28
I’D NEVER been ill. I’d never seen Sidonia suffer anything worse than a cold. The most dreadful illness I’d glimpsed was Tyrus after that first visit to Lumina, and I’d mostly avoided him during that time. Now, I saw signs of fever in the bright eyes, the waxen cast to his face.
Tyrus dragged his gaze to mine, and said raggedly, “Nemesis, before this, when we discussed my plan . . .”
I knew what plan he meant. His suggestion he’d handle this substance. “Yes?”
“I may have overestimated myself,” Tyrus said. “Just a bit.”
More than a bit, and we both knew it, but I managed a smile. “I know, Tyrus.”
His smile was loving, hopeless. Then he keeled over and threw up.
My first instinct even now was to recoil from the sight of sickness, though this time, I knew it wasn’t a virus. It was just a human body that had accustomed itself to a poison, now feeling a lack of what it had grown to expect.
A most dreadful lack.
Soon he couldn’t hold down so much as water without it coming back up. A constant tremor rocked his arms and legs, and I had to help him move to keep the cramps at bay. He wasn’t at liberty to leave the Colossus, so we roved the expanse of the garden within.
Tyrus stumbled over his words as he tried to explain the narcotic to me. “It’s like I’m submerged in a swamp. Everything is still there, but there’s this thick sludge blocking my every sense. . . .”
“Go on,” I said, clutching Tyrus’s arm with both of mine to keep him walking.
This was the first occasion I’d truly noticed the problem of the neural suppressor, because stars, he was so heavy. Normally I could outright carry him, and today he was only leaning some of his weight on me, yet it made me stagger.
“Then it clears, just a bit,” Tyrus murmured, “and I hear myself talking and see myself eating or moving and I realize—I’ve been doing this all along. And I’m still doing it. I am asked to sign this, or affirm that, and this person I am not quite inhabiting is so pleased to be able to accommodate any request. Then I surface entirely and stare aghast at what I’ve just handed over, but before I can voice my doubts, I am lost. The agreement about Lumina . . . You did something. I wasn’t sure—but I knew you were in danger, and I surfaced. . . .”
“You tried to walk away rather than surrender. I saw it.”
“And then nothing,” Tyrus whispered. “Like that, everything disappears again.”
“Pasus claims the inhaled form is milder.”
“I should hope so,” he muttered. “I haven’t anything else to give.”
“Titles. Perhaps the Hera.”
He closed his eyes a moment. “I assure you, he hasn’t forgotten that one. I’ve given him the title to it.”
“It’s mine. You can’t do that.”
“It becomes communal property when we wed, and . . . and on the bright side, the Senator now has an incentive to wish our union to happen soon.”
“There’s no end to his avarice,” I muttered.
“I’m sorry, Nemesis.”
This wasn’t his fault; the apology was foolish.
Though I still thought of the ship as Cygna’s, a surge of unexpected possessiveness swept over me at the idea of giving it up. Pasus would not have it.
Somehow, I had to preserve it.
Despair chased that thought. How? I couldn’t preserve anything else. Tyrus’s whole body shook now as though hit with an electric current, and his misery blared from his face, though he was still trying to hide it.
“Tyrus, you’ll need to beg him for the powdered dose. Just get it done. Look at the alternative: he will let you suffer through two days of misery, inject you with another dose, and then you’ll repeat it again. Put aside your pride.”
He let out a slow, shaky breath. “It’s not pride. I’ve always done this, and if I must be a pathetic, hopeless, abject beggar before all the great in this realm, I will do so. I can go to him on bended knee and show them all an Emperor in total subjugation. He means the Grandiloquy to understand he is their new master by exhibiting himself as mine, and I can endure it. It’s just . . .”
“It’s just what?” I stroked his forehead, the skin so hot against my hand.
“This feeling, the . . . the need to end it . . .” His eyes were haunted. “I can pretend, but some part of this won’t be pretending. I’m ready to kneel and beg for it. And next time? The next?”
I nodded. “Then . . . then perhaps we should think of my suggestion.”
He looked at me.
“Shall we return to that?” I said.
Not just to the suggestion—but to the Sacred City. He’d been confident enough to dismiss my idea of returning to the Interdict before, yet now . . . Now he was turning it over in his mind.
The Interdict was the only ally we had left. He was the only person whose voice was too powerful to drown out. We just had to get back to him, and then take him out here with us.
Then Tyrus began to laugh. I frowned at him.
“Do you remember suggesting that originally?” he murmured, smiling oddly. “Think. You wished him to see the Empire. I chose to scare him with the black hole. And the reason I opted for that is . . .” He started laughing again. “It’s because I thought your idea would take far too much time.” Then he had tears of laughter in his eyes, and I remained silent.
At the look on my face, his smile slipped away.
“Nemesis, I . . . I’ve completely lost track of the days. Do you know . . . The timing . . . We were lucky the first time.”
“I know the windows,” I said, barely moving my lips.
“Say no more,” Tyrus said.
Everything we said, every syllable spoken within the walls of the Colossus, was likely being overheard.
But yes, I knew the gravital windows. It was a twenty-three-day journey straight there, a day in and out of the system, and from the schedule of gravital windows, we had a little over two weeks to leave here if we meant to escape in time.
“For how long does it close next?” Tyrus said, keeping it vague enough for only my understanding. “Remind me. I’m still hazy.”
“Three years.”
He cursed softly. “This one or never, then.” He swallowed, and I knew he was fighting down the nausea again. “I don’t know how I will . . . think after I am dosed again. Even if I can, I am watched and I am overheard everywhere.”
I nodded.
“It’s why I won’t be allowed on the Hera.” He looked at me. “The very walls of that vessel repel distant eyes and ears.”
My ship was safe from surveillance, then. Good. “You gave me the best.”
“Always,” he said.
“I will make do.” I gripped his hand. “Trust in me.”
He nodded. Gratitude washed over his countenance, though that terror he was too raw to hide from me remained.
I stroked his face, the only relief I could offer. He leaned his forehead against mine, and my mind raced. Such a great promise I’d made to him. I’d do the thinking and planning for us. I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to start.
There were murky tendrils of ideas, but I didn’t know where they led, or what I’d find on the other end. But the fact was, Tyrus could not act, and my mind was perfectly clear. It had to be me. I had to save us or we would not be saved.
So I would do it.
I would save us.
When he keeled over, sick yet again, I made my first decision as the one of us who had to plan. “Now. I am taking you to the presence chamber to speak to Pasus exactly as he wished. I won’t allow you to suffer for no reason.”
He rubbed at his face miserably. “Do me . . . one favor.”
“Anything.”
He spoke softly: “Don’t watch.”
I smoothed my hand through his hair and nodded. I wouldn’t. My eyes wouldn’t glimpse his public humiliation. At least, any more of it.
• • •
Pasus had indeed been eavesdropping and had manufactured reasons to summon as many as possible to the presence chamber. He waited as a petitioner might before the thrones, but his hands were linked behind his back in a calm, masterful stance. As Tyrus approached him, I trained my eyes out the window, gazing toward the Hera, that beautiful and powerful asteroid ship I’d vowed never to surrender.
“Senator von Pasus, please give me the Venalox.”
“Wait a moment,” Pasus said, then he withdrew Tyrus’s scepter, and handed it to him. “Now, repeat that.”
Tyrus bristled. He looked down at the scepter, the mockery of having to hold it and say this. “Please, Senator von Pasus, I would like the Venalox.”
“Oh, but you were so resistant before,” Pasus said, his voice loud.
Tyrus had to do better than that. He dropped to his knees, and out they poured, the pleading, the begging, just what Pasus wanted to see. I couldn’t put my hands over my ears, so I made myself focus on the Hera with all its power. Even a sneak attack and an onslaught of automated mines hadn’t dented her. The gravital forces in the Transaturnine System were nothing to her. She would be our liberation.
“. . . so gracious and kind of you to do this . . . ,” Tyrus was saying.
No, this ship was mine. I would not give her up. I would use her and I would fix all of this.
Murmurs were sounding about me, and I shifted my gaze to see the sheer pleasure radiating from Pasus’s face as everyone—all who had the slightest bit of power in this Empire—beheld the Emperor debased at his feet.
“Oh, you dear boy. I hate to see you in pain. But of course, you may have this, Your Supremacy,” purred Pasus, uncorking the phial.
Tyrus began to rise, but Pasus’s hand fell on his shoulder, telling him to stay right where he was. Tyrus reached for the phial, but Pasus said a sharp, “No.”
And I’d told him I wouldn’t watch, and I hadn’t meant to, but now I saw the tremor of raw hatred pass through Tyrus’s body as Pasus maintained his hold on the phial.
“Go ahead,” Pasus said.
Tyrus leaned forward, just his head, and inhaled from the phial right in Pasus’s hand. I watched his face, trying to gauge how strong this was, how coherent he would be. The narcotic set in and a haze washed over his features.
He sagged forward, and Pasus balanced him with a hand, then said to the watchers, “It’s safe to say the Emperor and I are reconciled at last.”
Laughter. It seared my ears, and perhaps it was polite laughter, perhaps it was the sycophantic sort one offered to a Senator who now ruled over all in this room. . . . But I did not forgive it. My hands twitched to rip out the vocal cords of everyone I saw. I wanted nothing more than to ram the Hera through this ship and . . .
Then my gaze shot to that beautiful asteroid ship, my very blood electrified with the thrill of the idea. This one was more than a tendril; it cut right through the murky darkness until I could see a way forward. Hope blazd within me. I clutched it like a shield about my heart as Pasus reminded Tyrus to scoop up the scepter he’d dropped . . . then paraded his Emperor about here and there, like a tiger trained to jump through a burning loop.
Tyrus and I were in a bind, but we would not be for long, and when we turned on Pasus, nothing in this galaxy would save him. I would make sure of it.