The Harvesters pinned the man down, held his arm still with both their combined strength, and fixed their eyes on the blood funnel drawing a red stream from the man’s veins. By the time I passed out of sight, the Excess no longer struggled, his draining complete.
Afterward, he’d be allowed a few minutes to rest up and would be given a mug of hot chocolate in consolation. He’d likely have nightmares until the next harvesting. Indeed, the terrors would last until his adrenal glands, exhausted, ceased to react to the stimuli of horror. The Harvesters would then deem him “tapped out,” unable to supply quality product for the Grandes and Grandeés at the center of the Empire, whose evenings were so pleasantly spiced with the by-products of terror.
The universe was cruel. I didn’t understand how anyone could live somewhere like this and think otherwise.
As I descended into our small corner of the Obsidian Tower Dwellings, I braced myself to tell Anguish what I had done. He would insist on relocating at the next transport window, although in his weakened state, such a journey might kill him.
But when I saw him, my words died on my lips.
Anguish dan Domitrian was out of bed. Standing without support, gazing out the faded window at the view: a causeway swarming with dirty crowds of workers. Some alert quality to his posture, the straightness of his back and the tilt of his head, made him appear both engaged and prepared for whatever he might see.
“You look well,” I said in amazement.
He cast me a quick, slashing look. “Of course.”
There was no “of course” to it. Not anymore… Yet even his voice sounded stronger. I swallowed my news and gently laid the morning’s rations on the table. I would not ruin this small miracle by mentioning the skirmish. He would be alarmed that I’d left one of them alive, perhaps would insist on testing his strength by going to finish the job.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, peering suspiciously at the satchel slung over my shoulder.
“At the synthomat. I have to work, so I fetched our rations early. They’re ready for the heater when you get—”
He swung fully around. “Wait. You’re alone? But… Where is she? Is she still out there?”
The words pulled me up short.
“Who…?”
“You should not have left her on her own,” Anguish said gruffly, shoving back from the window. “Tell me where you left her!”
Her. Oh.
He meant Neveni.
After everything, his mind still lapsed back into thoughts of Neveni.
They’d argued often as their relationship decayed. At first she just disliked his well-meant interference, when Neveni tried to show me the latest transmissions of Tyrus’s doings—the laws enforcing state-sanctioned faith in him, the brutal repressions of riots, the crackdowns on dissenters. They were all her not-so-subtle attempts to keep my wounds fresh, and revenge at the forefront of my mind.
“Leave her be,” I’d heard Anguish advise her.
“Stop telling me what to do,” Neveni would shoot back at him.
They’d found each other when they united against me to take the Arbiter and strand me in the Sacred City. Now, as Neveni grew on edge, almost manic in her desire to weaponize me, Anguish moved to shield me.
Their disagreements grew more heated. I neared my sleeping chamber on the Arbiter one evening to hear their voices inside, and my ears were keen enough to pick out the substance of what they were saying.
“You don’t motivate her when you rub salt in her wounds,” I heard Anguish chide her. “You merely hurt her.”
“I don’t need her sad and moping, Anguish. I need her to remember what he did to her.”
“She does. She remembers.”
“She can take care of herself.”
“We are Diabolics. We are not invulnerable.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Her, or you? What is this really about?”
“I have told you—”
“Did I hurt your feelings and you don’t have the guts to say it?”
“This is about Nemesis.”
“Then leave it be,” she snarled. “I know what I’m doing.”
And then I’d stepped into the chamber with them and they both fell silent.
I had brought them together, and now I drove them apart. Her irritation with him swelled. All the small gestures Anguish made to show he loved her seemed to go awry. She was no longer charmed by the protective instinct behind his offers to beat the crewmen who challenged her authority.
It didn’t help that her crew feared and distrusted him. They fell silent and shrank back when he strolled past them. None who saw him could have doubted his Diabolic nature—his vast size, his fierce demeanor, announced it plainly. He had never learned to blend in with humans as I had; he’d never had a master like Sidonia, who treated him as an equal, who might have taught him to be more human. As Neveni’s hostility grew, Anguish’s befuddlement did as well. He did not know how to fix what was going wrong.
And soon I no longer saw him in the bunk with her.
Anguish and I hadn’t fit in with the Partisans, neither of us, and since he’d lost her, his loyalties shifted toward his fellow Diabolic. After Neveni blew me up on Corcyra, he stole a pod and took it down to the surface in search of me. In the chaos of the mass casualty event, Anguish forged through the destruction. Amid the carnage of thousands who had been killed and injured, he found me, and his were the arms that swept under me as hoarse screams erupted from my lips, my skin chafing where it touched him, and my brain was a tangle of terror and hopeless confusion.
He tended me in our hiding place in the Corcyra Field Museum and stayed long after the Arbiter had fled orbit. When I was well enough, we didn’t even need a discussion; we simply understood each other—and we traveled away from the accursed planet together to leave them all behind. Tyrus. Neveni. The Grandiloquy. The Partisans.
Everyone.
Now, on Devil’s Shade, I was the one caring for him.
And I could not let him step out of here to seek Neveni.
He tugged on one arm of his coat—far too large for him now—and aimed for the door. I hastily stepped in his path to block his way. The feverish, dark eyes met mine, and that small flame of hope I’d felt upon seeing him upright died away, for I perceived the murkiness in his face.
“Neveni should not be wandering on her own in this place—”
“Lie down, Anguish.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“She is not here, Anguish. Remember?”
He would have shoved straight past me, had it been earlier days, before his strength waned. As it was, I caught him easily and manhandled him back toward his cot. There, Anguish collapsed—just aware enough to register the irregularity of being overpowered by me.
I snared the arm of his coat to divest him of it, but he gripped more tightly, his face twisted as he battled to understand this situation.… And so I let him have the coat and clapped my palms over his heated cheeks, forcing him to focus on me.
“Anguish: remember. Where are we?”
“Corcyra…” He fell silent, confusion washing over his face. “No. We’re…”
“We’re on Devil’s Shade. Neveni is not out there. It’s just you and me now. Two Diabolics. The last of our kind.”