Dagger-Shaped Heart
The emperor ran.
Not literally, of course. These days, the emperor could barely walk. As the tiny spaceship that encased his body leapfrogged from galaxy to galaxy, folding the fabric of all that exists like a quilt set aside for the summer, he dreamed a planet of warm, black sands and silky, lavender seas. A peaceful place, though he was not at peace, and the tumult in his heart was one reason that he ran. He told himself that if any ship could overtake his admiral of admirals, it was his. But the admiral was also fast, and canny, and… Stop. The admiral’s excellence was another reason that he ran.
The ship was smooth and black as the places between the stars. It followed his bodily contours perfectly, life-support and guidance and propulsion seamlessly integrated to ports he’d worn as grim badges of his station since he became man and heir to the universe at the age of thirteen. In his endless travels the ship’s skin had become his skin, impenetrable and incapable of damage as a diamond. In the hold sat one piece of cargo and it was, in a sense—but also was not, in another sense—separate from himself: the dagger.
Forged of a forgotten alloy on a forgotten world, hammered into the shape of an elongated heart glimmering red, the dagger was the emblem of another bloody blade, housed beneath the emperor’s ribs. When he wielded the dagger, it was not for protection, but to make a point. The emperor’s heart must have but one desire: the consolidation of power in every corner of the universe. Nothing else mattered.
And so, at age thirteen, his father noosed upon the gallows and waiting for a nudge; and so, at age thirteen, hand in hand with two boys who would die for him if he would only ask; and so, at the moment he felt absolute power enter him like a spear of ice, the emperor had stepped back and lifted the dagger. He’d known the time would come to set himself apart—so had the boys of his heart. The knowledge hadn’t made it easier.
That was the last time he’d used the dagger that once belonged to his father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father, and so on. He called no man friend. He didn’t linger with the woman who bore the son he’d never see. He took pride in his forbearance at the imperial brothels, his refusal to visit the same bed twice. But now he saw he’d taken chances without realizing it. When love came, it came not with enticing smiles or golden limbs in filmy robes. That was not the face that love would show to him, he’d learned, too late. No, love was sharing what must not be shared, a connection like spidersilk, strong enough to hold both predator and prey but invisible until found by sunlight after a soft summer rain.
The emperor woke as his spaceship slowed, and he opened his eyes to a smear of multicolored light. He blinked, activating implanted corneal lenses, then lifted his finger to the viewport and traced the system’s twinned yellow suns and its fat, gassy planets, the largest of these ringed with green moons in a dance of possibility. The empire would make good use of those moons. But the stars were strange here, and the sight of them turned his stomach.
A tickle as he docked with the flagship holding his imperial forces and the man who commanded them, the man of whom he was failing not to think. More painful was the release of the ports connecting him brain, bones, and blood to the ship. He hissed as the hatch unsealed and he slid out. A billion tiny mechanisms brought strength to his atrophied limbs, and he rose to his feet, thinking of how many years had passed since he’d stood face to face with another human being. He gripped the dagger. It had drunk blood many times in the ages since its making, and when he fingered the wavy, scalloped edge of the blade, it nicked his flesh as well. He would strike quickly, and leave this place. An emperor’s heart had one purpose and one purpose only.
His admiral was waiting for him. He was tall, as the emperor once had been, with eyes of twilight, skin of night. Beautiful as the system they’d come to claim for the empire. And the sight of his admiral washed over the emperor like a flood from a green moon-mountain sliced open for the extraction of all that might be of use, a torrent dissolving metals and minerals never meant to see the light of day, a deluge that had fallen from an alien sky as fresh water but was no longer water at all, instead a killing downpour from that moon-mountain to the ill-fated plains below. Acidic and corrosive, the sight of his admiral boiled into the emperor’s heart.
The dagger clattered to the floor.
The admiral stood still as a statute; it was death to touch the emperor or his possessions. Instead the emperor himself bent to retrieve the dagger, brushed his lips over the blade, and turned to place it in his starship. It would not part beloved flesh today. And he was no longer fit to rule, if ever he had been. With a silent touch he provided the coordinates of the home system of his son and heir, and the tiny ship screamed away into the black night.
The admiral’s eyes were a lavender sea; his cheeks and jaw, a dunescape of soft black sand. The emperor longed to dive into those waters, to cover himself with that beloved flesh. But his heart had one purpose, and one purpose only.
The emperor lifted his empty hands and spoke, his voice grating like metal on stone.
This is my end. And in my end is the beginning.
Before morning, he would face the gallows.
© 2024 Lindsey Godfrey Eccles
About the Author
Lindsey Godfrey Eccles lives on an island in Puget Sound, spending as much time as she can in the woods and on the water and occasionally practicing law. Her fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter and Uncanny, among other places. You can find her atlindseygodfreyeccles.com or @LGEccles.