13
THE ONLY SOUND was the frantic, quick rasp of Gladdic’s breathing in the heliosphere. He didn’t move, but he was in terror. He’d seemed calm upon my arrival, but as we ticked down to the last minutes, his breathing rasped, his body trembled visibly. I sat behind him ready to spring if he panicked, if he fled. My idle gaze roved the heliosphere and determined all the weapons he could seize and deploy on me. The best was that chalice of burning oil.
I would overcome him and kill him, whatever he did, but I expected him to fight.
Yet he did not.
“Aren’t you at least going to try to run away?” I wondered. “Or fight me?”
“There’d be no point.”
“Of course not, but you’re dead one way or another. I’d try.”
He let out a shuddering sigh, and I saw his chalice was burning the last of its oil. “I know this is how it works. My father always found me disappointing. He wouldn’t mourn long. I . . . I don’t blame you. Or the Emperor. Don’t feel guilty.”
“I won’t,” I said, perplexed.
Before us, the midnight black sky lightened to a deep purple. A brilliant orange line snaked across the horizon. My gaze had been fixed on Gladdic’s back, but the sight captured my attention. The dark purple grew to a brilliant purple edged with clouds of brightest pink and orange, and the golden orange over the mountains grew larger, burnishing the mountains gold.
A star as those ancient humans must have seen it. All the trees between us and the horizon, all those peaks, seemed to gleam, and the mountains grew dimension and form wherever the brilliant starlight set them alight.
Planets were stifling and dirty and crawling with viruses and microorganisms; the skies were open to any true threat from space, and their inhabitants were so vulnerable without realizing it. I reminded myself of this, and yet there was some very primitive part of me, perhaps something of the humanity that had never been removed from my genetic code, that made my skin prickle in a wondrous way to see this star through atmosphere. This was a sight that should remain in Gladdic’s eyes as I killed him. This was the time to strike.
My muscles wouldn’t seem to move.
If he didn’t die now, Tyrus would seem weak. His bluff had been called, and all his bluffs would be called from now on, so better to kill Gladdic than to stay my hand and face more opponents later.
Gladdic had begun to tremble. He knew any moment, any moment . . . The goblet at his side had burned out.
He accepted what I had to do. This was our universe, the way it worked. This was our Empire, the system, the order. Tyrus sought to change so much of it, but the fundamentals of life and death were always going to remain. The bonds of lovers, of parent and child, and those were such potent weapons that had to be used at times like now. Aton had allied with Pasus in full knowledge we held his son. He knew he’d forfeited Gladdic. He must not be spared this consequence.
“By the stars, what are you waiting for?” Gladdic said, suddenly breaking into tears. He buried his head in his hands.
I rose to my feet soundlessly, twined my hand in his hair, and yanked his head back to expose his throat. One quick slash. One I’d delivered so many times.
Yet I found myself looking outward again, for it was difficult when enshrouded in endless darkness, the stars such distant things, to comprehend it all . . . to understand what tiny beings we all were. There was an odd melancholy washing over me, as though for a second I’d stepped back from behind my eyes to glimpse something I’d never once noticed. How fleeting our lives were, not even a blink to the universe. I’d believed an atmosphere confining, but I saw now the richness of it, the oddity of having taken for granted that this perspective was totally insignificant.
All I’d seen the first years of my life had been the force field about me, the walls of the corrals, never the sky, and perhaps that had all been deliberate. That honed one’s focus into a blade, narrowed one’s perception until all that mattered was the heartbeat in my chest, which required ending the heartbeat in theirs. . . .
Then my thoughts stilled.
I was more than that now. Was I not? Was this death truly necessary? Did I truly have no alternative to this?
You wish me to stop lying, Tyrus had said, and I wish you to stop giving me reason to lie.
Reason to lie. Like seeking out Gladdic to do what must be done—for fear Tyrus might not wish me to do this. And the truth was, I didn’t wish to do this either. Not to this harmless boy I had no reason to despise. Tyrus wasn’t a fool. He would preserve himself if it became necessary. I knew he would. All I’d been driven by since losing Donia was the terror of feeling that pain again. It had blinded me to the reality that Tyrus had survived years before I arrived, and he had killed in his own defense.
I didn’t need to be his blade and I did not wish to be his Diabolic.
Instead, I would be an Empress.
I released my grip on Gladdic’s dark hair and stroked my thumb over the scalp I’d been tearing at—all the reassurance I could give him.
“I’m not going to kill you. Go away.”
Gladdic swiveled his wide green eyes toward me.
“Go,” I repeated.
He opened and closed his mouth, and Gladdic took the first tentative steps like he was waiting for me to change my mind, to reveal this as a cruel joke. Then his courage failed and he ran, and his footsteps thumped down the stairs like someone tripping in his haste.
Seconds later, another pair of footsteps pounded up the stairs. Neveni peeked in, and I met her confused glance.
“Um, just checking. I thought . . .”
He’d come out, I hadn’t. A smile touched my lips. “You thought perhaps Gladdic Aton got the best of me?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of ridiculous.”
“Donia was so gentle and sweet, and she’d never harmed an insect, yet even if I were her, I’d be more than a match for Gladdic. Take him somewhere to be a human shield for this planet. I don’t need him.”
“No problem.” She turned to leave, and that was the moment it dawned on me that she’d actually thought to check to see whether I was all right.
As a friend would.
“One last thing,” I called after her.
She turned back, and my tongue seemed heavy in my throat.
“Thank you for checking,” I said.
She seemed puzzled, but just gave a smile. She would think it foolish, that this mattered to me at all, but I knew she had a great many friends. I did not.
• • •
I emerged from the heliosphere and smelled that floral scent once more, and knew it for jasmine. Sidonia’s favorite. The scent still lingered after I was escorted to Tyrus’s hasty assembly of those Senators with us who hadn’t defected.
They’d been up all night, conducting the remote effort to retrieve Devineé.
It had failed.
Pasus had her, and soon she would be dead.
“If they’re aiming for the Chrysanthemum, they have a head start on us,” Tyrus murmured, gazing at a map of all imperial territory, which from the side formed a shallow U-shape of stars. As it twisted, the expanse of space jutted out in several irregular points, mostly from the central focal point of that U. “So we hold position here. We use our service bots, repair the ships one by one. Lumina is a stalwart ally, and a powerful planet with extensive defenses. We’re too easy to ambush with the entry corridors to the six-star system. And I want a message sent to our allies at the Chrysanthemum: if other Helionics or even opportunists mean to defect—let them.”
Murmurs of objection.
“Let them,” Tyrus repeated. He leaned against the window, gazing out at Lumina’s purple-hazed surface. “I want to see who flocks to Pasus’s side. What are those words? ‘Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.’ So let’s hatch all of them. Now.”
His advisers looked to one another uncertainly, perhaps wondering if they’d backed a madman after all.
Tyrus missed nothing. He told them, “I am not at liberty to explain my . . . confidence to you, but I am certain this is a short-lived fracture. And you will all reap substantial rewards at its conclusion.”
The promise of a bribe made them smile, pleased at the prospect. After all, trust was worth far too little on its own.
Tyrus waited until they were gone to gaze thoughtfully at that shallowly curved U-shape of stars. At Lumina, we were closer to the point that spiked from the center of that U, and Tyrus zoomed in to examine the systems nearest us. Great spots of gray indicated zones of malignant space, and purple shading covered those vast swathes of space that simply could not be traversed due to gravity, radiation, debris. There was a very narrow corridor of habitable space amid these zones.
I tore my gaze from it, looked at him.
“You should sleep,” I suggested.
His fingers were pressed to his lips. “Not quite yet.” He flicked his hand and zoomed out, and more of those purple zones swam past, more, and then that U receded into invisibility amid a vast spiraling swirl of stardust.
He’d once told me the term “galactic Empire” was a bit of an exaggeration. Now my stomach gave a curious jump. I stared in dumb shock, because . . . because that was it? The great, seemingly endless expanse of space under Tyrus’s control fit into that tiny sector of the map, like a string amid those patches of intense radiation and heat and hazard?
Suddenly this Empire, so great, felt small. . . . And the intense vulnerability of our position registered in my mind. “It will take weeks, maybe longer, for her to die, and then . . .”
“And then there will still be a fracture. Yes, I am aware,” Tyrus said, threading his fingers together, just watching that galaxy swirl. “That’s why I’m keeping my hands off. As soon as I lift a finger in retaliation, I inspire true enmity. Vendettas. Holding strong, as though we are totally invulnerable—which we are if we stay here—and then offering a chance for his allies to win my forgiveness is the best possible course I can take. . . . I don’t want any of them to feel they’ve entrenched themselves and their backs are to the wall once she dies. I will take bribes to forget this—and stars know the treasury needs the funds.”
“And Pasus?”
“He’s the exception. They will all know it.”
Then he zoomed in on our position again, and with his brow furrowed, he began to turn the image about as though to examine the space around us on all sides. A twist of his hands, and he shifted the image toward a zone of white that appeared as a cluster of hundreds of stars all joined together. They formed the nearest border of dead space separating the Empire and whatever else there was.
“I’ve always found it interesting,” Tyrus murmured, “how Lumina, the greatest holdout of the old faiths, could be the one closest to the Transaturnine System, the prize of the Helionics.”
The star system of the Sacred City. Where the Interdict dwelled.
“Do you think he really exists?” Tyrus said. “The Interdict, I mean.”
I didn’t answer. Just on instinct. It was something one didn’t say aloud. One didn’t question that.
“The first thing I did when I ascended,” Tyrus told me, “was look at our classified files. I wanted to know whether the Interdict is real. And whether sentient aliens are out there, of course. You hear such rumors.”
“Surely not,” I said. There were plenty of plant and animal life forms that hadn’t evolved on Earth, and far more simple ones. “Nothing like us.”
“I found that we are in a habitable zone of this galaxy virtually ringed by places that would fry our ships and kill us in an instant if we left. If there is anything out there, we’re essentially cut off from it.” He gave a rueful smile, as though sheepish to even discuss that. “But Amon was taken prisoner along with his children to the Sacred City, and those children returned claiming the Interdict did, in fact, exist. Yet . . . yet were they just perpetuating the myth? If he were real, why do we see so little of him? A vicar emerges out of nowhere every few decades with a command or a demand for some tribute or other. The vicars would have us believe that same Interdict, Orthanion, is still living there in the Sacred City. It’s literally impossible for someone to exist so long. Even with med bots. Why so coy? Why not come in person?”
“You sound like you have a theory.”
“I think Amon’s children were terrified of meeting their father’s fate, and so they lied. I think the vicars have invented this man and enforced that belief in him by tarring doubters with the word ‘blasphemy.’ ”
“I wouldn’t put that beneath them.”
Tyrus abruptly turned off the image. “Nemesis, I think we need to go there.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted. Then, “Go there? To—to the Transaturnine System?”
“Yes,” said Tyrus, flashing a daring smile. “We’re but a few days in hyperspace away from it. We still have the most powerful starship in our arsenal—the Hera—and it’s in perfect shape to travel.”
“So many pilgrims try to go there and never come back.”
“Two possibilities,” Tyrus said. “One: they found the Interdict and stayed. Two: they didn’t find the Interdict, and someone didn’t want them to come back and admit it.”
The second possibility . . . It was malevolent. But oh, it made so much sense.
“The Hera is not a weak starship easily destroyed by an ambushing force,” Tyrus said, his eyes burning. “And if anyone makes an attempt . . . All they will do is give us more evidence we can then use. If the Interdict is, as I suspect, a fabrication of these vicars, then the threat of exposure will make them most amenable to doing as we wish, won’t it?”
I stepped behind him and laid my hands on his shoulders, looking at that projection of the galaxy. It would cost us a few days at most, and yes—yes, the rewards of this visit would be great.
“When do we leave?”