The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  Gladdic jumped to his feet as I approached, and reached out to draw my hand to his cheek.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “. . . Senator von Aton.” He closed his eyes. Yes. That was his title now. “I heard. I’m sorry for your loss.” Senator von Aton had deserved it, but that didn’t mean Gladdic should feel this pain. And I didn’t want to take the slightest risk he’d be harmed. There were many who deserved what lay ahead. He did not. “Gladdic. Go grieve in private.”

  “I wanted to be here to support you.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t be here.” I drew closer to him, suddenly intent. “If you are truly my friend, don’t watch this.”

  He looked about us urgently, and then leaned in very close: “I have to tell you something. I’m the new Aton Senator. So . . . so I was told something, but you need to know it. It’s about the Venalox.”

  It wouldn’t matter after today. I pressed my hands to his shoulders to tell him to simply go, but his whisper lashed out: “It’s neurotoxic. Pasus, Locklaite, Fordyce . . . They all know it. It’s poisoning his brain, and it’s a cumulative effect. They said it’s why the Emperor . . . why he killed my father.”

  I stared at Gladdic, the blood roaring up in my ears. “He . . . he doesn’t seem slower of wit.”

  “It’s not his intellect being damaged. It’s . . . I don’t know the names.” He gestured vaguely toward his forehead. “It’s empathy. Conscience. That’s the whole reason they had to reduce him to a pauper—he can’t pose a threat without autonomy or wealth of his own. . . .”

  Blinding fury swelled inside me. Of course. Of course that was their plan. It didn’t matter if a foe wished to strangle you if you chopped off his arms before he could do it.

  “But the real reason,” Gladdic said in the softest whisper, and I knew he’d noticed—as I had—that people were beginning to look our way. Soon they would seek to overhear us. “. . . is they hope the Venalox will nullify you.”

  “Me.”

  “The parts of the brain . . . they’re interconnected. Wipe away empathy, wipe away a conscience, and they think they’ll wipe away . . . you.”

  His attachment to me.

  An icy hand clutched my heart, for I could see exactly what their aim was. Hadn’t I once felt no empathy, no qualms of guilt—no love? Until I was bonded to Sidonia, I was totally incapable of any such feelings.

  When I broke away from Gladdic’s side and walked back toward Tyrus—watching me with those pale, clever eyes amid the crowd of our foes—I felt cold flutters all through me. An image blared in my mind. The day Pasus had arranged our wedding in the Great Heliosphere, Fustian mentioned the scepter.

  And Pasus had cast a long, careful look at Tyrus.

  Gauging how rapidly he’d progressed toward the aim. That aim was indifference to me. Did Pasus think he would be able to kill me when a day came and Tyrus had no love for me? Or did Pasus hope Tyrus himself would wish to be rid of me?

  When I reached his side, and Tyrus slid his hand down my arm to link our hands, there was a reassuring softness to his eyes.

  It wasn’t too late.

  “You didn’t tell him,” he said, an edge of warning to his voice.

  He didn’t care if Gladdic died. Gladdic, who had done nothing to us. And it wasn’t just anger at our situation accounting for that now. I banished the thought. “I ordered him to go grieve in private. No one wants to see his tears.”

  Tyrus’s face grew shadowed. Yes, I know what you did to his father, I thought.

  “I had very excellent reason,” he said.

  “I know.”

  I was not such a hypocrite I’d condemn him for a murder. There were things I expected of myself, though, and actions I expected of Tyrus. This wasn’t like him. Now I knew why.

  Tyrus and I made our first political stance against the animal fights. Pasus had thus decided we would celebrate our wedding by reinstituting them. I waited until the warm-up animals were raised out of the floor of the arena and unleashed to rouse the crowd, ready them for the blood sacrifice they’d all come to see. One was Randevald’s old manticore, the other a bear hybrid.

  The bear looked dazed by its sudden freedom. The manticore was not; it gave a deafening screech and pounced. The first blood spilled and the crowd roared.

  I took advantage of the moment to lean over and kiss my way to Tyrus’s ear. Anyone looking at us would have believed I was inappropriately nibbling on his ear in public.

  I was telling him about the Venalox.

  Tyrus listened without expression. At first, I wondered if he’d misunderstood me, but then I saw his fingers thread together to stop their shaking.

  “So there’s a reason. There’s a reason I’ve felt . . .” His voice caught.

  The bear was already dead, and it hadn’t put up a decent battle. Groans of disappointment pervaded the air. The manticore licked at the blood on its lips, and then its next challenger rose into the arena: a curious mixture of lion and shark. Hands flashed down to tap in frantic bets.

  “You see why I can’t accept it,” I said quietly, “when you say you don’t wish to use Anguish and Hazard.”

  “You think . . . that I should care more,” he said.

  I nodded.

  The lion smelled the blood and was already on guard. When the manticore pounced, the lion hybrid was ready, and this fight had more vigor. The manticore, overpowered, resorted to slashing with its poisonous tail, a cheat Randevald had engineered into it. Grandiloquy privately muttered about the paralyzing venom “ruining every match.”

  And then a shadow slid over us, and Pasus approached us with a poisonous smile all his own. “Your Supremacy. Nemesis. I trust you two slept well. There were a great many disappointed people last night.”

  Tyrus spread his arms over the backs of the chairs. He didn’t bother to conceal his abject loathing for Pasus. “I suppose you will have to refund whatever they paid for viewing privileges.”

  “What a low opinion you have of me,” chided Pasus. “I wouldn’t monetize such a sacred event. I was paid entirely in goodwill and favors.” He placed the scepter on the pedestal.

  “Don’t venture far from us,” Tyrus said mildly. “We will have to discuss the fight.”

  Pasus speared him with a questioning look. Then, “I am never far.”

  Tyrus’s lips spread in a smile. Pasus took a seat just below us.

  I trained my gaze on the arena where service bots were cleaning the blood and entrails of the lion hybrid, and electricity guns subdued the manticore so other bots could drag it into a cage, draw it under the floor.

  The betting screen for the match between the Diabolics raised out of the floor, and neither Tyrus nor I touched it. Pasus, I saw, had tapped in a bet on Anguish’s victory.

  Then my neural suppressor turned off. I knew it, because my muscles suddenly prickled as though they’d awoken from a slumber, and the air itself felt lighter about me.

  I flexed my arm, and Tyrus’s lips flickered. “Let’s see,” he said, offering his hand.

  I clasped his, we both propped our elbows on the armrests, and then—his strength strained against me as he tried to force my arm down. I allowed it for a few seconds, then slammed his hand down. He grinned and so did I.

  I was back at full power.

  “Will you need any help?” I said, nodding toward Pasus.

  “Oh no, I won’t,” he vowed softly. Sinister anticipation glinted in his eyes. He’d kill Pasus all on his own.

  “This is not the Venalox. I want him dead.”

  “No. Not the Venalox.”

  Hopefully, in the tumult, I’d have a chance to watch.

  Then the cheering swelled as the pair of Diabolics were lifted up into the arena. They were buck naked, exhibiting their great swells of muscles. A rack of weapons had already been placed in the arena with them. Hazard and Anguish disdainfully ignored their audience as though they were not the subhumans but the superior beings.

  “Time to go.” Tyrus offe
red me his free hand. “My love?”

  I put my hand in his and we walked forward to make our sacrifice.

  It just wasn’t the sacrifice anyone expected us to make. The crowd cheered now.

  Soon they would scream.

  33

  THE FLOATING CATWALK circled the arena once so all might look upon the Emperor and his bride. Tyrus and I stood in the center of it, and our gazes were locked on each other. No one else mattered.

  When we came to a halt in the dead center, Tyrus kept his gaze fixed on me and spoke—to the Diabolics below us who could hear every word.

  “You are not about to be sacrificed. Do not kill each other.”

  I chimed in: “Anguish, Hazard—the force-field surrounding the arena is only ten meters high. It’s generated thirty degrees to the right of you, Hazard. If you don’t wish to kill each other, then wait for the third shock. Start slaying the crowd as you wish. Do this and you will escape.”

  They both peered up at us suspiciously. “Why would you save us?” Anguish said. “Do you think you will secure our goodwill?”

  I cared nothing for their goodwill. I knew they’d kill Tyrus at first opportunity, so it was vitally important they die today. I repeated the words to Tyrus because I knew he didn’t have our hearing.

  Tyrus’s reply was unexpected: “Yes. I want goodwill. Not for myself. I am not such a fool. But for Nemesis, who has done you no wrong—yes. Look to her. When this vessel begins to shake, do as she does. Hold tight to something.”

  My hand, clasping his, began to squeeze. I saw him wince with the force, and belatedly recalled that I had more strength to command now than I’d had in ages.

  But I didn’t understand him. Why had he said that? What was he doing?

  We needed Anguish and Hazard, but not after this. If they survived, why . . . If they lived, I’d need to fight them off! We promised escape, but I didn’t mean for them to truly flee with us. They’d kill Tyrus.

  What was he thinking?

  But Tyrus turned his attention to the crowd and raised his hands, and a deep and penetrating silence lapsed over this vast chamber. His pale-eyed gaze roved over the faces of those watching us, the territory-holders of the Empire and their hangers-on. Those who fell over themselves to exalt him for his bloodline when he acted exactly according to his wishes, those who cut his legs out from under him as soon as he raised his voice for those outside their ranks.

  “I am delighted to see so many of you,” Tyrus told them. “I will enjoy this.”

  They were atypical words for an Emperor, but the Grandiloquy cheered anyway. Tyrus smiled and pressed a hand to his heart, then watched the crowd pressing hands to their hearts and kneeling down, back up.

  I tried to puzzle it out as the catwalk floated back to our viewing box, as Tyrus took my hand and I stepped out, and we settled in the chairs.

  The force fields about Anguish and Hazard dropped, and the crowd screamed in excitement. We were forgotten. I reached under my skirt, undid the knot holding the rope about my thigh.

  Even Pasus was not looking back at us as I fastened it hastily about my waist. . . . But Tyrus laid his hand on my wrist when I moved to tie the other end about him.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “We should do this well ahead of time.”

  “Don’t bind me to you at all,” he said.

  Hazard and Anguish hadn’t moved, so a shock of electricity jolted out to goad them both.

  “You have to be tied to me,” I said. “You don’t seem to understand how hard this is going to be—”

  “No, you don’t,” he said insistently. “Look at the size of this room. Nemesis, you’re going to struggle to hold on as it is. I won’t tie myself to you and risk both of us dying. You have better odds without me.”

  I opened and closed my mouth, and below us, the crowd screamed with impatience as a second electrical spike sizzled the two Diabolics, trying to increase the discomfort until they were goaded into battling.

  He was being . . . He was being irrational. This made no sense.

  “If it will be hard for me, then it will be . . .” Impossible for you, I almost said.

  And then I realized it. Then I knew: it would be. It would be utterly impossible for Tyrus to survive unbound to me. The sick, terrible understanding gripped me, and I knew then that he’d already decided it would be impossible to survive at all.

  “Stars ignite, you think you’re doomed,” I breathed. Below us, the third shock had spiraled, and finally Anguish and Hazard responded. Everyone in the crowd surged to their feet to see it as Hazard stepped over to the rack of weapons. He grabbed a sword in one hand, an ax in the other. Anguish threw a contemptuous glance about.

  “Tyrus, you can’t give up,” I said frantically.

  “I am not giving up,” he said. There was a sinister, unsettling peace to his face, and that just terrified me more. “I’m being realistic.”

  Below us, Hazard charged Anguish, ax raised, and the crowd roared with approval—and then Hazard leaped up onto Anguish’s shoulders, and hurtled himself over the force field above them.

  I seized Tyrus’s arm, ready to shake him apart. “That’s why you told them! You don’t think you’ll be there afterward!”

  “Nemesis . . . ,” he said thickly, his eyes shining. He stroked his hand over my face, and there was such tenderness in his voice: “This has to happen. Let it happen. I will do what I can for myself. I swear it to you.”

  Hazard landed amid the crowd as he spun around and hurled his ax at the force-field generator to knock it out. The ax thunked into place in a shower of sparks.

  “No,” I said, aghast. “Are you mad? No! We abort.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “I won’t let this—” I surged to my feet.

  He pulled me back down beside him. The screams of the crowd had changed pitch—because Hazard turned on the nearest Grandiloquy and began to kill them. Anguish, freed, stalked out of the arena with a terrible grin.

  Pasus had clearly realized something was going very wrong with the Diabolics and was now shouting instructions for his people to come to the Tigris. “Turn the suppressors back on!”

  But the screams would drown them out long enough that it wouldn’t matter.

  Anguish raised an enormous, spiked mace, and I could see him in the distance smashing open a Grande’s head. Panicked Grandiloquy fled the two Diabolics, streaming toward the exits.

  “This isn’t just about us!” Tyrus told me vehemently. “You know that!”

  Tyrus took the end of the rope and began to tie the scepter to me.

  “The shaking will begin. Then I have my pound of flesh,” Tyrus said quietly, a malevolent anticipation gleaming in his eyes. “After that, I will do everything I can to hold on—but not at cost to your hold. As for this . . . this device, if I don’t make it . . . If I don’t . . . Throw it into a star. Douse it with thermite. Just be rid of it. If there’s a Domitrian bastard out there, I can do this much for them.”

  I shook my head wildly, no, no . . . And chaos gripped the entire Tigris as people rushed out of the many exits, and I was aware of Pasus looking up toward us now, comprehension dawning on his face—he knew we’d played a part. It was too late for him to change it now. Tyrus seized me and pressed his lips harshly to mine and said to me over the roar of the crowd as the ship began to shake . . .

  “You’ve been the joy of this sun-scorned existence,” he rasped in my ears. “Every moment of unhappiness I’ve had, I’d relive a thousand times just for the heartbeats I’ve passed with you. Now by the light of all the stars, save yourself.”

  The vessel was jostling violently and I loved him more than anything and Pasus was shoving through the crowd up toward us. He had to know I was at full strength, yet he moved for us because . . .

  Because his first impulse was to grab the Emperor.

  Because he had more stake in Tyrus’s life than anyone.

  It was a dreadful thing to realize. He was th
e one who’d been horrorstruck on Tyrus’s behalf when he’d pointed his weapon at the window, when he’d nearly cast the last Domitrian out to space, and the shaking was so hard now, I had to think quickly and this was a revolting solution.

  Tyrus saw Pasus approaching too. He stepped forward to meet him, looking delighted to see him—because he was about to take out every last bit of frustration and anger upon his tormentor.

  My hand locked on Tyrus’s shoulder.

  He looked back at me in question.

  I rammed my fist into his face.

  Down he tumbled, sailing to the ground, stunned by the blow. Pasus jerked to a stop where he’d been clambering toward us, and I didn’t want him to leave. I lanced down and seized his shoulders. . . . And oh, what pleasure I could take in grinding his bones to powder! But there was no time.

  I dragged him to Tyrus. “Get him and go! Get off this ship! GO!”

  Pasus paled, but he immediately dragged Tyrus’s limp body up and slung him over his shoulder. He’d die before fleeing without him. The Domitrian Emperor was his most valuable possession in this galaxy, and how it boiled my blood to think of letting him go. I knocked aside Grandiloquy to clear Pasus’s path and didn’t focus upon anything else until I was certain they were gone. The rumbling filled the air, rattling my bones.

  Now to save myself.

  I turned and aimed myself down the vibrating stairs. There were very few Grandiloquy left to obstruct my path. At the edge of the arena, my rubbery hands settled upon the railing, my fingers tightened.

  A whimper.

  My gaze darted back . . . to Senator von Wallstrom, who’d opted to hide, not run, who now was on her hands and knees under a bench in full view of me.

  Wallstrom’s voice trembled. “Are you—are you going to kill me?”

  “No,” I told her, and pointed up. “But that will.”

  Then the Hera smashed through the ceiling.

  34

  THE EFFECT was instantaneous and bone-rattling. Overhead, the Tigris crumpled in, fire bursting and sparking from its walls as the massive asteroid starship plunged through it, the noise so deafening it felt as though my eardrums had ruptured.