by Adam Burch
“A people’s history is written in its genetics. Tao spliced human DNA into the animals, but also spliced the genes of animals into themselves.”
Edric calls himself a leviathan. Phaestion had dreams of being an orca. The monster speaks to me in my dreams . . .
“The connection has been diluted, but traces remain.”
I am the leviathan.
“Is it so hard to believe? Perhaps such genes may prove key to survival in the future.”
I turn back to the aquagraphic and see Phaestion standing triumphant. The crowd chants, “Phaes-tion, Phaes-tion, Phaes-tion!”
“I even tested some of your underclass with illuminating results. You met one once. A little girl. It was broadcast as part of The Exploits of the Companions program when you were a boy.”
I remember the girl who moved so fast, who helped me and Edgaard during the war games. How far does this man’s sick machinations extend?
“Humanity is something beyond what we were, preceding what will come. Cyborg, mutant, modified, designed, refined. I’ve traveled the ends of space, but seen none so beautiful as the work of art I envisioned. So I created him. Soon my new Adam will meet the rest of the Fracture.”
Phaestion climbs down from the giant metal structure.
“Winner, Phaestion of the Julii!” the announcer hails. My old friend walks toward the dais and raises his arms in triumph. The garlands are placed around his neck.
“I’m your father, just as much as I’m his,” he says. “Like any good father, I don’t want to see my children come to harm. Join him, Edmon. You can’t win.”
The spypsy’s face is shrouded by the hood, but I sense a tremble in his voice. If I can’t win, why is he afraid? The announcer calls for the next trial, and I walk past him to take my turn.
The bout is over before it begins. All fifteen of my opponents, scions of noble houses or professional combatants for hire, are paralyzed within minutes of the chime. No showmanship, no acrobatics, just cold efficiency.
The crowd howls in derision. The only thing the mob prefers to cheering champions is reviling villains. I was expected to win, but not so quickly, not so dully. I flash my teeth, and I hiss back. The camglobes pick up every last detail of my flagrant disgust. Through the noise, I pick out the sound of one steady clap from the skyboxes above. Phaestion stares out a window. Our eyes meet, and he nods. Tomorrow, thirty-six finalists will enter the arena, but the number doesn’t matter. It’s him and me. Winner take all.
Later, I am alone in the competitor’s steam showers, scrubbing the mud and sand from my body. Tomorrow, it will be blood. I sense movement beyond the entryway. Two men, heavy, strong. They’re armed. Knives and something else . . . guns? I dive to the bathroom floor as a bullet ricochets off the tiles. I leap into a cloud of steam that obscures me from view.
“I can’t see him!” one cries out.
“’Ere he is!”
I dodge the swipe of a knife. This attacker is a giant. Scarred. His eyelids have an epicanthal fold, and his hair is a violent shade of blue. This man is not from Tao. He swipes again. I intercept the blow, and my hand strikes his neck. He drops to the ground, immobilized.
A bullet rips through my thigh, and I’m hurled against the wall with the sound of smacking meat. I drive all the energy to my other leg and spring forward before the second attacker can fire again. My fists unleash fury. Knuckles smash face. He skillfully rolls and reverses our positions, pulling a knife from his belt, jamming it down like an ice pick. I block. My forearm is sliced open, but I hold it against the pain as it is the only thing keeping the knife from plunging into me. The point of the blade quakes centimeters from my eye. The man leans his body weight against me. There’s no way I can resist. I’m losing blood fast.
“Time to sleep, little man.” His green hair looks like blades of grass. There’s an odor of ozone from his perspiration, a telltale sign that there is tag in his system. He presses down again. My forearm buckles. This is how it ends. No glorious finish. No fanfare. Small violent lives meeting small violent ends.
Then a siren sweetly sings. The point of a blade suddenly sprouts from the man’s throat, and he gurgles on blood just before he slumps forward onto me, his giant body smothering me. I desperately push him off.
Sirens again, two of them. The long blade impales the paralyzed blue-haired giant on the floor a few meters away.
“This one wasn’t dead,” the haughty voice says. “Really, Edmon, you’ll have to be more thorough tomorrow.” I scramble with my back to the steam room wall. Phaestion picks up the pistol from the blue-haired man’s lifeless hand. “You know this is still the most popular method of killing in the Nine Corridors?”
He holds the firearm like a dead fish between his thumb and forefinger. “No skill. Look what they can do to even the most invulnerable of men.” He tosses the gun aside. It skitters from sight. “They’ll be useless in my new world. Crusaders with spider-weave armor, riding screamers, and brandishing siren swords will cut through gunmen like oars through shallows.”
I feel woozy. My legs wobble. Why is he here?
“Don’t run, Edmon.”
Did he send these attackers? Why stop them if he did? I ready myself for a fight, but he sheathes his weapons. I relax for a hair’s breadth, and he leaps toward me. By the ancestors, he’s fast!
I’m slammed against the wall.
“I could kill you now. No one would ever know.” He smiles. I struggle against his inhumanly strong grip. “But there’s no glory there. Don’t you want that, Edmon? Your song to last through the ages?”
I clamp my teeth down against his forearm and bite. The metallic flavor of blood spurts in my mouth, but he holds on.
“My father would have let these men kill you. He learned not to trust odds after he lost in the arena. Then he lost his first son to your father, a mere plebeian. I knew The Companions would try something. Probably Hanschen. Or maybe it was your charming sister, Lavinia, who sent them? I saw it would happen, and I came to make sure they didn’t succeed. You’re a survivor, Edmon. You always endure. Even when I told your father about Nadia . . .”
What?
“The day I saw you together, I knew she had to die. You’re mine alone. You were promised to the empress. I knew your father wouldn’t abide disobedience, so I told him you had taken a wife against his wishes.”
I shove him. He counters and pins my arm behind my back. Tendons and ligaments tear. Control the anger. Don’t let it control you. Become the storm.
“But he sent you away. That wasn’t what I wanted. Still, you survived and returned more beautiful, stronger. You take your pain and become something more from it. That’s why I love you. Tomorrow, we’ll have our aristeia. Even after I conquer the Fracture, they’ll still sing of the moment when Phaestion slew the only man he ever loved in a single combat.”
Chilleus and Cuillan.
He presses his forehead to mine in the gesture of brothers. It’s my moment. I raise my knee full force and slam it between his legs. If Phaestion can see the future, I must be unpredictable. My hand strikes his neck, and Phaestion drops, gasping for air.
“Beasts of the seas! That’s a trick.” He struggles against the effects of the Dim Mak. He should not be moving at all!
I try to run, but immediately crash to the floor, my bloody leg throbbing violently. I crawl to my sword resting against the changing bench. I hear Phaestion behind me reaching for his own. My fingers graze the pommel. His rapier sings. Damn it! My hand grasps the handle. I whip the blade from its sheath.
Screaming blades collide. Parry, thrust, riposte. I can barely keep time with his rhythm and speed. It’s as if he knows where I am going to strike or block before I do. Then I realize—he does. He sees the events play out moments before they actually do. Therein lies salvation.
The AI of the Arms of Agony once told me that it could not simulate Phaestion truly because his level of improvisation was such that generating a creative algorithm to match w
as impossible. Yet, the Phaestion who attacks now is so reliant on his prescience that his moves are not chaotic. They are modeled on the pattern of what he thinks I will do. I discern their beat. He may see the future. I see the music of the universe, and then I break it. I move in a way so antithetical, so discordant, the harmony of his playing is suddenly fractured.
I swiftly grab his wrist with a claw technique. The bones snap, and his sword clatters to the floor. I twirl my blade, and it gently licks the smooth skin above his jugular. His eyes go wild as he realizes, maybe for the first time in his entire life, he’s not invincible. He’s never accepted this as an outcome. Me? I’ve died a thousand times.
“Do it or you’ll die tomorrow. Do it or I’ll kill many more after you. Millions. Billions.”
My sword song wavers. What kind of monster are you?
“Edmon,” he says with no malice, “it’s who I am. It’s who you are, too.”
All men are monsters. Why run, boy?
Edmon, Nadia whispers in my memory. You can be who you want to be. My soul for his life and the lives of all those across the stars. Here there are no camglobes, no aquagraphics, no scribes to capture my choice in verses of epic poetry.
My sword falls. I jam my fingers into Phaestion’s neck again. He slumps onto the tiles. I hobble to his sword and kick it down the hall. Then I grab a towel and wrap it around my leg to stanch the bleeding. I leave him alive on the steam room floor, perhaps making the greatest mistake of my life.
CHAPTER 30
ENCORE
My abilities help repair my body but do little to heal my mind. I walk into my room in a daze. There’s nothing left for me here.
“Welcome home, sir,” Mentor chimes, but I know there is no home for me.
“Yes, brother. Welcome.” Lavinia’s raven hair cascades down her snow-white shoulders. Her pale, naked body gleams like moonlight. She stands centimeters from me. “Father’s alone tonight. Only Alberich guards him. He’ll admit you to the bedchamber. Enact the ritual of succession. Win tomorrow and I’ll serve you as sister, wife, whatever you desire . . .”
Her hand reaches up to my face, and her heart flutters. Wake up! Nadia’s memory saves me again. I grab Lavinia’s wrist too fast for her to react.
“Edmon!” I see something underneath her long, courtesan fingernails, something writhing beneath the cuticles. I throw her to the bed. She stares back defiantly and wraps the bedsheet around herself. “Damn you,” she whispers. “Only a scratch and the nanites enter your bloodstream.”
Nanites?
“Microscopic robots. I spent a fortune purchasing them from an off-world trader. They would not kill but weaken, make you slow. You destroy everyone’s plans!”
She meant for me to lose against Phaestion tomorrow.
“Father’s still vulnerable. Listen to me. Alberich awaits. Patricide is forbidden for daughters. If you don’t do it, he’ll keep himself alive for decades using healing tanks. This is our chance.” She stands, and I throw up my hands to ward her off. She sighs with disappointment and puts on her clothes. “I wouldn’t have really harmed you.”
Liar.
“We’re both trapped. Unless—” A thought interrupts her. “I can use the same distraction to lower the Wusong tower defenses. Alberich has reduced the guard in preparation for my sending you to Father’s chambers. Fat Beremon Ruska plans to defect this night. If you wish to go, rather than rule by my side, they’ll get you off Tao by day’s end. We can both have what we want. You needn’t fight and you needn’t rule; just leave me to it. Do we have an agreement?”
If I run from the Combat, the punishment is death or the Citadel. If I leave Tao, I can never return.
“You can disappear, just like Edric’s first son,” she says.
What?
“Help me. Kill Edric so that I may be sole heir to House Leontes.”
Edric’s first son? I grab her and hold her down as she attempts to scratch me with her deadly fingernails. I’m reminded of Edric, holding my mother down as he beat her.
“Is this all you are?” she screams. “A mindless savage?”
I look her in the eye. I slowly breathe the words first son.
“You may be eldest son now, but not always. When I became majordomo of House Wusong-Leontes, I delved into the records, the history of his rise, and found the aberration. Census birth lists show the first of his line. Edvaard was to be burned in the Pavaka. Birth defects.”
I release her from my grasp, shocked by the revelation.
“There’s no mention of the mother, but I tell you the boy didn’t die by fire. Ledgers show no record of incineration. The child simply disappeared.”
Edric killed the child by his own hand? Monster. Lavinia is right—I must confront him. For my mother, for Nadia, for all the atrocities he has committed.
“I ask again, do we have an agreement?”
I drop silently from the ventilation shaft to the hallway floor. Just like the Citadel, I think. Normally these corridors are guarded and I’d be unable to travel this route. Now that Lavinia has deactivated the security system and Alberich has lowered the guard, I have a few moments.
The lens of a camglobe swivels as it floats down the hallway. I wait just outside its scope. I snag the pearlescent ball as it floats by and crush it like an egg. The guards won’t notice the missing feed for a few minutes. Over the past few months, I’ve used the Mentor program to study and learn security’s movements. They’ll not pass this part of the palace for another two point five minutes. It’s more than I need.
I open the large double bronze doors inlaid with the great sea apes of House Wusong. Alberich awaits me at a security checkpoint. “You’ve come.”
To slay the monster or be slain myself.
I jam my fingers into his neck faster than he can react. He slumps into the guard station chair and stares up, unable to speak. I want him alive and able to witness everything.
I approach my father’s bed, hand on the pommel of my sword as a partition-screen rises.
“Alberich?” The withered voice cracks. My father rises in the pillows like a corpse from a billowing tomb. I draw siren steel from ivory. “Edmon.” The old man coughs. “I’ve been waiting, my son.”
He knew I was coming? Of course he did . . .
“I knew Lavinia would send you.”
I leap through the air. Twenty meters from the doorway to the edge of his pallet. An impossible jump, but I’m in an impossible mood. Siren song hums as my blade casts light on Edric’s throat. “Why hesitate?” he growls. An ember of strength still burns within his pale eyes. “I murdered your mother, strangled your lover, drowned her and your unborn child. Complete the rite of patricide. Defeat that Julii tomorrow and take the world. Rebuild it!”
I’ve no intention of giving him what he wants . . . yet. So I shake my head.
“I’ve failed.” His voice breaks with despair. “My children, my planet, I’ve failed them all. Everything I’ve done for them . . .” The old man cries reptile tears. “Listen, my son,” he implores. “I was an orphan, alone in the arcologies with only one way out—strength. I had to survive; it was the only way. I had a wife, a child. You were not the first. You had a brother. The birth went hard, and the breach could not be sealed. Freya’s eyes grew cold.” His voice wavers. “He was deformed. His head massive, wine-stain marks covered the side of his paralyzed, little body. I hated him. Why would the ancestors curse me so?”
It is too much. I want to silence him, end his rationalizing. I don’t want him to be human to me. I want him to be a monster, that monolith I saw the day of Edgaard’s christening, the one who denounced me, who struck my mother in front of the entire world. But I may never have another chance to understand him, so I stay my hand.
Tell me it was a kindness that you killed him, monster.
“The whole world lit up when my boy laughed. He was mine.” His cold eyes somehow burn with regret.
He gives the love I never had to a deformity long go
ne?
“I hid him from the Census. If I lost the Combat, he’d be found and killed, but there was no other way to overcome my station. I took the chance and won. My ascension, however, meant casting off my old life. Edvaard could never be the heir to a new Pantheon house. He couldn’t do what you must. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to kill him, either. I secretly sent him off-world and infiltrated the Electors’ Hall of Records to eliminate his birth from the genealogical history.”
If Lavinia could find the information, so could others . . . I have a brother. This deformed Edvaard garnered his affections. Perfect Edgaard held his hopes and dreams. What have I, his middle son, inspired? Nothing but wrath.
“Edmon, learn the truth of what I discovered when I entered the Hall of Records. The nobles of Tao claim lineage from heroes of the Ancient Empire. Lies!” He laughs dryly. “Our ancestors were slaves, test-tube soldiers. Their names—Song, Julii, Angevin, Mughal—were merely genetic templates. They rebranded themselves as kings. I realized that I, a plebeian from the arcologies, must do the same if I was to stand next to them as equals. I took the sea dragon for my symbol and the name of an ancient Anjin commander. Leontes was born.” He flashes a wrinkled-lipped grin. “Just as Leontes sacrificed his own life to save his people, I, too, made sacrifices. I’ve done what I have because it was the only way. I had to become a monster, Edmon. I loved you more than the others because you were the one born like me . . .”
