The Emperor of Everything

Corean’s face floated above him, transfigured with vengeful joy. “Oh, how I’ve waited for this moment,” she said, in tones vibrant with pleasure.

He knew better than to attempt speech until he had further recovered from the stun; his muscles were still useless. He looked around, and saw the tall naked woman with the steel slippers removing the last piece of her acolyte bodymask. She favored him with a nod and a cool smile. “Not a bad try,” she said. Apparently she was not in the employ of the pirates, as the mythagogue had told him. Other things were also apparent: principally, that Ruiz Aw was an idiot who richly deserved his fate. He sighed.

Remint y’Yubere sat on the couch, hands folded, looking remarkably placid. Ruiz could observe none of the intensity he had expected to see in the slayer’s face. The man seemed unaffected by the recent violent events. Genched, Ruiz thought, and shuddered. He would be just as placid in a little while.

“That’s right,” burbled Corean, as if she had added mind-reading to her skills. “You’re all mine now.” She reached out and touched the madcollar Ruiz wore. “Whose is this? No matter.” She clamped a decoupler module to the collar’s control linkage, and adjusted the damping field until it resonated with the linkage. The collar clicked open and dropped away. “There,” she said brightly. “Remint!”

The slayer looked up incuriously.

“Take us back to your brother’s stronghold,” she ordered.

Remint nodded. “As you say.” He rose from the couch and glanced around the suite. The joyboys, who were still huddled on the bed, both shrieked thinly when his gaze rested on them; he killed them with two brief touches of his pinbeam.

A look of uncertainty flickered across the face of the tall woman; immediately she suppressed it. The other two slayers laughed and brought out a control harness, which they began strapping to Ruiz. It was a device somewhat like the corpse-walker Publius had used; when it was activated Ruiz would be unable to make any movement except those specifically directed by the controller of the harness.

When they had finished fastening the control harness to Ruiz, they rolled him over and sat him up.

“Give me the controller,” said Remint.

“Sure,” said one slayer, and passed it over. Remint touched the controller’s finger pad, and Ruiz’s leg and arm muscles locked tight. The intensity of the pain astonished him; his abused nervous system was protesting vigorously. He clamped his jaws shut. For some reason he didn’t want to admit how much it hurt.

Remint took one last slow look around the suite, and then he cut down the rest of his people. The two male slayers fell before they could react; the tall woman, who was very quick, had time only to jerk aside slightly as Remint’s pinbeam cooked through her breastbone.

Ruiz took a sort of hopeless satisfaction in the terror that filled Corean’s face as she waited to find out if she were scheduled to die too. But Remint turned toward the door and said, “Come. Alonzo is waiting for us.”

Some sort of terminal bravado caused Ruiz to speak then. “Alonzo Yubere is dead,” he croaked.

If Ruiz had thought Remint a terrifying creature before, that pale perception faded to insignificance, seared away by the white-hot intensity that filled Remint’s face now. “What?” asked the slayer breathlessly.

Ruiz drew a deep breath. “Yubere is dead.”

“Who killed him?” asked Remint, stepping closer and pushing his terrible face into Ruiz’s, as if he wished to peer through Ruiz’s eyes into the hidden darkness at the back of Ruiz’s brain.

Had he not been paralyzed, Ruiz would have flinched away. “I did,” he answered.

“Ah, ah…. “The slayer rocked back and forth, shaking his massive head, very carefully, as though it might otherwise burst from the pressure of his thoughts. “You killed him? Why?”

“I was paid to do so.”

“Ah? By whom?” Remint’s lips writhed back and exposed his teeth in a hideous grimace that seemed to carry no identifiable emotional content.

Ruiz could hardly find the breath to reply, but he forced out the words. “Publius the monster-maker commissioned Yubere’s death; it was the price of his help, which I needed.” At least Publius would not escape unscathed; his machinations had led Ruiz to this sorry ending, and Ruiz found an unambiguous pleasure in the thought of Publius’s eventual meeting with Remint.

Remint stepped back, and calm rationality fell over the slayer’s features. “Ah. Publius. We know that one, an ancient enemy and colleague.” He looked away, and was silent for a moment. Then he asked, in gentle tones, “You would not lie to me, Ruiz Aw?”

“No.”

“No, I think not. What would be the point, now?” Remint paused, then spoke in the same soft voice. “You are too much like me, just a tool, sharp steel for the use of weaker hands.”

“May I ask you a question?” Ruiz found that he was still driven by his own purpose, even in this hopeless moment.

Remint nodded gravely. “Ask.”

“What have you done with my people… the Pharaohan slaves?”