The Empress

  I stared at it. The neural suppressor was off. I’d seen already he could deactivate it in a thought—so I suspected the reverse was likely. Otherwise I’d tear the scepter from his hands and destroy it any way I could. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “To what end?”

  “I’d break your hold over this place.”

  “To leave me defenseless before my enemies?” With a twist of his lips, a bite in his voice, “Again?”

  “No. No, I meant to spirit you away. By force if it were required. I shouldn’t have given it to you. Look what you are doing with this power. Look outside! Look at all the absent faces! And Gladdic . . . He’s innocent. He didn’t even agree to help me!”

  “No,” roared Tyrus, “he didn’t agree—and I would care about that if I gave a damn about him, but I don’t. This is entirely about you. Stars ignite, Nemesis, you are the single person I never expected to betray me!”

  “This was for you.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he warned me. “You once made a very important decision on my behalf that I never agreed to. I’ve had to live with the consequences for years. That is never going to happen again. The unilateral decisions are all mine. I may love you far too much to hurt you for this, but Gladdic von Aton has no such claim. He dies. Watch it happen, and know that this will be repeated with anyone, Nemesis—anyone—you try to use against me. As for the scepter?”

  He looked at it, and with a disdainful flick of his wrist, sent it sailing forward, spinning through the air. A pair of security bots abruptly zipped down and sliced their lasers at it. My every muscle jerked, but the steady beams of the lasers melted the supercomputer.

  “There you go. It is destroyed.” He waved his hand and the bots departed, and my stomach dropped.

  He still commands them.

  “The scepter fires up a link. That’s all. Then it waits until I’m dead so it can link another. Now, I’ve melted it, so there is never going to be another Domitrian to claim it.” He leaned back in his seat, a silent, dispassionate challenge on his face. “Tell me, my love, do you wish to break open my skull? Killing me is the only way you end this now.”

  “No,” I breathed. “I wanted to take the power from you so I could save you.”

  His eyes flashed unpleasantly. “I’ve seen your idea of saving me, and I’ll have none of it. Not ever again. There is no going back. All we can do is move forward.” Then his gazed dropped, releasing me from the chokehold of his scrutiny. “I hope I’ve made my wishes clear. We needn’t ever do this again.”

  “We needn’t do this today. I . . . Tyrus, I see what you are trying to tell me. Let him go. Please.” I stared down at the dancers, my heart pounding. “This isn’t you. Don’t you see, none of this is you? Nova blast me, you killed thousands of people yesterday and that gives you no pause?”

  “I acted out of necessity. I won’t apologize.”

  “You created malignant space! Malignant space, Tyrus. All you once cared about was fixing that!”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. I did. I decided upon it when I had the simplistic mind of a child. I’ve accepted now that the universe has no design, no meaning, no arc toward justice.”

  “You will enforce justice!”

  “Children seek fairness,” he shot back. “I sought out that Excess man I knew to be my father, and then I despised myself for leading the wolves to his door. He died because I’d been forced to tell my uncle that he’d been hiding me. That haunted me. I made sense of it by trying to rationalize the tragedy as one step toward greater good. How much easier, to blame a simple natural phenomenon for destroying it all—rather than to realize my father was a fool who brought his death on himself.”

  I stared at him.

  “They all did. Those Excess who stayed on that planet, knowing what was coming, deluding themselves into thinking they would stop it. . . . I told Arion. I told him, and I wept, and he hugged me. He reassured me it was all going to be fine, and little idiot that I was, I let myself be lulled by his words. It was intoxicating to feel protected.”

  “That . . . that wasn’t foolish, Tyrus. You were never allowed to be a child.” Neither of us had been.

  “I nearly destroyed myself again seeing this galaxy like one!” he said bitterly. “Do you know what I would do in that situation now, Nemesis? I would blow up their oxygen tanks, their water supplies, their granaries. Then if they still refused to leave, I would strand them there to meet the fate they’d chosen. I’ve wasted enough time raging against the wind.”

  “Tyrus, you don’t hear yourself. You don’t see yourself—”

  “You’re the one who isn’t seeing,” he said, suddenly frustrated. He surged out of his seat and floated toward me, planting his arms on either side of me. “You say I committed an atrocity? Well, I would do it again. I may do it again. Because I may have to. I created malignant space. Yes. All that time I devoted to stopping it was a waste! The ability to destroy a star system is a superweapon, and I could do so much with that in my arsenal! And you”—he had fury in his eyes—“have no grounds to condemn me for this. Once you would have done this in my place!”

  “You have no remorse about what you’ve done! That gives you no pause?”

  He gave a wild laugh. “Of course I have none. I have passed years waiting for this. To see the malignant space I created devour my foes . . . That was a time of sweet and glorious ecstacy the likes of which I have never experienced. If their terror in those dying moments was a draft, I would drink of it deep and never tire of the flavor. Why would I feel the slightest remorse?”

  I couldn’t look away from him. He had to be saying this to make his point, to rub it in. Surely he couldn’t mean this.

  “Now, it’s all over,” he said. “It’s done. We are safe. We are secure. We will only stay that way if we move forward as I plan, so that’s what we’ll do. If today I must kill an innocent man so you never seek another to use against me, I will do it. I’ll do it gladly.”

  “And is my distress another draft you could imbibe without quenching your thirst?” I said quietly.

  His hand flew up and for a disbelieving moment, I thought he’d strike me. But his shaking palm hovered just next to my jaw, and did not touch. “I love you to the very depths of my soul,” Tyrus noted quietly, “and sometimes I truly hate you for that.” Then with a push of his arms, he propelled himself away from me, and dropped back toward his seat.

  I stayed there with my back to the wall. This was how it would be. This would set the tone for everything going forward. If I accepted this, I had to accept everything.

  He meant to leave me no choice but to accept it.

  The dance was entering its final act, and I could see that Gladdic had finally been granted freedom of movement. He arched his legs to drive himself as far as possible from the people he knew would soon try to kill him, panic blazing on his face.

  He had to know there was no escape.

  I stared down at Gladdic. Soft, weak, well-meaning, fearful Gladdic. He was just one person. It was just one life. It was just the tiniest fragment of the atrocities yesterday, and yet it was the one that meant everything.

  Tyrus had asked when we’d poisoned Devineé—when was one life taken a death too many? And now I knew the answer.

  It was this one.

  Today.

  “This is being your Empress,” I said to Tyrus. “This is how it will be from this day forward. You mean to kill him and I cannot stop you.”

  Tyrus closed his eyes a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You are amplifying the significance of this. Gladdic dies. We move on. We wake up tomorrow and move on as though this never happened.”

  But that wasn’t me. It wasn’t.

  “Do you recall telling me what it was you loved about me?” I asked him. “You love that I act.”

  And with that, I hurled myself onto the floor to save Gladdic.

  49

  I SHED the steering rings before Tyrus could use them to drag me b
ack, and the dancers were stunned into stillness by the sight of me, carried into their midst by my momentum. I grabbed the first one I encountered, ripped the sword right out of his hands, and told Gladdic, “Get over here!”

  He aimed for me, near to weeping with his gratitude. I only half paid attention to him. I was watching one person.

  For a long moment, in the sudden hush, the Emperor Tyrus stared down after me like a stone effigy. I expected to hear the hum of the neural suppressor activating.

  I did not. I hugged the trembling Gladdic to my back, holding him as close as I could. It wouldn’t stop a security bot from slicing at him with a laser, but I knew Tyrus wouldn’t risk shooting me. . . . And I would be too close to take that risk. One by one, the recording bots sagged down. This whole thing was a propaganda broadcast. I’d just interfered.

  Tyrus glided down before me, like ice. “Remove yourself from the floor. I’ll devise a means of portraying this as part of the performance.”

  “To explain sparing the Immolate?” I said challengingly.

  “No. Desist, Nemesis. This will accomplish nothing.”

  “I disagree. You will pardon him. If you don’t, I will protect him unto death. Against you.”

  He had presented his terms for me, the way he envisioned us moving forward: he wanted me to sit passively by and turn a blind eye to what he did.

  These were my terms.

  For Tyrus had too much power. He wasn’t the person he’d been. I couldn’t let him continue unchecked. I had to know I could stay his hand.

  If I could not, then I would not sit at his side and be his Empress and pretend all was fine. I’d meant to destroy his scepter, to stop him. I couldn’t. So now I would find another way to stop him.

  “Why,” he said between his teeth, “do you care so much for him?”

  “I care for you. That’s why I saved him from you. Tyrus, pardon him.”

  My heart thudded wildly. If I could just do this now, then there was hope. There was hope I could stop him the next time he decided to sweep a mass of players off the board. The next time malignant space would be convenient to deploy, the next time Resolvent Mist was an option, the next time he could simply slice a foe apart with security bots . . . My voice would mean something. He would hear me. He would listen. That’s what I had to establish today—my influence over him. If not today, then I would never have it again.

  Tyrus beckoned a dancer over, took the man’s sword, then gave him an offhanded shove to send him far from us. He raised the blade before him, letting me see its gleam in the bright rays spilling in the window from malignant space.

  “Let me present it to you this way, Nemesis: I’m not going to turn on the neural suppressor. I’m going to let you retain your overwhelmingly powerful strength. So it’s in your hands what you do next—for you see, he dies. At my hand. To stop that, you will have to kill me.”

  No.

  Tyrus didn’t give me more time to think. He surged toward us, lashing out with the blade.

  I thrust Gladdic away from me, far from the blade, and I seized Tyrus’s leg as he propelled himself past me, for I had to rely on momentum outside myself. We neared Gladdic as he rebounded off the wall, and Tyrus drove his sword point toward him. . . .

  I hurled Tyrus away. He hit the wall hard enough for the sword to slip out of his grasp, and I caught it when it rebounded toward me.

  Tyrus recovered. Then—then he beckoned over another of the dancers. I shook my head, but he had another blade in hand. He arched his brows, tilted it toward me in lethal invitation.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Gladdic. Me. Who perishes, Nemesis?” And then he was on me.

  My sword crashed into his, blocking it, but the momentum sent me sailing back from them. Tyrus, undaunted, shifted his arms and legs to stalk after Gladdic as I sank downward, raging with frustration. Then my legs touched the diamond-and-crystalline wall, and I kicked off with a powerful thrust. Just as Tyrus reached Gladdic, I slammed my blade into his. Tyrus’s face contorted with the pain of impact, but he kept hold of the sword.

  He shot toward Gladdic, and I reached out to seize his ankle. . . . But it was a feint, because he whipped about at the last moment, driving a kick into my chest that sent me reeling down toward the clear diamond wall. The wall forced the breath out of me, but I had the presence of mind to shove off even as I tried to fill my lungs.

  The inability to steer was a dreadful handicap, and each time our swords clanged, I flew back across the ball dome. I doggedly kicked off the walls to return, and stopped Tyrus again and again from sinking his blade into Gladdic. Finally, exasperated, Tyrus focused on me, not Gladdic. He kicked himself forward, following me as I was driven back, and then our swords met and his elbow lashed out, pinning me in place against the wall. I grabbed his arm but did not wrench it out of place, did not shatter it.

  How easily, how easily I could break him apart right now if this were anyone else. . . .

  He used his steering rings to crush me then.

  “What do you think will happen here?” he raged. “You can’t stop this! Make your choice!”

  “I am not a vicar! There is no hand or head to choose between, Tyrus. I will fight you to my last breath and keep him alive and I will not kill you! That’s my choice. If you would just trust me—”

  “Trust you?” He smiled bitterly. “As I did on the Tigris?”

  The words stole my breath. The moment seemed to grind to a halt about me as my thoughts spiraled back to that decision, that moment.

  We were floating back from the wall, but all I could see were his pale, shadowed eyes.

  “I made my choice,” Tyrus said quietly. “I would free the woman I most loved and serve those people of my Empire, and it was all I wanted. I trusted you to let me decide, and you knocked me unconscious and left me with them. I chose and you took that from me.”

  My vision darkened a moment as understanding crashed over me, where the trust had been shredded for him. That decision to thrust him into Pasus’s hands, to remove him from danger.

  “I—I couldn’t let you die,” I stuttered.

  “So instead, you left me in the hands of enemies whose relatives I’d just helped kill in massive numbers. What outcome did you envision from that?”

  “I’m sorr—”

  “Do not apologize. You made your choice and chose not to listen to me, and now you ask for the same courtesy you never gave me?” He drew toward me and abruptly seized the blade of my sword. I could see the blood floating out as he tightened his fist, eyes burning into mine. He pulled the gleaming tip to his throat. “This is the choice I’m offering you. It’s the only choice. Kill me. Kill him. If we must battle a century, you are going to make this choice.”

  Let Tyrus murder Gladdic.

  Or kill Tyrus.

  It wasn’t a choice. I released the blade. It floated from my hand.

  His hands closed on my waist. He drew me to him.

  “Tomorrow,” he whispered, “all of this will be the past, and we will move onward.” And we were floating, floating toward the box, and the dancers were heading out onto the floor again. The transmitting devices powered up and resumed the broadcast, and Gladdic’s face grew dumb with terror as he realized his reprieve had ended.

  I looked at Tyrus, a stranger after three years enduring the consequences of a choice I’d taken from him. Three years for this quiet anger to build. A great wave of tenderness welled up within me.

  “Tyrus, I am sorry for what I did,” I murmered.

  Then I struck the Emperor of this galaxy with one abrupt, treasonous swing of my arm, and the momentum was enough to knock him back and send me into the center of the ball dome so all might see, all might hear, as I pointed at Fustian nan Domitrian.

  “That man is an imposter. I know he’s not the Interdict—because I killed the Interdict Orthanion when I destroyed the Sacred City.”

  50

  TYRUS CUT OFF all the transmitters with a curse, but i
t was too late, it was too late—the words were out there, and he whirled on me with crazed horror, shouted, “What are you doing?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Take it back. Say it was a joke. Say it!” His voice was ferocious, and I waited until he was convinced I’d obey. He turned the transmitters back on.

  I said: “I slit the Interdict’s throat and rammed the Hera into—”

  “ENOUGH!” roared Tyrus as the transmitters cut off again. “You’ve gone mad. What in the hell are you thinking?”

  “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  He looked like he wanted to hit me. To combust. He soared to me, seized my arms, and drew my face toward his. “You told the galaxy you killed the Interdict! They’ll believe you!”

  “I know. That’s why I said it.”

  “Black hole devour you—to what end?”

  “I’m setting,” I told him, my eyes boring into his, “my own terms for how we move forward. Now you have them.”

  He shouted out in frustration, threw me from him, and I drifted with the momentum, still watching him as he scraped his hands through his hair, clearly trying to think of a way to salvage this. The Empire was in his hands. All the technology in this sector obeyed him. But he couldn’t erase what I’d done.

  And he knew it.

  Then, “Why?” His voice was a deathly whisper, but I could make it out.

  I neared the far wall, so I shoved off it to float back toward him. The audience in the ball dome was watching us, rapt. Gladdic was holding on to the edge of a box, heaving himself into it, desperate for his escape.

  “Surely you realize . . . ,” Tyrus began.

  “That I’ve condemned myself? Yes. That’s the point.” I caught his arm. Very gently, I pressed the hilt of my sword into his palm. “You could use this. The honor of an Empress’s death must surely go to her husband. It will be your duty to carry this out.”

  He stared at the sword blankly, then looked at me. His momentum kept him with me as I listed to the side. I was only half-aware of every screen in the boxes all about us going opaque as Tyrus blocked us from their view.