43
MY LEGS SANK out from under me, and Tyrus gave a tut of disapproval.
“A bit of overkill,” he said to Pasus. “Surely you’ve realized I can talk her into most anything.” He flicked open the gem on his ring and drew in a sniff of the Venalox with a shudder of relief. It didn’t seem to be an inactive substance neutralized by the alloy.
“Even you could not talk her into this,” Pasus said.
Tyrus laughed hoarsely. “I might have liked to try,” he said, and the wash of calm over his face . . . like an addict getting his fix . . .
A sick feeling curled in my stomach.
He’s faking, I thought. Surely . . .
Pasus caught his shoulder to steady him. “You endured well.”
“It was not easy. Diabolics,” he said, sending me a crooked grin, “do not use the bathroom very often. I kept giving her more wine . . .”
He had urged a good deal on me. . . .
“. . . hoping she’d go relieve herself so I could sell the story of overcoming the Venalox, but . . . it’s like dealing with a camel. Perhaps literally. My love, did the Interdict mention camel DNA in that talk about creatures? It’s been so long.”
Now I looked inward, and had he used Venalox in the washroom?
No. No. I shut the thought down, because we were in private, so he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to . . . No. This was a ruse. He’d told me . . .
He’d said . . .
“Oh, I did learn some interesting things,” Tyrus said, wheeling away. He punched in a transmission code and said to the voice on the other end, “There’s a starship called the Arbiter. The fugitive Neveni Sagnau is on board. Send out a bulletin.”
“Tyrus!” I said, aghast, because . . . because even if he was just playing a role (and I told myself—I told myself he was!), he actually might get her hunted down.
“My love, my dear heart,” said Tyrus, “Sagnau is your friend—but she’s not mine. There’s something off-putting about that girl. And frankly, I think we’re going to deal with this Sacred City issue by burying it, so I can’t have her running around spreading rumors. I’m sorry, but I need to hunt your little friend down and kill her.”
“But . . .” But I’d told him of Neveni just for him. For Tyrus. Because . . . because I trusted Tyrus.
Tyrus, I thought to him, you are starting to terrify me. Please give me a hint this isn’t real.
“I see no reason we can’t get started right away,” Pasus told Tyrus. “I signaled all the interested parties. Many will just use screens throughout the Chrysanthemum, but quite a few agreed to your suggestion. Most creative. They’re going to assemble in sight of the heliosphere.”
“Why?” My voice was a whisper.
Tyrus ignored me and set about examining himself. “I do wish I’d had time to change. White does not become me.”
Pasus smiled. He withdrew from his pocket a folded green garment.
“I am touched,” Tyrus said, shucking off his tunic right there, yanking on the close-fitting green shirt as I just gawked at them, trying to make sense of this. “You haven’t spoken of the Atlas.”
“The vessel you apparently obtained and then resold behind my back?” Pasus said.
Tyrus paused where he’d been smoothing down the shirt.
Pasus laughed. “Tyrus, you’ve earned it. You made a bargain, the profits are yours. You needn’t hide this from me in the future.”
A poisonous sensation spread through me at Tyrus’s surprised delight, to realize Pasus wasn’t going to wrest something from him that he’d stolen from someone else. “Did you make sure the ships out there obtained the best vantage points, Alectar? I really want to win back some favor with the Grandiloquy.”
“This will do it. They will adore you for the gesture,” purred Pasus.
Tyrus gave a satisfied nod. “Nemesis, come on.”
I did not move as Tyrus started down the hallway. He swiveled around when he realized I wasn’t following. I didn’t like the enjoyment on Pasus’s face. A terrible picture had formed in my mind, and my worst fears of all seemed to be true.
“You said what I wanted to hear.” My voice was gravelly. “When you spoke in the oubliette, you planned every word with him.”
“Not every word,” said Tyrus. “But yes, I spoke what I thought you wanted, and you gave me what I wanted, my love. In more than one sense.” His gaze trailed down me appreciatively. “Isn’t that marriage? And now you will do me one more service yet.” Then he jerked his head. Footsteps scuffled over to me and arms seized me, but I didn’t fight.
I just . . . didn’t.
Something dreadful was soon to take place. The knowledge was a death knell, thudding in my brain.
I had believed him.
And to offer me the hope I hadn’t lost everything, only to withdraw it again . . .
If they meant to kill me, I couldn’t imagine I’d even fight. I hadn’t understood Gladdic in the heliosphere the day I’d come to slay him. For the first time ever I felt so hollowed out that it didn’t matter.
It didn’t even matter that Tyrus didn’t care enough to linger, and Pasus had fallen back to delight in the look on my face as I was forced to walk the heliosphere.
“You did very well, heading to Eurydice straightaway,” Pasus said. “I was very pleased you did that. Moreso even than the Emperor. I’m the one who sees the expedience of this union. He would have wed for wealth had I allowed it. He certainly would have cavorted with other women had I not kept an eye on him. I have become the chiefest advocate of your union.”
If he was aiming for a response, I didn’t give it to him.
I was out of words.
I was out of everything.
“The fact that you are popular with the Excess makes this march excellent all around. That leaves only the matter of the Grandiloquy,” Pasus said. “Since you are now known to have survived the Tigris, that confirmed their suspicions you orchestrated it. Many died, or almost died, and they have one more reason to despise you. It is time to satisfy the Grandiloquy’s need for revenge.”
“Just get to the point,” I said. “What do you want, for me to tell you that you won? It means nothing to me. Kill me. Slit my throat in the heliosphere, it won’t matter.”
“No. Alas, your death would inflame the Excess. We need you alive. But we also need to appease the Grandiloquy. Your husband had a most inventive solution. I may have floated a variant of this idea by him a year or two ago—but he proposed it himself as soon as you returned. I want you know this is all his doing.”
We entered the Great Heliosphere, and it surprised me only for a moment to see all the starships that had arrayed themselves out there, angled toward us. They’d taken up Tyrus on his suggestion to see whatever would occur in here with their own eyes, through the magnifiers of their windows.
Then Tyrus waited expectantly by Fustian, and my captors drove me forward, and Pasus called, “May I have the honor of telling her?”
Tyrus waved his hand negligently, his ring winking in the light. His gaze was fixed on those starships outside the window.
“You are here for a Ritual of Penance,” Pasus spoke right in my ear.
A Ritual of Penance.
My mind ground to a halt.
I knew what that was.
The halfway, the compromise that was not execution, yet was not the insult of me as Empress presiding over Grandiloquy.
A Ritual of Penance was performed to remove one’s capacity to engage in offensive conduct. It was just the punishment the Grandiloquy would deem fair to inflict upon me.
It could be done with Scorpion’s Breath in high doses, or Fustian might drive a piercer up my nose and damage my brain directly. Either way, the result was a ritualized lobotomy.
I would never be capable of acting for myself again.
And there was no healing me. Not ever.
This wasn’t possible.
This was awful beyond my comprehension.
And Tyrus was waiting with ill-concealed impatience before Fustian. He seemed to look through me as Pasus waved forward a servant carrying . . . carrying a jeweled piercer.
To drive up my nose.
Into my brain.
In the holiest possible way.
“No,” I blurted. I wrenched at the arms holding me, but I couldn’t break away from them.
Tyrus was just glancing outside the window again. Then he raised his glove to speak into the transmitter. “Tell them to close formation. The ships in the back will miss it.”
“Tyrus.” My voice shook. “No. Don’t do this. Don’t!”
“Don’t struggle,” Tyrus said to me. Now he met my eyes, placid and indifferent. “This needn’t be painful.”
“You don’t . . . Tyrus, please. Pasus is manipulating you. . . .”
Pasus laughed. “I told you, your husband decided this. Not me.”
Tyrus didn’t deny it. He didn’t care enough to acknowledge me now that he had what he wanted. He just adjusted his green tunic, concerned with appearances—now of all times.
I shook my head. I kept shaking it. It couldn’t be. This was a ruse, a trick, Tyrus wouldn’t really do this to me. He wouldn’t. Tyrus needed to tell me. He just needed to look at me, one glance to tell me this was going to plan . . .
Surely he would do it again, deliver me from this, prove himself my miracle, and yet as I was forced down onto my knees before Fustian nan Domitrian, and he began to pronounce a Liturgy of Misdeeds over me—centering primarily on the deaths from the Tigris massacre—I realized it.
No ruse.
It couldn’t possibly be a game, a show, a charade, because we’d passed the event horizon of this black hole. There was no turning back. All those ships out that window were arrayed because the Grandiloquy wanted to see my downfall, and even without Tyrus spearheading this, they’d get it. They had overwhelming force. It was going to happen.
This was reality, and reality was cruel. It would only be ignored for so long, and then it would sink in its teeth with a sharper bite.
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Tyrus, kill me first. DON’T DO THIS.”
“The next time she speaks, slice out her tongue,” Tyrus said to the men holding me. “Proceed, Vicar.”
Fustian raised up a sealed container. Within would be the numbing vapor, and my face would be pressed over it so I would grow disoriented. I wouldn’t feel it when the piercer drove up through my nose and ruptured my frontal lobe. I screamed out like an animal and began to fight with all the strength the suppressor allowed me. I’d slam my head against the floor and kill myself rather than be a mindless creature they could manipulate as they willed. . . .
But I couldn’t free myself. I was helpless to avert my fate. The vicar lifted the lid to release numbing mist, and I twisted frantically to evade the curls of vapor snaking into the air, but it registered dimly in the back of my mind . . . a slight tingle of familiarity.
The gas billowed all about us, a self-propelling cloud of yellow-brown that hit the air in a swell, and then instantly bloomed again, again. . . . I had seen this, I knew it. Fustian, Pasus, his servant, and the pair of Excess—they knew it too. Everyone but the Emperor leaped back from the very sight of it.
Not Tyrus. He just stood there as the dark cloud swelled about him, his calculating gaze flickering up toward the open air vents leading to general atmospheric circulation. Then the screams began and confirmed what this gas was.
It was Resolvent Mist.