And, of course, I kept my nose as it was.
Donia cupped my cheeks. “You’re breathtaking.” Worry stole over her face. “Please come back.”
I placed my hands over hers. The one person in this universe who defined me. “I will.”
Then the voices swelled, and we broke apart. The Matriarch glided in, followed by a retinue of Servitors. She alone was seeing me off. The Senator had already bidden me a cursory good-bye.
She took me by the arm. “Come now, Sidonia.”
She’d started calling me by that name so I’d adjust. I wasn’t so careless as she believed, and the name felt wrong in Donia’s presence. I looked back at her as the Matriarch led me away.
“Remember what I’ve told you of the Excess,” the Matriarch whispered in my ear.
“I remember.”
The Excess weren’t all like Sutera nu Impyrean (whose death we blamed on a mishap with the animal pens, whose body we shot into the nearest star because the Matriarch knew she’d want burial in the Helionic way). They also weren’t like Doctor Isarus nan Impyrean, the family physician. Those two had been Excess who’d believed in the imperial system, who’d become a part of it and earned a place in it. They’d faithfully served the Impyreans and proven their loyalty, so they earned the appellations nu and nan, signifying their affiliation as male and female servants of the family.
These Excess, however, were being paid for their services. Their loyalty was not to the Impyrean family, but to the currency they’d earn from serving the Impyreans.
They were called “employees.”
They were being employed, specifically, to escort me to court.
“The Grandiloquy controls all the most powerful technology, Nemesis,” the Matriarch had explained to me this last week. “We have the starships and the weaponry, so we are the government connecting one star system to another. We are the Empire.”
I knew most inhabited planets weren’t optimal for human life. Few were self-sufficient, and most all of them depended upon resources from space—which the Grandiloquy totally controlled. They also depended upon technology lent to them by the Grandiloquy. In this manner, the Excess were forced to serve the Grandiloquy merely to survive.
A hush fell over the employees as the Matriarch and I rounded the corridor. The Excess stood in scattered groups, facing one another yet looking back at us like we were an alien species. I stared back at them, feeling the same way.
Just like Sutera nu Impyrean, all but the youngest of them were rife with physical defects from planetary living conditions and exposure to unfiltered sunlight. Marks on their skin, those lines called “wrinkles,” excess flesh or sometimes such a deficit of flesh their bones were visible through their skin. They all had tonsures—the shaving of the very center of their scalp, leaving the rest of their hair to grow around the bald patch like a crown. It was a curious look, especially on the longer-haired women, many of whom had braided their hair to wrap in a circle around the bald spot.
Tonsure was mandatory for any Excess who wished to seek employment with an imperial family in space. It signaled that they’d converted to the Helionic faith of the nobility, or at least pretended to. If they were accepted as employees, they then received a tattoo of the family sigil on the bald patch, and from then on they had to display the sigil until they were dismissed.
There was something about the way they looked at the Matriarch, at me, that warned me there was no fondness here. They had to resent their position, forced by the Grandiloquy monopoly on technology to adopt an unwanted religion, to serve for survival. I reminded myself that these Excess had all been thoroughly screened for Partisan leanings, so they shouldn’t be a threat. Partisans, after all, were those planet dwellers among the Excess who believed they would be better off freed from the Empire. They objected to the Grandiloquy’s suppression of knowledge. Being a Partisan was the most dangerous treason possible, and one of Partisan leanings would never be allowed so close to the Impyrean heir.
The Excess didn’t bow or kneel. They stood straight and stared back at us as the Matriarch inspected them. Some glanced uneasily at the Servitors carrying my belongings. It was well known that most Excess disliked Servitors.
The Matriarch favored them with a stiff smile and a greeting. “Hello,” she said. “It is good to see you. Show me your sigils.” Then, “Please.”
That must have been a hard word for her to say. She never needed to use it with anyone at the fortress.
The Excess dipped their heads to display the sun-rising-from-behind-a-planet tattoo that served as the Impyrean family sigil. I saw fists curl, jaws stiffen. Some of the employees looked at one another as the Matriarch checked each of them for the sigil, and a prickling moved up my spine. Resentment hummed thick on the air.
I’d been puzzled earlier, wondering why the Matriarch bothered hiring Excess as an escort to the Chrysanthemum. They’d struck me as troublesome. Living human beings weren’t necessary for anything, after all. Machines could be used to control a ship, to navigate, and even to repair the machines that controlled ships and navigated. Machines were used to fight wars, to develop new medicines, to contrive treatments. That was the reason humans didn’t need to know how the machines operated, or the science behind their construction. The system sustained itself.
“We use employees because the Excess are expensive and perilous, Nemesis,” the Matriarch had said. “Power over a machine is a given. Power over Servitors is natural if you are rich enough to purchase some. Power over the will of a member of the Excess, though—people who serve you because you have purchased their loyalty, and serve you perhaps against their inclinations or their personal liking—why, that’s the most dangerous and unpredictable power of all. It attests to our strength as a family when we have a retinue of employees to escort you to the Chrysanthemum. If you didn’t have employees in your escort, those at court might begin to whisper that this family couldn’t afford them, or worse, control them. You will dismiss them from your service as soon as you’ve been presented to the Emperor.”
Now the Matriarch finished her inspection. “Thank you, employees. I’m sure you’ll serve my daughter well.” She turned to me and reached out her hands. “Be safe, my daughter. May you find your way in hyperspace. Try not to die.”
I took her hands, sank to my knees, and pressed her knuckles to my cheeks. “I will try.” Then, that word, so strange and alien on my lips: “Mother.”
We locked eyes, the Matriarch’s sharp gaze and my own, for a split second as our mutual conspiracy unfolded. And then we took leave of each other. The employees cleared the way to admit me onto their borrowed starship. The appointed Servitors of my retinue followed behind me, hauling trunks of clothing and other possessions as befitted Sidonia Impyrean on her journey to the Chrysanthemum.
If I didn’t have superior hearing, I might not have caught a few whispers the Excess exchanged as the airlock sealed, things they thought I would never hear:
“That’s a callous good-bye,” someone said. “Guess she won’t miss her daughter much.”
“I’m telling you, aristos are cold-blooded. They don’t feel things like normal people do. Too many genetic mods over the centuries.”
I didn’t betray what I heard, but the words almost made me smile—an impulse that surprised me, because humor didn’t come naturally to me. The simple fact was, these Excess really had no idea how callous and genetically modified I truly was.
I had only two goals going forward: to fool people into thinking I was Sidonia, and of course, to try not to die.
9
I SPENT the voyage confined in my chambers with the Servitors, reviewing everything I’d learned about the Imperial Court. I could imagine Donia pacing restlessly, waiting for the moment my ship left hyperspace and I could send her a message again.
I made myself lie in bed for eight hours just like Donia would. I made myself
eat as much as Donia required. I fought the urge to move, move, and somehow get my muscles working.
It was easy forswearing exercise back when I’d been weakened by the muscle reducers. Now I felt like I was going to burst with the energy I wasn’t using. I dared not indulge, or I’d undo all the work I’d put into shrinking.
Sidonia had always told me space was vast beyond comprehension, but I hadn’t understood it until now. We were moving through hyperspace at an incomprehensible speed and our journey still took weeks. We were traversing but a sliver of the known galaxy. Outside the window loomed a void of darkness without stars.
Things occasionally went wrong in hyperspace. It was a rare but horrifying event for the Empire when a starship broke apart in hyperspace, and in years past, the Emperor always recognized the tragedy and issued orders for a galaxy-wide mourning period. As the tragedies grew more common, though, they became more of a secret. Terrors to hush, suppress. Senator von Impyrean believed the disasters took place because the starships were growing too old.
Such disasters didn’t merely kill the people onboard the ships, they damaged space itself. A death zone would form in that area of space, which devoured any starship or planetary body near it. It was called “malignant space.”
And malignant space seemed all the more threatening to me when I stood here, staring out into unending black, knowing at any minute something could go wrong and leave us to the same fate.
The drop out of hyperspace came as a relief. It was abrupt: the darkness simply snapped away, and light poured into the windows as we ripped into the sextuplet star system where the Chrysanthemum awaited.
There was a knock at the door, and in poured several of the employees. “Grandeé Impyrean, we’ve reached the Chrysanthemum. They’ve authorized us to approach.”
“Good.” Then, “Thank you,” I added, remembering the Excess valued pointless courtesies.
The employees glanced at one another, and then the man in front ventured, “Do you mind if we watch from your window?”
I had one of the few view ports on the ship, as was my due.
I stepped aside so the Excess could join me in watching the approach to the Chrysanthemum. “Very well.”
The starship jostled violently as the gravitational forces kicked in. The window flooded with the blinding glare of three pairs of binary stars, all orbiting the same gravity center.
Soon a dark mass began to emerge against the backdrop of blinding white, and the ship shook its way through a gauntlet of charged weaponry floating through space, spread through the system like teeth waiting to tear into us.
“My God, we’re actually here,” murmured one of the woman employees. “We’re going to see it.”
The others nodded in awed silence. The vessel shook lightly about us the whole approach. The six-star system had such chaotic gravitation forces that there was only a narrow channel of space safe enough for incoming ships. If a great armada ever tried to attack, one of the employees explained to another, they’d have to fly in virtually single file, or get ripped apart by the stars in this system before they could approach.
“Who would ever try to attack?” I asked them.
They looked at me, surprised, since I hadn’t spoken to them of my own initiative yet. Then the answer occurred to me: other imperial families.
Families like the Impyreans.
These defenses stopped any notion they might have of sweeping in and cutting off the head of the Empire by killing the Domitrian royals.
The employees knew better than to say that out loud. The man just laughed with discomfort and pointed out the window. “Well, obviously no one would.”
We trembled past thousands of energy panels and stationary weapons, and then the first pylon of the Chrysanthemum slid into view. A murmur of awe stole through the employees at the sight of the Empire’s greatest structure.
The Chrysanthemum was shaped like the flower for which it had been named. It was made of thousands of vessels that joined up in the very center, where the largest heliosphere in the Empire loomed. The centermost sector was made up of smaller, gently curved pylons about a great living space. It was a single vessel called the Valor Novus and it served as the domain of the imperial royals and visiting high officials. It also contained the Senate chambers and war rooms. All of the longer pylons were part of connecting vessels, branching out from that central starship and fanning out kilometers into space from the interior.
The Chrysanthemum in itself was massive enough to exert a gravity force without any artificial help. Every section could separate from the whole, making it possible to disassemble the entire imperial center into two thousand individual vessels.
The history I’d hastily read and the lessons I’d learned over the last few months all rang in my head, and I couldn’t help thinking of what I was doing: I was a Diabolic ready to march into the heart of the Empire, where my very existence merited death. I was going to pretend to be the daughter of the Great Heretic Senator before a court of politicians who wished to destroy him. I had to deceive the minds capable of ruling over a place that looked like this, and if I failed, Sidonia might follow through on her threat and die along with me.
There was a dancing in my stomach that I hadn’t felt in many years.
I knew at once what it had to be: fear.
Do not tromp, but glide gracefully like a swan. . . .
Sutera nu Impyrean’s words drifted back to me as the strongest of my Servitors struggled to heave up the ceremonial gown I needed for the entrance to the Emperor’s presence. There were employees waiting by the door to escort me, so I didn’t dare relieve the Servitors of the burden.
Ceremonial gowns were intricate garments woven of metal. They compressed unmercifully about the waist, and consisted of enough gold to weigh twice as much as the Grande or Grandeé wearing it. The ceremonial gown required an underskirt consisting of an exosuit—thin metal bands that clasped the limbs and spine and served as a mechanized skeleton to do all the heavy lifting.
With my superior strength, I could manage without it, but again, I had to put on a show of weakness I didn’t have. So I told the Servitors to hold it up for me, playing the perfect imperial heir letting Servitors assist me in fastening the ceremonial garb about me. The cool metal enclosed my skin.
Once I was wearing the elaborate outfit, I told a Servitor to hand me the controls to the stilts in my hair. With a flick, I rearranged my locks in a series of elaborate braids, and waited as precious gems were woven in between the strands by another Servitor.
I surveyed the effect in the mirror. I didn’t recognize this person staring back, tall and narrow, gleaming in the ceremonial gown, raven hair pleated and bejeweled, her skin a clear bronze lit flatteringly wherever Sutera nu Impyrean had pigmented it.
Only the nose remained of Nemesis dan Impyrean.
I touched it to remind myself that I was still me, aware of the employees shifting their weight in the doorway, eager to get on with it.
“I’m ready,” I spoke to the air.
I’d have an escort of six employees and a tail of eight Servitors behind me for my walk from the Valor Novus’s docking bay to the presence chamber. As the future Senator von Impyrean, I was important enough for the Emperor to receive in person—even in disgrace.
Whether he’d receive me with an immediate execution . . . that remained to be seen.
10
EVEN WITH the exosuit, gliding gracefully like a swan was tricky beneath hundreds of pounds of metal, mostly because Sutera had also stressed the importance of keeping a serene, relaxed countenance while doing so. Being serene and relaxed was as unnatural to me as humor.
I forced myself to stare straight ahead as my escort led the way, though my eyes and my instincts wanted me to survey everything, everyone in the Valor Novus. This vessel was the centerpiece of the Chrysanthemum, the largest in size, and
attached directly to the massive heliosphere. At one point, I couldn’t resist peering overhead, and what I saw stopped me in my tracks.
Open sky.
The room was so large, the blue tint of artificial atmosphere drowned out my view of the overhead windows and ceiling. One pair of binary suns shone down through what had to be windows I couldn’t see, and for a disconcerting moment, I felt like I had somehow ended up on a planet, not on a ship. Never before had I stood in a room where the ceiling was not visible. None of my survival skills and instincts had been cultivated for such an open and endless space. The confinement of the ceremonial gown began to grow stuffier, tighter.
The employees were looking at me questioningly, so I forced myself to move, step by step, and ignore that yawning illusion of sky. Then the great doors before me parted and I was admitted to the presence chamber of the Emperor.
All the anxiety within me calmed as my eyes adjusted to the presence chamber, as the multitudes of people came into view. They parted to clear a path to the very front of the room by the great, yawning windows overlooking four of the system’s stars, and I knew with a glance which great personage was Emperor Randevald von Domitrian, because the eyes not focused on me were trained on him, including those of his mother, Cygna Domitrian—just to the right of him.
First, the Grandiloquy gait.
My employees moved to the side as well, clearing room for me to close the distance to the Emperor. Three steps, kneel. Just as Sutera nu Impyrean had instructed, I raised my eyes each time my hands touched my heart, and looked at the large man with long blond hair that trailed down about his shoulders like a mantle.
The journey to the Emperor’s feet felt endless, and whispers and murmurs formed a sea of noise rippling about me as the other Grandiloquy watched. There would be time to assess them all later. For now my focus was the single man who could determine whether I would live or die.