The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

Author:Kameron Hurley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Angry Robot, Angry Robot
Published: 2014-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Remember all the roads.

“Roads to where?” Ahkio said.

“It gets weirder,” Caisa said. She stood. Liaro scrambled up as well and pressed past Ahkio.

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Liaro told Caisa.

Caisa pulled on her coat and went after him. She paused in the door and smiled.

“What is it?” Ahkio asked.

“You’re getting better,” she said.

“I’m glad you think so.”

“When did you give up?” she said.

“Give up what?”

“Ever going back?”

“Back to where?”

Caisa’s smile faded. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was mistaken.”

“No, what did you mean by that?”

“Nothing. I misspoke. Goodnight, Kai.” She pressed thumb to forehead and left him.

Ahkio shook his head and stared at the book. Everyone was going mad. He paged through and read the scrawled notes in the margins. Not just his sister’s handwriting but Etena’s, too – it matched the scrawl of her name on the front. The notes were in some kind of shorthand. It took him a moment to work out that they must be in the Kai cipher.

He sat down and picked up a bleeding pen, the sort made from the stamens of claw-lilies, and turned over one of Kirana’s stack of temple maps. She had an inordinate number of them, mostly of the six levels of basements beneath the temple proper that contained the great bathing rooms, massive storage rooms, and the old garrison.

As he worked out the first of the margin notes, he noticed a familiar symbol from the reverse side of the map. He turned the map over.

It was a map of the lowest level of the temple, roughly circular, just like every other layer, divided into a labyrinth of rooms that spiraled out over the page like a small city.

At the center of the labyrinth was a square with a double circle inside. Where had he seen it? The Assembly Chamber table. The map of Dhai. That was the same symbol on that old map, inlaid in the table about the same time Faith and Hahko took up residence there.

He assumed the symbols for the temples were some holdover from Dorinah, something the Dhai had used instead of writing. Many would have been illiterate when they came over the mountains. But it was odd to see it replicated in the map, because outside the Assembly Chamber table, no one used them anymore.

Ahkio turned the paper back over and finished translating the first margin note, which was in Kirana’s handwriting.

The sentence made him pause. He must have made some mistake. He translated the next one, the one at the bottom of the page, in Etena’s handwriting.

His breath left him. He stared at the page. Everything he thought he knew fell apart.

Yisaoh was right. He was not as clever as he thought.

Kirana had written:

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