Not wanting to wait to get back to her quarters, she opened the vial and sipped the sapho. The taste was pungent and bitter, not at all sweet, as it appeared. Deciding that a mere sip could not possibly be enough, she upended the vial and drained it before she could react further to the taste.

She hid the empty vial at the back of a shelf and licked her lips. She rubbed her mouth on her forearm, leaving a red stain. She wondered how long it would take for her to notice the effects of the sapho. Anna hurried away from the dispensary with whispering footsteps, imagining the severe consequences she would face if she were caught.

If she were caught …

That thought triggered a troubling echo in her mind, and she began to think of other times she’d been caught at the Imperial Palace, and other consequences. Horrific consequences. She felt memories well up, one after another, like bubbles rising to the surface of a boiling pot.

With sapho, the bubble-memories were brighter and fresher than they would have been otherwise, vivid in all of their details. She remembered slipping away to meet her young lover. She had loved Hirondo with such intensity, although he was only a palace chef who was deemed inappropriate for her affections. It wasn’t fair! The romance lasted for several weeks before they were discovered and torn from each other’s arms. After she kept trying to see him, Hirondo was banished — perhaps executed, she was never sure — and then she was exiled to the Sisterhood school on Rossak.

The sapho continued to work inside her brain, triggering more memories.

When she was fifteen, she had taken some of Empress Tabrina’s jewelry because she thought it was pretty. The Empress accused one of the female servants of stealing it, and Anna was relieved that she hadn’t been caught. But when the servant was sentenced to disfiguration as punishment, Anna produced the pilfered jewels and admitted her own guilt.

That should have been the end of the matter, but Emperor Salvador was not satisfied. “Sister, you have to understand consequences and know that you’re responsible when other people get in the way of your indiscretions.” He flared his nostrils. “We will carry out the sentence as decreed.”

And so, Anna had been forced to watch in horrified silence as the servant, still wailing her innocence and begging for mercy, had one of her arms severed.

The memories were so vivid, the pain so fresh and clear, that Anna stumbled into a wall. Recovering her balance, she kept pushing forward, trying to make her way back to her quarters.

More memories surfaced like bats swooping out of a cave at dusk, and the more painful they were, the more intense they appeared in her mind. She could see only her past and not the dim corridors of the Mentat School.

“Help,” she whispered aloud, but she was far from her mysterious friend, who never spoke to her except when she was in her own room. Anna fumbled along, her eyes closed, but that didn’t help, because images continued to flow across her thoughts. She finally found a door that seemed to be her chamber. She pushed it open and tumbled inside, hoping she was in the right place.

The sapho continued to rush through her bloodstream.

She remembered one of her beloved pets, a silky dog so small it could curl up in her lap. But it barked too much, and Salvador always hated it. Her dog died mysteriously, and Anna never knew whether or not the Emperor had instructed one of his guards to poison it. Dear Roderick had consoled her and offered to replace the animal, even though that would never heal her heartache. But Salvador overrode his brother, forbidding more dogs in the palace.

Now, in the dim room Anna staggered forward and bumped her shin painfully against a chair. Her chair. She found her bed by accident and sprawled onto it. The universe of her past whirled around her like a cyclone, gathering strength.

“Help me,” she said aloud. “I can’t stop.”

The memories grew louder, more intense. She saw herself as a girl, playing in the extensive palace gardens and arboretum. But now she had more context, more understanding. She had been too young to comprehend the politics of what was happening in the Imperium, the turmoil caused by the release of the Orange Catholic Bible, how the people despised the Commission of Ecumenical Translators who claimed to speak for God. The popular mood was already raw and inflamed from constant Butlerian provocations, and Emperor Jules had struggled to keep his government from tearing itself apart. As a girl, she hadn’t understood why the CET members, led by their spokesman Toure Bomoko, remained in protective exile.

She had been such an innocent child that day when she went out to the waterwheel cottage on the palace grounds, where she expected to play uninterrupted.

Now, thanks to the sapho, the memory came fully alive inside her. A child again, Anna crept up to the open window, surprised to hear voices inside, since the cottage was rarely used. Heavy breathing and strange noises … a scuffle, judging by the sounds. And a woman crying out. Anna had never heard such a sound before, but it seemed like pain or surprise, or perhaps fear.

Then she saw Orenna with a naked man on top of her. Orenna was flailing her arms, trying to beat the man away … or was she clutching him? Anna couldn’t tell.

When the girl yelled for help, the man jerked away, and she recognized him as Toure Bomoko, head of the CET delegation. Now, Orenna did look terrified — her wide eyes turned toward Anna at the window. The girl screamed again, and the guards came running as Bomoko fled.…

The sapho reawakened her memories of the uproar in the palace and the rage on Emperor Jules’s face. Orenna, the so-called Virgin Empress, was in despair, filled with fear, and Anna had been certain it was because she was afraid of that man attacking her.

In a completely unconvincing voice, Lady Orenna was forced to publicly accuse Bomoko of raping her. The disgraced CET members, in protective exile, were rounded up and arrested, but Bomoko had disappeared.

Anna had never seen her father so furious, so disturbed. She never forgot his words. “I’m so proud of you for the treachery you exposed, daughter. You have done a fine thing that will strengthen our Imperium.” As a reward — Jules insisted it was a reward — he allowed her, forced her, to watch as the CET members were dragged into the courtyard. One after another, the men and women were decapitated, a more ancient and barbaric means of execution than had been used in many centuries. Horrified, with tears streaming down her face, Anna had watched each one die.

Thanks to the sapho coursing through her, she now remembered those sounds of death in incredible detail: the sharp thud, the pop of a severed spine, a wet rain of spraying blood. When she had tried to turn away, her father made her look.

Salvador and Roderick were also there. Even though her brothers were much older than Anna, they seemed confused about what was happening. But Toure Bomoko escaped, and had never been found in all the years afterward. He remained a hunted man, and sightings still occurred regularly.

Anna had tried to erase the scars of those memories, but the sapho reopened the wounds. The memories burned like flames in her mind. The drug surged through her bloodstream, unlocking door after door in her thoughts until finally the sapho wore off and the memories faded. She lay sobbing on her bed.

It was then, at last, that she heard the voice of her special new friend, calm and supportive, yet also curious.

“I take it the sapho unlocked your memories? Excellent! You must tell me what happened — tell me everything.”

Chapter 29 (Just repeating a statement often)