The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  “What are you doing?” My voice was quiet, deadly.

  “I am going to listen to them while they decide the fate of my planet,” Neveni said, her eyes glittering. “Are you going to punch me like last time, or are you going to let me go?”

  I tilted my head, considering it. “I barely punched you, Neveni. If I had truly punched you, you would have died from the head impact. I’ve also refrained from killing you a great many times when it would have been very convenient for me to do so,” I told her.

  “That’s so humanitarian of you. I suppose I owe you thanks for sparing my life.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I was sarcastic, Nemesis! God. No one should thank people for not murdering them.”

  I pointed upward. “You’ll take me, too?”

  “If you’ll stay quiet,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I have no idea how you can even get up here. I climbed up a bookshelf—”

  “I don’t need help.” I leaped up and caught the edge of the vent. Then I easily hoisted myself up into the vent with her. Neveni’s eyes were wide and dark on mine as I reached down to pull the door closed behind us.

  “You’re so strong,” she said.

  A rush of pride, despite myself. “I know. Now lead the way.” My voice reverberated in the darkness.

  A flick, and a faint light glowed between us. She had something on her wrist to illuminate the darkness. “Stay quiet.”

  Then she crawled forward on her hands and knees. I was too tall to do the same, so I eased myself after her flat on my stomach, dragging myself with my elbows. Neveni mouthed something to herself as we reached a junction in the wall, then raised her wrist to illuminate her face so I’d see her finger pressed to her lips. She quietly eased up a panel of the duct between us, just a crack, to allow voices to float up to our ears.

  “. . . ask a great deal of me.” Pasus sounded amused. “I may wed your cousin, but I may not have intercourse with her. I must not only accept as family the beast that killed my daughter, but I must throw my full-throated support behind the match and urge the vicars to authorize you to use the scepter. Then, this province. You want it as well.”

  “Does it seem a great deal to ask, Senator? I am giving you my consent to wed the heir to the throne. Your child will rule this galaxy. I could have demanded more. Randevald made any wedding to him conditional on paying down the Domitrian debts—”

  “Yes, and so he remained unwed. His Forenight disasters did not help, either.”

  “I don’t set such an onerous condition. With my cousin, she cannot consent in her state of mind. You wish to father an heir with her DNA? Use an incubator. And Nemesis is a given. You knew that coming into this.”

  “How decisively you make your will known! Such a contrast to a year ago, when you were speaking to walls and raving about being a deity.”

  “I was keeping myself alive a year ago, Senator. As for your support, your weight behind the vicars . . . That is the reason I’ve even considered this union.”

  “Truly? And here I believed it was my bypassing you and petitioning the Senate that forced your hand.”

  Pasus had a point there, and I hated knowing that. . . . But Tyrus’s voice evinced no sign of defeat: “Believe that if you wish, Senator. Whatever you may perceive of my current position, I can make life immensely difficult for you. The marriage will not happen unless I allow it, and I can swear that to you right now.” There was quiet vehemence in Tyrus’s voice.

  That, too, was the truth. A private satisfaction rippled through me. The Vigilant’s Bane meant Pasus would never have Devineé without our consent.

  Maybe Pasus sensed Tyrus’s certainty, because he forged on. “And you demand Lumina.”

  “This province is beset with malignant space. Soon it will be worthless as a trading outpost. I cannot be seen to accept the disrespect of being accorded nothing, so I ask for this piece of your depreciating property. It’s a symbolic gesture.”

  Neveni drew a sharp, angry breath, and I just pinned her with my eyes. He is playing indifferent, I thought to her, willing her to understand. It wasn’t his true regard for Lumina.

  “Lumina will not be lost anytime soon,” Pasus said. “You overstate the threat.”

  “I am compelled to remind you that mere months ago,” Tyrus said, “this planet would have violently freed itself of your dominion if I hadn’t intervened.”

  “But you did intervene. You did so most effectively. Curiously effectively.” An odd note in Pasus’s voice, “And then—then they aided you at the coronation.” A sharp, indrawn breath—and then laughter. “Ah. I comprehend you. You cut a deal. Didn’t you?”

  “I did not,” Tyrus said, and it was a weak rejoinder. He hadn’t expected Pasus to figure that out.

  “You made a deal and now you mean to fulfill your end of it. My. That rather elevates Lumina’s worth in this situation, does it not?”

  Neveni’s hands balled into fists, and she was glaring down toward the sound of their voices like she wished to rip the vent apart and crush Pasus’s skull.

  Tyrus gave it a moment’s thought. Then, “I will offer you Gorgon’s Arm for Lumina.”

  A murmur from Pasus that must have escaped without his intending it. Gorgon’s Arm was a most valuable mineral outpost.

  But his voice grew sly: “What was the deal? Actually, no, let me guess. There is only one thing the Luminars ask for. Independence. You promised them liberty, didn’t you? Oh, don’t deny it, I know this planet; it crawls with partisans and delusions of self-sufficiency. Of course you made that deal! Oh, dear young Tyrus . . .”

  “We are not on such informal terms, Senator,” Tyrus reminded him coldly.

  “Very well—Your Supreme Reverence. Think ahead to the dangerous precedent you’d be setting by freeing this planet. Liberate one, and all the other Excess get dangerous ideas. More will want to leave the Empire. The ones of value who support the ones without will rip away first, and soon you are presiding over a worthless six-star system with no inherent worth of its own.”

  I looked up at Neveni’s hard face. Yes, the Luminars knew that.

  “You’re seeing this from the wrong angle, Senator,” Tyrus said, his voice softening, growing persuasive. “There is another solution entirely to such a situation: we ensure living conditions are such that these Excess wish to remain in a voluntary union! Surely that is preferable to an Empire bound by force.”

  A long silence. Then, “You are very young and idealistic.”

  “I strive for more. I wish to improve life for us all. Shouldn’t everyone wish for that?”

  “Look about us, Your Supremacy. This capital city alone has more people than the entirety of the Grandiloquy. There are four billion people on this planet. Four billion! If a fraction of those minds are inclined toward study, and a fraction still of those understand what they are looking at that, it’s still a staggering degree of intellect all bent toward one purpose: making use of the blasphemies you so blithely handed over to them today.”

  “Technology schematics are not necessarily blasphemies. I’ve been studying the Interdict’s original proclamation at length, and there is a very good case to be argued that we’re interpreting his words too literally. If the Luminars have such intellectual might at their command, shouldn’t we be relieved to have those minds working to solve the issue of malignant space?”

  “I did hear your Convocation speech on that, and the . . . the new era you spoke of. Scientific pursuits. Hmm. Your blasphemies are on your soul alone, so I will not play vicar with you.”

  “Much appreciated,” said Tyrus darkly.

  “Instead I will speak to you as a Senator to my Emperor: this Empire is maintained by a very precarious balance between the Grandiloquy who rule, and the Excess who are ruled by us. We have a vast array of destructive technologies, yet these devices are in the hands of our small number of people—and that is why the rulers and ruled live in accord. Today you give the Excess
databases, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume they are harmless things. That is all well and good, but tomorrow? Tomorrow they will want weapons. Starships. And if you do not provide them, they will build upon the knowledge you have given them and develop weapons themselves. Then they will use them. On us.”

  “Which brings me right back to living conditions! Senator, they will develop those weapons because that’s what human beings do when they see so much in the hands of others, and they feel they are being robbed of it. We live in a universe with literally infinite frontiers. There is no reason for anyone in this Empire to know scarcity. Remove the reason for them to turn those weapons on us, and it will not happen.”

  Pasus laughed. An inappropriate bout of true laughter that made me wish to drop down into the chamber and punch him. But he said, almost jeeringly, “And here I was marveling at your cleverness, yet now I am reminded that I am dealing with a mere child. They will turn those weapons upon us because they hate us, and they always have. Their descendants will hate our descendants, as their ancestors hated our ancestors, because even if we sink so far below them that we are being crushed by their feet, they will remember how we were once superior. What you propose, Tyrus, will lead to our sort, we Grandiloquy—and bastard of an Excess you may be, but Grandiloquy you are—being crushed by them. All in the name of tackling an existential threat that is only ‘existential’ to planet dwellers who cannot fly around it.”

  Strange, how Pasus gave no thought to those planet dwellers. He had no pity for those who, as Tyrus had described to me, would be trapped under a sky watching their doom grow and grow.

  “There is no reasoning with you on this,” Tyrus said, his tone odd. “Our views will never come to accord.”

  “Ah, do not be so quick to jump to conclusions. Perhaps a break is in order. Tyrus, I must admit, I’m impressed with you. Not just these . . . dreams and ideals you somehow held in your heart in secret, but how effectively you blinded all our eyes to you. Had fate taken a different turn, your children with my Elantra might have conquered this universe.”

  “For whatever it’s worth,” Tyrus said softly, “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “From the man who wed her murderer,” Pasus returned, “it is not worth much, but I thank you anyway.”

  11

  NEVENI AND I remained in the darkened shaft until the silence had lasted for a good minute, and then we crawled back along the slippery metal surface, heading the way we came.

  “Do you . . . ,” I began, then fell silent.

  “What is it?”

  “I just . . . You know more than I do about such things. Do you think that went well?”

  She didn’t reply for a long moment. “I think if the marriage goes through, Tyrus had better test all his food for poison.”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t know, Nemesis.” She gave a faint laugh. “I’ve never dealt with galactic politics. I’m glad I’ll never have to. You passed the exit.”

  I eased back around, saw her feeling about the metal shaft, finding a hinge. Then light spilled up into the metal enclosure, and she peered downward. “I think it’s too far to jump here.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said, and thrust myself down, landing neatly on the ground. I held out my arms. “Trust me?”

  “Um. You’re sure you can catch me?”

  “Yes.” When she still hesitated, “I won’t let you break your legs. I promise. You don’t seem to realize how strong I am.”

  “One way to find out.” Neveni dropped down, and I caught her easily, then set her on her feet.

  For a moment, we just looked at each other, and then she said, “Are you hungry at all?”

  Startled, I nodded.

  “Come on. I’ll introduce you to roasted snake. It’s disgusting.”

  “Then why eat it?”

  “It’s a very good kind of disgusting.”

  She turned to leave, just assuming I’d follow, as we always had ventured together to new places on the Chrysanthemum. The ripple of happiness that moved through me was unexpected. . . . And so I followed her.

  • • •

  The roasted snake was disgusting. Until it was not.

  I described it to Tyrus as we were led to our sleeping chamber for the evening. “You eat the venom pouch first,” I explained to him as we stepped inside. “I tried it without, and it tastes like rubber. Then the venom is worse, but the rest of it transforms once you’ve eaten it.”

  Tyrus was a finicky eater. He’d try things to be diplomatic, but every morning he had the exact same breakfast, and generally one of the three same lunches. He had several such benign neuroses, like his need to always sit with his back to the wall, or to complete an even number of kilometers whenever he ran. Weights had to be lifted in sets divisible by ten, and if he fell a few short due to an interruption, he would always find his way back to the exercise chamber just to get in the final few he’d missed or it would “vex him all day.” That sort of thing.

  Knowing he’d never try it, I described the snake as well as I could. He listened to my account with a morbid fascination.

  “After the venom, the snake tasted almost like . . . chicken.”

  Tyrus laughed as we passed through the doorway, bidding good-bye to our escort. Outside the windows, Lumina’s proto-night had fallen as it often did in the planet’s winter—a bright moon still lit the sky almost as brightly as most suns, but the sun itself was not in sight.

  “Strange how wherever you go in the galaxy, you will encounter the taste of chicken,” Tyrus murmured. “That’s an oddity of . . .” He trailed off as he turned about, surveying the room.

  One bed.

  Tyrus stared a moment. So did I.

  Of course, we were publicly engaged. And this was . . . this was normal.

  A heat stole under my skin, and I darted a quick glance at Tyrus, caught him doing the same to me. We hadn’t yet shared a bed.

  “There looks to be an exquisitely comfortable couch . . . ,” he said.

  “You wish me to take it?” I said.

  “No, I’d take it, of course.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ to that, Tyrus. You’re the Emperor of the galaxy.”

  “I will take it,” he repeated.

  He stepped away—but I grabbed his arm. His bicep felt tense, and his eyes immediately shot to mine. He was nervous too, and the realization made a warmth surge through my heart.

  “There’s no need.”

  He smiled tentatively, a slight flush to his face. It was so rare to see him nervous in this manner that I couldn’t help a giddy smile. Then he caught my lips in a fervent kiss, and my back hit the wall, and I found myself smiling again like some dazed, silly thing, but he was too.

  A chirping. Transmissions. Always something to call to him. I eased him away and watched him walk—my gaze clinging to that exact posture, the easy grace honed by that same self-discipline that drove him to craft his own muscles. He called for an audio feed, and I turned away and stepped into the washroom.

  A strange, dancing nervousness fluttered inside me, and it only mounted. I’d be alarmed and make assumptions about that roasted snake from earlier if there weren’t something so thrilling about the sensation. Even my hands seemed to be tingling with a strange, pleasant fear.

  I met my eyes in the mirror, two currently dark irises glittering with an intensity that made me start. I traced my finger over the bridge of my crooked nose. I’d never fixed it because Donia had loved it this way. . . . And I did too. It was always the reminder I needed, even now, even this day: Here I am. And I am still me.

  I washed up, and when I returned to the bedchamber, I could hear Tyrus in the other washroom doing the same. Restless, I roved back and forth, trailing my fingers over the dresser. When I heard him switch off the water, my breath caught. I cast my gaze down, hoping I appeared perfectly calm, standing before the mirror.

  Tyrus appeared behind me, and I felt his gaze like a hot, searing
touch . . . tracing the bare skin of my back, my arms, my legs bared by the sheath nightgown I’d chosen.

  Then he closed the distance, and how strange to see him reflected back at me, for I saw now that he was taller than I sometimes realized, that his shoulders were broad, his arms heavy with muscle. So often all I could see was how easily broken he would be compared to me.

  He traced a finger down my back. My heart thumped wildly. Then his arms, muscular, strong, pulled me back onto the warmth of his body and his lips brushed over the tender skin of my neck.

  “You are so utterly beautiful.”

  “I know,” I agreed.

  He smiled against my skin and then his lips laid the softest of kisses on my skin, finger brushing aside the strap of my gown, and the hot kisses trailed up the arch of my neck. There was something that made a tingling sensation spring through me, and a sound escaped my lips. One I hadn’t meant to utter.

  I looked at his reflection, saw a secretive smile on his face, like he was pleased to have figured out something. Then I turned, draped my arms about his neck, and gave in to the need to have him closer to me. His mouth met mine and his tongue probed between my lips, tasting me, and we made our way across the chamber.

  My leg touched the bed, and my heart gave a frightened spasm. I asked him, “So do we begin the sex now?”

  Unfortunately, that seemed to break the mood, because Tyrus began to laugh. Then I began to scowl. And I no longer wished to begin the sex.

  He smothered his mouth with his hand, his cheeks pink, flushed. “I’ve just never heard it put that way. I think we should . . . begin the sex at a time that feels right.”

  “Not now?”

  “Not now.”

  Every centimeter of me, from the tips of my toes to my hairline, seemed alive with awareness of him as I reclined in the bed. My gaze lingered on his back as he stripped off his shirt, neatly folded it, and then unlooped his belt, with the sheath holding the scepter. It settled on the table with a clank. Then his trousers, which he also took great care to fold.

  His face was too rough to be pretty or handsome, his hair perpetually somewhat tumbled, whether by his hand, or something else, but every centimeter of him was lean, taut, disciplined. He sprawled onto the bed beside me, and we both looked each other over.