49
I SHED the steering rings before Tyrus could use them to drag me back, and the dancers were stunned into stillness by the sight of me, carried into their midst by my momentum. I grabbed the first one I encountered, ripped the sword right out of his hands, and told Gladdic, “Get over here!”
He aimed for me, near to weeping with his gratitude. I only half paid attention to him. I was watching one person.
For a long moment, in the sudden hush, the Emperor Tyrus stared down after me like a stone effigy. I expected to hear the hum of the neural suppressor activating.
I did not. I hugged the trembling Gladdic to my back, holding him as close as I could. It wouldn’t stop a security bot from slicing at him with a laser, but I knew Tyrus wouldn’t risk shooting me. . . . And I would be too close to take that risk. One by one, the recording bots sagged down. This whole thing was a propaganda broadcast. I’d just interfered.
Tyrus glided down before me, like ice. “Remove yourself from the floor. I’ll devise a means of portraying this as part of the performance.”
“To explain sparing the Immolate?” I said challengingly.
“No. Desist, Nemesis. This will accomplish nothing.”
“I disagree. You will pardon him. If you don’t, I will protect him unto death. Against you.”
He had presented his terms for me, the way he envisioned us moving forward: he wanted me to sit passively by and turn a blind eye to what he did.
These were my terms.
For Tyrus had too much power. He wasn’t the person he’d been. I couldn’t let him continue unchecked. I had to know I could stay his hand.
If I could not, then I would not sit at his side and be his Empress and pretend all was fine. I’d meant to destroy his scepter, to stop him. I couldn’t. So now I would find another way to stop him.
“Why,” he said between his teeth, “do you care so much for him?”
“I care for you. That’s why I saved him from you. Tyrus, pardon him.”
My heart thudded wildly. If I could just do this now, then there was hope. There was hope I could stop him the next time he decided to sweep a mass of players off the board. The next time malignant space would be convenient to deploy, the next time Resolvent Mist was an option, the next time he could simply slice a foe apart with security bots . . . My voice would mean something. He would hear me. He would listen. That’s what I had to establish today—my influence over him. If not today, then I would never have it again.
Tyrus beckoned a dancer over, took the man’s sword, then gave him an offhanded shove to send him far from us. He raised the blade before him, letting me see its gleam in the bright rays spilling in the window from malignant space.
“Let me present it to you this way, Nemesis: I’m not going to turn on the neural suppressor. I’m going to let you retain your overwhelmingly powerful strength. So it’s in your hands what you do next—for you see, he dies. At my hand. To stop that, you will have to kill me.”
No.
Tyrus didn’t give me more time to think. He surged toward us, lashing out with the blade.
I thrust Gladdic away from me, far from the blade, and I seized Tyrus’s leg as he propelled himself past me, for I had to rely on momentum outside myself. We neared Gladdic as he rebounded off the wall, and Tyrus drove his sword point toward him. . . .
I hurled Tyrus away. He hit the wall hard enough for the sword to slip out of his grasp, and I caught it when it rebounded toward me.
Tyrus recovered. Then—then he beckoned over another of the dancers. I shook my head, but he had another blade in hand. He arched his brows, tilted it toward me in lethal invitation.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Gladdic. Me. Who perishes, Nemesis?” And then he was on me.
My sword crashed into his, blocking it, but the momentum sent me sailing back from them. Tyrus, undaunted, shifted his arms and legs to stalk after Gladdic as I sank downward, raging with frustration. Then my legs touched the diamond-and-crystalline wall, and I kicked off with a powerful thrust. Just as Tyrus reached Gladdic, I slammed my blade into his. Tyrus’s face contorted with the pain of impact, but he kept hold of the sword.
He shot toward Gladdic, and I reached out to seize his ankle. . . . But it was a feint, because he whipped about at the last moment, driving a kick into my chest that sent me reeling down toward the clear diamond wall. The wall forced the breath out of me, but I had the presence of mind to shove off even as I tried to fill my lungs.
The inability to steer was a dreadful handicap, and each time our swords clanged, I flew back across the ball dome. I doggedly kicked off the walls to return, and stopped Tyrus again and again from sinking his blade into Gladdic. Finally, exasperated, Tyrus focused on me, not Gladdic. He kicked himself forward, following me as I was driven back, and then our swords met and his elbow lashed out, pinning me in place against the wall. I grabbed his arm but did not wrench it out of place, did not shatter it.
How easily, how easily I could break him apart right now if this were anyone else. . . .
He used his steering rings to crush me then.
“What do you think will happen here?” he raged. “You can’t stop this! Make your choice!”
“I am not a vicar! There is no hand or head to choose between, Tyrus. I will fight you to my last breath and keep him alive and I will not kill you! That’s my choice. If you would just trust me—”
“Trust you?” He smiled bitterly. “As I did on the Tigris?”
The words stole my breath. The moment seemed to grind to a halt about me as my thoughts spiraled back to that decision, that moment.
We were floating back from the wall, but all I could see were his pale, shadowed eyes.
“I made my choice,” Tyrus said quietly. “I would free the woman I most loved and serve those people of my Empire, and it was all I wanted. I trusted you to let me decide, and you knocked me unconscious and left me with them. I chose and you took that from me.”
My vision darkened a moment as understanding crashed over me, where the trust had been shredded for him. That decision to thrust him into Pasus’s hands, to remove him from danger.
“I—I couldn’t let you die,” I stuttered.
“So instead, you left me in the hands of enemies whose relatives I’d just helped kill in massive numbers. What outcome did you envision from that?”
“I’m sorr—”
“Do not apologize. You made your choice and chose not to listen to me, and now you ask for the same courtesy you never gave me?” He drew toward me and abruptly seized the blade of my sword. I could see the blood floating out as he tightened his fist, eyes burning into mine. He pulled the gleaming tip to his throat. “This is the choice I’m offering you. It’s the only choice. Kill me. Kill him. If we must battle a century, you are going to make this choice.”
Let Tyrus murder Gladdic.
Or kill Tyrus.
It wasn’t a choice. I released the blade. It floated from my hand.
His hands closed on my waist. He drew me to him.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered, “all of this will be the past, and we will move onward.” And we were floating, floating toward the box, and the dancers were heading out onto the floor again. The transmitting devices powered up and resumed the broadcast, and Gladdic’s face grew dumb with terror as he realized his reprieve had ended.
I looked at Tyrus, a stranger after three years enduring the consequences of a choice I’d taken from him. Three years for this quiet anger to build. A great wave of tenderness welled up within me.
“Tyrus, I am sorry for what I did,” I murmered.
Then I struck the Emperor of this galaxy with one abrupt, treasonous swing of my arm, and the momentum was enough to knock him back and send me into the center of the ball dome so all might see, all might hear, as I pointed at Fustian nan Domitrian.
“That man is an imposter. I know he’s not the Interdict—because I killed the Interdict Orthanion when I destroyed the Sacred City.”