Chapter 35

Snow bathed the world in pearly silence. Zezili found something very comforting about that as she walked Dakar across the clean stretch of silent white. Few travelers were on the roads to Lake Morta this time of year. As dusk fell, she finally saw the approaching stretch of the vast lake. Blessed by Rhea, all said, it was a lake full of stories – and tourists during the summer. But the peak of summer travelers had passed, and the first snows were on the ground.

The road took her around the lake. The falling snow began to taper off. Clouds roiled across the black sky, revealing the moons and the tiara of satellites that circled the largest moon, Ahmur. The world seemed to glow.

Zezili saw no tracks on the road, but the snow was new. It didn’t mean Anavha hadn’t gone this way. Unescorted men were generally picked up very quickly. Her fear was that someone had already found him and turned him in to the enforcers.

She could see the spill of light from the inn on the other side of the lake, a sprawling hulk amid the snow.

Dakar halted suddenly and let out a low whine. He turned his head toward the flat, snowy expanse of the lake. The teeth of mountains called the Cage reared up behind the lake, chewing at the dark sky. Scraggly everpines peppered the mountains.

Zezili kneed her dog and whistled at him to move forward. He twitched his ears toward the lake.

“What’s out there?” she asked, patting the dog on the shoulder.

The quiet stretched. Dakar yelped again; a cry that echoed.

“What-” Zezili began.

She felt the air shudder. Heard a great whumping sound, like a massive ripple of air.

Then a dull thumping came from the lake.

She doubted her hearing. Was it some kind of echo? The echo of their passing?

Zezili dismounted. She knotted Dakar’s reins to a tree. She strode down a snaking path to the lake, her coat flapping behind her. She heard ice cracking. The sound rolled across the bowl of the lake.

Outside the cover of the trees, the flat lake caught the moons’ light like a mirror. The lake glowed milky blue. Zezili walked out onto the ice. It creaked beneath her. She peered across the lake and saw a fissure opening at its center. The snow trembled. A chunk of ice broke up from the lake and skittered across its surface.

Zezili moved faster, toward the heart of the lake. “Who’s out here?” she yelled. Her voice echoed, loud and eerie.

Something was coming out of the lake.

Zezili crouched where the cracks in the ice originated, and saw hunks of ice floating on open water. She got down onto her belly and slid forward. She saw a pale, clawed hand striking at the black water.

Then a head emerged, and a torso.

There was a woman in the lake.

Zezili should not have been surprised, not here, on the glowing ice of this twice-cursed lake, not after everything that had happened since she got the Empress’s order to start killing dajians, but she was struck dumb with horror as she watched the woman pull herself from the icy depths of the frozen lake, hand over hand, from freezing water to powdery snow.

The woman gazed up at her, not so much a woman, Zezili realized, as a young girl. She was dark of hair and eye.

Zezili took her under her arms and dragged her forward onto the ice. “Stay flat on your stomach,” Zezili said. “Don’t stand or you’ll drown us both.”

Zezili grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her away from the broken ice floe. She dragged her clear of the long cracks around the scar. Then she stood and took the girl with her. The ice continued to groan. Zezili’s stomach knotted. The inn was not far, but if she, too, fell in the ice, she’d have to leave the girl behind.

She huffed out a sigh of relief when she stepped onto solid ground again. She picked up the girl, surprised at how light she was. The girl clung to her like a sodden puppy. Zezili glanced over her shoulder at the wound in the ice. A soft wind buffeted her face, drew the clouds back over the moons. The lake fell into darkness.

By the time she reached Dakar, it had begun to snow again.

The girl’s eyes fluttered.

“Where did you come from?” Zezili asked.

The obvious answer, of course, was the lake. But that was absurd. Zezili pulled off her coat and wrapped it around the girl. In the darkness, it was difficult to make out her features. If she bore some resemblance to a family Zezili knew, it might give her a clue as to why she was out here. Most likely, she was some desperate person trying to murder herself. Zezili had no patience for that sort of thing. Death always came soon enough.

Zezili commanded Dakar to sit. She pulled the girl up in front of her and wrapped her arms around her. She was a little thing, no more than a hundred pounds.

The girl murmured something.

“What’s your name?” Zezili asked. “Who’s your family? Did someone push you into the lake?”

The girl didn’t respond. Zezili whistled for Dakar to increase his pace. The girl had begun to tremble violently, which was good. When she stopped shivering, things would be bad.

It took another twenty minutes to get to the inn. Zezili called out for help, and a meaty innkeeper came to the door carrying a flame fly lantern.

“Found a girl in the lake,” Zezili said. “You have a physician here?”

“No, but I have a tirajista,” the innkeeper said.

“That’s not much help.”

“She is if you’ve brought something from the lake. Come in.”

Zezili tied off Dakar and took the girl into the inn. The innkeeper led her up to a room that already had a fire lit. Zezili lay the girl down in front of the hearth. One of the innkeeper’s dajians came up to help her strip off the girl’s wet clothes.

In the light of the fire, Zezili noted that the girl was a bit dark for a Dorinah, and she had the low forehead and broad cheekbones of a Dhai, covered in strange puckered scars, as if someone had taken an ice pick to her face. Not all with Dhai features were dajians; if this girl’s mother had claimed her as Zezili’s had, she would be free. Being marked like that made self-murder an even more likely reason for her jaunt across the lake, though. When they undressed her, Zezili saw old bruises mapping across her legs and torso, as if she’d been abused by some foul master. A runaway dajian was a more likely scenario than some parajista catching her up in a vortex and throwing her in the lake.

They wrapped the girl in a large blanket.

“Is this the girl?” said a woman at the door.

She was an older woman, forty at least, with long, lustrous black hair and the same broad Dhai cheekbones as the girl on the floor. But this woman was more clearly Dorinah, pale and gray-eyed, with a high forehead and bold nose.

“Found her in the lake,” Zezili said. “You’re the tirajista?”

“I am,” she said, and waved away the dajian. She knelt beside the girl. Put her hands to the girl’s cheeks.

Zezili heard her mutter something, and a warm vortex of air moved over Zezili’s hands where they met the girl’s body. Zezili pulled away. That was a parajista trick, not a tirajista. As Zezili watched, the water on the blanket evaporated, and the girl’s skin began to regain some color.

“I came here looking for my husband,” Zezili said. “He thought I was coming to Lake Morta.”

“And why would you do that?”

“To find Isoail Rosalia. Are you her?”

“May I ask who you are?”

“Zezili Hasaria.”

“Your reputation is well known.”

“My mother is Livia Hasaria.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “I’m Isoail, but we’ve seen no men here since the leaves fell. What did your husband want with me?”

“I expect he thought to find me here. My mother recommended you.”

“For what, may I ask?”

“She said you’re the best jista in the country.”

The girl on the floor opened her eyes. Zezili glanced down at her. “You alive?” Zezili asked. “You best get your papers together. What were you doing out there?”

But the look on the girl’s face reaffirmed that she had no papers. Zezili had seen that look of terror on many dajian faces. She sighed. “Listen, girl–”

“Mam,” the girl said in Dhai. Zezili realized she was looking not at her but at Isoail. “Mam!” The girl grabbed at Isoail’s dress. “I promised.”

Isoail took the girl’s wrist as if to push her away.

“I thought you were dead,” the girl said. “But I promised I’d find you. I promised. I did it. I’m not a coward, Mam.” She began to weep.

“Is she yours?” Zezili asked.

Isoail shook her head. She pulled the girl’s fingers free and said, in Dorinah, “I don’t know this dajian. Call the enforcers.”

It was still early enough that the innkeeper had hot food on order. Zezili ordered some and asked the innkeeper if an unescorted man had arrived at the lake.

“Man? Rhea’s tears, no,” the innkeeper said. “You pursuing a runaway? I didn’t think that was up to the legion.”

“He belongs to me,” Zezili said. “I’d pay well for his return.” She gave his description. “You hear anything of him, contact me at the Hasaria estate outside Daorian. Easy enough to get post there.”

“I’ll remember,” the innkeeper said, “though I expect you’ll be disappointed. The weather’s worse this year than usual. I’m not sure a housebound boy could survive it.”

“He had some currency,” Zezili said, and wanted to add that he was very pretty, but the idea of him using his prettiness to survive angered her, so she let that go unsaid.

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” the innkeeper said. Zezili didn’t like the sympathy in her voice.

After eating, Zezili ordered a warm brandy.

“Anything else before I go to bed?” the innkeeper asked. “I’ve given you a room on the second floor, end of the hall. There’s a shared privy. You have your own sink, though.”

“Thanks,” Zezili said, and slipped the key into the pouch at her hip. “I’ll be fine for the night.” She found a broad, comfortable chair by the fire in the dining room and sipped the brandy. She was at Lake Morta. Anavha was not. She was uncertain what to do next except drink.

The innkeeper left her a lantern by the chair and put out the rest of the lights in the common room. She bolted the door. Zezili wondered if she had any security out here. Surely she had some hulking swordswoman around to deal with rabble?

Zezili sat in the semi-darkness, drinking and considering her next move. A sane woman would go back to Monshara. A sane woman would forget about a runaway man. But every time she thought of Anavha lost, her chest hurt and her vision blurred.

As she watched the banked coals of the fire flake and fade, she heard a sound from outside. She thought at first it was just the wind, but the wind became words. A muttering voice. Clunking on the porch. Then rapping on the door. More muttering.

Zezili went to the window.

“Don’t open it.”

She glanced back. Isoail was coming down the stairs, her long skirt caught up in one hand. She carried a lantern in the other.

“You heard it from up there?”

“I expected it,” Isoail said. “You already pulled one thing from the lake tonight. They come in pairs now.”

Isoail shuttered her lantern and stood with Zezili at the window. In the light from the moons, Zezili saw a hunched, hooded figure standing on the porch. It leaned against the door. As Zezili watched, the figure brought up its hand. Knocked again. Then began to scratch at the door.

“What is it?” Zezili said, low. “If it’s dangerous, I can kill it.”

“I could kill it just as well,” Isoail said. “Listen to that language. Do you know it?”

“No,” Zezili said.

“Then let it be,” Isoail said. “Sometimes when something comes through, it triggers another event. Other things… come after.”

They watched the figure in silence for some minutes. Zezili saw a hank of pale hair escape the hood. An older woman, then, or an Aaldian? The figure snorted. Laughed. A small, childish giggle that made Zezili’s flesh crawl.

After what felt like hours, the figure shuffled off the porch and waded back toward the road.

Zezili glanced over at Isoail. “Who was it?”

“Something from the lake,” Isoail said. “Not all of them are as docile as that dajian upstairs.”

“I don’t understand.”

Isoail took up her lantern again. “I’m surprised at that,” she said. “I heard rumors that you’ve been eliminating dajian camps at the Empress’s order for some weeks. Has she not told you why?”

“I have a good idea why,” Zezili said. “I’ve been on the other side.”

“Have you?” Isoail sounded genuinely surprised. She unshuttered her lantern. Her face looked garish in the sudden light. “Then surely you understand.”

“What, you think she was from that other world?”

“There’s more than one other world,” Isoail said. “Some even less friendly. We’re still determining how many.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The Empress requested a coterie of Seekers to monitor occurrences here at the lake ten years ago,” Isoail said. “It’s always been a holy place. It’s only very recently we understood why.”

“So, you’re Tulana’s?”

“All Seekers answer to Tulana.”

“People come through?” Zezili asked. Isoail was isolated here. She must not know about what happened at the Seeker Sanctuary.

“A good number of them,” Isoail said. “We’re not sure why here. It requires less effort, less energy from Oma, perhaps.”

“Why was that one dangerous?”

“Some come from a world very like ours with similar people. That’s likely the one you visited, correct? A world very like ours, with people who share our faces?”

“Yes,” Zezili said.

“Others are… much different.”

“That’s… I’m not sure that’s something I can speak of without breaking an Imperial order.”

“What can you tell me?” Zezili gestured to the chairs by the fire. “You know I’ve been there. I’m working with one of them.”

“I’m afraid I know little that will help in your campaign,” Isoail said. Isoail took a seat. Zezili sat across from her. “We both have our orders from the Empress.”

“I expect you won’t tell me all of yours.”

“No,” Isoail said.

“So, how do you stay in residence here without raising suspicion?”

“I do tirajista demonstrations in the summer,” Isoail said. She smiled wryly. “I’m particularly sensitive to Tira, and Para, of course.”

“A double channeler? That’s rare.”

“No wonder you got stationed out here.”

“I’m sure you understand the burdens we all bear to maintain the empire,” Isoail said. “All the intrigue becomes tiresome, though. I go to the Seeker Sanctuary twice a year to renew my license. In blessed years, the Empress has no other task for me but my research here.”

“No family, then? No children?”

Isoail leaned back in the chair. She seemed amused. Her eyes sparkled. “Do you?”

“And mark them with this face? No.”

“My parents both bore some dajian blood, from very far back,” Isoail said. “But my mother was free. She claimed me, even after my father tried to call me some terrible Dhai name, Navarra or Nava.” She shrugged. “So I am free. It’s very easy to pass, especially here. All they see is a jista.”

“So it wasn’t your face that steered you away from children.”

“No,” Isoail said. “I had a child once. After a difficult pregnancy. The midwives told me to flush it, but I was stubborn. Then the last few months, it started to kill me. Poisoned my blood. So they cut me open.” She made a cutting motion across her belly. “Pulled out a deformed mass of twisted limbs. That might have been all right, but they botched the surgery. I didn’t realize how badly until I tried to conceive again. No luck.”

“Midwives often have very sound advice,” Zezili said. “Surgeons’ skill is less.”

“I was young,” Isoail said. “I thought I knew better. If I’d chosen to end it before it went bad, perhaps I’d have had other children. But I did not. So here we are.”

“Yet you have strange little dajian girls calling you mother,” Zezili said.

“I’m not her mother,” Isoail said softly. “Most likely she mistook me for someone else.”

Zezili picked up her brandy and drank too much of it. It warmed her stomach and softened her doubts. “When girls like this pass through these… tears in the lake… Could people here travel through them? Go after them?”

“If they were in the same area, yes. Ah, yes. You’re thinking of your husband.”

“He meant to meet me here.”

“Many things can happen to a man on the road.”

“My husband is loyal. He meant to meet me here. If he’s not here, it’s possible he’s on the other side, isn’t it?”

“Many things are possible. But why would you think that?”

“He… there was an incident at our house. I thought it meant nothing at the time. Thought it was some trick. But maybe, with all these people showing these gifts now… maybe he opened a door by accident.”

“Ah,” Isoail said. “That is… something.”

“Have you ever tried to go to the other side, through one of these doors?”

“I’m more than a double channeler,” Isoail said. “I thought for a good long time that’s all I was, until I saw the disturbances here. I could see them – the red breath of Oma. I shouldn’t have been able to.”

“Triple? Ha. End times, indeed. I can fairly feel the fiery eye of Rhea.”

“Who can say what will be rare in a year’s time? Maybe all jistas will be able to call on Oma in addition to their ascendant star. We don’t know. Oma hasn’t risen in two thousand years. Everything is strange now.”

“You figured out how to open a gate.”

“Yes. I tried to copy some of the patterns I saw on the lake. But it always opened to the same place, some blasted vista, and I could never pass through. It was like trying to get through a window made of steel.”

Zezili nodded. Isoail couldn’t pass over because she did have a double, then. Someone on the other side, possibly working with that… other Zezili to build the mirror? And if Anavha was there, too… She took another drink. Saw the head stamped on Monshara’s coin again. Monshara had lost her world and become a frightened tool, but Zezili was no one’s slave.

“There are things coming into this world that shouldn’t,” Zezili said. “You know that. You see it. I think there’s an easier way to stop them besides just pulling wreckage from a lake or murdering dajians at their order.”

“If you’re about to talk treason, I won’t hear it.”

“Not at all,” Zezili lied. “Have you ever built an infused mirror? One as big as a building?”

“That would be something,” she said, “but no.”

“If you had, could you destroy it?”

“Destroy an infused mirror?” Isoail said. “Yes. You unravel the pattern. Each channeler has a distinctive pattern. I’d know if it was mine.”

“My mother said you’re the best at what you do,” Zezili said. “The best in Dorinah at making infused mirrors. So, if we apply the logic of dual forces, that means your other self over there, she’s probably going to be good at building mirrors, right?”

Isoail shook her head. “That’s a large stretch.”

“You can help me stop them, Isoail.”

“That’s treason.”

“There’s a mirror they’re building there to keep open the way between worlds. Once it’s infused, their armies will spill through. Help me stop it.”

“I love my Empress.”

“So do I,” Zezili said. “But she’s not loyal to you. Do you know what she has Syre Kakolyn doing?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Purging Seekers from Dorinah. Seekers like you. She cleared Tulana and Sokai and the rest from the Seeker Sanctuary.”

“That’s madness. Why are you here, really?”

“You can check out that story,” Zezili said, and stood. “Then if you want to help me, you let me know. I leave in the morning, but I’ll be at a camp in Aloerian for a week or so, if you want to join me.”

“The Empress would never–”

“I didn’t think she’d wipe out two million dhorins worth of dajians, either,” Zezili said. “It sounded fine, at first, but the more you think about it, the more the whole thing unravels. The Empress is planning something with these strangers, something that isn’t meant to benefit Dorinah.”

“If you mean to betray–”

“I don’t,” Zezili said, and she found the conviction in her own voice very comforting. “Ask about your Seeker Sanctuary. Ask where your friends are now.”

Zezili went to bed. She lay awake for hours, staring at the spiders crawling across the ceiling, each as big as her palm. She should have known Isoail would have a living double on the other side. If she couldn’t destroy the mirror, perhaps she could still help Zezili find Anavha. They could open a door here, and Zezili could spend… how long? How long would she look for him, before her Empress gave her up for dead or had her friends over there murder her for treason?

No. If the Empress destroyed her, she wanted to take something with her.

When she finally slept, Zezili dreamed Anavha was scratching on the door, his head covered in a hood of fine spiders’ silk. When she woke, a hooded form stood over her. Fear seized her. She grabbed the sword next to her bed.

Isoail threw back the hood of her coat. She looked pale and distraught in the early morning light.

“They came for the girl,” she said, “and brought me a message by sparrow, from the Sanctuary. It had died on the way. A tirajista with the enforcers kept it in tissue paper.”

“I want to know what the Empress really has planned for us.”

“I thought you might,” Zezili said. “But if we’re going to destroy the new world they’re building, we need to figure out how to get there.”

“How would I know where this mirror is?”

“You don’t have to know. I know where it is.”

“Right here,” Zezili said. “You said you always open a door to the same place? You say the easiest place to come through is here? Maybe the easiest place for you to build a gate to over there is the best place for them to put a mirror, too.”

“That is a great leap in logic.”

“I’m full of leaping today. But the bigger question is how we get you over there when your other self is still alive.”

“We don’t have to get me over,” Isoail said.

“The girl,” Isoail said.

“What, from last night? What about her?”

“The girl could break the mirror if she knew the pattern.”

“She may not be my daughter here, but there… well. I went over our conversation many times last night. You believe I was the one who made this mirror, this great gate, over there. If that’s so, I can untangle it. And so can a very close blood relation, if they are gifted and know the pattern I used to create it. Sometimes they are able to see the pattern and unravel–”

Zezili threw off her blankets. The room was cold. “Let’s get her, then.”

“We can’t,” Isoail said.

“What do you mean? She’s in the next room!”

“Did you not hear me?”

“I’m half asleep, Isoail.”

“The enforcers came for her this morning, before I woke. That was six hours ago. I don’t know where they took her. There are eight camps within a few days’ march of here – north, south, east, west… they could have gone any direction.”

Zezili grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and grunted. Isoail could open the gate. The little dajian could destroy the mirror. And Zezili could use the ensuing chaos to find Anavha. Rhea had handed it to her all in one night, and she’d tossed it away.

Zezili stood. “Come with me.”

“I’m purging every last one of those camps in the coming weeks,” Zezili said. “The girl’s bound to be in one of them.”

Zezili swept into Monshara’s tent completely sober. She was cold but already had her helm under her arm and her gloves off. It showed a measure of trust, she thought.

Monshara stood bent over a field table with a steaming cup of tea clasped in her hands. Her hair was knotted atop her head in a loose tangle. A heavy woolen scarf that had once been blue and was now a washed-out gray swaddled her neck. If she was surprised at Zezili’s appearance, she did not show it.

“I expect the purging of the last camp went well,” Zezili said.

“Has your husband been rounded up and whipped? I understand that’s your way.”

“It’s cultural, not personal.”

“Indeed. Your desertion was reported.”

“You knew where I was and why. We share command. I answer only to the Empress.”

“She isn’t pleased. Nor is the woman I answer to.”

“I’ve spoken with my Empress personally,” Zezili lied. “She understands.” She pulled a piece of paper from her belt and unfolded it on the table. It was a rough sketch of the girl from the lake. Isoail knew an artist in the neighboring town who created it based on their shared memory. She’d passed it on to enforcement offices along the way, but to the enforcers, every dajian looked alike. “She’s asked me to find a dajian thought to be hiding in one of these final camps. We’ll need to circulate this before we run each purge.”

Monshara set down her tea and squinted at the page. “What’s she done?”

“I didn’t ask. You and I only follow orders, remember?”

Monshara leaned toward her. “If you think I’ll forget your desertion–”

Zezili thumped her helm on the table. “If you think you’re my superior, you’re sorely mistaken,” she said. “My business is my own and I answer only to the Empress of Dorinah. My Empress. So watch your tone and do as she tells you.”

Zezili snapped up the page and her helm. She walked out.

Monshara called after her, “Don’t think that’s the end of this, Zezili.”

“We have a lot of killing to do,” Zezili called over her shoulder, and slid her helm back on. “Best give your full attention to that.”

She had four full weeks, she guessed, before Monshara confirmed her story was hash. What happened when she found out, well… the world was ending anyway, wasn’t it?