5
IN THE TWO WEEKS since the coronation, Tyrus had been busy.
For so long he had passed by, shifting with the wind, hiding his true beliefs behind a show of madness or whatever facade he required to evade death, that he seemed to explode with frantic activity upon reaching this destination.
He had become the Emperor of this galaxy, and he couldn’t move fast enough.
However late he’d been up the evening before, he was always awake by 0600. He no longer had two hours to exercise, so he threw himself into an hour of intense exertion, whenever he could snatch it. Then he attacked some other task over a hasty breakfast—listening to transmissions he’d received, sending off instructions to distant provinces, setting up meetings for the day. He read over reports from advisers as machines prepped and polished him for appearing in court, or recorded propaganda broadcasts to reassure the farthest domains of the Empire that their new Emperor was not, in fact, the madman of rumor.
Then, hours of wrangling with Grandiloquy, all vying for something from him, with the Luminar allies who’d aided him, all aiming to secure favors for their planet immediately, not content to wait. He fit in those social occasions undertaken less for pleasure than for practical reasons: events that meant to be entertaining, but were really more episodes of maneuvering relationships within his new court.
He partook of every narcotic offered rather than insulting those gifting them with refusals, and if necessary, he subtly extended his arm to a med bot to clear them from his system—without the giver’s knowledge. His watchful eyes always fixed upon those he spoke to, silently gauging their sentiments, their knowledge, their loyalty, all while wearing a disarming smile as though he were but a foppish young Grande enjoying the decadence about him.
Favor seekers dogged him everywhere. Grandiloquy sent messages and invitations, hundreds each day, always seeking a meeting, a discussion, following up on promises they claimed his predecessor had made, or referring to debts Randevald had incurred on behalf of all Domitrians.
Soon, even Tyrus’s single hour of exercise could not be done in peace. As exertion-averse as the Grandiloquy were, preferring to fashion muscles using bots rather than through actual physical use, a great flock of them suddenly took to adoring exertion. Steroids and amphetamines became the favored narcotics at court for these, and each Grande or Grandeé scrambled to create the best high-gravity exercise chamber for his or her ship. There was also a thriving trade in gravity reduction bands, rather defeating the purpose of these exertion chambers.
I was thankful Tyrus had given me the Hera, so I might avoid so much of the bewildering and chaotic activity, and yet it had effectively separated us at a time when we were on uncertain terms. The fleeting minutes we could snatch were devoid of the old familiarity and intimacy, almost as though we were strangers joined in a cause, and I could see from the frustration on his face that he was as much at a loss over it as I was. . . . But he had too much to occupy him to apply his mind to this scepter dilemma.
Now I ran with him through the wooded track spanning the lower deck of the Valor Novus during that scant hour of exercise in the morning. Usually he alternated between sprinting and jogging, but today the crowds in pursuit had driven him to favor sprinting. Even those Grandiloquy abusing steroids couldn’t keep up with us, not yet, so it was a rare moment of privacy . . . though the pace left Tyrus too breathless to speak much.
Me? It was quite easy. So I told him everything Fustian had told me.
Tyrus digested it with no words, just ragged breaths, that damnable scepter now in a cross-sheath over his back. An Emperor’s first year in power meant it accompanied him everywhere; even here. Even useless as it was.
His sprint lagged, and Senator von Locklaite appeared behind us, in sight. Tyrus clenched his jaw and launched forward at full speed once more. I matched him effortlessly, and we kept our distance from Locklaite.
“Fine,” Tyrus said.
“Fine?”
“We . . . can’t get the support . . . of the vicars. Forget it, then.” He concentrated on breathing for a moment as we reached a high-gravity section of the track, then said, in a great rush, “The vicars become obsolete sooner than I could have hoped. I can control this Empire without . . . without the scepter.”
“How will you do that?”
“Kings . . . in ages past . . . relied on goodwill . . . good judgment . . . alliances. I’ll do that.”
“What of service bots, Tyrus?”
He began to slow, needing a rest from this pace. An idea came to me, and I took his sweaty arm, dragged him with me off the path into the overhanging mass of trees, and there we settled against the rough bark of a large oak tree beneath the yawning expanse of the sky dome above us. Tyrus leaned his head against the tree to recover his breath. He was pushing himself too hard. In every possible sense.
Even with this new plan of his.
“The problem with . . . service bots,” he said, his breathing growing steadier, and I detected distant footsteps scuffling past, people striving in vain to catch up to their young Emperor, “lies in the centralization, right? No scepter means two thousand ships are all two thousand separate systems. So . . . so we can’t rely on service bots to find problems and triage them as one great mass of bots.” He grinned at me. “So we have people do it.”
“People?”
“Employees. We hire them. Excess who will work for the Empire. They can . . . they can survey each ship using their eyes. Inspect them. Once . . . no, twice a day. They report any problems, and that way, we just . . . we just fix the most urgent problems by assigning bots to them ourselves. Problem solved.” He spread his hands
Problem far from solved. “That will require a great many employees.”
“I know.”
“The Grandiloquy will feel uneasy with so many Excess about.”
“They will. Perhaps uneasy enough to pressure the vicars of their acquaintance to render more employees unnecessary.”
I eyed him dubiously, thinking of that mass of security machines ringing the Chrysanthemum, and the security bots that should be buzzing over our heads right now. All should be protecting us, all were outside his control.
And then there were enemies like Pasus, lurking like vultures, never taking their eyes from him. They tolerated Tyrus at the moment, but if Pasus wed Devineé, he would most certainly kill the current Emperor to secure her throne.
Tyrus was young. His coronation speech must have seemed quixotic, full of goals unlikely to be realized. If he ever began to make true progress toward his goal of reinstituting the sciences, empowering the Excess, the Grandiloquy would panic. As long as there was another Domitrian, they could kill him.
Footsteps were rustling our way, and voices exclaimed, “Ah, here are the two lovebirds!”
“We quite lost Your Supremacy!”
“Such a pleasurable run!” said Grande Stallix. “Shall we take refreshments together?” He had water ready. “There are electrolytes and amphetamine within this bottle.”
“This is water from the purest springs of the third moon of Sillaquarth,” said another, with water in his hand as well.
“Not stopping yet,” Tyrus said. Then he heaved himself away from the tree and picked back up into a run. I didn’t follow this time. I stood there and watched him, then that mass pursuing him, falling to ten steps behind him. . . . They were all abusing narcotics or secretly wearing low-gravity bands, and Tyrus relied only on brute strength. He was but one person and there were so many of them, all vying to catch up to him, with varying advantages he lacked. Today they did not—but one day someone would.
And when that day came, all the will and drive and cleverness in the world would not give Tyrus the edge he needed to stride out of their reach once more.
Love was a selfish thing, and I knew that, because I craved him so fiercely, I could ignore my misgivings, my doubts, and even that ruthless voice of reason within me that knew the truth: I was the root of so many of his problems. How easily I could solve them by simply leaving. He would not keep me if I convinced him I felt nothing for him, if I set off into the unknown that was life outside this place.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
There was one thing I could do for him, the thing I could always do for him: I could murder his enemies for him.
So that was what I would do.
• • •
Impaired or no, Devineé was the greatest threat to Tyrus’s life. Her mere existence provided an alternative for the throne, and though Tyrus could live with that, I could not.
Luckily, her life was one of predictable routine now that she had to be ushered through it by outside forces.
I could take advantage of that.
Easily.
In this precarious time, I could not be known as her murderer. The last accident I’d engineered for her hit the wrong target. This one—this one would not fail.
I stood on the rampart above the animal pens of the Tigris, where I’d been imprisoned for a month, and watched Devineé Domitrian being led by a tether attached to a service bot. Three times a day, she was walked around her ship in this manner to circulate her blood. Salivar used to be led about as well, before he perished. How much better if it had been her!
Today it would be.
My gaze slid about the chamber. These were the long-term pens, not like the cramped ones directly below the arena. I’d passed enough time in here to know exactly which creatures were confined, though the force fields were all set to full opacity at the moment. The animal fights had ended under Tyrus, but the fighting beasts remained, just as I had been, since only this place could contain a Diabolic.
My confinement here had also intimately acquainted me with the habits of the animal attendants. I’d timed this carefully, and now I watched the one on duty depart from the chamber to retrieve food for the dead Emperor’s manticore, usually a small cow. That gave me five minutes.
More than enough time.
I thrust myself over the railing and landed amid the force fields. Each computer console controlled the power of six surrounding force fields. I needed to depower only one panel to free the animals in six pens. They’d been born and bred to kill. Devineé stood no chance.
I fastened my ears on the sound of Devineé’s humming service bot, strode over to the nearest console in her path, and waited.
Then I hooked my heel in the web of wiring, and thrust my leg down to snap it.
The console blinked out.
The opaque fields about me faded away, revealing a pair of empty cells, a serpentine creature coiled in sleep. Then a promising one in the fourth—a horned bull with snake eyes that lifted its head to sniff the air.
A series of clicks from the fifth one as a hybrid of bear and reptile, befuddled by liberty, began to paw at the dropped force field. Movement out of the corner of my eye from the sixth.
I looked sharply toward it.
Nothing.
That gave me pause. I could sense something watching me. The humming of the service bot was nearing me now, so I backed away slowly, knowing something, something would set these predators astir, and it was best to be clear of them before that. . . .
Then my back collided with a broad chest, and I whipped about to see the largest man I’d ever beheld, glaring down at me with black eyes and a faint smile, and I knew him. I knew him.
Cygna’s Diabolic, Anguish dan Domitrian.
“You didn’t expect me, I see,” he said.
Oh no, I had not.
My fist flew at his face. He caught it and shoved me back so hard, I hurtled to the ground. I rolled in the same movement to my feet, terror and a swell of malice propelling my muscles. The first instinct I always had, the first one, was to attack—and so I did.
But I was smaller. Weaker. I’d been made weaker still to pass as Sidonia. . . .
And the power of the fist that met my face jolted my skull, knocking me back. He charged as I caught my balance, and this time I dodged the fist. Then I vaulted toward him and delivered a cruel kick to his groin . . . that weakness of male Diabolics.
He grunted with the pain of my blow, but his great hands snagged my leg and I kicked and twisted to escape his grasp. His hands anchored about my head. I knew then that it was coming, I knew it, oh stars no. . . .
Anguish snapped my neck.