The air in the gym is frigid, and few other guests are about. Various machines line the sides, several resembling torture contraptions and medical cradles more than they do exercise instruments. Privacy spheres veil several. The space is so wide, all paneled wood and a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, that no one needs to be within twenty meters of each other if they don’t want to—which is how I prefer it. I attract no particular attention as I go through warm-up routines: in some places baring your chest in public is risqué or criminal, but Septet is not one of them.
I work my arms and shoulders until they’re supple, until my rotator cuffs and ulnas turn like well-oiled cogs and my muscles run as warm as a faultless engine. There is a careful balance to strike when most of one’s body is cybernetics—the organic parts must also be maintained, and there’s only so much my nanites can do. Metabolism, maintenance of the viscera, streamlining somatic processes. But to stay in fighting trim I still need to contribute my part.
The pull-up machine registers my body mass as I touch it, adjusting for my muscle index and my cybernetic-to-organic ratio. I grip the bar overhead, adjust my form, and begin. In my former profession, officers often prioritized their legs, but for recreation I’ve found it most satisfying to pit myself against gravity. The line of exertion I can feel clearly down my arms, shoulders, spine; my entire body works and bends itself to this one single goal. I pull. I pull until my feet are off the ground, and hold. Half a minute before I lower myself. The next time I hold a little longer, until I do so for a full minute in the air, aloft only by the power of my hands and arms. It demands the entire apparatus of the body, it stretches every tendon. Ascend, descend. Unnecessary thoughts recede: endorphins cleanse the mind, leaving my senses and perception with the clarity of new glass, of a clear morning.
I move on to leg lifts: less strenuous, since from the knees down I’m cybernetic. By the time I’m done, sweat soaks my breasts and stomach, collecting in the crooks of my elbows, the backs of my knees. Nanites flood through my augmentation couplings, lowering temperature where the pseudoskin doesn’t vent excess heat.
Daji brings me towels and a tray of drinks. She’s gone out of her way to put on a Vimana uniform, though her version is a little less modest—the neckline plunges deeper, the hemline floats shorter. Maroon stockings, burnished with hints of copper, sheathe her legs. “You’re such a vision,” she murmurs as she wipes me down, lingering on the dark seams where flesh blends into musculoskeletal couplings. “Do you suppose I could clean up all this salt with my tongue? It seems wasted on towels.”
“This is a little public. And my sweat contains trace coolant.” Not that she’d have issue ingesting that. The drinks she brought are chilled tea: assam, oolong, ceylon. I sip from each cup. Strong and fragrant, richly flavored, each full of bitter complexity. “I’m surprised you brought me such sober things, not cocktails.”
“I considered that but I got distracted when I found coconut rum in your suite’s sideboard.” She wrinkles her nose. “I thought of throwing it out, but on the off chance that you might enjoy such a freakish and unlovely concoction . . . ”
The idea an AI would have such specific dislikes amuses me. “And here I thought I was going to have you lap it up from between my thighs.” Half-teasing. I don’t know, yet, what to do about intimacy with Daji. Whether it should continue, whether I should indulge myself and her. I’m tending toward yes. Daji is less complicated than Recadat.
“Even for such a treat I’ll not stoop to coconut-flavored anything. I can make parts of my proxy dispense liquor, if you wish. I just need to learn what you like if I’m going to mix cocktails.”
An image, incredibly vivid, flashes through my mind. Of drinking sake straight from her mouth, or vodka from between her breasts and other such outlandish things. I set down one of the cups and put my knuckles under her chin. “My regalia. You’re such a hungry little thing.”
“Exclusively for you.” Daji’s hand strokes my bicep, circles around to my back; she cups her palm over a shoulder blade. “Look at you. Your musculature is made to be serviced by my mouth. In prehistoric times you’d be thought a demigod, a hero born of woman and divine flame.”
“And you’re an immortal seductress out of myth. The populace would throw themselves into boiling cauldrons if it’d amuse you. You would be declared the most gorgeous in all the land.” I cradle her jawline. It’s so easy to fall into this, to fall into her; more than that I want to. “Still would be; I like to think I’m a good judge of feminine beauty and no one I’ve ever met compares to you.”
“Flatterer.” But her smile is wide and genuine; guileless. Or it would be, if she were human. She sits down at my feet and puts her head on my thigh, heedless of the sweat-soaked fabric. I stroke her head as I would a pet, surveying the mostly-empty gym, wondering how much we could get away with.
Through the glass wall I spot a familiar figure stepping out to the pool—Ouru. Ze’s in a nacreous bodysuit, midriff and ankles bared. Ze is slightly soft around the middle, pleasant to look at, zer lower half a runner’s physique. Thighs and calves like the trunks of well-fed trees. Ze is not looking my way, though I have no doubt ze is aware of me. Zer regalia would be watching out for zer, as mine is.
Ouru must have warmed up elsewhere, for ze slips at once into the water. In there ze looks born to it, moving under the currents with naga elegance. I could imagine scales on zer, piscine gills.
“You’re watching zer a little too intently, Detective.” Daji rubs my knee. “I’m right here.”
“Ze’s not my type; too androgynous. It’s useful to know the enemy, isn’t that so?”
“You can study your enemy without staring at zer bare skin.”
“There isn’t much to see,” I say mildly. “My appreciation of zer is entirely respectful.”
I finish my tea. Ouru completes zer laps, gets out of the water, and stretches out beneath an enormous palm frond the color of crocoite. Our connection establishes and I’m pulled into zer virtuality.
When I join zer it is within the image of a Theravada temple, a prayer hall of convex gold ceiling and suspended paper talismans plated in silver. Several Buddhas, reclining or seated beneath bodhi trees with rose-gold and copper canopies. It may be cultural training—I attended temples not unlike this in my youth—but to me this speaks of spirituality far more sincerely than the Cenotaph and Wonsul’s monk costume.
Ouru is waiting for me in the scriptorium, holding in zer hand a long, pleated scroll made of sapphire paper. Ze nods at me. “Thanks for being reasonable.” Then, as if seeing me or rather my body’s specifications for the first time, “You’re mostly prosthetic. Is that by necessity or by choice?”
“I could take that as a very rude question.” From one of the shelves I pluck a hand-bound volume: a theological text that addresses different, syncretic versions of the Siddhartha myth. One has him, the holy prince, as always having been an androgyne. “It’s by choice. I could have had my limbs regrown, but I preferred cybernetics.”
“Hell of an upkeep.”
“Fine once you’ve acclimated; better if you have the means to ease the procedures.” I nod at the virtual setting. “You’re devout?”
“Yes. Just not the pacifistic kind. Judging by your name and accent, you must’ve grown up somewhere Theravada-majority as well.” Ze folds up the scroll and returns it to its place. “You’re working with Recadat, correct? I’m surprised she would let you talk to me. That’s a single-minded young woman.”
“What caused your falling out?”
Ouru’s chuckle is like abacus beads. “She believed her need nobler than mine and that I ought to give way to her when the game has whittled down to the two of us. Each of us believes our cause is the most just or the most urgent, no? I regret that I ever gave her the impression I’d yield victory to her—I don’t like parting ways in acrimony. But it is what it is.”
I run my fingers over the volume in my hand, appreciating the fine detail: the textural arrays, the faint smell of old paper. “What’s your goal, then?” The great wish, the desire that burns so bright in Ouru’s soul that ze would risk zerself in unfathomable machine schemes.
“I could just not tell you. But it’s no secret—I told Recadat. I’d like to become a haruspex.”
Why is everyone obsessed with that, I wonder. The advantages are attractive enough now that—allegedly—the process has been perfected: no more botches like Eurydice. A haruspex is revered on Shenzhen, granted not just comfort but every available privilege. Access to the cutting edge of anti-agathic extension, as close to immortal as a human can get. That was one of the draws for Eurydice; she wanted to live forever. “Bypassing the usual petition process, including Shenzhen’s prohibitive immigration control, I’m guessing.”
“Precisely. The usual process—well, they take few applicants, the criteria are vague and nebulous. This way it’s guaranteed.” Ze gestures toward the far end of the scriptorium, at a window lit by an emerging sunrise. “I don’t intend to lose. Under no circumstances will I forfeit. Do you understand, Khun Thannarat?”
At the window a figure coalesces, blue-black smoke solidifying into a silhouette and then a clear shape—Houyi’s Chariot. My first good look at the regalia. Broad-shouldered and about my height, as Recadat said. Their face remains hidden, save for a visor through which their eyes burn like twin reactors.
“I admire when a person has a clear objective they work toward.” I nod. “Ensine Balaskas has sent me her calling card.”
“Then I anticipate you and your regalia will soon be destroyed. My condolences in advance.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” My eyes remain on Houyi’s Chariot, drawn to the outline of them limned by oil-slick corposant. “Not very talkative, are they?”
“Houyi talks when they deem the world fit to hear their voice.” Ouru gives zer regalia a small fond smile. The expression transforms an unremarkable face into a tender portrait. “Now, you’re going to ask for my cooperation against Ensine. My answer is no.”
“My regalia is Empress Daji Scatters Roses Before Her Throne.”
A small twitch from Houyi. “So she’s back in the game, I didn’t think she would join this round.” Their voice is like a slow rockslide. “Ouru, consider her proposal. Daji is unusual.”
Ouru lets out a soft huff, not quite a laugh. “Coming from you that is high praise. Nevertheless, there can only be one victor. I can’t share the prize.”
The regalia makes a small, inscrutable gesture. “Daji used to be a haruspex.”
That I didn’t anticipate, though it’d explain why my treasure of roses and pelts acts human so well—she used to share a body with one. Ouru widens zer eyes, expression turning thoughtful. Speculative.
“I’ll ask her if she would vouch for your haruspex application,” I offer Ouru. “Put it on the table, though I can’t promise anything absolute. Houyi—what happens to regalia whose duelists have died or forfeited?”
For a moment I expect the AI would not answer. Then they say, “Unattached regalia may not engage in combat without being partnered to a duelist, and they may seek a new duelist to bind themselves to. Ouru and I have been eliminating a number of them.”
Five regalia remain. Only two are unknown variables. “Can one duelist bind themselves to more than one regalia at a time?”
“Not without frying their brains.” Houyi does not elaborate. “We’ll be your allies, provisionally. Contingent on you convincing Daji to assist Ouru. And speaking of that, it’d be best if you leave now.”
I start to ask. The virtuality’s fabric starts to rip. Scriptorium shelves give way to blinding gold. Chun Hyang emerges wreathed in its own brilliance, and where its feet fall Ouru’s virtuality singes and blackens. Houyi’s Chariot steps between their duelist and the intruder, spear drawn.
No point staying and inquiring as to Ouru’s operational security. I pull free of zer virtuality. Back in the gym, in a wash of synaptic storm: the physicality of a hard bench, the sunlight pouring in, and the water murmuring outside. The warm weight of Daji has annexed my lap.
“You were gossiping about me with Houyi.” She bites my earlobe, none too gently. “Very rude, Detective Thannarat.”
“I was implying that you were resplendent, without peer.”
“And yet you were asking Houyi if you could have more than one regalia.”
“As a hypothetical. I don’t plan to adopt any. You’re my only partner.” I wrap my arm around her thick waist. “Your opinion on my little machinations?”
“Clever that you intuited naming me would make Houyi talk. They and I are friendly rivals, though I don’t need their help to take down Chun Hyang.” Her delicate shoulders rise and fall. “I’ve battled Chun Hyang’s Glaive many times, across the rounds.”
I trail one hand down her spine, languorous, appreciating each curve and bend. The architecture of vertebrae: brittle in a human body, impregnable in hers. “The records suggest Chun Hyang has won every round it entered.”
She pinches my forearm. “The archivist is not a reliable narrator. What, you think we’d let him do this silly chronicling if his information was accurate? He’s part of Septet’s infrastructure. The papers he keeps have multiple versions.”
I grimace; she laughs. “And you I am to take as reliable? Why make the Divide so deeply . . . difficult? The deceptions on deceptions, the double- and triple-crossing, the masquerades.” Though I haven’t yet met any human I’d suspect of being an AI, but that is the point. “The destabilizing of all aspirants and duelists.”
“We didn’t create this to make it easy for you to win, Detective. There have been rounds where it was all pyrrhic victory or scorched earth where not a single soul emerged in triumph. This game’s for—” Her head cocks. “Aren’t you going to ask about my time as a haruspex?”
Machines do not hesitate or misspeak. She’s not going to tell me about the Divide’s true aim, though I’m starting to glimpse the iceberg-tip of it. For now that’s a suspicion only. I set the thought aside. “I’m interested in a different question, Daji. Duelists risk themselves in the Divide for tremendous gain. Why do machines bother? Individually, not the great overarching purpose of the Mandate. It can’t be just to stave off boredom—this is too much investment.”
“Says who? An AI can run a range of parallel threads, piloting scores of proxies. Even now I might be entertaining a dozen other lovers.”
“I can hardly fault your appetite.” I kiss her palm. “But I do aim to be your most interesting, such that when I occupy your attention I’ll force you to tunnel down to, oh, five others. When we fuck, that’s going to have to be down to two others at most. So what’s the Divide to you? Personally?”
“Cocky.” Daji squeezes my thigh. “On Shenzhen, where I was made, a haruspex is the incubator for new AIs. You meld with a human and, at the end of this life cycle, the human half dies and is sloughed off. For me—for us—we ran into a . . . neurological incompatibility early on that made it no longer possible for the haruspex to hold. One of us had to give. My human half chose to sacrifice herself so I could continue.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. In me she’ll be immortal. I am her living memorial. But because our time was cut short, it gave me a peculiar longing; I don’t think many AIs share it. I don’t want to become a haruspex again, that was too limiting and I’ve been granted my full capacity since.” She runs her nail up my throat, drawing circles until she reaches my cheek. “I want a companion, Detective. Someone who’ll love and cherish me as my human half did. Someone who is mine, all mine, and who pleases me in all ways. The only one—once I’ve found this companion I will require no other. No more dalliances, no more diversions. Just her.”
I smile, slight, against her thumb. “And have you found such a person?”
“I’ve come close once; now I come closer still. I stand on the brink.” Her hand tightens on my jawline. “This time I don’t intend to lose. I’ll turn Septet to cinders if I need to. Victory, Detective, at any cost.”
By late night I send Ouru a message; ze replies promptly that Houyi successfully repelled Chun Hyang, and that both regalia remain active. Peculiar, I think, that those two keep fighting and yet their battles lead always to a stalemate. Both are holding back, or are playing at a deeper purpose.
“It’s not that,” Daji says when I bring up the subject after I wake up to her face between my thighs and we’ve had our mutual satisfaction. “Chun Hyang and Houyi have a complex. They want a single decisive fight, going all-out, having their duelists use every single override they’ve got. A huge spectacle; they’re building up to it. It’s popular with AIs back on Shenzhen and these two adore being the center of attention.”
“It seems excessive to protract their skirmishes so they can have something worthy of the stage. I never knew AIs could be so theatrical.” My fingers rub along the soft fuzz of hair at the base of Daji’s skull, then against a few stray petals. She’s deactivated her custom perfume; currently she smells like me, of me. Cologne and coolant-tinted sweat. “I want to collect a few more overrides before we commit to anything. Are there more functions to them than the three I’ve seen—Seer, Retribution, and Bulwark?”
“There are several more.” She nuzzles my bare stomach and giggles. “Oh, this is so firm. I love your muscles. I love your body, I can hear the nanites inside you: they make such an orchestra. There are several duelists remaining, and if any of them possesses overrides you could always . . . persuade them you’re in greater need of those.”
Recadat, Ensine Balaskas, myself, Ouru. The rest of the duelists are unaccounted for. “Any override function I should look for?”
“Bulwark is good—that’s for you, but you need me to activate it. Fortress is better; that’s a function for the regalia to deploy. Assembly is situationally useful.” Daji pouts. “More than that I can’t tell you. It’d violate the few rules I have to abide by.”
“It’d help if these things had normal, descriptive names. Whose idea was it to implement so much obscurantism?”
To that she only laughs, a bright ringing peal.
There’s a niggling suspicion that I have. Over and over Daji has told me the rules are as bendable as blades of grass. That this is as much a game of deception as it is a game of might. “I’ll be heading out,” I say.
“I’ll stay near.” Her tongue darts out, licking my thigh. “Walk without fear, Detective.”
I don’t quite put on every piece of armor I own, but it comes close, and I leave the suite well-armed. No telling what to expect.
In the lobby I pass by a wedding party: two brides in red, surrounded by people variously in qipao or shalwar-kameez, chattering excitedly and passing around gilded mandarins. There’s a sense of unreality to this—they’re attempting to lead normal lives on a world that’s anything but, when any moment they might become collateral damage to duelist conflict. I suppose life goes on, and eventually they’ll get the chance to leave this place for the paradise that is Shenzhen, where they will walk glittering streets and purchase gorgeous saris. Eat shark fins and abalones and elephant meat all day. Whatever people do in utopias: I haven’t had the chance to live in one, and I don’t really believe in any. For every surface of frictionless ivory and priceless gemstones, strata of rot throb underneath.
The day is blistering. Libretto is only bearable indoors, and I wonder why every city here is intentionally uncomfortable—there are more hospitable climes on Septet, the Mandate could have built their stage-cities there. Instead they’ve chosen miserable swamps and scorching deserts, as though to make the conditions as dispiriting as possible, and to foment desperation.
I reach Ostrich’s home; he’s less quick to answer this time.
When he does, it is to part the door a few centimeters and peer out. I can smell the stench of his hygiene, or rather the lack thereof. The heat doesn’t treat him well, and he doesn’t appear to shower often. “Yes, Detective?” His voice is tremulous.
“I need a little more information, Ostrich. Mind letting me in?” In my coat pocket, I grip my sidearm.
A long pause during which I consider whether I need to show him my gun’s muzzle, that narrow deadly mouth. Guns can be an expression of the owner, for all that I am not sentimental. Mine is larger than average, the grip coated red-black, the rest of it matte. Fit for conventional ammunition of mid-high calibers, among other types; I like to think people I point it at can appreciate a little of its beauty. In my callow youth I thought of weapons as much like women, temperamental and lethal, compliant once they’ve found the right wielder. These days I’m less pretentious. But there’s still elegance in a weapon, the way it handles, the way it demands attention.
Ostrich steps back. I step in. On his work desk there are stacks of new paper, some already filled with his notes. I pick up one sheet—from a quick skim, these are records of the current round. It contains information to which he could not possibly have been privy, including a list of duelists who fell in the Cadenza arena.
“Preparing for the next round, Ostrich?” I page through the rest. Considerable level of detail, including how Daji and I met. Duelist pursued by Chun Hyang’s Glaive . . . late-game regalia activation, without precedent . . . “You’re thorough. It’s such specialized ethnology, isn’t it, such a unique society. Tell me, is there anything you want the most in life? You can’t possibly want to be stuck on this miserable world, in this miserable town, for the rest of your natural life.”
“I’m content, Detective.”
“No plans to go home? You must have friends and family back in the Catania Protectorate.”
He shifts his weight uncomfortably, his eyes flitting to one of his statuettes, as if they might provide protection or solace. “I was banished.” With difficulty he adds, “For various reasons, but mostly because I didn’t want to marry a woman—any woman. Once word got out, it brought dishonor to my family and my congregation.”
I’m aware, of course, that there are places where certain lines of attraction are censured or outright criminalized. It didn’t occur to me that Catania would be one of those, but then I know little of their religion. “Like a shrine maiden getting exiled because she engaged in a little carnal relation? That’s a raw deal.” Carefully I put down his papers. “Now tell me about your regalia, I assume it is still active.”
Ostrich blinks rapidly. “I’m sorry?”
He’s a lanky man, not that much shorter than I am but so thin as to be skeletal. I lift him off his feet with one hand and slams him into the wall. He chokes on his own breath and saliva; drywall chips and rains down around him. One of the statuettes topples, its white cheek cracking against the grimy floor, its resin wreath fracturing. Brittle—these are not works of art built against impact but cheap replicas, badly extruded.
“You can’t,” he gasps, “the overseer—”
“If there’s a prohibition against harming you, we’d have been explicitly told, wouldn’t we?” I press my gun against the pulse-point in his throat. “Neither is there a prohibition against you entering the game as a duelist. Anything Wonsul’s Exegesis hasn’t forbidden is fair game, whether that’s you using insider knowledge or deploying a Retribution command on a sub-contest. So? I could kill you. If I’m wrong, well, no one said you can’t murder the archivist. If I’m right, it’s perfectly fantastic to murder another duelist.”
“I haven’t done anything to you.”
“Possibly not,” I agree amicably, though I wouldn’t consider an orbital strike nothing. “But I want to win. How come you didn’t attack the Vimana, out of curiosity?”
“You’re staying there. I—I owed you.”
Ah. Sometimes good deeds indeed go rewarded, and more duelists gathered in Cadenza than are accommodated at the hotel. He must have had only one Retribution to spare. “Appreciate it. How many overrides do you own?”
He swallows, his laryngeal lump bobbing against my gun. “Five.”
“Use one to destroy your regalia. Transfer the rest to me.”
The room’s illumination strobes and flashes. Out of the corner of my eye I see several of the statuettes flowing together, assembling into a figure of feathered torso and antlered head, the face featureless except for two parallel silver mouths.
Glass shatters. Daji crashes through in a hail of windowpane and mortar-dust, her blade leading: its serrated edges as black as superionic ice, its length as red as a star’s nucleus. She pins Ostrich’s regalia with precision, blade-tip entering plumage and armor. I watch this act of penetration, a knife coring a fruit, a lover descending upon her betrothed. Violence is about branding and being branded: you own your opponent and they own you, until the moment that decides who shall rise in supremacy.
Daji wrenches at the enemy regalia’s antlers, her fingers gouging into where its optics must reside. It thrashes. One of its arms detaches and lunges at her; her fox proxy pounces on that, shredding the limb as if it is nothing more than rotten wood and wet paper. Methodically it moves on to the rest of the enemy regalia, teeth bared and darkened by lubricant.
“Your regalia isn’t going to overcome mine,” I say calmly. “From the looks of it I’d even suggest you can give me all of your overrides. No need to squander any to destroy your partner. What’s its name anyway?”
His mouth is a thin pale line. Sweat gathers on his brow and upper lip. “Maugris upon the Lake.”
“Pretty. I’m not familiar with the etymology.” I press the gun a little harder, so that when he breathes his pulse pushes against the muzzle. It’ll leave a bruise. “How long have you been doing this, exploiting your position? Except you’ve never won, have you. No matter how many rounds someone was always your better, and even though you survived—through a deal with the overseer, I’m guessing—you never got your wish.”
Ostrich doesn’t answer.
“It can’t be entry into Shenzhen—all your work here would’ve earned you admission already. So it’s something more. A guaranteed haruspex integration? Revenge against Catania?” Daji is providing me with a visual feed of her battle: she has the upper hand, is toying with her opponent almost. She’s collapsed one of its legs, ribboned one of its arms, and torn off handfuls of feathers that she flings, laughing, into the air. Showing off for my benefit, and the benefit of the audience in Shenzhen. Destroy it, Daji, I tell her. Better to leave Ostrich without options.
Tears well up in his eyes. “Take my overrides.”
They appear in my overlays as a constellation, five stars, five sets of commands. The count of regalia has changed once more—three, now. I let go of Ostrich. He crumples to the ground, though I haven’t inflicted any real damage.
“One last time.” Ostrich is crying in earnest. “There was a man I loved—he’s still on Catania—I wanted to see him one last time. That’s all I wanted.”
Love plucks at the seams of you and undoes it one by one—it can become such an obsession, such sickness. Passion and the poison it secretes. Would you bleed for love, Eurydice once asked me, and I had scoffed. In the end I’m not proof against it, against the foolishness it can impel you to commit. This basal force moves me, now, when it might not even matter anymore and I may never have Eurydice back in any concrete way.
“Sorry about that,” I say at length. “Better luck next round.”
Recadat makes sure, this time.
A bar in Libretto, suffocated by smoke and liquor. The ceiling is low to the point of being claustrophobic; the scuffed floorboards smell like calcified hope. A hiding place, though far from the best. Were she an unarmed duelist, deprived of her regalia, she might have run into the wasteland and found a cave in which to hole up until this is all over.
But she is not that. She lost Gwalchmei and then she was found.
And so she is here, hunting. Old techniques serve her well: keeping to her little corner and eavesdropping on conversations. People will say anything when they think they’re safe, even though there’s no privacy filter here, even though they could be struck down any time. She tries not to think of the pair in the dining orchard. More than their faces she remembers the meal, the aroma of it swallowed by blood. What a waste it was.
No one has prosecuted her, but then no one was ever going to. Strip a world of law and what remains is human nature, peeled back to throbbing nerves and twitching tendons and ravenous guts. Recadat rubs her fingers together and visualizes herself as a thing of long teeth and legs made for loping on all fours. Her lover would hold her leash, a length of black iron joined to a jeweled collar whose radiance sinks muted into her fur.
Thannarat used to call her a tiger.
She raises her head. An older man hunches over the bar, continuing to disclose to no one in particular that his life is in danger, that coming here was a grave mistake, and he would get out on the first available ship. Yes, not long now, it can’t be far off, he’s not going to hold on for much longer—the state of his heart, his dwindling funds . . .
In a way it eases her conscience that he is advanced in age, banal in concerns. His motives are opaque to her but it is difficult to imagine a person like this with true interiority, with grand ideas and ambitions. Of course saving Ayothaya is loftier than anything a man like this could desire. Perhaps his cause is as ordinary as escaping debt or he already has plenty and is greedy for more, fantasizing about endless wealth. She does not imagine for him a set of loved ones. Simpler to reduce people to their surfaces—killing becomes, then, almost guiltless. You shoot an empty box, not a being of flesh and sapience.
Recadat has made that compartmentalization many times in public security. The pursuit of justice meant accepting collateral damage as part of the equation.
The man exits. She follows. In the corner of her vision the Divide’s tallies slowly blink. One aspirant remains, and she is almost absolute it is this man. Aspirants are not worth the hunt, not really. But she must make sure. There should be as few variables as possible; hers is not a prize that she can give up.
He moves unsteadily: one drink too many in him. No real awareness that he’s being followed as he makes his way to one of the anonymous tenements. There is no art or finesse necessary to cornering him. She simply strides up behind him and puts her gun to the back of his skull.
She thinks of kicking his legs out, of shattering the bridges that the human body has carefully constructed within itself. A dislocated patella, a fractured tibia. Disabling a person is so simple. She considers interrogating him, but then he would deny that he’s a participant in the Court of Divide, there’s no gain for him in telling the truth. And she does not have time to torture an old man. She pulls the trigger, waits, and this time the Divide module does oblige. Aspirant count down to zero.
Sweat trickles down the back of her knees, down her sternum. Libretto is like the inside of pyrexia even as night approaches, and when Recadat comes to a fountain she climbs into it without thinking. She stands there and lets it drench her, discovering that the water is much cleaner than she thought, potable even. As if the Mandate has decided on planetary deprivation but doesn’t quite know what that looks like. Those residents bedecked in finery, the impeccable tuxedo and qipao.
After a time she feels cleansed. She gets out, dripping, and thinks of what to do next. When she returns to her suite, her lover will congratulate her and reward her lushly in bed. The only space they will not invade is anywhere with Thannarat.
She doesn’t go to her own floor when she returns to the Vimana. Thannarat has given her access and the lift takes her to her old partner’s corridor. For a moment she stands there, damp and cold, not even sure that Thannarat might be in.
The door opens. Her old partner stands on the other side, warmly backlit. For several seconds Recadat can only stare at her, the solidity of this woman, the color of salvation. She realizes she has been silent for too long when Thannarat says, “Come in. You look terrible.”
The private lounge is illuminated in gold—she doesn’t remember seeing that when she last visited. Vases full of roses, basins full of lotuses. Fruits dangle from the ceiling, pomegranates and crimson grapes—particulate projection, but especially well-made. Thannarat herself is lightly dressed, unbelted trousers and loose shirt. Recadat thinks of the images her lover spun, the broad strength of Thannarat’s long, muscled back—she’s struck by the thought of what that would look like glistening with sweat, and quickly throttles the idea back.
“What happened?” Thannarat is steering her to the lounge bathroom.
“Fountain,” Recadat says. Black marble walls, exquisite symmetry. An expansive mirror. The reflections tantalize her, the verge of what could be in this close and intimate space. “It’s a hot night.”
“Every night in this forsaken city is hot.” Thannarat studies her, searching her expression. “Do you need help?”
Delayed response, coming in drenched when normally her habit is to look immaculate. It dawns on Recadat that to Thannarat she must look stricken, shell-shocked. The thought almost wrings a laugh out of her. “Yes. Please.”
Thannarat pulls off her jacket, blunt fingers skimming over the sodden material of her shirt. She stands as still as possible, hardly breathing as the shirt too is taken off. Her bare skin is cold. Her cheeks are hot. “Thannarat,” she says. “What would you do if you found out I did something terrible?”
Her old partner pauses. “Depends. Did you drown an infant? Torch an orphanage? Blow up an entire station?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then we’ll continue to get along. I’m not exactly a saint so I’m not going to judge. Your moral compass is better-made than mine, in any case.” Thannarat drapes a towel over her. “My clothes will sit on you like a sack, but the bathrobe should do you right. There’s plenty of space. Do you want to stay the night?”
Recadat tries to track the direction of Thannarat’s gaze, to divine whether it ever lingered on her. The towel is loose and she wants. For more than a decade she has wanted. In Thannarat’s absence it was a daydream, fondly thought of but safely inert. In her presence it is a tide and now it overflows. “Did you ever . . . ” She grabs Thannarat’s shirt, clenching tight, imagining the hard flesh underneath, the scaffolding of augments. Imagining this pillar of potency rising and falling above her. “Did you ever love anyone but Eurydice? Even a little? Even for a minute, a second, a passing fancy?”
Thannarat’s eyes widen and Recadat thinks that finally this is the moment, the point of mutual realization; that their history will fall into place and then they’ll open a path into the future together. She can see it in the deep umber of Thannarat’s irises, the slight parting of her mouth.
“I’ve always—” Cowardice blunts her. She tries again. “Thannarat, I’ve always . . . ”
The bathroom door swishes open. A woman leans in, her lavish mouth curved. “Detective, have we a guest? So rude that you didn’t introduce us. Please call me Daji, lovely stranger. I am Thannarat’s regalia.”
Recadat stares, rooted to the spot. The woman is voluptuous and short, her skin the flushed gold of sunrise roses, so perfect that it is at once evident she is artifice—that she cannot possibly be anything but an AI’s proxy. Hair like the tail of a black comet, threaded through with spheres of gold, a pointed vixen’s chin and small nose and enormous limpid eyes. Exactly the kind of woman Thannarat likes, tailor-made to her tastes. It dawns on Recadat that the lounge has been decorated around the regalia. An entire room, and the rest of the suite likely, configured to adorn Daji.
Her guts twist. Outwardly she returns the woman’s—the AI’s—pleasantries. But it is autopilot, and the way Daji and Thannarat touch each other confirm the truth. Thannarat’s hand on the regalia’s waist. Daji’s thumb stroking Thannarat’s bicep.
There’s never been a promise between Thannarat and Recadat, never a seed that did not fruit because the soil was fallow. There has only ever been false hope, a foolish delusion on her part.
Don’t you want her? Her lover’s voice pours into her ear like cool water. Don’t you want her, Recadat, like you want a beautiful butterfly? A specimen pinned under glass for your pleasure and perusal. All yours, always.