In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Oh?”

  “She forgives me,” the Emperor said, sounding the words out as if making sure of them. “Because I once dwelt in Hell, and where there is no God, there can be no possibility of good. Only evil.”

  Lisinthir paused, then started laughing. “Oh… yes. I see how that might be yet another level of inexplicability. I’m not even sure I would know how to engage with it.”

  “You sell yourself short,” the Emperor replied. “You might not espouse such principles with your lips, but you enacted them in my court.” He cocked his head, mane shifting against his shoulder. “With my last breath, I will serve life.”

  “And I do, Exalted,” Lisinthir said with a bow. “But serving life and forgiving those who do evil… not the same.”

  “It’s not?”

  Lisinthir paused. Chuckled. “If it is, it’s beyond me. Right now anyway. My cousin would find it easier, certes.”

  “This cousin,” the Emperor said. “You think he will survive the court?”

  “I can no longer say,” Lisinthir admitted. “As I know nothing of what the court is like anymore. The Usurper and his Second are nothing like you and yours, from what you’ve said.”

  “No,” the Emperor murmured, touching a finger to the projection and watching the outline ripple over the talon. “Fighting this way relaxes you.”

  “It is one of the few things that does.”

  “Fighting with weapons,” the Chatcaavan said, eyes distant. “You once spoke of it, at dinner in your first week with us. Something about blood like ribbons? Streamers?”

  “Possibly,” Lisinthir answered, surprised his lover recalled it. “There is a certain poetry to it that appeals to me.”

  “And here you practice to maintain your skill.” The Emperor put an entire hand through the ghostly impression of the solidigraph. “Is it difficult enough to tax you? We do only live fighting, even while training. Fighting against computers… no one would admit to it if they did it.”

  “Not even battle simulations?”

  “For ship to ship fighting,” the Emperor said. “Anything large enough to require coordination. But for fighting with your hands? Never.”

  “It is not how I learned either,” Lisinthir said. “But I have found it useful, now that I have access to it.” He watched the Chatcaavan circle another of the phantoms, frozen in a lunge, and recognized the predatory tension in the Emperor’s shoulders. “You want to try it, don’t you?”

  The male looked up, yellow eyes burning.

  “Best do so alone, first.” Lisinthir drew away from the center of the room and sat on the bench. “I would not mind the respite.”

  “Wouldn’t you,” his lover said, skeptical, fond.

  “The brief respite.” Lisinthir grinned. “Are you ready?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Computer,” Lisinthir said. “Reconfigure simulation for one Chatcaavan male, no weapons. Restart.”

  A solidigraph sprang into life and rushed the Emperor, and if either of them had doubted the Chatcaavan would fail to react to an obvious simulation, the speed with which he swiped talons across the false foe’s throat put paid to it. That “death” spawned two new enemies, faceless and swathed head-to-foot in white, just like the first; they staggered their attacks which made it too easy for the Emperor to dispatch them both. The two that replaced them rushed their target at once, and then the fight was on.

  Lisinthir knew the Emperor had held back in their tussles; the Emperor’s final duel with Second had shown him what real fighting looked like among Chatcaava. But that had been as much ritual as brawl, with pauses for discussion, for demands, longer ones that gave both parties opportunities to yield. It had been nothing like this soulless exercise, which existed only to test and train fighters in their craft. In all Lisinthir’s life, and it had been long enough, he’d never witnessed such a pure demonstration of ferocity in a sapient. The computer spawned the enemies as fast as its algorithms believed the Emperor could handle them, and both of them learned quickly. The lyricism of it was breathtaking: one black dragon crowned in horns and framed in spreading wings surrounded by his vicious white-wrapped enemies, like a crowd of the vengeful dead. And he reaped them with talon and wing and teeth at a speed that defied belief.

  That Lisinthir had not only taken this male to his bed, but also defied him, suddenly struck him as absurd. That he’d survived, aweing. He had learned to kill but there was no comparison. He was dangerous but he had not been born to predation. His had been, he realized, the exact opposite of the Emperor’s arc, who had learned to stay his hand after failing to be born to compassion.

  “Come, Perfection,” the Emperor called. “Join the fun.”

  Lisinthir grinned and took up his swords. “So long as you find a wingless freak at your back acceptable, Exalted.”

  “I do, if that wingless freak does not find this notion of fun offensive?”

  Startled, Lisinthir laughed. “You have a ridiculous memory for trivia, Exalted.”

  The Emperor smashed another solidigraph in the throat. “My conversations with you were never trivial, Beauty.”

  Lisinthir ignored his flush and leapt instead into the fray. Fighting at the Emperor’s back was fraught, as the Chatcaava used their wings as weapons. He took one of the Emperor’s flanks instead and put his swords to use. It was nothing like fighting with Jahir, which had been communion: this was less comfort and more competition, and when the Chatcaavan flashed him a challenging look Lisinthir gave up and said—panted—“Computer, tally please. Foe count by fighter. Final blows.”

  “Tally begun.”

  “I hope you’re not tired, Exalted.”

  “I hope you’ve gotten better at accepting failure, Perfection.”

  “Never,” Lisinthir growled, and laughed, and slid through the throng to cut down his choices.

  After that he gave himself over to exhilaration and didn’t stop until his body began to fail him. The Emperor caught him up when one of his knees gave, and then they were biting one another, scrabbling. One of them remembered to cancel the simulation; if the computer reported the tally, neither cared. Both swords fell to the deck, clanging. They followed. Cold tongue. Hot fingers, skidding on sweating skin. Hands and mouths and shuddering rapture, found in overheated bodies writhing on the ground.

  Lisinthir collapsed alongside the Emperor, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard and feeling, finally, finally, at peace. He listened to his lover’s pants and enjoyed the lassitude of every muscle.

  One finger touched his neck, near the shoulder, very gently. “You’ll have marks.”

  “Honor wounds,” Lisinthir murmured.

  The Emperor chuffed a laugh. “Only you would say so.”

  “That suits me,” Lisinthir replied. “I like being right while other people are holding misguided opinions.” He looked over. “Is this how it will be, then? When we go for the Usurper?”

  The Emperor did not immediately reply, nor seem to notice Lisinthir’s scrutiny. His gaze was distant, looking far past the ceiling of the gym. “Ordinarily not.”

  “I thought the Chatcaava liked their fights personal.”

  “The Navy prefers orbital bombardment.” The Emperor sighed and pushed himself upright, shaking his dark mane back. “And no doubt the Admiral-Offense will attempt to convince me of the wisdom of planting a high-energy weapon in the center of the palace.”

  “He would do that?” Lisinthir asked, stunned. “Destroy a landmark and all the innocents in it to kill one male you should be challenging to a duel?”

  “Absolutely.” Kauvauc—definitely Kauvauc now, somehow—hung his arms over his lifted knees. “The Usurper took the throne without honor, alet. It is not necessary for me to kill him personally.”

  “It’s ‘arii’,” Lisinthir said. “’Alet’ imposes a distance. I cannot believe you would allow the Usurper to go unpunished.”

  “Is not death sufficient punishment?”

  Lisinthir snorted. “No. A
nd well you know it.”

  The Emperor laughed. “Very well. I agree. Though Living Air knows what Andrea would say to us both.”

  “She would counsel clemency, no doubt, but neither of us is clement.”

  “No.” The Emperor nodded, more to himself than to Lisinthir. “Unless something goes wrong, I do intend to go down into the palace and find the Usurper and kill him myself. But not as one does a male in an honor duel. As a rabid animal in need of slaughter. And with as little warning as possible because I find the thought of the death of innocents abhorrent.” He looked over his arm at Lisinthir. “Are you surprised?”

  “No.”

  The Emperor’s wings hissed as he mantled them. “Laniis Baker knows me only as a tyrant and a torturer. Andrea knows me only as a victim and admits to trouble conceiving of me as anything else. You alone have known me as both, Perfection. How can you reconcile the two pictures? When you have been under me as my victim, and over me as my lover?”

  “You think it should be more difficult for me, but it is in fact easier. I saw your transformation. I know what to expect.” The sweat had ceased running down his sides and was now cooling into a sticky film he should have found more distasteful. Instead, it felt like the friction burns and bruises: like something earned.

  “And unavoidably we must act on our expectations,” the Emperor murmured.

  “Those of us who do not have the luxury of feeling the thoughts of others through their skin, at least.” Lisinthir looked up at him. “Besides, Exalted, there are threads that run through you that have not changed.”

  A neutral tone, then. “Bad ones?”

  “Neither bad nor good,” Lisinthir replied. “Your strength of will. Your passion for the fight. Your curiosity most of all.”

  “It was my curiosity that led me into this,” the Emperor mused.

  “And your curiosity will lead you out.” At the Chatcaavan’s sharp gaze, Lisinthir said, “So it goes with all our character traits, beloved. Our virtues, our vices… they spring from the same well.”

  The Emperor mulled that in silence, and Lisinthir lingered, savoring their repose and this break in the thickness of his lover’s depression.

  “So both females fail to understand me because of the expectations they have of me, and you do because your expectations are truer to reality.”

  “I don’t know that Andrea misunderstands you,” Lisinthir said. “Laniis certainly does. The lens by which we view others can be distorted by prior experiences with them. Particularly bad ones.”

  “Or good ones?” the Emperor said. “I trusted Command-East. I didn’t name it, as I did my trust for Second-who-was. But I trusted him.”

  “You did, yes.”

  “Inasmuch as I trusted any male,” the Emperor continued, lifting his head and squinting. “No, that would be an incorrect assumption. I did not trust him. I trusted the navy, and that feeling encompassed him.”

  “Possibly,” Lisinthir said slowly.

  “And unlike me, he has not changed. When I titled him again, he was still the male I’d known before.”

  “He could have been hiding his penchant for treachery?”

  “He could have been.” The Emperor’s stare lost its focus, then he bared his teeth. “But he isn’t. And he hasn’t. Changed, Perfection. He is still the male I knew. But like Lieutenant Baker, I let my preconceptions blind me to that understanding. And I do understand him.” A heartbeat. “He doesn’t want the Thorn Throne.”

  “So one would presume, given that he set the Usurper on it,” Lisinthir said, hesitant.

  “No.” The Emperor set a palm on the ground and twisted to look down at him. “He doesn’t want it because he doesn’t think he can keep it.” He hissed. “He knew!”

  “You’ve left me behind now,” Lisinthir said slowly. “Exalted?”

  “Second was Navy, Ambassador. He knows the Navy and the system lords are an unnatural alliance. He’s placed the Usurper on the throne while he arranges for the Empire’s most volatile elements to combine. Because in the resulting civil war, he can carve out a piece of the Empire for himself.” The Emperor exhaled. “There is nowhere else for him to go. From being Command-East, the only steps higher were Apex-Navy, a title I still hold, and Emperor, which I am. He was already my subordinate; when I asked him to be Second, I once again gave him second best, with no opportunity of achieving the foremost title. He told me when he accepted that he would be honored because he knew no male could fight me and win.”

  “So instead of challenging you for the throne of an Empire he can’t hold against you, he’s going to dissolve the Empire and make himself Emperor of one of its pieces while leaving you to the war to pull it back together,” Lisinthir said.

  “Because he knows that anyone who deposed me in my absence would die when I came back,” the Emperor said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, Ambassador. He wanted power, but he was also canny enough to understand his limitations.”

  “He didn’t think he would win against you.”

  “He knew. We have worked with one another too long. Unlike me, he did not let anything cloud his understanding of my probable actions.” The Emperor bared his teeth. “He is the real architect of this.”

  “I suppose we’ll just have to kill him along with the Usurper then,” Lisinthir said, stretching. “And given that he’ll be aboard a ship of traitors among a fleet of traitors, I fully approve of using a bomb to do it.”

  The Emperor’s smile was wry. “I hope we have the chance. If he’s smart, he will find a way out of the trap and leave me surrounded by enemies who still think of the Empire as a single unit.”

  “Do you?” Lisinthir asked, quiet. “Think of it thus?”

  This hesitation felt more like regret. “No, Perfection. I do not.” Shaking back his mane, he pushed himself to his feet and offered Lisinthir a hand. “But I intend to assemble something from the wreckage, and that will be my Empire. And it will be a better one than the corpse from which it rose.”

  “This metaphor is rather disturbing,” Lisinthir said, accepting the hand up. “Say rather it is the phoenix rising from the ashes of its pyre.” At the inevitable quizzical look, he explained, “A mythical creature, who grew old and died so that it could be reborn fresh. Shaped like a bird made of fire; as it dwindled it lost its flames and became cold and small and dark before exploding afresh in a bonfire.”

  “Dramatic,” the Emperor said. “Not inappropriate. I trust you are exercised properly?”

  “You could probably exercise me further later,” Lisinthir said with a twitch of his mouth. “For now, I think we have other priorities.”

  “Oh? Those being?”

  Lisinthir said, “Second’s plan. It’s greatly accelerated by this war, isn’t it.”

  “Unquestionably.”

  “Because combining the fleets of system lords and naval Chatcaava would invite strife. And they’re gathering them at Apex-East. Knowing whether he’s succeeding in that aim, and how quickly, would be valuable.” Lisinthir smiled wolfishly. “And I believe we know several people in the Apex-East system who owe us favors.”

  The Emperor’s hesitation lasted too long, and his eyes when they met Lisinthir’s too reticent; he was once again the victim of the harem, struggling with doubt and despond. “I would not relish making that request.”

  “Fortunately, you have me to make it for you.” Lisinthir added, “Would you, if I hadn’t offered?”

  The Chatcaavan looked away, eyes hard. Then: “Yes. Of course.”

  Lisinthir nodded. “Then I will shower and change and see what kind of message Meryl and Uuvek think best.”

  “Realtime’s possible,” Meryl said, tapping her fingers on the table. “Realtime encrypted into an enemy system teeming with bored military and paramilitary forces? Not a chance.”

  Lisinthir glanced at Uuvek who said, “She is paranoid, but right to be. I can make a flat message look routine. The smaller it is, the better.”

  “I’
m not sure its size matters,” Lisinthir said. “Once it’s opened. Given what I intend to ask.”

  “What’s that?” Meryl asked.

  “I want Deputy-East to spy for us.”

  Uuvek looked up from his data tablet. “That would be useful.”

  “That’s it?” Meryl said, bemused. “Just ‘it would be useful’?”

  “It would be,” Uuvek said, resuming his perusal. “Dangerous also. He’ll probably get caught and executed.”

  “Hopefully the Worldlord will pull his tail out of the fire if he falls into it.” Lisinthir took a seat beside the Chatcaavan. “I presume I can dictate?”

  Now Uuvek set the tablet aside and both he and Meryl were staring at him. The latter said, “Sure. Just tell us when to start.”

  Lisinthir gathered his thoughts. “Begin now.” He sensed rather than saw them arranging for it with the technology at their fingertips. “Deputy-East—The Sword greets you and trusts you have had your fill of giggling harem females and alcohol, because the hunt is calling and it knows your secret name.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Worldlord. Do you have a moment?”

  The male, overseeing the renovation of what used to be his slave quarters, glanced over at him and canted his ax-shaped head. “Deputy-East? You have the look of a male on a mission.”

  Despite the resolve that had crystallized on reading the Sword’s message, Deputy-East felt his face stretching into a wintry smile. “You could say. I know you have resources beyond what you casually discuss with huntfriends, Worldlord. I was wondering if I could call on those resources now.”

  The Worldlord straightened, wings sagging as he frowned. Then, brusquely, he said, “My study. This is not the place for such a discussion.”

  “Of course.”

  Outside, Deputy-East launched into the air and rode the Worldlord’s vortices, feeling a strange calm. Something about knowing he would probably die soon, maybe? Surely that should have made him more anxious, not less. But his wings beat steadily and his sight was clear, truly clear for the first time in revolutions. Maybe this was what it was like to have a purpose beyond his own survival.