47
WORD spread rapidly of Senator von Pasus’s dreadful attempt at a coup—a public narrative of his actions this time. And the very next day, Tyrus organized a great spectacle to demonstrate unity in the face of the devastation Pasus had wrought upon the six-star system of the Domitrians.
He also did it to spread the myth that the Interdict was alive. Later in the ball dome—with a view of the writhing white of malignant space—those who were now a part of the new order hastily donned their finery. I endured the attentions of Shaezar with bewilderment.
I couldn’t think of frivolity. Not now. Not with the task I’d set myself, the one I had no means of fulfilling yet: securing thermite, destroying the scepter, and saving Tyrus from himself. Tyrus met me in our viewing box, his hair thicker than usual in the absence of gravity. He drew me into my seat, then steered down into his own.
“You and I will go out there. Fustian will frame what happened yesterday,” Tyrus murmured, “and I’ll speak to address the rumors, to reassure everyone. You need only appear at my side—the new Empress. Then our part is done.”
Good. I couldn’t think to do anything else tonight.
He added, “I mean to make it very explicit to everyone just how events must proceed from here. People need to have expectations in place early.”
Then, applause. I looked down to see Fustian gliding out in the finery of the Interdict. . . . And wearing a close approximation of Orthanion’s face. The sight froze me, for how obscene it was to realize he’d been altered to wear the guise of a man who’d died. A man so much better than he ever could be. The starlit robes rippling about him looked all wrong with the bright glare of malignant space. Tyrus, at my side, closed his eyes a moment. . . . And the optics of the windows shifted to dim the view so Fustian could seem to glow with starlight, as intended.
Fustian nan Domitrian’s voice had more of a rasp, but still did not quite sound like the real Orthanion’s as he said: “As you know, I have spent many centuries dwelling in the Sacred City.”
My gaze slashed to Tyrus. Tyrus was focusing intently on Fustian, and I wondered if he’d told him beforehand what to say, or if he was thinking it to him somehow now. Perhaps Fustian had a device in his ear with words being piped to him.
Tyrus had chosen his puppet well. Too cowardly to use the live feed to defy him, versed in all the lingo and mannerisms, and vain enough to exult in the attention.
“And tonight, in the wake of this great atrocity wrought by the heathen Senator von Pasus, it is more important than ever that we reaffirm our faith in the Living Cosmos. And our love and reverence for our Emperor.”
That was the cue.
Tyrus took my hand, and we propelled ourselves out of the box and into the ball dome. The rippling silver of my gown floated about me, but something was wrong with the steering rings. I tried to flex them, to adjust my momentum. . . .
They weren’t in my control.
Tyrus was controlling them.
So small a thing. So small, and he was probably doing it without conscious thought . . . but my determination to destroy that scepter burned brighter still. I couldn’t tolerate this.
Tyrus spoke the words as though he’d rehearsed them in his mind for years, a denunciation of the Senator von Pasus who had seized power—and a mixture of some truths and some lies of Pasus’s doings over the years.
“But now this enemy of our galaxy has been torn down, and we will come back from the tragedies of yesterday,” Tyrus pledged. “His co-conspirators are already being identified and dealt with. We will be avenged on all who sought to take this Empire from its people.”
And a vast swirl of security, medical, and service bots zipped into the dome with us, a whirlpool of them, a display of might and spectacle that set the crowd roaring. Then Tyrus turned to me amid the gleaming vortex and took my waist. He pulled me into a kiss, and my eyes were open and . . . and so were his. . . . Until a subtle pressure of his hands, the insistence of his lips parted mine, and abruptly the encircling bots soared in all directions, and Tyrus and I spun upward in the chamber back to the box.
Now, a performance. I couldn’t look at him without pain in my heart. So I tried to focus on the feathered dancers gliding onto the floor. The first threads of music from the Harmonids rose in the air. . . .
And then familiarity struck me.
I sat up straight and threw an incredulous look at Tyrus as the King’s Immolate began. “You banned this. You yourself banned it.”
“I was overhasty,” he said, threading his fingers together. “I overlooked the symbolic importance of the performance. It will send the proper message.”
“You want all to see that you are just another Domitrian.”
“I want them all to see that I must be obeyed.” And when he looked at me, there was something that made me wonder—was that aimed at me?
The trained birds soared out, followed by the performance’s Immolate. . . .
All seemed to go quiet about me. For I knew this Immolate. And I knew why Tyrus had been looking at me in quiet expectation, and I knew why he’d spoken of this sending the right message.
Gladdic von Aton.
Tyrus told me, “I mean to make this very clear to you: I miss nothing, Nemesis. Do not conspire against me again.”