The Empress

by S. J. Kincaid

  “I don’t understand you,” he said.

  “You should. I am the same as I have always been. Yours. And desperately in love with you. I won’t sit here and watch you become what you hate. I thought perhaps I could influence you, but I clearly can’t. I can’t be your conscience. You hoped I would learn to live with turning a blind eye, but I won’t. Even if I were capable of that, I could never do you such a cruelty. So here is your new set of choices, Tyrus.”

  “Choices?” he said between his teeth. “There are no choices anymore. You’ve made sure of that! You’ve eliminated every choice but the single one I cannot make! You mean me to kill you.”

  “On the contrary, there are two choices: you may choose me, or you may choose power.” The cold certainty of the words registered in my mind. “Your grandmother once said there is a single choice for a Domitrian. Are you a Domitrian? Or are you Tyrus, the one I love—the one who will choose me?”

  He just stared at me. I was aware of several Grandiloquy who’d managed to force their screens back to translucence. . . . Tyrus was too focused on me to shield us from them again.

  I cupped his hot, dry cheeks in my hand, stared into those bewildered eyes. “The Emperor of this galaxy has a duty to avenge the Interdict. Emperor Tyrus has to kill me. But Tyrus, my husband, the love of my life—he can decide otherwise. He can save me.”

  “How,” he rasped, “can I possibly save you from this?”

  “You’ll take me away from here. I wanted to save you, but it’s not in my power now. So you’ll save me instead. We’ll aim for the black hole. We’ll emerge in a time when no one knows us. How easily you and I might disappear if we wanted to, and they may even think we flew right into malignant space . . . or something else. We can take any of these ships and jump into hyperspace until we are so far away, the Empire is a distant memory.”

  He gave a crazed, hopeless laugh. “The idea is ludicrous. You’ve now confessed to killing the Interdict,” he said, “and I have decimated much of the Grandiloquy. I am not invulnerable, Nemesis. I am only now learning how to control these machines. Do you truly think we will get that far?”

  “We will run fast. If we are cornered, we will fight hard. No force in this galaxy can stop us.”

  “And this Empire?”

  “Leave it behind! Tyrus, your family is deemed royal, but they don’t rule this place. They have been chained to it for thousands of years. You can break those chains. You’ve ended the line, so free yourself from it. Escape with me, my love.”

  Tyrus’s eyes glinted. “You’ve never called me that.”

  “Have I not?” I murmered, my heart pierced not just by the realization I hadn’t—but by the fact that he’d noticed. “My love.” I pressed a kiss to his lips. “My true love. Love of my life.”

  He gathered me closer, heedless of how this had to look after my confession. “Why do you keep doing this to me?” His voice was thick like he’d caught back a sob.

  “Helios help me, that Venalox wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t do enough. I would gladly poison every fiber of my heart that beats for you if I could be free of you. You are the only one who can hurt me.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “Tyrus, I can’t imagine myself without you.”

  He looked at me with a torture in his eyes I hadn’t seen in the worst torments of withdrawal. “No. But . . . I can.”

  Then he buried his sword in my chest.

  51

  HEARTBEATS felt like ages. An eruption of bright, blazing red, the world blasted on a wave of pain, and between our bodies swirled a haze of crimson roses, but then the iron tinge in the back of my throat betrayed the blood I was seeing hemorrhage from my veins. Heat drained from my limbs in one gasp, but arms caught me, clasped about me. My vision saw something strange, a part of me that couldn’t be me, punctured, split as it was, with steel buried in my flesh.

  “I hate you,” said the voice, so close, and with a wrench it tore out of me, a slash of his arm casting the blade, end over end, to the far reaches of the ball dome. “Oh, how I hate you for this.”

  Air strangled me. I choked, heaved it in, but there was not enough, my own breath was drowning me. . . . And the distant crowd floated into my vision, their shouts and raucous voices flooding, pounding the air.

  So many animals. Two-legged creatures with their sharp teeth and clawing hands and the fog descended thicker and thicker over them.

  My head sagged back against something warm, solid behind me, and a voice whispered, “Shh. Shh.” His voice dropped, grew bitter. “This will never be their show.”

  He twisted us about, and then all we could see was vastness beyond clear diamond windows. Fingers threaded through my hair, tingling across my scalp, the nape of my neck, over and over as brilliant light flooded my vision.

  “There.” The breathy whisper. “Just look there.”

  Closer we glided, two faint, ghostly reflections gleaming against the malignant space. Though my vision slid out of focus, the brilliance remained, bright, effervescent, radiating at me until it hummed through my soul as life slipped from my veins.

  “Breathtaking, isn’t it?” A hoarse voice. Choked. “Never in my life have I seen such terrible beauty.”

  The fog descended.

  52

  SHE STOOD too close to the edge. Sidonia pointed to something, but I couldn’t make it out. She was wandering ever farther, and every bit of me thrilled with warning.

  “Donia, Donia, you shouldn’t go into that water. . . .”

  A moment later, the absurdity of the words dawned on me. . . . Though why they were out of place, I could not say. Donia just looked back at me, a smile glimmering over her lips, a soft, tender warmth in her dark eyes.

  “Oh, Nemesis,” she said. “I’ll take care of you. That’s painful.”

  I knew what she was talking about. My gaze dropped to my bare feet, scorched and lacerated where they bled on the jagged stones beneath me.

  Her hand closed about mine, and then she tugged me from the pain to the velvety sands that pooled between my toes. A sigh escaped my lips, and she smiled.

  “Look,” she said, and then dipped a toe into the water, a clear glaze reflecting darkness wild with stars. “It’s very warm.”

  I followed her lead, but when my toes touched the water, they met ice. Perplexed, I watched her take another step, another, the rippling starscape over the liquid vibrating with her steps. It was so easy for her. But for me, it was impossible.

  “Donia, I can’t . . .” I tried to explain it. “I . . . I’ve forgotten something.”

  I couldn’t think of what, but she knew the answer and there was a sweetness and purity of love to her face as she told me she understood me as no one had ever understood me. As I’d ever known myself. “I’ll be here.”

  And then I was choking, my chest heaving, vibrating, and a blare of a voice, too loud, “Oh, good. Now we just have to hope she’s not brain-dead.”

  The voice . . . That voice . . .

  I gasped out and tore up from where I was sprawled, but arms tangled with mine, driving me back down, and she skittered back from me, fingers splayed, hands up.

  I had to look at her a long moment to make sense of her. . . . To make sense of Neveni, so altered, with most of her hair gone, an angry, thick scar across her face as though someone had tried to cross her out . . .

  Then her hand shot forward and tightened on mine. Not small and soft as Donia’s was, but Neveni’s hard, rough one. “Do you know who I am?” she said.

  Of course I knew her. I knew pain throbbed through every single fragment of me and an unfamiliar ship hummed about me, the fluorescent lights overhead blaring into my eyes and Donia was gone, and Tyrus . . .

  Neveni.

  Neveni—who had stranded me.

  A scream ripped from my lips and I surged for her. She reared back, lips blazing in a feral grin, but a pair of enormous arms, heavy with muscles, locked around me.

  Oh. Oh, him. Anguish.


  “Yeah, she remembers me,” Neveni said, leaning against the far wall.

  “What’s . . . What is . . .” I cast about for understanding. Then I heaved myself forward, and Anguish abruptly released me—sending me plunging to the ground. Pain banged up my knees, and Neveni started forward as though to help me, then halted . . . rethinking that.

  And then . . .

  Then it was all there blaring in my mind, and my hand flew down. . . . Tender flesh over my rib cage.

  The blade . . . The blade!

  “I was . . . He . . . ,” I gasped.

  “Let me help you up.”

  Her voice rang in my ears, but I couldn’t seem to understand it. Neveni’s arms wrapped around my waist, and she hoisted me up with an oof. I sagged there dumbly, and then Anguish grabbed my arm to help her out.

  I looked at her, at him, and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . What was wrong with me? “How did I get here?”

  “Gladdic of all people contacted me. It was the oddest thing, but he gave me a heads-up where we could find you. Let’s get her to a chair.”

  Anguish nodded.

  I hung there between them as they eased me across the room. “G-Gladdic?” What? What about Gladdic? What was going on?

  “He told us what had happened,” Neveni said. “Long before we actually caught the transmission ourselves. I think he wanted us to spirit him away, but I let him know there’d be a price for it. You. He paid us. Whether we pay him back or not, well . . . Maybe if it’s convenient one day.” I blinked at her sluggishly. Yes. I’d given him her frequency. I recalled that suddenly.

  “I don’t . . .” My mind fought to untangle as they settled me in a chair. “I’m not . . .”

  “Hypovolemic shock.” Anguish’s deep voice drew my attention to him. He gazed down at me. “It’s happened to me before. We don’t respond as they do. Great blood loss, and we go into a sort of hibernation. Easy to mistake for death.”

  “Gladdic also injected an oxygen pellet into your bloodstream to keep you from suffocating while you weren’t breathing.” Her mouth curled in an uneven smile—with that scar slashing over the corner of both lips. “You think you know a guy, and then he surprises you by not being thoroughly useless. . . .”

  Death.

  Hibernation.

  What?

  “Then it was just a matter of trying to make sure we caught up to your tomb before you woke up . . . if you did. Gladdic tweaked the navigation, too. He must have, or you’d be ashes.”

  I stared at her, and I couldn’t understand it. It made no sense. It just . . .

  My mouth was like sawdust. My eyes were sliding in and out of focus, but when I looked down at the floor beside me, an ugly shock jerked through me.

  A crystalline enclosure.

  A tomb.

  I’d been in there. I had been inside it. I’d been trapped inside, stranded in bare space. If I’d awoken and never been found . . .

  She caught me when I keeled over, but nothing escaped as I dry heaved.

  “Yeah, it’s rough. Anguish told me it would be,” Neveni said.

  Waves of ice swept through me, chills prickling over my skin. I looked at the coffin again.

  “Welcome back from the dead,” Neveni told me.

  She reached back to retrieve a glass, offered it to me. Desperate thirst gripped me. I drew in a great mouthful, then gagged.

  Not water.

  Not water—whiskey.

  “Unless you prefer water,” Neveni said.

  I didn’t. I dumped the glass down my throat, and the burn of my esophagus seemed to be the only point of me thawed from ice.

  “Should I give her more?” Anguish said.

  “She was dead. Give her the whole bottle,” Neveni said.

  • • •

  Numbness pervaded my very soul, the hum of the starship about me seeming to vibrate my bones, my skull, threatening to shake loose those muffled thoughts in my mind. I vaguely saw the bare walls of the chamber I’d been led to.

  There I sat on a bed where the springs dug into me, and I lifted my shirt to see my chest. . . . Taut flesh over my rib cage with a smear of toneless white a shade brighter than the skin about it, where my life had almost been preserved by a med bot. Or someone had chosen to fix it up for disposal of my body in a star.

  Nothing felt real, nothing was as it should be. I had a fog in my head that would not recede, a heavy cloud cover. Anguish and Neveni returned. She plucked up the empty glass bottle, studied me. “So I once got him to drink a whole bottle, and I swear, he was giggly. Can you imagine? A bit scary, actually. You?”

  I couldn’t process her words.

  She let out a breath. “I really hope you don’t have brain damage, Nemesis. I’m not sure what I’ll do with you then. Actually, I am. I’ll probably kill you. I can’t afford to deal with that.”

  Brain damage.

  There was a warning in the words, and it didn’t matter to me in the slightest. I pressed my hands over my ears. Tyrus’s eyes were looking at mine in the ball dome, and I screwed my lids shut to block the image, but it was inside me, the image of that gaze just before . . . before he . . . I couldn’t tolerate my memory veering back to that.

  I didn’t hear whatever else she had to say, her voice lost in the mire of thoughts swirling in my head. I plunged into dreams of those two distant, remote, cold eyes and awoke chilled in my bones.

  Something hard pressed the back of my head.

  Neveni stood above me where she’d yanked my pillow out from under me.

  “Enough. Anguish said it’s a bit of a shock to . . . well, to come out of shock, but you’ve had time. Now you need to be awake. Get up.”

  When I did not move, she scowled at me, the red line of the scar tracing a lurid path across the corner of her mouth.

  “Enough of this,” she muttered. She unsheathed a glinting dagger. Then she slashed it down at me.

  I caught her wrist, anger spouting in me. “I am not a feeble old man taken off guard!” And to emphasize this, I ground her bones together. I hurled her away from me, suddenly furious. “Desist unless you want me to slice the rest of your face!”

  But she did not come at me again. “There you are,” she said breathlessly, clutching her arm. “You’re still very strong.”

  “Would you have killed me?”

  “Only if you’d let me.” She shrugged, sheathed the knife again. “Remember how you told me once I’d feel better soon? This was soon after I found out everyone I knew and loved had been murdered. . . .”

  I looked at her flatly. Yes, I saw now how insensitive that was.

  “It’s the last thing you ever want to hear, but you turned out to be right,” Neveni said. “Blowing up the Sacred City and becoming the greatest heathen in the galaxy really did cheer me up. So did getting this ship. So did grabbing you before you burned up. Think of it: the whole galaxy knows their Empress killed their Interdict. Imagine how terrified they’ll be when you come back from the dead for real this time and say you’re going to kill more than that.”

  I closed my eyes. “What do you want?”

  “I want to tell you that I know what you’re feeling. I lost everything. You loved Tyrus so much, you went back to certain death, and what did he do? He married you, and then as your brand-new husband, he killed you.”

  She’d said it, she’d given voice to that thing so unbearable to think about, but now I had to. Now I did. I pressed my hand to the new skin of my chest and turned the concept about in my mind, again and again.

  Tyrus had killed me.

  Tyrus. Killed. Me.

  He’d done it. He’d truly done it. He killed me.

  “There’s only one way to bounce back from this, and you know what it is,” Neveni said, her eyes glittering savagely. “Find him and return the favor. And tear down his Empire around him. I know you want this. If you don’t yet, you will soon. I’m sure of it.”

  Just listening to her excited voice made me feel lousy.


  “I know what you’re thinking,” Neveni said. “How can three people do anything? But we’re not any three people! The strongest man and woman in the galaxy—and the greatest terrorist! Nemesis, you’re a Galactic Empress publicly murdered by her husband who will come right back from the dead. The Empress who isn’t Grandiloquy, the Empress who killed the Interdict . . . You think there’s no use for that? You’re a legend. We all are—and imagine what we can do!”

  I imagined nothing. Later, after she’d left, I moved mindlessly to the washroom on legs still aching, sore from disuse. I beheld a reflection, the ruins of a person I’d been days ago donning a gleaming silver gown, determined to salvage what had already been lost.

  My gray eyes ran down over that frame, honed into a version of itself acceptable in an Empress, a Grandeé. A Diabolic who had squandered her purpose twice. It took me a moment to notice that wisps of my hair were bound up. I reached back and unlatched the clip holding it . . .

  And an ugly pain wrenched at me as I examined it. The very clip Tyrus had retrieved from the nitrogen fountain. The gift he’d offered me for our wedding. How much hope this had given me . . .

  My fist tightened on it, a wild urge to break it all apart tearing at me. I raised my eyes to meet a pair of savage, feral gray ones, glaring at me above a nose so fashionably uneven. Donia loved it that way. So did Tyrus.

  Then I decided something: I didn’t love it.

  I despised it.

  It wasn’t perfect. I could be. I was symmetrical and lethal and powerful, and this intentional and unnecessary mar needn’t even be there. I was done with it. With a gritting of teeth, I balled up my fist over the clip and positioned the sturdiest of its gems right where I wanted it.

  Then I smashed it over the bridge of my nose.

  Pain burst before my eyes, bright, welcome. I struck again, again. . . . Blood dripped down to splatter about my feet. Red-hot waves of agony reverberated through my skull, but it didn’t matter, none of it did. I flung the clip away, seized the broken bridge of my nose, and then arranged it. I twisted, yanked, pulled it until it was exactly where it was meant to be—dead center, tugged into straightness. Exactly as it should have been all along.