The Emperor of Everything

“I delivered them to my brother’s stronghold. Beyond that I know nothing.” Remint turned to Corean, handed her the controller. “You must now proceed as you think best.”

Corean recovered her power of speech. “Wait! We still need to get Ruiz Aw back to the stronghold.”

Remint shook his head. “My directives in the event of my brother’s death take precedence over all other instructions; I must go now to punish his murderer.” The slayer started toward the door.

Corean made a serious mistake, then. She stepped in front of the slayer, and, in an attempt to detain him, put a hand on his chest. “Now wait,” she said, just before he snapped out his armored forearm and knocked her across the room. She hit the wall with the back of her head, and the controller went flying. She slid down the wall into a boneless heap, unconscious or dead.

Remint was gone, and Ruiz was alone in the suite full of corpses, unable to move a muscle below his neck.

Time passed, and the agony in his limbs eased somewhat, as his peripheral nerves adapted to the harness. He watched Corean, and wondered if she was alive and if so, how long it would take for her to awaken. The management of the joypalace seemed in no hurry to investigate the trouble in Suite B-448; hours might pass before they sent up a security team.

After a long while, he heard a faint scrabbling sound from an unexpected direction, and he snapped his head around.

To his astonishment, he saw the tall woman attempting to drag herself along the wall. Her face was white, and the wound in her chest made an ugly sucking sound. Apparently Remint’s beam had not quite ruptured her heart. It had apparently severed her spinal cord; her legs trailed uselessly. She was making slow progress, pulling with clawed hands at the dirty carpet, her bulging eyes fixed on the harness controller that still lay a good two meters away.

Ruiz couldn’t bring himself to hope that she would succeed. His mind seemed to have taken a turn toward cold introspection, and he was unable to take much interest in the woman’s efforts.

In a few minutes he fell into a philosophical mood, and began to examine the woman’s continued survival in those terms. At one time, both Remint and Ruiz Aw had espoused a philosophy of Perfect Violence. If he could act with Perfect Violence — he had once thought — then no one could obstruct or withstand him. But here was concrete evidence of the flaw in that philosophy. Not even violence was perfect-able… not even Remint, as perfect a slayer as Ruiz had ever met, was perfect in his violence. The woman still lived, still hitched her painful way toward the controller!

He began to hope again, faintly — a hope that glimmered away each time the woman paused to gather her waning strength. The pauses grew longer as she approached the controller.

When her outstretched hand was only a few centimeters from the controller, she collapsed and twitched with what Ruiz took to be terminal spasms. He ground his teeth and his eyes filled with hot tears. He thought of Nisa, but only for an instant; his mind was too full of despair to hold anything so sweet.

But the woman’s head came slowly up again, and she made one last lunge.

Her trembling finger touched the controller, the harness released Ruiz, and he collapsed backward. The sudden freedom shocked him, so that he lay there for a long moment, mind blank, unable to act.

Then he jumped up and tore at the harness straps, ripping them away joyfully. When he was completely free, he seized the closest weapon, a splinter gun that had belonged to one of the dead slayers — and only then turned to the woman who had released him.

She lay motionless, and only her eyes, which followed him as he crossed the room toward her, showed life.

He knelt beside her, examined her wounds. Her exertions had evidently worsened the damage; bright arterial blood pulsed from the exit burn under her shoulder blade. Her face was bluish; she tried to speak and failed.

“Yes,” he said, wanting to comfort her. “I’m going now. I’ll put him to death, if I can.”

Her eyes showed doubt, but it was a strangely unreproachful doubt. She almost smiled.

Her breathing ceased and her eyes stopped seeing.

He gathered up the rest of his weapons and the madcollar, then ran from the suite, lurching on uncertain legs.

It was only after he had left the joypalace and was on his way up to the lagoon that he realized he had failed to make sure of Corean. He paused, tempted to go back, but if she had recovered and called her people, the suite would still be a perfect trap.

He went on. His head buzzed with bitter thoughts about the imperfect quality of his own violence, and he cursed himself for a fool.

Ruiz was still busy criticizing his performance as he strode up the ramp toward the quay. A faint unpleasant sound penetrated his thoughts; he stopped abruptly and forced his attention back to the business at hand.