The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  He will. HE WILL.

  Anguish’s voice dripped with the taunt of his words: “You believe we Diabolics love. Then show me. If I love Hazard—if I am capable of that much—then I will have reason to spare you and you will have gambled correctly.” His grip tightened. “If you are truly certain she loves you—then you must be certain I can love him.”

  Don’t, I thought. Tyrus, do not do it. Back off. Regroup. Think of another plan. . . .

  Tyrus withdrew from my sight. His jagged breaths reached my ears, and I hoped he was figuring something out, I hoped he was leaving, anything, anything but do this. . . .

  Then the force field dropped about us.

  Anguish would kill us both.

  7

  HORROR THUNDERED inside my mind as Tyrus swept into my view, hands up, edging toward me.

  He’d lost his mind. He’d committed suicide.

  “I am proving it, am I not?” Tyrus said softly.

  “Come and take her,” Anguish said. “But first drop the weapon you are hiding.”

  “W-what?”

  A rich, cynical laugh. “Come now. You have observed us? I have observed you. That is all we do. Now drop it.”

  A rustling of clothing, then a clatter.

  “All of them,” said Anguish. “You have more.”

  “That is all of them.”

  “All of them,” Anguish said. “Lie to me again and I will kill you both.”

  A low sound in Tyrus’s throat. Then . . .

  Another clatter. Another.

  Abruptly, Anguish wasn’t supporting my weight anymore. My body flopped to the side.

  “Then take her.” I saw Anguish’s boots step back from me. And Tyrus . . .

  Edged toward me closer, closer—eyes on Anguish. Then I saw it ripple over his face, the moment Tyrus decided trust was not enough, that he couldn’t take the risk of being wrong. “Now!” Tyrus shouted.

  He threw himself over me just as Anguish shot toward me in response to betrayal, but Anguish’s legs sank beneath him as a low tone filled the air about us, and then Tyrus drove his boot into the Diabolic’s face, knocking him back. He bundled me up into his arms, lurched to his feet, and jolted us out of his reach.

  “Raise it!” cried Tyrus, and the force field was snapping back up. . . .

  Then confused faces washed into my sight as Tyrus turned, as he addressed his people: “Grab Hazard, get him back in a force field. Send a med bot after. Do it!”

  And then Tyrus dropped down to the ground, still grasping me, and bodies were surging past us, people scrambling to follow the instructions. . . . We were safe, we were safe, and I was dizzy with the air I couldn’t feel myself breathing as Tyrus pressed his lips to my hair.

  “Hypocrite.”

  Anguish’s voice was low, a taunt. He’d pulled himself to his feet and leaned his weight on the force field.

  “You don’t believe. You never believed.”

  Tyrus didn’t answer him. Only now that he’d escaped did he begin to tremble, and then I knew he’d been afraid all along.

  • • •

  Pain awoke me. It was the scream of all the nerves below my neck registering sensation again, and my eyes snapped open, took in a bleary glimpse of Tyrus pacing at my bedside, before the dark swallowed me once more.

  The next time my eyes opened, and my vision focused, it was to his hand on mine, his mouth wide open where he’d fallen asleep with his head against the bed. For a moment, I just looked at him, all the recollections of what had come to pass filtering over me. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but I could envision Grandiloquy clamoring at the door, transmissions mounting in number, so many vying for the Emperor’s time.

  I must have completely disrupted his routine. I lifted my arm, and though it sent a slight twinge up my shoulder, it pleased me to know I could do so. My fingers hovered over his skin, so close I could just feel the warmth radiating from it. Then, the slightest touch to his pale, angular brow.

  It startled him awake.

  “Nemesis,” he exclaimed, breathless. “Are you— Should I get—”

  The scepter must’ve been in his lap, because I caught a glimpse of it clattering to the floor, and he didn’t seem to notice as he leaned over me.

  “Tyrus.” My voice was hoarse. My mouth felt bone dry. “How . . . how long?”

  “Three days. You had to be unconscious and totally still to re-fuse your spinal cord.” He looked me over, worry shadowing his face. “The Doctors nan Domitrian say you should recover.”

  I closed my eyes, processing it. Licked my dried lips as my sluggish mind wrapped about what had transpired.

  He’d spared the Diabolics. He hadn’t told me he’d spared them. Then he’d very recklessly risked himself at their hands.

  “Tyrus,” I told him hazily, “I just remembered how angry I am with you.”

  “You are very calm in this anger.”

  “I am building up to it. I am too weary to illustrate it properly right now. You should not have risked yourself. You shouldn’t have done that. It was foolish.”

  His lips crooked. “And I would not have done so had you not gone to kill my cousin. Or rather, to contrive another accident like Salivar’s.”

  “An accident that would have succeeded had there not been surprise Diabolics within the pens!”

  “Yes. About that . . .” Tyrus’s smile faded. He rubbed his hand over his forehead. “It’s called a ‘neural suppressor.’ ”

  “What?”

  “The device attached to Anguish’s spine. To Hazard’s as well. I used it to cripple Anguish. I might’ve used it sooner, but I had never seen one in action and I wasn’t sure how quickly it would work.” He regarded me a moment. “I assume you were about to ask about it? The suppressor has a sonic activator, meaning all one needs is the right tone playing in the air and a Diabolic’s muscular impulses slow, rendering their strength much more manageable.”

  “Did you . . . Where did you get it?”

  “I didn’t put it in Anguish. One of the Domitrian employees found it in the manticore’s leavings. Just the tiniest device. I had someone look into it. It was in Enmity’s body, attached to her spine. And it had been placed there early in her life. I tried bribing any former corral masters I could contact for an explanation of the device, but it wasn’t until the evening of my coronation that they grew eager to supply an explanation to their new Emperor. Apparently, it’s a trade secret. They used suppressors to protect themselves from their own Diabolics. That device had been attached before birth. It couldn’t have been removed.”

  I remembered so little of those fearful, early years of my life. The corral masters had seemed imposing and enormous as a child, but I was certain they’d be small, easily breakable men to me now. I couldn’t even recall how they’d protected themselves from me.

  Tyrus scraped his fingers through his hair. He wasn’t looking at me for some reason. “I understand why they kept it a secret. Anyone could have used it to overcome a Diabolic bodyguard. There goes the value of Diabolics as bodyguards.”

  Understanding clicked into place. “That’s why you spared Anguish and Hazard’s lives. You had a means of neutralizing them. You also didn’t tell me.” I watched him closely. “You kept it all from me.”

  He didn’t speak.

  But I figured it out. Telling me of their survival meant I would learn of the suppressors.

  All Diabolics had these suppressors.

  Including me.

  “Why did you hide this from me?”

  He let out a slow breath. “Because I considered the possibility I would need to use it. Use . . . yours.”

  “Ah.”

  “Had you known it was there, and had you meant to kill me—”

  “No suppressor would have stopped me, unless it remained your surprise advantage,” I said. “That’s true.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d take my hand at the coronation, or break my neck. I knew you could be biding your time, or
you could doubt me still. . . .”

  “I see.”

  “I know why you believed my grandmother,” he said. He met my eyes now, his pale lashes fringing gray blue. “I once lied to you about those electrodes. Then I swore to you I wouldn’t do such a thing again. I meant it then, but I’ve made a liar of myself once more.”

  “Yes,” I ground out. “You have.” Once again, he’d shown he hadn’t trusted me.

  Then again, I had gone behind his back to strike at his cousin twice now. I hadn’t merited trust.

  And I’d believed his grandmother’s lie.

  Tyrus surged to his feet and paced away as I carefully trusted my strength, pushing myself upright. I gazed at his back, my mind returning to the horror of knowing he’d let the force field down.

  I’d feared he was reckless. Insane. Suicidally stupid. But he’d been underhanded, and he was even underhanded with me. And not without reason. I had posed a genuine threat to him. The part of me that wished to be his partner seared with the knowledge he hadn’t trusted me, and yet the part of me that scorched with love for him knew this was the instinct that would preserve him.

  “Tyrus,” I finally said, my thoughts growing clear. “It vexes me. I’m offended you clearly don’t trust me. I resent knowing you are underhanded and a liar with me at times and I’m also . . . I fully understand why you do it. I believed Cygna’s fabrication. I believed her—and not you. I was foolish. So . . . so what am I to say? I’m glad you keep yourself alive and safe. Even if it’s against me. I’ve warranted your mistrust.”

  He let out a groan. “Ah, but everything you believed, what you did . . . I know why, Nemesis! I have done it yet again—offered you excellent grounds to doubt my every word. I can’t say anything to excuse it. I trust you more than anyone else in this galaxy, and yet even with you, I do this. All I can say—and I know how little it may be worth—but all I can say is I would never have hurt her if for no other reason than because you loved her, Nemesis. You loved her, and however inconvenient she may have been to me, I would never have stolen her from you.”

  “That’s where we differ,” I said quietly. “Because I would not hesitate to kill someone you loved.” I looked at him. “Or a member of your family too disabled to fight back—who poses a threat to you with her mere existence.”

  “I’ve asked something difficult of you,” he said.

  “Yes. You have. You want me to just turn my back to a threat. Tyrus, I’m a Diabolic. This is what I am. Your grandmother knew it. I believed you were capable of engineering her destruction because it’s exactly what I would do—in your position. Don’t lament being manipulative or underhanded. You are still fundamentally better than I am.”

  Tyrus’s lips quirked. “Do you recall the first time I saw you? Truly saw you? It was the day you jumped into an arena to stop a beast from tearing apart a helpless Exalted. How many of us sat there in the crowd, disgusted and repulsed by what we were about to see, yet did nothing to stop it? I was the Successor Primus and I did not utter a word or lift a finger to stop something wrong, and you did. You acted. It’s the rarest quality there is, to actually move to stop something wrong and immoral. I’ve never had that. You are the better of us.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You care for an ideal. I care for no such thing.”

  “Many care for high ideals, Nemesis. I pursue lofty goals only now after years of turning my eyes from evils just to stay alive. I’ve told myself I would become Emperor if I but survived long enough, and none of my inaction would matter. I’d one day reach the throne and vindicate myself with my doings. . . . Yet I was paralyzed and I didn’t realize it. I think about things over and over. I revisit plans a hundred times. It wasn’t until I knew you that I saw what I had neglected to do in all this planning and biding of time. . . . I hadn’t acted and it was past time. So here we are.”

  I decided to test my weight, and he came to my side to take my elbow as I balanced there by the bed. Words seemed to tangle in my throat, and it was difficult to look at him, for it felt so strange to be . . . appreciated for this.

  But I did understand one thing now. I knew what lay behind his frantic flood of tasks every hour of every day since his coronation, and that relentless drive to pursue his goals. He’d always meant to vindicate his very survival to this point by what he did once in power, and a tenderness swelled in my heart because he shouldn’t feel that need merely for staying alive. Sidonia would have known what to say here.

  But all I could manage was, “Stop lying to me, and I will stop giving you reason to lie.”

  “Deal,” said Tyrus with a smile.

  It was then that my gaze settled on the window. I jerked with surprise to see we were in hyperspace. “Where are we going?”

  Tyrus looked at the void, a shadow falling over his face. “While you were unconscious, Pasus moved to circumvent me and petition the Senate directly for Devineé’s hand. So I tried to stall that—by offering to negotiate the match between them myself. We are meeting him on Lumina.” At the stunned shock on my face, he added, “It’s as good a pretense as any to go there and fulfill my end of the bargain with the Luminars, anyway. I owe them technology and I promised them independence, and this is a chance to come through if I play it correctly.”

  I grabbed his tunic, bunched up some of the fabric in my hand. “You can’t. Tyrus, you can’t agree to this or let this happen. He will wed her and then he will most certainly find a way to kill you.”

  “I know,” he said. His larger hand covered my tense fist. “He honestly believes me so young and untried, I do not see his clear aims. I must seem to bend for now or I will be made to do so.”

  I released him. “I know this was another reason you didn’t tell me you’d spared Anguish and Hazard. You knew I’d want them dead because they’re a threat to you. Pasus is a threat to us both. You can’t possibly expect me to stand by and let him place a noose about your neck.”

  “I do expect you to stand by,” Tyrus said, a hard edge creeping into his voice, “because I will handle this, Nemesis. You wish me to stop lying, and I wish you to stop giving me reason to lie. Don’t act unilaterally on this.”

  “I lost Sidonia. If I let you die too . . .”

  He gathered me into his arms. “My love, I am extraordinarily difficult to kill. I have no intention of letting this happen. I mean to stall him. And . . . and there is a way I can ensure my cousin never poses a threat to us.”

  “Short of killing her, I don’t see it.”

  “It is short of killing her. But just barely.”

  8

  TYRUS KNEW our ship couldn’t go alone to Pasus’s space, so he’d mobilized all the Domitrian ships but one to accompany us. The Grandiloquy followed him, as they always did. Tyrus knew not to outright insult them by ordering them away from him for the trip. Instead, he’d stocked and staffed all the other starships, except the Tigris, so Grandiloquy vying to accompany him hedged their bets and sought places on all but the Tigris, hoping to end up with the Emperor. Then Tyrus moved me to the Tigris. Because of its skeleton crew, none had gambled on our presence. That was how he’d secured us an interlude alone in hyperspace. We were alone but for Devineé, who was not going to disturb us. As I recovered from the spinal fracture, Tyrus did something quite rare—he slept most of the first day away to recover after the first weeks in charge of a galaxy.

  Then it was just the two of us.

  Free of the eyes at the Chrysanthemum, there was no need for formality. Tyrus had given me the finest guest quarters on the Tigris and taken a chamber just down the hall from mine. It spared me the curious mixture of terror and anticipation I felt when I considered the prospect of sleeping in the same bed together.

  The next time I awoke, Servitors soundlessly came forward, holding an array of clothes for the day. I picked quite at random, then found Tyrus, already in the room overlooking the salt baths, service bots prepping the six-egg omelet he always ate for breakfast.

  In his hand, a glowing
phial of a narcotic.

  “You’re starting early,” I noted. Perhaps he was more stressed than I realized.

  Tyrus’s brows jumped, and it seemed to take him a moment to understand what I referred to. “What, this? Oh, no. This isn’t for pleasure.”

  “Of course.”

  He smiled. “I’m serious.” He accessed the ship’s database, and a projection bloomed to life in the center of the table. It was a schedule. Narcotics of varying sorts. Planned for the next three months like an exercise routine, complete with dosages. Today’s was obviously a psychedelic.

  “It’s called mithridatism,” he explained. “Ancient Emperors on Earth used to expose themselves to small amounts of poison daily to gain an immunity to them. Essentially, I try to do this to gain some resistance to intoxication—what you come by naturally.”

  “Recreational intoxicants are not poisons.”

  “That could be debated,” he noted wryly. “At the very least, an assassin’s blade could never threaten me so much as a foggy head might around my grandmother. Since I am not blessed with a Diabolic’s metabolism, this is how I prepare my chemical receptors. When I use a narcotic socially, I’ve already practiced in private at a much higher dose, so I can keep a clear head, and merely pretend to feel what I don’t.”

  I glanced down at his schedule for today. “Are you hallucinating as we speak?”

  “Not much . . . apart from your antlers,” he noted. “I am certain those aren’t usually there.”

  “They aren’t,” I agreed gravely, reaching up to feel my scalp.

  “And banana fingers,” he noted, staring at my hands in an abstracted way.

  On a strange whim, I wiggled them in his face. Tyrus leaned forward and playfully nipped at them. Yet not so hard that he broke skin. He was quite in control.

  “Do I look strange?” I wondered, for I could never experience what he was feeling.

  “Draw a bit closer. I’ll tell you.”

  So I did, and his arms swept about me. There was a sweet liquid ripple inside me as I settled against the warmth of his body. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, down to the tender skin of my neck, his soft breath skimming the shell of my ear.