Viv tried not to look. She tried not to think in capital letters. It was a bad habit. If you weren’t careful, pretty soon you’d find yourself Going to the Store to Buy a Carton of Milk—or worse, speaking German.
She needed that dry laugh now. Here she was, creeping like a rat through the throne room of a woman who’d torn her heart from her chest, who’d melted her skin, who’d hurt her friends—not to mention crushed a galaxy, wrecked Orn and banished Gray, locked Zanj inside a star. This was the Empress: the green the same, the radiance identical. She had wrecked Viv’s life, and this was the closest Viv could manage to revenge: sneaking past beneath her notice. She wasn’t even a rat, here. Rats could tunnel and undermine. She was a mouse, tiny, powerless, scuttling for a hole out of the Empress’s sight.
The portal looked a bit like a hole if you ignored the auroras that curled and uncurled above it, or the banks of machinery, most exotic and crystalline and so complex she could not tell which parts were filigree and which functional. A rippling silver hole, edged by a sapphire ring, down which she could scurry home.
She remembered Natalia back on Saint Kitts, Lucy wondering where her boss had gone or if she was alive, remembered family. She remembered the faceless shadows in suits, the three-letter acronyms who had hunted her, and whom she meant to hunt in turn. She had a war to win, a world to conquer. She had to get home. She remembered Magda, trapped in green.
The Empress was a problem for another world. A problem for other friends. Whom she had abandoned one by one to reach this point.
What else could she do? She was a mouse. Abject. Soulless. A bag of meat. You talk a big game, Vivian Liao, but you’re a coward.
The Empress was behind her now. The black hole of Viv’s old life drew her down, beneath the transparent floor. Light bent around its edge.
She had tried to fight the Empress back in that basement, with as much success as a kitten in a mastiff’s jaw. Her friends had given so much, and she had asked so much from them, to bring her here.
Do not speak, she had been warned, and so she did not speak. She held out her hand to Zanj, who took it.
Zanj stepped between Viv and the hole.
Of course. Even now, she would not kneel.
Her crown was the gray of a still dawn. Again and again on their journey, Zanj had promised to kill Viv, in earnest and in jest, but right now, in the throne room silence, Viv forgot all those threats and remembered her cabin aboard the poor lost Question, touching Zanj’s scar as Zanj touched hers. Pirate queen, perhaps. Stealer of suns, scourge of galaxies. A murderer, certainly. A happy killer in an unkind world. Who tried, when Viv asked, to stop killing. Who was, for all her violent protestations, inspite of Hong’s suspicion and all her own temptations toward betrayal, a loyal friend.
And if Viv removed that crown, Zanj could break her neck in under a second.
She’d given her an order back on Groundswell. In fear for her life, maybe. But Zanj was owed revenge for that, and for so much else.
Her hand shook as it approached Zanj’s brow. She brushed her hair without meaning to. Zanj’s lips twitched up. If she had not been scarred, that might have been a smile.
The crown broke in two at Viv’s touch, as if it had been made of dried twigs. Zanj caught the other piece before it hit the floor. She took the piece Viv held, and set them both on the ground. Eyes closed, she breathed in, out. Freedom’s first breath in three thousand years.
Viv stood before her, slow, fragile, altogether in her power.
When Zanj moved, Viv made a sound—a small, even mouselike, squeak that might have doomed them both had it not been crushed against Zanj’s chest by the force of her hug. Viv felt the strength in her friend’s back and arms. Memorized it, as surely as she’d ever memorized a password or a knot. If she could bear one moment home, let it be this.
But even such moments pass. With a silent thunderclap, the hole opened.
Zanj drew away. Her eyes, always bright, looked more wet than usual, though her face was the same old steel, bent in the same old grin. She stepped out of Viv’s way, ushered her forward, patted her on the shoulder, and withdrew.
Leaving only Viv and the pit.
She counted steps to the edge. So long ago, she had stood on the edge of a boat rigged to blow, with a small watertight sack over her shoulder, under a blue sky she’d never flown beyond. On Earth. With the world at her back, and the world before her.
She had to go.
She thought of Hong. Gray. Xiara. Zanj. All she had to do to honor them, their sacrifices, was close her eyes, breathe in, and leap.
Leaving the Empress at her back.
Turning away forever from the chance to face the woman who built these machines, the will that cowed a galaxy.
Accepting her inferiority.
Fleeing the greatest challenge she could ever face.
Abandoning her friends.
She breathed out, opened her eyes, and turned.
The Empress sat upon her throne, reclined in seeming sleep, beautiful as music, fierce as flame, so bright she left red shadows on the eye.
Zanj stood over her, the Fallen Star clutched in both hands, its tip narrowed to a point, her face a mask of rage and certainty and fear: the face of a woman ready to kill, and, in the instant of her blow, to die.
There was a pop within Zanj’s skull. Her irises flowered brilliant white.
Viv whispered, “No.”
The Fallen Star stabbed like an ice pick toward the Empress’s eye.
It struck her, and drew sparks.
And the Empress woke up.
42
THE EMPRESS ROSE from her throne.
The galaxy winked out. Displays died one by one all through the chamber. The veins of green that pulsed in the diamond walls drained back through floor and pillars into her. What Viv had taken for the workings of the ship had in fact been the workings of the Empress’s multichambered mind.
The Empress shrugged off sleep as she might have shrugged off a mountain’s weight: with that little care.
The whole time, Zanj fought her.
She swept the Fallen Star through a blurred arc, and it bounced off a shell of green light that had not existed a millisecond before, and ceased to exist a millisecond after. Spears of green radiance pierced the air where Zanj had been, but she was already gone, behind the Empress, bringing the Star down on the crown that looped her head—only for it to bounce off another shell.
The Empress rubbed the heel of one hand against the eye Zanj had hit, as if it ached. Both her eyes were black and full of stars between the lids. She descended one step from her throne.
Zanj swept the Empress’s feet out from under her, but she did not fall, of course. What hold could gravity have over her, that she did not yield it of her own will?
Viv watched, fixed by awe, fear, and gross curiosity. There was more to this battle than she could see, and she was grateful for once that she could not touch the Cloud. Watching the physical dimension of this fight was bad enough. Watching Zanj’s soul set against the Empress’s might have blinded her.
And as she watched the green light that never quite caught Zanj, the Star’s blows that never landed, Zanj fixed on the Empress as if they were the only two people in the chamber, in the entire universe, Viv assembled the puzzle.
This had been Zanj’s plan all along. Get Viv home? Sure, if convenient. But use her, drive her, always, to the Empress. Use her to break the chains on the Fallen Star, Zanj’s greatest weapon. To open the Empress’s ship. To breach her stronghold. To find the Empress alone, lulled to sleep by Grayframe—and take her final shot. Vengeance for herself, for her friends, her people. Even if it doomed her.
Zanj roared. She had unfolded into a quicksilver being of many dimensions, the thief of suns, and her voice shook the station. The force of her rage knelt Viv to the ground. The Star burned through the air—actually burned, leaving plasma trails that would have seemed bright were they not set beside the Empress—and bounced off a
nother shield. The throne room rang like a bell.
The Empress looked at Zanj then. The full mouth in the green glory of that face twisted to a sneer, then broadened. “Ah yes. I remember you.”
And Viv remembered that voice: not so eerily close or all-consuming as in the server room, but with the same quiet, mocking force, casually overriding all other sound. Green light caught Zanj; she somersaulted back, changed direction in midair, landed, her claws shrieking grooves in the transparent floor, rolled out of the way of another lance of green, then blurred forward once more.
The Empress followed her with her head and eyes, body still, as if tracking an insect.
Zanj stabbed the Star at the Empress’s neck, and this time, the Empress moved.
She stepped, smooth and unhurried, out of the Star’s path, and caught Zanj’s wrist. Green light flashed; the Empress stepped back, and Zanj—stuck.
She tried to leap away, to fly, but the green light held her fast, her wrist locked in space as if the air were stone. Zanj’s claws drew sparks from the light; she pulled, strained, but her arm did not budge.
With a roar, she swept the Star, grown immense, through the chamber, snapping crystal pillars like ropes of grass, smashing through the wall—but it bounced off the Empress’s raised forearm with that same bell-ringing sound. The Empress blurred along the Star’s length, and caught Zanj’s other wrist, and again that flash, and that wrist, too, was stuck.
Zanj dropped the Star, caught it with her feet, and jabbed into the Empress’s gut.
The Empress flowed aside, caught Zanj’s ankles in the crook of one arm, and flashed them both in place.
Zanj’s tail snared the Empress’s neck, squeezed—and she casually unwound it. Then, with a shrug, she broke her tail, and flashed it, too, crooked.
Zanj howled. She cursed. She strained against the light that held her. The Empress circled her, contemplating—then, almost as an afterthought, slapped the Star away. It clattered out of reach. Casually, with head-cocked aesthetic detachment, the Empress adjusted Zanj’s limbs until she hung spread-eagled in space, then stepped back, one knuckle to her chin.
“Not bad,” the Empress said, “all things considered. It’s been a long time since I had to work so hard. Zanj. How did you get out of your cage? How did you stay sane?”
“Three thousand years of hate,” Zanj said. “Three thousand years dreaming of my teeth at your throat.”
“Three thousand years and you couldn’t come up with a better use for your time. There’s no need for us to be enemies.”
“You’ve killed my friends. Slowly. Left them in pain. You destroyed Pasquarai.”
“Destroyed? Zanj.” She shook her head, as if Zanj were a pupil who’d made an understandable, sad error. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tyrant.”
“That’s your line, yes, you and all those children screaming about freedom, without understanding. The freedom to die, the freedom to be eaten. I can see what’s broken in you: a small error, easily corrected. If you let me inside, I could fix it.”
“I will kill you,” Zanj spat. “Slowly. Someday, I, or my children, will cut your power from you. We’ll skin you and drink your blood. We’ll string harps with your nerves. There will be no sound in all the world for your screams.”
The Empress, still watching Zanj’s face, raised two fingers and flicked them forward, beckoning. The crown’s halves darted from the crystal floor, and slammed shut around her head with a sound like a portcullis slamming home. The iron burned black, and Zanj’s eyes white. Smoke rose from her flesh. Blood curtained her face, and she began to scream.
The Empress nodded, as if noting the progress of an experiment. Since waking, she had not so much as glanced toward Viv.
Viv edged back. The portal, behind her, remained open: rippling and hungry, and past it, home.
Zanj’s scream stopped. She panted, slack, hanging from the lights that bound her in midair. The Empress drew her hand through a gentle arc, trailing light—and tapped Zanj’s temple with her middle finger. The crown hissed. Across the room, through the green, Viv could see Zanj’s gritted teeth, her staring eyes, her face contorted, the veins bulging on her neck as she tried to strangle her building cry. Zanj squinted. One eye closed, then the other.
Was that a wink? Telling her to go? Telling her it was okay? She couldn’t make a difference anyway, so she might as well leave? Could Zanj think through that agony? Could Viv, if their positions were reversed? Sweat soaked her jumpsuit. Spit frothed between her teeth.
Discarded on the cracked floor between them lay the Fallen Star.
Viv realized she was running.
Yannis, mountain-sized, had strained and failed to lift the Star. Viv didn’t make the slightest shadow on the Cloud. She could deadlift a good deal more than her body weight, and rig a sail alone, but the Star was another class of thing altogether—built from exotic matter for killing stranger, stronger things than gods.
Viv scooped it from the floor without breaking stride. Its tip rang off crystal.
The Empress’s head cocked at the sound, and she turned, languorous and superior.
Viv didn’t know how to use the Star. She hadn’t expected to be able to lift the damn thing. She had no illusion of her chances once the Empress saw her. So, still twenty feet from the Empress, she swung the Star, and hoped.
The Star unspooled in mid-sweep, twenty feet long now without any change in balance Viv could feel—and the Empress turned back, with a yawn, to Zanj.
She must have expected that green shell to reappear and stop the strike. Viv was as surprised as anyone when it didn’t.
She didn’t see where the Star hit the Empress—it moved with a speed Viv’s eyes could not track. The force of the blow threw the Empress back into the chamber wall, which shattered into diamond dust. Viv fell to her knees, covered her eyes with her arm, just in time: shards tore through the ’faith robes Hong had given her. One sliced open her forearm, and a long thin splinter embedded in her side.
When the crash faded, she risked opening her eyes.
Zanj hung in light, limp, staring. Most of the chamber wall was gone, revealing a forest of razor mirrors beyond. No doubt they served some important purpose for the ship. Right now, they caught and glimmered green.
The Empress marched back into the throne room over the diamond rubble, barefoot. Her side smoked where Viv had struck, but she did not seem to care. Her eyes of stars and nothing settled on Viv, and grew just slightly wider.
“Ah. So that’s how Zanj got out.” Her laugh seemed too soft to be so loud. “You survived. What a pleasant surprise! Come on. Stand up. I don’t like to see you on your knees.”
Viv rose, unsteadily. The Star felt heavy in her hands: not as heavy as she knew it was, but as heavy as a thick bar of cold iron might be. “Still disappointed?”
“Yes,” the Empress admitted. The soles of her feet ground diamond and glass to powder as she advanced. “But impressed, too. I thought you’d die. If not, I thought you’d be too smart to come for me.” She flowed across intervening space faster than Viv could follow—but only to stand by Zanj’s side, to set a hand on Viv’s friend’s neck. Her skin seared, and Zanj let out a strangled sound. “Not to mention, too smart to release this monster. Hard to believe even you might be that dense.”
“I did what I had to,” Viv said.
“Why?” She patted Zanj on the side of the neck, and walked forward.
“You hurt my friends. You stole everything from me. You ripped me from my world.”
“Your world?” The Empress laughed at that: a genuine laugh, unforced and uncontrolled, arrogant, but not at all mean. She had never been weak enough to need meanness. That was the laugh of a woman who had spent millennia and more bending a universe to her will, who had never encountered a challenge she could not crush, a danger she could not conquer. A woman to whom unsolved problems were items on a list to cross off one by one.
Viv recogn
ized that laugh. She felt cold all over, chilled not by terror but by denial.
The green light folded into the Empress. All its blinding perfection hid beneath her skin, like a blade palmed.
Viv knew that body—knew the way cool green silk would feel drifting over it. She knew those eyes. She knew that winding braid, which she’d taken for a crown.
She had never been afraid of mirrors.
“It never was your world,” said Vivian Liao. “It’s always been mine.”
43
“YOU’RE LYING.” VIV said the words, but did not believe them. She wanted the Empress to be playing a cruel joke on her—she’d played jokes as cruel on the rest of the galaxy. She wanted her ice-cold creeping shock of recognition to be wrong. She wanted to look at Zanj, slack in bonds of light, and find support, anger, anything but careful neutrality. “It’s not true.” But saying the same thing with different words did not make it so.
The Empress slid her hands into the pockets of her dress and walked toward Viv, head cocked slightly, mouth’s corner slanted up: Really? Viv knew that face. She’d used it for the cover of Time.
“You’re not me. I’m not you.”
“I watched my first living thing die—outside of bugs, I mean—when I was seven. We were sailing. I woke up early and found this beautiful green-blue bird twitching on the deck. I think the cat got to it. There was nothing I could do. I could see all the way inside it. Organs looked so clear in Mom’s books: hearts, lungs, guts. But on the deck they were a mess. I knew it would upset them if they saw it—they’d be so worried about how it might have affected me that we’d spend the rest of the trip talking about that bird. So I knelt and watched it die, and when it was dead, I gathered it and tossed it overboard and cleaned the deck, and never told anyone. Until now.”
Something was stuck in Viv’s throat. She could not breathe. The Fallen Star weighed heavy in her hands. Her voice sounded thin—a shadow of the Empress. “Maybe I wrote the story down. You could have spied on me. Found records.” But the story’s truth had not chilled her so much as the patter. Cadence, choice of words, the wry shrug, amused and puzzled by the child’s disgust, never self-deprecating: Viv had never told this story to anyone, but if she did, that was how she would tell it. “I can think of a thousand ways you might know.”
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