He floated idly toward me, his back to me. “Well?”
“He is as ready as he will ever be,” I said, my eyes on the diamond glass I made a show of scrubbing. “I think if we give him the instructions at the last minute, he’ll obey what I tell him to do. I am sure of it.”
For a moment, we floated there in the silence, and memories washed over me of the last time we’d been in this place together… when Tyrus had fought me. When he’d driven his sword through me.
Such was our own arc of history that we returned here once more—this time to work together.
“If you’re certain, then it’s time,” Tyrus said. “Let’s make it happen.”
* * *
With Gladdic ready for his role, it was time to kindle the flame of resistance. Tyrus ordered the execution of the terrorist Neveni Sagnau and her accomplice, the Diabolic known as Anguish.
The executions would be public, conducted in grand style on Neveni’s dead planet of Lumina. We departed with half the Grandiloquy following us, for they’d been promised a raucous party following the execution.
Tyrus had drawn up an impressive list of charges. Neveni had consorted with the rebel Partisans. She had orchestrated the abduction of the Empress after the attack on the Tigris and had sent an imposter in the Empress Nemesis’s place to defame the Interdict and spread conspiracy theories about the destruction of the Sacred City. She’d abused Gladdic von Aton during his imprisonment with her family. She was a blasphemer and heretic, who indulged in the vilest depravities.
As the darkness of hyperspace enshrouded the Alexandria, Tyrus showed me the transmission being circulated across the Empire, the better to draw a wide audience for the live coverage of Neveni’s execution. The pompous narrator read out an endless list of offenses, some of which made me laugh softly.
“ ‘Leading youth into depraved debaucheries’?” I echoed. “This is ridiculous.”
Tyrus paused the transmission on a still of Neveni’s enraged face—a clip taken from some surveillance video. For all I knew, it showed Neveni’s displeasure at receiving a poor meal in captivity, but she looked fearsome, her fist uplifted toward the lens, her dark eyes fiery. “I hope she agrees,” he said. “With any luck, she’ll feel indignant enough to speak out on the scaffold.”
“Oh, Neveni’s never short on indignation.”
Tyrus shrugged. “When faced with death, some become stoic, resigned to their fate. Insulting her pride might forestall that possibility.”
“Can you find different footage of her?” Neveni’s face looked too convincingly rageful. “Gladdic has a soft spot for those in distress.”
Tyrus disagreed. “He’ll be likelier to act if he knows he can win a strong ally.”
“I can manage to convince him of that.” During my time with Gladdic, I had been seeding our conversations with glancing references to Neveni—conjuring a tragic heroine, whose life history illustrated many of the injustices that our reading criticized. I would veer into tales of her ferocity and resourcefulness now as well.
“Gladdic concerns me,” Tyrus said, not for the first time. “If he proves too fearful to do as we planned…”
Then I would have wasted several weeks, making him read books to me. “Neveni will just have to escape without him.”
His lips flattened into a line. Tyrus was worried that Neveni might seize control of the resistance we were working to create. Having learned more of ancient history during my evenings with Gladdic, I understood the concern. Tyrus did not wish to create a new Robespierre. And Neveni was certainly capable of taking power too far, given the opportunity.
My hand stole into his and squeezed. “We’ll find a way to make it work.”
He drew me closer, kissed the crown of my head. I could feel the tension vibrating through his body but did not know how to reassure him. Our plans had backfired so many times. I knew better than to trust luck.
So I gazed out at the pitch black of hyperspace and envisioned those arcs of history, and hoped upon all the stars that we were in the right place, at the right time, for fortune to favor us.
44
LUMINA’S purple atmosphere had enveloped the ship, causing the interiors to glow with a dim, menacing light. Everyone looked bloodless and bruised.
I had stopped by Anguish’s cell first, but the betrayal in his eyes was breathtaking, and my words had knotted up in my throat. It tortured me that I could not tell him the reason for my “betrayal,” that I had to keep the truth locked inside.
But he knew Tyrus to be an unabashed villain. Even if I had felt able to tell him the truth, he never would have believed it. At best, he would pity me for a deluded fool.
So all I could say was, “I’m sorry.”
Then, ashamed, I departed his cell.
Neveni was easier to face.
She was gazing stoically out the window at her home world, her arms crossed. She didn’t turn as I entered, but somehow she knew it was me.
“Pathetic,” she said pleasantly, as though resuming an ongoing conversation. “I knew you’d run back to him, but I never figured you for spiteful. Or was it his idea to kill me here?”
I could not trust Neveni with the truth either. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought it would be a comfort, to return home one last time.”
“What would you know of it? You never had a true home. Maybe a laboratory somewhere.”
She was trying to hurt me. I offered the only kindness I could: “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
She turned toward me. Perhaps it was a trick of the violet light spilling through the window, but she looked less angry than resigned. “I’m glad to die with my planet under my feet,” she said quietly.
My stomach tightened. So much for kindness—but we needed her angry, not serene. “Anguish will be with you.”
She recoiled. “You’d kill him, too? You would actually let Anguish die?”
I said nothing. Even knowing what we had planned, I felt shame swell in me.
Her laugh was bitter. “Of course you would kill him too. We’re nothing to you next to Tyrus. Did you plan all along to go back to him?” Her mouth twisted. “No, you didn’t, did you? Because he’d be dead right now if I hadn’t been stupid enough to want his ship.”
That stupidity had been my great good luck. I was so glad she’d wanted the Alexandria enough to save his life.
Perhaps she saw it on my face, because contempt flashed in her eyes. She spat at me. “Believe it or not, I never expected any better of you. I knew you’d forgive Tyrus. It’s pitiful. At least I’ll die with some dignity.”
“I wouldn’t lose hope so soon.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She sat heavily on the bench beneath the window. “You’d love it if I stood there cowering, begging him for mercy. Well, you can go fly into a black hole, Nemesis. I’m going to die, and that’s fine. I’ll hate you both to my last breath. I’ll see you in hell.”
I paused, then spoke slowly, giving weight to each word. “Save your last words for the execution.”
“What?” She went very still. “I’ll have a chance to talk?”
“With recorders broadcasting your speech to the galaxy. So I recommend you choose your words wisely.”
An ashen resolve filled her face. She hid it, turning away from me toward the window.
I stood there a moment longer, watching her with a heart weighted by grief and old affection. I had known Neveni for a long time now. She would not surprise me on the scaffold.
When she proclaimed our misdeeds to the galaxy, each sin she recited would fuel the burgeoning unrest of the Excess.
I left her then to plan the furious speech that would obliterate us.
* * *
Overhead, purple clouds blocked the twin moons of Lumina, casting a shadow across the square where the Grandiloquy had assembled to watch two terrorists die.
Tyrus stood at the center of this square, atop an enormous floating platform surrounded by recorders. The gi
ant screen behind him showed a close-up of his face, contorted now by the crazed smile of a madman.
The live transmission had commenced—his first since that fateful day, years ago, when I’d screamed the truth of the Sacred City to the Empire.
Traditionally, a committee of advisers staged such events. They had issued three recommendations for Neveni’s execution.
First: Do not execute the Luminar on her own planet. It will remind the public of the tragedy that occurred there.
But Tyrus meant to inspire sympathy. He’d chosen the Central Square for the execution site: a place still littered with the skeletons of Luminars killed by Resolvent Mist.
Second: Do not put the two prisoners together, lest their connection affect the audience.
Neveni and Anguish stood side by side, their palms pressed against their respective force fields, only millimeters separating them. The force fields were protecting them from the lingering poisons in the atmosphere, and a series of protective domes shielded those of us looking on. The recorders captured Anguish’s doleful face, and the loving tone of Neveni’s indistinct whisper.
Above all, Tyrus’s advisers had urged him, Don’t give her a chance to speak!
Tyrus had placed voice amplifiers throughout the Central Square. When Neveni raised her voice, the galaxy would not miss a syllable.
As for the advisers, he’d called them fools and dispatched them back to their home planets—effectively ending their lifetimes of service.
Since I was not officially alive, I stood at a remove with Gladdic, out of sight of the imagers. Gladdic took my arm as Tyrus lifted his hand to an attendant to mark the start of the ceremony.
The force fields’ opacity shifted, so that Neveni and Anguish at last perceived their audience. The recorders hummed as they drew closer yet, giving spectators across the Empire an intimate, front-row experience of Neveni’s stricken face, her sharp choked gasp.
The machines swiveled to follow her look, panning across the field of Luminar skeletons. They captured Anguish’s low, urgent remark—“Neveni. Look at me, only at me”—as he strained toward her, blocked by an invisible barrier.
And above loomed the Emperor Tyrus, visibly enjoying the sight of his prisoners’ misery.
“Behold the aftermath of disobedience,” he announced imperiously. “You stand amid the ruin of Luminar civilization—a ruin your people brought upon themselves.”
“Liar,” Neveni hissed.
Tyrus continued. “Your Divine Emperor in his benevolence extended his hand to the people of this planet. He offered them a beautiful new future of scientific growth and learning. But your people were not content with peace. They experimented with bioweapons. They destroyed themselves.”
“Liar!” shouted Neveni, her small fists balling at her side. “You know that’s not true!”
“And you, Neveni Sagnau—you, one of the last survivors of Lumina—you, above all, should have repented for these sins. You might have chosen a righteous path, a peaceful path. But what did you do?” Tyrus paused theatrically. “You chose to seed terror across this Empire. You murdered the innocent. You laid waste to the peaceful. You so admired the sins of your people that you strove to outdo them. And so I condemn you to die as they did, in the fatal embrace of Resolvent Mist. This is your last chance to speak, to breathe clean air. Confess your arrogance, your sins. Perhaps if you unburden yourself, your Divine Emperor will be moved to mercy.”
Neveni glared at him. “I’ll confess.”
The force fields merged, imprisoning Neveni and Anguish together. He stepped over to her, a silent wall of strength, and Neveni took his hand, then addressed the Grandiloquy: “Here it is. My confession.”
Her words rang over the air, and the Grandiloquy leaned forward around me, eager to hear her grovel and forfeit that fragile dignity.
“My people did not do this to our planet!” Neveni roared. “The Grandiloquy did! And the Emperor knows that! He’s no god! He’s a tyrant! And the Empire is a lie!”
Anguish gathered Neveni into his arms as the force field dropped, allowing poisoned air to envelop them.
Within seconds, she began to cough. On other planets, she would already be dead, but Lumina’s natural atmosphere and soil diluted the Mist’s effects—and made it an even slower, more agonizing way to die.
Gladdic had clutched my arm. “This is terrible,” he whispered.
Still coughing, Neveni pulled out of Anguish’s grasp. Clutching his hand to her heart, she raised her voice: “Tarantis—Tarantis von Domitrian triggered”—a racking cough—“the great supernova! He…” Her knees gave way, and Anguish caught her. The toxic air did not work as quickly on Diabolics, and he remained holding her upright as she gathered her strength to continue. “He used malignant space, just as our Emperor has done! It’s not the power of a god. The Domitrians have known how to create malignant space for hundreds of years!”
Derisive murmurs from all around us, all the Grandiloquy pretending to find this laughable.
“They stole everything from us!” screamed Neveni. “They have no right to own this galaxy!”
“You are in your last moments,” Tyrus mocked, “and you spend them blaspheming your own God.”
“YOU ARE NO GOD!” she howled, and doubled over, coughing. The words escaped her, jerky, breathless, urgent: “You are a MONSTER!”
Tyrus laughed. His Grandiloquy took the cue and broke into laughter as well, all of them sycophants who knew it to be true but pretended it was not.
“Spirited to the last,” Tyrus jeered.
And Neveni just coughed, struggling to breathe.
“I can’t watch this,” Gladdic muttered.
His eyes had closed. “No,” I said sharply. “You have to look.”
He shook his head.
“If she can bear it, you can bear to watch it!”
“I can’t!”
“Then save her,” I said.
Gladdic sent me a startled look. “What?”
Neveni had fallen, Anguish kneeling over her.
“Such a brave Partisan,” Tyrus jeered. “Fitting you should die strangling on your own lies. Open your eyes, girl. Take your last glimpse of your beloved planet. For it dies with you too.”
Neveni forced her head up, and her cheeks were covered in tears of blood.
In the sky above us, a great slash of bright white light tore across Lumina’s sky. Neveni screamed as the malignant space opened in the upper atmosphere of her planet.
Cries rose from the crowd, and Gladdic moaned.
My grip fastened on his arm. “Gladdic, you must act. Save her. I’ll drop the protective dome around us. You will charge out there and defy Tyrus. Publicly.”
“He’ll kill me.”
“No, he won’t.” I seized his shoulders and turned him to face me fully. I’d removed the growths from my face for this occasion, counting on the inattentiveness of the crowd… knowing I needed my true face to look into Gladdic’s, to give him this last reassurance. “I have prepared everything in advance for you. Read this.”
Then I pulled out the discreet-sheet I’d readied for him, with the entire explanation outlined for him.
The Resolvent Mist antidote waiting on the ship. He would not need it, but Neveni and Anguish would.
And of course, the words he would need to speak before saving Neveni—the ones that would set this galaxy afire.
The location on the ship of every single critical spot Tyrus and I had discovered, the planets where he should venture first—where he could fly unimpeded.
Neveni lay limp now on the ground, Anguish cradling her—two defenseless figures beneath a sky shrouded in death.
Even the Grandiloquy looked sober now, stirring uneasily at the sight unfolding in the sky above them.
Gladdic was frantically reading the discreet-sheet. “There’s a neutralizer device!” he exclaimed.
“Here.” Pulling open the fold of my gown, I unveiled it, pressed it into his hand. It was the size of
a standard rifle. “Do it, my friend. You are ready. All the tools are in your hand.”
He gawked at me, and looked back down at the discreet-sheet. Fire the weapon once into the sky at the malignant space, he had to be reading. A second shot, aimed anywhere, will summon your escape pod.
“We’ve read of this, Gladdic, and now let’s make it happen. You can save Neveni and Anguish, and then the Excess will rise with you to take down the Empire. It takes but one great act of courage to topple a tyrant. Don’t you see? You are the key. Liberty and justice, Gladdic!”
The malignant space touched the outermost atmosphere and had a curious effect upon the clouds it contacted. Thunder cracked overhead, gales of lightning forking like branches of a spider’s web. Even Tyrus’s composure briefly wavered as he startled at the sound.
He looked out over the crowd, his gaze hunting for me, desperate no doubt to discover whether Gladdic would act while the recorders were yet poised to capture the moment.
But Gladdic was frozen, horrorstruck, and it dawned on me that this would not work, that I had chosen a coward in the desperate hope that he would act and had fooled myself into thinking he would do so.
He will not, I realized, aghast. He won’t do it.
Then something unexpected happened, for Neveni was crumpled on the ground and my heart wrenched with the realization that she might already be dead.… But suddenly, with the last of her strength, she struggled up to her feet.
Blood streamed down her face, and the hatred that blazed there caused the crowd to gasp and reel back. No doubt some wondered how she still lived. But for a lifetime she had chafed at the rule of the Grandiloquy. She had lived and breathed and fueled herself on hatred since losing this planet to the Grandiloquy. She was ready for this.
She opened her mouth and spoke in a feeble whisper—which the speakers caught and amplified. “Nemesis lives,” she rasped. “She’s alive. It’s the truth.”
The effort sent her into a coughing fit, yet Neveni endured it, remaining upright as the coughs racked her body. On another desperate, ragged breath, she raised her eyes defiantly and screamed out the words with her last breaths:
The Nemesis Page 30