introducing

If you enjoyed

BEHIND THE THRONE,

look out for the sequel!

Coming in Winter 2016

by K. B. Wagers

1

The execution site was an unremarkable building in the government sector across town. The room went quiet, the rolling murmuring on the air vanished when I walked in with my BodyGuards around me. My teams were still in disarray a week out from the coup attempt that had taken the lives of too many of my Guards, so Emmory and Cas were at my sides with Zin, Willimet, and Kisah behind us.

I was dressed in a black, military-style uniform—no sari, no mourning powder streaked across my face in a deliberate statement about the traitors whose deaths I’d come to witness. My cousin Ganda and my nephew Laabh.

“Your Majesty.”

Everyone in the room either dropped into a curtsy or bowed low.

“Everyone up, please.” I moved across the room, exchanging greetings with the judge, the lawyers, and the police.

“Majesty.” Prime Minister Phanin executed his perfect bow and held a palm out to me in greeting. “We are glad to see you well.”

“You also. I was relieved to hear you weren’t injured in the chaos.”

Phanin waved a long-fingered hand in the air. “I was in my offices when the incident occurred. Thankfully we went into lockdown and I don’t think I was at all on their list of targets given how unimportant my position is.”

I didn’t have a good reply for that. Technically he was the head of the General Assembly, but the political body was more for show than anything. Phanin had no real power in the governing of Indrana. He was there to placate the masses.

That wasn’t something I was going to say out loud.

“Your Majesty.” Two naval officers approached, saving me from the awkward situation. Phanin murmured his good-bye and stepped away.

“Commander Timu Stravinski.” The commander was a man with graying hair at his temples and clear gray eyes. He saluted.

“Commander.”

The young woman with him was barely eighteen; her eyes were dark blue and her blond hair twisted up into a smart knot off the collar of her naval uniform.

I knew who she was before she said her name. A cousin. A member of my family—same as the woman I was about to kill.

“First Lieutenant Jaya Naidu, ma’am.” She saluted me.

“Lieutenant.” Ganda’s little sister wasn’t the spitting image of her treacherous sibling, but I could see the resemblance and I felt Emmory brace for a scene.

“I volunteered to witness, Your Majesty. To spare my parents further pain. They have removed the traitor’s name from the family tree. I am not here for sympathy or to ease her passing. I’m only here to see justice done.” Jaya bowed sharply. “My family is loyal to you, Majesty.”

“Of course. Thank you,” I murmured the reply because I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Lieutenant Naidu nodded again and left me alone.

There was no one here for Laabh except his lawyer, who bowed low in front of me. My nephew’s father was gone, fled to the Saxons. His mother and sister dead from a bomb he helped radicals plant. His marriage family had already washed their hands of him, lest the displeasure of the throne splash back on them. There was no one left for quiet denunciations and murmured declarations of loyalty.

I spotted Leena when she slipped in through the door, already dressed in widow’s white. There were circles under my niece-in-law’s eyes and she gripped her sari so tightly that her knuckles stood out in stark relief against her skin. What had been a social coup for her was now a nightmare.

Murmuring my apology to Laabh’s lawyer, I crossed to the door and pulled Leena into a hug before she curtsied. She froze, startled, and then clung for a moment.

“I left Taran at home,” she said as she stepped away. “I didn’t think it was appropriate. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

“That was a wise choice. Leena, he’s still my family. Whatever his brother was responsible for having him do, we don’t hold Taran accountable.”

We’d retrieved some of the data off Dr. Satir’s smati and it had corroborated Laabh’s story that the AVI had been slipped to Mother in the weekly gift of lokum Taran brought her. I had to contend with the idea that Dr. Satir might have known about the drug, though that secret died with her. There were no records of the treat being scanned when it was brought and my suspicions over Mother’s still-missing Ekam were high.

“Please don’t take him, Majesty. I’ve come to care for Taran.”

“I have no plans for that, Leena. I received your mother’s petition and I’m in agreement with it. Taran will stay with you.”

Leena’s eyes strayed over my shoulder toward the chamber on the far side of the room. “I loved my husband once. I’d thought he could be so much more.”

“That’s not a crime,” I replied, watching as the bailiff escorted Laabh and Ganda in. “You’ve never seen anyone die, have you?”

“No, I—no, Majesty.”

I took her gently by the shoulders. “There’s no shame in looking away. This way is quieter than most, but you’re still watching someone’s life vanish right in front of you. It changes a person to witness it.”

“You’ve seen it.”

I felt the smile flicker to life at the corner of my mouth. “More times than a person should.” I let her go and looked at Willimet. “If she needs to get out of here, go with her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your Imperial Majesty and the others in attendance.” The judge was a tall, slender woman named Sita Claremont. She addressed the small crowd as the technicians strapped Ganda and Laabh onto the tables. “We’re here today to see justice done in the matter of the Empire of Indrana versus Ganda Rhonwen Naidu and Laabh Albin Bristol Surakesh.”

Laabh was calm, his dark eyes still burning with fanatical hatred when they met mine. Ganda was less calm, her eyes darting around the room and her breath coming high and fast in her chest as the table was tilted slightly up.

Judge Claremont turned to look at the prisoners behind the glass. “You have both been found guilty, through evidence and your own confessions, of waging war against the state, direct participation in regicide, attempted regicide, and treason. Your right to trial was dismissed at the empress’s pleasure. It is the empress’s wish that on this day you take your last breaths and let the Dark Mother have her justice over you.”

Ganda flinched. Laabh remained perfectly still.

“Your Imperial Majesty, is there any mercy in you for these two traitors?”

I’d known the judge’s question was coming. The palace had been inundated with calls and messages about the execution. I’d read most of them, and answered several of the calls personally. The Amnesty Galactic one had been the most interesting.

In the end, I couldn’t let much of it influence my decision. We had written confessions from each of them about their involvement in the deaths, and no matter my personal feelings on the matter that was enough to condemn them.

Plus I knew better than to leave a live enemy behind me. I’d learned that lesson the hard way from Po-Sin, the gunrunning gang leader and my former employer.

“There is not.”

“Very well.” Judge Claremont nodded. “Do the condemned have anything to say?”

“I did what I had to for the good of the empire.” Ganda’s voice didn’t ring with the same conviction as my mother’s Ekam when he’d claimed the same thing. “The empress turned us belly-up to the Saxons and drove this empire into the ground. Now you’ll all allow that trash upon the throne. A criminal, a self-admitted gunrunner! She’s not worthy of your respect or your loyalty!”

I kept my face blank as she railed. I wasn’t ashamed of the things I’d done after I left.

“If you didn’t want me to come back, Ganda, you shouldn’t have killed my sisters. Cire should have been empress, or her daughter, or even Pace. All of them would have been a better choice than I am. It’s your conspiracy, your treachery that put me here.”

“No.” Ganda shook her head, tears rolling down her face, but she didn’t have any argument to make that would have swayed anyone’s sympathy.

Laabh lifted his chin, the haughty look unable to fully hide the fear in his eyes. “You will all regret this,” he said. “We see farther than you can imagine, and our plans are far more glorious than this piddling empire. You won’t live through the next spin of the planet around the sun, you gunrunning whore.”

There were gasps of outrage in the room. I crossed my arms over my chest and met Laabh’s glare with a cold smile. “You won’t live to see them fail,” I replied.

Whatever he shouted in reply was cut off by Judge Claremont’s quick gesture. The comm system was deactivated and the two technicians in the room donned their helmets as the tables were lowered once more.

Nitrogen asphyxiation had been the preferred method of execution in the empire for thousands of years. It was a quick and painless method, but as I’d pointed out to Leena, it was still taking another human life.

The lights on the wall of the chamber flashed, and at Judge Claremont’s nod the technicians threw the switch. The air circulators in the chamber filled it with pure nitrogen as they sucked the oxygen out.

Laabh was unconscious in under a minute with Ganda quickly following suit as the oxygen in their lungs and then their blood was replaced with nitrogen. The hypoxia that followed would cause brain death in a matter of moments.

I’d seen messier deaths and been directly involved in more than a few of them myself. This wasn’t even the first time I’d stood on the other side of a glass window and watched people die, but there was undoubtedly something cold about these quick and silent deaths. It felt weird, clinical, and made me uneasy.

I watched their chests rise and fall, breaths growing shallower as the heartbeats on the monitors above the tables slowed. Laabh convulsed, and Leena’s choked sob echoed through the room.

“Take her outside, Will,” I murmured without looking away from the people dying in front of me.

The shrill tone of the flatline filled the air only moments after Willimet ushered Leena out the door, as first Laabh’s and then Ganda’s hearts gave out. The masked techs moved around the tables, efficiently checking their patients and passing the information along to Judge Claremont.

“Heart death confirmed,” she announced. “Brain death to follow in approximately ninety seconds.”

The flatline tone had been turned off with the confirmation so we all stood in silence again as we waited for the final words from the techs. The one at Laabh’s side turned and nodded once, but I didn’t release the breath I was holding until Ganda’s tech nodded also.

“Brain death confirmed. Execution sentence carried out at 2253 Capital Standard Time. Let the record reflect that justice has been served.”