Empire

  The corridor in which Hanan’s rooms lay was quiet when they reached it. Hanan’s name was displayed on a screen by one of the doors. Paul pressed the buzzer beneath it, but the door did not open and the screen display did not change to show the face of Hanan or one of his assistants.

  “He was expecting you, Councillor Tiray?” said Peris.

  “Of course he was. You brought his reply to me yourself.”

  “I didn’t read it, though. You could not have misunderstood it?”

  “No, it was clear. Try him again.”

  Paul hit the buzzer a second time. Still nothing happened. He looked to Peris for a decision. On the off chance that it might work, Peris swept his hand across the door’s sensor. The door opened silently, sliding into the wall. The room beyond was brightly lit and furnished with Illyri antiques, all of which looked more old than comfortable.

  “Speaker Hanan?” Tiray called. “May we come in?”

  No reply came. Paul sniffed the air. He could smell cooked meat.

  “Stay with the councillor,” Peris instructed Paul.

  Peris entered the room, his right hand instinctively reaching for a weapon, and freezing by his side as he remembered that he was unarmed. Paul and Tiray watched him slip into a side room. Neither of them spoke. The corridor remained empty. Paul wondered where the surveillance cameras were. None were visible, but he thought it unlikely that a place like Erebos would not have such a system.

  Peris appeared again, moving with care, being careful not to touch anything.

  “You’d better get in here,” he said. “And close and lock that door behind you.”

  Tiray entered first, Paul behind him. He made sure that the door could not be opened from outside, then joined Peris and Tiray. They were standing at the entrance to a huge bedroom, dominated by the biggest bed Paul had ever seen, suspended from the ceiling by thick chains. Beyond it was an open doorway leading into a tiled bathroom. The smell of charred meat was stronger here—unpleasantly so.

  “In there,” said Peris. “But I warn you, Councillor, it’s bad.”

  Tiray ignored him. He probably shouldn’t have. Paul saw him freeze at the entrance to the bathroom. He stayed there, unmoving, for four or five seconds, then turned away and vomited on the bed. Paul passed him and looked for himself.

  This room was almost as large as the bedroom, with two massive sunken baths in the floor. No water filled either of them, but they were not empty: three burned and blackened bodies lay in them, two in the first and one in the second. The white enamel inner surfaces had blackened and melted with the heat of the flames, and the room smelled of strong, roasted flesh, but Paul could see no sign of the fire that had done this, and the alarms and sprinklers had not been set off by it.

  Paul turned away. Peris found a napkin in the main sitting room and handed it to Tiray so that he could wipe his nose and mouth.

  “What do you think?” Peris asked Paul, while Tiray recovered himself.

  “It looks like they were forced into the empty baths, then something was poured on them—an accelerant or fuel—and then set alight. But any flames should have set off the alarms, unless they were deactivated.”

  “They weren’t. I’ve checked. And those bodies aren’t just burned—they’re incinerated almost to ash. That takes an incredible amount of heat.”

  “We have to inform the Sisters,” said Tiray. His skin had a gray tinge beneath the gold.

  “But this may be linked to you, Councillor,” said Peris. “You were to meet with Hanan, and now he and his staff are dead. We have to warn Joris and Kellar before we do anything else.”

  “But the Sisters—they must be told!” said Tiray. “Security here is their responsibility.”

  “Councillor Tiray,” said Peris gently. “Think about what you’ve just said. If the Sisterhood is running this show, nothing happens here without their knowledge. Nothing.”

  Tiray seemed at a loss for words. If Peris was right, they had all walked straight into a trap.

  “We must leave,” he said. “We have to get off Erebos.”

  “And we will,” said Peris. “Just as soon as we’ve located Joris and Kellar. Kellar is nothing to me, but I know Joris. She is a good soldier. I will not abandon her.”

  Tiray nodded. He was already ashamed at his moment of panic.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. Of course you are. Let’s find them, and any others who may be on our side. The wedding be damned. They can’t stop us all from leaving.”

  But Paul was not so sure.

  CHAPTER 70

  The Lady Joris had traveled without security, for she had no concerns for her safety. She was among the longest-serving Military commanders, but her relations with the Diplomatic Corps had always been good, by and large. Like Lord Andrus, who had been in the year below her at the academy, Joris was both a soldier and a politician, as skilled at negotiation as at fighting. She had long given the appearance of being the voice of reason in arguments between the Military and the Corps, moving between both camps, soothing ruffled feathers, negotiating compromises. In reality, though, her loyalty was entirely to the Illyri Empire and its Military, which she viewed as best equipped to protect the race and expand the Illyri Conquest.

  However, in recent months her spies among the Corps and its sympathizers had come to her with alarming whispers of unregistered Corps facilities on conquered worlds, and there had been a troubling message from Earth, purportedly sent by a former Securitat named Fremd who had turned traitor. It spoke of a possible alien contaminant, an unknown extraterrestrial organism that had been introduced into the Illyri race. So Councillor Tiray had been dispatched to establish what he could of the truth behind the tales, and now he had returned. It was Joris’s dearest hope that Tiray had discovered evidence linking the Corps and the Sisterhood to these crimes against their race, thus giving Joris a reason to prevent this abomination of a wedding ceremony, for it would firmly tie the Military to the Sisterhood.

  A bell tolled lightly in her quarters. Joris’s long-standing partner, Raya, who was accompanying her as a guest at the wedding, had been resting on the bed, but now she sat up. She knew something of her lover’s worries, and of her plots and plans.

  “Is it Tiray?” she asked.

  “If it is, he’s earlier than expected.”

  Joris activated the camera. Two Novices in blue robes stood outside her door.

  “Witches-in-training,” she said to Raya. “What can these little brats want?”

  She hit the unlock button. The door opened.

  One of the Novices was holding a tray. On it stood a bowl of candied fruits, and a bottle of very dusty, and very old, cremos.

  “With the compliments of the Marque,” said the Novices. They spoke in unison, and Joris saw that they bore a startling resemblance to each other, even though the one on the left was taller, and leaner.

  “If the Sisterhood had done its homework, it would know that I don’t drink intoxicants,” said Joris. “Neither does the Lady Raya.”

  The two Novices ignored her. They slipped past in perfect step, and set the tray on a table.

  “Wait a minute,” said Joris. “I didn’t give you permission to come in here. I want your names. Now.”

  “I am Xaron,” said the elder. “And this is my sister, Mila.”

  Mila smiled, and made a gesture with her left hand. The door behind Joris closed, and the display turned to LOCKED.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” asked Joris as the Sisters took each other’s hands, staring at her. Raya stood in alarm and moved to join her, but then she stopped as something dripped onto her beautiful gown. She raised her right hand to her nose. It came back stained with blood.

  “Joris, I’m bleeding,” she said.

  The drops turned to a steady flow, covering her mouth and spilling over the front
of her dress. Tears of blood started to weep from the corners of her eyes, and thin ribbons of it flowed from her ears. She opened her mouth to speak again, but a gush of fluid took the place of words, and bloodstains spread upon her clothing. She sank to her knees, uncomprehending, and sat back on her heels, her arms hanging loosely by her body, the light already leaving her eyes as she started to die. Joris could do nothing to help her, for tiny explosions of pain were erupting throughout her own body, their intensity increasing until all she could do was scream and scream, each cry punctuated by a fountain of blood.

  And Xaron held Mila’s right hand in her left, the better to concentrate their power as slowly, meticulously, like children pricking balloons, they burst every blood vessel in Joris’s body.

  CHAPTER 71

  Junior Consul Kellar might have been young, but he was no fool. He knew that the Corps would be merciless with him if it discovered the extent of his treachery, but he was not to be swayed, even though one of his closest friends and allies had already died under mysterious circumstances. Radis had been found dead in the bathroom of his home. It was said that he had fallen and struck his head on a tiled corner. Apparently one of the tiles had shattered somehow, and pierced the base of his skull.

  Kellar did not believe a word of it.

  Kellar himself was of mixed Military and Diplomatic parentage, but he had married into a stalwart Diplomatic Corps family when he wed his childhood sweetheart, Velaine, who happened to be Consul Gradus’s favorite niece. Yet Kellar was naturally inquisitive—nosy, his laughing wife would call it—and gradually he had become aware of some mystery surrounding Gradus and his wife, the formidable Archmage Syrene. His curiosity piqued, he began to dig deeper until through careful observation—and ultimately some illegal activity, including the electronic monitoring of meetings and the payment of bribes to aides—he realized that whatever was afoot, it was clearly designed to renew the hostilities of the Civil War.

  Kellar’s upbringing gave him a unique perspective of the enmity between Military and Corps: he had heard of the horrors of the Civil War from both sides, and was determined to do all in his power to prevent a second such war from erupting.

  His weakness, if it could be called that, was his goodness.

  Now the young consul stood on the steps that led down from his apartments on Erebos to the grass below. Guests walked on the grounds or sat beneath great trees to sip cremos in the glow of their luminescent branches, and a soft breeze carried the scents of flowers and blossoms. All appeared idyllic, but Kellar could see only shadows and smell the poison that seeped through it all. He watched the Sisters moving along the walls and among the crowds, and they seemed to give form to all that was wrong with the Illyri. His wife’s late uncle Gradus had even married the most public and powerful of them all: Syrene. Her fingerprints were all over the plots that Kellar had discovered.

  Velaine had considered joining her husband for this most unusual of occasions, but memories of her dead uncle had stopped her. The pace at which the widow Syrene had secured herself a new husband seemed disrespectful, Velaine complained privately, and Kellar had been quietly relieved when she’d opted to stay on Illyr with their two children. Radis’s strange death had shown that Kellar was engaged in dangerous business, and he was glad Velaine was safe at home. Instead, two guards had accompanied him; one stood outside the door to his rooms, and another waited at the bottom of the stairs. Still, even sandwiched between them as he was, he felt on edge, and he yearned for the comfort of his wife.

  Suddenly figures below were standing up, and fingers pointed excitedly to the sky. A gold-and-red shuttle appeared, escorted by a pair of smaller skimmers in similar raiment trailing contrails of red smoke. Lord Andrus and Syrene were arriving for their wedding ceremony.

  Kellar heard the door to his apartments open, although the buzzer had not sounded. He walked back inside and called out, “Hello, who’s there?”

  A woman appeared from the hallway. It was Velaine. Kellar stumbled in shock at the sight of his wife.

  “My darling, what are you doing here?” he asked as he stepped toward her, his arms outstretched. He loved Velaine, and even his concern at her presence on Erebos at this difficult time could not overcome his affection for her.

  “I couldn’t stay away,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wanted to see you.”

  He hugged her to him, and her arms encircled his body.

  “Where are the children?” he said.

  “The children?” she said absently. “I left them on Illyr.”

  Kellar was startled.

  “With whom?” he asked. “Are they safe?”

  “Of course. They’re with your parents,” was her reply.

  Wait, thought Kellar. Something is wrong here, for only his mother was still alive.

  “Did you say my parents?”

  She held him tighter, clutching him like a vine, pressing herself against him, but it was not sexual. She cooed into his shoulder. It was oddly unsettling. And she smelled different. He was so used to Velaine’s scent that he could detect it even beneath any perfume that she wore.

  Soft lips kissed his neck, then she looked into his face, her curious breath filling his nostrils. It stank of corruption and disease. He drew back, but she held him grimly.

  “I missed you,” said the thing that was not his wife.

  He tried to pull away, but her grip on him was strong and she was stretching for his mouth greedily, her lips parted, her tongue thick and wet. Over her shoulder he saw movement in the hallway. A female appeared dressed in the vestments of a more advanced Nairene Novice, a Half-Sister, but these sea-green robes were piped with bright blue, a combination he’d never seen before.

  Her name was Bela, although Kellar would never learn it. She was adept at clouding but she sensed that Kellar had spotted the deception.

  “Nemein,” she said. “He knows.”

  “It’s all right,” said Nemein. “It’s started.”

  She released her hold on Kellar and moved away from him. Now he could see her true form: thin, too young, with features that spoke of hunger, and appetites that could not be filled. She was not beautiful. She was not his wife.

  Kellar felt pain in his armpits. He touched his left hand to the skin beneath his right arm and felt lumps growing there.

  “What have you done to me?” he said.

  He raised his right hand before him. As he watched, his skin swelled, and the first of the tumors appeared, turning from red to black in the space of a heartbeat. He felt them spreading across his body, and his vision blurred as they reached his face, his cheeks distending, his eyelids bulging.

  “Cancer,” said Nemein. “Don’t fret, it’s almost over.”

  Kellar tried to speak, but his tongue was inflamed. He reached for the Novice who had done this to him, but she skipped beyond his grasp, and he did not have the strength to leap forward and grab her. The disease continued its destruction of his body, flipping cells from white to black, until at last it reached his brain, and mercifully, the pain ended. Kellar hit the floor hard, and died without making another sound.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bela. She looked appalled, but Kellar’s corpse was not the source of her frustration. “I thought I could fool him for longer.”

  Nemein smiled.

  “It was more than enough,” she said. “In fact, you’re almost as good as Dessa was. Anyway, I just needed to hold him for it to happen that quickly. Come, though, we have more to do. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to perfect your skill.”

  Bela brightened at the compliment, and at the thought of more killing.

  CHAPTER 72

  Syl watched the descent of the shuttle carrying Lord Andrus and his bride-to-be. She was surprised at how cold she felt inside. This was her father: the man who had raised her after the death of her mother, who had indulged her, protected her, love
d her, and from whom she had been separated by the vindictiveness of Syrene. Under ordinary circumstances Syl would have run to greet him, falling into his arms, burying her face in his chest, and congratulating him on at last finding a new partner in life after all his years alone.

  But these were not ordinary circumstances. Her father was no longer the same. The Others had inhabited him—infested him—and Syrene was responsible, the same woman who would soon be called his wife. There was nothing for Syl to celebrate here.

  She wondered if Oriel’s body had been discovered yet. She felt no regret at what she had done to her, at taking yet another life. During the shuttle flight she had examined her absence of guilt in a scientific way, as though she were her own subject beneath a microscope. Oriel would have killed her had Syl not murdered her first, and she would have rejoiced in the act. Syl had sensed Oriel’s purpose in those final moments, could feel the hate pouring from her. But she had not taken pleasure in killing Oriel. It had simply been necessary. And she could have made the old witch suffer a great deal had she wished it, by holding the garniads back just a little and prolonging the pain, but she chose not to. From this she took cold comfort.

  With any luck, it would be some time before the body was found, particularly as the Marque was as empty of life as it was ever likely to be. Still, it was only a matter of time before Oriel’s death was discovered, and then connected to Syl, for her fingerprints and DNA would be all over the Second Realm. They would soon be looking for her, and in her elegant dress she stood out in this sea of robes.

  A figure in white vestments and a headscarf passed Syl as she stood at the window. Syl kept her face turned away, but the Service Sister glimpsed her reflection, and Syl saw her reaction reflected in turn. The girl stopped short and stared.