The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  “Fine,” Tyrus said.

  “Fine?”

  “We . . . can’t get the support . . . of the vicars. Forget it, then.” He concentrated on breathing for a moment as we reached a high-gravity section of the track, then said, in a great rush, “The vicars become obsolete sooner than I could have hoped. I can control this Empire without . . . without the scepter.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Kings . . . in ages past . . . relied on goodwill . . . good judgment . . . alliances. I’ll do that.”

  “What of service bots, Tyrus?”

  He began to slow, needing a rest from this pace. An idea came to me, and I took his sweaty arm, dragged him with me off the path into the overhanging mass of trees, and there we settled against the rough bark of a large oak tree beneath the yawning expanse of the sky dome above us. Tyrus leaned his head against the tree to recover his breath. He was pushing himself too hard. In every possible sense.

  Even with this new plan of his.

  “The problem with . . . service bots,” he said, his breathing growing steadier, and I detected distant footsteps scuffling past, people striving in vain to catch up to their young Emperor, “lies in the centralization, right? No scepter means two thousand ships are all two thousand separate systems. So . . . so we can’t rely on service bots to find problems and triage them as one great mass of bots.” He grinned at me. “So we have people do it.”

  “People?”

  “Employees. We hire them. Excess who will work for the Empire. They can . . . they can survey each ship using their eyes. Inspect them. Once . . . no, twice a day. They report any problems, and that way, we just . . . we just fix the most urgent problems by assigning bots to them ourselves. Problem solved.” He spread his hands

  Problem far from solved. “That will require a great many employees.”

  “I know.”

  “The Grandiloquy will feel uneasy with so many Excess about.”

  “They will. Perhaps uneasy enough to pressure the vicars of their acquaintance to render more employees unnecessary.”

  I eyed him dubiously, thinking of that mass of security machines ringing the Chrysanthemum, and the security bots that should be buzzing over our heads right now. All should be protecting us, all were outside his control.

  And then there were enemies like Pasus, lurking like vultures, never taking their eyes from him. They tolerated Tyrus at the moment, but if Pasus wed Devineé, he would most certainly kill the current Emperor to secure her throne.

  Tyrus was young. His coronation speech must have seemed quixotic, full of goals unlikely to be realized. If he ever began to make true progress toward his goal of reinstituting the sciences, empowering the Excess, the Grandiloquy would panic. As long as there was another Domitrian, they could kill him.

  Footsteps were rustling our way, and voices exclaimed, “Ah, here are the two lovebirds!”

  “We quite lost Your Supremacy!”

  “Such a pleasurable run!” said Grande Stallix. “Shall we take refreshments together?” He had water ready. “There are electrolytes and amphetamine within this bottle.”

  “This is water from the purest springs of the third moon of Sillaquarth,” said another, with water in his hand as well.

  “Not stopping yet,” Tyrus said. Then he heaved himself away from the tree and picked back up into a run. I didn’t follow this time. I stood there and watched him, then that mass pursuing him, falling to ten steps behind him. . . . They were all abusing narcotics or secretly wearing low-gravity bands, and Tyrus relied only on brute strength. He was but one person and there were so many of them, all vying to catch up to him, with varying advantages he lacked. Today they did not—but one day someone would.

  And when that day came, all the will and drive and cleverness in the world would not give Tyrus the edge he needed to stride out of their reach once more.

  Love was a selfish thing, and I knew that, because I craved him so fiercely, I could ignore my misgivings, my doubts, and even that ruthless voice of reason within me that knew the truth: I was the root of so many of his problems. How easily I could solve them by simply leaving. He would not keep me if I convinced him I felt nothing for him, if I set off into the unknown that was life outside this place.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  There was one thing I could do for him, the thing I could always do for him: I could murder his enemies for him.

  So that was what I would do.

  • • •

  Impaired or no, Devineé was the greatest threat to Tyrus’s life. Her mere existence provided an alternative for the throne, and though Tyrus could live with that, I could not.

  Luckily, her life was one of predictable routine now that she had to be ushered through it by outside forces.

  I could take advantage of that.

  Easily.

  In this precarious time, I could not be known as her murderer. The last accident I’d engineered for her hit the wrong target. This one—this one would not fail.

  I stood on the rampart above the animal pens of the Tigris, where I’d been imprisoned for a month, and watched Devineé Domitrian being led by a tether attached to a service bot. Three times a day, she was walked around her ship in this manner to circulate her blood. Salivar used to be led about as well, before he perished. How much better if it had been her!

  Today it would be.

  My gaze slid about the chamber. These were the long-term pens, not like the cramped ones directly below the arena. I’d passed enough time in here to know exactly which creatures were confined, though the force fields were all set to full opacity at the moment. The animal fights had ended under Tyrus, but the fighting beasts remained, just as I had been, since only this place could contain a Diabolic.

  My confinement here had also intimately acquainted me with the habits of the animal attendants. I’d timed this carefully, and now I watched the one on duty depart from the chamber to retrieve food for the dead Emperor’s manticore, usually a small cow. That gave me five minutes.

  More than enough time.

  I thrust myself over the railing and landed amid the force fields. Each computer console controlled the power of six surrounding force fields. I needed to depower only one panel to free the animals in six pens. They’d been born and bred to kill. Devineé stood no chance.

  I fastened my ears on the sound of Devineé’s humming service bot, strode over to the nearest console in her path, and waited.

  Then I hooked my heel in the web of wiring, and thrust my leg down to snap it.

  The console blinked out.

  The opaque fields about me faded away, revealing a pair of empty cells, a serpentine creature coiled in sleep. Then a promising one in the fourth—a horned bull with snake eyes that lifted its head to sniff the air.

  A series of clicks from the fifth one as a hybrid of bear and reptile, befuddled by liberty, began to paw at the dropped force field. Movement out of the corner of my eye from the sixth.

  I looked sharply toward it.

  Nothing.

  That gave me pause. I could sense something watching me. The humming of the service bot was nearing me now, so I backed away slowly, knowing something, something would set these predators astir, and it was best to be clear of them before that. . . .

  Then my back collided with a broad chest, and I whipped about to see the largest man I’d ever beheld, glaring down at me with black eyes and a faint smile, and I knew him. I knew him.

  Cygna’s Diabolic, Anguish dan Domitrian.

  “You didn’t expect me, I see,” he said.

  Oh no, I had not.

  My fist flew at his face. He caught it and shoved me back so hard, I hurtled to the ground. I rolled in the same movement to my feet, terror and a swell of malice propelling my muscles. The first instinct I always had, the first one, was to attack—and so I did.

  But I was smaller. Weaker. I’d been made weaker still to pass as Sidonia. . . .

  An
d the power of the fist that met my face jolted my skull, knocking me back. He charged as I caught my balance, and this time I dodged the fist. Then I vaulted toward him and delivered a cruel kick to his groin . . . that weakness of male Diabolics.

  He grunted with the pain of my blow, but his great hands snagged my leg and I kicked and twisted to escape his grasp. His hands anchored about my head. I knew then that it was coming, I knew it, oh stars no. . . .

  Anguish snapped my neck.

  6

  “IS THAT ONE DEAD?”

  The voice, familiar but not, swam through my head, and I roused slowly, certain I was dreaming, for I didn’t feel real.

  Hazard dan Domitrian leaned in above me.

  For a moment I stared up at the face that couldn’t be there looming above me. Cygna’s Diabolic. Another face appeared in my sight. Anguish.

  Then I remembered.

  Then I noticed what was so wrong and why the world was off.

  All I could feel was my face. My neck. . . . My neck!

  Horror swamped me in a great sickening crash and I was suffocating, for I couldn’t feel my own breathing and the Diabolics were above me and free and this was it, the end, my fatal mistake.

  Oh. Oh no, I’d freed Anguish, so he’d freed Hazard. . . . And now I was as good as dead. Hazard stared down at me, and Anguish told him: “I severed below the fifth vertebrae.”

  “You did not paralyze her respiration?”

  “Not yet.”

  Raw panic flickered through me, clawed at me, and there was nothing I could do as the world swam above me, and even the scream I fought to voice wasn’t rising, and it was a nightmare come to life. How were they even here? How were they alive? How was this happening? The thought came to me. Cut through the storm of terror. Tyrus spared them. He spared them. But he didn’t tell me.

  I had just freed them.

  I was dead. I was dead, I was dead—and Tyrus. Helios, Tyrus. . . . What would happen to Tyrus? The air was too thin. Anguish’s heavy footfalls moved him out of my sight, and then I heard a voice in the distance. . . .

  “Not another word after this,” Tyrus said. “You have your instructions. Not one word more.”

  He knew how good their hearing was. He still underestimated it. And the silence was thick and terrible and how I wished I were already dead, for anything would be better than bearing helpless witness to what was to come.

  “Go outside the force field,” Anguish rasped, “and close it about us. Security bots won’t be able to fire on us.”

  They didn’t know Tyrus had none to command. Tyrus had no scepter.

  Hazard’s boots thumped away.

  Then Anguish was above me. He reached down, gripped the back of my neck, and sat me up. He kept my neck steady in place, though it was already broken.

  A futile voice of hope within me pointed it out—it can be fixed if I am treated soon.. . .

  But oh, I had to survive and Tyrus had to survive. I strained my eyes to the side, searching his face desperately for some hint of his plan. His dark features were set with a cold, lethal resolve. I wish I’d been conscious to hear whatever he’d said to Hazard.

  Now that I could see, I ascertained that we were within an animal pen. And then Hazard flipped up the force field to surround us, locking the two of us in the cell while he remained outside it.

  A humming mounted on the air, and then, above us, a platform slid into view.

  And standing alone on top of it was Tyrus.

  Just Tyrus.

  Sickness churned through me. Sickness and dread. He was too close. Eight meters above us at most.

  “Your Supreme Reverence.” Anguish’s voice flared out.

  “Hello, Anguish.” Tyrus entered my line of sight. With his light blue eyes and hair, his lashes pale, his skin perfect for the coronation, he appeared almost a creature of ice. No emotion touched his face or colored his tone as he said, “She is still alive. You spared my cousin as well.”

  “We had no use for her. We drove your pets back to their pens. This one is another matter.”

  Devineé is still alive, I thought with despair. I should have risked the opprobrium of murdering her outright.

  “They told me you were holding Nemesis. What is it you want?” He spoke with a preternatural calm, and folded his arms so he might exhibit the Imperial Scepter, loosely grasped in his hand.

  Although Hazard gave a growl at the mere sight, Anguish remained calculating, calm. He tilted his head, assessing the foe above him. “You remind me that you spared us as though you expect gratitude. Surely you know better, Your Supremacy.”

  “Tell us of our master!” Hazard roared.

  He was not so calm as Anguish. He jerked back and forth in restless steps, as though desperate to rip something apart. The one stroke of good fortune for me was the fact that Anguish was in here with me, not out there with Tyrus. . . .

  Leave here, Tyrus. Please!

  “You know exactly what happened to my grandmother,” Tyrus said, eyes on Anguish.

  “You killed her!” rasped Hazard. “And we will tear you limb from limb—”

  “Quiet,” said Anguish.

  Hazard fell silent.

  Anguish gathered me closer to him, keeping my neck carefully steady as he angled me into Tyrus’s sight. The indignity of this! Why hadn’t he simply killed me?

  “Strange,” noted Anguish, “how no security bots are mobilized.”

  “I have no wish to escalate this situation,” Tyrus said calmly, in such a fine show of confidence, I began to think there had to be a reason. . . . Or was he simply so skilled at faking it?

  “Really.” Tyrus spread his arms. “You don’t think the Emperor stands here alone above you, defenseless, do you, Anguish? Be realistic. Now tell me what you want.”

  “Your blood.” Hazard’s voice shook. “Your pain. Your life.”

  “Surely you understand,” drawled Tyrus without looking at him, “my reluctance to offer that. There must be something else.”

  Anguish shifted his gaze to me, studying me with an intent, predatory interest, and with a jolt I knew—he was trying to gauge from my face the emotions he could not read from Tyrus’s.

  “Perhaps,” he said, lips breaking into an eerie smile, “I simply want you to watch her die.”

  Above us, Tyrus’s hands flew forward, seizing the railing. It was his only reaction—but enough of one. Enough of one to betray that Anguish had hit upon a point of vulnerability, and no Diabolic could miss that.

  Anguish stroked his finger over my cheek. “A pity,” he said, “that she has no sensation below the neck. What pain I could inflict before she dies. . . .”

  I glared at Anguish, wishing my rage could lacerate him, for I was a Diabolic. Just as he was. I could bear pain just as he could. Yet he meant these words for Tyrus, for the human and unwisely-in-love Tyrus, and my mind, attentive to all tiny details that relayed distress, noticed Tyrus’s knuckles white where his hands still gripped the railing. He attempted to show nothing and in doing so, revealed everything.

  And he must have realized it, because Tyrus suddenly changed tack: “Look at her, Anguish. Just look into her face. She is so like Enmity. She could be her twin.”

  “She killed Enmity.”

  “No,” Tyrus said, face lighting up with hope at this single route of appeal.

  Don’t tell him this! DON’T!

  “No, Anguish,” Tyrus said, “I killed Enmity. As I killed your master. Your quarrel is entirely with me.”

  My view jolted, as though shock had loosened Anguish’s grip on me. I could have torn Tyrus apart for telling him this, for giving him this! And yet Anguish looked at me swiftly, and I could see he was less willing to kill me now.

  A bitter trade-off for increasing his incentive to murder Tyrus.

  And Hazard’s.

  I’d forgotten him until he roared out, and even Anguish’s shout couldn’t stop him. A scuffle, and then he flashed into the corner of my vision as he leaped up
onto a panel and propelled himself from there. Tyrus’s eyes flew wide, and he jerked back as Hazard careened toward him. . . .

  A frantic swing of his scepter crashed into Hazard’s face. Hazard’s own momentum turned his enemy as he hurtled, spinning, back to the floor. I didn’t see his impact but heard it, the ugly thunk . . . his skull. The silence that followed, and a low sound in Anguish’s throat . . . a cry aborted.

  Tyrus gasped raggedly for breath.

  Then Anguish pressed us against the side of the force field. “Hazard. HAZARD!” I saw it now—Hazard’s leg. No movement.

  I cast my gaze up frantically, and Tyrus’s face seemed to electrify with an idea.

  Don’t, I screamed inwardly at him.

  But he hurled himself over the railing and hit the ground in a roll. He was on Hazard in a moment, and Anguish bellowed at him. If Hazard stirred, Tyrus was dead. He was dead.

  Yet Tyrus’s face was wild as he dragged the unconscious Hazard into our sight, a blade at his throat, pressed so hard blood welled at its bite. “Here’s the incentive now, Anguish,” he rasped at him. “One for one. Let her go, I let him go. One wrong move and I open his throat, I swear.”

  “Why should that concern me?” rumbled Anguish’s voice. His hand warningly brushed my neck. “Your Supremacy doesn’t realize just how much blood loss a Diabolic can endure. And besides that—why would that ever prove an equal trade?”

  “He’s all you have left,” Tyrus said quietly. “You have passed decades side by side. I know you care for him. I’ve seen it. Let her go, he lives. You live. We are all satisfied.”

  “You believe I love him, do you?” said Anguish in an odd tone. “As I did my master? As you love this one?” A strange, ominous note in his voice. “As she loves you . . . ?”

  Silence. Then, “I do.”

  “Prove it. Walk in here.”

  Tyrus didn’t say anything.

  “Prove yourself by coming in here and retrieving her, Your Supremacy.”

  No, I thought furiously.

  Tyrus swallowed. “You’ll kill me,” he said hoarsely.