9
THERE WERE TWO branches of the Domitrian family, and both sides had been virtually decimated by Cygna Domitrian during her quest to secure the throne for her favored child.
The six-star sigil belonged to the royal Domitrians. They all descended from the Empress Acindra von Domitrian. The other side was Cygna’s branch of the family, the nonroyal Domitrians, with the black hole sigil. They descended from Acindra’s uncle, the Emperor Amon von Domitrian.
During his reign, Amon grew frustrated by his Senate and devised a most cunning scheme to control them: he slipped all the Senators an obscure poison called Vigilant’s Bane. Only he held the counteragent, one that had to be taken to keep the poison’s death spiral at bay. The Senators spent years voting and acting as he wished to keep earning their counteragent.
Then came Amon’s fatal misfortune.
A freak accident with a shipment, and the counteragent dried up. The Senators began dying one after another. Amon tried to flee, but he didn’t escape. He was torn from power, and his entire line of descendants was expelled from the succession.
Now here was Tyrus, descendant of both the black hole and six-star Domitrians, contemplating the very toxin that had been Amon’s downfall.
“It’s called Vigilant’s Bane. I wasn’t supposed to know my grandmother even had this, but I watched her too closely to miss it,” he noted, his tone dispassionate, though I knew there had to be distress raging beneath that calm surface. He despised the very idea of killing his own family as his grandmother had. “The counteragent is easier to come by. If Pasus doesn’t know he needs it, he’ll never obtain it in time if we decide . . . if we decide it’s time for Devineé to perish. Until then, I can keep getting her the counteragent as long as she’s close, as long as he’s cooperative. Then, if Pasus turns, if he seeks to rebel in her name and usurp me . . .” He didn’t need to say more.
He would let Devineé die.
“It’s a fine compromise, Tyrus,” I assured him, closing my hand around his—and around the poison as well. “It’s not murder.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, looking at me.
“No, it isn’t. You are sparing her to the extent that you possibly can. It will be up to Pasus, and only if he turns on you will she pay a price.”
“He will turn on me, Nemesis. You know he will. Think: he has informed me that he is willing to put aside a vendetta against you just to be the husband of the Successor Primus. What does that tell you?”
“That he is a liar willing to wait for revenge?”
“Or that his ambition burns so brightly, he can forgive where otherwise he would not. And that sort of ambition will not be slaked by the second most powerful position in this Empire.”
“I know she’s family,” I said to him, “but it’s just one life.”
“One life. And tomorrow, one more life. And one more, and so many single lives . . . At what point will it be too many lives?”
“If I were to guess, I’d say it’s the day you kill without wondering that.” Then I took the poison from his hand and waited while Tyrus ordered his cousin to be brought to us.
I mixed it right in with a glass of wine, and sip by sip, I watched it disappear into Devineé Domitrian, knowing this would eventually be the cause of her death.
Of our salvation.
Her fate would be ours, and I would never feel remorse or regret to know we’d taken her life in hand. As for Tyrus’s conscience . . . Perhaps it would pain him, but if it desensitized him in the slightest so he could more readily strike a lethal blow to his next enemy, all the better.
• • •
There was no communication between ships in hyperspace, and close to malignant space, communications failed as well. We were encased in silence until we were far enough from that ribbon of terrible light, and then transmissions bombarded us in a great blast.
Dozens, then hundreds of them . . . all from various personages who were on the Hera, or Senator von Aton’s Atlas, or Tyrus’s own ship, the Alexandria, all ships that had dropped out of hyperspace before us. Then a fresh onslaught when the other ships cleared malignant space.
Mostly, the inane messages were ones of greeting, hoping the Emperor had a good journey through space. Tyrus had a team of Excess employees sorting through them to find the messages of substance. A few status reports from the Chrysanthemum, a few reports of happenings in the Senate.
The vessels from the Chrysanthemum joined together in a smaller version of the Chrysanthemum, and then Tyrus and I were garbed and prepared for a public appearance by Shaezar nan Domitrian. The Tigris landed within a short distance of Central Square.
Then, the crowds.
The last time I came to this planet, the numbers of people shocked me. Space dwellers tended to have one or two children at most, and vast areas to rove without such dense humanity packing the walls. Our last visit to Lumina, I had been stunned by the size of the crowd. This time the numbers overwhelmed me.
Tyrus was Emperor now, not Successor Primus.
The dizzying array of faces, so much more varied than on the Chrysanthemum, rendered me mute and almost disoriented. They were all ages, not like the Grandiloquy, who kept the young out of sight unless they used a bot to make them suitably aged so as not to stick out. The Grandiloquy also tended not to age unless due to an eccentricity or strategic choice, but so many of these Excess were old.
My friend Neveni Sagnau met Tyrus in front of the onlookers. She had been acting as Lumina’s Viceroy on an order of the last Emperor’s, so she ceremonially surrendered the office to her elected successor. He then introduced Tyrus to the Excess, and the thundering clamor of shouts and applause—even some boos—seemed to vibrate my very bones.
Tyrus mounted the podium before this great square, shielded by an invisible barrier, and offered for the Luminars a variation of his Convocation speech. I half listened, too busy surveying for threats. I saw it the moment a gap appeared in the masses because it was so odd, and then out of their midst (ringed in a protective force field that had driven the crowd apart), Senator von Pasus emerged. He was trailed by a retinue of servants, employees, and Servitors and utterly heedless of the blistering glares from the Excess of the planet he owned.
I’d already been tense. Now my every muscle was a knot.
Tyrus saw him too. Not a flicker of reaction on his face. Nor did he hesitate at the next part of his speech: “As a gesture of my affection for this fair province, I would like to gift the museums of Lumina with some imperial artifacts. . . .”
My gaze shot to Pasus’s face to see his reaction to these “gifts.”
For Tyrus wasn’t giving artifacts. And everyone knew it.
A floating container holding pieces of technology, blueprints, schematics, disassembled machines was being floated out of the Tigris and given to the Luminars. Tyrus was giving them technology and scientific knowledge, whatever he could find. It was a blasphemy that would offend a good Helionic.
An act like this had destroyed Senator von Impyrean.
And Tyrus did it casually, so offhandedly he gave all a cue about just how to treat this offering.
All took the cue—but for Pasus.
He was gazing narrowly up at Tyrus, an incredulous smile at his lips as though he couldn’t quite fathom what Tyrus was trying to pull off. After all, Lumina was within his territory, and he was a Helionic. He could simply take that technology away.
I fought a smile of my own, for I knew what came next.
“In addition,” Tyrus went on, “I would like to leave with you a number of my Grandiloquy friends for an extended visit to this fair planet. I know you will all enjoy each other’s company and encourage relations between Luminars and Grandiloquy.”
Pasus’s smile froze on his lips.
His shocked eyes skipped over the faces of those Grandes and Grandeés being escorted forward, with all honors and ceremonies, like they were, indeed, vacationing guests. In truth, they were all Helionics, the prisoners Tyrus had taken at his coronation, and he was leaving them here in the keeping of the Luminars to serve as human shields in case Pasus did try to strip away the new technology of the Luminars.
One hostage was familiar to me, with his usual golden wraps about his dark hair, and those wide green eyes: Gladdic Aton. He was the son of Pasus’s closest ally, Senator von Aton. His life alone would have been a bulwark against attack, even without the dozen others joining him here.
My gaze found Pasus again as understanding settled cold and hard over his face. Whatever slightly amused condescension he’d been wearing until now had melted away, and he assessed Tyrus with the icy eyes of a sniper regarding a distant foe. He saw, at last, that he wasn’t dealing with an overwhelmed boy so easy to manipulate.
Tyrus and I had discussed how he should present himself, and settled upon this. He couldn’t project artificial weakness with Pasus unless he meant to do so consistently. Although the predatory instinct of honing in on the weak might have misled Pasus into dropping his guard, we both agreed strength would be the more effective means of giving him pause.
These thoughts passed through my mind as I gazed down at him. Then Pasus’s eyes lifted and met mine. All about me seemed to drain into a silent stillness as I regarded him and he regarded me. . . . I’d killed his daughter, and now I would wed his Emperor, entering the very same family he was clawing and striving to join.
The truth was, I wasn’t sorry about what I’d done to Elantra. She’d deserved every moment of pain and fear I’d given her before ripping her heart from her chest. She took away Sidonia from me, and if I’d had the chance to kill her father, too, I’d have done so already.
I knew as our eyes held that the feeling of cold enmity was mutual.
Tyrus’s speech concluded, and Pasus drew his hands together in applause, never looking away from me. That was when I knew it in my heart: we would destroy him, or he would destroy us.
And I would not let us be destroyed.