The question seemed to startle him. He opened his mouth but uttered no sound—then finally nodded. “Yes.”
My eyes drooped closed, the chamber a swaying, tilting thing around me. “Tell me.”
“Tell you… about what?”
“He became a monster when I was away.” And now I’ve become one, to fight him. “I want to hear about that.” I wanted the certainty of understanding. I wanted to know why I had to do this.
So Gladdic told me.
* * *
After the Tigris was destroyed, and I was off with Neveni, Tyrus’s erosion under Venalox had proceeded gradually and then rapidly.
“The Grandiloquy were furious with him after you left,” said Gladdic. “Most everyone had lost someone on the Tigris. Family. Friends. They blamed you, but they thought you were dead. They also blamed Pasus, but they were too afraid to say so to him. But the Emperor…”
I could guess.
“He was glad to be blamed,” Gladdic said. “He gloated over it.”
I could imagine it.… Tyrus had been totally in the thrall of Venalox, surrounded by enemies with reason to hate us, and they were totally unleashed, once I was not around any longer. They had no reason to fear what I’d do to them—for there was no one else but me to protect Tyrus.
They must have made him suffer for the Tigris.
And Gladdic told me of that first month after my escape.… The hysterical meetings of the privy council, where Grandes and Grandeés demanded reparations for the lives lost in the collision. He told me of Tyrus’s unvarnished satisfaction listening to them, however much Pasus rebuked or punished him for it.
“You all want compensation? Truly?” Tyrus had said. “Well, let me assure you, if I had but a nugget of gold, I would piss on it and throw it in the waste reclaimer before I’d give any of you a flake.”
Pasus had ordered him to cease such talk, for he helped nothing by it.
“Excellent, for I don’t intend to help,” Tyrus had replied, causing the Grandiloquy to erupt with cries of anger. “If I could have killed the entire lot of you in that arena, I would have! It was the mercy of my wife—yes, the Diabolic you despise—that ensured any of you survived! I wanted you all dead. She won’t be here to save you the next time it happens.”
And though Pasus seized his hair—disrespecting the Emperor in front of all of them—and whispered some threat in his ear, Tyrus had only laughed.
“Do your worst, Alectar,” he’d said.
“I didn’t see much of him for a while,” Gladdic told me. “Pasus confined him to his chambers. He’d only allow him out at ceremonial occasions, and then he’d be drugged, but…”
But that had not been the end of Tyrus’s defiance of the Grandiloquy. They had committed the mass murder of the Luminars, then had taken him prisoner—of course he had not cooperated.
But Pasus had set out to force him into submission. And in my absence, no one had defended him.
I clenched my jaw as Gladdic recounted the myriad indignities through which Tyrus remained strong.
“I was the only person he would speak to civilly,” Gladdic told me. “He passed days staring out at the stars, waiting.”
Waiting for me.
I must have made some noise, for Gladdic paused, looking at me questioningly.
My throat was too tight to speak. I shook my head, and he went on.
“He claimed to be indifferent to the mistreatment, but as the months passed—”
I was only supposed to be gone for a month, at best, but we’d known it could be longer. Neither of us had realized it would be years.
“He took on a hunted look,” Gladdic was saying. “His hands developed a tremor. And I began to suspect…” He paused. “Nemesis, I really only saw some of it. What Pasus permitted the court to see.”
I tried to tell myself these were the travails of another Tyrus. The real Tyrus. Not the one I’d seen murder those Excess on the Halcyon. Not the one who could create malignant space.
“If I were to say one day changed things,” Gladdic told me, “it was about five months after you left when they found some of the debris from the Tigris. Pasus had been searching for the scepter, or for your body, because really, it would quash all the Emperor’s hopes if they just found you dead. One day they found a body… It was Hazard dan Domitrian.”
Hazard had been a Diabolic. He had not survived like Anguish and I had.
“The Grandiloquy celebrated. They actually celebrated,” Gladdic muttered, looking abashed. He had likely been there, playing along with them. “They threw a great gala, and Pasus did not inform the Emperor of the reason for it. It was in the ball dome, and the Emperor was suspicious that something was in the works, but he had no choice but to attend. Pasus insisted he take the first dance, as per custom, and it was ghastly, Nemesis. They…”
“What?”
“They propelled Hazard’s body out of the Empress’s box. I suppose they all thought that if one Diabolic couldn’t survive the vacuum, then… Well, everyone thought it meant you had died.”
I looked at him, at his carefully averted eyes, my heart heavy in my chest. “And what did he do?”
“The body floated down to him and he… I don’t know. He didn’t move. He did nothing, he just stared. I think he assumed the same as the rest of us—that it meant you were dead too. He stopped fighting after that, Nemesis. He stopped eating, speaking. He became catatonic.”
I closed my eyes. Enough, I wanted to say. I could bear to hear no more.
But I felt deserving of punishment. Of pain. So I did not stop him from continuing.
“It went on for… well, long enough that Pasus was afraid. They knew I was the only one Tyrus would speak to—I’d always been the one sent in to reason with him. But he would not acknowledge me. I’m not sure he even knew I was there. Mostly I passed the time by reading to him. He’d stare at the wall. For a while, I think Pasus even skipped the Venalox. There was no need for it anymore, maybe. He’d already won.”
It felt like a solid stone was jammed in my throat. Tyrus, my Tyrus, the Tyrus I had known, lost and hopeless among endless enemies, utterly broken…
Broken by my death.
I rubbed my pulsing temples. “And then?” I made myself ask.
“They tried everything to rouse him,” Gladdic said. “Nothing worked. But I… I helped him, I think.”
My eyes flew open. “How?”
He gave me a tentative smile. “I told him a secret. Pasus’s people found the casing of the scepter on sale on the black market. Everyone knew what that meant.”
Neveni must have sold it when she realized it was not the actual scepter.
The scepter had been with me.
So if it had escaped from the Tigris? Then so had I.
“That restored him?” I realized I was rubbing my chest. It hurt, and not from any physical wound.
“Yes. It was proof you’d survived, wasn’t it? Pasus wanted it kept quiet, but I told the Emperor. I wasn’t supposed to, but I knew of no other way to help him.”
My heart thudded wildly. “And…?”
“And then he looked at me. He saw me. For the first time in months, he was there. He asked if I was sure, and I said yes. Then he got up, he showered and dressed and…”
I leaned forward. “And what?”
“He began to ingratiate himself to Pasus.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What? You mean, he pretended to obey?”
Gladdic shrugged helplessly. “At first I thought it was an act too. The Emperor would sometimes send me a look, like we were in on some joke together. But then… well, he came here.” He gestured about us, indicating the Repository we were docked with. “And he brought Pasus with him. He’d offered Pasus access to the Domitrian stores and treasures. I don’t know what happened here, but when he came back, he… he turned on me, is the best way I can put it.”
I knew from Tyrus’s own account what had happened from there. He had resolved to liberate himself fr
om the Venalox. He’d brutalized and terrorized Gladdic into using Venalox with him, so Gladdic might serve as his test subject for neutralizers.
Yet I had not known it was a visit to this Repository that started him down that path.
Gladdic’s eyes were shimmering with tears. “I grew to fear him. I often wondered if he hated me for having seen him so weak, or maybe… maybe he hated himself because he’d needed me. I can’t remember the day he sentenced me to death, or—anything, really, from that time. I just remember waking up and…” He loosed a shuddering sigh. “The Emperor was sitting at my bedside, watching me. He said he wanted a ‘fresh start.’ I didn’t realize until others told me that I’d nearly died at his hand. That you died intervening for me.”
“And you don’t remember saving me,” I said hoarsely. How cruel of Tyrus, to rob Gladdic of that single memory of heroism.
Although, to be fair, Tyrus likely hadn’t known until Corcyra that I’d been saved at all.
At the bleak shake of his head, I snared his hand. “But you did. You saved me. You, Gladdic.”
Gladdic’s hand briefly tightened around mine before he pulled free. “And what have I done since?” he said in a soft, miserable voice. “I’ve spoken lie upon lie—whatever he wanted me to say. I said I’d seen him transform into a god. I did it all with a straight face. You’re right: I’m despicable.”
“Oh, Gladdic.” The last remnants of my anger with him now crumbled away. I reached up, wiped the tears from his cheek. “It’s over. It’s done now.”
Tenderness did not come naturally to me, but receiving it came easily to him. He closed his eyes to my touch. “I am not brave,” he said very quietly. “Not like you.”
My mind returned to those Excess who’d tried to fight me off in the Repository, the ones I’d slain so easily. That was not bravery. It was not noble, either. “Bravery is not the same as battle skill,” I said slowly. “I was bred to fight. It’s not born of courage. In truth, I think I lack the strength to be like you.”
He snorted. “Timid, you mean?”
“Gentle. The Grandiloquy are vipers, and you live in their snake pit—yet you have never been one yourself. You seek to understand others, to understand me, to understand Tyrus, even though none of us has ever repaid that kindness to you.”
My words were slowing under the weight of my fatigue. My hand, still damp from Gladdic’s tears, dropped like a lead weight back to my side.
“I don’t understand you,” I said honestly. “Just as I never understood Donia. But I know enough to wish I could be more like you.”
Yet it was an impossible ambition. When I was hated, I replied with hate. After Tyrus had stabbed me, I’d tried to inoculate myself with hatred; I’d finally succeeded after the Halcyon. And in hating, I had become hateful.…
It takes a monster to kill a monster.
But was that so? For I had forgotten the fundamental truth that I was more than a Diabolic. I did not want to be this way. Merely because I was created to be a monster did not mean that was my destiny. For I had also been invested with a mind and a will, and my fate was my own to decide.
That Gladdic could look at me so kindly, even after beholding the slaughter I had wrought, was a gift indeed. It showed me that I was more than my worst mistakes.
I wanted to be more.
Perhaps that was the true difference between me and the Tyrus that now existed.
I would find a way to stop Tyrus, but I would not sacrifice my own soul to do it. There had to be a better way.
After a long minute, Gladdic spoke again. “What do you think the Emperor found in this Repository, to return from here so changed?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I mean to find out.”
23
“I MUST FIND something while we’re here,” I said to Plyno. “Do you recall the Emperor visiting this place in the company of Senator von Pasus?” At his nod, I pressed, “Do you know what they were looking for?”
Plyno nodded. “Pasus spent his time poking through the Domitrian vaults. But the Emperor only wanted a tour of the facility.”
“Do you know where he visited, what he looked at?”
“It could have been anything. Anywhere. It’s the royal prerogative to see all the contents stored in the Repository.”
“I need to know anything he examined, Plyno.”
Plyno took me to the Repository’s data archives, where we discovered that Tyrus had covered his tracks well. He’d deleted all surveillance records of his visit and had taken efforts to erase his digital footprints in the system too.
But clever as he was, Tyrus had no technical training. “Give me a moment and I can find out if he looked at anything in the Repository databases,” Plyno said.
I nodded. With Pasus distracted by a greedy inventory of the Domitrian vaults, Tyrus certainly would have stolen the opportunity to ransack the data files.
“Here.” Plyno tapped the console and the large screen before us lit up. Together we studied the backed-up logs from the archives, which showed every ancient record that Tyrus had accessed.
Most of them he’d perused only for seconds. Old proceedings of the Imperial Senate, scraps of surveillance collected by the late Emperor Randevald, footage of traitors long since executed… As I began to flip through the files, I gained a sense of what Tyrus had been searching for.
He’d been hunting for proof of Pasus’s culpability in the mass purges of political adversaries under Randevald. What had Tyrus intended? To use these records as blackmail? Expose them to the public? Or…
My breath caught. This was what I’d been searching for.
Tyrus had watched two holographic records repeatedly—five times and twenty-two times, respectively. He’d copied them both to a data crystal.
“Play these,” I said to Plyno.
My heart thudded with anticipation as Plyno cued the nearby holographic projector for the first record. An image bloomed to life between us.
For a fleeting moment, I thought it was a younger Tyrus that I gazed upon, standing in the center of the Grand Sanctum of the Chrysanthemum.
But a slight shift of the angle revealed this boy to be much smaller, with hollowed cheeks and a sulky demeanor that Tyrus had never exhibited.
Stars, they looked so similar. The same hair, the same eyes…
“Who is this?” I said to Plyno.
Plyno did not even have to consult the data log. “That’s Emperor Tarantis von Domitrian.”
Tarantis had reigned nearly five hundred years ago. What would Tyrus possibly learn from some old record of Tarantis the Great?
The holographic image abruptly panned back. My eyes narrowed as I studied the decoration of the Grand Sanctum. Bright banners and multihued flags covered the walls, but none of them showed the six-star sigil of the Domitrians. Strange.
Were these Senators? They sat where our current Senators sat, and held themselves as our Senators did, yet I glimpsed no family sigils on their garb as they discussed legislation. The representatives were wearing a variety of odd fashions, some of the same palladium and metal fashions preferred by the Grandiloquy as formal wear now, some wearing garbs of cloth.… Strange fashions. Hair, makeup, jewelry, clothing—so many different styles, and no two alike. Everyone wore a translator node, clipped to ears or throat or collar.
“Volume,” I said.
Plyno touched the projector. A babble of voices spilled over us.
“What language are they speaking?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” Plyno said.
It took me a moment to realize they were all speaking different languages. From one another. I could make out several distinct tongues.
“They didn’t all speak the same language,” I said, astonished. The Empire did not tolerate use of old Earth languages outside of academic study. The use of other tongues was considered subversive.
As the recording proceeded, Tarantis raised his hand and said, “I humbly seek the honor of service to the Unit
ed Republics. I ask you to accept my pledge of loyalty to the people of this galaxy.”
A voice called, “Is this appointment ratified?”
The image panned from one representative to the next.
“On behalf of the electorate of Lumina, I approve.”
Electorate? What in the name of Helios?
“On behalf of the electorate of Atarys, I approve.”
Were Senators elected back then?
“On behalf of the electorate of Gorgon’s Arm, I approve.”
My head whirled. I was watching the proceedings of a Senate—an elected Senate—representing self-governing provinces of humans from a vast swath of the galaxy.
It resembled no history I’d ever read or heard about. And yet, here it was.
“I don’t understand,” Plyno murmured. “The Domitrians have ruled for over two thousand years. It is the law. So what… why would he…”
He trailed off as a member of the Senate rose and pronounced Tarantis to have been ratified by the power of the electorates of the Empire.
“Go back,” I said rapidly. “Let us hear that again.”
Yes, Tarantis had been ratified by a body of electorates. And in response to this news, he bowed low—like a servant to his masters!—and thanked the provinces for the honor.
“They granted him the power,” Plyno said wonderingly.
I had to play it again just to make sure of it, but to my mounting disbelief, my suspicions were true.
Tarantis was not being treated as an imperial royal, but as a servant. A servant granted power by this multitude of people.
A vicar drew forward, holding the imperial scepter high over his head. “Do you, Tarantis von Domitrian, swear to protect and defend the United Republics, and preserve the independence and liberty of all inhabitants to the best of your ability?”
Tarantis dropped to his knees, kneeling before all the chamber. “As Grand Spymaster I vow to serve this galaxy to the best of my ability.”
Plyno made a noise of amazed disbelief at that word “serve.” Service was something a Domitrian demanded of others—but never had we heard of an Emperor applying it to himself.
The Nemesis Page 15