“You began life in madness, Nara. But you wake up every day and cohere, pull yourself to sanity. I, on the other hand,” he lifted his gloved prosthetic, “possessed absolute surety as a child, piety and scripture. And every day I shatter more.”

Nara took both of Laurent’s hands in hers. The false one was as hard as metal, without the rubbery feel of a civilian prosthetic. It closed gently around her fingers.

Nara Oxham ignored the cold pain of him. She grasped the living and the dead parts. Pushed her fingers into the strange interfaces between body and machine. She found the hidden latches that released his false members. Removed them. She saw his phantom limbs as if they were real. She put her mind into him.

“Shatter, then,” she said.

4

High Gravity

A painful lesson for any commander: loyalty is never absolute.

—ANONYMOUS 167

Senator

It was past midnight before the War Council was called again.

Senator Oxham was awake when the summons came. All night, she had watched the bonfire in the Martyrs’ Park. The flames were impossible to miss from her private balcony, which hung from the underside of her apartment, giving it sweeping views of the capital. The balcony swung in a carefully calibrated way—enough to feel the wind, but not nauseously—and at nighttime the Martyrs’ Park spread out below, a rectangle of darkness, as if a vast black carpet were blotting out the lights of the city.

Tonight, the usually dark expanse glimmered, populated by a dozen pools of firelight. Initiates from the Apparatus had taken all day to build the pyres, raising the pyramids of ceremonial trees using only human muscle and block and tackle. The newsfeeds gathered swiftly, broadcasting their labors and speculating on what sort of announcement would come after it had burned. As the pyres grew in size, the guesses were scaled up to match them, growing ever wilder, but still not quite matching the truth.

The politicals never trusted the populace of the Risen Empire with unexpected surprises, especially not in the volatile capital. The lengthy rituals of the Martyrs’ Park allowed bad news to be preceded by a preparatory wave of anxiety, a warning like the glower of a distant storm. The newsfeeds usually hyperbolized their speculations, so that the true facts seemed reassuringly banal by the time they were made known.

This time, however, the news was likely to exceed expectations. Once the Child Empress’s death became public knowledge, the true war fever would start.

There was enough of the construction to burn until morning, and Nara Oxham would need her energy when the news was announced, but she nonetheless went outside to watch. However exhausted by the day’s events, sleep was impossible.