She found the Twin Hearths, her designated inn, and took a moment to get her luggage into her room. She didn’t bother to unpack it, though. That was another thing she was beginning to pick up. She’d skipped out of enough places in the middle of the night lately that she knew better than to get settled in.
Then it was time to find her contact, Yaryoki. The names and locations of all the Void Hands was one of the things she’d been drilled on and tested over, but just because she knew the streets’ names didn’t mean she could find them. Aystad was a horribly tangled town. Miryo at least had the sense to ask her innkeeper, and he was very obliging, but following his directions turned out to be impossible. By the time Miryo found Yaryoki’s house, nearly an hour later, her temper was frayed quite thin.
She took a moment outside the low garden wall to straighten her hair and calm herself. Then she walked in.
The perimeter spell tripped as she passed through the gate. Miryo kept her steps slow, to give the Cousin time to get to the door. It opened before she reached it, and the short, stocky woman inside bowed her in without a word.
Perhaps it was the way the Cousin seemed unaccountably tense. Perhaps it was the way she didn’t ask Miryo’s name, as if Yaryoki had been expecting her. Whatever it was, though, instinct prompted Miryo to draw herself suddenly erect as she was conducted into the sitting room.
Where she bowed to the Primes.
Being around Mirage had taught Miryo how to control her expression better. She was proud of herself as she straightened; that control, combined with her sudden suspicion before she walked in, allowed her to face the Primes without flinching, or showing any sign of surprise that they were here, in Aystad, in Yaryoki’s house. Expecting her.
Satomi, of course, was in the center. They sat in an arc of high-backed chairs; the resemblance to their formal seats in the hall where they had sent her on her hunt was not accidental. Magical lights cast the room into stark relief. The effect left her feeling as though there was no place to hide.
“We are concerned,” Satomi said.
Void it.
“The Cousins were sent with you for protection. We began to worry when they were seen by a Void Hand, and you were not in their company. We investigated.”
So Kan and Sai had been found. Miryo wondered, rather belatedly, where they had gone after they left her.
Satomi’s eyes were completely expressionless. “You have found your doppelganger.”
“Yes.” No point in denying it.
“And it is not dead.”
Miryo found herself flinching at the pronoun. She had grown used to thinking of Mirage as a person; it was jarring to speak with someone who didn’t. But Satomi was waiting for an answer. “No, Aken.”
She expected the Void Prime to ask her why, and in fact was marshaling her arguments. Not that she thought they’d work, but it was worth a try. Satomi, however, surprised her by staying quiet. It was Rana who spoke next.
“We understand,” the Water Prime said, and Miryo’s jaw almost hit the floor. “It is difficult. To face one so like you in appearance, to strike that blow, is not an easy thing to ask.”
“You must do it, though,” Koika put in. “This task has been given to you. It is your responsibility to fulfill it.”
Miryo could already see what they were doing. Next it would be Shimi. And, right on time, the Air Prime spoke up. “There are no other options. None. We have searched for them, through the centuries, and found none. Misetsu established the pattern for us, and we must continue to follow it if we wish to survive.”
And then, of course, came Arinei, giving her the final exhortation. “This is all that remains between you and the power that is your birthright. All you need do is reach forth and take it. Then you will be a witch—as you have strived to be, all these years! That dream will be yours!”
Empathy, resolution, reasoning, and a grand vision to round it off. All nicely matched to their Elemental roles. Miryo hoped the cynicism she felt didn’t show in her eyes. It would make them very unhappy.
Of course, so would what she was about to say. “So you say. But I’d still like the chance to investigate it myself, before I go kill a part of me.”
“Your doppelganger is no part of you. It was separated out in infancy for a reason.”
“What reason, Shimi-kane? That’s one of the things I wonder about. And I’m afraid I can’t quite agree that she’s no part of me.” No visible reaction when she called Mirage “she,” but Miryo knew they’d noticed. “You see, I’ve met her. I’ve looked her in the eye. And that’s something none of you can understand. You’ve not been there, looking at your own reflection made flesh.”
“Wrong,” Satomi said.
The word brought Miryo’s head snapping around to face the Void Prime. It broke the tenor of their little speeches so far. Satomi wasn’t speaking from a script now; she was talking to Miryo directly.
“What?” Miryo said.
“I have been there. I looked my doppelganger in the eye. And I hesitated. For an entire day I talked to her, and I questioned everything exactly the way you have. But in the end, I chose to complete my task. Will you hear why?”
The floor had dropped out from under Miryo’s feet. Satomi’s doppelganger had survived? How? Presumably the way Mirage had, of course, but… Miryo tried to envision it—the Void Prime, twenty-five and idealistic, looking for a way out. And then accepting that there wasn’t one, and killing her double.
“Yes,” Miryo managed to get out. And then a belated, “Aken.”
Satomi closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, they were as cold as ice.
“Centuries ago,” she began, “in the days when the land was still joined into three great kingdoms, a woman dwelt in the southern mountains. She was a hermit, and a devotee of the Goddess in all her Aspects. Despite her young age, she was known for her faith, and her love of the Lady who watches over us all.”
Misetsu, obviously. Miryo knew the story. But she kept her mouth shut; no sum of money would have persuaded her to interrupt Satomi right now.
“One evening, as the stars were beginning to emerge, this woman climbed to the top of a crag and stood there, singing praises to the Goddess. And such was the joy and devotion in her heart that her song changed, and became something more. And she saw that around her the starlight had begun to grow; it filled the air, and formed into threads, and began to dance around her.
“She stood there the whole night through, singing. When the dawn rose, she sang one final praise, and then fell asleep, there on the rock where she had stood. In the evening she awoke, and the gift of magic was strong inside her, and the Goddess had given her the name of Misetsu. In the weeks and months and years that followed she continued to hear the Goddess’s voice in her heart, and thus created the first spells and enchantments.”
Now Satomi’s voice changed, and Miryo realized the story was diverging from the one she had always been told. “She had daughters, three of them. And the Goddess showed her how to pass her gift on. One by one, as her daughters were born, she sang the spells over them. And she found, to her surprise, that as she did so, each child became two. This puzzled her, but she chose to raise all of them as her own.”
Goddess, I wish Mirage were here to hear this. Wait—no, I don’t. I’m not sure what the Primes would do to her. “Twenty-five years later,” Satomi continued, “she began to discover her error. For the time had come for her eldest daughter, Monisuko, to wield her magic.” Monisuko? I thought her name was Menukyo.
“To Misetsu’s horror, her daughter’s magic raged out of control. And before long, it slew both her and her double. Misetsu grieved, but attributed the disaster to imperfect faith. Her next daughter, Machayu, would do better.”