“In fact, I’m thinking of writing a book about my ordeal while I’m here on Atarys enjoying your beautiful binary stars.” Gladdic was speaking fluently now, and his flush actually worked to his advantage, suggesting a wealth of repressed emotion. “Then, once I’ve returned to Eurydice, I’ll speak further about my victimization at the hands of Luminars. No doubt it is right to mourn the loss of that planet—I don’t mean to discount anyone’s grief. But I think history must reckon with the full truth, the dark truth, of those who dwelled on Lumina—above all, the Sagnaus.” He cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, nodded smartly. “I welcome any inquiries from journalists who’d like to compose a holographic exposé for me.”
Anguish and I exchanged a look. There was not a chance that Neveni would let Gladdic carry out that plan.
It was only a matter of time now before she struck back.
* * *
We’d chosen Atarys for its close proximity to the last sighting of the rogue Partisan vessel, the Arbiter. Neveni likely wouldn’t strike in person—she might suspect a trap and deploy someone else—but someone connected to her certainly would. We would use that person to track her down.
Gladdic’s family owned a great swath of property here, so he’d secured us a small manor house just outside the capital. Hidden from the main road by a stand of lavender-leafed trees, the building was practically indefensible: it boasted four entrances, uncurtained skylights and windows that offered a clear view of the interior, and a chimney large enough to accommodate the entry of a dozen security bots.
We’d chosen this property for its relative seclusion—and the ease with which it could be surrounded and attacked. At this remove from the populace, there should be little collateral damage if a true battle began.
Gladdic was the bait.
Waiting was not a skill that came naturally to me. I was picking irritably at a mediocre stew from a nearby tavern when Gladdic’s transmitter chimed.
I pushed away from the table as Anguish grabbed his weapon. “Answer it,” I said to Gladdic.
Gladdic looked up from his transmitter. All the blood had drained from his face. “It’s not her,” he said. “It’s the Emperor.”
Anguish and I exchanged a sharp look. Tyrus must have noticed the irregularity of Gladdic’s public announcement. Perhaps he’d also learned the truth of what had transpired in the Clandestine Repository. If he knew Gladdic was with us, our situation had just gotten much more complicated.
“I don’t know what to say to him.” Gladdic was panting rapidly. If he kept it up, he’d pass out.
I stepped forward to the holographic transmitter and rapidly jabbed in an avatar sequence to lend me Gladdic’s face and voice. “I’ll answer. Leave the room.”
He seemed to collapse into himself with relief. Anguish, taking his arm, hauled him to his feet and out the door. I waited another moment, took a bracing breath, then answered Tyrus’s transmission.
“Your Divine Reverence,” I said, dipping to my knees and drawing my hands to my heart, ice water in my veins.
Tyrus’s image bloomed to life before me in explicit and painful familiarity—arms folded, fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against his bicep. He was no longer accustomed to being kept waiting.
How like Tarantis he looked now!
“What in the name of Helios do you think you are doing, Gladdic?”
I straightened to my full height. “Showing Your Divine Reverence the respect you are due.”
“Don’t be cheeky. Why are you on Atarys fawning before the recorders? I ordered you to Eurydice to represent me at the Media Divinity Summit.”
I wanted to snarl that he could find someone else to lie for him. But Gladdic would never be so impudent. “Forgive me, Your Divine Supremacy. I’m very tired—and anxious. The crowds expect so much of me, I fear to disappoint them, to represent you poorly, due to my own exhaustion.” That sounded like a plausible excuse from Gladdic. “I just craved a brief respite, to recover my strength.”
“Yes. Yes, and apparently to mull over your trauma at the hands of the Luminars.” Tyrus’s voice was dry. “Tell me, isn’t it enough that they’re dead? Why profane their memories by inventing stories of abuse?”
I opened my mouth but was too surprised to manage a reply. Was he actually attempting to take the high ground here?
“Well?” he prompted.
“I…” I imitated Gladdic’s anxious demeanor. “I felt moved to speak of my—my feelings about the past. Perhaps it was ill done of me. I am sorry.”
“For a man so anxious about his public performances, you nevertheless seem remarkably eager to draw attention.” Tyrus’s voice was harsh. “There are consequences. I intercepted Partisan chatter of a plot to hunt you down.”
My heart gave a strange, skittering beat. That was exactly what we’d meant to engineer.
“I’m going to have you evacuated from that planet before they act on that plot,” said Tyrus. “I’ve contacted the Viceroy and have an armed guard mobilized for—”
“No,” I cut in.
“No?” His brows arched.
I could see Tyrus’s mind at work, speculation sharpening his study of me. I cursed my carelessness.
“I’m leaving shortly, Your Divine Reverence,” I said. “I need no escort.”
“I’ve never known you to refuse security, Gladdic.” Tyrus’s voice grew soft. “Surely you remember what happened on Eurydice two months ago.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“What happened?”
I stared at him.
He drew closer to the transmitter on his end. “Tell me in your own words what happened on Eurydice two months ago.”
Heart drumming, I said nothing.
“You don’t recall, do you?” Tyrus tipped his head just a fraction. In someone else, it would have signaled polite interest. From him, it was tantamount to a predator baring its teeth. “The microgravity dancer and the incident with the wine?”
“Oh, of course. That dancer.”
His smile was slow and humorless. “In truth, you weren’t on Eurydice two months ago. Gladdic would know that. But you aren’t Gladdic, are you?”
Gladdic would look, feel, horrified—panicked—wounded by such an accusation.
Panic was not difficult to fake. I felt something like it. “Your Divine Reverence! I—it is true that I haven’t felt like myself of late, but I am not sure—”
“Who are you?” He spoke coldly, all expression evacuated from his voice, his face. “Is Gladdic alive?”
My stomach sank. There was little point to carrying on this pretense. But admitting the truth would be even more unwise. I took a breath, preparing to compose another nervous, Gladdic-like reply—but I was interrupted by the shrill of the perimeter alarms, even as a great shadow blotted out the sunlight overhead.
“Never mind that.” Tyrus’s eyes gleamed. “I know your exact position, and I already have forces in orbit. You’ll answer all my questions shortly—whoever you are.”
I slapped off the transmitter and charged to the window. A starship was descending through the atmosphere. Footsteps pounded behind me: Anguish and Gladdic rushed up to my side, Anguish shoving a weapon into my waiting hands.
“We need to leave,” I said.
The Atlas was docked on the far side of the city. We would never make it.
The imperial vessel was a massive silhouette descending toward us.
Anguish and I both lifted our weapons, aiming them at the ship. Running was useless. So we would fight.
A flare of light caught my attention. It came from above the imperial vessel. As I squinted up, the light pierced the hull of Tyrus’s ship, burning straight through it. Below, trees exploded into flames, and a shower of purple leaves hit our window.
The imperial vessel bucked beneath the assault, then twisted in an attempt to target its new foe.
But it was no match for the Arbiter.
It had been the Interdict’s vessel, and it was he
avily armed. It blasted at the imperial ship again and again, causing molten steel to erupt on all sides. Anguish seized my arm and Gladdic’s, too, then hurled us away as a tumbling fragment roared toward us.
I hit the floor on my belly just as the wall behind us exploded. A wave of fire rolled down the far wall, sucking the oxygen from my lungs as it went. Windows shattered, glittering shards slicing down all around me. For a moment—less than a heartbeat—silence fell. And then the house groaned all around us, beams snapping and cracking—and collapsing.
Darkness. I reached out blindly, trying but failing to find my companions. Each breath made me retch and gag—dust and powdered concrete choked me, and the thick, bitter taste of ash coated my tongue. Through the ringing in my ears, I could make out explosions and weapon fire. Loud and then louder, so loud that the explosions seemed to come from within my aching skull. My hands over my ears did not help; I could not drown out the roar of it. A war was being waged overhead.
Never before had I felt so small, so helpless. Unable to breathe, to see, or to think. I tried to crawl to cleaner air, but in the darkness, I did not know which way to turn, and found my path blocked again and again by rubble. Even a superhumanly strong Diabolic was nothing, matched against a pair of interstellar killing machines.
The air was clearing. I could breathe again, choked and heaving breaths. A hand grasped my wrist—Anguish hauled me to my feet. Under his other arm, he held up a swaying Gladdic. We stood together amid the burning wreckage of the house, inside a forest on fire, with the remnants of fractured, scorched security machines littered all about us. Sirens pealed in the distance. As the air continued to clear, I spotted a bright inferno, green flames fed by some chemical from an injured starship, that marred the distant vista of Atarys.
And overhead, the other starship, still intact, descended steadily, its lethal rings spinning. As the Arbiter settled on the ground, it raised another choking cloud of ash. I was still coughing, my eyes watering, when armed Partisans appeared through the haze, respirators masking their faces, weapons aimed at us.
Anguish looked at me with a question in his eyes. I’d intended to reunite with Neveni on my own terms—to ambush one of her people, learn her location, and then surprise her.
Instead I would be at her mercy. Again.
With gritted teeth, I tossed down my weapon. After a stubborn hesitation, Anguish did the same.
The Partisans spoke not a word. They jerked their weapons to indicate that we should precede them onto the Arbiter. And thus—as prisoners—we did.
26
THE PARTISANS fastened treatise bands about our necks, set to detonate if we stepped out of line. Then they brought us to the command nexus of the Arbiter.
I barely recognized the Neveni Sagnau who awaited me there. Once upon a time—so long ago it felt more like a dream than a memory—we had been friends. But that lively, irrepressible girl was as dead as my affection for her. The Neveni who turned to acknowledge me wore her dark hair sheared close to her scalp, the better to show off the scar that slashed across her cheek and ran into her hairline, and her eyes were hard and cold.
The scar had been gifted to her by the very Partisans she now commanded. I offered them my loyalty, and in reply, they tried to kill me and take the Arbiter, she’d told me once. They didn’t succeed.
“So Nemesis does live,” she said. “You look like hell. Was that my doing?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I stepped forward and was halted immediately by Partisan weapons leveled in my direction. “We need to talk.”
“You agreed to kill the Emperor, then went back on your word. There is nothing left to say.” As her gaze found Anguish, her voice soured. “But you? You surprised me.”
He folded his arms and lifted his chin, broadcasting defiance. “I valued her.”
“More than you did me, clearly. You betrayed me for her. Well.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “It doesn’t matter now. My mistake for trusting either of you.”
She started to turn away—then paused, a laugh scraping out of her as she noticed Gladdic.
“And Grande von Aton… of course. Your little speech was far from subtle. Bait, was it? It worked. I was really hoping the Emperor had put you up to it—that, at least, would have been interesting. But I suppose you’ll crawl for anyone, provided they toss you a bone now and then.”
Gladdic grew rigid at her contempt. “I am not with the Emperor,” he said. “And neither is Nemesis!”
I stepped between Neveni and Gladdic. “I knew no other way to contact you,” I said tersely. “I need you to see this. There are two holographic recordings.” I withdrew the data chip I’d saved from within my glove. “Watch them.”
She gave it a brief, dismissive glance. “What is it? Some poorly designed piece of malware?”
“Forgotten history,” I said flatly. “I could tell you, but you must see it to believe it.”
Neveni eyed me without trust but nodded for one of her Partisans to take the chip from me. A tense silence hung in the command nexus as their holographic transmitter bloomed with the same images we’d watched in the Repository.
“What is this?” demanded Neveni when young Tarantis appeared.
“That’s Tarantis—”
“Tarantis von Domitrian. Yes, I went to school. But why…” Her voice trailed into silence as Tarantis bowed to the assembly and she realized what I had: Tarantis had not been Emperor when this recording was made.
In rigid silence, she watched the second of the scenes play out.… Tarantis deciding to create a mass catastrophe so he might build his Empire, giving the provinces of free people over to the custody of the Grandiloquy. Her fellow Partisans were not so restrained: they swore and murmured among themselves as the drama unfolded.
Only once the images had faded did I speak again.
“Did you catch the date of the recording?”
She gave me an opaque look, then turned away to speak with a crewman.
Did she not understand? I started toward her, but a wall of weapons forced me back. “This was made ten days prior to the supernova,” I said to Neveni’s back. “Don’t you see? He spoke of causing a catastrophe, and then he did. The Interdict always believed that supernova had an artificial cause. He was right, but he misplaced the blame. It was Tarantis’s doing. Tarantis conspired with the Grandiloquy—”
“Stop.”
She whirled on me, thunderous anger contorting her face. Her searing glare passed onward to Anguish. “Do you think I’m a fool?” she demanded to him. Her gaze swung back to me. “Do you think I am stupid enough to believe this nonsense?”
“Nonsense?” I echoed. “You saw with your own two eyes—”
“Vent them all from the air lock,” she snapped. Two of her Partisans started toward us.
Calculations unfolded instantly in my brain. If we did not resist, we’d die.
If we resisted, our treatise bands would detonate, blowing our heads away.
I was on Neveni before any of her Partisans could shoot. She gave a howl of indignation as I hooked my arms around her. Her teeth sank into my arm, drawing a grunt from me, but I hauled her closer yet, so that her feet dangled off the ground and our cheeks pressed together.
“My dear old friend,” I snarled in her ear. “What a quandary. Blow me up and you die too.”
She fought my grip, clawing and kicking desperately, but she was no match for a Diabolic. “Detonate it!” she shouted at her Partisans. They traded uncertain looks, briefly hesitating. “Detonate it,” Neveni screamed.
One young man moved toward a nearby panel to obey her. But Anguish had seen his opportunity. In one great lunge, he seized the man and immobilized him.
Now we had two human shields.
“Stop this!” Gladdic raised his arms as though in surrender. “All of you, stop!”
Now, that was nonsense. “Grab a weapon!” I roared at him.
“This is ridiculous,” Gladdic said. “Neveni, you two are on the
same side.”
She sank her teeth into my arm again and I hissed in annoyance. “Do you really think you can hurt me?” I bit out.
“Nemesis, stop that, too!” said Gladdic. “Loosen your grip—she can’t breathe.”
The note of command in his voice was so foreign and unexpected that I heeded it, easing the pressure of my near stranglehold on Neveni. “You have a better plan?” I snarled. “How delightful. Share it, if you please.” For all about us in the command nexus, the Partisans aimed weapons at our heads, and Neveni still struggled in my grip.
But Gladdic had no interest in answering me. His attention was on Neveni. “Why do you want us dead?” he asked, a certain helpless befuddlement in his face. “Don’t you want these holographics of Tarantis?”
“They are fake!” Neveni shot back. “Stars, did you really think I’d be such an easy mark? That you would march in here after all this time and happen to bring exactly what I’d want most to see?” She made a choked noise, scorn and disbelief combined. “And then you’d discredit us, no doubt, by having us spread it everywhere.”
“It’s no fake, you little fool!” I would have shaken her until her teeth rattled if I didn’t need to keep her head pressed close to mine. We would die together, here and now, if that was how she insisted it go.
“No. No. Neveni, listen to me.” Gladdic raised his hands even higher over his head, his fingers trembling, and slowly approached Neveni. “It’s real,” he said, his green eyes wide and guileless. “We found that in a place called the Clandestine Repository—a vault for the Grandiloquy. I tell you, it’s real.”
“Oh, Gladdic,” whispered Neveni, then mumbled something.
His brow knit and he inched closer to us to hear.
Don’t do that, I thought, exasperated by his naivete. But I didn’t warn him. He was fool enough to deserve the lesson.
Neveni’s leg lashed up and rammed his face, throwing him to the ground.
The Nemesis Page 17