The Diabolic

  “You’re quite certain?”

  “I am, Your Eminence. She needs to die.” There was a moment of silence and then Enmity’s sharp demand: “What is that—”

  Enmity’s words didn’t escape her before the energy weapon lashed out at her.

  The glare blinded my eyes a moment, and I wasn’t sure I was seeing what I thought.

  Enmity wasn’t like Leather, who’d taken a single shot to the chest and died. She stumbled back from the beam, and even with the gaping wound in her side and the damage I’d inflicted, she recovered her footing instantly and roared out with anger.

  She charged at her attacker, and he shot again, a continuous beam that began carving a burning path through her as she fought it, as she forced her legs to keep moving. Then a crater of blood and flesh boiled away, exposing her skeleton, her organs, and she collapsed down to the ground.

  There was a thick silence, and then hands were pulling me up. “Come on.”

  Tyrus Domitrian’s face swam into my vision.

  My thoughts turned in one direction. I fumbled with numbed fingers and pried his weapon from him, then dragged myself to my hands and knees.

  Tyrus gaped at me. “What are you doing?”

  Enmity was dead. I was still alive. I could still move, so I’d finish what I started. I couldn’t stand, so I crawled toward the doors. I didn’t have time to wait for the Emperor to come to me. I’d probably bleed out first. I would go to him. A great dark haze was creeping in the corners of my vision, closing in on me.

  “You can’t even stand. You can’t possibly think you’ll kill my uncle in this shape.”

  “Stay . . . back . . . hurt you . . .” The words seemed to drain from me. The darkness was growing rapidly, and then the floor was rushing up at me.

  21

  I WAS BACK in the salt baths, where the water bobbed me around, floating, floating there. But everything hurt and pulsed with pain, and it was Donia hurting, weeping like she had that time she shocked herself unexpectedly on her computer console, and I couldn’t make it better. We were both young, small.

  “Donia. Donia!”

  “Is that your master?”

  The question from above me, around me, made me look up to see a familiar face close to mine. For a moment, I felt the arms holding me up, the chest against my cheek. I could see his freckles over the bridge of his nose, the pale-lashed blue eyes floating in a haze above me.

  Then Donia was gazing at me wide-eyed from the animal cloisters, and she was getting too close to the tigers. I knew they were civilized, blunted by genetic engineering, but those primitive human instincts even Diabolics possess told me these animals were muscular, strong, and they could kill her with one blow.

  “Don’t go near them,” I told her. “They’re dangerous.”

  “You’re delirious,” announced the voice, and it was Tyrus Domitrian kneeling in front of me where he’d put me on the bed, where he’d pressed a wet cloth to my head. I couldn’t hold myself up. My ribs were stabbing me. Waves of heat and cold swept through me. “You’re gravely injured. You may die. But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He studied me a weighty moment.

  The next thing I knew, med bots were swarming over me, buzzing, faint heat from their power generators puffing my skin. My teeth were chattering, and my thoughts swarmed with Donia, the tears in her eyes when I refused to let her call me anything other than Nemesis dan Impyrean. She’d always wanted something else from me I hadn’t understood, and now I never really would.

  The subtleties of the way people—real people—thought and acted and felt were beyond me. Maybe it was just the corrals, growing up that way, like the worst sort of monster, maybe it had warped me even if my nature hadn’t. . . .

  I was puking, dry heaving, blood splattering the floor by the edge of my bed. Med bots still swarmed me. Tyrus Domitrian stood with his arms folded in the doorway, watching me. Intelligence and cold deliberation were on his face, so unlike those other times he’d laughed and mumbled to himself, and I couldn’t reconcile the two images.

  “Sidonia Impyrean was your master?” he said to me. I realized hours had passed. He was pressing a cloth to my head again.

  The sheets felt tangled and strangling around me. I strained to understand this, understand where I was.

  “They did a fine job disguising you,” Tyrus said. “I suspected something was off about you, but I never imagined . . .” He smiled wryly. “Senator von Impyrean was a man of vision, and the Impyreans were clever. They are a true loss to the Empire.”

  That reminded me, like a blow stealing my breath. It reminded me of where I was, what this was, that Sidonia had died and stripped all meaning from my existence and I’d failed to kill her murderer. Instead I was here, alive, and if I could have wept, I would have. But no Diabolic can shed tears, and there was no way for this hideous emptiness and grief to escape me, so I screamed.

  They tore out of me, awful, wretched screams, animal screams.

  It was later when I grew aware of the fire scorching my throat, the waves of heat and cool replaced by a sort of vague physical comfort. Tyrus had returned to the room.

  “Screamed out?” he said in a detached way. “It’s fine even if you’re not. Hearing screams coming from my chamber will just reaffirm my poor reputation.”

  I peered at him through crusted eyelids, the pain still battering in my awareness, but when I sat up a fraction, two, I discovered there was no bright hot wrench of agony.

  The med bots had fixed my worst injuries.

  Tyrus held very still as I sat up farther and saw bruises on my arms where I’d been restrained—but was no longer.

  “You’re not going to die,” he said. “You were close. I’m certain Enmity— What are you doing?”

  I swayed to my feet, then shoved him aside with all my strength. I wasn’t nearly so powerful as I normally would have been, and Tyrus kept his balance. My muscles felt like they were all crying out in exhaustion, sapped of vitality.

  As I stepped into the next room, the door before me sealed, several expressionless Servitors stepping forward to bar my way. In my current state, they might even have been able to manage it.

  “Where do you intend to go? To try to kill my uncle again?” Tyrus spoke from behind me. “Even if you get past Anguish by some miracle, you won’t get past Hazard. And even if, battered as you are, you overcome those two Diabolics in a way you could not overcome one, the Emperor has an entire entourage of Grandiloquy around him, not to mention security bots and—”

  “What do you want?” I growled as I spun toward him.

  “Your name is Nemesis, isn’t it?”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “I looked up the death register from the great purge of Diabolics. There was a Nemesis registered to Sidonia Impyrean. That’s you, I assume.”

  “What does it matter now?”

  “Because I hate waste.” Tyrus settled down on his chair, regarding me with a cool, calm deliberation entirely out of place on his features—the ones I’d seen so often lit with some crazed animation. “I never had Diabolics of my own. My uncle made sure none of the other imperial royals had them. Diabolics tend to get in the way when you want to kill someone, and my uncle kills family quite liberally.”

  I said nothing. I had no interest in what he had to tell me, unless he revealed why he’d saved me, and when I could leave.

  “I’m sorry about your master,” he said, watching me carefully. “But you can look at this as an opportunity.”

  “An opportunity?” I sputtered.

  “We want the same thing, Nemesis. You want my uncle dead, I want to be Emperor—which will require, of course, my uncle’s death and quite a bit of maneuvering besides. You can’t achieve it on your own, and neither can I. Why don’t we help each other?”

  “I don’t give a damn about your uncle or politic
s. It doesn’t matter a whit to me if you ever become Emperor. He killed Donia, and now I’ll kill him or die trying. Let me out.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  I stepped toward him menacingly. “I’m not asking!”

  Tyrus flicked his finger.

  Bright hot vibrating tendrils snaked up my neck and into my temples, and I found myself on the ground, gasping.

  “I’m truly sorry,” he said in a detached, unapologetic tone. “But I’d rather not get my neck broken right now. I’ll only activate these if you move toward me.”

  My hand flew up to my neck, where that strange feeling had come from.

  “They’re electrodes under your skin. It’s about the only way to control a Diabolic. I want you to hear me out.”

  I looked up at him, seething. “I will tear your heart from your chest!”

  “One day, maybe. But not now.” He stepped toward the door, then waved about the frame. “You won’t be able to pass through this threshold. I want you to have time to think about what I’m requesting before making a decision.”

  “I’ve made my decision!” I shouted at him, but he was already passing through the doorway, leaving me, his Servitors trailing behind him.

  I rushed for it, but the blinding shock of electricity drove me back down to my hands and knees, gasping for air, my heart sputtering in my chest.

  There was nothing left for me in this universe, and I wanted nothing but for this pain and emptiness to stop. I wouldn’t change my mind, however long Tyrus imprisoned me here.

  22

  HOURS PASSED. Servitors came to soundlessly offer refreshments, food. I wanted to throw the selections in their faces. Only the knowledge that they wouldn’t flinch or react at all stayed my hand. There was no pleasure in bullying mindless, defenseless creatures.

  I began contemplating the doorway again, trying to imagine what momentum I’d need to work up to fling myself through before the electricity rendered me useless.

  That was when Tyrus Domitrian returned.

  “Restless?”

  I just looked at him, imagining how satisfying it would be to crush his skull.

  “I wanted you to have time to deliberate. Walk with me.”

  “Where?”

  He angled his body so I could pass him through the doorway. “This is my ship.”

  The Alexandria, just like Salivar and Devineé’s vessel Tigris, branched immediately off the Valor Novus section of the Chrysanthemum. The difference was, no one paid a call to the mad heir’s domain. The entire vessel was virtually abandoned but for the machines and Servitors running it for the Successor Primus.

  As I approached, he seemed to think better of letting me pass directly by him, and he began walking, so I remained several steps away from him. He never fully turned his back to me.

  “You should know, I took pains to erase any trace of our DNA from the scene of Enmity’s death, but I couldn’t cover up the murder. There’s intense scrutiny of the Grandiloquy right now, especially those who have had their families slain. Everyone’s secret weapons have been confiscated. The most respectable people were publicly humiliated, being frisked by my uncle’s Diabolics. Hazard and Anguish found earbobs that served as poison darts, shoelaces of razor wire, neurotoxins concealed in all manner of toiletries. . . . We Grandiloquy are a far more savage sort than we pretend.”

  I didn’t care about any of this. I had no intention of lingering in court. As soon as I was out of here, I’d resume exactly what I’d planned before. I wondered what would happen if I crossed the distance to Tyrus and broke his neck before he could activate the electricity.

  As though he knew the turn of my thoughts, Tyrus said, “You could kill me, but the electrodes will deliver a shock to your heart and stop it. I assume it’s not worth dying just to kill me. Whatever would Sidonia say?”

  Even hearing him mention her name flooded me with anger. He had no right to say her name.

  “I apologize for keeping you confined here like an animal, but I wanted to discuss this rationally. Diabolics are engineered with the ability to think and reason. I want a chance to appeal to that reason, but I don’t intend to set myself up for death. You’ll find I rarely underestimate my enemies.”

  “And what about your friends? People must be aware I’m here. How do you explain keeping Sidonia Impyrean on the Alexandria for . . . for however long it’s been?”

  “Five days. And it’s quite simple, Nemesis. They’ll assume the imperial madman has abducted you. Later, you and I may devise another explanation. . . . But no one will interfere with the Successor Primus, whatever he does in his insanity.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You are no madman. I see that now.”

  Tyrus’s gaze wavered. “No.” He turned away from me, and we strode past great windows looking onto the bottom of the Berneval Stretch. “Most of my family dies young, usually at the hands of other family members. I figured out as a child that my only hope for survival lay in a projection of weakness, so I began to fake insanity.”

  “And people have always believed this.”

  “A palatable lie is easily swallowed. The Domitrians aren’t a well-loved dynasty. It’s an open secret that my uncle has squandered the royal coffers, spending liberally on his own pleasures, and now he seeks to tax the Excess to pay back the deficit he’s caused. He hides behind his faith to justify repression of the Excess, just as my grandfather did, and his mother, and her father before her. We Domitrians have been a toxin poisoning this Empire for centuries.”

  Reluctant curiosity overcame me. “You’ve truly feigned madness for half your life?”

  “A frightened child can manage all sorts of feats to preserve his existence. If I hadn’t, I’ve no doubt I’d be dead now too, rather than heir to the Empire. It required more effort in the beginning, especially when the med bots could not ‘cure’ my ailment, but lately I need only make an outlandish gesture publicly now and then, and people believe. That’s how I’ll explain the five-day abduction of Sidonia Impyrean.”

  My mind roved over what else I’d seen of him. His disrespect during services at the Great Heliosphere. “Leather,” I recalled.

  “A Servitor dying anyway in a hideous manner. I thought it a mercy to kill her. If it reinforced my reputation, it served us both.”

  “And the Exalted?”

  A flicker of distaste on his face. “I’m no rapist. The sacrifices on Consecration Day are barbaric, so I told a lie and it was readily believed. Of course, the Pasus girl almost ruined my gesture before you intervened in the arena. Speaking of which . . .” He wheeled on me. “What did happen with my cousin and her husband?”

  There was no point lying. “I force-fed them their own wine.”

  His lips quirked. “Fitting.”

  We stepped into a room with a clear glass floor, and beneath us was a great sky dome. A sense of disorientation crept over me as I stared downward at the blue sky I seemed to be standing upon. The room below us consisted of walls of shelves that vanished into the blue atmosphere, the sun shining up between them.

  “Do you know what those are?” said Tyrus, gazing downward. “On those shelves, in stasis fields?”

  “No.”

  “Those are valuable artifacts called ‘books.’ They’re ancient reposi­tories of knowledge bound in a mobile fashion.”

  “Are those some type of . . . of scientific texts?” I said, thinking of Senator von Impyrean’s forbidden materials.

  “Some of them,” he said with a half smile. “The databases lost in the supernova were electronic. Those that weren’t wiped out by the supernova were deleted with merely a few flicks of a button. These books, however, contain knowledge in actual physical form. Many of them were taken from Earth when the first colonies were founded, and over time, these books fell utterly into disuse. No one bothered to destroy them, so I collect them. It’s one
of my . . . eccentricities. No one raises eyebrows when a madman shows interest in such things.”

  I thought of the Matriarch and her “priceless” old things, all probably destroyed now along with her. Strangely, though I had no bond to her, there was a pang within me at the thought she was dead.

  “Do you know any human history, Nemesis?”

  “Why would I?”

  “It’s your history too. Every strand of DNA in your body originated on Earth.”

  I’d never thought of it that way, but I still didn’t see why this should interest me. I gazed at him flatly, waiting.

  Most people grew unsettled under that stare. A predator’s gaze, the Matriarch told me. Too direct, too unblinking for a human being. I’d trained myself out of staring, but now I had no need to hide what I was.

  Tyrus studied me in return, not calculating but thoughtful. A youth who’d faked madness and maneuvered himself to the second most powerful position in the Empire in the face of the constant threat of death.

  I suspected suddenly he would never fear me.

  “Human history,” Tyrus said, “is a repetition of patterns. Empires rise and then fall into decadence and decay. Time and again. Ages ago, human beings progressed technologically at an exponential rate. We expanded into space; we left Earth and traveled the galaxy. And then the same thing happened that always does—we grew lazy. We had technology we stopped learning how to use. We let machines think for us, act for us. The supernova and the rise of the Helionic faith merely worsened a problem that already existed. Our ancestors sought knowledge, but we, their descendants, glorify ignorance. If you scoured this entire Empire, you wouldn’t find a single person capable of repairing the technology our ancestors built for us.”

  “Why is it necessary for people to possess that skill?” I said. Machines handled everything.

  “Because this can’t last forever,” Tyrus said. “Our technology is aging. More of it shuts down every year and can’t be brought back online. When our older ships malfunction, they tear apart space itself. We need a scientific revival, yet we do not have one because the Grandiloquy—because my family—knows any intellectual revolution inevitably leads to political revolution.”