In his seeming conviction, he inspired some to give uncertain cheers, but it was mostly because they knew they should, rather than because they saw sense in what he was saying. After all, the Emperor couldn’t mean to waste firepower attacking a star. There was a restive province near there, so he had to intend to attack that, not the actual star.
But no. Tyrus meant to attack the star.
Under the Emperor’s ecstatic direction, Tyrus’s fleet unleashed salvo upon salvo into the hypervelocity star. The bright weapons streaked repeatedly into the searing hydrogen and helium. He broadcast the attack live, as though this were a true war, and forced Fustian to stand behind him to give his sacred sanction to the action.
“Oh, that strike did it damage,” gloried Tyrus, to his confused commanders.
He paced the command nexus of the Valor Novus and shouted encouragement to his fleet as they laid weapon fire into that vexing star.
“See how it wilts under the bombardment,” proclaimed Tyrus, though the star continued to glow without a trace of damage.
Thus he spent so much of the firepower stored on the Chrysanthemum… sinking it into a star. And at last, some spell seemed to have been broken that held the last of the loyalists among the Eurydicean media, for they, too, began to send out broadcasts that subtly undercut the Emperor.
Neveni, Anguish, and I all passed an evening watching a smirking Eurydicean journalist report on the progress of the crusade: “Today the Divine Emperor made good on that vow of four weeks ago, when his forces mustered to stop the speeding star.”
The image dissolved into footage of Tyrus’s fleet firing lasers into the searing mass.
“Experts say the Divine Emperor’s new weapons technology is the most powerful in this galaxy’s history. But so far, the star has yet to issue a surrender. Some say it never will—including some who once felt differently.”
Neveni and Anguish both exclaimed when the view panned to show Fustian nan Domitrian, flushed and stiff as the journalist held out her recorder.
“Interdict,” the journalist said, “you’ve come here today to publicly withdraw your support from the Divine Emperor’s crusade. Can you tell us why?”
Fustian shook his head. “It’s a farce. It’s all a farce, don’t you see? The Emperor is no god. He’s a madman! As Interdict, I declare him a heretic! An apostate!”
My eyes narrowed. Of course, Fustian was one of the first loyalist rats to flee the sinking ship. He likely knew the truth about him had been released, and he believed turning on Tyrus first might save him.
“That does it,” declared Anguish. “He’s lost the Helionics.”
“The Helionics who still believe he’s holy, yes,” Neveni muttered. Then she shifted her gaze to me and watched me in a piercing, suspicious manner, one that made me look at her quizzically.
“So, Nemesis,” Neveni said, “want to tell me what the hell is really going on?”
The question startled me. Anguish cast her a knowing look and turned around to plant himself between me and the viewer, tall and looming, his arms crossed. He’d fully recovered his strength. I could no longer defeat him when we sparred.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We’re not fools,” Neveni snapped. She jumped to her feet and took her place at Anguish’s side. “Tyrus is not an idiot. He’s also not totally insane. Well… he’s insane, but not like this.…”
I leaned over to catch a glimpse of words scrolling over the bottom of the screen… Breaking News. Desperate to escape their scrutiny, I pointed it out to them. “Look!”
Neveni whipped around, and I heard her gasp. For beneath the recording of Fustian, the text announced that the Emperor had ordered the arrest of the Interdict.
Simple words to announce a massive event. I knew this was a major development, for there was no going back from this.
Yet neither Neveni nor Anguish were sufficiently distracted. They turned back to me, accusation on their faces. And a bombardment of evidence poured from their lips:
“We escaped from Lumina too easily.”
“Where did you even get that neutralizer? How did you get it without Tyrus realizing it?”
“How haven’t we been stopped?” Anguish said. “We are a vulnerable target moving from one destination to another. The Excess always seem to have learned rumors in advance of our coming—we are too public. The Emperor must have sources tracking us. We should have been captured by now.”
“Why arrest Fustian and turn all the Helionics against himself rather than announce that he’s an imposter?” cried Neveni. “He defeated us in the chaotic gale because he was clever about it, but now… He won, and you knew he would—because he’s not this stupid! Why, if he wanted to be overthrown, I couldn’t think of a better…”
Then she must have seen something on my face, because she knelt down right in front of me, vibrating all over as though she were holding back the urge to seize me and shake the answers out me. “You’re hiding something. Just tell us.”
I looked between their faces. Anguish—my brother. Neveni—the combustible friend and enemy who’d shared the best and the worst moments of my life.
Perhaps it was too late to change anything, either for the better or the worse. Events had their own momentum.
And it would be a comfort to share the truth with someone else.
“Tyrus’s mind was never damaged,” I admitted to them. “Your scans were right on the Alexandria. His conscience has always been intact.” And then I looked at Anguish. “He’s never been a monster. He learned the truth of Tarantis, and then he set out to be overthrown.”
They both gawked at me for a long moment.
Then Neveni blurted, “What?”
“He set out to be a tyrant so the Excess would rise up and overthrow him. It’s why he declared himself a god. He meant to unite all the Grandiloquy and the most socially prominent Excess of this Empire together in repeating a single, ludicrous narrative. All of the Empire’s establishment parrots the mistruths of the Domitrians, so he knew he could use that to discredit them forever if they lined up behind the proper falsehood. He’s breaking this Empire from within its heart. I learned it on the Alexandria. It’s why I saved him. We worked together to orchestrate everything that’s followed.”
Neveni sank down onto the couch next to me, and Anguish still just stared at me, thunderstruck.
“This has all been a sham,” he murmured.
“Not a sham,” I said fiercely. “It’s a revolution, Anguish. The most bloodless possible revolution orchestrated by a regime ensuring its own overthrow.”
After all, dictators and oligarchies fought back. They decimated those trying to strip their power.
Not Tyrus. He’d wasted armaments on repeated crusades against the hypervelocity star. He insisted on commanding the forces Grandiloquy marshaled for their Divine Emperor’s cause—and always directed them awry.
I could see Neveni’s eyes widening as she fit the pieces together in her head… that this had all been deliberate.
“Our escape from Lumina was easy because I didn’t actually save you from him,” I went on. “Nor did I ever endanger you by placing you in his hands to be saved. He was never going to kill you. So there you have it: that’s the truth.”
They were both totally silent for a weighty moment. And then Neveni reached out, and Anguish soundlessly moved over to take her hand.… And my heart gave a curious wrench at the sight of them taking comfort from each other, for I did not know if I would ever have a moment like that with Tyrus again.
“I meant Gladdic to lead this revolution,” I told them. “I didn’t want to do this.”
“It could only be you,” Anguish said to me wearily. “You are the one they cry for.”
“The one I called for,” whispered Neveni. “I was so angry with you, Nemesis, but I think I knew… I knew you wouldn’t let me die. I knew you’d save me. That’s what you do.”
And then in a gesture of kindness, she reached her ot
her hand out for mine, offering me a trace of their affection as well. Her soft hand clasped mine tightly, and I realized how desperately I’d craved their understanding.
“I know how it ends,” I told her, my eyes jamming shut. Nova blast those tears, threatening me now. My throat felt tight. “I know the truth of this can never be known outside this room—”
“Never,” Neveni said.
“Not even if he comes to trial,” I said.
The tense silence that answered me confirmed it. How I wished they were inspired in a way I was not.… Inspired enough to devise some miraculous alternative to the ending we all approached.
Instead Anguish moved to sit at my other side, his heavy arm draping about my shoulder, and like that, on both sides, I had friends. I was not alone in this.
“I suppose I never really knew him,” Neveni offered. “Why is he doing it?”
“He knows he’ll be hated for all of history. He accepts it. I think it’s his penance,” I answered her jaggedly.
“And…” Her hand tightened on mine. “And you can accept it?”
I thought of that long-ago day on the Tigris when I’d taken Tyrus’s fate from him and chosen it for him. Then I forced my eyes open so she would see my resolve. “It’s his penance. And I help him—because that’s mine.”
46
TWO WEEKS later I received a very, very good reason to return to the Chrysanthemum:
The Emperor had invited me to a party.
The message came courtesy of a local Domitrian servant who looked faint with fright when he knocked on the door of our guest lodgings on Atarys. That I answered the door with a weapon slung over my shoulder did not help.
“I don’t know what this message contains, but I am to convey it to you with g-greatest compliments,” the man stammered, before handing over a slim metal folio fashioned out of diamond-studded platinum. “P-please,” he said as he backed away, “inform the Divine Emperor that I did precisely as c-commanded and with total discretion. He promised to release me from service if I conveyed this to you.”
I took the message and opened it after his departure. Indeed, it was an invitation. It was time.
I went directly to Anguish and Neveni. “Brace yourself,” I warned her gently.
For the party was being held on Lumina. Tyrus meant to move the entirety of the Chrysanthemum into orbit of the planet. The party itself would take place amid the desiccated remains of Neveni’s brethren.
“Horrid,” she said on a shuddering breath. “He has a true talent for perversity. But why invite you?”
“It’s a signal of some kind.”
“A signal of what?” Anguish asked. Despite having been told the full truth, he remained skeptical of Tyrus. “For all we know, it’s a trap.”
“I’m sure it is a trap.” I spoke steadily, betraying no sign of the turmoil that had electrified me since receiving the invitation. Time was running out. This would all be over soon. Stars pray that I managed to bear the outcome. “It’s a trap he’s setting—for himself.”
“Regardless,” Anguish said. “We are twelve days away in hyperspace, and this event takes place in ten days.”
“The Grandiloquy parties can span days, as you’ll remember,” I said to him dryly.
“You would never make it in time.”
“The timing’s deliberate,” I said. “The servant who delivered it said as much. So we won’t go to Lumina. We’ll meet him on his return.”
Once we were aboard the Liberty, Neveni sent word to the wider network of Excess and Partisans. She alerted them that the Chrysanthemum might soon require occupying forces. This way, we would arrive in advance of the rebel fleets. I did not allow myself to hope for a chance to save Tyrus, but I would not give up on the possibility either.
As we traveled, the party began on Lumina.
The Grandiloquy had been the longest holdouts for Tyrus, with many of them blinded by the bubble of privilege around them. The savvier of them had carefully escaped the Chrysanthemum as soon as the crusade against the hypervelocity star began, but others remained closely attached to the Emperor.
After all, they were victims of their own control over the galaxy’s culture. They’d received their information of the growing unrest from the Eurydicean media, and had long learned to discount alternative pathways of information, but Tyrus controlled that media and thus the information that reached their ears. They reinforced one another’s belief in their invincibility as a class. They were further blinded by the favors and largesse the Emperor had showered upon them, for Tyrus was willing to spend ruinously nowadays to keep the most avaricious at his side to share his downfall.
For most, it wasn’t until the unrest directly affected the provinces they owned that they began to sense danger on the air.
Other Grandiloquy were aware of the danger, but too desperate for the money Tyrus spent liberally, the favors he offered of his dwindling treasury, or the promises of power he offered freely. Still others had treated the Excess on their provinces so cruelly over the years that they had no choice but to cling to the Emperor’s side, even as the regime began to sink under its own weight.
For these last loyalists, Tyrus threw his party.
We emerged from hyperspace two days into the revelry, and I tuned in to the galactic transmissions. The party had certainly begun, for Tyrus had stationed recorders all over the planet—unseen by the partyers—broadcasting their antics for all to see. The galactic media played footage around the clock, with commentators alternately marveling and reviling the revelries. “A new standard for depravity,” said one. “Nauseating extravagance,” opined another. In a time of poverty, the most expensive of light shows raged over the heads and around the celebrants, priceless jewels sparking from their elaborate outfits… and yet Tyrus had left the Luminar bodies where they’d fallen, littered amid the dancing and cavorting.
Viewers watched as the last of the regime’s loyalists followed their mad Emperor’s lead, wildly partaking of substances and behaving with inhuman barbarism. The final sacred Exalteds were used to serve narcotics, their profound innocence witness to the debauchery about them. Tyrus wore naught but a pair of antlers and a mad grin, planted at the center of the celebration like a pied piper leading his Grandiloquy into the most abhorrent antics they could devise. He drank wine from a dead Luminar’s skull and loaned fervent encouragement to any lurid spectacle the Grandiloquy partiers could imagine. His gift for inspiring the best in me had this flip side, for he could rouse the very worst in others. The most vile antics of the Grandiloquy were thus displayed for the entire galaxy at the worst possible moment for them.
When a group of partygoers began to dance and simulate sexual acts with the bones of Lumina’s dead, I turned off the screen lest Neveni pass by.
This hideous display was certain to be the final blow to the Empire. Even after the horrendous revelations about the Domitrians, Tyrus, the Interdicts, and the nature of malignant space, some Excess had balked at overthrowing the established order. The horrors of the known remained preferable to the dreadful possibilities of the unknown.
But this profane celebration among the dead put an end to all ambivalence. The last remaining loyal provinces exploded into protest, burning effigies of Tyrus that showed him gnawing on the bones of dead Luminars.
As we approached the Chrysanthemum, news broke confirming that Tyrus had disappeared from the party hours before. His loyalists, meanwhile, continued to revel on the planet’s surface, utterly unaware that the Emperor had shared their antics with the galaxy.
We encountered no opposition as the Liberty docked with the Valor Novus. I led Neveni right into the Valor Novus, and we did not encounter a soul. The deserted, brightly lit corridors felt eerily expectant, like a stage awaiting its players.
Or perhaps they felt haunted.
“Hang back,” I told Neveni as we stepped into the heart of the Chrysanthemum. I sounded so calm. But my stomach was churning. “Keep Anguish back as well.”
<
br /> “But…”
As she looked into my face, she saw, perhaps, more than I meant to reveal. Her face softened, and she gave me a nod.
“You don’t have much time, Nemesis. Make the most of it.”
“I will.”
Taking a deep breath, I passed through a grand archway, down a short enameled hallway, and into the presence chamber.
Tyrus sat on his diamond throne, his eyes closed, the bejeweled robes of a Grande discarded by his feet. The chamber flickered with eerie light, shed by the purple hue of Lumina, the Chrysanthemum’s new place of orbit.
He was not asleep. Others would think so, but I knew him better. I knew him like myself.
And I loved him more than ever.
He’d shed Tarantis’s face. For the first time since our interlude on the Alexandria, he looked like himself again. As I approached, my footsteps announced me. His eyes opened. When he saw me, he rose.
“I received your invitation,” I said to him. “Regrettably, I had other plans.”
He smiled wearily. “My loyalists don’t realize they will soon perish. The least I could do was give them a final party.”
I could not help myself. I touched his face, the corner of his mouth, the crease that formed when he smiled. “It is almost over,” I said huskily.
He turned his head the slightest degree, the eerie light sliding over his dark red hair. His lips found my palm for the briefest moment.
“Good,” he said very softly. “Tell me.”
“Six thousand vessels are in hyperspace. They’ll arrive within the hour.”
“Six thousand.” His smile now was slow and full of wonder. “How…?”
“Some of the ships were formerly your forces. Others—many others—were built in the last few months… by the Excess.” His eyes were shining, so I went on. “The technological blueprints that were leaked… that you leaked?” I paused, and when he nodded once, I smiled and continued. “The Excess were able to make sense of them. All across the Empire, shipbuilders are emerging. The new constructions aren’t so fine as the Alexandria, but they will do for now.”
The Nemesis Page 32