26
I WAS summoned for the first meeting of court since our return. I knew what it meant: Tyrus would be in our midst. I could finally see if he was well. I chose a gown that deliberately angled down in a V to display the Interdict’s mark on my heart, and then I plunged out into the sea of hostile eyes in the presence chamber.
There was a throne lower than Tyrus’s, yet positioned at the top of the chamber . . . meant for his future Empress. I took it, and it gave me a grim satisfaction to see the resentment and bitterness on the faces of the onlookers as they beheld me in the Empress’s place. That was the single pleasure I could take from Pasus’s bargain.
And then—at last.
Pasus stepped into the presence chamber, and I saw with a rush of fury that the scepter was in a sheath at his waist. He was followed by two of his servants, steering Tyrus forward by the arms. I rose to my feet, gazing at him intently, waiting for his eyes to meet mine, but they didn’t seek me. Tyrus’s face was cloudy.
That was why he hadn’t waved back to me, or done anything at the gala.
Trust me, he’d said.
I trusted Tyrus. But trust also implied something: it implied he’d be in a position to act in a way that might disappoint or please me, and when his eyes drifted past me, a cold, crawling realization sank over me that the Venalox was stronger than he’d realized.
He would give me an indication if he was faking this. Some tiny, tiny hint.
But his head slumped back without anyone holding it as he was placed on his throne. He never turned toward me, his fingers dangling toward the ground.
Tyrus, look at me, I thought, staring hard at him.
Then I said it: “Tyrus. Tyrus.”
His head moved toward the sound of my voice, his eyes unfocused. I reached out to touch his arm, and his gaze dropped to my hand with a naked, open, lost look that belonged on a child—not on Tyrus.
I felt like the breath had been driven out of me. We needed a new plan.
“You’ve helped him,” Pasus’s voice came to me. “Now remove your hand.”
I tightened my grip. “You expect me never to touch my fiancé.”
Pasus prowled toward me. He said in a furious undertone: “Sensory input confuses him. You will agitate him.”
“How much of this drug have you given him?”
“Enough. Let go, or I will say you have taken ill and must be removed.”
And as I was, I couldn’t fight back. I lifted my hand from Tyrus, and it shook in the air with my rage. How glorious it would be to feel Pasus’s heart thrum in my hand as Elantra’s had, to watch his life seep out beneath me. . . .
I pressed myself back in the seat, knowing what those thoughts were.
The malice of a Diabolic.
I traced my finger over my concentric suns mark, reminding myself: I am a person.
Even if people, I mused as I watched Pasus, did most malevolent things too.
“Shall we begin?” spoke Senator von Pasus, to the hearty assent of those about. He linked his hands behind his back in a masterful gesture, surveying those present, then turned gracefully as if doing a pirouette and began walking in a reverent Grandiloquy gait to the seat of Tyrus’s throne—three steps, dip, hands to his heart, three steps, dip.
Why even bother? The strange bits of formality he clung to bewildered me. He knew Tyrus was in no state to notice his presence or absence. Everyone watching here knew just what the situation was. But Pasus reached the foot of the throne, and Tyrus wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at an overhead crystalline chandelier as though he, new to this universe, was viewing such a thing for the first time.
Pasus snapped his fingers. Twice. The second time, those glazed eyes looked toward the sound. “Your Supremacy, tell me to rise. As we practiced,” he said quietly. “Remember? Rise. Rise.”
Tyrus’s brows pressed together. He blinked sluggishly.
“Rise?” Tyrus said.
Pleased, Senator von Pasus straightened—and that was the last involvement of Tyrus for a good while as Pasus turned to address the gathered Grandiloquy like he was their Emperor. He might as well have been, though he recalled himself at one point, removed the scepter from its sheath, and then slung it across Tyrus’s lap.
Tyrus gazed at it with puzzlement, and then his head flopped back again.
“I don’t know how much of what I say you can understand,” I told Tyrus quietly, and surveillance equipment might be recording this, but I didn’t care. “But this is not what we had in mind. Tyrus, please, if this is for show . . .”
Nothing.
“No.” I swallowed. There was a mass in my throat, it felt like. A great panic clawed at my chest.
I didn’t know what to do.
“. . . been coordinating with media outlets on Eurydice,” Pasus was telling the other Grandes and Grandeés. “In case our primary narrative does not come across as we wish, we’re preparing a secondary story. A backup.”
My gaze fastened on him, a laser focus to my thoughts.
“Our Emperor is very young, and of course, it was well known before he took the throne that he was not entirely stable. He is in love with . . . a woman of, shall we say, violent tendencies, who influenced him. If our story is doubted, we will cast it as an attempt to shield this story: that the Luminars attempted to take advantage and stir up trouble, and this boy so new to his power overreacted to it. This will also quash any speculation about my remaining here—”
I surged out of my seat, swelling with outrage. “No. No! You will not cast us in that light!”
They all looked to me, to the woman by Tyrus’s side, the one who dared to talk over them, but I felt as though I sizzled like lightning with this raw fury.
“You will not say Tyrus is responsible for what you did on Lumina!” I bellowed. “That wasn’t him. It was you. How dare you say that!”
Many sought to reply, but Pasus waved them silent. His lips were a jaded twist. “We will not say anything. We mean the public to believe the Luminars—always a fractious sort—were secretly experimenting with bioweapons and had an unfortunate accident. This is merely a contingency plan in case that story is not accepted.”
“You did it. And you will not say it was Tyrus’s doing.”
“He is a Domitrian,” Pasus said. “He is the last Domitrian. He is the only one who can shoulder blame for this without dying for it. And our Emperor himself will agree to make that gesture for his Grandiloquy. Right now. Today.”
That was when I realized why Tyrus was so drugged. They were going to use him as their safety net—with his complicity.
“I won’t let you,” I vowed, and what I wouldn’t have given for my strength.
“Retire her for the day,” Pasus said to his servants. “She’s disrupting the proceedings.”
I leaned over and swiped the scepter from where it still lay on Tyrus’s lap. As the first servant reached me, I swung around and crashed it into his head—as Tyrus had done to Hazard. Then I raised it overhead, but the second man caught it, and the rare feeling of someone struggling with me, overpowering me, made me grit my teeth and drive my heel into his shin.
Then—a fist across the face.
Normally I could absorb this. Today bright lights flashed behind my eyes and I found myself on the floor, close to Tyrus’s feet. And his hazy eyes were directed my way, his brows flickering down.
Hands were already grabbing me, so I implored him, “Say nothing. Say nothing, Tyrus—SAY NOTHING!”
But irresistible forces dragged me back, and Tyrus was looking my way, but did he see anything? I fought every step toward the exit as Pasus stepped up to Tyrus, as he clasped his face to turn it right toward him so all Tyrus saw was him.
“You ordered the Resolvent Mist deployed on Lumina.”
“No, you didn’t!” I shouted, and then a hand jammed over my mouth. I sank teeth in, and my heels skidded over the floor as Pasus spread his palms to block me from Tyrus’s sight.
“Just say yes. Agree that it was you. Say yes. As we practiced.”
My teeth dug in deeper, but the hand remained.
“Say yes. Say yes!” Pasus shouted now.
And the entire chamber—all these smug perpetrators of mass murder—they were watching intently, hopeful! Hopeful as though their own crimes would be forgiven by another wrongly, dazedly accepting blame!
“Yes. As we practiced. Yes.”
Tyrus keeled forward, and delight made me almost laugh—because it was clear he was trying to walk away. Pasus caught him in a bear hug to keep him there, to keep him on his throne, and they were both crammed between the armrests now, and how ridiculous it looked.
“Say it! Say. Yes.”
Tyrus’s head swayed about, to fix him with a confused look. “. . . Yes?”
Applause followed, and he sent a bewildered look over the Grandiloquy giving cries of relief, bringing their hands together, and Pasus smiled broadly, and that was all I saw before I was out of the presence chamber. But Pasus’s noxious voice poisoned the air:
“All of you heard it. The Emperor’s word is sacred, and it was spoken with all of us as witness. It may be said with total honesty that we heard this—all of us. No drug and no lie detector will ever say we deceive. Let’s congratulate our young Emperor for ensuring peace! Very well done, Tyrus. We are so proud of you.”
The fight had left me. It was done. If the Excess refused to believe the Luminars had destroyed themselves, then Tyrus and I were to be blamed for the deaths of four billion people.
When a Servitor appeared with a discreet-sheet, I almost crumpled it up, in no mood for intrigue. But I looked, and it was from Gladdic.
Explosive decompression tonight. 2000 from the Justice Hall.
I crumpled the paper to powder.
I could do this much.
• • •
I’d never worn a space-sheath before, but I knew it was prudent to check it for leaks before using it. I didn’t. There was no time. I sorted through the formfitting silver-and-black sheaths already on the Hera and found a size that would fit. The material felt rubbery and resisted as I tugged it over my legs and zipped it up over my breasts, but then after I’d secured the gloves and helmet, the material inflated and pressurized. The in-built steering rings shrank as well, and then the sheath’s material hardened into a rigid shell.
Oxygen pumped through the helmet, and my focus narrowed as I approached the Hera’s air lock. One flick of my hand, and the meager air propelled me out into space.
With the momentum at my back, I plunged into the still and deathly silence. For a moment, I drifted that way, the absence of gravity somehow more jarring and unnatural out here, somewhere a human body could not exist, could not survive.
Then I played a mental game with myself: this was a ball dome with a very clear exterior. The vessels, these massive metallic and granite structures I drifted through, they were just walls. Obstacles. It was a game.
And so I moved my legs to steer my momentum as I would in any ball dome, drifting soundlessly past the empty windows of the Hera, and how very hard and imposing Cygna’s starship looked from just outside. At the final airlock I passed, I yanked the door open, left it that way. Then I aimed myself toward the Valor Novus, which the Hera attached to by a corridor that appeared a spindly arm out here, though I’d walked through its sturdy interior hundreds of times.
I kept my eyes fastened on the windows, but the void was great and dark. Even had someone stood near the windows of the Valor Novus, they’d never spot my black-and-silver suit drifting past against the background of starships. I peered in window after window, trying to orient myself from outside a ship I knew so well from the inside.
Then I found it. The Justice Hall.
I’d just have to hope Neveni had the foresight to exhale before she was vented. If she held her breath, her lungs would rupture immediately, and she would die. It all depended on her.
I positioned myself just above the air lock, hearing my own breathing within the narrowed helmet, my own heartbeat. . . . Such total silence out here in space. Gleaming metal starships shrank in all directions. So still out here.
A thought crawled into my mind: no sound waves traveled through a void, which meant the neural suppressor could not be sonically triggered out here. I had my full strength right now, and though the lack of gravity meant I couldn’t feel it, it was there.
My gaze traveled about, searching for the Colossus, for this was a possibility. I could rescue Tyrus from the outside. Who would see it coming?
A burst of light, and out came Neveni, totally exposed with no space suit, cast to her death in this void.
And so I launched myself forward to save her.