32
NEVENI AND I had worked it out. It was a long shot, but it was our last hope.
Tomorrow morning, Tyrus and I would usher in our wedding day with a standard blood sacrifice. This would take place on the Tigris, in the arena. The sacrifice Pasus had arranged was meant to be an insult to me: we would preside over a battle to the death between Anguish and Hazard.
Pasus meant to rub it in my face, their subhuman status—watching them die for sport like any other animal.
But I’d figured out something about that blood sacrifice. The Grandiloquy would not crowd forward in hopes of seeing two ordinary men battle to the death. They wanted to see two full-strength Diabolics.
That meant their neural suppressors would need to be off.
And mine as well.
We would be on the weakest of the Domitrian starships, surrounded by the masters who commanded all the other vessels of the Chrysanthemum, and for a few hours more, I still had control of the most powerful Domitrian ship.
We would escape.
Or we would die.
• • •
Shaezar nan Domitrian was due to arrive with his servants at 0800. Tyrus and I rose from bed. We’d continued to vex anyone watching by simply passing the night in the sleep that I knew Tyrus desperately needed. . . . Yet whenever my eyes opened, I found him just watching me with a strange peace on his face.
“Please tell me you’ve gotten some sleep,” I said.
“I’ve gotten some sleep.”
“Tell me you’re not just telling me that.”
He laughed. It was a genuine, pure sound, and I curled up against him, never wishing to let him go. He wouldn’t even have taken the Venalox, he was so invigorated by our plan. I convinced him to do so. We didn’t need him in withdrawal during the event ahead.
As he garbed us, Shaezar nan Domitrian made polite conversation, “How was Forenight?”
“Terrible,” Tyrus said briskly.
“Yes. We mean to call it all off.” We both kept very severe faces, but then our eyes met, and we were both smiling. Shaezar had grown very tense, and now he realized—and gave us a polite laugh.
Metal was a social taboo in the arena, so we were both clad in black leather. Tyrus’s was a sweeping tailcoat, and mine formed one seamless bodysuit that dipped into a deep V to expose my mark of personhood. Effervescent essence was carefully applied to give my features a striking glow, and my hair was stripped down to a platinum shade not too much darker than my true one.
Tyrus, by his own choice, appeared much as always. His coppery hair was combed back, his garb obsidian like mine, to contrast with the scepter Pasus would bring for him to wield before the crowd. That meaningless instrument of power was almost a mockery of us at this point. I hoped for that to change.
“Any doubts?” Tyrus said to me intently.
An observer would mistake this for a talk about the wedding. “None. You?”
“None whatsoever,” he said, his face hard. He took my hand, and then we strode out to meet our fates.
• • •
The arena of the Tigris was jam-packed today. The blood sacrifice for a royal wedding was a major event. So many of these decorated, foppish Grandiloquy had battled one another for the finest seats around the animal-fighting arena. The second most desired area was the one that allowed a full view of my reaction to the sight. What a humiliation they were hoping to see!
Tyrus’s expression was unpleasant as he observed the highly ranked Grandiloquy who’d made the unusual seating choice of viewing us more closely than the animals. He told me, very quietly, “Don’t tell Anguish and Hazard what we planned.”
“But if we don’t . . .”
“There will be no warning.” His eyes were hard. “They deserve none.”
It was the same thing Neveni had suggested, when I’d figured out the part the Diabolics would play in this plan. I’d refused her, too. “We have to warn them.”
Tyrus drew a breath, released it. He clearly wished to argue, but then the crowds about us grew dense, and the path cleared on either side of us narrowed. We were surrounded by Grandiloquy, all too close to us. I was only vaguely aware of imperial processional music, of recording bots buzzing overhead.
I spotted a single person in the crowd who did not look excited for the sacrifice.
I slowed.
“One minute,” I said to Tyrus, and I felt him stare after me as I crossed the distance to the boy whose father he’d killed.
Gladdic jumped to his feet as I approached, and reached out to draw my hand to his cheek.
“It’s all right,” I said. “. . . Senator von Aton.” He closed his eyes. Yes. That was his title now. “I heard. I’m sorry for your loss.” Senator von Aton had deserved it, but that didn’t mean Gladdic should feel this pain. And I didn’t want to take the slightest risk he’d be harmed. There were many who deserved what lay ahead. He did not. “Gladdic. Go grieve in private.”
“I wanted to be here to support you.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be here.” I drew closer to him, suddenly intent. “If you are truly my friend, don’t watch this.”
He looked about us urgently, and then leaned in very close: “I have to tell you something. I’m the new Aton Senator. So . . . so I was told something, but you need to know it. It’s about the Venalox.”
It wouldn’t matter after today. I pressed my hands to his shoulders to tell him to simply go, but his whisper lashed out: “It’s neurotoxic. Pasus, Locklaite, Fordyce . . . They all know it. It’s poisoning his brain, and it’s a cumulative effect. They said it’s why the Emperor . . . why he killed my father.”
I stared at Gladdic, the blood roaring up in my ears. “He . . . he doesn’t seem slower of wit.”
“It’s not his intellect being damaged. It’s . . . I don’t know the names.” He gestured vaguely toward his forehead. “It’s empathy. Conscience. That’s the whole reason they had to reduce him to a pauper—he can’t pose a threat without autonomy or wealth of his own. . . .”
Blinding fury swelled inside me. Of course. Of course that was their plan. It didn’t matter if a foe wished to strangle you if you chopped off his arms before he could do it.
“But the real reason,” Gladdic said in the softest whisper, and I knew he’d noticed—as I had—that people were beginning to look our way. Soon they would seek to overhear us. “. . . is they hope the Venalox will nullify you.”
“Me.”
“The parts of the brain . . . they’re interconnected. Wipe away empathy, wipe away a conscience, and they think they’ll wipe away . . . you.”
His attachment to me.
An icy hand clutched my heart, for I could see exactly what their aim was. Hadn’t I once felt no empathy, no qualms of guilt—no love? Until I was bonded to Sidonia, I was totally incapable of any such feelings.
When I broke away from Gladdic’s side and walked back toward Tyrus—watching me with those pale, clever eyes amid the crowd of our foes—I felt cold flutters all through me. An image blared in my mind. The day Pasus had arranged our wedding in the Great Heliosphere, Fustian mentioned the scepter.
And Pasus had cast a long, careful look at Tyrus.
Gauging how rapidly he’d progressed toward the aim. That aim was indifference to me. Did Pasus think he would be able to kill me when a day came and Tyrus had no love for me? Or did Pasus hope Tyrus himself would wish to be rid of me?
When I reached his side, and Tyrus slid his hand down my arm to link our hands, there was a reassuring softness to his eyes.
It wasn’t too late.
“You didn’t tell him,” he said, an edge of warning to his voice.
He didn’t care if Gladdic died. Gladdic, who had done nothing to us. And it wasn’t just anger at our situation accounting for that now. I banished the thought. “I ordered him to go grieve in private. No one wants to see his tears.”
Tyrus’s face grew shadowed. Yes, I know what you did to his father, I thought.
“I had very excellent reason,” he said.
“I know.”
I was not such a hypocrite I’d condemn him for a murder. There were things I expected of myself, though, and actions I expected of Tyrus. This wasn’t like him. Now I knew why.
Tyrus and I made our first political stance against the animal fights. Pasus had thus decided we would celebrate our wedding by reinstituting them. I waited until the warm-up animals were raised out of the floor of the arena and unleashed to rouse the crowd, ready them for the blood sacrifice they’d all come to see. One was Randevald’s old manticore, the other a bear hybrid.
The bear looked dazed by its sudden freedom. The manticore was not; it gave a deafening screech and pounced. The first blood spilled and the crowd roared.
I took advantage of the moment to lean over and kiss my way to Tyrus’s ear. Anyone looking at us would have believed I was inappropriately nibbling on his ear in public.
I was telling him about the Venalox.
Tyrus listened without expression. At first, I wondered if he’d misunderstood me, but then I saw his fingers thread together to stop their shaking.
“So there’s a reason. There’s a reason I’ve felt . . .” His voice caught.
The bear was already dead, and it hadn’t put up a decent battle. Groans of disappointment pervaded the air. The manticore licked at the blood on its lips, and then its next challenger rose into the arena: a curious mixture of lion and shark. Hands flashed down to tap in frantic bets.
“You see why I can’t accept it,” I said quietly, “when you say you don’t wish to use Anguish and Hazard.”
“You think . . . that I should care more,” he said.
I nodded.
The lion smelled the blood and was already on guard. When the manticore pounced, the lion hybrid was ready, and this fight had more vigor. The manticore, overpowered, resorted to slashing with its poisonous tail, a cheat Randevald had engineered into it. Grandiloquy privately muttered about the paralyzing venom “ruining every match.”
And then a shadow slid over us, and Pasus approached us with a poisonous smile all his own. “Your Supremacy. Nemesis. I trust you two slept well. There were a great many disappointed people last night.”
Tyrus spread his arms over the backs of the chairs. He didn’t bother to conceal his abject loathing for Pasus. “I suppose you will have to refund whatever they paid for viewing privileges.”
“What a low opinion you have of me,” chided Pasus. “I wouldn’t monetize such a sacred event. I was paid entirely in goodwill and favors.” He placed the scepter on the pedestal.
“Don’t venture far from us,” Tyrus said mildly. “We will have to discuss the fight.”
Pasus speared him with a questioning look. Then, “I am never far.”
Tyrus’s lips spread in a smile. Pasus took a seat just below us.
I trained my gaze on the arena where service bots were cleaning the blood and entrails of the lion hybrid, and electricity guns subdued the manticore so other bots could drag it into a cage, draw it under the floor.
The betting screen for the match between the Diabolics raised out of the floor, and neither Tyrus nor I touched it. Pasus, I saw, had tapped in a bet on Anguish’s victory.
Then my neural suppressor turned off. I knew it, because my muscles suddenly prickled as though they’d awoken from a slumber, and the air itself felt lighter about me.
I flexed my arm, and Tyrus’s lips flickered. “Let’s see,” he said, offering his hand.
I clasped his, we both propped our elbows on the armrests, and then—his strength strained against me as he tried to force my arm down. I allowed it for a few seconds, then slammed his hand down. He grinned and so did I.
I was back at full power.
“Will you need any help?” I said, nodding toward Pasus.
“Oh no, I won’t,” he vowed softly. Sinister anticipation glinted in his eyes. He’d kill Pasus all on his own.
“This is not the Venalox. I want him dead.”
“No. Not the Venalox.”
Hopefully, in the tumult, I’d have a chance to watch.
Then the cheering swelled as the pair of Diabolics were lifted up into the arena. They were buck naked, exhibiting their great swells of muscles. A rack of weapons had already been placed in the arena with them. Hazard and Anguish disdainfully ignored their audience as though they were not the subhumans but the superior beings.
“Time to go.” Tyrus offered me his free hand. “My love?”
I put my hand in his and we walked forward to make our sacrifice.
It just wasn’t the sacrifice anyone expected us to make. The crowd cheered now.
Soon they would scream.