The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  Arguments began. Then a session of court was even called to hash out the ground rules of these arrangements, as Tyrus just clutched his temples, ignoring whatever they were saying. I listened, shaking with rage as the cloying, false-youth-abusing Wallstrom said, “But what if he visits and he wishes to have sex?”

  “With you?” said Pasus skeptically.

  “With anyone!”

  Boiling inside, I couldn’t sit here and just watch this. I ripped to my feet . . . and Tyrus’s hand caught my arm. I threw him a furious look where he’d just been sitting, eyes closed, almost as though asleep.

  “This isn’t theirs to decide,” I snarled.

  Tyrus shook his head. “Don’t. Just sit.”

  My heart thudded with blinding rage as Pasus reproved the company. “Domitrian DNA is a matter of state. It may not be slung about carelessly. When an heir is born, it will happen after we have all made a decision that it’s the appropriate time. No sooner.”

  I wanted to break them all apart. But Tyrus just seemed to want to sleep.

  It was horrifying to realize he’d accepted such a fundamental decision was out of his control.

  We will leave here, sizzled my thoughts. Tyrus, this will not last much longer—one way or another.

  I couldn’t say the words. Anything I spoke to him would be overheard. I could only speak to Neveni in the shelter of the Hera.

  The rest of the galaxy believed she was dead, so I had her at my total disposal. I bombarded her with everything I couldn’t say to anyone else, but it was rather like talking to a wall.

  In fact, she spent most of her time staring at walls, or worse, scraping her arms and legs with a diamond she’d found on the ship, drawing small lines of blood over her skin. She seemed to prefer that to even the most euphoric substances. The only time I saw any emotion from her was when I mistakenly left a screen on, a broadcast from Eurydice—an account of the Luminar tragedy. They’d been experimenting with bioweapons and accidentally triggered one.

  That was the official story.

  She broke the screen. Then she lapsed back into silence.

  I spoke to her despite the sullen silence. I’d never been particularly verbose, but it was better than the empty void that settled about me when I was alone, when every doubt and fear would seep into me.

  I was in the middle of rambling to her: “. . . of course, we can’t truly fix any of this until we reach the Interdict again. The time is growing short—”

  “The Interdict?”

  Neveni’s voice startled me. It was rasping, dry, crackling with not having been used. Now she looked at me flatly.

  “That’s your plan? Go to the Interdict?”

  “He’s a man with a conscience.”

  “He’s an arrogant old coward who’s hidden away from the galaxy for five hundred years.”

  “He’s that, too, but he’ll help us,” I insisted. “If he knew of the Resolvent Mist, of this situation . . . Don’t you see? Every single Helionic professes total obedience to him. He is the single person in this galaxy who is totally untouchable. Even Senator von Pasus’s faction won’t dare to question him. A few words from him, and we’d solve this.”

  Neveni was really looking at me now, and I realized I’d gotten through to her. She said, almost to herself, “You’re right. The Interdict matters to them. They all revere him. He’s valuable to them.” Life kindled in her dark eyes. “I’ll help you get there.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was a whiplash of determination. Then she was on her feet, shooting past me. “Let me shower. I smell horrible. Then—then we figure this out.”

  30

  TYRUS WOULD PASS the evening on Senator von Vanderfuld’s starship, the Zeppelin, and the plan was simple: I would enter the vessel from the outside, bringing a space-sheath for him with me. At my signal, Neveni would tear the Hera straight from its moorings, we’d use the space-sheaths to board the ship, and then we would flee.

  Neveni was skeptical: “I really wish we could have more time to plan.”

  “We don’t,” I said flatly.

  Tomorrow was the eve of our wedding. I was desperate.

  This had to work.

  My careful glide through the void toward the Zeppelin took nearly an hour. I held my breath every time a shadow stirred in a window near me, fearing the wrong pair of eyes might glimpse me. But I made it.

  No one thought to lock their ship from the exterior. I tugged open the Zeppelin’s air lock, thrust myself inside, and then the trickiest part proved prying open the space-sheath with the strength of a regular girl.

  I stepped out into the corridor just as one of the Zeppelin’s service bots hummed past. Yet—no alarm. Why would it react to the sight of me? I was just another person. Another bot swept past with a tray of narcotics, and I followed it down the corridor until doors parted for it, revealing a glimpse of laughing, chattering Grandiloquy. I plastered myself against the wall, out of sight, until those doors slid shut again.

  All were still awake and about. I had to wait them out . . . assuming Tyrus was among them.

  But of course he was. One didn’t bribe Pasus for the Emperor and then fail to exhibit him at a party. So I needed a position where I could wait without attracting attention, where I could hide and keep an eye on him until the party concluded.

  My gaze strayed upward toward the ventilation shaft. If I could get up there . . . Indecision gripped me until a Servitor wandered toward me, heading in the direction of the same chamber.

  I stopped him. His glassy eyes both aimed at me and did not focus, in that swampy, empty way Servitors always seemed to look at you.

  “Hold this position,” I ordered him. I arranged his hands together, stepped onto them, and then climbed up onto his shoulders. My balance, at least, was still as good as a Diabolic’s.

  I shoved open the panel, then gripped the edge of the shaft and . . . and I couldn’t do a single pull-up to get myself into it. This was ridiculous! Were people truly this weak?

  To the Servitor, I said breathlessly, “Put your hands straight into the air.”

  He raised them both, and with that boost, I shoved myself into the shaft. I began to ease the panel back down, but the creature was still standing there with his hands straight up.

  Ban Servitors, I’d told Tyrus.

  If only we’d done that much.

  “Now go where you were going,” I told him. He began to walk, and I hissed, “And put your hands to your sides!”

  The hands fell back at his sides, and I closed the shaft at last.

  • • •

  Once I’d made it to the grate above the reception chamber I’d glimpsed from outside, the voices reached me. Inane chatter. Eight people. The scent of a narcotic crystal, something sweet. The slightest glimpse that way, and I could see the flash of the Servitor who’d come in before me, now being manhandled, enduring it with the empty expression he’d worn with his arms in the air.

  A lone, clumsy thump of footprints, and then there was Tyrus, moving through the corridor into the chamber just below me. My heart raced, but I dared not ease myself down.

  Wait until he has retired for the night. It must happen.

  A voice: “Your Supremacy.”

  “I’m ill,” Tyrus responded. “Leave me in peace.”

  “I’ll fetch a med bot.” Following him into the chamber was a disheveled Senator von Vanderfuld. Tyrus threw off the hand his host had settled on his arm.

  “Leave me be for a few minutes,” Tyrus snapped. “Can I not have a minute away from your lot?”

  Vanderfuld stepped back, and then I saw Senator von Aton join him. The two men inclined their heads toward each other. Aton murmured for Vanderfuld’s hearing—and unwittingly, for mine, “Alectar did tell us all to be mindful: he is an Emperor, but he is also newly twenty. Some moodiness is expected.”

  “But my guests will get restless,” Vanderfuld said to Aton. “Should I use the Venalox . . . my son is the same age.�
��

  “No. Hold off on the dose. Leave me to speak with him,” Aton said.

  Vanderfuld retreated. My gaze focused sharply between the lines of the grate as Aton considered Tyrus, and then cleared his throat loudly to announce his presence.

  I angled myself to try to catch a glimpse and saw Tyrus leaning both hands against a podium holding a bust. In fact, the chamber was filled with them, bronze heads of . . . of dead Domitrian royalty.

  I stared at the empty bronze eyes of Randevald as Aton said, “A fine likeness, isn’t it?” He nodded to the podium.

  Tyrus sighed, weighed it in his hand. “I knew her well, Horatio.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Tyrus just shook his head, setting the bust back down. I glimpsed whose head it was.

  The realization made me start. His grandmother. The Grandeé Cygna.

  “It feels as though she is in here with us, watching us,” Aton said.

  “Oh, you’d know if she could see through these eyes,” Tyrus said bitterly. “We would never hear the end of her laughter.”

  “I was very fond of your grandmother. She was most clever—though not so generous as Your Supremacy. I never did thank you for the Tigris. Such a bountiful gift,” Aton was murmuring.

  “Yes,” Tyrus said shortly. “I am continually astonished to discover my own expansive generosity.”

  “I have considered renaming it in your honor.”

  “The Ozymandias, then. A fine name.”

  “Ah, I fear I do not know the reference. I am not so inclined toward perusing those old books as you are. I know you quite enjoy them. The most interesting feature of the Tigris,” Aton said, a sly note in his voice, “is surely the surveillance archives.”

  Silence.

  From where I observed them, suspicion stirred within me. I’d never liked Gladdic’s father. What was he up to? For his part, Tyrus did not move for a long moment. Then, “Senator, I vastly prefer you delete the logs.”

  “Your Supremacy, I assure you that I am discreet. I’ve no intention of exhibiting them. Such insights I have gleaned from them! I understand you better, Tyrus. I know just how vexing this entire situation must be.”

  “Do you.”

  “No time to yourself. Always used as the entertainment. So many powerful men seek to invert that in their private lives, but not you. I respect that.”

  “What,” Tyrus said, rigid, “is it you want from me, Senator?”

  “I am offering to help you.” And Aton produced a phial. Tyrus’s posture grew rigid. He couldn’t know the raw, unquenched need for it all over his face—because he would have been desperate to hide it. “We might keep this between us: I have obtained the chemical recipe. You needn’t rely only on Alectar. Won’t that be a relief? An occasional reprieve from scraping and pleading when he wishes to withhold from you?”

  Tyrus’s face twisted. “What’s the price for this?”

  Aton took a step back, another, and Tyrus trailed him with sharp, watchful eyes that never left the phial. “I want to invite you to my starship. Once, twice a week, perhaps, if it can be contrived. And when you are there, I will have nothing to do with you. Would you have any use for such a thing?”

  Tyrus didn’t answer. He knew—and I knew—that Aton was still angling for something. This was a hard sell and he had yet to demand his price. But something passed over Tyrus, and he pressed his hands over his face. “I just wish I could sleep.”

  “Sleep?”

  “I am so tired. All the time, I am tired. It may be the Venalox, or it may not be. I am never at liberty to sleep when I wish, or so long as I wish and I just . . . Senator, name your price. You’ve drawn it out long enough that I am growing certain it is dreadful. If all you desired was my presence on your ship, you’d speak to Pasus.”

  “No, you don’t understand. My price is not dreadful by any means. All I seek is what I’ve asked for: visits to the Tigris. And I would like you to bring your . . . future wife with you.”

  Silence.

  Tyrus’s hands dropped from his face. He just stared at him.

  “I have watched her in your surveillance archives, and in the ball dome, and I am entirely bewitched. If you tell her to accompany you.”

  “Are. You. Insane?” Tyrus’s voice seemed calm. But there was a deadly rage in the words. “You must be. You must be utterly mad. You think I would ever . . .” Tyrus stopped. Then, “No. A thousand times, no! Delete those archives and put those thoughts from your head!”

  Aton had abandoned any shade of deference, his tone sour. “Surely Your Supremacy realizes denial only strengthens one’s ardor. Now I must insist. I came to you as a courtesy, but you are correct—I have the means to circumvent you entirely. I needn’t ask you, or even ask her. . . .”

  Tyrus swept up Cygna’s bronze bust and slammed it into Aton’s skull. The movement was so abrupt, even I didn’t understand what I was watching for a moment as the next and the next plunge of Tyrus’s arm and the sickening thuds that followed split Aton’s head open. . . .

  Voices from the next chamber, partygoers pouring in, then screams.

  My mind snapped back to action and I gripped the edges of the shaft. It was all I could do not to tear it open and fling myself down there.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. My hands felt like claws as I forced them to open, as I forced myself back. Below me, Tyrus pummeled Aton’s head long after it had been reduced to a mass of blood and pulp. There were horrified onlookers ringing them, but none dared approach. When Tyrus finally took notice of them, his tunic was smeared with blood in a surreal pattern.

  He straightened, rubbed clean his grandmother’s bloodied bust, and set her back on her podium. Then he swiped up the fallen phial of Venalox and settled by the window to use it like nothing had happened.

  Deathly silence descended. He’d ended the party.

  I closed my eyes in the ventilation shaft. All I could hear now was my own breath in the air as my plans for rescue died away. I had no choice but to wait it out as people swarmed the ship, and then Pasus himself came, sending the others away with a gruff voice.

  “Well, now you’ve done it, Tyrus.”

  “Have I?”

  “That man and I have shared a half century of friendship. You know the consequences.” Then, in a louder voice—so a servant lurking near the door could hear him—“Fetch Nemesis. Bring her here.”

  My heart gave a lurch. They’d go to the Hera. I wasn’t there. Neveni was.

  I debated throwing fate to the wind, plunging down there . . . But Tyrus just chuckled. “Alectar, you won’t hurt her.” His voice was slightly thick with intoxication, but his words were clearer than they usually were immediately after use of the substance.

  “I’ve told you any violence on your part will be met with violence against her!” thundered Pasus. “She will lose a limb. I am tempted to take two. . . .”

  “Aton was not your friend,” Tyrus said. “Would a true ally give me this?”

  Silence. I peeked down to see Pasus had taken the empty phial of Venalox, the one Aton had gone behind his back to slip to his Emperor. “I trust this buys immunity from consequences.”

  Silence. Then, “Yes.” And after another second, “This time.”

  “A half century of friendship. You were truly fond of him, weren’t you?” Tyrus’s whisper was mock sympathetic, filled with poison. “Such treachery. How cruel the universe can be.”

  Indeed.

  The universe was cruel. Tyrus had secured me a reprieve from paying the price for his violence, but he’d also ended any chance I had of removing us from this cage altogether. He’d be too closely watched tonight for me to sneak him away.

  My eyes sank closed. My head throbbed.

  One more day of liberty, and then the next day, that liberty ended. We would be married, Pasus would have the Hera, and I saw no way out.

  31

  NEVENI KNEW with one look at my face upon my return that the plan had failed. She didn’t seem su
rprised. Maybe she’d grown accustomed to accepting the worst.

  I hadn’t.

  “I’m not surprised. I’m a bit relieved, actually.”

  “Relieved?”

  Neveni helped me pry off the half-stiffened space-sheath. “I kept running it over in my head. Even if you’d gotten the Emperor, signaled me, and then gotten him onto the Hera, well . . . Think about it. Every single Grandiloquy starship would have chased us the entire way out of the system. I think they could’ve stopped us.”

  My head pulsed. “I’m pleased you’re satisfied. You do realize that we’ve just lost any chance of escape.”

  “No, actually—we have one more chance. A good one. I thought of it too late to stop you from going out, but now . . . I think I figured out the perfect time for your plan.”

  I looked at her sharply. “Did you?”

  Neveni smiled.

  • • •

  It was the day before the wedding, and Tyrus and I would receive the Laudatory, and begin our Forenight. A contingent of Senators’ spouses were to be my anointers. They bustled onto the Hera to pretend to awaken me and I let them go through the ritual.

  I’d been Elantra’s anointer before her Laudatory, and that had been . . . It had been the most devastating day of my existence.

  The smell of the oil the Grandeé von Canternella opened to apply to my back stirred images of Donia’s dying eyes in my mind, and the look on my face must have reflected my anguish. The husband of Senator von Wallstrom made a choked noise where he happened to be directly in my line of sight, and he stumbled back and tripped over the low table behind him.

  And despite myself, I smiled, and uneasy chuckles sounded about me. He didn’t know it, but he’d diverted my mind. They eased on my robe of white liquisilk, and I told them: “Go ahead and anoint each other. I’ll be in the washroom.”

  I left them occupied with that and shut the door behind me. “I’m alone,” I said.

  Neveni emerged from the bathing chamber. “This is the best I could find,” she said, showing me a length of rope. “It’s sturdier than it looks. I’d use the synthesizers and make more, but . . .”