The Empress

  28

  I’D NEVER been ill. I’d never seen Sidonia suffer anything worse than a cold. The most dreadful illness I’d glimpsed was Tyrus after that first visit to Lumina, and I’d mostly avoided him during that time. Now, I saw signs of fever in the bright eyes, the waxen cast to his face.

  Tyrus dragged his gaze to mine, and said raggedly, “Nemesis, before this, when we discussed my plan . . .”

  I knew what plan he meant. His suggestion he’d handle this substance. “Yes?”

  “I may have overestimated myself,” Tyrus said. “Just a bit.”

  More than a bit, and we both knew it, but I managed a smile. “I know, Tyrus.”

  His smile was loving, hopeless. Then he keeled over and threw up.

  My first instinct even now was to recoil from the sight of sickness, though this time, I knew it wasn’t a virus. It was just a human body that had accustomed itself to a poison, now feeling a lack of what it had grown to expect.

  A most dreadful lack.

  Soon he couldn’t hold down so much as water without it coming back up. A constant tremor rocked his arms and legs, and I had to help him move to keep the cramps at bay. He wasn’t at liberty to leave the Colossus, so we roved the expanse of the garden within.

  Tyrus stumbled over his words as he tried to explain the narcotic to me. “It’s like I’m submerged in a swamp. Everything is still there, but there’s this thick sludge blocking my every sense. . . .”

  “Go on,” I said, clutching Tyrus’s arm with both of mine to keep him walking.

  This was the first occasion I’d truly noticed the problem of the neural suppressor, because stars, he was so heavy. Normally I could outright carry him, and today he was only leaning some of his weight on me, yet it made me stagger.

  “Then it clears, just a bit,” Tyrus murmured, “and I hear myself talking and see myself eating or moving and I realize—I’ve been doing this all along. And I’m still doing it. I am asked to sign this, or affirm that, and this person I am not quite inhabiting is so pleased to be able to accommodate any request. Then I surface entirely and stare aghast at what I’ve just handed over, but before I can voice my doubts, I am lost. The agreement about Lumina . . . You did something. I wasn’t sure—but I knew you were in danger, and I surfaced. . . .”

  “You tried to walk away rather than surrender. I saw it.”

  “And then nothing,” Tyrus whispered. “Like that, everything disappears again.”

  “Pasus claims the inhaled form is milder.”

  “I should hope so,” he muttered. “I haven’t anything else to give.”

  “Titles. Perhaps the Hera.”

  He closed his eyes a moment. “I assure you, he hasn’t forgotten that one. I’ve given him the title to it.”

  “It’s mine. You can’t do that.”

  “It becomes communal property when we wed, and . . . and on the bright side, the Senator now has an incentive to wish our union to happen soon.”

  “There’s no end to his avarice,” I muttered.

  “I’m sorry, Nemesis.”

  This wasn’t his fault; the apology was foolish.

  Though I still thought of the ship as Cygna’s, a surge of unexpected possessiveness swept over me at the idea of giving it up. Pasus would not have it.

  Somehow, I had to preserve it.

  Despair chased that thought. How? I couldn’t preserve anything else. Tyrus’s whole body shook now as though hit with an electric current, and his misery blared from his face, though he was still trying to hide it.

  “Tyrus, you’ll need to beg him for the powdered dose. Just get it done. Look at the alternative: he will let you suffer through two days of misery, inject you with another dose, and then you’ll repeat it again. Put aside your pride.”

  He let out a slow, shaky breath. “It’s not pride. I’ve always done this, and if I must be a pathetic, hopeless, abject beggar before all the great in this realm, I will do so. I can go to him on bended knee and show them all an Emperor in total subjugation. He means the Grandiloquy to understand he is their new master by exhibiting himself as mine, and I can endure it. It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?” I stroked his forehead, the skin so hot against my hand.

  “This feeling, the . . . the need to end it . . .” His eyes were haunted. “I can pretend, but some part of this won’t be pretending. I’m ready to kneel and beg for it. And next time? The next?”

  I nodded. “Then . . . then perhaps we should think of my suggestion.”

  He looked at me.

  “Shall we return to that?” I said.

  Not just to the suggestion—but to the Sacred City. He’d been confident enough to dismiss my idea of returning to the Interdict before, yet now . . . Now he was turning it over in his mind.

  The Interdict was the only ally we had left. He was the only person whose voice was too powerful to drown out. We just had to get back to him, and then take him out here with us.

  Then Tyrus began to laugh. I frowned at him.

  “Do you remember suggesting that originally?” he murmured, smiling oddly. “Think. You wished him to see the Empire. I chose to scare him with the black hole. And the reason I opted for that is . . .” He started laughing again. “It’s because I thought your idea would take far too much time.” Then he had tears of laughter in his eyes, and I remained silent.

  At the look on my face, his smile slipped away.

  “Nemesis, I . . . I’ve completely lost track of the days. Do you know . . . The timing . . . We were lucky the first time.”

  “I know the windows,” I said, barely moving my lips.

  “Say no more,” Tyrus said.

  Everything we said, every syllable spoken within the walls of the Colossus, was likely being overheard.

  But yes, I knew the gravital windows. It was a twenty-three-day journey straight there, a day in and out of the system, and from the schedule of gravital windows, we had a little over two weeks to leave here if we meant to escape in time.

  “For how long does it close next?” Tyrus said, keeping it vague enough for only my understanding. “Remind me. I’m still hazy.”

  “Three years.”

  He cursed softly. “This one or never, then.” He swallowed, and I knew he was fighting down the nausea again. “I don’t know how I will . . . think after I am dosed again. Even if I can, I am watched and I am overheard everywhere.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s why I won’t be allowed on the Hera.” He looked at me. “The very walls of that vessel repel distant eyes and ears.”

  My ship was safe from surveillance, then. Good. “You gave me the best.”

  “Always,” he said.

  “I will make do.” I gripped his hand. “Trust in me.”

  He nodded. Gratitude washed over his countenance, though that terror he was too raw to hide from me remained.

  I stroked his face, the only relief I could offer. He leaned his forehead against mine, and my mind raced. Such a great promise I’d made to him. I’d do the thinking and planning for us. I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to start.

  There were murky tendrils of ideas, but I didn’t know where they led, or what I’d find on the other end. But the fact was, Tyrus could not act, and my mind was perfectly clear. It had to be me. I had to save us or we would not be saved.

  So I would do it.

  I would save us.

  When he keeled over, sick yet again, I made my first decision as the one of us who had to plan. “Now. I am taking you to the presence chamber to speak to Pasus exactly as he wished. I won’t allow you to suffer for no reason.”

  He rubbed at his face miserably. “Do me . . . one favor.”

  “Anything.”

  He spoke softly: “Don’t watch.”

  I smoothed my hand through his hair and nodded. I wouldn’t. My eyes wouldn’t glimpse his public humiliation. At least, any more of it.

  • • •

  Pasus had indeed been eavesdrop
ping and had manufactured reasons to summon as many as possible to the presence chamber. He waited as a petitioner might before the thrones, but his hands were linked behind his back in a calm, masterful stance. As Tyrus approached him, I trained my eyes out the window, gazing toward the Hera, that beautiful and powerful asteroid ship I’d vowed never to surrender.

  “Senator von Pasus, please give me the Venalox.”

  “Wait a moment,” Pasus said, then he withdrew Tyrus’s scepter, and handed it to him. “Now, repeat that.”

  Tyrus bristled. He looked down at the scepter, the mockery of having to hold it and say this. “Please, Senator von Pasus, I would like the Venalox.”

  “Oh, but you were so resistant before,” Pasus said, his voice loud.

  Tyrus had to do better than that. He dropped to his knees, and out they poured, the pleading, the begging, just what Pasus wanted to see. I couldn’t put my hands over my ears, so I made myself focus on the Hera with all its power. Even a sneak attack and an onslaught of automated mines hadn’t dented her. The gravital forces in the Transaturnine System were nothing to her. She would be our liberation.

  “. . . so gracious and kind of you to do this . . . ,” Tyrus was saying.

  No, this ship was mine. I would not give her up. I would use her and I would fix all of this.

  Murmurs were sounding about me, and I shifted my gaze to see the sheer pleasure radiating from Pasus’s face as everyone—all who had the slightest bit of power in this Empire—beheld the Emperor debased at his feet.

  “Oh, you dear boy. I hate to see you in pain. But of course, you may have this, Your Supremacy,” purred Pasus, uncorking the phial.

  Tyrus began to rise, but Pasus’s hand fell on his shoulder, telling him to stay right where he was. Tyrus reached for the phial, but Pasus said a sharp, “No.”

  And I’d told him I wouldn’t watch, and I hadn’t meant to, but now I saw the tremor of raw hatred pass through Tyrus’s body as Pasus maintained his hold on the phial.

  “Go ahead,” Pasus said.

  Tyrus leaned forward, just his head, and inhaled from the phial right in Pasus’s hand. I watched his face, trying to gauge how strong this was, how coherent he would be. The narcotic set in and a haze washed over his features.

  He sagged forward, and Pasus balanced him with a hand, then said to the watchers, “It’s safe to say the Emperor and I are reconciled at last.”

  Laughter. It seared my ears, and perhaps it was polite laughter, perhaps it was the sycophantic sort one offered to a Senator who now ruled over all in this room. . . . But I did not forgive it. My hands twitched to rip out the vocal cords of everyone I saw. I wanted nothing more than to ram the Hera through this ship and . . .

  Then my gaze shot to that beautiful asteroid ship, my very blood electrified with the thrill of the idea. This one was more than a tendril; it cut right through the murky darkness until I could see a way forward. Hope blazd within me. I clutched it like a shield about my heart as Pasus reminded Tyrus to scoop up the scepter he’d dropped . . . then paraded his Emperor about here and there, like a tiger trained to jump through a burning loop.

  Tyrus and I were in a bind, but we would not be for long, and when we turned on Pasus, nothing in this galaxy would save him. I would make sure of it.

  29

  IN THE Great Heliosphere, Pasus stood in the next ring outward. He held the scepter in his hands idly—bearing it “for the Emperor,” as he always said. He was staring fixedly at my chest. Another man, and I’d have assumed it was lust. With him, it was the concentric suns of the Interdict that trapped his gaze. My mark of personhood by the leader of the faith he wholeheartedly believed, and yet had willfully disregarded for his own convenience.

  How did he justify it to himself? Truly?

  In any case, Fustian nan Domitrian stopped before Tyrus, who hadn’t had a dose of Venalox since the night before and looked like he hadn’t slept in his entire life. There was one dose in the morning, which meant he began to look miserable by evening—before he received the other. By the time morning came about, he was already sick and uncomfortable again. It was a wretched torment that waxed and waned without stopping. He rubbed his arms as the vicar drizzled oil over his head, then Fustian stopped by me.

  I waited, my chin lifted.

  Fustian paused a moment, then blessed me.

  The Interdict had decided for him, and it seemed that was enough. As the lights were extinguished to adjourn the service, Pasus swept forward, clasped Tyrus by the shoulder, and almost took mine, then thought better of it and settled his other hand on Tyrus’s other shoulder.

  “Vicar Primus, the Emperor and his future Empress should wed soon.”

  Fustian nan Domitrian nodded thoughtfully. “The issue of personhood is no longer. What of heirs? There is still the . . . genetic difficulty. Obviously, any child will have to be . . . entirely human.”

  Until this, Tyrus hadn’t paid the slightest bit of attention to anything. He’d been staring at Pasus with bloodshot eyes, waiting for his morning dose. Now his gaze snapped to the vicar. “I’m not having children.”

  “Of course he is,” Pasus said smoothly. “And we will take whatever is human of Nemesis, for surely there is something or other, then the Emperor’s DNA. . . .”

  “I would sooner castrate myself than produce an heir to this situation!” Tyrus roared.

  “The Emperor does not know what he is saying,” Pasus said. “As for . . . Nemesis, whatever is inhuman in her genome can simply be substituted with parts of mine.”

  Tyrus broke into laughter. A strange, high sort that made him double over, and I just glared at Pasus, who seemed unappreciative of the laughter.

  “This is precious,” Tyrus said, wiping away tears. Or maybe sweat. He looked ragged. “The three of us will have a baby together. All the Senator’s dreams will come true.”

  “Does the idea of my DNA repulse you? That’s insulting, Your Supremacy.” Pasus withdrew Tyrus’s next phial of Venalox and considered it. “I would like an apology. Or perhaps I will smash this next dosage.”

  Tyrus’s eyes were feverish with hatred, but the need overtook him and I had to look away. He wouldn’t want me to see this; I didn’t want to see it.

  Craving had a will all its own, and it seemed to colonize his mind, driving out whatever else had once been in its place. I was sure of it, because Tyrus would never willingly place his lips on Pasus’s boots, or endure the hand that stroked through his hair as he was rewarded for it.

  “In any case,” Pasus said, gesturing with the scepter (Tyrus was out of the conversation, sitting on the floor, propped up against Pasus’s leg and totally lost to the Venalox), “We are arranging a great spectacle on short notice, but I do want His Supremacy’s new bride exhibited for all the vicars in the Empire now that she has the Most Ascendant One’s approval. The vicars will likely feel more flexible when the time comes and I wish to revisit the matter of the scepter.”

  “When will that time be?” said the vicar.

  Pasus’s gaze dropped to the young man below him, and he seemed to be weighing something in his mind. “Not more than a year, I should think. The wedding we can do now. There will be a most magnificent view of the stars in four days. Shall we do it then?”

  “Very well,” said the vicar.

  My heart felt like it was jolted.

  Four . . . four days?

  “Excellent,” Pasus said with a smile. “It’s decided.” To Tyrus, “How wonderful for you!”

  Tyrus gave a low sound in his throat that might’ve been agreement or objection, and I stared down at him, aghast. Four days. I had only four days, and then I would lose the Hera. Pasus would claim it as soon as it passed into Tyrus’s co-possession.

  I couldn’t envision any possible escape without that ship!

  Whatever I did, I had to act as soon as possible.

  • • •

  My thoughts were urgent, darting things, racing this way, that. I’d hatched a tentative pl
an to don a space-sheath, rescue Tyrus from the outside of the ship, and then we’d simply use the Hera to plow straight through anything in our way.

  It was a fine plan—except for the fact that he could no longer be found on the Colossus, somewhere predictable I could plot to reach beforehand.

  Where he stayed now shifted from night to night.

  Tyrus had been wrong about having nothing left to sell. Pasus could offer one very valuable asset on behalf of the Emperor—and it was the Emperor himself. The Domitrians were the foremost family in the Empire, and just by virtue of who he was, Tyrus was a status symbol with a variety of uses.

  His mere presence in a chamber meant there had to be ceremony at his entrance. Tyrus never stuck to that formality unless it was an important occasion, but now that Pasus had assumed the role of proxy Emperor, he insisted that such honors be paid to Tyrus—and Pasus was always there to drink them in as though they were meant only for him.

  Images of Tyrus taken while wearing certain fashions could be distributed to help sell them. Any food, drink, or narcotic he enjoyed could be publicized to market that product as “so fine, the Emperor himself partakes of it.” And of course, any chamber on any starship where Tyrus passed the night soon fell into the annals of that family’s history. Their future guests could luxuriate in the knowledge that they were sleeping in a chamber deemed fit for a galactic Emperor.

  I suspected Pasus shared custody of Tyrus partly to mitigate concerns that he had too much influence over him. He always wore a most uneasy look, passing the next dose of Venalox onto one or the other of the Grandiloquy so they could preside over the Emperor for an evening.