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Before her will could cru once like a ha, and the Other abandoned her to oblivion
For a an to fade But horribly, the victory of death cal its relentless ain Trevim knew even as consciousness slipped away that she would reaniain The symbiant was too powerful, too indo was equally iht 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 ale senator in the Foruhty Worlds sent delegations, proportional representations of their constituencies The voting strength of each world eighted according to its taxed economic output, and senators from planets with many representatives subdivided their world&039;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 Oxhae, pyraranite 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 ular 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&039;s pit Senator Oxham had seen the old man Puram Drexler of Fatawa, seated on the cereiven her the oath of office It was strange to think that in a few days, she ht be stripped of that office and condemned to death after the votes were counted aloud by the same ht that left no shadows against the gray granite floor That was for the newseyes, which lined the high lip of the Foruht, checking the viewership On Hohty percent of the populace atching Even in the antipodal cities, spread fro hours, a rade translight feed was headed out live through the Irade recording of this trial would eventually reach every world in the Eighty The Emperor had never turned Laurent Zai into the martyr he&039;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 Reale didn&039;t stand up to the hundred-year rule, so a coed Puram held a cut-off switch, in case Oxhaenocide 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 knohen to censor her Oxhae at this breach of the Compact, but however much the Emperor&039;s plans had shaken hiray 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&039;t contested Drexler&039;s position in decades, considering the presidency to be nothing urehead But now the er Niles had shaken his head when these terms had been explained in the second week of preparation for the trial
"We&039;re finished," he&039;d said "If you can&039;t tell the for mercy"
"Don&039;t worry, Niles," she had answered "I&039;ve got other secrets to tell" Her counselor had raised his eyebrows at this, but she dared not say more
The Emperor didn&039;t know about the latest transside a political report from one Adept Harper Trevim A Rix prisoner had revealed what the coe rescue, the symbiant, the Empire itself The Emperor&039;s Secret was hers
It didn&039;t enocide 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 ainst the floor The sound was amplified, and echoes skittered around the hard stone of the Foruravel
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 zoo for her reaction She had the dise herself in a synesthesia mirror She blinked the feed away, and reminded herself to stay in the real world Even her prepared speech washer priht
Nara needed to watch the faces of the Senate, rather than worry about how this was playing in the feeds If she couldn&039;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 froiven her special permission to cross the Pale, the first repre-&039; sentative of the Apparatus ever to do so
"The Eent"
"And who is the accused?"
"His Majesty&039;s Representative from Vasthold, Senator Nara Oxham" The dead woe of eers went to her apathy bracelet autoain She had already precisely adjusted her empathy The capital hovered over her, a volatile presence focused on every word spoken here, but its emotions were in check After weeks of furious calls for ie, the solemn ritual of a trial had focused the mob into a respectful audience The people of the capital had long been trained to revere tradition
The Senate&039;s guard-at-ar man was the only person allowed to carry weapons in the Foruht honorary, but which had become suddenly very real
The uard asked the prelate
"Yes"
The guard-at-arht try to run
"Who will speak in defense of the accused?" Drexler asked, his eyes sweeping the whole of the Senate, daring theainst the Emperor
"I will speak for myself," Nara said Her oords seemed disembodied, a result of both amplification and the incredible situation It was hard for Oxha to hundreds of billions, and to history, and that her own life depended on her words
"Then let this Honorable Senate begin to hear the accusation," Drexler said, and sat on his chair of stone
The dead prelate rose again, and walked to the fore of the Dais
"President, Senators, citizens," she began "The Eun
The prelate went on, as sonorous and repetitive as prayer The rit-ual phrases rolled over Nara all the words of blood oaths and bloody payainst death, and of the Eift of i way into the prelate&039;s narrative Every iota of childhood conditioning was triggered, until even Senator Nara Oxham found herself appalled at what she had done How dare she break faith with the man who had bested the Old Enemy death?
She steeled herself Let them play all their cards now Let them invoke every ancient superstition The Emperor would fall all the harder when his secret was revealed
"This woive the Ees
"And having taken an oath of secrecy," the prelate continued, "she betrayed the Emperor&039;s War Council She broke the duly invoked hundred-year rule Nara Oxham turned traitor"
The proof came next The Great Forum darkened, and the airscreen above the Low Dais came alive Puram Drexler would have had to crane his ancient neck to see, so instead he stared out at the audience like an alert teacher whose class atching a synesthesia lesson
The Senate listened in solees had been broadcast throughout the Empire for the last teeks In the newsfeeds, of course, each piece of evidence had been reduced by repetition to a single signifier: an i in her voice, a long shot of the palace&039;s east here the War Council met But here in the Senate, the scale was stretched in the opposite direction Time slowed to a crawl Each mark the Oxha minutes of explanation Their first conversation was studied fraly on a security camera; ten years of short missives were read aloud in the dead prelate&039;s dolorous cadence; quietly made plans were revealed with dramatic flourishes, as if their love had been a conspiracy froes between Oxhae by an overwhelle-word e, Don&039;t, was associated with Zai&039;s refusal of the blade of error It was all edited in the naressor in the relationship Nara was glad that they weren&039;t going after Laurent Over the last teeks, the Apparatus had walked a fine line with the hero Zai His propaganda ie had been weakened, but not destroyed--he was now a once-strong I woe to her was absent froe had worked They still didn&039;t know that Nara Oxham had the Emperor&039;s real secret in hand
The litany went on, slipping into irrelevancies toward the end Oxham&039;s antiwar bill, the one withdrawn before she&039;d taken a seat on the council, was revealed Her old votes in the Senate were isolated and given new significance; the accuser even found sinister coislature unani statement This sloas the merest outline The Emperor&039;s accuser apparently planned to present an insuperable mountain of detail over the days ahead The two hundred minutes of the accusation, half the first day of trial, seemed like years
Finally, Nara Oxha statement
The Senate President held up his cut-off switch and warned her before she began
"The secrets of the Realm are sacred, Senator Oxham Do not attempt to reveal them here in the Great Forum"
"I won&039;t, President Drexler" Of course, the old solon had only been briefed about the Eenocide, the issue covered by the hundred-year rule If Laurent was right, the real secret, the one His Majesty had been willing to murder thoseor dead, outside the conditioned drones of the Apparatus
According to the Rix mind&039;s story, even the Apparatus could not to speak of that secret It brought them pain to hear it mentioned She hoped that part of the tale was true
Nara finally understood why the Empire was built on fear and bribes, on inti, on the superstitious babble of soy mystery cult
It was all because the Empire was built on a lie
She turned to the Senate, prepared to undo it all
For a ht of the E She feared for a ht be conditioned, bound fro the words by sohtly touched her bracelet for luck, and let the fear pass Her anxiety was simply anticipation of how this speech would feel eerous ride on the nervous animal that was the Empire
"President, Senate, citizens," she said "The dead are dying"
A small cry escaped from the prelate&039;s lips, but there was no other sound in the Great Forum Drexler hadn&039;t cut her off, she noted with a final touch of relief Laurent was right: Even the oldest Loyalists didn&039;t know
"We were made a promise," she continued "We were told that the Old Enemy had been defeated, that in service to the E All of them"
A murmur came from the audience, and Nara felt a snap in her empathy, a sudden disconnect The rapt attention of the capital city above her had tumbled into confusion
So soon? she wondered
A quick check in second sight confirone dark The Apparatus had cut her off already
Plagueue Axis looked down at his valet/ initiate had suddenly fallen to the floor, clutching her stoh the speaker of her protective suit The plaguenostics across the bottoreen He hadn&039;t infected the young dead wo And certainly the symbiant would have protected her from any disease for days at least "Can I--"
"Turn it off!" The initiate flailed at the hardscreen upon which they had been watching the trial
The request puzzled the plaguee of Nara Oxhaesture, however, the e shield, the emblem of the Apparatus media censors The feed from the Great Forum had been silenced at the source
The initiate&039;s retching noises stopped She put her hands to her head and groaned the saueh her biosuit visor Here in his own sealed quarters, he wore his usual clothes, and visitors donned anti-conta aspirant&039;s face brought hoain how dehumanized he must appear when he wore his own suit, how anonymous he was here in the monoculture