The Emperor of Everything

Ruiz laughed. “Do you really care, as long as it’s away from here?” He no longer felt the consuming anger toward the monster-maker that had driven him since he had found Albany. The encounter with Remint had somehow exhausted most of his capacity for emotion, and a dangerous numbness was invading him. He examined the cut on his upper arm, and found it relatively shallow; the bleeding had slowed to a slow seepage. “We still have a deal, don’t we, Publius?”

“Oh, yes,” said Publius fervently.

“A problem has occurred to me, Publius. How can I be sure Tildoreamors will do as you ask, now that your power is destroyed, and the pirates are in such a froth about anyone leaving the city?”

Publius laughed, a thin mad sound. “Because — oh, this is a ripe irony — Tildoreamors belongs to me wholly, a Genched double, just like my Yubere.”

“I see,” said Ruiz. “Then we will go to your Yubere and release him and you will instruct him to do my bidding in every respect.”

As ruiz had hoped, the sampan was still moored to the quay. He moved a few of the crates, and made a place for Publius’s floater.

When he guided it aboard, the monster-maker reached out and patted at the produce with uncertain hands. “Vegetables? This is the best you could do, Ruiz?” His voice was still thin.

“Don’t complain,” said Ruiz, arranging the crates to hide the floater. “If I didn’t still need you to get out of SeaStack, I’d cut your throat and feed you to the margars.”

“Would you indeed? I don’t know… you’ve changed, gone soft, for all that you’ve bested Remint. You must have tricked him somehow….”

“How else?” said Ruiz sourly. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I’ll live, if you get me to a medunit. Would you moisten my eyes? They feel very strange.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. And we’ll see about the medunit after you’ve fulfilled our bargain. Meanwhile, I like to see you suffer.”

Publius giggled. “No matter. And even if I die, I have my clones, who’ll surely get even for all this destruction. I confess, I’d prefer to keep this old brain; I’m comfortable in it. But times change and we must adapt, eh?”

Ruiz looked down at the blood-smeared face, the dull eyes, the still-arrogant mouth. “Don’t be so cocky, Publius. I drained your clones.”

A stricken look clouded the monster-maker’s face. He clamped his lips shut and said no more.

Nisa lived in grayness. Her cell was gray: the door, the walls, the floor, the narrow bench where she sat, the cot where she lay. The light that seeped from the ceiling was gray, neither bright nor dim, except for those times when it grew very faint and she slept. Even the food was gray and tasted of nothing.

She had grown listless in the days since the terrible Remint had thrust her into the cell and locked the door. She had lost track of time, or rather had abandoned it. On several occasions, she had awakened without a memory of falling asleep, and assumed that she had been drugged. She had no way of knowing how long those periods of unconsciousness had lasted, so she stopped caring. She drifted into an almost-comfortable apathy, which was easier than wondering if her mind had been altered in the awful manner Ruiz had described.

She rarely thought of Ruiz and his inexplicable treachery, preferring instead to dwell on happier times on Pharaoh, when she had been the favored daughter of the King. She remembered her father’s garden, and the pleasure she had taken with her many lovers, and the various delightful sensations of her patrician station: fine food, the best wines, silks and jewels, the worshipful attentions of her slaves.

After a while Pharaoh seemed more real than her present dull circumstances. It was only when she slept and dreamed that she was unable to maintain her carefully cultivated detachment. In her dreams, Ruiz Aw came to her and pleaded for forgiveness, and she pretended to accept his apologies. In dreaming, she concealed her hatred and led him on skillfully, so that she might make him vulnerable and wreak a dreadful vengeance on him. But the dreams were frustrating because she always woke before she could shatter his heart as he had shattered hers.

The worst thing of all was that she sometimes woke crying weak tears, sad that the dream was over, that he had slipped away again, even though she hated him and hoped never to see him again.

Occasionally she wondered if she were dead and in Hell. Perhaps all that had gone before had been a sort of purgatory. Had she failed that test and been condemned to this eternity of grayness? Ruiz Aw might well have been a demon of destruction, sent to beguile her. It seemed to her there was a good deal of evidence to support such a view.

To escape the dreams, she slept rarely and spent her artificial nights sitting in the darkness, remembering the blazing light of Pharaoh.

It was at such a time that the door groaned and slid back and Ruiz Aw stood there looking in at her.