The Diabolic

  “Was it you who intervened for me, Sidonia?”

  “I told Tyrus you could help matters. You could calm the unrest.”

  Neveni gave a hopeless laugh. “So that falls to me. How am I going to do that? My people know the Empire and the Helionics stand in the way of progress. The Empire takes more from Lumina in taxes than Lumina gets back from the Empire. In fact, what does the Empire even do for us? Provide security? Against what? The Empire is our greatest strategic threat! The Empire with its decadent Grandiloquy, and its ancient ships spreading malignant space everywhere!”

  I looked around to affirm that nobody was eavesdropping on this dangerous talk.

  “And on top of all this, the Emperor added insult to injury by killing my mother, the woman Luminars elected as leader.” Neveni’s voice shook. “It’s no wonder there’s unrest. My people were all disenfranchised, stripped of any pretense of choice. Am I supposed to tell them that none of their grievances matter?”

  “I don’t know what you should tell them,” I said slowly. “But I know that you’re the only one who stands a chance of fixing this. The Emperor has no mercy, Neveni. He’ll raze the planet before he’ll let it leave the Empire.”

  “He’ll try.” A strange gleam stole into her eyes. “Even if I help the Emperor, nothing stops him from summoning me back to the Chrysanthemum afterward to kill me anyway. Nothing stops him from razing my planet sometime later when we’re not on alert anymore. Right now we’re in a position of strength. If we leave, other planets will leave too. They’ll fight with us. I don’t have much incentive to help your beloved Tyrus. In fact, I’m going to tell you something very personal.” She leaned toward me, defiance on her face. “I don’t believe in the Helionic faith. I think it’s nonsense.”

  Startled, I glanced behind us toward the heliosphere, making sure no Domitrian employees were about to hear us.

  “I don’t believe the Cosmos is some divine, living entity that intentionally created us,” Neveni snarled. “I think space is a void and the Cosmos is a thing and God created us. God created the Cosmos, too. That’s what my mom raised me to believe.” Her face crumpled. “I didn’t listen to her very often, and if I could take that back . . .”

  Her voice hitched, and then she drew a shaky breath to firm herself.

  “Sidonia, whatever we did on the Chrysanthemum, however many functions we went to or however many pretty outfits we wore or however much money you gave me, I’m not a Grandeé. I’m not like you. I’m not born and raised in space or favored by the Empire. I’m one of them. I’m one of the Excess.” She spat the word.

  Only then did I realize that this word—this word I’d heard countless times, and repeated without thinking—was a slur. Excess. It implied that the vast majority of human beings were useless and insignificant.

  “I know you will never believe it,” I told her softly, “but I don’t care if you’re a heretic. I don’t care about any of that.”

  But this was clearly not the response she was looking for. “Two weeks ago,” she said with a bitter smile, “that would have made me very happy to hear. I would’ve felt like I was accepted by the Grandiloquy. Like I belonged. I used to want to belong. I was so angry with my mother for—” She broke off, mouth twisting. Then, “I used to wonder, why did she defy Senator von Pasus? But now I know. Now I see her for what she was, Sidonia: a hero. I’m going to be the daughter I should have been while she lived.”

  She left me without another word.

  As I watched her go, a sinking feeling weighted my chest. It had never before occurred to me that she might refuse to help us. But I was no longer sure I could rely on her. She was too angry, too heavy with grief, to be a predictable player in this complicated game.

  30

  AS WE NEARED Lumina, we slowed down to carefully navigate past the patch of malignant space an imploding starship had left several years before. Tyrus headed to the largest window on the Alexandria so he could gaze out at it with his own eyes.

  I joined him, curious about this phenomenon that seemed to fill people with such dread.

  The sight surprised me. Malignant space resembled a ribbon of light against the vast starscape. However much I tried to tell myself I was looking at something dangerous, it merely appeared to be a band of glowing energy, like a vast solar flare. I said as much to Tyrus.

  “Oh, it’s deceptive in appearance.” Tyrus pointed. “That light? It isn’t coming from malignant space. Those are the hydrogen gases of stars that have been ripped apart by it. The light is being drawn into the ruptures—eaten, you could say. We’re seeing the death of solar systems, Nemesis. This is what frightens the Luminars. They’re three light-years away from here. We’ve used the same engines over and over for thousands of years, and we’ve now made ourselves forget how they even work. This right here is the end result of our ignorance: a problem we cannot solve.”

  I gazed again at the dead stars forming a virtual gash in space, pure light with edges of lurid purple. Now, it seemed, I could see something terrible in it. I knew I was looking upon oblivion itself.

  “To think of all the time and thought we put into perfecting chemi­cal pleasures and worship of the stars,” Tyrus said. “And yet this happens more and more often, and we simply turn away. Many of the Grandiloquy would ignore this until there is no place to flee, no space free of this malignancy.”

  A bitter note stole into his voice.

  “In some ways, we deserve this. . . . But all the others who are going to suffer for our actions don’t. If I can stop it, I must.”

  He turned away from the window, a vein flickering in his forehead.

  “I’ve seen enough. I can’t look upon this anymore. Would you like to spar again?”

  His stamina amazed me. “Have you recovered from the last time?”

  “I’ll welcome the distraction.”

  The first time Tyrus and I fought, I kept my hands joined together behind my back. It swiftly became evident that it would have better for him if I’d restrained my legs instead.

  He moved quickly for a regular human. I was impressed by the power behind his punches, and had I not been swift enough to dodge them all, I was certain he could have knocked me off balance.

  Then I delivered a roundhouse kick to his chest and heard bones crack.

  Tyrus flew across the room and hit the wall with an ugly thunk. He lay there several seconds, gurgling for breath as he clutched his ribs, before the med bots responded to his vital signs and swarmed over him.

  For myself, shock had riveted me in place. Now, at the sight of the med bots, my trance was broken. “Your Eminence?” I rushed over to him and peered between the swarming bots.

  I had known this would happen. I had known! Why had I agreed to such idiocy?

  When they’d reinflated his collapsed lung and knit his ribs enough for him to talk, Tyrus leaned over to hack up blood, then sat up, peering at me, wiping at his mouth with the back of his arm.

  “You are extraordinary.”

  “What?” The word slipped from me in a stunned whisper. I had been waiting, dread-filled, but there was nothing but admiration in his voice.

  He spat out more blood. “I understand the brute power, the speed, but where did you learn technique?”

  I blinked. Normally I disliked any questions about my upbringing in the corrals, but since I’d just nearly killed him, I felt I owed him an answer.

  “When I was developing, visual aids were provided.”

  “What does that mean?” He heaved himself up with a wince, the med bots still crawling over him like large insects, tending to other injuries from his flight across the room.

  “There were holographics projected in the pens.” I spoke hesitantly, for it was hard putting into words those memories that were best forgotten. “They were images of people performing combat maneuvers. I would watch them. There was nothing els
e to do. I noticed that when I imitated them, I was rewarded.”

  “Rewarded . . . how?” Tyrus sank down onto his haunches, letting the med bots work on him, gazing at me with avid interest. The heir apparent to the Emperor, whom I had just come close to killing—waiting to hear about me.

  “Better food,” I said in bewilderment. Why did he care about my history? “A reduction in noise.”

  “Noise?”

  I nodded. “An unpleasant humming sound. It would decrease in volume for a time if I did something pleasing to the corral master.”

  “That’s ghastly.”

  Yes. It had been. “It worked,” I said quietly.

  He was scowling. “As far as I understand, Diabolics have a superior neural capacity to duplicate movements they’ve seen visually, but I had no idea such training was done under duress.”

  “It worked,” I said again, and reached out a hand to him. Tyrus grasped it and pulled himself upright.

  “Again?” he asked.

  I gawked at him. “Now? After you nearly—”

  “I feel quite better,” he said. “I know what you can do now, and I’m prepared. We’ll go again.”

  Had he learned nothing from his close escape? Perhaps he truly was demented. Fortunately, I was not. “No.”

  “Nemesis, I insist.”

  That stubborn look was becoming very familiar to me. “Not unless you wear body armor.” He had refused it before.

  “Very well.”

  “And I won’t kick you,” I added.

  “That, I won’t agree to. I must learn to absorb blows.” He wiped at the blood crusted on his forehead from his tumble. “I’ve taught myself much of this combat. I’ve never had a sparring partner willing to risk injuring me. I welcome the worst you can do.”

  Madman. “You’d best not do that, Your Eminence, or you will end up dead.”

  But Tyrus’s insistence and conviction could not be long resisted. Finally I agreed to undergo another round. This time, despite his urgings, I did not kick, and I permitted several of his blows to land just to gauge his strength. It was considerable. One strike even drove the breath from me before I instinctively lashed out and broke his arm.

  Tyrus held his face granite still, trying to hide his pain as the bots swarmed him again—tending to his broken arm, his dislocated shoulder, his splintered rib, his broken nose, his swollen lips. I watched, my teeth clenched in irritation.

  “Happy now?” I asked.

  His laugh sounded breathless. “Did I injure you in the least?”

  “My knuckles ache from punching you.”

  He grinned, impossibly cheerful about the whole thing. At last the med bots withdrew, and he tested his mended arm. “So,” he said with a wince. “One more round?”

  “No!” I thought quickly. “I’m . . . tired.”

  His keen eyes glinted. “Naturally you are. Certainly you’re not sparing my ego because you see I’m at the limits of my strength. It’s not necessary, Nemesis, though I thank you for the gesture.”

  I settled onto my knees to watch this strange young man. How could I be the only person who saw him for what he was? Clever and clear-sighted, impossibly resilient, willing to absorb blow after blow in the hope that it would strengthen him even if no one ever witnessed his mettle.

  Curiosity was a strange feeling. I had not experienced it often. It itched at me from the inside, until at last I had to ask.

  “Why, Your Eminence? Why learn to spar against me? Surely you have more to worry about from poisons or knives in the back. Strength and brawn will not shield you against them.”

  Tyrus tipped his head back against the wall, deliberating on his answer. The pale light from overhead caught the sheen of freckles across his face. He looked very young in that moment, younger even than his nineteen years.

  “Attacks can come in any form, and if I die, I mean it to be after I’ve exerted myself to my utmost, defended myself with everything in me—not after I wilted because I proved helpless.” His lips thinned, his gaze turning inward. “My mother died when I was eight years old. I’m sure you know the story.”

  “No,” I said. Sidonia had been the student of history, not I.

  He glanced up at me. The bleakness in his face made me regret my ignorance—made me wish I could spare him the retelling.

  “It wasn’t stealth or poison that got her,” he said. “My mother was very prudent, very cautious, very careful. We were paying a call to a Viceroy, but Grandmother had paid him on the side. A swarm of people rushed into our villa. Mercenaries. I could do nothing.”

  The bitter twist to his mouth puzzled me. “Of course you couldn’t,” I said. “You were eight years old.”

  “Of course,” he said flatly. Then, after a moment, he shrugged. “At any rate, they butchered her. And I hid.” He looked down at his clenched fist. “I’ve been hiding ever since, just in a very different way.” A pause. “You must think me a coward.”

  “No,” I said, surprised. But he did not look up.

  I reached out to touch him. But the impulse confused me, so I stopped myself. “It’s obvious to me,” I said slowly, “that you did exactly as required to stay alive. I simply don’t understand why your family is so . . .”

  “Murderous?”

  “Numerous. Why did your grandmother have so many children if she then planned to wage a war against all but one heir? The Impyrean Matriarch always said fashionable imperial families limited their offspring to avoid this problem.”

  Tyrus sighed. “It was my grandfather’s doing. He was short-lived—only ninety-three when he passed—but he insisted on producing as many children as he could manage. Some twisted form of masculine pride, I believe. My grandmother only consented to bear one child. That was Randevald. So Grandfather harvested her ovaries and created new grandchildren without her consent. The only limitation was that he insisted on natural birth using human wombs rather than incubators. Fortunate—otherwise there might have been a hundred more Domitrians to deal with. As soon as he began weakening with age, Grandmother set to purging all the other offspring who might compete with Randevald’s claim to the throne.”

  “But the Emperor distrusts her. I saw that. She placed him in power and he fears her.”

  Tyrus managed a smile as the last med bot finished mending a great cut on his chest. “After you watch a scorpion lethally sting dozens before you, it’s difficult to accept that scorpion as an ally. You cannot help but think it might turn on you next. It’s one reason Randevald has never wed, never fathered children of his own. He fears they’d find more favor with Grandmother than he does, in which case he’d go the way of our other family members.”

  “And this is also why the Emperor favors you.”

  Tyrus nodded. “Grandmother despises me. I survived her purge long enough to enter my uncle’s confidence, and thanks to my madness, I’ve retained his trust and protection. She dares not strike at me, not right now. Not unless I slip and show myself in any way a threat to my uncle. Then he might permit her to strike me down. As things stand, he’s fond of me because I am his bulwark against her.”

  I studied him, amazed. Evidently it was a blessing that I’d never been burdened by a family. The closest I had to DNA relations were my fellow Diabolics.

  “So you see why I wish to fight with you, Nemesis,” Tyrus said. “If you are a terrible menace in battle, then I welcome any challenge from you. It can only make me stronger in the end, to learn from the most dangerous.”

  His words ignited a strange glow in my chest. No one other than Donia had appreciated what I might show and teach, rather than how I might serve.

  “I’ll do as much as I am able,” I promised him.

  And for the rest of the trip through hyperspace, my days fell into a routine. Services in the heliosphere, an occasional meal with Neveni when she felt in the mood for compa
ny—which was rare. A workout with Deadly, running around the vessel to expend the dog’s excess energy. Then meeting with Tyrus and battling the evening away.

  I always handicapped myself. Sometimes I used bands to limit my range of motion. I insisted that Tyrus wear body armor. Sometimes I gave him a weapon and went bare-handed. As the days wore on, he required fewer and fewer advantages.

  It wasn’t that Tyrus’s strength matched mine. Far from it. It was that he began to figure out how I moved, how I approached battle. He anticipated me. One day, when we experimentally donned exosuits to enhance our strength far beyond the capacity of regular humans—so far beyond our ordinary strength that the difference between Tyrus and me became irrelevant—he defeated me.

  I found myself pinned against the ground, one metal-clad arm crushing down over mine, metal-clad legs trapping mine, and Tyrus just above me, too far out of reach for me to head-butt him.

  I assessed my situation carefully, and then I had to admit it. “I yield.”

  “Yield? Do you really?” He gazed at me intently, his breath rasping harshly in the chamber.

  “You have defeated me, Your Eminence.”

  “Well. Well . . . Imagine that.” He released me and stood up. This time, his hand reached down toward me and clasped mine to pull me to my feet. “Nemesis, in private call me Tyrus.”

  “Tyrus,” I repeated, the name sliding awkwardly over my tongue.

  “That’s it.” His smile lingered as he stood looking upon me, pleasure still lighting his face. “Without the exosuit, of course, I never would have won.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Nemesis,” he said earnestly, “thank you.”

  Now it was my turn to smile. During our journey, he had practiced his combat skills alone as often as we had fought. I was not sure I had taught him as much as he supposed. But his transparent respect warmed me regardless. It was a peculiar pleasure to feel accomplished, important. It was gratifying being needed.

  I felt entirely gracious dipping my head solemnly and saying, “You are very welcome . . . Tyrus.”