The Diabolic

  The Emperor was sniping with Hazard, and Hazard was saying, “. . . untrustworthy. You can see it in her face. . . .” And their voices faded from my hearing as Anguish shoved me out of the room.

  And then, outside the chamber, Anguish’s black-eyed gaze met mine levelly, and I just played my role, the affronted heir manhandled by a creature. “How dare you!”

  Anguish leaned very close. “Let me use language you understand: if you approach the Emperor again, I will rip your spine out.”

  The threat of violence made me freeze, because could he possibly have guessed what I was? No, there was no way. But before I could demand an explanation for such a naked threat, he was back inside the chamber.

  So the Diabolics had been able to read the lies on my face. I just hoped the Emperor’s paranoia outweighed his trust in their judgment.

  I dispatched a Servitor with a discreet-sheet to Tyrus.

  I planted the seeds with your uncle. His Diabolics doubt me, but he has heard my words.

  Now let those seeds take root. Once the Emperor demanded an explanation from Tyrus, clever Tyrus would do the rest.

  46

  THAT VERY EVENING, Tyrus’s engagement to Elantra was announced. I learned of it because a Servitor arrived with Elantra’s missive: I was to report to her villa at dawn for her anointing.

  “Anointing?” I said, staring at the sheet.

  Donia snatched it from me and read it over. “Anointing is an engagement ritual. Usually people have their closest friends do it before they’re getting ready to announce their union. Mother taught me how to do it, but it’s elaborate. Too elaborate for me to explain.”

  “So I’ll refuse to do it.”

  “No!” She paled. “That would be a terrible insult, Nemesis.”

  “I intend it as one,” I said flatly. “I dislike Elantra, and so do you.”

  “No, you really can’t refuse. It’s a sacred rite. You could start a war with her family, and we can’t afford that right now.”

  I didn’t need trouble from the Pasus family at this precarious time. “Fine, I won’t refuse, but I don’t understand this. I’m not Elantra’s friend. Why did she even ask me?”

  “To flaunt the engagement, perhaps?” she suggested. “Listen, we’ll go together. She won’t object to your bringing an Etiquette Marshal. I’ll whisper instructions to you.”

  “Dawn” was 0600, and so early that morning, Donia rubbed sleep out of her eyes as we headed toward Elantra’s villa.

  Elantra’s Servitors opened the doors for us, and in we walked. I followed the Servitors into Elantra’s bedroom, where she lay pretending to sleep.

  “Wake up,” I snapped at her. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Elantra sat up, her black curls tumbling about her shoulders, and glared at me. “That is not how it’s done.”

  Irritation flashed through me. I pulled out the silken handkerchief, and Elantra closed her eyes again, waiting expectantly. Donia had explained the first expectations of the ritual to me. I recalled this part well enough.

  There was a basin of sun-blessed water by the bed. I soaked the handkerchief in it, then dabbed it over one of her closed eyes, and then the other.

  “That’s better,” said Elantra, sitting up.

  Donia peered in the doorway and mouthed what I was supposed to say.

  “Congratulations to you, Grandeé Pasus, on this most glorious day when you formally pledge yourself to another,” I recited.

  Elantra looked between me and Donia. “Do you really need your Etiquette Marshal to remind you how to perform a basic anointing ritual?”

  So she’d caught that.

  “Forgive me, Grandeé Pasus,” I said. “I didn’t expect to do it until I had a friend getting married.” I threw emphasis on that word.

  Elantra smirked at me and rose to her feet. She held out her arms, blinking prettily. “Disrobe me.”

  I tore one of her buttons off tugging the silken overgown from her.

  “As for why I asked you, Grandeé Impyrean, that should be very obvious.”

  “Not to me,” I said bluntly.

  Donia gestured with a finger for me to lead Elantra outside into the villa’s solarium. There was a great shade hiding the sun, and Elantra stood there before it, waiting.

  I stepped over to the shade and began pulling it up slowly. It was as close as we could get to a gradual sunrise playing over her skin, which was supposed to symbolize the new dawn of Elantra’s life with Tyrus rising over the horizon.

  “The Successor Primus and I are uniting together,” Elantra said, leaning so her black hair spilled down to the middle of her back. “I thought asking you to perform this might clarify things between us once and for all. Do my back now.”

  I reached for one of the jars of oil that had already been set aside in readiness. “Clarify how?”

  “Not that one,” Elantra said sharply, seeing what I was reaching for. “That’s your oil. The darker one beside it is my anointing oil.”

  I took the darker one, trying to recall the drawing Sidonia had done earlier to show me what pattern I needed to trace on Elantra’s back.

  It had just looked like a sun with concentric rings about it. Elantra held still before the mirror as I traced it into her skin. Whenever I faltered, Donia stepped over to my side, took my wrist, and moved my fingers for me.

  “Tyrus suggested you as my Anointer,” Elantra remarked.

  My hand fell still on her skin. That surprised me. “He did?”

  I glanced at Donia, and her eyebrows rose.

  “Yes. I suppose he’s trying to make you jealous.” Elantra smiled unpleasantly. “That tells me he still has feelings for you, even if he may claim otherwise. Does that please you?”

  Why would Tyrus tell her to use me? He never acted without deliberation, so there had to be a reason. Perhaps it was a gesture for his grandmother, signaling to her that I would remain important to him even if she forced a marriage with Elantra. He must have focused on Cygna without much thought about how Elantra herself would receive the request—an oversight quite unlike him.

  “Of course you’re pleased,” Elantra said, studying me. “Anyone would be.”

  “I’m indifferent, really.” I resumed tracing the pattern into Elantra’s skin with the anointing oil.

  “I suspected beforehand that he might still love you and seek me only due to necessity, but it wasn’t pleasant to get confirmation,” Elantra said, her eyes fastened on my face in the mirror. “I suppose he chose me over you to please the Grandeé Cygna. I accept the falsehood of his love if it’s the price I must pay to be Empress.”

  My hand went still again, my heart giving an odd jerk. “That’s . . . presumptuous.” I had to say it. It was treason to discuss the Emperor’s death, and Elantra was not my friend.

  Elantra flashed me a spiteful look over her shoulder, her lips curling. “Don’t play coy. He needs me to win the Grandeé Cygna’s support. He’s planning to kill the Emperor. I’ve even seen the poison he intends to use for the deed, a simple toxin. One unwary touch and it would soak right through poor Randevald’s skin, killing him in minutes.”

  My hands went still again. That must have been dragged out of Tyrus, that confession. If Elantra had backed out of the marriage, the Grandeé Cygna might have been inspired to support Randevald over him. I supposed he shared that information with Elantra to persuade her to go through with the marriage, but I wasn’t pleased to hear it. She could betray us all.

  Then again, Elantra wouldn’t betray us if she hoped to be Tyrus’s Empress. . . . But now that she’d figured out Tyrus loved me, not her, Elantra would be on guard when he ascended, ready for him to turn on her. We’d have to proceed very carefully.

  “Why am I here, Elantra?” I asked her. “You didn’t have to agree to invite me to this.”

  Elantra d
idn’t answer that. She held out her arms for me to pull on her overshirt. Then she spun around, barefoot, and settled on the great cushion by the sunlit window. “Oh, Etiquette Marshal! Get Senator von Impyrean’s oil. Now it’s her turn to get anointed.”

  Donia selected the jar of lighter oil, the one I had to use on my shoulders and chest before I served as Elantra’s escort to the vicar. Again, I didn’t know the patterns I had to draw. Donia spoke up to rescue me. “I have very able hands. May I anoint my mistress? It will be faster.”

  Elantra never looked away from me. “She can anoint herself. Give her the jar and leave us.”

  Donia smiled at Elantra, her most gracious smile ever, and I wondered just how Elantra would feel if she knew her true rival was the small, meek girl beside me. “Really, Grandeé Pasus, I would very much like to do this for Grandeé Impyrean. In fact, I insist on it.”

  Elantra’s gaze flashed to her. “How dare you insist with me! Don’t you know your place?” Then the anger melted from her face, the bright flush of her cheeks fading. She tilted her head and smiled. “Very well. Since you insist, you can anoint your mistress.”

  I shrugged off my tunic and waited as Donia dipped her fingers in the oil and began brushing them over my shoulders. Elantra watched Donia’s fingers move over my skin.

  “To be honest,” I told her, “it was very reckless of you to reveal Tyrus’s plans to me. For all you know, I’m the vindictive scorned lover poised to betray him to the Emperor.”

  Elantra’s smile was malevolent. “Oh, I’m not worried about you revealing anything.”

  And that was when the oil jar shattered at our feet, and Donia gave a strangled cry. I spun around and met her wide, terror-stricken eyes. She raised shaky, oil-slicked fingers, and I saw that her flesh was rapidly turning a sickly gray where she’d coated her fingers. The stinging on my shoulders began at the same moment, and I knew, I knew why Elantra had brought me here—why she felt safe speaking so openly.

  The oil was poisoned.

  Elantra had never intended to let me leave here alive.

  47

  DONIA’S EYES were wide and panic-stricken on mine, and I could already see her skin mottling over her neck and chest.

  I reacted at once, seizing Donia and hauling her with me toward the washroom in Elantra’s villa. The skin of my shoulders burned, but I ignored it, driving Donia toward the washbasin and thrusting her hands under the faucet. I flipped on the water and scrubbed vigorously.

  “Nemesis . . . can’t . . . breathe . . . ,” she choked out, and when I looked to her, I saw her face was growing a grayish blue.

  There was a hiss, and I looked back to see the door to the washroom sealing itself shut. I launched myself to it, but the lock had been doctored—it would not budge. We were trapped.

  Elantra’s spiteful voice drifted over the intercom.

  “It’s no use,” she called gaily. “It’s already in your systems. I made sure to test it, just to be certain it’s truly lethal. It had to sit on the Exalted’s skin a good hour before he began to succumb, but humanoid creatures are always more resistant to such things. I imagine it will work far more swiftly with you two.”

  Enraged, I hurled myself at the door. My hand rebounded off it, sending splinters of pain up my arm. Donia choked, and I whirled around back to her. The arms of her gown were soaked now where she knelt at the foot of the sink, her skin mottled all over, and I grew aware of my urgent heartbeat like thunder in my ears, my sweaty skin, the mounting burn of my shoulders.

  A cold draft of clarity swept over me.

  Elantra had just locked us in.

  She’d exposed us to poison. It must be the very same that Tyrus had planned to use on the Emperor.

  I’d washed Donia’s skin, but it was already in her system.

  Sidonia might die.

  “Elantra, please!” I yelled. “Elantra, please! Please, let us out. Or at least my companion. Please let my Etiquette Marshal live. Please let her go. Elantra! Elantra!”

  My voice was a wail, but her taunting reply drifted into the room. “The Grandeé Cygna is supposed to arrive soon to escort her future granddaughter-in-law to the heliosphere. I suppose, instead, she’ll have to help me figure out what to do with your bodies.”

  “I WILL TEAR YOUR HEART OUT FOR THIS, ELANTRA!”

  Only silence answered me. I began furiously throwing myself at the door, knowing this was our only chance. I had to get Sidonia to a doctor. I had to get her to med bots. I had to do something.

  “N-Nem . . .”

  I whirled around, and everything in me froze at the sight of her. Her face was waxen, her eyes stark against her skin. She was like a rag doll slumped beneath the sink, the mottling of her neck swelling into blisters.

  “Wash.”

  “I’ve washed you.” My vision was blurring. I couldn’t seem to look away. “I washed it off, Donia.”

  “You.”

  My shoulders burned. I thought of that Exalted, how it had taken an hour for him to begin feeling the effects. No doubt Diabolics had a similar frame of survival. Death was what I deserved for leading Donia into this trap. I didn’t know what to do. I prayed to every god there might be, especially that divine Cosmos that had restored Donia to me once, to please come here, please help us, because I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t bear this again.

  Donia fumbled with a frail hand toward the washbasin. “Wash.”

  “I don’t deserve to wash it off,” I cried. “Donia, I hope it kills me.”

  “Wash,” she insisted. “Please.”

  My brain felt numb. I splashed water on my shoulders until the stinging receded from my skin.

  Diabolic physiology again. The poison was passing through me as though it had never been there. I’d trade anything to give my immunity to Donia.

  “I . . . I don’t know what to do,” I told her. I looked at my hand, my knuckles bloody from where I’d punched the door.

  Donia looked grayish blue now, the whites of her eyes red with veins. Her shaking hand closed around mine and I hunkered down against her, feeling her body like a frail little bird’s, because this wasn’t happening, this wasn’t happening. . . .

  “Love,” she wheezed.

  I clutched her tighter.

  Her grip tightened as much as it could. Her breath was coming in raspy gasps now. “Love . . . you . . .” Then she gave a high-pitched wheeze and tensed against me and I was thinking of Deadly again and clutching Donia closely, horror thundering through my brain, because no, no, this wasn’t happening. . . .

  But then she wasn’t breathing, wasn’t moving, and I looked at her eyes like sludgy clouds, without that spark that was Sidonia, and no, no, this wasn’t going to happen.

  “Donia. DONIA!”

  I seized her and shook her. I screamed at her. I pinched her skin, twisting it, trying to get something, trying to hear a cry, to get her to flinch, to do anything, but she was slack and limp, and she was dead, she was dead, and a scream of rage tore from me.

  Then abruptly the energy left me, the strength was gone, and all I could do was rest my head against her, whispering, “I love you, too. I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. . . .” Because Donia was dead, and this time there would be no miraculous deliverance.

  I waited there numbly, barely moving, barely breathing, unable to comprehend how everything had gone so wrong, so quickly. I waited, hearing only the low, steady thump of my heartbeat, aware only vaguely of the burn on my skin.

  I didn’t understand this. I didn’t understand anything about cruel, bitter fate.

  And then there was a footstep outside.

  I remained very still, everything in me searing with dark, molten malice. I sensed Elantra listening for movement. Then the door slid open, and she told her Servitors, “Collect the bodies. Tell Grande Tyrus—”

  A S
ervitor reached for me and then I was on my feet and throwing him against the far wall. Elantra’s scream pealed through the air, but it was too late for her, I was already upon her, and I had her by the neck, driving her backward like the helpless girl she was next to me, thrusting her down through a table, splintering it in two with the impact. Other Servitors reached for me, but I threw them away and turned all my focus on her.

  She wailed and screamed in fright as I pinned her down, and I knew I’d just broken several of her ribs, but I didn’t care. I tore at her face, I twisted at her arms, dislodging them from their sockets. And then I thrust her chin back so she’d look directly into my eyes.

  “Please,” she said, her eyes filled with tears.

  I drove my fist through the soft flesh of her torso, and then I had it, I had Elantra Pasus’s heart, and I was drenched in blood and still the molten anger and malice in me was not slaked, because nothing made sense. The organ was slick and hot in my hands and I stared at it, the body at my feet, because I couldn’t understand how this could have happened.

  What now?

  What now?

  WHAT NOW?

  I dropped the heart and reeled upright, Elantra’s body sprawled beneath me. Blood drenched my arms, my gown. The lights were too bright and a great buzz of noise sounded in my ears and Sidonia was dead this time, she was dead, I’d seen her die. . . .

  I stumbled over to my knees and retched. Everything foul and bilious came out of me and still there was more because how had this happened, how . . .

  The great thunder of panic and horror in my brain drowned out the noise of the Grandeé Cygna arriving, and then she was standing there, gray-faced and terrified for once, gasping at the sight of such carnage. And as I raised my bloody face up to look at her, she whipped out an energy weapon. “You stay back.”

  “She killed her,” I gasped. “Elantra killed Donia.”

  Cygna circled about me, still keeping that careful distance, and peered in one room after another. Then the washroom. She gazed in there a long moment, then emerged.

  “So the Impyrean girl was doomed after all,” Cygna remarked.