The Empress

  “You look as you always do. Beautiful.”

  Without thought, my fingers slid to the underside of his chin, and I pressed my lips to his. It was tentative, soft, testing the ground where I hadn’t ventured since the coronation. His arms slid about me, gently, almost reverently, and then he drew me closer and deepened the kiss, until what had seemed almost frightening felt so natural, felt so right.

  “Two weeks,” I murmured against his mouth. “Just us.”

  His lips curved. “Just us.”

  I kissed him again.

  • • •

  From without, the Tigris took the shape of an arched claw, yet within, the labyrinth of decks yielded an endless series of surprises.

  Our favorite level held an artificial forest teeming with plant and animal life. Toward the end of our journey, Tyrus suggested a jaunt ancient Earth humans might have taken. No machines. We swam in a river as the birds engineered with the sweetest voices sang overhead. Afterward, we dried off by a real fire.

  At least, that was the intention. Tyrus had read of lighting a fire with the use of sticks alone. He began quite gamely, and then after several frustrating minutes and a great number of splinters, I began to feel true amusement.

  “You are bad at this,” I marveled.

  His lips crooked. “Thank you.”

  “Truly bad.”

  “You are so supportive of me.”

  “I am merely surprised. You are bad at something.”

  He slumped back, befuddled. “The most primitive human beings could master this art. I live in space, surrounded by unimaginably advanced technology—and I cannot light a fire. Or can I?” Then he disappeared. Minutes later, he returned with a lighter—and flicked it on. He cast me a forbidding look as he cheated, as though daring me to say anything.

  A rare impulse came over me, and I heard myself laugh. Flames sparked against the pale gaze fixed on me with wonder and amazement. “You laughed,” he marveled.

  “I did not.” My cheeks flushed, but I found myself smiling nevertheless like some silly, foolish young girl.

  “I heard it. I know what I heard.” His grin was crafty. “I will make it happen again.”

  “Try to start another fire and I’m sure it will.”

  Tyrus pulled me to him, his lips hot and intent, parting mine. His hand cupped the back of my neck. The stroke of his thumb at my nape sent delightful chills skittering down my spine.

  His hand slid downward, and his eyes met mine before his touch traced up the expanse of my leg. He searched my face, and I realized he was gauging my response. Wanting to force him out of his head, I shoved him onto his back. Tyrus gave a startled sound, but his lips blazed into a grin as I tasted the skin of his throat. . . . And then his legs were tangled with mine, rolling us over again, his face flickering in the warm glow of the firelight.

  “I love you,” he told me simply.

  I pressed my hand over the hot skin beneath his tunic, and he closed his eyes as I stroked the indentations of his abdomen. His larger hand captured mine, and our lips met, his kiss insistent, searing me to the core. . . .

  The vessel began to jostle about us, harder and harder.

  Tyrus pulled back, dread on his face. He looked to be cursing inwardly, as I was.

  Then the stars began to reappear through the sky dome overhead, and I knew we had just dropped out of hyperspace. Regret sank through me. Our eyes met. I ran my fingers through his coppery hair as the heaviness of our task settled back over us.

  We both moved to the window without agreeing to do so. Then out we gazed at that bright point against the dark of space that grew larger as we neared it—the patch of malignant space just outside Lumina’s star system.

  The brilliant white-and-purple death zone was like a gash through the void, eerily beautiful. I wondered how many had perished on the vessel that had ruptured entering hyperspace, leaving this tombstone behind.

  “It’s grown since we last saw it,” I remarked, puzzled by that. It grew faster than I would have expected. “What feeds the growth?”

  “It doesn’t need fuel to expand, it just does it.” He gave a vague wave of his hand, staring transfixed at the brightness. He leaned against the window, his face suddenly remote. “The first time I ever saw malignant space, I was living on a planet.”

  “I didn’t know you’d lived on a planet.”

  “Almost ten months,” he said distantly. “I wasn’t suited for it. The gravity was so heavy. The humidity seemed to strangle me. I was allergic to everything, and constantly sunburned. Bloodsucking insects loved me far too much, and . . . and it was probably the happiest year of my life.” He admitted that softly as though it were something shameful. “All it took was one accident at the edge of the star system to wipe it all away.”

  “A ship ruptured. And then . . .” I nodded toward the sight in front of us, figuring it out.

  “It’s frightening and beautiful to see from here—but it’s indescribable from a planet. The atmosphere shifts what light filters through or amplifies it. At the beginning it was a small slash, and then in mere weeks, it grew so large. You could see it in the day, but at night, it filled the sky. These clouds of orange and scarlet and gold . . . I wasn’t on the planet by the time it was gone. Some evacuated early, but so many were debating or wrangling over what to do. They thought they’d find a way to fix it. They delayed. And I am very sure many were in denial until it was too late to escape, and that malignancy had filled their skies. Can you imagine the horror of that?”

  I gazed at the whip of light, knowing we did so at a safe distance, knowing we could leave. I tried to imagine seeing it from under a planet’s sky, but my mind couldn’t wrap around the idea.

  “Was it dreadful?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Of course it was a dreadful thing, dwelling somewhere, and then knowing it had been wiped away.

  “It was important,” Tyrus said. “Up to that point, I would have ripped off my very skin if I could have disowned my family. My mother was dead, and I could never escape who I was. But that planet showed me what it really meant to be a Domitrian: I wasn’t ever going to be a victim of circumstance. I was going to shape the circumstances, if I just survived long enough to do so. One day, I’d have it in my power to do what that entire planet of Excess could not, and I would fix that sky.”

  He drew and released a breath, the light of malignant space harsh on his features. In that moment, I felt as though I saw the nineteen-year-old boy slip away, and in his place, the Emperor turned from the window and said, “Now here we are. Let’s get started.”

  9

  THERE WERE TWO branches of the Domitrian family, and both sides had been virtually decimated by Cygna Domitrian during her quest to secure the throne for her favored child.

  The six-star sigil belonged to the royal Domitrians. They all descended from the Empress Acindra von Domitrian. The other side was Cygna’s branch of the family, the nonroyal Domitrians, with the black hole sigil. They descended from Acindra’s uncle, the Emperor Amon von Domitrian.

  During his reign, Amon grew frustrated by his Senate and devised a most cunning scheme to control them: he slipped all the Senators an obscure poison called Vigilant’s Bane. Only he held the counteragent, one that had to be taken to keep the poison’s death spiral at bay. The Senators spent years voting and acting as he wished to keep earning their counteragent.

  Then came Amon’s fatal misfortune.

  A freak accident with a shipment, and the counteragent dried up. The Senators began dying one after another. Amon tried to flee, but he didn’t escape. He was torn from power, and his entire line of descendants was expelled from the succession.

  Now here was Tyrus, descendant of both the black hole and six-star Domitrians, contemplating the very toxin that had been Amon’s downfall.

  “It’s called Vigilant’s Bane. I wasn’t supposed to know my grandmother even had this, but I watched her too closely to miss it,” he noted, his tone dispassionate, though I knew
there had to be distress raging beneath that calm surface. He despised the very idea of killing his own family as his grandmother had. “The counteragent is easier to come by. If Pasus doesn’t know he needs it, he’ll never obtain it in time if we decide . . . if we decide it’s time for Devineé to perish. Until then, I can keep getting her the counteragent as long as she’s close, as long as he’s cooperative. Then, if Pasus turns, if he seeks to rebel in her name and usurp me . . .” He didn’t need to say more.

  He would let Devineé die.

  “It’s a fine compromise, Tyrus,” I assured him, closing my hand around his—and around the poison as well. “It’s not murder.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, looking at me.

  “No, it isn’t. You are sparing her to the extent that you possibly can. It will be up to Pasus, and only if he turns on you will she pay a price.”

  “He will turn on me, Nemesis. You know he will. Think: he has informed me that he is willing to put aside a vendetta against you just to be the husband of the Successor Primus. What does that tell you?”

  “That he is a liar willing to wait for revenge?”

  “Or that his ambition burns so brightly, he can forgive where otherwise he would not. And that sort of ambition will not be slaked by the second most powerful position in this Empire.”

  “I know she’s family,” I said to him, “but it’s just one life.”

  “One life. And tomorrow, one more life. And one more, and so many single lives . . . At what point will it be too many lives?”

  “If I were to guess, I’d say it’s the day you kill without wondering that.” Then I took the poison from his hand and waited while Tyrus ordered his cousin to be brought to us.

  I mixed it right in with a glass of wine, and sip by sip, I watched it disappear into Devineé Domitrian, knowing this would eventually be the cause of her death.

  Of our salvation.

  Her fate would be ours, and I would never feel remorse or regret to know we’d taken her life in hand. As for Tyrus’s conscience . . . Perhaps it would pain him, but if it desensitized him in the slightest so he could more readily strike a lethal blow to his next enemy, all the better.

  • • •

  There was no communication between ships in hyperspace, and close to malignant space, communications failed as well. We were encased in silence until we were far enough from that ribbon of terrible light, and then transmissions bombarded us in a great blast.

  Dozens, then hundreds of them . . . all from various personages who were on the Hera, or Senator von Aton’s Atlas, or Tyrus’s own ship, the Alexandria, all ships that had dropped out of hyperspace before us. Then a fresh onslaught when the other ships cleared malignant space.

  Mostly, the inane messages were ones of greeting, hoping the Emperor had a good journey through space. Tyrus had a team of Excess employees sorting through them to find the messages of substance. A few status reports from the Chrysanthemum, a few reports of happenings in the Senate.

  The vessels from the Chrysanthemum joined together in a smaller version of the Chrysanthemum, and then Tyrus and I were garbed and prepared for a public appearance by Shaezar nan Domitrian. The Tigris landed within a short distance of Central Square.

  Then, the crowds.

  The last time I came to this planet, the numbers of people shocked me. Space dwellers tended to have one or two children at most, and vast areas to rove without such dense humanity packing the walls. Our last visit to Lumina, I had been stunned by the size of the crowd. This time the numbers overwhelmed me.

  Tyrus was Emperor now, not Successor Primus.

  The dizzying array of faces, so much more varied than on the Chrysanthemum, rendered me mute and almost disoriented. They were all ages, not like the Grandiloquy, who kept the young out of sight unless they used a bot to make them suitably aged so as not to stick out. The Grandiloquy also tended not to age unless due to an eccentricity or strategic choice, but so many of these Excess were old.

  My friend Neveni Sagnau met Tyrus in front of the onlookers. She had been acting as Lumina’s Viceroy on an order of the last Emperor’s, so she ceremonially surrendered the office to her elected successor. He then introduced Tyrus to the Excess, and the thundering clamor of shouts and applause—even some boos—seemed to vibrate my very bones.

  Tyrus mounted the podium before this great square, shielded by an invisible barrier, and offered for the Luminars a variation of his Convocation speech. I half listened, too busy surveying for threats. I saw it the moment a gap appeared in the masses because it was so odd, and then out of their midst (ringed in a protective force field that had driven the crowd apart), Senator von Pasus emerged. He was trailed by a retinue of servants, employees, and Servitors and utterly heedless of the blistering glares from the Excess of the planet he owned.

  I’d already been tense. Now my every muscle was a knot.

  Tyrus saw him too. Not a flicker of reaction on his face. Nor did he hesitate at the next part of his speech: “As a gesture of my affection for this fair province, I would like to gift the museums of Lumina with some imperial artifacts. . . .”

  My gaze shot to Pasus’s face to see his reaction to these “gifts.”

  For Tyrus wasn’t giving artifacts. And everyone knew it.

  A floating container holding pieces of technology, blueprints, schematics, disassembled machines was being floated out of the Tigris and given to the Luminars. Tyrus was giving them technology and scientific knowledge, whatever he could find. It was a blasphemy that would offend a good Helionic.

  An act like this had destroyed Senator von Impyrean.

  And Tyrus did it casually, so offhandedly he gave all a cue about just how to treat this offering.

  All took the cue—but for Pasus.

  He was gazing narrowly up at Tyrus, an incredulous smile at his lips as though he couldn’t quite fathom what Tyrus was trying to pull off. After all, Lumina was within his territory, and he was a Helionic. He could simply take that technology away.

  I fought a smile of my own, for I knew what came next.

  “In addition,” Tyrus went on, “I would like to leave with you a number of my Grandiloquy friends for an extended visit to this fair planet. I know you will all enjoy each other’s company and encourage relations between Luminars and Grandiloquy.”

  Pasus’s smile froze on his lips.

  His shocked eyes skipped over the faces of those Grandes and Grandeés being escorted forward, with all honors and ceremonies, like they were, indeed, vacationing guests. In truth, they were all Helionics, the prisoners Tyrus had taken at his coronation, and he was leaving them here in the keeping of the Luminars to serve as human shields in case Pasus did try to strip away the new technology of the Luminars.

  One hostage was familiar to me, with his usual golden wraps about his dark hair, and those wide green eyes: Gladdic Aton. He was the son of Pasus’s closest ally, Senator von Aton. His life alone would have been a bulwark against attack, even without the dozen others joining him here.

  My gaze found Pasus again as understanding settled cold and hard over his face. Whatever slightly amused condescension he’d been wearing until now had melted away, and he assessed Tyrus with the icy eyes of a sniper regarding a distant foe. He saw, at last, that he wasn’t dealing with an overwhelmed boy so easy to manipulate.

  Tyrus and I had discussed how he should present himself, and settled upon this. He couldn’t project artificial weakness with Pasus unless he meant to do so consistently. Although the predatory instinct of honing in on the weak might have misled Pasus into dropping his guard, we both agreed strength would be the more effective means of giving him pause.

  These thoughts passed through my mind as I gazed down at him. Then Pasus’s eyes lifted and met mine. All about me seemed to drain into a silent stillness as I regarded him and he regarded me. . . . I’d killed his daughter, and now I would wed his Emperor, entering the very same family he was clawing and striving to join.

  The truth
was, I wasn’t sorry about what I’d done to Elantra. She’d deserved every moment of pain and fear I’d given her before ripping her heart from her chest. She took away Sidonia from me, and if I’d had the chance to kill her father, too, I’d have done so already.

  I knew as our eyes held that the feeling of cold enmity was mutual.

  Tyrus’s speech concluded, and Pasus drew his hands together in applause, never looking away from me. That was when I knew it in my heart: we would destroy him, or he would destroy us.

  And I would not let us be destroyed.

  10

  THE DIPLOMATIC compound was secure. Pasus could not strike down Tyrus while he was here, nor vice versa. The building itself defused all projectile weapons within its walls.

  The negotiation chamber had no surveillance; it was shielded from any electronic eavesdropping equipment. I’d even ventured just outside the room to press my ear to the door, hoping my superhuman hearing would make out some words.

  The walls, alas, were soundproof.

  So I was left in an agony of suspense, waiting for Tyrus to emerge from his meeting with Pasus. My gaze darted toward every stray sound, and I could not keep still.

  I was just trying to eavesdrop again when I heard something. . . . A faint thump, then a reverberating echo above me. My mind instantly sharpened. I was in the atrium outside the meeting chamber, so the sound was suspicious. I trained my gaze on the ceiling, heard it again, and I knew it: someone was in the ceiling.

  I waited for the next thump—and then I jumped up and drove my fist through the ceiling. A shout, and I’d clamped my hand upon someone’s leg, my full weight hanging from it. “Who are you?” I bellowed up at its owner.

  “Stop! Nemesis, it’s me!”

  Neveni.

  I released my grip and dropped to the floor.

  Then a panel in the ceiling tilted down on a hinge, and Neveni peeked her head out, dark hair dangling down about her. “What do you want?”