The Diabolic Read online

  Of course she wouldn’t. And then she’d be punished for it. An edge crept into my voice. “If you can’t bring yourself to be rid of me, then I’ll take the matter into my own hands.”

  “I said I won’t do it, Nemesis, and neither will you!” Her eyes flashed. She raised her chin. “I’ll find another way.”

  Sidonia had always been meek and shy, but it was a deceptive appearance. I’d long ago learned there was an undercurrent of steel within her.

  Her father, Senator von Impyrean, proved a help. He nursed a powerful animosity toward the Emperor, Randevald von Domitrian.

  When Sidonia pleaded for my life, a glimmer of defiance stole into the Senator’s eyes. “The Emperor demands her death, does he? Well, rest easy, my darling. You needn’t lose your Diabolic. I’ll tell the Emperor the death has been carried out, and that will be the end of the matter.”

  The Senator was mistaken.

  Like most of the powerful, the Impyreans preferred to live in isolation and socialize only in virtual spaces. The nearest Excess—those free humans scattered on planets—were systems away from Senator von Impyrean and his family. He wielded his authority over the Excess from a strategic remove. The family fortress orbited an uninhabited gas giant ringed by lifeless moons.

  So we were all startled weeks later when a starship arrived out of the depths of space—unannounced, unheralded. It had been dispatched by the Emperor under the pretext of “inspecting” the body of the Diabolic, but it was no mere inspector onboard.

  It was an Inquisitor.

  Senator von Impyrean had underestimated the Emperor’s hostility toward the Impyrean family. My existence gave the Emperor an excuse to put one of his own agents in the Impyrean fortress. Inquisitors were a special breed of vicar, trained to confront the worst heathens and enforce the edicts of the Helionic religion, often with violence.

  The Inquisitor’s very arrival should have terrified the Senator into obedience, but Sidonia’s father still circumvented the will of the Emperor.

  The Inquisitor had come to see a body, so a body he was shown.

  It simply wasn’t mine.

  One of the Impyreans’ Servitors had been suffering from solar sickness. Like Diabolics, Servitors had been genetically engineered for service. Unlike us, they didn’t need the capacity to make decisions, so they hadn’t been engineered to have it. The Senator took me to the ailing Servitor’s bedside and gave me the dagger. “Do what you do best, Diabolic.”

  I was grateful he’d sent Sidonia to her chambers. I wouldn’t want her to see this. I sank the dagger under the Servitor’s rib cage. She didn’t flinch, didn’t try to flee. She gazed at me through blank, empty eyes, and then a moment later she was dead.

  Only then was the Inquisitor allowed to dock with the fortress. He made a cursory inspection of the body, pausing over it merely to note, “How odd. She appears . . . freshly dead.”

  The Senator stood bristling at his shoulder. “The Diabolic has been dying of solar sickness for several weeks now. We’d just decided to end her suffering when you arrived in the system.”

  “Contrary to what your missive said,” the Inquisitor stated, swinging on him. “You claimed the death had already been carried out. Now that I see her, I wonder at her size. She’s rather small for a Diabolic.”

  “Now you question the body, too?” roared the Senator. “I tell you, she was wasting away for weeks.”

  I watched the Inquisitor from the corner. I wore a new Servitor’s gown, my size and musculature hidden beneath voluminous folds. If he saw through the ruse, then I would kill him.

  I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Concealing an Inquisitor’s death might prove . . . complicated.

  “Perhaps if your family was more respectful of the Living Cosmos,” the Inquisitor remarked, “your household would have been spared a ghastly affliction like solar sickness.”

  The Senator ripped in an angry breath to reply, but at that moment the Matriarch darted forward from where she’d been lurking in the doorway. She seized her husband’s arm, forestalling him.

  “How right you are, Inquisitor! We are immensely grateful for your insight.” Her smile was gracious, for the Matriarch didn’t share her husband’s eagerness to defy the Emperor.

  She’d felt imperial wrath firsthand at a young age. Her own family had displeased the Emperor, and her mother had paid the price. Now she appeared electric with anxiety, her body quivering with eagerness to placate their guest.

  “I’d be ever so pleased if you’d observe our services tonight, Inquisitor. Perhaps you can note what we are doing wrong.” Her tone dripped with sweetness, the sort that sounded odd in her usual acrid voice.

  “I would be glad to do so, Grandeé von Impyrean,” replied the Inquisitor, now gracious. He reached out to draw her knuckles to his cheek.

  She pulled away. “I’ll go make the arrangements with our Servitors. I’ll take this one now. You—come.” She jerked her head for me to accompany her.

  I didn’t want to leave the Inquisitor. I wanted to watch his every movement, observe his every expression, but the Matriarch had left me no choice but to follow her as a Servitor would. Our steps brought us out of the chamber, far from the Inquisitor’s sight. The Matriarch picked up her pace, and I did as well. We wound together down the corridor toward the Senator’s chambers.

  “Madness,” she muttered. “It’s madness to take this risk right now! You should be lying dead before that Inquisitor, not walking here at my side!”

  I cast her a long, considering look. I’d gladly die for Donia, but if it came to my life or the Matriarch’s, I’d put myself first. “Do you intend to tell the Inquisitor what I am?”

  Even as I spoke, I visualized the blow I’d use to kill her. A single strike to the back of the head. . . . No need to risk her screaming. Donia might emerge from her chambers if she heard anything. I’d hate to murder her mother in front of her.

  The Matriarch had the survival instinct her husband and daughter lacked. Even my mild tone sent terror skittering across her face. The next moment it vanished so swiftly that I wondered whether I’d imagined it. “Of course not. The truth would condemn us all now.”

  So she would live. My muscles relaxed.

  “If you’re here,” she said darkly, “then you’ll make yourself useful to us. You’ll help me conceal my husband’s work before that Inquisitor inspects his chambers.”

  That I could do. We plunged into the Senator’s study, where the Matriarch hiked up her gown and shuffled through the debris strewn about the room—blasphemous database fragments that would instantly condemn this entire family if the Inquisitor laid eyes on them.

  “Quickly now,” she said, gesturing for me to start swiping them up.

  “I’ll take them to the incinerator—”

  “Don’t.” Her voice was bitter. “My husband will simply use their destruction as an excuse to acquire more. We simply need to clear these from sight for now.” She twisted her fingers in a crack in the wall, and the floor slid open to reveal a hidden compartment.

  Then she settled in the Senator’s chair, fanning herself with her hand as I heaved armful after armful of shattered fragments of what looked like computer debris and data chips into the compartment. The Senator passed days in here, repairing whatever he could salvage, uploading information into his personal database. He avidly read the materials and often discussed them with Sidonia. Those scientific theories, those technological blueprints. All blasphemous. All insults against the Living Cosmos.

  I stashed the Senator’s personal computer in with the debris, and then the Matriarch crossed to the wall again and twisted her finger in the nook. The floor slid closed. I heaved the Senator’s desk over so it covered the hidden compartment.

  I straightened again to find the Matriarch watching me narrowly. “You would have killed me back in the hallway.” Her glittering
eyes challenged me to deny it.

  I didn’t. “You know what I am, madam.”

  “Oh yes, I do.” Her lips twisted. “Monster. I know what goes on behind those cold, soulless eyes of yours. This is exactly why Diabolics have been banned—they protect one and pose a threat to all others. You must never forget that Sidonia needs me. I’m her mother.”

  “And you must never forget that I’m her Diabolic. She needs me more.”

  “You cannot possibly fathom what a mother means to a child.”

  No. I couldn’t. I’d never had one. All I knew was that Sidonia was safer with me than with anyone else in this universe. Even her own kin.

  The Matriach loosed an unpleasant laugh. “Ah, but why even debate you on this? You could no more understand family than a dog could compose poetry. No, what matters is, you and I share a cause. Sidonia is kindhearted and naive. Outside this fortress, in the wider Empire . . . perhaps a creature like you will be the very thing my daughter requires to survive. But you will never—never—speak to anyone of what we’ve done today.”

  “Never.”

  “And if anyone seems ready to find out we’ve spared our Diabolic, then you will take care of the problem.”

  The very thought sent a sizzling, protective anger through me. “Without hesitation.”

  “Even if taking care of it”—her eyes were sharp and birdlike—“starts with yourself.”

  I didn’t condescend to answer. Of course I would die for Sidonia. She was my entire universe. I loved nothing but her and valued nothing but her existence. Without her, there was no reason for me to exist.

  Death would be a mercy compared to that.

  2

  THAT VERY EVENING, the entire household—people and Servitors alike—gathered in the heliosphere, the clear dome at the top of the orbiting fortress. As much as the Matriarch pleaded with him, the Senator never bothered with services unless there were visitors. Today he attended for appearances’ sake, but he didn’t bother to hide his insolent smile from the Inquisitor.

  The Inquisitor, after all, had just thoroughly inspected the fortress. He’d found nothing worthy of reporting to the Emperor. A clever man would not gloat, but the Senator was a fool.

  The Matriarch had accorded the Inquisitor an honored seat just behind the family for the service. We all watched in thick silence as the star rose over the curvature of the planet below us. The windows were crystalline, refracting light in just the proper way to send it scattering to certain points of the room where mirrors were positioned. For a split second, the bright rays all converged upon a single point: the ceremonial chalice at the center. It ignited the oil within. We gazed at the burning chalice as the perfect angle to the star shifted, dispelling the blinding glare of the lights. The blessing began.

  “And so,” spoke the vicar, lifting up the burning chalice, “through our birth star, Helios, the Living Cosmos chose to spark life on planet Earth and gave rise to our most revered ancestors in that ancient era when the stars were but distant points against the infinite dark. Humanity was veiled in ignorance in those days, devoting themselves to worship of deities imagined in their own likeness, unable to recognize the true divinity of the universe itself all about them. . . .”

  My gaze crawled the room, passing from the intent vigilance on the Matriarch’s face to the ill-concealed disdain on the Senator’s. Next I looked to the Inquisitor, who was staring intently at the Senator’s back. Then I looked to Donia, whose wide brown eyes were fixed on the chalice as the vicar recited the story of homo sapien genesis. Sidonia had always possessed a strange fascination with the tale of the solar system of human origin, and the sun, Helios, that had nourished the first human beings.

  She was devout. She’d tried to convert me to the Helionic religion as soon as I was acquired, and she’d brought me to a service to entreat the vicar to bless me with the light of stars. I didn’t quite grasp the concept of the Living Cosmos or souls yet, but I hoped to be blessed because Sidonia wished it for me.

  The vicar refused. He informed Donia that I had no soul to bless.

  “Diabolics are creations of mankind, not of the Living Cosmos,” the vicar told Donia. “There is no divine spark in them to illuminate with Cosmic light. This creature can observe the blessing as a gesture of respect to your family, but she can never participate in it.”

  As he spoke, there was a strange expression on the vicar’s face and on the Matriarch’s. I’d just begun to figure out facial expressions, and I recognized it even then: total revulsion. They were disgusted by the mere notion a Diabolic might be favored by their divine Cosmos.

  For some reason, the memory of the looks on their faces made my stomach clench even now as I listened to the vicar. I chose instead to resume watching the Inquisitor, the man who would report the details of this visit to the Emperor. His word could condemn Senator von Impyrean if he found the Impyreans insufficiently pious. Worse, his words could condemn Sidonia.

  If anything happened to her, anything, I would hunt this man down and kill him for it. I memorized his proud, cold features—just in case.

  The vicar’s voice droned on until the nearby star mercifully sank behind the curvature of the planet. Then the lights dimmed within the heliosphere but for the burning chalice. The vicar drew an earthclay lid down over the top of it to extinguish that fire.

  A deep, hushed silence followed in the darkness.

  Then one of the Servitors turned the lights back to full. The people left the heliosphere first—the Impyreans, the Inquisitor, and then the vicar. After that I filed out along with the Servitors.

  The Senator escorted the Inquisitor toward the bay doors, not even offering him the courtesy of a night’s sleep at the fortress. I followed them at a careful distance, my keen hearing able to pick out their parting words from a corridor behind them.

  “So what’s the verdict?” boomed the Senator. “Am I sufficiently pious for the Emperor’s taste? Or do you, too, wish to call me ‘the Great Heretic’?”

  “It is your manner that offends the Emperor,” the Inquisitor replied. “And I don’t believe the Emperor will find it improved. How boastful you almost sound about that hateful name you’ve acquired! Well, heresy is dangerous, Grande, so I’d advise you to watch your step.”

  “Senator. You will call me that.”

  “Of course, Senator von Impyrean.” The words were spoken as a sneer.

  With that, the Inquisitor and the Senator parted.

  I found Donia, where she’d planted herself by a window overlooking the bay doors. She refused to move until the Inquisitor’s ship pulled out and disappeared into the black. Then she ducked her head in her hands and dissolved into tears.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded, my alarm mounting.

  “Oh, Nemesis, I’m so relieved!” She raised her tearstained face and laughed. “You’re safe!” She hurled herself forward and threw her arms around me. “Oh, don’t you see? He may be mad at Father, but you’re safe.” She buried her head against my shoulder. “I could never live without you.”

  I hated when she spoke like this, as though I meant everything to her when in reality, she was the one who meant everything to me.

  Donia continued to weep. I wrapped my arms around her, a gesture that still felt unnatural and strange to me, and contemplated the oddity of tears. I had no tear ducts and was totally incapable of weeping, but I’d seen tears often enough to know they were about pain and fear.

  But it seemed they could come from joy as well.

  As the sole heir of a Galactic Senator, Donia would be expected to take her father’s seat after he retired. That meant she had to cultivate political instinct now and learn to speak to others among the Grandiloquy, the Empire’s ruling class. Her social skills would fashion the future alliances of her family and ensure their continued influence. The virtual forums were her only means of practicing social nic
eties. I’d never seen these forums myself, but Donia had explained to me that they were set in a virtual reality where people used avatars to interact with one another.

  Twice a month, Donia was forced to attend formal gatherings on the forums, where she’d meet other young Grandiloquy in far-off star systems who were destined to inherit power in the Empire. The meetings were a painful necessity for her. As she prepared for the day, her shoulders were slouched, dejection in every line of her body.

  The Matriarch, as always, ignored her gloom. “The Emperor will have a report of the Inquisitor’s visit by now,” she told Donia. “If your fool of a father has created any new problems for us—”

  “Please don’t call him a fool, Mother. He’s really quite visionary in his own way.”

  “—if he has, then the Emperor will have told his confidants. Their children will have heard. You need to listen, Sidonia, both to what they say and what they don’t say. The survival of our family may depend on the information you gather in these forums.”

  The Matriarch prized these gatherings so dearly, she always sat next to Donia and tapped into the feed with an add-on headset of her own. In that manner, she monitored her daughter’s interactions and hissed advice—or rather, orders—in her ear.

  Today they settled by the computer console and pulled on their headsets to begin observing a world only they could see. I listened as Donia stammered nervously through small talk. Occasionally she made some social blunder, and the Matriarch pinched her in punishment.

  It took all my self-restraint not to stride forward and break the Matriarch’s arm.

  “What have I told you about avoiding certain subjects?” the Matriarch hissed. “Do not even ask her about the nebula!”

  “I just asked if it was as beautiful as I’d heard,” Donia protested.

  “I don’t care why you asked. The Great Heretic’s daughter can’t afford to ask anything that could be misconstrued as scientific curiosity.”