The Diabolic
In the arena, the beast yowled again with another electric jolt, and now he was barking furiously, growling at tormentors he couldn’t reach, frothing with mounting rage that would soon express itself on something, on someone, and my stomach tightened as all I could think about were those shocks I’d received, the ones that hadn’t stopped until I couldn’t see, couldn’t hold back, couldn’t do anything but lash out, but strike, but tear and hurt and kill, and then she was dead, dead at my feet, the first human being I’d ever killed. . . .
And then Deadly was running for the Exalted, and he didn’t look pure dog anymore, but he looked like a lethal, heavily muscled, born-and-bred killer. The Exalted let out a whine and covered his face with his hands, just like the girl had when I’d finally moved on her. When she’d realized I was going to kill her, that I was a horrifying monstrous thing with no pity, no reason, no mercy, and I didn’t know just what was taking hold of me right now as I remembered that day, but I hurled myself over the wall and dropped down into the arena.
I landed there on the rocks, aware of the hush that fell over the entire watching arena, aware of the confused whimpering of the young Exalted, and the terrifying, slavering growls of Deadly. Both the Exalted and the beast looked to me, the newcomer interfering in the natural order of things, and my sanity returned in a sudden thunder of horror.
I’d just done something Sidonia never would. Something she would never dare. I’d thrown myself down into the fighting arena before all these people. This was madness. Insanity.
The furious creature rounded on me, the new threat, and another terrible thought struck me.
If I fought this creature, I exposed myself before all these people. Before Enmity, out there in the crowd somewhere, who’d identify a Diabolic’s strength and movements with a single glimpse.
Yet if I didn’t fight this beast, it would kill me.
16
I DREW a breath and looked up at the crowd, all these eyes on me, ready to betray me. I could do this. I could. I’d stay entirely true to Donia’s capabilities, and I would still defeat this creature. I wouldn’t move like a Diabolic. I wouldn’t fight like a Diabolic. I would still win this.
Hands were reaching down, people in the crowd eager to win favor from the Impyrean heir by rescuing her. I saw Gladdic and even Tyrus Domitrian reaching down for me. Elantra hung back, watching me with cruel interest.
Neveni tore off her necklace. “Sidonia!” She tossed it into the ring, where it landed with a faint clack.
Even amid the collective horror at my predicament, the crowd murmured, scandalized. Neveni had just broken a taboo by openly revealing her necklace was a weapon.
I moved for it, certain it could help me.
But Deadly blocked my way, his nostrils quivering, his growl deepening ominously. Despite Neveni’s kind gesture, there’d be no help from her.
I backed slowly from the creature as it stalked me. I kept its attention on me, the larger and more dangerous thing in the arena with it. Hatred and hostility radiated from the beast. I reached down and furiously tore strips from my gown. If this animal truly was mostly dog, then it would attack by latching onto the first limb in reach. I kept my eyes fixed on it as I encased my left arm in protective cloth. Then I bent down to pick up one of the stray rocks from the landscape.
“Come at me, animal,” I whispered to it.
Deadly’s growling sounded more bearish by the second. I needed this over with. I took a sudden step to the side.
With a thunderous roar, the animal sprang forward, a mass of muscle and flashing sharp teeth. It closed the distance faster than any pure canine could hope to, and I thrust out my left arm, bracing myself for the moment those teeth dug into my skin. The great mouth clamped around my flesh; then I dragged it toward me, blind to the pain, as its jaws compressed. With my free hand, I crashed the rock down into its skull.
It would have been easy for me to crush its head if I’d used my full strength, but I was Sidonia, so it took three light blows at my hands. The animal collapsed, going limp on the ground. I jolted back a step and unwound the fabric from my left arm. The teeth had torn into it, but I only had faint, bloody nicks on my skin.
I caught my breath and tossed the rock aside. Dead silence pervaded the arena. When I looked up, I saw hundreds of shocked, staring eyes. My mind went blank. I was going to have to explain why I’d done this. How could I explain myself? How could I put into words the impulse that had led me to intervene, to stop this, when I didn’t understand it myself? Donia never would have done this.
Wait.
My thoughts cleared.
No, Donia would have done this. Not by jumping into the arena like I had—but beforehand. She would have acted the moment Elantra tossed down that Exalted. Or perhaps even the moment Neveni asked for funding to order an animal of her own.
“Have you people no shame?” I shouted at those staring faces. I crossed over to the Exalted, curled up and frightened, and gathered the frightened boy in my protective arms. I made a show of stroking Unity’s trembling back, just as Donia would have. “Is something wrong with you? What pleasure can you possibly take from watching this helpless creature torn apart? Are we savages?”
Whispers and murmurs filled the air.
I caught eyes with Elantra, and she stared hatefully back at me. There was a look on her face of bare contempt, and I knew she was already interpreting my actions as a move against her, against the Pasus family.
And then, to my profound shock, Tyrus Domitrian raised his hand for silence. The noise of the crowd faded, and the Successor Primus gazed down from where he stood, his expression clear and lucid for once.
“Grandeé Impyrean, you’ve entertained all of us with an unexpected spectacle. Don’t we agree?” He looked about, and laughter rippled through the crowd. Tyrus caught my eye. “I think as a reward for your valor, we can give you that Exalted to take under your protection.”
I released the boy quickly. I didn’t want that. “No.”
“No?” Tyrus’s eyebrows shot up.
“The creature, Your Eminence. The beast. I want the beast. I paid for it. I want it back. It fights no more in your . . . in your savage entertainments.”
It was only in that moment that I understood myself, understood what had driven me to throw myself down between the hunter and the prey. It wasn’t the Exalted who resonated with me, despite my easy lies to the crowd while playing the part of Sidonia. No, it was the creature about to kill the Exalted, this beast fashioned like I was to kill mercilessly, and driven to it even when it resisted.
I wouldn’t let it happen. Not again.
Instead I would make it mine.
My body shook with excess adrenaline as I was finally lifted out of the arena, as I was ushered down to the animal pens to await Deadly’s return.
I expected Neveni to hasten back to my side, but the one who appeared was Gladdic. His dark hair was askew within its golden wraps, and I expected him to fret, to worry.
Instead, he said, “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Excuse me?”
He jerked a step toward me, then moved no closer. “Sidonia, that was scandalous! You’re not doing the Impyreans any favors by behaving so irrationally. My father will never let me associate with you after this!”
Anger swelled in me. I tugged my sleeve up to expose the light gashes on my arm for the nearby med bots, and suddenly found myself thinking of Gladdic so meekly obeying Elantra and slinking off to join her.
For that matter, that very first day at the Chrysanthemum, Elantra had alluded to the salt baths, and Gladdic had begun to speak, then stopped. He’d been ready to warn me of what would come, I realized now, but then Elantra had silenced him. And he’d let her silence him.
“So to avoid scandal and preserve my reputation,” I said coldly, “I should simply have allowed that beast to be tortured
and that Exalted to be ripped apart?”
“It’s not like it’s a person,” Gladdic said.
I surveyed him clinically, seeing him in a new light. Not just an outwardly fragile, delicate young man, but inwardly.
This pathetic weakling was unworthy of Sidonia.
“Just leave me, Gladdic.”
“Sidonia—”
I wanted to strike him. I turned my back to him instead. “I said leave. I have nothing more to say to you.”
Coward that he was, Gladdic did not argue, did not object. I listened to his footsteps slink away from me. I realized I was shaking all over with anger. When movement sounded behind me, it occurred to me that he’d come back for a last word. I ripped around, ready to snarl at him, but then my heart froze.
It was Enmity.
The Diabolic studied me in the bright fluorescent light of the force fields. Med bots still tended my bruised arm. I shoved them aside, bracing myself for the moment she closed the distance and killed me.
She’d seen me in the arena. She’d seen everything.
I’d tried my best to move like Donia in the arena, to conceal my strength, my speed. But from the way she was looking at me—like she could see nothing else—I suspected with a great swell of dread that I’d failed.
But Enmity made no move toward me. She just studied me like some strange curiosity. “Do you believe what you said to him?”
“Believe . . . what?” I said warily.
“What you said to that boy, just now. You believe saving that creature was the right thing to do?”
The question caught me off guard. All I could say was, “I couldn’t allow that to happen. What was going to take place in that arena was . . .” I couldn’t properly explain away the strange compulsion I’d had to intervene. All I could say was, “It was wrong.”
Enmity looked around us, seeing the pens, this place that so resembled the corrals where we’d both been raised. Where we’d both been the creatures on the other side of the force field.
“Perhaps I’ve misjudged you, Grandeé Impyrean. Given what I am, compassion is something very strange to me.” Her cold-eyed gaze found me. “But I’m not blind to its value. You struck me as an oddity from the moment I first interacted with you, and now I suspect this is why. I simply didn’t understand someone so . . . kind.”
With those words, she seemed content that she’d solved the mystery that was Sidonia Impyrean and withdrew from my sight. I stood there as the med bots flew back over to heal my arm, trying to fathom that I’d won her over because of what I’d said to Gladdic. In intervening for a nonperson, a creature like Enmity, like me, I’d done something so like Donia, it explained away her suspicions about me.
And from that day forward, Enmity followed me no more.
My actions sent scandalized whispers through the Chrysanthemum. The Grandiloquy of more tender feelings who’d privately detested the animal fights found ways to sidle up to me and whisper, “I thought you were very brave, Grandeé Impyrean.”
Others cut me. When I neared them, they made a point of turning away and dropping their voices in hopes of concealing their conversations. I’d made an unseemly public display of condemnation for a popular pastime, after all.
I read nothing into it until one evening after services in the Great Heliosphere, when the Grandiloquy assembled in the presence chamber to take the vapors. The heavy weight of someone’s gaze rested on the back of my neck, and I turned—just in time to see the Emperor’s eyes on me, and the Grandeé Cygna leaning over to whisper in his ear.
That’s when I chanced a look about me, at the Grandiloquy near me, those who’d expressed sympathies for my actions in the arena. Then I looked toward the ones who’d been avoiding me, clouds of vapors flowing up from their mouths, their eyes occasionally assessing my group. I felt a shock.
They were stratified along the exact same fissure as Senator von Pasus and Senator von Impyrean’s rivalry in the Senate. Those inclined to embrace my actions and gather about me were Amadors, Rothesays, and Wallstroms. All proponents of restoring scientific pursuits.
Those who took the opposite view, those who detested my gesture and began openly and loudly boasting, especially in my hearing, of the new creatures they’d commissioned, as though to make a point—they were Fordyces, Atons, Locklaites, and other Pasus allies. The most ardent Helionics.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Those families who dared not express displeasure with the Emperor openly were doing so secondhand, by taking a stance against their foes regarding the animal fights. And they were beginning to rally around me. Around the heir to the Impyrean family, the focal point of their discontent.
I excused myself immediately and fled the crowd, because this was exactly the opposite of what I was supposed to do here at court. I was supposed to avoid notice, not attract it!
Yet just as I reached the doorway, I glanced back toward the Emperor. He sat gripping the arms of his chair, surveying the Impyrean faction from his high vantage point, an icy look on his face.
He was a man without mercy, and now he had his enemies coalescing in plain sight.
17
I BEGAN withdrawing to my villa more often, hoping to be forgotten. When visitors who’d recently expressed their sympathies for my actions in the arena attempted to pay a call, I had my Servitors refuse them entry. I played sick with all but Neveni.
Fortunately, I had Deadly to occupy much of my time.
At first he’d been hostile, ready to rip at me whenever I approached. I forbade my Servitors to interact with him and gave him a room all his own in my villa. Then, when I was sure there was no surveillance in the room, I shamelessly used my superior strength to teach him obedience. When he came at me, I pinned him down, forced him to show his belly. When he snapped at me with his jaws, I seized him by the scruff of his neck until he desisted.
I wasn’t sure at first whether a monster bred for murder in an arena could be tamed. Deadly was such a mixture of animals that approaching him as a pure dog meant neglecting the lion, neglecting the bear. But gradually, Deadly learned to obey me. He even revealed a frivolous side. When I returned to my chamber for the evening, he’d scurry about me enthusiastically until I petted him to his satisfaction. Then he’d tug at the legs of my garments to provoke me into playing with him. I found that if I made my fingers crawl over the floor like small animals, he would eagerly nip at them and chase them.
The only problem he faced with being civilized was the sheer energy he needed to expend, just as I did, and the limited space in which he had to roam. The longest pylon reaching out into space served as one of the few vigorous walks we could undertake away from prying eyes.
Neveni joined me and the beast during one of our walks down Berneval Stretch. She gave a jump of fright whenever he drew too close to us. “Are you sure you want to keep it?”
“He’s already becoming easier to control. He learns quickly. Oh, and I have something for you.” I fished in my pocket and produced her necklace. “Thank you for this. I know you invited disgrace by revealing it in public. I won’t forget your gesture.”
She fingered the necklace gingerly. “I don’t care what everyone else thinks of me. They all have weapons of their own. They’re hypocrites for acting like I’m the bad one for having this, especially after . . .” Her voice grew jagged. “After what Salivar and Devineé did to me.”
I said nothing, because I wasn’t sure how to console her, so it seemed best I didn’t try.
“Where’s yours?” Neveni said with a sneaky smile. “You have to have a weapon. I know you do. I won’t tell anyone.”
I didn’t bother carrying a weapon. I was the weapon. But I felt a need to give her an answer, so I made one up. “My shoe. There’s a blade hidden in the sole.”
“Why didn’t you use it against Deadly?”
“I’m . . . I’m not so brave as
you are in the face of public censure.”
Neveni laughed and poked my arm. “Says the girl who jumped into an arena to save an Exalted.” She stopped. “I can’t walk any farther in these heels. Go on without me, Sidonia.”
I bade her farewell, feeling indulgent toward her after her recent gesture. There was something I appreciated about her, almost trusted about her, to the extent that I could trust anyone other than Sidonia. When Deadly and I resumed our walk, I missed her company.
But at least I could move faster without Neveni around, and now that Enmity had abandoned her pursuit of me, I could take this indulgence. I picked up the pace. Deadly perked up, eager to run as well. We weren’t creatures to creep slowly and take our time.
I launched into a flat sprint. It was faster than any I’d done since my muscle reduction, and to my immense pleasure, Deadly kept up with me, electrified with energy as I was. We reached the end point far too soon, my lungs rasping in a pleasurable way, my muscles shaking off the terrible stiffness of disuse.
It took a toll on me, maintaining this physical weakness. The canine swirled eagerly about my feet, sniffing here and there. I let him rest as I studied the wall of sigils and names. There were more names there, new ones since my first visit, families from all over the Empire.
My gaze ran over the sigils idly—and then sharpened. I began studying them closely.
The Bellwethers. The Wallstroms. The Amadors. The Rothesays. The same names that had recently flocked about me. Their arrival at court hadn’t invited nearly the same attention mine had, as the daughter of the Great Heretic, so I hadn’t paid enough attention to their coming. I hadn’t realized how many of them were newly arrived at the Chrysanthemum.
They’d been summoned here just as Sidonia had.
Every survival instinct I had began to scream at me as I studied the new arrivals on the wall. There were so many faces in the Valor Novus, I hadn’t paid much attention to newcomers. But this wall of sigils illustrated the situation to me in stark clarity.