The Mirror Empire (9 page)

Being summoned from the coast while her force lolled about getting drunk waiting to mount an offensive on the isle of Alorjan filled her with trepidation. The Empress did not pull her captain generals from the field so lightly. Zezili swore as she waited, muttering old Dhai curses, in case anyone of importance happened by. More people feared her when she spoke Dhai. It reminded them of her mixed face and manners, and her deviant propensity for slaughtering her own kind.

The big double doors to the audience chamber opened, and the Empress’s white-haired dajian secretary, Saofi, said, “The Empress regrets she cannot see you at this time, Syre Zezili Hasaria.”

“She’s left orders, then?” Zezili said, trying to conceal her annoyance. Saofi was a plump, matronly woman, easily fifty or sixty, and had survived a long service to the Empress. That made her nearly as valuable as Zezili. Zezili did not often measure her own worth compared to that of dajians – Dhai slaves – but Saofi was obviously of mixed parentage – Dhai and Dorinah, just like Zezili. And sometimes the similarities chilled her. The secretary’s mother had sold her. Zezili’s mother had claimed her. One woman’s choice made all the difference.

“She has something prepared, yes,” Saofi said. “She told me earlier she may be unable to make this audience. This way, please. I’ll give you her missive.”

Saofi led Zezili through the drafty hall. The Empresses of Dorinah had torched their organic holds and rebuilt them from stone and iron over eighteen hundred years before. It meant their holds were cooler, less permanent, and required much more maintenance than the tirajista-built holds that littered the lands of their neighbors. Zezili found the idea of maintaining this massive heap of stone exhausting.

They passed a pair of dajians refilling the lamps along the hall. A girl no more than ten hung from the ladder, leaning far over to the next sconce. When the girl saw Zezili, her eyes got big. She dropped the oil decanter.

Zezili snapped up the decanter before it could clatter to the stones. Oil sloshed onto her hand. She shoved the decanter back at the little dajian. “You’ll set the whole cursed place on fire,” she said.

The dajian babbled apologies. Zezili saw Saofi watching them. She should have just let it fall. She half thought to dump the oil on Saofi and set her aflame, just for effect, but knew she wouldn’t get her orders then.

So, Zezili settled for shoving the decanter at the older dajian holding the ladder, who hadn’t lost her senses in the face of a captain general. Then Zezili forged on ahead of Saofi.

“I don’t have all day, secretary,” Zezili said.

Saofi hurried to catch up. She had a shorter stride. As they came to Saofi’s office, Saofi selected the key from among the various useful secretarial items she had dangling from the chains of her chatelaine. She opened the door and retrieved a small purple letter from her desk.

Zezili took it and broke the royal seal: the Eye of Rhea stamped into a generous gob of gonsa sap.

Zezili skimmed over the honorifics after the Empress’s name. Zezili did not question the Empress’s orders, ever. It was one reason she kept her place at the head of the legion. But she didn’t much like the idea of packing up back home and blindly following some foreigner, even at the Empress’s order. She hoped they weren’t Saiduan or Tordinian. Saiduans were arrogant, and Tordinians foul and uncouth, even by her standards.

“Is this a serious letter?” Zezili asked.

Saofi shrugged. “You would know better than I.”

“Why didn’t she see me personally? Why call me out here and then send me home again?”

“I don’t pretend to know the mind of the Empress,” Saofi said. “I take her orders, just as you do.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Zezili said.

“As you say.”

Zezili pushed her helm back on. Her ears were cold. She bunched up the letter. It had been a waste of time to come all the way to Daorian for this. She could be at home fucking her husband.

“Luck to you,” Saofi called as she stepped into the hall.

Zezili bit back a retort. Every word would get back to the Empress. She walked down to the kennels and had the kennel girls bring out her dog, a big black brute named Dakar whose shoulder was as high as Zezili’s chest. He had dark eyes and a scarred muzzle, reminder of a skirmish she had taken him into along the coast of the Saiduan island called Shorasau. She had always preferred dogs to bears. They were easier to train and stank less.

She rode through the great gates of the stronghold of Daorian and into the city that took its name from the hold. Daorian had been built on the ruins of the Saiduan city of Diamia before it. The city was a patchwork of government houses to the east, merchants’ quarters organized by profession, and poorer shacks and tents along the water, where the fishers and sea-trade people lived.

Big, somber-colored awnings stretched over the sidewalks where city-owned dajians tended to the lanterns set up on long poles lining the road; the dajians bore the look of their Dhai relatives but could hardly be called Dhai when they’d spent the entirety of their lives owned by the Empress. Women and girls filled the streets, dressed in bright tunics and long trousers and skirts, embroidered coats and wide hats. Little dajians followed after their owners, carrying shopping baskets; many had babies tied to their backs with lengths of colorful fabric. Most dajians were easily recognizable by their drab gray clothing, their smaller stature, their tawny complexions. Many were also branded with the mark of the family who owned them.

Zezili watched as the dajians streamed past, hurrying after tall women whose hair was curled or beribboned, pinned or sewn in place, and adorned in combs and jeweled pins. Zezili had learned how to tie hair up like that, a lifetime ago, before her mother had put a sword in her hand.

She rode past the booksellers and merchants’ stalls and into the religious quarter, where all of the lanterns were wound with red paper. The open awnings of the men’s mardanas lining the streets of the quarter were red, the sidewalks lined in brick. The Temple of Rhea stood at the end of the red-lantern road, its spires outlined by the gray sky. The Dorinah flag flew from the three topmost peaks of the stone towers: the Eye of Rhea on a background of purple.

“Syre Zezili!” someone called. “My favorite unwashed snapdragon. How are you?”

Zezili turned. A bear-drawn carriage pulled up next to her. The lacy curtains were swept back from the window, revealing a bright, rouged face with eyes heavily lined in kohl.

“Tulana Nikoel,” Zezili said. “Looking for a treat in the mardanas?”

“Nothing so amusing,” Tulana said. Her dark hair was arranged atop her head in a pile of forward-facing curls that had been sewn into place and knotted with yellow ribbons. It was not the most intricate style Zezili had ever seen, but nearly. The Empress’s gifted jistas, the Seekers, had little to do but sit around and braid each other’s hair between enemy-killing, road-building, and ditch-digging. Tulana’s little sloe-eyed shadow, Sokai, sat with her, gazing off in the opposite direction. Zezili had made a pass at him once during a campaign, and he hadn’t taken it well. Men had no sense of humor.

“I didn’t think the Empress let you out of the Seeker Sanctuary without a leash,” Zezili said.

“Being gifted is often a curse,” Tulana said, “but leading the gifted can be advantageous. Tell me, has the Empress called you here to speak of a campaign? I have six new parajistas hungry for experience in the field.”

“You know I can’t say,” Zezili said. “But when I can, you’ll be the first to know. Say hello to Amelia and Voralyn.” They were the only gifted women Zezili could tolerate, in large part because they often lost extraordinary amounts of money to her at cards.

“I will say hello to their purses for you,” Tulana said.

Zezili grunted and turned Dakar away. From the corner of her eye, she saw Tulana’s bright expression darken. Zezili suspected Tulana’s tolerance for Zezili was only slightly higher than Zezili’s for Tulana. But Zezili’s legion, without gifted Seekers, was just a mob of women with pointy sticks when facing the gifted forces of an enemy. She had to work with Tulana and her little jistas more often than not.

Dakar carried her to the limits of the city, where a charred black ring marked the outer edges of habitable land. She gazed across the rolling hillsides covered in tangled summervine and creeping deathwart. Most of the trees had been cut, but there were still many dangerous semi-sentient things crawling along the roads. Workers burned off the plant life for twenty feet on either side, ensuring that nothing took root.

Zezili passed time that afternoon to eat and pray at a way house run by the owners of an adjacent silk farm. She was not fool enough to give up her daily prayers to Rhea and her daughters, though she did not consider herself particularly religious.

Her husband, Anavha, had often begged her to move the household back into the city, where he would find more of his own kind and could worship in a proper temple. But she preferred to keep him out here, safe from the dangers of the city. As was custom, Zezili had allowed her sisters the use of Anavha until they had done with their own broods. Then she moved her household to the country, away from the lascivious stares of older women and the poisonous influence of mardana men.

She arrived at her house just after dusk. Her estate was not grand, but adequate for her station. Lights burned in the windows. The latticed shutters were open. An apple orchard stretched out behind the house, and beyond that, Zezili kept a small vineyard that produced the estate’s wine. She saw a gaggle of dajians with flame fly lanterns patrolling the orchard. Burning out encroaching strangle vines and sap thorns took constant maintenance.

Zezili dismounted. Her housekeeper, Daolyn, emerged from the round gate, followed by two of the house dajians. The dajians took Dakar’s reins.

“How goes my house?” Zezili asked Daolyn.

Daolyn was mostly dajian, short and dark-haired, though her hair was going to white. She had the high cheekbones and tawny cast of a dajian, but her eyes were Dorinah gray, and she had put on a healthy amount of fat over her broad frame. Zezili trusted no one else with the affairs of her house.

Daolyn inclined her head. The night was cool. She wore green divided skirts and a short coat with an embroidered green collar. She had sewn the Eye of Rhea onto the two big outer pockets.

“Your house is well, Syre Zezili,” Daolyn said. “We did not expect you for several weeks.”

“The Empress had other plans,” Zezili said as they walked into the inner courtyard. “How is my husband?” A fountain bubbled in the eye of the yard. A circular door from each of the house’s three main rooms led into the yard.

“He has been melancholy,” Daolyn said.

Zezili walked into the common room. “I suppose I should bathe before I settle,” she said, glancing at the padded benches and chaises and the tapestry lining the floor, so recently uncurled that its edges had been strategically held down by items of furniture. Daolyn only put the tapestry rug out when Zezili was home; she would have hurriedly unrolled it the moment the dajians in the yard alerted her that Zezili was coming down the road. That touch inspired in Zezili a feeling of contentment she could almost call happiness.

“You must strive to keep him busy,” Zezili said. “Idle hands ruin good boys. We’ll have visitors soon. Prepare the house for company.”

After bathing and having her hair washed, combed, and tied with red ribbons by a new house dajian Daolyn had purchased in her absence, Zezili dressed in long red trousers and a red undershirt embroidered at the cuffs and hem. Daolyn brought her a new handsome short coat of red silk stitched in silver at the wide sleeves, with three silver-threaded frogged ties at the front and blooms the color of blood embroidered at the collar.

“Will you allow your husband to attend supper with you?” Daolyn asked.

“Yes,” Zezili said, “and bring the account books. I need to review them. This new campaign will keep me occupied many months, I’m sure.”

Daolyn inclined her head.

Zezili walked back to the common room, where the dajians had pulled out the low dining table from the wall, set it at the center of the room, and put cushions down on the floor. As Zezili waited for her husband, the dajians brought out mushroom and leek soup, served cold, garnished with basil.

She heard a rustling at the door. Anavha stood in the broad archway. Had it only been a month since she last saw him? He wore a white girdle that pulled in his waist just above the hips. He was, of necessity, slender. She believed men should take up as little space as possible. He wore his black hair long over his shoulders, tied once with a white ribbon. Those men allowed to live were, of course, beautiful, far more beautiful than many of the women Zezili knew. Anavha was clean-shaven, as she wanted him, lightly powdered in gold, his eyes lined in kohl, eyes a stormy gray, set a bit too wide in a broad face whose jaw she had initially found almost vulgar in its squareness. He stood a hand shorter than she; she easily outweighed him by fifty pounds. She liked him just this way.

She warmed at the mere sight of him. She wanted to push Anavha onto the table, and pull his body into hers.

“Wife,” Anavha said softly. He knelt with head bowed.

“Rise,” Zezili said.

Anavha stood. Zezili took him by his slender forearms and looked into his eyes. He averted his gaze.