The Mirror Empire (49 page)

Lilia dropped her filthy blanket. Cora brought out a pan of tepid, mostly clean water. Lilia sponged herself off as best she could. She wiped at her thighs and saw tendrils of blood leaking back into the pan. She had not wiped her face. She looked down between her thighs, saw a smear of blood. She pressed her fingers between her legs. They came back red.

“I’m bleeding,” Lilia said. It sounded stupid to say it out loud, but seeing the blood reminded her of her bare, scarred arms, and the power that could be called with blood.

“Get her something,” Emlee said. She had settled by the fire and was stirring up some rice.

Cora handed over a wadded rag. “I’ll find you some linen and a belt,” Cora said.

Lilia tied on the linen belt that secured the clean rag between her thighs. She dressed in a long skirt of Cora’s, too big and too long for her. The tunic they gave her was also too big and made of itchy wool, but it was warm. Cora loaned Lilia her shoes and stuffed them with straw to keep them on Lilia’s feet.

“The sick wait on no one but me,” Emlee said. “Up, up. Let’s go now. See how useful you are.”

Cora handed her a sticky rice ball as Emlee pushed her out the door.

Lilia walked after Emlee, wolfing down the rice. Emlee strode purposefully down paths, around refuse. She called to those sitting around the fires, knew the names of all the dirty children, at the breast and apron strings, and the others, the orphans who ran in packs.

Emlee greeted two young women sitting outside the awning of a lopsided hide tent. One of them carried a twisted bundle of firewood. Both women looked relieved to see Emlee. Emlee introduced Lilia. They led them inside the dim tent.

“Have you seen yaws before?” Emlee asked.

Lilia shook her head.

They stooped over a young man who lay in a corner of the tent. He turned his face to them.

Lilia’s stomach lurched.

Something had chewed away the center of the man’s face. Where a nose and upper lip should have been was an open wound of flesh, leaving the top of the mouth open, the lower teeth visible. His left eye was lower than the right, drawn down into the wound that was his face.

Emlee handed Lilia her pack of supplies. “Open that up,” Emlee said. “Get familiar with it.”

Lilia sat down behind Emlee as the old woman settled beside the faceless man. Lilia unrolled Emlee’s pack of supplies. She had two dozen vials of herbs and mixed concoctions, none of them labeled. She had several kinds of scalpels, a mirror on the end of a metal rod, a small file-saw that Lilia could hold easily in the palm of her hand, and a length of clean gauze wrapped in a thin paper that smelled of everpine.

In the days that followed, Lilia became intimately familiar with the contents of Emlee’s kit. She learned the names of all the potions and how to mix them. Emlee brought her to births and deaths. Lilia saw cancers and gonorrhea, dysentery, gangrene, syphilis, and diseases she had no name for but the ones Emlee gave them: orange fever, billicks, sen rot, and skin ulcers and lesions that ate away arms and faces and feet. They treated frost-bitten drunks, women whose insides had been cut out by Dorinahs and left ill-treated, men who had been castrated and become infected, urinated blood and pus – when they could urinate at all.

Lilia worked silently, like a shadow. She did not lose her stomach until the day they were brought to a woman who had been carried to Emlee’s doorstep. She had a swatch of dirty, bloodied bandaging up one leg and wrapped about her torso. She stank of dead flesh.

Emlee reached forward to take off the bandaging. Lilia saw something moving beneath it. When Emlee drew the bandages clear, she revealed the woman’s gaping wound: a shiver of writhing maggots seethed inside the rotting flesh. The smell of death thickened the room.

Lilia’s skin crawled. She stumbled out of the tent and vomited her breakfast into the latrine gutter. She crouched with her head down for several minutes until her stomach stopped heaving.

Then she went back to Emlee and knelt beside the woman.

“Found her in a ditch at the rear of the camp,” Emlee said. “They only throw the traitors there.”

“Traitors?”

“Dajians who worked for the Empress,” Emlee said.

“Why would the Empress send them here?”

“Because they betrayed her,” Emlee said.

“Wait. So they are traitors to the Empress, not to us?”

“Us?” Emlee frowned. “Child, those who betray the Empress also betray us. We’re her people.”

“But you’re… you, all of you–”

“You’re a temple Dhai,” Emlee said. “You wouldn’t understand. But you will.”

Lilia gazed across the comatose woman to the open door and the camp beyond. She found something to replace her numb despair then. It was rage. Rage at all of this, at this world, at a place that could create all of this sorrow and madness, at a place that could throw her and these people away like filth.

She bent over her patient and gently pulled the woman’s matted, dirty hair from her face. Lilia’s fingers froze.

She knew the woman’s face.

It was Gian.

 

40

“I said I would tell you when it was time,” Maralah said. “It’s time.”

“The Dhai are keeping information from us,” the Patron said.

“And we’re keeping information from them,” Maralah said. “They have yet to ask if we’re fighting Dhai.”

Maralah, Driaa, and Kadaan stood with the Patron at the top of the keep, in what had become their makeshift war room. The space wasn’t meant for it. Best Maralah could surmise, it had once been a luxurious retreat for some very old Patron’s favorite wife. Silver and gold gilded passages from the
Lord’s Book of Unmaking
graced the ceiling. The passages were a selection of love poetry to Oma written by a sixth-century scholar included in one of the appendices of the Book.

The chamber also had a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside. Maralah suspected that before it was tarted up, its original purpose was a military one. Village elders always told her that time was a circle and everything came back around again. It was strange to see how literal that had become.

“I tried to keep them close by having one of their boys dance,” the Patron said. “It reminded me of happier times. But I suspect they mean to betray us, if they have not already.”

“Five little Dhai? We can deal with five Dhai,” Maralah said. “Especially one that just saved you from men that looked just like him.”

“They let my son die.”

“That was my failure,” Maralah said. “Kadaan and I were seated at that table for that purpose. I failed you, Patron, not the Dhai.”

Kadaan did not look at her. In meetings such as this, with the Patron’s mood uncertain and conditions rapidly deteriorating, she preferred to be the only one to speak with him, even if he had called up all three of them. Some part of her expected he would ask the other two to kill her, and invite Kadaan to take her place. It was a fight she had prepared for these many months by sparring with Kadaan in the courtyard and sending Driaa off on assignments. Kadaan was faster, but Maralah had more experience. All that remained was for the Patron to give the order.

“Why else would they bring a boy who could see through wards and not tell us?” the Patron said. “Why would Dasai bring him to my table? I know Dasai’s history here.”

“I don’t know why they failed to mention his talent,” Maralah said. “But to be fair, we failed to mention they were fighting themselves.” The Patron had been drinking more of late. Rumor had it he had not visited his wives in some time, not even the formidable Arisaa, who had borne his most beloved sons and given him sound advice when he was in these moods. When Maralah’s counsel could not keep him balanced, Arisaa’s usually could. She made a note to have Driaa stop by Arisaa’s quarters after this meeting. Arisaa did not care for Maralah, but she would tolerate Driaa.

“We must not act on fear,” Maralah said.

The Patron choked on a laugh. “Fear?” he said. “Fear? This is about respect. They disrespect me in my own house. I’ve had their correspondence monitored all these weeks, and I believe it’s been telling as to their intentions.”

“A valid precaution,” she said.

“But not one you suggested.”

“No,” she said.

He began to pace along the wall of windows. His long coat was dirty at the hem. His boots were scuffed, and his hair needed washing. Seeing him like this, she was reminded of a story of the last days of the Empire of Dhai, when a group of sanisi finally penetrated a room much like this one, where the city’s magistrate, her family, and their bodyguards made a final stand. They were mad, broken people, the sanisi wrote, with big bug-eyed faces and wan complexions. They had eaten their own children. What remained of their little bodies was spread out on the stones, washed and neatly butchered with skinning knives and cleavers. Maralah wondered what she would be driven to do at the end.

“They have found something,” the Patron said. “It’s been too long with no progress. They
must
be sending all the information they have back to Dhai.”

“That may be,” Maralah said, “but it does not change our position. The invading armies are marching south from Caisau. They’ve burned out four villages and routed much of my brother’s regiment. He’s bringing what remains here. It isn’t enough to hold Kuonrada. We need to retreat south to Harajan.”

“After Harajan is Anjoliaa,” the Patron said, “and once they have us against the sea, we are done.” He ceased his pacing and stood motionless, looking north. From this great height, Maralah thought she could see smoke from some burned-out little town. She had given her brother’s regiment permission to burn out the farms between Caisau and Kuonrada as they retreated, taking what they could for themselves and leaving nothing behind for the invaders.

“They should have stopped their advance,” the Patron said. “You said they would stop as the season deepened.”

“It’s madness to march in this weather,” Maralah said. “If I led them, I would have stopped two weeks ago. They’ll freeze in their tracks.”

“Then the weather will devour them.”

“That is my hope,” Maralah said, “but they do not seem to heed the cold. They could make it here before the worst of the weather and turn us out. Then we’ll get caught in the weather during our retreat. It’s just luck now.”

“This is the place,” the Patron said softly. “This is the place they’ll write about.”

“What?”

“We make our stand here,” he said. “In Kuonrada.”

“Patron, I must protest–”

“That’s my decision,” he said.

“We discussed this before we retreated from Caisau. When the time was right–”

“You are my general,” the Patron said. “You are not Patron. That is my burden.”

“We could last out the season in Harajan.”

“That’s what you said about Kuonrada,” he said. “Yet here we are, retreating again. What would my predecessor say to this? What would Osoraan have said to this?”

“Former Patron Osoraan would not have survived this long,” Maralah said. “He would have broken his armies against them in some vain and glorious gesture early last year, and all of us would be dead. It’s what he did when he assaulted us. It’s why we won.”

“We?” the Patron said.

Maralah grimaced. “It’s why
you
won, Patron.”

He jabbed a finger at her. “This is where we stand, Maralah.”

“Then this is where we will die.”

“It is a good place to die.”

Maralah bowed deeply. She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw hurt. “Then I will die beside you,” she said.

“When your brother arrives, give him the order to hold this position.”

“Yes, Patron.”

“You may go. All of you.”

Maralah took two steps back before turning away. Kadaan and Driaa waited until she turned before also retreating. They cleared the doors. Kadaan shut them. They were heavy doors, amberwood banded in steel. But Driaa put up a bubble of air around the three of them anyway. Maralah’s ears popped.

“Do you want me to call back Soraanda’s command?” Driaa asked. “They’ve already started the retreat to Harajan at your order.”

“What do you think, Kadaan?” Maralah asked.

“I think we can last another year if we retreat to Harajan,” he said.

“Driaa?”

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Driaa said.

“No one does,” Maralah said.

“We have no one for the seat,” Kadaan said.

“The Patron will stay on the seat. My brother will be here in four days with his army,” Maralah said. “I can convince the Patron to… retire. For a time.”

“You’d put him into a slumber?” Driaa said.

“When peace arrives, we will wake him,” Maralah said. “I’m no betrayer, Driaa. No oath-breaker. I told him I would protect him. That’s what I will do. My brother and I will lead the armies. Start speaking to those you know to be allies. When it happens, it will happen very quickly.”

“You must expect some resistance,” Kadaan said.

“His star is descendent,” Maralah said. “It won’t take but a few moments. But I want to make sure the people left in the hold are ours first.”

“When do we begin?” Kadaan asked.

“When my brother arrives. I want Para below the horizon,” Maralah said. “Parajistas who side with him will be weaker.”

“So will those parajistas who side with us,” Driaa said.

“But we’ll know what’s coming,” Maralah said. “Sometimes that makes all the difference.”

 

41

When Roh arrived back at the hold, he handed over the Talamynii book to Kihin and went down to the infirmary to visit Luna. Two green-robed orderlies were helping Luna dress. They pulled Luna’s soiled robe off, revealing his small breasts. Roh was used to Dhai, where everyone chose what gender they went by. He wondered, for the first time, who had decided Luna was not “he” or “she” but “ze.” Was it the first person who owned Luna, or Maralah, or someone else? But that, it turned out, was a terrible train of thought, because then he had to acknowledge that every single person he’d meant in Saiduan had had a gender decided for them. They had no choice in it at all.