And here, here, I could see in total how his thoughts had swerved toward destroying his own Empire rather than reforming it.
“It’s impossible,” he said, “to have an Empire of this size without a ruling class forming, and rank is blinding to its holders. We exalted few stand so high on our pedestals that we can no longer see the fine detail of the landscape, yet we rule the Excess who live among what we can barely perceive. We who do not even understand their existence presume to dictate its terms to them. The solution always had to be an end to the Empire, a total decentralization of power so even the most prominent among each society holds only so much influence, never such an exorbitant amount as I do.…”
“So you are doing exactly what you need to do, then. You are breaking up the Empire.” I didn’t see the problem. “You were in error when you were young, but you don’t think that way now.”
He gave an ironic smile. “That’s exactly it: I, a single person, am arbitrarily making a decision for everyone else in this galaxy that the Empire needs to come to an end—to put a stop to small numbers of people holding exorbitant power. I alone am making this decision. You see where I run into my own hypocrisy. And that’s why I cannot halt the doubts. Fundamentally, I am all that I mean to oppose—even in my act of opposition.”
I shook my head, impatient. “What’s the point of thinking like that? You’ve told me the rationale. You’ve clearly thought it over. It’s too late to turn back now.”
“I could wipe away all that is,” Tyrus murmurs, “and perhaps something worse will fester in its place.”
“Worse than a repressive tyranny where entire planets are wiped out in a single day?” I pointed out.
“We are not mired in an unending civil war. We are not in a state of universal anarchy. A great number of people live quite contentedly. Every so often I look at the enormity of what I am doing to this galaxy, and I think, ‘Stars, what am I doing? What right do I have to do this?’ And I cannot shut out those thoughts.”
“There could be something worse. That’s always the risk you take when you seek change,” I told him, my voice hard. “But you do have the right to do this because this galaxy has imbued you with the power of an Emperor. You are exploiting a fundamental flaw in its makeup to destroy it, and if it has that flaw, perhaps it deserves to be destroyed using it. What alternative did you have? Flee with me to a black hole and give it all up, leave a power vacuum for a new tyrant to fill?”
He reached out and took me gently by the arms, drew me closer. “I regret that,” he told me hoarsely. “Not a day passes that I don’t wish we’d left together.”
“Nor for me,” I admitted reluctantly, “but that was never an answer. Look at the other choice: You and I ruling together, side by side? The Grandiloquy massed to stop us from making any true change. You had to resemble their form of tyrant for them to support you. You would have had to kill most of the Grandiloquy, and a good number of the Excess imperialists as well, to achieve any substantial reforms… but you wouldn’t be the Tyrus I know if you were capable of that.”
His gaze grew distant. “My mother warned me that our family’s power would cost me my soul. I think she was right. It may be impossible to hold the power of an Emperor and remain pure. Even if you and I had ruled and remained… noble, all we would have done was reinforce the institution of power we occupied. We’d make the case there could be rulers of humanity worthy of holding such influence over the lives of others. Our successors would have ruled on a mandate we helped strengthen, and they might have been devils.”
“So there you go,” I said, arching my brows. “Those are your alternative decisions, and none of them are better than the choice you’ve made. So what is the use of doubt now, Tyrus? You’ve chosen a course, and… and if it makes a difference, I think it could work.”
He caught my eyes, intent, and it dawned on me that it still mattered immensely to him what I thought of this. “Do you?”
I took his face in my hands, trapping his gaze. “Tyrus, I do.”
He sighed and leaned forward, and I surrendered to a dangerous impulse and drew his head onto my shoulder. The sensation of Tyrus so near me, with me once more, felt utterly right.
For was this not the reason we had always been stronger united rather than set against each other? He was my solace and I was his, and here we were sharing our thoughts, our minds once again, deciding together.…
Why, this was home.
Not a home as in a place. Not even a home as in my place with Tyrus, but perhaps, in some sense, my home in that I felt I had come back to myself after a long absence. This was more than Nemesis the Diabolic, the human, the Empress. This was the Nemesis who’d felt herself worthy of all those roles… the one who could stand at Tyrus’s side staring out at the stars and devise and act upon dreams greater than herself.
I’d missed this person. And I’d missed Tyrus. At last I said so to him.
“I fear you will vanish if I take my eyes from you,” Tyrus confessed.
For I had been away from him far longer than he had from me. With his raw, vulnerable admission, I finally stopped battling myself.
“I won’t leave you again. And Tyrus, I don’t want to.” Then I raised my gaze to his, and Tyrus read my permission in my eyes, and dipped his lips to mine.
After I met his kiss, he made a low sound in his throat, and his arms swept under me to draw me up across his lap, his arms banding about me in a ferocious hug as though never to release me again. There were tears on his face that I gently kissed away, and he just held me there, nestled in the shelter of his warmth.
There, with the great window looking onto the dark of hyperspace, we held each other, and the last of my doubts melted away.
We were together. We’d returned home at last.
42
OUR NIGHTS were sleepless no more. We passed long hours in a sweet, blissful solitude, not a machine or a Partisan to disturb us in the darkness of hyperspace. It was Tyrus who awoke me at nights with his hand caressing my hair, soothing me after my tormented dreams, and it was I who kissed him awake when he turned to and fro with his own nightmares.
We could not endure to be away from each other.
We talked of everything. We had never been so honest with each other. We spoke of my travels, of sleeping in forests beneath naked skies, of the months passed with Anguish in the wilderness, of the hardships of life on Devil’s Shade. Tyrus spoke of the miseries under Pasus, of his doubts and hard-won victories during the isolated, empty years we’d passed apart.
Mostly, we spoke of each other. Revisiting our shared history, we retold it honestly.
It was not easy to relive. Our history was barbed.
Tyrus told of searching surveillance cameras across the Empire for glimpses of me. “In those first months, it crushed me to find you. You looked devastated. Betrayed. By the time we met on Corcyra, your hostility almost came as a comfort—I was glad to see the fire in your eyes again. But then, with what followed…”
Pained silences often punctuated our discussion. I could not think of Corcyra with calmness. Hope and dignity shattered, I had almost died.
“You took shelter at the Field Museum,” he murmured of that time. “When I realized where you were, I kept the museum closed. I planted a medical bot in reach—just in the next room. But Anguish never looked there. I had the bot ram itself into the wall several times, hoping to attract his attention, but he was too preoccupied. It was unimaginably frustrating.”
Remembering the endless painful hours I’d passed in recovery, I was nauseated by this new knowledge. A med bot had been waiting so close by! But Tyrus, trapped by his own deceit, had been powerless to send it directly to me. Anguish and I would have been suspicious.
I had confessions of my own. “I hated myself for failing to kill you on Corcyra,” I told Tyrus. “I couldn’t do it. I pitied you so—I was sure you were mad.”
His lips curled. “If it’s any consolation, I suspect I am.”
/> “That was never in question,” I said. “Merely the form of the madness.” And like that, the solemnity of our discussion was broken, and Tyrus kissed his way down my neck.
“Oh, I will show you something I’m mad about,” he vowed, and rolled me onto my back to kiss his way down my body.
The discussions were all medicine—harsh but necessary. With each talk, we lanced and drained old wounds. With each confession, we reawakened the injury and magnified the ache—before curing it.
And as we talked, and as we kissed, we shut our awareness to the calamity in our near future, drawing closer with every day we passed in hyperspace, for soon we would reach the Chrysanthemum. Reality. The harsh future just ahead of us. He had set us on a course, one that he’d always meant to end in his destruction, and I could not allow that. On this one matter—the most crucial matter—I was willing to go to war with him. For he could not survive his scheme, and I would not let it kill him.
A morning came when I reached for Tyrus and found the sheets cold and empty.
I sat up, and my stomach plunged.
Stars gleamed out the windows. We had dropped out of hyperspace into the Eurydicean system.
Little time remained until we reached the Chrysanthemum and the real battle commenced.
Tyrus stood by the window, his tall, disciplined frame silhouetted by silvery starlight, posture rigid and tense. I’d made no noise, but he started at my waking. The tension did not escape him until he felt the press of my body against his side.… And then his eyes closed heavily. Soundlessly he leaned against me, drawing strength from me in these final moments we could afford to share in peace.
“Together,” I whispered. “Everything we do from here, we do it together.”
“It complicates everything,” he said. “Now you know the truth.”
“I won’t consent to your suicide.”
“You speak as though I wish to die,” he said softly, reaching out to trace his knuckles over my cheek. “I have too much to live and breathe for, especially now that you are come back to me. But, Nemesis, revolutions end with a king’s head on a pike.”
“Not this one.”
The edges of the Chrysanthemum slid into view, the great mass of inactive defensive machines like the teeth of a waiting monster. Then the vast pylons reared into sight, great and shadowy forms in silhouette against the planet of Eurydice.
Tyrus’s lie, his pretense to godhood, and his plan to nurture his own downfall had developed their own momentum. Yet the Excess had not risen to overthrow him.
But someone would. Somehow, it would happen. There was too much resentment boiling under the surface, small fragments that would swell into ruptures at this vast lie too many had eagerly swallowed and parroted.
All I knew was that I would not play the part he’d designed for me. I would not be the agent of Tyrus’s destruction. I had barely survived when I’d believed I had murdered a monster. Now that I understood he intended himself to be a sacrifice for the sake of this galaxy’s freedom, harming him was unthinkable.
The main body of the Chrysanthemum filled the window as we drew closer. It looked oddly disordered, the armada of vessels interlinked clumsily without a Domitrian mind serving to unify the vast network of computerized systems. Where his arms wrapped around me, I could feel the slight tremor that ran through Tyrus. Any pretense of peace or serenity was gone. For both of us.
The Chrysanthemum had hosted the worst moments of our lives. Here, he had suffered for four years as a prisoner of Pasus; here, he had set a course to destroy the galaxy as he knew it and ensure his own doom in the process.
Here, he had killed me.
It was Tarantis “the Great” who had first assembled this massive collection of vessels, calling his newly empowered Grandiloquy to him in a royal court, to serve as a centralized fist to project their combined power over the breadth of their galaxy. How hopeful Neveni had looked, at the prospect of deorbiting and destroying this vast superstructure.
A pity I’d cost her that chance. It might have been pleasant to watch this wretched place burn.
As we drew nearer, I saw debris orbiting the Chrysanthemum—detritus composed of thousands of deadened security bots. Others would be littered throughout the corridors of the vessels that composed the great complex. There was no more pretense of safety or security here.
But I would do my best to protect him. In the spirit of our new honesty, I felt compelled to tell him so. “I’m going to keep you alive, Tyrus.”
He stroked my hair. “Then we’re at an impasse,” he said calmly. “For I won’t permit you to share my fate. And anyone who aids me will be targeted with me.”
I caught his hand, sliding it down so he cupped my cheek. “You have no machines to enforce your will. How do you plan to drive me away?”
He closed his eyes. “What choice is there? Name an alternative.”
“There’s another way.” I kissed his palm—then bit his finger sharply. Startled, he opened his eyes. “We’ll pick a new opposition leader.” I threaded my fingers through his. “Someone who will moderate the forces that rise against you—someone who can be made to understand the reasons for all you’ve done—for all we’ve done. He will make sure we’re spared.”
There was a hint of relief on his face, perhaps because I was clearly speaking of someone who was not Neveni. His eyes searched mine intently. “You have someone in mind.”
“I do.”
His relief evaporated as soon as I told him:
“Gladdic.”
* * *
As we pulled in to dock with the Valor Novus, a beauty bot worked to transform Tyrus. As I watched his features shift—the cleft in his chin disappearing along with his freckles, his reddish hair lightening to a shade of blond—I fought the gnawing presentiment that he was disappearing. That I was losing him once more.
“You already resembled Tarantis,” I said. Tyrus and his forebear shared the same pale eyes and sharp cheekbones. “Why emphasize it?”
“For posterity.” Tyrus studied the bot’s work in a handheld mirror. He had not looked at me in some time. An imperceptible distance was opening between us, which I tried not to mind; we each dealt in our own way with the gravity of the task ahead. “In a thousand years,” he said, “when historians look back upon the legendary Tarantis von Domitrian, I wish them to think as well on his monstrous descendant. I want it to be clear to them that the mad, megalomaniac Tyrus was very much a product of Tarantis’s line. May they always mention us in the same breath.”
He laid down the mirror, giving me a half smile. It was not his smile. Tarantis’s upper lip was fuller, more deeply bowed.
“It’s a face for a monster of history,” he said. “I’ll be known for trampling a vast Empire with my delusions of godhood. Known for the mass murder of Luminars—”
“Pasus’s deed!”
“I’ll take credit for the Sacred City, as well. For more wrongs that still have yet to be known—”
“So the misdeeds of others will be yours. Yet Tarantis is hailed as a hero!” I said bitterly.
“Imagine what passed through his mind those final moments of his existence,” murmured Tyrus. “He bought that false legacy of greatness with his very soul, and he still perished as we all do. What does it matter if posterity deems me a Caligula, a Hitler, a Vengerov? I know the truth of myself. I have no fear of that final breath.”
He looked at me then, his voice wistful, soft. “And you know the truth. It was a torment to be monstrous in your eyes. Only in yours.”
It was strange to hear the words as I looked upon his ancestor’s face. He’d worn his true features when coming to save me from the Partisans. Expecting to find me tortured and traumatized, he’d disabused himself of all illusions.
But his kindness was a double-edged sword. Now, when I remembered that awful moment when I’d detonated the charge, it was his true face that I saw—his true eyes, stricken and fixed as his heart stopped beating.
May
I see that face again one day.
Tyrus waved away the bot and rose smoothly to his feet, sliding into a shin-length oiled-leather coat. I also rose, feeling heavier, somehow, than I had moments ago.
“Nemesis.” He paused, studying me with a cool gaze. “If we’re to do this, I have a condition of my own.”
If I kissed him now, his lips would feel like a stranger’s. “Go on.”
“You are never to be seen at my side.” His voice was remote, formal. “As far as this galaxy knows, you are dead.”
“I would have suggested the same.” The better for me to be mobile, to slip unremarked through the shadows and keep him alive long enough to complete his task.
And when the reckoning came, and the galaxy finally bent to his will and conspired to destroy him, well… I would find a way to direct the chaos so that both of us were spared.
I waved over the beauty bot and typed in a hasty transformation program of my own. A single slice of the laser, and I sheared my white-blond hair to a mere quarter inch. Next, the laser rendered my hair black as pitch. The third pass enlivened my skin with pigment.
As Tyrus watched me, he forgot to pretend indifference. “That becomes you,” he murmured.
“You like it?” Before he could touch me, I added, “I don’t like yours.”
Brows raised, he stepped back. I flicked my fingers over the buttons and gave myself disfiguring growths on my lip and cheek, large enough to distort my own features.
The effect was not flattering.
Tyrus laughed, and I smiled back at him despite myself.
The Nemesis Page 28