.”

“Noted,” Ahkio said. He turned away. “Is Yisaoh upstairs in the Kai’s study?”

“Ahkio, you can’t be serious about Meyna.”

“It’s the best solution,” Ahkio said. He’d been thinking about it all morning, remembering that warm night around the table before Nasaka came for him. “Her husbands are Yisaoh’s brothers.”

“If you won’t marry her, you had best be prepared with a very smart way to pacify her.”

“I intend to ask her about Kirana.”

“Oma’s breath, Ahkio, don’t go accusing the Garikas of murder. I’ll come up with you.”

“No. They hate Oras far more than they hate me. Stay here.”

“I don’t advise it.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Ahkio said, and walked back through the massive banquet hall, past drudges and novices and the occasional Ora sitting down to the midday meal. He considered Yisaoh kin. Her brother Lohin had married Kirana. But the link that decided him was her kinship to Rhin and Hadaoh. She could not contest her own family marrying him; with Meyna came Rhin and Hadaoh. He thought of the spill of Meyna’s hair and her broad smile. He wanted her here beside him more than anything. Even she could not argue the logic of it.

Ahkio went up to the Assembly Chamber. Two militia flanked the archway leading into the waiting room outside the Kai study. But the waiting room was empty.

The door to the Kai’s study stood open. Ahkio saw Yisaoh sitting on one of the padded chairs in front of his sister’s desk. Well, he thought, at least she had the decency not to sit in Kirana’s chair.

Yisaoh rose at his appearance. She was solidly built, wide in the hips. Her long blue-green skirt and tunic were plainly made, unfrivolous. She had a long face and heavy brow. He found her crooked nose endearing. She took him in with a steely gaze.

“Yisaoh Alais Garika,” he said.

“Li Kai Ahkio Javia Garika, kin,” she said.

It was, indeed, a mouthful.

His sister's portrait gazed at him from the far wall, one of eight to stare back at him from the portraits of five hundred years of Kais. His mother’s most contentious action as Kai had been to break the line of succession. For five hundred years, the line of the Kais had followed that of the most gifted male or female. But his mother’s older sister had been gifted to the point of madness, and his mother had taken it upon herself to change the rules. His mother, not his Aunt Etena, took the title of Kai. And now he was left with it. Though Kais throughout history had been a variety of genders, he would be the first unable to bear an heir to term from his own womb, as he didn’t have one. And that difference wasn’t going to sit well with some people.

Ahkio sat in the guest chair opposite Yisaoh. Moving behind the big desk reminded him too much of Nasaka. Yisaoh was already formal and defensive. More hierarchy among Dhai rarely resulted in anything but increased defensiveness.

She resumed her seat.

He had forgotten to order tea. Had Nasaka thought to send someone for it? She would take it as an affront. He had lived in a proper house with Meyna and her family for so long that he had no idea how anything got done inside a temple.

“Pardon, Li Kai, I know I come at a troubling time,” Yisaoh said. She rubbed the stained ends of her fingers together. He forgot she smoked. Tordinian cigarettes, likely. His sister had loved them.

“I expect you aren't here to talk about taxes,” Ahkio said.

He fished around in his sister’s desk, looking for her smoking box. It would have been comforting indeed if Yisaoh came to him about taxes. He knew all about tax law.

“No,” Yisaoh said. “With your sister being prepared downstairs, I–”

He found the cigarette box, a black lacquered box as big as a ledger. “Can I offer you a cigarette?”

She hesitated. “No, thank you.”

“I don’t smoke, and my sister is dead.” He pushed the box toward her. “Is this enough, or is there something else of my sister’s you’d like?”

Yisaoh steepled her fingers. “A mouthy ethics teacher. That’s what Kirana called you.”

“And where is my sister’s husband?” Ahkio asked. “Your brother Lohin? I expected him.” Ahkio sat across from her. He adopted an open posture, arms on either side of the seat, legs uncrossed. It took a great deal of effort not to snap up like a morning glory at midday, but she was here to find weakness.

“He sends his regards,” Yisaoh said coolly.

“Thoughtful.”

“I see there’s no sense in dancing around,” Yisaoh said. “I never was a good dancer.”

“I doubt that very much.”

“I am here to ask you to renounce your claim to the seat.”

“I’m afraid I’ve chosen not to do that. It’s not what Kirana would have wanted.”

“So you’re doing this for Kirana?”

“Yes.”

“Not Ora Nasaka, of course?”

“It’s no secret Nasaka and I don’t get along.”

“There have been questions about your right to the seat,” Yisaoh said, “based on your true parentage.”

“My… what?” He folded his hands, realized what he was doing, and released them again. He tried to look at ease while pondering what she meant. He could think of no legitimate issue with his parentage except for lost, mad Etena. Had the Garikas found her after all? When his mother exiled Etena, Tir’s family all but declared an open campaign against his mother’s family. Kirana had fought them off with a great deal of diplomacy and, it was rumored, an inordinate amount of affection for Yisaoh.

“People talk, Ahkio. Kirana and the three dead babies before you were all obviously your mother’s children. But you look nothing like your mother.”

He laughed. “Is this all you have? Yisaoh, there are far more important things at issue here. First, who poisoned my sister with some gifted charm that no tirajista could cure? Who wanted this seat badly enough to commit murder for it?”

Yisaoh shrugged. She looked at his sister’s portrait on the wall. “An interesting question,” she said. “Perhaps this was done by someone who knew that times in Dhai are about to become very dire, and we needed someone of strength on the seat.”

“Someone like you?”

“I would offer you a seat as my Catori, my consort, but really, a boy not of the Kai’s womb has no right even as consort.”

“You’re less charming than I supposed, based on the amount of courtesy Kirana showed you.”

“Should I be charming? No. I hold the might of clans Garika and Badu in my fist. What do you have but the backing of some nattering old Oras?”

“Oras who can call on the power of the stars? I’d say I have a great deal.”

“You’d threaten me with the power of the gods? You’d use Oras against your own people? Are you truly so monstrous?”

“If this is about power for Garika, I’ll marry Rhin and Hadaoh and Meyna. But if this is about you, I cannot help.”

Yisaoh was rubbing her fingers again. “They are the weakest of my brothers. You think I’d stand for some honey-headed sheepherder in this seat?”

Ahkio heard a clatter from the waiting room. Elaiko entered carrying a tea tray. “I’ve brought cinnamon-orange tea,” she said. “My family’s most popular blend.”

“Ah, yes,” Yisaoh said. “Elaiko. My father buys your family’s tea. That’s my favorite blend.”

“Oh, is it?” Elaiko said.

“But of course you knew that.”

“Thank you,” Ahkio said. Elaiko placed the tray on the table.

Elaiko pressed thumb to forehead. “I’ll be just outside if you need anything,” she said, and left them.

“That is a coy little bird,” Yisaoh said.

“A gentle description,” Ahkio said.

“You misunderstand my intent with this meeting,” Yisaoh said.

“Do I?”

“My father seeks to give power back to
all
clans, not just Garika. Assuming–”

“Your father, if you’ll pardon, is a liar,” Ahkio said. “I know precisely what your father wants, and I’ll burn down the temple before I see your father pronounce you Kai of Garika and rename our country after one of his children. You’ve been trying to get this seat into your family’s hands for decades. I’m offering you a fair compromise.”

“My father said you would speak of tradition and history and say only, ‘It’s always been done this way.’ He said–”

Ahkio quoted from
The Book of Oma
, “
Our country could see a thousand years of peace before the rising of Oma. That peace does not forfeit our strength but disciplines it. We must rely on that peace and our lines of kin to survive. When Oma calls us to defend
–”

“And he said you would quote the Book at me,” Yisaoh said.

“I think that’s enough,” Ahkio said. He had been fair. He talked sense. Why wouldn’t she see it? “Tell your father I can’t grant his request. Tell him that any militia or sons or daughters or spouses or cousins of his he sends here will be treated with the utmost courtesy, but if another one threatens me, and in so doing threatens this country, I’ll exile his entire family. Spouses. Sons. Daughters and all. I’m not pleased to be in this seat, but I respect the words of the Book. And what you and your father are proposing is heresy.”

“Those are brave words from a shepherd.”

“I teach shepherds. I’m not one.” Ahkio stood. “It has been an occasion, Yisaoh Alais Garika.”

She moved reluctantly to her feet. “I am disappointed. I hoped you would show sense. Your sister understood what was coming, even if the Oras covered their eyes. She kept a house in Garika and listened to my father and our stargazers when no one else would. You could have learned much from her.”

“You’re talking of Oma?”

“Ah, so they’ve purported to figure that out themselves now, have they? My father told Kirana and Ora Nasaka about Oma’s rise years ago. We knew it was twenty years from rising, at best. Not a century.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” Yisaoh gestured at the desk. “I suspect you know very little about your sister and her alliance with us. Perhaps you should learn more for yourself and stop relying on lies from scheming Oras.”

“I’m not going to take that apple, Yisaoh. I know how divide-and-conquer politics work. The Oras are mine.”

“The Oras belong to themselves. Don’t you ever forget that. You’re just a means to an end.”

Ahkio called out to the militia posted at the doors. “Will you please escort Yisaoh Alais Garika from the Temple of Oma?”

Yisaoh’s eyes were black. He saw her father’s strength in her, a hardening of the jaw, blind purpose.