The Empress

  I shook my head. Pasus had confiscated all but one of the Hera’s synthesizers, and I was fairly certain he was monitoring that to make sure I wasn’t trying to get my hands on a Venalox substitute or an explosive.

  I yanked on the rope to test it. It didn’t break when I pulled it, but that meant very little at my present strength. “This is enough for me to tie Tyrus to me.”

  Neveni’s gaze flickered. “You should use that knot I showed you and tie yourself to the wall. Let him hang on to you.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s strong enough.”

  “You don’t know if you’re strong enough,” she pointed out, an edge in her voice.

  “I’ll find out soon enough,” I told her.

  “I, uh, I think you need to run this whole thing by him. In advance. If you get a chance.”

  “Of course.” But that was a big “if.”

  I’d begun tying the knot to hold the rope about my thigh, but Neveni waved my hands away, then set about doing that elaborate tie of her own that left one end of the rope flopping out, ready to give with a light pull.

  “Thank you,” I told her sincerely, and eased my robe back into place.

  We just considered each other for several heartbeats. She’d been crackling with determination ever since she’d broken out of her stupor, but Neveni still appeared a shadow of herself. Too thin, like she’d been hollowed out on the inside. She put on a brief smile that I knew was entirely for my benefit.

  “Are you nervous at all?” she said.

  “No point to nerves. This succeeds and we are free, or it fails and I will die.” I considered her thoughtfully. “And you . . .”

  “I’m not nervous. Worst-case scenario, this fails, I’m discovered, and I die, and I don’t care about that.”

  “I won’t apologize for saving your life.”

  I turned to leave, but Neveni said, “Nemesis, for whatever it’s worth, thank you for saving me. You’re a better friend to me than I think I can ever be to you.”

  I’d saved her life, I’d only struck her once in the grand total of our acquaintance, and I’d been fairly patient with her. “Yes. I am an excellent friend, aren’t I? Strange that you’re the only one I have.”

  Neveni laughed. “Very strange.” She leaned forward, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “See you on the other side.”

  • • •

  The Laudatory generally took place well before the Forenight.

  The Laudatory was the beginning of a formal engagement. It often bound two Grandiloquy who’d never met each other, much less had sex. The vicar would begin the thirty days by administering hormonal stimulants to sync the pair’s bodies. Each morning, the engaged would formally meet under the influence of mood-elevating narcotics so they might associate each other with pleasant feelings.

  In the evenings, they undertook other bonding experiences: shared psychedelics to nurture spiritual bonds, shared amphetamines to complete a detailed task together (generally, a thorough preparing of their future bedchamber). Stimulants so they might have extensive discussions into the small hours of the nights, sedatives so they might experience their first shared slumber. Then, Forenight: when the vicar gave them the powerful aphrodisiac Fireskiss.

  This was when they consummated their relationship.

  Many marriages had been canceled after disappointing Forenights. If a couple could not satisfy each other at the very height of their physical and emotional desire for each other, then they never would. Since Forenights were generally a witnessed event, family and friends often weighed in on the couple’s sexual chemistry as well.

  Since Tyrus and I had already had sex, we were going straight from the Laudatory to Forenight. Unfortunately, even though we were already certain of our chemistry, we would also have surveillance for those who’d like to critique us or offer their input.

  My anointers did not realize I could hear them as they quietly speculated about it during the walk to the Great Heliosphere.

  “. . . bet she’s a brute with him.”

  “Wouldn’t she injure him?”

  “No, I hear she’s harmless right now.”

  “She wouldn’t harm him. Diabolics are very skilled at handling such things . . .”

  I lost interest in their whispers as we headed into the Great Heliosphere, and the positive crowd of anointers for Tyrus fell into silence. I saw Tyrus, dressed in the same robe of white liquisilk that I had. I was painfully aware of the press of the rope bound about my leg. . . . The plan I needed to share with him. Somehow.

  We took our place before Fustian nan Domitrian, and he began his Laudatory. “Normally I would receive contributions from both your families discussing great sexual deeds, but Your Supremacy has no living relatives, and the bride . . . She has a most complicated situation. . . .”

  A snide whisper from Senator von Wallstrom to a companion, “He should go on about the prowess of a synthesizer. . . .”

  Faint giggles that Fustian did not hear. “. . . so instead I will laud the sexual feats of our Domitrian sovereigns, your predecessors, Tyrus. Our first Emperor Sephias was a humble man, bewildered with the power thrust upon him. He treated copulating as a friendly sport to be undertaken with great cheer and vigor . . .”

  Then, Sephias’s daughter. Tyrus’s face bloomed with the same horrified realization I had just reached: Fustian meant to talk about the Domitrian ancestors one-by-one.

  Our anointers swiftly realized it too, because they began to stealthily and then not-so-stealthily escape the room.

  By the time Fustian reached Randevald (having praised many, many Domitrians for “vigor” and described many with the ambiguous word “unconventional”), the Great Heliosphere had hemorrhaged most of the anointers. Including Senator von Pasus.

  “. . . I presided over three Forenights for Randevald in this very heliosphere . . .”

  And with those words, Fustian fell silent, realizing three Forenights and zero marriages could not be cast in anything but a supremely negative light, and it was never a wise idea for someone who was not Domitrian to insult one who was.

  Not only that, but everyone was looking at one of the few anointers still here with us, the Grandeé von Canternella—the late Emperor’s mistress. Her cheeks flushed. “He was creative,” she mumbled.

  Awkward shuffling. Fustian quickly concluded: “And now it is Tyrus von Domitrian’s turn, and we are all eager to exalt in the prowess we’ll witness from these two young lovers.”

  Fustian turned away to retrieve the Fireskiss, and I glanced behind us. “We’ve lost most of our audience,” I told Tyrus. “However will we know if we have sexual chemistry?”

  But Tyrus did not smile. There was nothing but a dark anger to his face. “They’ll return. They won’t miss the event.” His gaze dropped. “But we’ll disappoint them.”

  He tilted his forearm so I could see it, and after a moment, I picked out the slight difference in skin tone from the rest of his arm. I wouldn’t have noticed had he not pointed it out to me. . . . Fake skin to shield him from the Fireskiss.

  It was such a small, unimportant thing, yet his eyes gleamed with an ashen triumph. My chest seemed to grow hollow. Had we truly come back here intending to ban Servitors, to bring back the sciences, to fix this galaxy? And now—reduced to this. To enjoying only victories so small as not being watched on Forenight without our consent.

  Tyrus made a show of succumbing to the Fireskiss. Fustian rubbed it into our wrists, and Tyrus began to breathe harshly, he swayed in place. His gaze riveted to me heatedly.

  He aimed himself for me as though desperate to reach my side as our anointers led us from the Great Heliosphere back to the Emperor’s chamber of the Valor Novus. The anointers did their job and held him back from me.

  We nearly made it.

  Then a few of the anointers who’d stepped out caught up with us. One who returned was a man who had taken to watching Tyrus so closely, he was the only person who could read him so well as I
could.

  “Your Supremacy’s Venalox is within,” Pasus said, and took advantage of the turn of Tyrus’s head toward him to seize his chin, keep it there.

  “Don’t,” Tyrus said, jerking back from his grip.

  Fustian nan Domitrian tugged at Pasus’s sleeve, and whispered, “Best not to touch him with the Fireskiss in his system . . .”

  “He’s faking,” Pasus said. “Are you blind?”

  “What are you . . . You’re imagining things,” Tyrus tried hazily. He reached for me . . . but Pasus’s hands fell to his shoulders, pulled him back.

  “Did you bribe someone to adulterate it?”

  “Best not touch me right now,” Tyrus said between his teeth.

  “My touch is much the same as always because you . . . What? Took an anxiolytic to nullify it in advance? What?”

  Tyrus glared back at him. “Let. Me. Go.”

  Pasus lifted his hands, but dropped his voice to a dangerous whisper: “You know exactly how much I value your personal dignity. Do you really want me to check in front of everyone—in front of her—whether you are lying to me?”

  Her. Me.

  Tyrus’s eyes closed. Then he viciously dragged his nails over his forearm, scoured a gash in the fake skin.

  “Clever boy,” Pasus said. He beckoned over Fustian and administered the Fireskiss to Tyrus himself, rubbing it directly into the veins of his neck.

  And so even this small victory—even this tiniest of them—was taken away from him.

  • • •

  I awaited him in the bedroom, not wishing to see him succumb as I’d witnessed far too many times with Venalox.

  I unwound the rope from my leg, slid it under the bedsheets. No one would bother looking through the surveillance while I was alone in here. But once we were together . . .

  The door slid open and raucous voices washed in. Tyrus stood there gripping the doorway, his face hazy. Desire scorched him, but all I could think of was his determination in the Great Heliosphere not to give our watchers what they wanted. I made up my mind.

  I bolted forward, yanked him inside and shut the door to block those eyes. Tyrus swept me up in his arms. “Nem . . .”

  Then his lips were on mine, insistent, hard.

  “Tyrus, the . . . ,” I said, pulling back.

  “Mmm?” His arms banded about me, hauled me against him. There was a roughness and urgency to it all. The warmth of his body pressed up against mine made my blood race. If I still vastly overpowered him, this wouldn’t make me uneasy. With a forceful push, I escaped his grip.

  “This way,” I said, trying to move us toward the attached washroom.

  His eyes were fever bright, hands tugging me back as I dragged us forward, but I bundled him into the next room as he sought anything close to him with his lips, with his touch. We stumbled against the sink, and he swept me up onto it, hooking my legs about him.

  “Tyrus, you didn’t want . . .”

  “Love you,” he said breathlessly, kissing me desperately.

  I evaded his kiss, shoving his head to the side. He was unbalanced, so I made it past him into the bathing unit. He caught up to me as I stood there looking about, confused.

  “Where’s a tub? A shower?” I said to Tyrus. This chamber appeared filled with rocks.

  “So beautiful . . . ,” he replied, not very helpfully, drawing me back into his arms.

  “Turn on the water!” I called to the air, trying the standard command.

  That did the trick. Water gushed from the walls, streaming over the rocks in foaming torrents, pooling in the basin that resembled a small pond. The walls shifted from dull gray to an image of stormy skies. The ceiling shed rain droplets upon us, and they sizzled in the steaming water.

  So this was meant to seem like the outdoors. “That accounts for the rocks,” I told Tyrus.

  “Rocks . . . ,” he moaned as though I’d said something intensely provocative. Anything I spoke right now likely sounded that way.

  I changed to cold-water mode. A shimmering wall of heat bloomed up from the water, and the walls shifted their image from storm clouds to clear blue skies. I twisted about, since Tyrus had his arms around me, and pressed him up against the edge of the water. “Tell me if it’s cold.” I had to repeat it a few times before he dangled his fingers into the water, the other one roving over my skin wherever he could reach.

  “Too cold. Like ice.”

  “That works.” I shoved him headlong into it.

  He surfaced with a shout, but the icy water had awoken him like a well-delivered slap. He blinked at me, hair plastered to his head, eyes wide.

  “Better?” I said.

  His face flushed. “Better.” He dipped down into the water, emerged, soaked all over, and said, “Much better.”

  “How long will this Fireskiss last?”

  “Give me ten minutes. I’ll be able to keep myself in check then. Nemesis, did I . . . did I do anything untoward?”

  “You told a Diabolic you loved her and that she was beautiful. Most of the galaxy would deem that untoward.”

  He didn’t smile. Intently, almost angrily: “Did. I. Hurt. You?”

  “You did nothing wrong, Tyrus.”

  “I despise every aspect of this,” he said hollowly. “Some days I feel I am going to lose my sanity.”

  I cast my gaze about us. Pasus would be most vexed I’d thwarted the evening’s entertainment, yet now that I surveyed this bathing unit with its gushing water, its fizzing waterfall . . . “Tyrus, I have something to tell you as soon as you can trust yourself closer to me.”

  I could see that interested him. He said, “Just . . . just stay out of the water, I’ll . . .” He drew a jagged breath when I leaned down toward him, but didn’t grab me.

  So I whispered it in his ear:

  “Tomorrow we escape.”

  32

  NEVENI AND I had worked it out. It was a long shot, but it was our last hope.

  Tomorrow morning, Tyrus and I would usher in our wedding day with a standard blood sacrifice. This would take place on the Tigris, in the arena. The sacrifice Pasus had arranged was meant to be an insult to me: we would preside over a battle to the death between Anguish and Hazard.

  Pasus meant to rub it in my face, their subhuman status—watching them die for sport like any other animal.

  But I’d figured out something about that blood sacrifice. The Grandiloquy would not crowd forward in hopes of seeing two ordinary men battle to the death. They wanted to see two full-strength Diabolics.

  That meant their neural suppressors would need to be off.

  And mine as well.

  We would be on the weakest of the Domitrian starships, surrounded by the masters who commanded all the other vessels of the Chrysanthemum, and for a few hours more, I still had control of the most powerful Domitrian ship.

  We would escape.

  Or we would die.

  • • •

  Shaezar nan Domitrian was due to arrive with his servants at 0800. Tyrus and I rose from bed. We’d continued to vex anyone watching by simply passing the night in the sleep that I knew Tyrus desperately needed. . . . Yet whenever my eyes opened, I found him just watching me with a strange peace on his face.

  “Please tell me you’ve gotten some sleep,” I said.

  “I’ve gotten some sleep.”

  “Tell me you’re not just telling me that.”

  He laughed. It was a genuine, pure sound, and I curled up against him, never wishing to let him go. He wouldn’t even have taken the Venalox, he was so invigorated by our plan. I convinced him to do so. We didn’t need him in withdrawal during the event ahead.

  As he garbed us, Shaezar nan Domitrian made polite conversation, “How was Forenight?”

  “Terrible,” Tyrus said briskly.

  “Yes. We mean to call it all off.” We both kept very severe faces, but then our eyes met, and we were both smiling. Shaezar had grown very tense, and now he realized—and gave us a polite laugh.

/>   Metal was a social taboo in the arena, so we were both clad in black leather. Tyrus’s was a sweeping tailcoat, and mine formed one seamless bodysuit that dipped into a deep V to expose my mark of personhood. Effervescent essence was carefully applied to give my features a striking glow, and my hair was stripped down to a platinum shade not too much darker than my true one.

  Tyrus, by his own choice, appeared much as always. His coppery hair was combed back, his garb obsidian like mine, to contrast with the scepter Pasus would bring for him to wield before the crowd. That meaningless instrument of power was almost a mockery of us at this point. I hoped for that to change.

  “Any doubts?” Tyrus said to me intently.

  An observer would mistake this for a talk about the wedding. “None. You?”

  “None whatsoever,” he said, his face hard. He took my hand, and then we strode out to meet our fates.

  • • •

  The arena of the Tigris was jam-packed today. The blood sacrifice for a royal wedding was a major event. So many of these decorated, foppish Grandiloquy had battled one another for the finest seats around the animal-fighting arena. The second most desired area was the one that allowed a full view of my reaction to the sight. What a humiliation they were hoping to see!

  Tyrus’s expression was unpleasant as he observed the highly ranked Grandiloquy who’d made the unusual seating choice of viewing us more closely than the animals. He told me, very quietly, “Don’t tell Anguish and Hazard what we planned.”

  “But if we don’t . . .”

  “There will be no warning.” His eyes were hard. “They deserve none.”

  It was the same thing Neveni had suggested, when I’d figured out the part the Diabolics would play in this plan. I’d refused her, too. “We have to warn them.”

  Tyrus drew a breath, released it. He clearly wished to argue, but then the crowds about us grew dense, and the path cleared on either side of us narrowed. We were surrounded by Grandiloquy, all too close to us. I was only vaguely aware of imperial processional music, of recording bots buzzing overhead.

  I spotted a single person in the crowd who did not look excited for the sacrifice.

  I slowed.

  “One minute,” I said to Tyrus, and I felt him stare after me as I crossed the distance to the boy whose father he’d killed.