The shuttle to Cadenza is more crowded than I would expect, filled with people who look ordinary enough, just commuting. I find my seat and settle in, surveying the other rows. Eighteen duelists remain, seven without regalia and five with. A fair number would be aboard this shuttle; many would know each other’s face already, and Ouru would recognize mine through zer regalia.
Ze does a good job of appearing nondescript—a honeyed complexion undecorated by dermals or scars, a face that could belong anywhere, plain well-fitted kurta and pants. Southeast Asian, I’d say, and therefore ze might have come from any number of polities; we have that in common. Tiny earrings, white gold or electrum; no rings or bracelets that would get in the way in combat. Zer hands are spatulate, lightly callused around the thumbs. Ambidextrous.
I lean across my seat. “I’m Thannarat.” My name offered as goodwill. “I don’t suppose we could talk?”
Ouru doesn’t pretend surprise. “More privately, please.”
We open a link. I fold my hands and make a show of looking out the window, to a view of Septet’s ruinscape. There is not much forestry in this part of the equator, and the land is a vastness of jaundiced earth broken up by those impossible skeletons. A few look reptilian while others look like they could have been chimeras, horned and long-hoofed but with inexplicable primate features.
You’re the new duelist. The last one. How did you survive Chun Hyang’s Glaive?
The usual way, I inform zer, by not dying. I trust Houyi’s Chariot is well?
Ze unwraps a protein bar—it smells surprisingly good, savory with shallots and dried meats—and begins to eat. Houyi is the only remaining regalia who stands a chance of contesting Chun Hyang. That should inform your forthcoming decisions.
My smile is slow. In my fogged reflection in the window, it looks like a gash. I don’t bother demanding redress for zer attempt to snipe me down. Certainly I’ll take it into account. May I ask why you spared the duelist Recadat?
Ouru’s head twitches. Ah. She’s the one who told you about me. I imagine she didn’t tell you that we had a falling out due to an ideological difference and then she turned on me. Once she understood that she could not take me down in combat, she reached a deal with me: I’d spare her in exchange for her destroying her own regalia.
So much for Gwalchmei Bears Lilies. How did she do that to a proxy?
Ze bites off half the protein bar. An override, how else? If I were you, I wouldn’t trust Recadat. To do this to your own regalia is an act of terrible perfidy.
Never mind that Ouru drove her to it in the first place, though I can see what ze means. A point of honor: your life or your regalia’s. Then again Gwalchmei merely lost a proxy, not his entire existence—the disparity in risk between duelist and regalia is enormous. I press zer for more details on the loser’s fate, but ze is not forthcoming, busying zerself with zer little meal. All ze offers is, Try the Gallery.
We land in good time. Cadenza is a city of gnarled obsidian spires and high robed walls, bracketed by a body of water that brachiates across the ground. Briars and orchids drape the balconies and walkways, striping the streets in green shadows. The Divide system informs me that the sub-contest will begin within the day but nothing more specific. I keep an eye on the duelist and regalia counts, and keep my hand ready on the draw. I’m more vulnerable to attacks than ever, and I have already revealed myself as a duelist while on the shuttle.
The rule against bringing your regalia doesn’t forbid me to stay within a certain radius of you, comes Daji’s voice. In fact, that rule doesn’t kick in until you enter the arena proper. I’m watching over you, Detective. In case you get the idea of debauching some pretty young thing in Cadenza.
“I have standards,” I murmur under my breath. Cadenza’s denizens have a look I can only call swampy—stooped by the indignities of living in this place, perpetually damp, with hair that makes me think of marsh weeds. The climate here is horrendously humid.
The arena could be anywhere—from the city map I would guess either the stadium in the center or the megastructure in Cadenza’s eastern half, an enormous edifice that looms almost as high as the skeletal beasts beyond the walls. I stroll about, sticking to places with good cover where I won’t be easy mark for a sniper. Ouru could make another attempt.
A storefront draws my eye. Mostly antiques, with one panel devoted to jewelry: elaborate crowns and necklaces of dynastic designs, tiny void jewelry settings, miniature tableaus made from semiprecious stones and ivory. What catches my attention is a single fire opal. Six point five carats, according to my overlays, suspended in a little cube without any setting. It reminds me of Eurydice. This would have been to her tastes.
On impulse—not quite yet knowing what for—I purchase the fire opal. The price is not low, but the proprietor is excited with the Vatican bracelet, and in the end I have to pay little.
I exit the shop to find Recadat waiting for me. Reliably punctual: she didn’t board the same shuttle I did—she would’ve been recognized by Ouru and the rest—and so she arrived later, but not by much. She cuts a spare figure beneath a spread of orchids, a single point of efficiency amidst the tropical excess. When I teased her about being popular with women, I meant it—she has the needlepoint look of a stiletto, the trim glistening threat of something slender and utterly deadly. My opposite. When we first got to know each other I was surprised at how squeamish she could be in her philosophy and naivety, because on the field she was savagely competent. Tiger-spirited, almost a different person.
When she looks up, her gaze zeroes in on my purchase. “Who’s that for?” The question is surprisingly sharp before it softens into something more playful: “You did pick up a woman! I knew it.”
“It’s just some bauble. I might wish to look at a fine object in my spare time.” I put the fire opal away. “We should get moving.”
Wonsul’s voice sounds in my ear promptly, directing me toward the megastructure. He specifies the route and adds that any deviation from it will disqualify me. Sensible: each duelist will receive their own instruction, such that our paths will never cross before we reach the arena. I nod to Recadat. She will not enter the sub-contest, but will provide me with support. No part of the rules forbids such cooperation.
Up close, the place is even larger than it looked from above, the dimensions of it so gargantuan that the entire block is cast in jade shadow. Overgrowth swathes the banked walls and the bent columns, frothing out of cracked stone like ichor. I enter through a little gate Wonsul points me to.
It shuts behind me. Past that awaits a cavernous chamber and a single cage; inside the cage, a child of ten or twelve. Sedated. A first-aid kit lies on the ground.
“Duelists.” Wonsul’s voice emits from everywhere, every nook and cranny serving as his mouthpiece. “Be informed that this arena is not a sanctuary zone. One of you will have found a child. That shall be your objective: to win, bring her to the arena’s center. If you lose her or eliminate her yourself, you forfeit the contest. If you leave the arena’s bounds, you forfeit the contest. As with all other ceremonies, this is a duel to the death; all means may be utilized to achieve your goals, outside of using your regalia. May victory find you.”
I open the first-aid kit and fish out a neutralizing tab. Keeping the child—almost certainly an AI proxy piloted by Wonsul’s Exegesis—unconscious would minimize mess, but I have nothing I can fashion into a sling, and fighting one-handed is suicidal. To make sure of all my options, I heft the child up: light enough for me to carry, should it come to that. The kit also contains a sedative patch, in case I need to put her back to sleep. Considerate.
The override Recadat transferred me offers three options: Retribution, which calls down an orbital strike. Seer, which gives me access to satellites that would let me map the area and monitor other participants for a few minutes. The final option is labeled simply Bulwark. It requires triple-factor authentication—from myself, and the rest from my regalia. Daji doesn’t answer when I inquire.
No jamming in the area. I pluck from my belt a tiny casket and pour out a handful of swarmbots no larger than poppy seeds. They fleet through cracks in the stone, and in a moment I have a visual of my part of the arena. Recadat’s overlays hail mine and we establish a synchronization link: she’s brought her own scouts and their view expand mine as they spread and cover more ground. The arena is densely but haphazardly built, seraphinite-colored chambers stacked on top of each other, connected by the occasional stairway and passage. I’ve been put into one of the lower levels and the openings and gaps between floors means I’ll be easy pickings for duelists who have entered through one of the higher tiers.
My destination is a round little gazebo, accessible by two narrow catwalks exposed to the elements and also to other duelists. One of whom is heading toward me. I don’t see Ouru; ze must be in a part of the arena my bots and Recadat’s haven’t reached yet.
The first duelist coming for me is a short, stocky man situated several levels above. Well-armed and evidently equipped with reconnaissance gear similar to mine. Reckless: he doesn’t anticipate that other contestants would have scouted the area too.
He’s climbing down a ladder when a shot takes him out. Precisely placed: it enters the back of his skull and punches cleanly through the medulla oblongata. Consciousness shuts down nearly instantly—a painless way to go, but looks ignoble all the same. Comical almost, how the muscles spasm in its last throes, how the collapse looks more like a puppet’s than a person’s.
The count of active duelists ticks down. Seventeen.
I open the cage, retrieve the child, and administer the tab that’ll flush out the sedative. She comes awake with a jerk and a cough—convincing, for an AI proxy. When she meets my eyes, her gaze is vacant. I don’t let Recadat view my visual feed. She’s soft and would err on the side of assuming that this is a human child.
“On your feet,” I say. The child obeys. Good; the AI has decided to spare me play-acted hysterics. “You’re to follow me. Closely. Can you do that?”
She nods. I don’t have sensors with biotelemetry functions, though a proxy can emulate human vital signs in any case—the only way to know for sure is to cut the chassis open. Her movements are stiff and heavy. That will be an issue.
I venture out the corridor, keeping an eye on what my scouts are sending me. I take a stairway and ascend without event, the child in tow. I can avoid the other duelists, though not for long. Two are directly above me, moving in parallel passages so that when I exit into the open air—a natural chokepoint—they’d be flanking me.
You doing all right in there, Thannarat? Recadat’s frown is almost perceptible through the connection, even though we share no visual except the bots’.
Fine, considering. Keep expanding our range. The bots can do more than scout. As I move toward the chokepoint, I direct a stream of them toward one of the duelists, a wide-hipped man. Some cyborgs with military-grade defenses have personal dampener fields that’d have shorted out the bots; this person is not one of them. My swarmers streak into his ears and nose, puncture the wet surface tension of an eyeball and release a vitreous flood. The human face is a vulnerable entryway, full of unprotected orifices. Each offers up an open channel to the gossamer barrier of the meninges, the trembling isthmuses of cranial nerves, the artful whorls of the cerebrum. A little time in forensics is worth years of medical education. Mathematics and physics too, for fluid travel and splatter vectors—projecting where the blood will land after a gunshot, a knife slash, a switchblade stab. Everything has its own signature.
As soon as I emerge, I shoot almost without looking—I know the other duelist’s exact position. He topples over screaming, one knee shattered. I fire again and he turns quiet. The counter ticks down once more: fifteen.
Ouru and Ensine Balaskas are the only known quantities here, and I have yet to encounter the latter. I still haven’t seen Ouru, and I’ve expended some scouts; they now cover much less ground. I send the ones remaining ahead of me. Recadat’s bots are a little more sluggish, hovering near the arena’s periphery.
A different connection blinks on. You pilot these things well, Detective, for a human. A specialty?
I have a minor affinity for machines. The path is clear for the next couple stairways; good enough. I thought our regalia aren’t meant to interfere or assist.
Daji laughs in my ear, lover-close. I’m offering commentary, who’ll chastise me for that? My help doesn’t come so easily.
Get too tart, I tell her, and when I return to the Vimana I’ll chastise you well enough. Because this is what she wants to hear, the expected retort in the script she’s set up between us. Her the petulant, flighty seductress in need of a firm hand.
Oh, you know just what to say; I’ve picked the right duelist. But don’t let the thought of disciplining me distract you.
A segment of my swarmbots extinguishes, but not before I catch the visual—Ouru. I don’t have enough scouts left to replace those, but I can now approximate zer location and trajectory. Not coming my way but moving to the center. Ze lacks my recon tools and, most likely, means to find a spot near the gazebo where ze can snipe down any approaching opponent.
The child stumbles behind me. Hefting her up I put her on my back and say, “Hold onto me. Your legs too.” To my fortune, the child weighs no more than fifty kilos. Practically featherweight and my hands remain free. Still she adds bulk and disturbs my balance. Not my first time with a small person slung on my back, all the same. I keep up my pace, staying beneath the cover of foliage and slanted boulders.
Recadat’s scouts spot a duelist sighting me down. I duck—the child slides off me; she’ll be safe enough on the ground—and return fire. Bullets ping off stone.
Ouru chooses that moment to fry my swarmers, shutting down my view of the gazebo. I swear through my teeth, but I’ll soon be there—
Daji’s roses blaze in the corner of my vision. Detective. Get out of there. Now.
I don’t ask questions; she would not send a message like this without cause. I hoist the child into my arms and start running back the way I came. A shot cracks above me and another; one grazes my shoulder but I don’t slow down—the time for assessing damage will be later. For now the point is to have a later.
My trajectory is not ideal. I stare down a crumbled walkway and take a running leap, landing on the other side more heavily than I’d like: the floor dents and the tiles creak.
I’m clear of the arena, ninety meters out, when light lances down the sky. The orbital strike is surgical. The heat of it singes my cheeks and buffets my hair; when it is over afterimages strobe across my retinas.
On the ground the child stirs and twitches. It is when her gaze clears and she starts screaming that I realize I have been carrying a flesh-and-blood creature, human and not an AI proxy after all. In the Divide module, the count of duelists has dropped to eleven.
Wonsul’s Exegesis picked up the child before I departed Cadenza; her parents had agreed, evidently, to sacrifice her to the contest in exchange for accelerated entry into Shenzhen Sphere. So much for the nobility of parental love. Still, the girl’s alive; sometimes that’s all you can ask for.
Unfortunately the overseer does not agree to hand me an override even if I’m the de facto winner. Recadat is safe, if shaken. Nothing quite like this has happened so far during this round of the Divide. She stayed behind in Cadenza to see if she can find out who engaged the Retribution command.
The graze on my shoulder proves merely cosmetic, an unlovely scratch on artificial shell but nothing more, and I return to Libretto without incident.
Once I’m in the Vimana suite I breathe more easily—it is a false illusion, but habit situates the human mind to regard a base, a temporary residence, as refuge. I toss my coat aside and settle down on a divan.
Daji glides behind me, sliding cool hands onto my shoulders. “I can almost smell your adrenaline,” she says in my ear. “It’s piquant. Welcome home, Detective.”
I inhale—Daji smells of roses and pomegranates. Olfactory emitters, customizable to any fragrance. From my pocket I bring out the box from the antique shop. “This is for you.”
A rustle as she removes it from its paper lining. “Close your eyes.” I comply; after a few seconds she murmurs, “Now open them.”
I do to the sight of Daji kneeling between my legs, dressed once more in that scantiness of pelts and petals. The fire opal gleams between her collarbones, embedded into her chassis. It looks right at home, complementing the shades of her flower-and-fox raiment. She has placed one of her hands on my thigh. Her other holds a prosthesis—mine; she must’ve been cataloguing the contents of my suitcase.
“Let me,” she says, “take care of you.”
My breath hitches. She is right that I’m still fresh from the fight, blood coursing with the near-miss of that orbital strike. To narrowly escape your mortality gives quick spice to the libido, and this would be such an easy way to extinguish those inconvenient embers I carry for Recadat. “You’re a proxy.”
“That does not mean I lack. Quite the opposite. In me you’ll find all that you need, my duelist.” She leans a little closer. “I’ve been so patient. Should I not be rewarded a little? Should you not indulge yourself so your humors will be soothed, your hungers sated? Then you’ll be ready for the rest. The Divide is a taxing campaign.”
“And duelist and regalia should be wedded in intent and action, so I have heard.” A split second’s decision that I may later regret. For the moment I can only think of how soft her skin looks, how voluptuous she is, the banquet offered by her breasts. Those indentations of clavicles framing the fire opal. I take off one glove and cup her face, running my thumb along jawline and then earlobe. Utterly authentic. I’d never know I am with a machine.
Daji grins, her teeth showing sharp and fine and ravenous. She unbuckles my belt then replaces it with the harness that secures the prosthesis to me. I activate the module associated with it, the sensory array that joins my nervous system to the device: a thick length of supple material, done in oxblood. Once it is affixed and online, it rests between my legs, soft.
Her fingers graze slowly along the shaft, stroking, teasing. It stiffens. “Sensitive,” she says. “This responds to your arousal, doesn’t it? Most appliances of this category are more . . . static.”
I rub my thumb against her lips. Feels, briefly, the tips of her incisors. Little needlepoints. “This stays hard as long as I have the will.”
“A lovely function.” Her hand encircles the device, taking hold, running up and down: exploring its contours, its dimensions. She breathes onto its tip. Her tongue darts out, but does not touch. “How virile you are, Detective.”
My nipples are hard, painful points. Hers too—what she wears does not cover much, though for the moment it gives modesty to her lower half. Her skull feels delicate in my palm, avian, made for a creature of aerodynamics and endless expanses. “Enough talking, Daji. Show me what you’re made for.”
She places her hands on my thighs and takes the length between her lips, nearly all of it at once. An impossible feat for most human partners, the piece being considerable in dimensions—her mouth is endlessly capacious. She works the prosthesis as though it is her favorite instrument, her attention a thing of arias and complex maneuvers. My breathing serrates as her teeth put pressure on the most sensitive points. My vision brightens. I dig my fingers into her scalp and can tell from her quickened pace that this is exactly what she likes, how she wants to be handled, the fulcrum of her desire. Machine, yes. Not without her preferences, all the same.
It doesn’t take long before I convulse and fill her mouth with a substance the color and consistency of thick wine. Daji swallows it all, lapping it up as though it’s the most precious liquor this side of the galaxy.
“The profile of good sangria,” she says. “Your taste is good and you taste excellent.”
I exhale. “We’re far from done.”
“Yes, I can tell, this is still hard—”
While I may be no judge of AIs, I am a good judge of women. So I am confident when I yank her up by the hair, close one hand around her throat, and growl, “You do like it rough, don’t you.”
Her eyelashes beat rapidly. Part black, part gold. Subtly dichroic. “This you call rough, Detective?”
I use her neck as a handhold to drag her to her feet and fling her onto the bed: enough force to knock the wind out of her, if she was a non-augmented human. She lies very still, her hands flat against the cerise sheets that bunch and crease around her like stricken lilies.
“I can accommodate any desire,” Daji purrs, her eyes brilliant. “In the most literal sense. My anatomy—it can be anything you want.”
“Give me a cunt,” I say, pulling off the pelt that covers her waist and hip.
What appears at first blank—mannequin neutrality—shifts and reflows, rearranging itself into that familiar part, one of my favorite sights on a partner. I should be unsettled; instead this thrills me, the strangeness of it, the display of machine finesse. She’s given herself the gorgeous folds of labia, the unmistakable clitoral nub as hard as a pearl. Comprehensive in detail, a locus where basal urges intersect. I can smell her heat, her salt.
My left hand on the back of her neck. My right on her wrist, wrenching it so far back that on a human her elbow might have snapped or dislocated. But she’s strong, a body of numinous might, impossible for me to damage. Daji is a canvas that will never tear no matter the force of the pen, the searing of the ink.
I lower myself and push into her with the most minimal of resistance. She is slick, a furnace, far hotter than her mouth. Her inside caresses my prosthesis, nearly as dexterous as her fingers. The world tunnels down to sensation, to the motions of her juddering like a rag doll beneath me, to the bed shaking under us like tectonic prayer. Several times I fill her, flip her over, fill her again.
When I withdraw from her I am panting, my limbic architecture sundered by the song of her, my mind reconstituting piece by piece. She levers herself up, meeting my eyes, flushed. Her lower lip is swollen and bleeding—she must have bitten it.
“If we had unlimited time,” I whisper, “I’d be fucking your mouth again.”
There is no airiness in her laugh: it is deep, smoky, onyx and oodh. “We do have a lot of time. Not unlimited though; who has eternity? Not even the Mandate itself. You were wonderfully rough. A human would be incredibly sore right about now, but I’m not one of those, so we are a most perfect match.” Her hand slides up my thigh, to the silk shirt which has come loose and gaping. “The whole of you makes an interesting artistic perspective from down here. Every square millimeter of you is so pleasing.”
I drop to the bed; we lie facing each other. My own cunt is engorged, sensitive. “Do you often do this?” I fit my hand into her lumbar curve, half-expecting to find it gone to metal and silicon. But it stays flesh-like, deceptively organic. A few roses susurrate under my fingers.
“Do what? Have a good time?” Daji rubs the base of the prosthesis. My nervous system rings staccato with each touch. “Tell me, Detective. Does the fact I’m a proxy add to the appeal? Do you find the synthetic fascinating, the alloyed skin more alluring than skin that is not?”
“You’re well aware that your chosen looks are breathtaking. A woman hardly needs to have such . . . specific predilections to want to push you up against the wall and make you scream.” I pinch one bare breast. She arches into me, as reactive as a taut wire. “But perhaps.”
Her lips purse on the thumb of my free hand. She talks around it as she might around a cigarette. “I can tell a fetish when I see it—the alacrity of your orgasms. The vigor. Not that I mind; some humans are ashamed of wanting a proxy and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.”
“So you’ve tried other humans before.”
“Possessive,” she says, pleased. “It’s just that I don’t enjoy intercourse between my own kind, whereas what we just did together? That’s exactly what I crave. Exquisite. Addictive. And you’re so honest about your wants.”
I run my nail over her jaw; I suspect that even if I try to break skin, I would leave no marks, or no marks that won’t heal within minutes. My thumb reaches the choker around her throat. I pull. The choker snaps. Beneath it, her throat is a vision. “Is your preference common among AIs?”
“Not at all, though most of my peers don’t care who I choose to pursue. A few are prudes and would tell you I’m sick. Why, does it bother you that you just fucked a machine pervert?”
“Hardly. You and I are both perverts.” I kiss the back of her hand, repeating that gesture that sealed our pact. “I assume Wonsul didn’t take issue with you giving me a warning. Seeing that you were able to monitor overrides.”
“Retribution is a rather blatant command. A human could’ve seen an oncoming orbital strike with the naked eye. Wonsul cannot fault me for using my optics.”
Except she warned me well before it landed. The Retribution armament, being Mandate equipment, would be cutting-edge. There would have been no telltale prelude to a discharge, and certainly not that far ahead. “How much is a regalia supposed to see into the Divide system?”
“Walls are permeable things. For any destination there are a hundred thousand roads to it. Every rule is made to be bent. That’s how the game is played.” Daji taps my nose. “Now, the real reason you joined the Court of Divide.”
Sex where I don’t need to hold back has a strange effect on me. The aftermath of it wildly varies; for intimacy to be its immediate consequence is rare. I might tell her anything. “I came from Ayothaya.” Her weight shifts on the mattress as she twines herself closer to me, one thigh slipping between mine. As if she can’t get enough of me, or a good pretense of such. “My life there was unremarkable—I worked as a detective with public security and went freelance after I realized the force inflicted violence to the guiltless more than it prevented. Not because I’m some altruist. I dislike senselessness.”
“When we shear the world in half, we demarcate with great precision: those who wield themselves like a knife and those who wield themselves like a whip.” She nods.“This is an inexact quote—it comes from a meditation on violence, a text one of my duelists liked. You belong to the taxonomy of the blade; violence may excite you, but you don’t strike indiscriminately.”
My mouth quirks. “I don’t know about that. In any case, I could find all the thrill I wanted working for myself and did well enough at it to prosper. During all this I had a wife, and our marriage . . . There was a gulf that kept widening until we could no longer bridge the difference. It wasn’t the nature of my job—that never bothered her. But she felt I lacked . . . that I couldn’t show properly that I loved her, to the point she couldn’t tell if I loved her at all.”
Her hand slips under my shirt and comes to rest on a breast. One of her roses caresses my stomach; I was right that they’re part of her, appendages as mobile as her fingers. “I disagree. You’re perfectly good at showing how you feel.”
“No, Eurydice had the right of it. I was a fool. And then she caught wind of the haruspex initiative.” Haruspices: the composites that live on Shenzhen Sphere, sacred cyborgs who are half human and half AI—two beings, one body. “She had a lifelong fascination with machines; we had that in common. Once the haruspex initiative opened to outside applicants, she divorced me and left for Shenzhen.”
“Heartless,” Daji whispers.
“She did what was right for herself. I was—” Disconsolate, because I was selfish; because I wanted things to continue as they were, comfortable for me and unbearable for her. “A few years later, I was contacted by the Mandate. Their representative let me know that Eurydice had listed me as her next of kin and that the haruspex process had failed. That nothing of her was left except a copy of her neural stacks and genetic information. The day after, a queen’s ransom materialized in my account. I was going to send it back, but it turned out there was no source. The money just showed up as though it’d always been there, as though that was any kind of compensation. The Mandate didn’t respond to my demands for Eurydice’s data. I never heard from an AI again.”
“Until you met Benzaiten?”
“The Hellenes decimated our military, executed our commanders and ministers, and charred a good amount of our infrastructure. There’s a Hellenic governor installed there now, sitting in our capital. Citizens are interdicted from leaving—I got out because I had the means and the contacts and the wealth. Most didn’t.” My mouth twitches. Not exactly a smile, more a rictus. “Benzaiten came to me while I was on a ship, bound for nowhere important. Xe told me about Septet, knowing that I’d be motivated to enter the Divide either way—by the invasion or by the . . . by what happened to my ex-wife. Why xe singled me out I wouldn’t begin to guess. Some machine caprice.”
Daji drums her fingertips on my nipple. Her roses tickle my ribcage. “I’m a machine and I’m capricious, so I shouldn’t take offense. Well, which is it? The Hellenes or your ex-wife?”
“Eurydice,” I say at once. For so long I’ve mourned her. Grief is an irrevocable beast: it can eat and eat until the meat and gristle are cleaned from the bones, and then it’ll crush the bones and swallow them down. I’ve fought it for years. I intend to conquer it at last.
She stiffens. “You’re a woman motivated by passion above all. I shouldn’t be surprised. The subjugation of your homeworld doesn’t offend you?”
“It does. Who knows—before the end I may change my mind.” Recadat’s idealism against my self-interest.
“If you choose war, Detective, I’ll personally accompany you to Ayothaya and settle the score. A whole warship of me. Their troops will fall before me like walls of dust.”
“An extravagant offer.” I gather a handful of her hair and inhale. Still rose and pomegranate, tinged with sangria. A notification blinks in the corner of my vision. The Vimana’s. “Let me get the door.” I unclasp the harness and leave the prosthesis in Daji’s keeping—she raises an eyebrow and murmurs something about remote access. The fox climbs onto my shoulder.
There’s no one at the door; on the floor is a sealed envelope, black striped with gold. The suite’s security feed shows me that no one has been in this part of the corridor. An AI must have made the delivery.
I open the door partway. The fox trots out to retrieve the envelope and returns with the paper in its mouth. Nothing explosive or toxic that I can detect, says Daji. No anti-cybernetic payload, no anything that could harm you. From material composition this appears to be plain paper. Black ink: carbon, solvent, surfactant, the usual.
All the same I put on my gloves before touching the thing. Conventional adhesive. Perfectly good paper, the envelope stiff and the letter within thick and sumptuous. Neat handwriting; Cyrillic script. My overlays translate: Felicitations to the late-coming duelist partnered to the regalia of roses. I am sure you know who I am—my reputation must precede me. Unlike most who join the Court of Divide I have no wish, save to pursue the purest form of conversation: combat. I sense that you have instincts not unlike mine, a connoisseur of the soldier’s ataraxia. Let us meet honestly and test ourselves, duelist against duelist and regalia against regalia. I’ve attached a place and time.
Yours, Ensine Balaskas.
Recadat meets her lover in a dining orchard where pollen glitters like gold and tourmaline, and the air is redolent with frangipani and persimmons. Foliage both true and artificial cups the restaurant in a palm of boughs and canopies, though they don’t entirely mask Cadenza’s hot, muddy stench. Her lover’s table perches on a stretch of obsidian that juts out from the building’s flank, and though there are railings—translucent, barely visible—she feels as she sits down that they’re at the edge of a precipice, a vast plummet. Sixteen floors aboveground and fatal.
Her lover has already started in on their meal. The cut of meat on their plate is so raw that it rests in a puddle of its own death, like fresh kill, and they’re cutting slices so thin and fine that it should not be possible with a table knife. They lift one morsel to their mouth, swallow it whole. The meat is tender, well-marbled, glistening with blood and marinade. Salt, she guesses, and flecks of spice she does not recognize. The dish is as far from Ayothayan cuisine as it can be.
“Have you had a good outing?” They lick a red blot off their full lips. Today they’ve painted their mouth the shade of graphite. “What good fortune that you weren’t there when the arena was struck.”
“Did you do it?”
A small chuckle—it rings the mesh of chimes they wear like sealing talismans around their throat. “You know I didn’t. I would never harm a woman who occupies so much of your thought.”
“She doesn’t—”
They take hold of Recadat’s wrist, a fingernail in duochrome digging into her flesh. Not painful. Enough to interrupt her sentence. “What news from Ayothaya?”
She composes herself. “Another town burned. Someone had the bright idea to try armed resistance. That didn’t go well, the Hellenes outgunned them completely.” And are not prone to leniency. She wishes she could have told the insurgents to choose differently; to coordinate with other efforts, to bear with the state of atrocity. To wait. She wishes she could send secret messages, but Septet is closed to outside networks. The only news she can get from Ayothaya is via Mandate-sanctioned information brokers, coming neither cheap nor fast.
“Detective Thannarat didn’t give you updates?”
“She must have made detours before coming here, to get prepped and armed, to gather everything she’d need for Septet. Her information’s no more recent than mine.”
Her lover spears another slice of meat, this one thicker, the shape of it making her think of a tongue. They eat the morsel immaculately. “Do you really believe that? Does she behave or sound like a patriot?”
Recadat brushes an insect off her sleeve. A gnat. There was an excess of mosquitoes where she came from, and she used to have a phobia as a child that extended to all bugs: the way their bodies could release unseen horrors, pustulent liquid and larvae and egg sacs. Insect promiscuity. Her cheeks itch. “You don’t have to be a patriot to want a home to go back to.”
“It is true that you’ve known her for so long while I don’t know her at all, except through your accounting. My judgment of her character could be incorrect.” They empty their long-stemmed glass in a single draw and still make that look surgical rather than sloppy. “Yet she doesn’t strike me as driven by a sense of home. What you and she have come here to do requires that you’re ready to confront the limits of your mortal coil. My impression, however, is that she has nothing in particular to return to, no piece of Ayothaya she’d die to preserve. What do you think?”
“Of course she does. Everyone has something.” But if pressed, she wouldn’t be able to name any for Thannarat other than Eurydice, and that’s gone. She admired that in her senior partner, that core of absolute independence, unburdened by attachment. No place for softness, no chink in the armor. A force of nature more than a human being.
“A world is so little, Recadat. What matters is passion. That is what propels people to great deeds, to terrible carnage. To hate or love is the true fuel behind human motive. You’ll immolate yourself for it and march forward even as you burn.”
In the link she shares with her lover, images unfold: life-size, so that in her vision their table is suddenly surrounded by a battalion of Thannarat. Some clothed, others much less so. The hard bulk of her, the physique of a mountain, unyielding and permanent: Thannarat’s back makes her think of boulders. Even the bare shoulders captivate—the potency they promise, the suggestion of what she is capable of. Recadat wrenches her gaze away from a glimpse of wiry hair between two thick thighs ridged with cybernetic connectors. “Stop that.”
“They’re approximations. Did I err in my extrapolation of her musculoskeletal structure? Perhaps she has more scars, interesting ones that arrest your eyes? You could show me your own simulacra. Over the years you must’ve made several for private use, imbued them with rudimentary heuristics and linked them to your sensory arrays. To simulate what it might be like to lie with the woman you long for the most.”
“I’ve done no such thing.” Completely disrespectful, utterly violating. She never even considered it.
“My poor Recadat,” they murmur, dismissing Thannarat’s doppelgangers, “not even an outlet for all that pent-up frustration. It’s not as if you are sworn to chastity, given everything you let me do to you in bed and how much you enjoy it, the sounds you make—”
“Stop that,” Recadat says again, cheeks blistering. The nearest table is far away enough that she hopes they didn’t overhear. Two young people, a couple she thinks, one in tuxedo and the other in an adapted hanfu. Excellent tailoring; she would know, having invested a good deal in her own wardrobe. On Septet marks of wealth are ubiquitous—signifiers of poverty are confined to border residences—but there is no real commerce beyond tourist attractions. She can’t make sense of the world’s economy, if it even has one. All of it seems pantomimed. “Have you found more duelists? I’ve been busy.”
Her lover refills their glass, seemingly just so they can swirl it, that liquor the sumptuous color of brass. They peer at her over the wine-wet rim. “Why do you think I asked to meet here? The table behind you—the one in the tuxedo—that is a duelist. He is without a regalia. Nevertheless it’s best to cull the herd, wouldn’t you agree. The fewer pieces on the board, the cleaner things shall be.”
“Do you want to shadow him or shall I?” She’s done that so many times on Septet. As if her career in public security never ended, a seamless continuation. Stalking a suspect. Stakeouts.
Their eyes widen. “Why? You can kill him where he sits. It saves so much time and we have such a long list to work our way down.”
Recadat glances at that table. Situated far enough they cannot eavesdrop: that has different significance now. Neither the supposed duelist nor his companion appears threatening, though she knows that is deceptive. Duelists can be anyone, look like anything. “In broad daylight?”
“This is Septet, my jewel. All violence is permitted. Everyone has agreed to death and ought to defend themselves accordingly, take the appropriate precautions. Who sits down to dine unarmed? You’d never be so complacent. Detective Thannarat wouldn’t be either. Oh, think of this as helping her.”
“I’m not going to just walk over and shoot someone in the head.”
“You can sit right here and shoot him in the head, Recadat. The range is nothing and you’ve got perfectly outstanding aim.”
Recadat’s breath scrapes through her teeth. Her lover has not yet been wrong, has singled out duelists with the unerring precision of a hawk. She looks at the remains of their meal, now reduced to a thin smear, every shred of meat put away. “And his companion?”
“She’s an ordinary Septet citizen, insofar as this place has a citizenry.”
The pair is twenty-two, twenty-five at most—practically adolescent. She can hardly remember being that young. Her hope is that they are not related or in love: it’s easier to carry this out if she imagines they are coworkers, casual acquaintances, something brief and impermanent. Few tables in the orchard are filled, and she knows neither patrons nor staff will stop her. There’s no public security here, no authority to appeal to. Wonsul’s Exegesis will intervene only if Divide rules are being broken. Homicide is beyond his jurisdiction or, she suspects, his interest. What do machines care for morals or human lives.
Despite everything, she’s never committed such an act. That she has the capability is not in question: she dislikes violence and yet has found herself prodigious at it. Adrenaline suspends her doubt, enables her to do what is necessary in the moment even if afterward she might regret it. But on Septet there is no social contract; there is only the savage demand of the Divide, the reduction of people to feral beasts.
Recadat gets up. She strides to the table, and once she’s close both the man and woman look up at her, startled—perplexed. There is no hint of recognition in his face that she’s a threat, and he still looks surprised when the muzzle of her gun enters his field of vision. The impact of the shot sends him reeling back. Instantly gone. The human skull is not designed to withstand such force, and he appears unaugmented.
His companion screams, scrambling away as blood leaks and soaks the table, its spotless cloth, the meal they’ve just shared. Escargot and foie gras, plated with a truly fine eye, postmodern and architectural. All those tessellated layers. She thinks of leaving a large tip, a compliment to the chef.
The woman flees. The other tables are now empty. They know what is going on, and that there is no recourse: to stay is to risk a duelist’s bloodthirst, and they would assume she has her regalia about. She holsters her gun, stepping away from the corpse, and waits for the duelist count to go down.
A full minute passes. The count stays at eleven. Impossible—the system updates within seconds, if not the very moment the duelist’s brain terminates and the final shred of consciousness succumbs.
Recadat stands there, turning cold as her lover sidles up behind her, placing a snakeskin-gloved hand in the small of her back.
“My bad,” they purr against her neck. “Even I make mistakes, jewel. But it is as I said, everyone who lives on Septet consents to this potential fate. Don’t think anything of it. No one is going to. Are you hungry? Let me treat you; I trust the kitchen staff hasn’t evacuated.”