3
WHEN I’D LAST SEEN Senator von Pasus, he’d adopted the look of a dignified elder, perhaps in deliberate contrast to his daughter, Elantra, whom he wished to wed to Tyrus. Most Grandiloquy used false-youth, but sometimes they selectively adopted signs of aging, whether to give themselves a different look, or more likely, to deal with the Excess in their territories. Planet dwellers had no access to beauty bots, so they associated visible age with experience. So Pasus had not seemed too odd, with that gray hair, that short beard.
Now he appeared before us in holographic form, lacking those former ravages of age. His hair had become a stark coal black that seemed to devour the light, his eyes an icy blue, his now-unlined features even and seemingly cut with the precision of a beauty bot that aimed to lend him not handsomeness so much as grandeur.
He dipped to his knees with a perfunctory grace before rising just as swiftly. “Your Supreme Reverence.”
I’d retreated so I wouldn’t appear in the holographic image on Pasus’s end.
“Senator,” Tyrus said icily, “your alteration is most surprising.”
“Your Supremacy inspired me,” Pasus said. “I felt as though I would be truly meeting my new Emperor for the first time, so I should follow suit and present myself anew.”
Yes. He was one of the many Grandiloquy who’d known Tyrus only as his assumed persona—the mad heir to the throne. Not the clever young man he actually was. Tyrus turned his head and offered me his hand.
So he wanted me in the transmission. Though I’d be inflammatory, he wished Pasus to see me.
I moved to Tyrus’s side and appeared on Pasus’s end.
“Your call is most unexpected,” Tyrus said, taking my hand. A message. Very deliberate.
Pasus stared downward a moment, and I knew his cold gaze was fixed on the image of those linked hands.
“You must forgive me for abstaining from attendance at your Convocation speech, and your coronation before that. I was most distraught over the recent death of my daughter, as well Your Supremacy knows.”
“Everything about that situation was most regrettable,” Tyrus returned with the same remote courtesy, “including the circumstances that directly led to the tragedy.”
Pasus had to know what Tyrus was pointing out: Elantra had killed Sidonia, and that was what led to me killing her. His jaw ticked, but then he smiled—or rather, bared his teeth like an angry animal. “I have just heard word of the unfortunate death of your brother-in-law.”
Tyrus was granite-faced. “Have you.”
“I offer my condolences. What a terrible tragedy that is. And your cousin, left without a husband . . .”
“As she will be for a very long time,” Tyrus said.
Something in me grew cold, for I didn’t like the way Pasus was smiling—as though he’d just spotted something he meant to have, and he would allow nothing to get in his way.
“You must be very uneasy. How could your security bots have permitted a toxin so close to Your Supreme Reverence? And the heliosphere—why, repair bots are not what they once were, it seems. So coincidental, two separate systems failing on the same day.”
Tyrus’s eyes narrowed a fraction. I realized it too: Pasus knew. He knew why Tyrus’s scepter was not working.
“Then again, things happen.” Pasus’s smile was knowing. “Perhaps it was a one-off.”
“Perhaps.”
“But in the case it is not so temporary, Your Supreme Reverence is in a most awkward situation, are you not? You will require very powerful friends about you. And yet, your allies all appear to be new Senators, replacements for those killed along with Senator von Impyrean during your uncle’s reign. Novices.”
I could feel Tyrus’s heart racing in his palm. His voice, though, came out perfectly controlled: “I am ever so grateful for your concern. I assure you, all is in hand.”
“Hmm. Yes. Though if I were in your position, and forgive me for offering unsolicited advice, but I have known you since you were a young boy, dear Tyrus, so I feel compelled to suggest . . . I would look into restoring my favor with our Living Cosmos. And such favor cannot be won with the help of those you’ve gathered about you.” His eyes moved to my image. I knew that for sure, because raw hatred blazed over his face, though he had the same perfect mastery of voice Tyrus did. “I would look to longtime friends of your family. And the means by which you might win back what you’ve lost.”
“I thank you for the advice, Senator. Do feel free to come and give me more in person.”
Pasus just smiled, for he knew to come in person would be to fall into Tyrus’s power. “I am always glad to offer it. And if Your Supremacy wishes more, do but come to my territory—and seek it again.”
Tyrus smiled too. That was not going to happen.
But then after the transmission ended, he blew out his breath, pulled the scepter out of his waist sheath again, and gazed down at it with frustration.
“He knows something. That’s what he was hinting about. And the gall . . . Salivar is freshly dead, and he’s already angling for my cousin’s hand.”
“That can’t happen,” I said.
Pasus was threat enough as it was, being the most powerful member of the Helionic faction of the Senate, and one of the wealthiest Grandes in the Empire. If he wed Tyrus’s heir, Devineé, then I wouldn’t give Tyrus a week before he’d meet an untimely death.
“Of course it won’t happen,” Tyrus said, tightening his fist about the scepter.
My eyes sought his, saw the stormy cast of his features, and I knew in my heart that a disaster loomed on our horizon. He shoved the scepter back into its sheath, where it might as well remain, for all the good it was doing him.
“Tyrus.”
He looked to me distractedly.
“Perhaps it’s time.”
“Time . . . for what?”
“Let me kill those who pose a threat to you.” This. This was one thing I could do—one strength I could bring him that no one else could. I had no pity, and if they threatened him . . . I couldn’t lose him as I had Sidonia. “I’ll start with your cousin.”
He strode over to me, took my cheeks in his hands. “Nemesis, no.”
“But—”
“You are not my Diabolic. I am never going to ask you to be my Diabolic again. This is a setback. I will figure this out.”
He said that, but he didn’t know how. He did not.
And so I waited until Tyrus had to surrender to that need to sleep, the one I had so little of, the one he needed far more than I did.
Then I determined to go find the reasons for his weakness for myself. There was one man in this superstructure who had the answers. And he would give them to me.