The Diabolic

  I found my gaze riveted to the fan.

  It’s a weapon, whispered my thoughts. My eyes never left it. I couldn’t help the thought. This tool could be for nothing else. Grandes and Grandeés of high birth weren’t supposed to lower themselves by openly carrying weapons, so Donia had told me they concealed them in innocuous objects. Because Sutera had spent her life learning and teaching the habits of the Grandiloquy, she must have imitated this aspect too.

  What could be within it? A blade? A whip?

  “I think we’ll start with your appearance,” said Sutera, recovering. “Now I trust you know the basics of styling and self-modifications. You need to decide on your signature features.”

  Because I was the one who ultimately needed to know this, I interrupted, “What are those?”

  Sutera slanted me an irritated look. Although she had to teach us both, she obviously considered my attendance a waste of her time and talents. “In Grandiloquy circles, every physical aspect can and will be modified as fashion demands. No one knows anyone’s true age, skin color, hair color, lip shape, weight, eyelid composition, or other features. A child of a great family has the means to modify his or her appearance at will, but one learns quickly that changing everything all the time is highly frowned upon. For instance, once must always display the gender you identify with. It’s positively gauche to undergo chromosome resequencing just on a whim or for a party. Additionally, for delicacy’s sake, a few features must always remain the same to keep you identifiable. Those are signature features. Mine, for instance, are my lips and my chin.” She waved a graceful hand to herself, her plush lips curving into a smile. “I never change them.”

  I peered closely, studying her lips and chin, wondering what about these features made them her point of pride.

  “I’ll help you choose yours, Sidonia Impyrean.” Then, after a moment, Sutera said, “And of course, yours, Nemesis dan Impyrean.”

  “She’s not ‘dan,’” Donia said suddenly. “You have to have noticed she isn’t a real Servitor.”

  “That’s ridiculous, child,” twittered Sutera. “Everyone owned by your household is a dan, girl, Servitors and other humanoid creations alike.”

  Donia clenched her small hands into fists. “Nemesis is different.”

  “Is she?” Her eyebrows shot up. “She was bought by your parents. She was fashioned for you. She serves a function. She is no different from a Servitor in that respect; therefore, she is Nemesis dan Impyrean.”

  “Stop using the ‘dan’ or I’ll tell Mother I’m through here,” Donia said, her voice shaking with anger.

  “Donia . . . ,” I warned her. This wasn’t the time to get worked up defending me.

  But this was one battle Donia always fought. She tilted her chin up. “Nemesis Impyrean. That’s what you’ll call her in my presence.”

  Sutera gave a huff of laughter. “Oh, so now she’s an immediate blood relation of yours?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Well, while we’re inventing things, let’s just call her Nemesis von Impyrean and deem her head of your household, too. Have you any instructions for me, Madam von Impyrean?” Sutera dipped a mock bow toward me.

  “I’m done,” Donia announced. “I won’t tolerate this.”

  And then she turned around and stalked out.

  Sutera blinked after her, astonished. Then she murmured, “By the stars, this already looks quite hopeless.”

  I followed Donia, thinking grimly that if the Etiquette Marshal thought the Impyrean heir was utterly hopeless, it was a good thing she didn’t realize she was actually here to drill graces into a Diabolic.

  5

  DONIA AND I both lay awake that evening. Donia was clearly stinging from the tongue-lashing the Matriarch had given her over storming out on Sutera nu Impyrean. As for me, I couldn’t forget what Donia had said earlier about me.

  Finally I broke the silence.

  “I am.”

  “What?”

  “I am Nemesis dan Impyrean.”

  “No, you’re not.” Donia twisted in bed to face the window.

  I stared at her frail shoulder blades. “I am a creature owned by your household. I don’t know why you deny this.”

  “You are Nemesis Impyrean.” Sidonia sat up and glared at me in the starlight. “Simple as that.”

  “Only a fool would battle the Etiquette Marshal over so small a matter as my name. You know what I am. I am not a person. I’m a Diabolic. This is just like when you tried to take me to the blessing! Haven’t you gotten it through your head yet that I’m not like you?”

  “But, Nemesis—”

  “I don’t want you doing this anymore!” I roared at her. Suddenly I was furious. “Stop dangling these things in front of me when we both know I can’t have them! I can’t get blessed, and I can’t be called Nemesis Impyrean. There’s no reason to teach me to read or to insist I am of the stars just as you are. . . . There’s no dignity in trying to force me into a mold I will never fit.”

  “No dignity?” Donia echoed. Then tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m not trying to humiliate you.”

  Humiliation. I realized the word for the awful emotion that swelled within me whenever I saw the heliosphere and remembered that first meeting with the vicar. It was humiliation over my predicament, over myself. It had nothing to do with Sidonia, and I didn’t wish to feel more of it.

  “I am not your equal. I am your Diabolic and that is all. Never forget that again.”

  Her lips wobbled. Then, “Fine, Nemesis dan Impyrean. If I own you, then obey me and stop talking so I can sleep.” With that, she whipped around in bed and buried her face in her pillow to muffle her tears.

  I listened to her weep softly as the dark side of the gas giant formed a massive black gulf out the window. Donia was attached to me. It would hurt her once the Matriarch’s deception was known. She would order me not to go to the Chrysanthemum in her place. She’d fear for my safety. I knew the pain my actions would cause her.

  Yet her feelings for me mattered less to me than my feelings for her.

  For a moment, the contradiction sat there in my mind as I stared up into the darkness. It had never occurred to me before that there was something profoundly selfish about devotion. Because of what I was, I was supposed to have no ego, no needs of my own. Even now, I only needed to sleep three hours a night, yet I lay here on the pallet by Sidonia’s bed because she needed eight hours of sleep and felt comforted knowing I was here.

  A Diabolic was meant to be utterly without self-interest where a master was concerned.

  Yet it seemed I had self-interest. How could that be when I wasn’t a real person? This humiliation, this selfishness, it was all unnatural in a creature like me. It shouldn’t exist.

  I turned on my pallet. It seemed easier just to listen to Donia’s slow breathing and put it out of my mind.

  And then I heard a footstep scuff outside the doorway. I instantly sharpened to alertness.

  “Come out here, Nemesis.”

  The whisper was so soft, Sidonia never could have heard it even wide awake. I bounded to my feet and crossed the room, then stepped outside.

  The Matriarch waited, arms folded. “Come.”

  She turned and I followed her soundlessly, unquestioningly. We retreated to her wing. I’d never seen the Matriarch’s chambers and was surprised to find myself in a place of clunky relics. I stared down at a clumsy sculpture shaped like a doughy human form, chiseled entirely out of stone. Why would she value such a thing?

  “That figurine was crafted before the first agricultural civilizations on Earth,” the Matriarch remarked, seeing my scrutiny. “It’s priceless.”

  “How could that be? It’s not very impressive. Donia could carve a better one.”

  “You truly have no concept of value.” She withdrew an iron box and slid the lid off. Ou
t buzzed a swarm of tiny metallic machines, all smaller than the tips of my fingers. As I watched, needles emerged from them, one from each.

  “Sutera was correct,” said the Matriarch, studying me. “You are too large to ever pass for a natural human. We’ll have to pare down your muscles and shave in your bones. That’s where these machines come in.”

  I stared up at the bots swarming like the insects of the garden. The needles flashed in the light. “So many are needed?”

  “They’ll each inject a substance in a targeted area of your skeletal structure to begin the process of breaking down what’s there. We need to shrink you rapidly. I told Doctor Isarus nan Impyrean they were for my husband—that he’d become unfashionably bulky and I wished to pare him down to a more attractive size. The doctor says this process needs to be repeated over many nights. It’s fortunate we have three months before you need to be at the Chrysanthemum. We’ll need them. Every two nights after Sidonia is asleep, you’ll come here for your injections.”

  I drew a breath, not afraid, exactly, but my heart had picked up its tempo. Adrenaline. “This sounds painful.”

  “Excruciating, I’m told,” the Matriarch answered. “I’d offer an anesthetic, but we know that would be quite useless.”

  For Sidonia, I thought.

  I slipped off my outer garments and held out my limbs. I was determined she wouldn’t see me so much as flinch. “Then let’s begin.”

  The next several nights I dreamed of swarming insects, jabbing and stabbing and tearing into me. When I awoke, it was to a twisting, grinding sensation all through my arms, and faint swelling over my calves, my thighs. It was difficult hiding my discomfort from Donia. I felt drained, and every time I relieved myself, I knew molecules from my muscles were leaving me.

  For Sidonia, I reminded myself, tugging down my sleeves to hide the splotches of bruising all along my arms. Each step hurt and my bones felt like large splinters, but I tried to hide my discomfort.

  My faltering strength made me more normal, perhaps, but made things difficult during the next sessions with the Etiquette Marshal. Sutera nu Impyrean recovered from the insult of Sidonia storming out on her and began drilling us in the Grandiloquy gait—the style of approach one was to take when meeting the Emperor. Normally I’d find any physical task effortless, but my formidable strength was languishing. I perfected the gait before Donia, but just barely.

  Then we moved on to the tedious task of mastering our chemical substances. This was most difficult for me because I felt none of their recreational effects, so I had to fake whatever effect they seemed to have on Sidonia.

  “Remember,” Sutera told us, her own eyes dilated as she swayed under the effect of the vapors she’d just inhaled, “relaxation without . . . what?”

  “Sloppiness,” Donia said, her voice slurred.

  “Laughter without . . . ?”

  “Mania.”

  “And always, always use moderation. Recreational chemicals, but never neurotoxic ones,” Sutera said, twirling herself around in time with whatever chemical impulse she was following. “Addiction is a most unattractive quality. You’ll need med bots to fix your brain, and in the meanwhile everyone will whisper about the scandalous Impyrean girl. And neurotoxins, well, the best med bots in the galaxy won’t be able to fix you after you’re through with those.”

  Donia didn’t handle all the drugs well. Anything that gave her energy made her anxious and jittery. Anything that caused euphoria made her delirious. On one occasion, I had to force Sutera nu Impyrean to end the lesson so I could put Donia to bed.

  Her weight was too much for me amid the muscle reduction treatments, so I drew her down the hallway with an arm over my shoulder. Donia smiled at me lazily the whole way. She sprawled across her bed, grinning at me, trilling nonsense like, “You’re glowing from within.”

  “I’m not,” I assured her.

  “You are. You glow like a star, Nemesis. A beautiful star.” She reached out and ran her fingers over the skin of my arm, entranced. “You’re a supernova.”

  “That would be very dangerous for you, then,” I said, pulling off her shoes.

  “You do have a divine spark.” Her eyes flooded with tears that spilled over, happiness giving way to melancholy. “I wish you’d believe it.”

  I sighed. What a dreamer she was. “Go to sleep, Donia.”

  “I love you more than I can bear sometimes. You’re a wonder and you don’t even know it.” She spoke so earnestly, almost sadly, that I reached out and put my hand on her arm, following a tender impulse I rarely felt, and only for her.

  “Please go to sleep,” I urged her softly.

  “You’re really wonderful, Nemesis. I wish you could see that. I wish I wasn’t the only one who knew it. I wish you knew it.”

  What a strange idea she always insisted upon, me having a divine spark. I stroked her arm, disturbed by how much the notion appealed to me. What use did a Diabolic have for an afterlife? Donia would not require my protection once she’d perished. Wherever her soul journeyed next, the entrance was barred to a creature like me.

  “You speak nonsense,” I said. “Sleep now.”

  Donia drifted off, and I sat there listening to her breathe, trying to will away the odd weight in my chest. I had no use for delusions—still, it was strangely comforting to know that one person in this universe believed sweet lies about me. Were I less disciplined, I might even have taken pleasure in pretending to agree.

  6

  AFTER we passed through the array of chemicals, we moved on to memorizing dances. There were all types of them for different occasions, with varying gravitational conditions. I always took the lead because I was larger and stronger than Donia, but it made no difference which position I danced. I learned and perfected both just from watching Sutera nu Impyrean demonstrate them.

  One day we practiced a rendition of one of the more complicated dances at the Imperial Court called the Frog and the Scorpion. The women performed the quick, lashing movements of the scorpion, and the men the great sweeping throws and repositions of the frog. After the first section of the dance, the scorpion was supposed to spend most of the dance entirely supported by the frog. The dance was performed in zero gravity, but the Impyreans had no zero-gravity dome. We made do as best we could in the low-grav chambers of the fortress, which only dipped to one-third standard gravity. I tossed Donia into the air and made to catch her as she soared down toward me, but she slipped from my arms.

  It wasn’t a disaster. She stumbled and caught my arm for balance, gaining it easily in the low gravity, but I experienced an ugly shock. My arms shook from the strain of throwing her even in the low gravity, and when Donia’s eyes met mine, I knew she hadn’t missed it either.

  I’d been sleeping more on the nights I wasn’t treated because my body needed rest to recover. That evening after I dropped off into slumber, Sidonia shook my shoulder to wake me.

  That, in itself, was unusual. Usually I snapped awake instantly at the slightest sound.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Sick?” I mumbled.

  “You’ve been so listless lately. And I didn’t want to say anything, but your clothes are all looking baggy on you. Nemesis, you’re wasting away.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I think we should call Doctor Isarus here.”

  “All I need is sleep.”

  But Donia eyed me with more worry every day. The Matriarch finally decided I’d pared down my muscles and bones to an acceptably fragile size. No longer did I have the sturdy frame of a tiger, but something longer and leaner, like a lynx. I could at last pass for a normal girl. An unusually tall one, but certainly not a Diabolic.

  I was relieved to end the injections. My strength rebounded more than I could have hoped. I couldn’t comfortably exercise in the high-gravity chambers, but I could walk through them again. Even with my skel
etal muscles systematically shrunk, I was far stronger than a normal human.

  “This will make it more difficult for you,” remarked the Matriarch as I lifted myself into a handstand over the arm of her couch. “It would have been easier if we’d weakened you further. You’ll have to fake it. No more displays like this.”

  “You asked to see what I was capable of,” I reminded her, slowly releasing my grip and lifting up an arm, balancing on a single palm. Though I wasn’t so strong as before, my body was lighter, compensating somewhat for the muscular changes. “Should I have lied to you about my capabilities?”

  She watched me lower myself toward the couch, then push myself back up. She looked strange and almost old when viewed upside down. “No more exercising even in private. There are eyes everywhere in the Chrysanthemum, and we’ll have wasted all this treatment if you simply bulk up again.”

  I gazed at her from beneath my dangling hair, my arm burning gloriously, but . . . but shaky. It never used to shake when it held me up like this. “I know all of this, madam. I’m no fool.”

  “Starting now. Get down.”

  I swung my legs down and landed on the ground. My arm ached, so I rubbed it, holding her eyes. “Starting now.”

  I’d now experienced weakness, and between hiding my strength or possessing genuine frailty, I vastly preferred to hide.

  So I would.

  The Etiquette Marshal had found cosmetic work pleasing enough to perform on both of us to the best of her ability, not just Sidonia. Now Donia and I both possessed carefully applied glow and shade pigments under our skin, and even effervescent essence woven into our hair, nourished by the beauty bots into flowing, elaborate manes. We’d wake in the morning with our hair down, and with a single command, the mechanized stilts woven into our hair tightened and rearranged themselves, pulling our locks into any hairstyle we chose, no matter how elaborate. Another command, and certain threads morphed from a shade that matched our hair into glowing strands like gold or silver, or anything that might match a garment. They could even cast a light that artificially altered our hair color without the need of beauty bots.