"You're killing me, Zai."
"Die, then," the man said.
He went on, calmly detailing what the Rix had revealed to him.
Adept Trevim fought to control herself, to withstand the pain, to resist the pleas of the Other to return things to calm. Once, she saw her hand reach out, about to make the gestural sign that would give Zai what he wanted. But she managed to hold herself back. Then his words continued, and the wrenching punishment of the war inside her resumed.
Before her will could crumble, Trevim's half-rebuilt heart stuttered, striking once like a hammer blow in her chest before failing, and the Other abandoned her to oblivion.
For a moment, the adept thought she'd won. Her mind began to fade. But horribly, the victory of death calmed her, and the Other returned, working its relentless miracle to begin repairs again. Trevim knew even as consciousness slipped away that she would reanimate to face these tortures again and again. The symbiant was too powerful, too indomitable and perfect, and her centuries-long conditioning was equally immovable. As she died, Trevim realized that her will, caught between these two indomitable forces, would eventually be destroyed.
Sooner or later, she would relent to Zai.
Senator Rarely had she seen the Senate so full.
Many planets, Vasthold among them, had only a single senator in the Forum. Winner-take-all, it was called. But the majority of the Eighty Worlds sent delegations, proportional representations of their constituencies. The voting strength of each world was weighted according to its taxed economic output, and senators from planets with many representatives subdivided their world's votes. The system had been carefully honed to achieve balance over the centuries, but it made for complex vote tabulation. It also led to a crowded Great Hall on those rare occasions when every senator was present.
They were all here now, to try Nara Oxham for treason.
The Great Forum was a huge, pyramidal hole cut into the granite foundation that underlay the capital. Plaster poured into the empty space would have cast a flat-topped pyramid with steps up its four sides. Each of the major parties claimed one of the triangular staircases, with their leadership clustered at the point down close to the center, and their rank and file arrayed across the wider rows farther up.
The President of the Senate was seated on the Low Dais, a circular riser of marble in the center of the Great Forum's pit. Senator Oxham had seen the old man. Puram Drexler of Fatawa, seated on the ceremonial dais only once before, when he had given her the oath of office. It was strange to think that in a few days, she might be stripped of that office and condemned to death after the votes were counted aloud by the same man.
The Great Forum was lit today with a sharp, unreal light that left no shadows against the gray granite floor. That was for the newseyes, which lined the high lip of the Forum. Senator Oxham allowed herself a moment of second sight, checking the viewership. On Home, the numbers were staggering: Eighty percent of the populace was watching. Even in the antipodal cities, spread from midnight to the early morning hours, a majority were tuned in. Niles had told her that a low-grade translight feed was headed out live through the Imperial entanglement repeater network, and a high-grade recording of this trial would eventually reach every world in the Eighty. The Emperor had never turned Laurent Zai into the martyr he'd wanted, but at least now he had a villain for his war.
The Apparatus had done everything possible to inflate viewership of the Oxham trial. Evidently, they were not afraid of her words.
She would be allowed to speak in her own defense. Senate President Puram Drexler had insisted on the fullest possible interpretation of the tradition of senatorial privilege, turning back the arguments from his own party about the security of the Realm. But even privilege didn't stand up to the hundred-year rule, so a compromise had been forged. Puram held a cut-off switch, in case Oxham mentioned the Emperor's genocide. The shock collar around her throat reminded Nara to watch her words.
Drexler looked a bit pale, there on the Dais. The Apparatus must have briefed him about the nuclear attack the Emperor had proposed, so that Drexler would know when to censor her. Oxham was sure that he had taken deep umbrage at this breach of the Compact, but however much the Emperor's plans had shaken him, Drexler's politics were as gray as the stone of the Great Forum. He would silence her if she hinted at the forbidden subject. Oxham realized ruefully that the pink political parties hadn't contested Drexler's position in decades, considering the presidency to be nothing more than a figurehead. But now the man held her life in his hand.
Roger Niles had shaken his head when these terms had been explained in the second week of preparation for the trial.
"We're finished," he'd said. "If you can't tell them about Legis, it's pointless. Give up and beg for mercy."
"Don't worry, Niles," she had answered. "I've got other secrets to tell." Her counselor had raised his eyebrows at this, but she dared not say more.
The Emperor didn't know about the latest transmission she had received from Laurent, hidden alongside a political report from one Adept Harper Trevim. A Rix prisoner had revealed what the compound mind had learned on Legis: the truth behind the hostage rescue, the symbiant, the Empire itself. The Emperor's Secret was hers.
It didn't matter that Nara Oxham couldn't speak of genocide. She had a better story now. The Apparatus had locked the wrong door.
Senator Drexler opened the trial. He wrapped his withered right hand around the staff of his office, and struck its metal tip against the floor. The sound was amplified, and echoes skittered around the hard stone of the Forum.
"Order," he said. His voice rasped like gravel.
The Great Forum became silent.
"We are here in a matter of blood. A matter of treason."
Nara had left a newsfeed translucent in her second sight, and her own face zoomed up to fill her vision, some distant camera searching for her reaction. She had the disembodied feel of seeing herself in a synesthesia mirror. She blinked the feed away, and reminded herself to stay in the real world. Even her prepared speech was memorized; she wanted no text prompts cluttering her primary sight.
Nara needed to watch the faces of the Senate, rather than worry about how this was playing in the feeds. If she couldn't win her fellow solons over, the impressions of the popular audience could hardly save her.
"Who is the accuser?" Drexler said.
A dead woman rose from the Loyalist benches. A prelate. The Senate had given her special permission to cross the Pale, the first repre-' sentative of the Apparatus ever to do so.