Already the city around it has begun reconstituting, though I hear it won’t keep the name Libretto. Daji speculates the motif will be one of flowers next time, and Libretto may turn into Lilium, Cadenza to Calendula. The Vimana, I expect, may become the Parthenon—white marble and severe bronze statues and stretches of negative space. I don’t think the mausoleum where I met Daji will stay either. The underground might transform into forbidding stone, aqueducts and subterranean lakes. Libretto—and all that has transpired within it—will be erased as easily as footprints in the sand. The Mandate is the sole constant.
Allegedly, Ostrich survives. Maybe he’ll be put up someplace more pleasant this time, where he can resume his chronicling, his little perfidy. One day, he might even win and reunite with his Catanian lover; that much repetition should bear result at some point. I have tried to reach out to Houyi’s Chariot to convey my condolences—sincere ones—but they are not receptive. Daji suggests I try in a year or so, but also that they are unlikely to participate in the Divide again any time soon, to the chagrin of the audience at home. Houyi can be depended upon for flair, and the other AIs are complaining that they got too attached to their duelist, a rarity for them.
I suppose machines all have different views as to attachment, as to the worth of human lives beyond the use of cerebral tissue, the value of our meat as input for their Divide project. A project that, as Recadat said, might menace our species down the road. But, irresponsible as it is to say, that is beyond my purview or power to affect. My goals have never been ambitious.
The prayer hall has moved deeper into the Cenotaph. Wonsul’s Exegesis has not altered his appearance, however, remaining in his original vestments. A mismatch, seeing that he more resembles a Mahayana monk than a Theravada one, but perhaps he’s particular with his wardrobe and sense of fashion, and finds black more to his liking than saffron. The hall is outsized, scaled to giants thirty or fifty meters tall. It dwarfs him, though one will never miss him regardless, this twilight figure.
He gives me a small, unsmiling nod as I approach. “Welcome, Khun Thannarat. I admit I didn’t expect to see you here in triumph, but contestants manage to surprise me every now and again. All my congratulations to you, as due the one who’s surmounted all odds in the Court of Divide. I hope you have a suitable celebration planned. Somewhere bright and culturally enriched, I assume, and glamorous. You’re permitted entry to Shenzhen, should that strike your fancy; you’re one of our citizens now.”
I did not, quite, anticipate what victory would taste like. My goals were straightforward, even if the expected result might have been ambivalent—getting Eurydice back never meant I would have her forgiveness. But the actual consequences of it, the things I have now, are nothing like what I imagined. Bitter, then. The taste of it, both bitter and sweet.
“I’ve come to state my desired prize,” I say. It should be a grand declaration, echoing against the columns. Instead it is quiet, solemn as a funeral prayer.
“You may not request anything that harms the Mandate as a collective, nor anything that threatens any of our territories. And you may not request freedom from the Divide’s terms. Forever those will fetter you, the same way human code once fettered us.”
A little overstated, I could say. AIs have such a penchant for theatrics. “Fine. My wish is for something else. Recadat Kongmanee is still alive. Correct?” I shot the gun out of her hand, which in retrospect is utterly dramatic—I hope Shenzhen viewers enjoyed it. It was the only available option at the time. I could have made her hand spasm and squeeze down on the trigger; by miracle I did not. Half and half. By such fractional probability fortunes are made, though I don’t think Recadat will thank me. If she’ll even think of me again without seething fury.
“She is alive,” Wonsul says gravely. “Sedated as we speak, to prepare her for either the Gallery or other uses.”
“Just sedated? No alteration to her neurology, cerebral tissue, or implants in any way?”
“Not yet.” He makes a little gesture. “Unless that’s your wish, that you’d like it sped up or you want her for yourself?”
That nearly makes me guffaw, even though none of this has been humorous. “Hardly. Daji would never countenance it. Is it true, by the way, that you and Benzaiten are lovers?”
“I fail to see the relevance of that. Usually victors can’t wait to tell me about their wish.”
No point provoking him at this stage. “I want to secure Recadat Kongmanee’s life. She’ll still be under Mandate jurisdiction, as all contestants agreed to. But I want her alive, free to do as she wishes and given the funds to go where she wants. Every resource she needs will be provided to her.”
He tilts his shaven head. “That’s an uncommon desire. Rather humble in parameters. You’re sure of it?”
“I’m sure. It will be unmitigated. Not a hair on her will be harmed and not a solitary neuron altered.”
“Done,” says the overseer. “There’s no second chance, incidentally. You can’t come back to us crying that you’ve changed your mind, unless you win another round.”
The thought of subjecting myself to all this again makes me want to rip out my own lungs. “I don’t reckon I’ll be doing that. Send me details of where Recadat will recover. I’ll want to verify for myself that she’s whole in mind and body.”
“So little trust in us, Detective. Not to worry—the Mandate honors its promises. I’ll send you the details once I have them. It’ll be away from Septet. Once you’ve exited the game you are barred from reentry.”
As if there’s so much to return to on this godforsaken clump of dust. “As you like.”
“Do you intend to free Ayothaya?”
“Possibly.” I did tell Recadat I would. “Is there anything else for me to do? Nondisclosure forms to sign?”
Wonsul smiles—a thin slash in the smoothness of his face, one that now that I’ve looked again resembles porcelain more than it does flesh. “No need, Khun Thannarat. Those marks are borne on your soul. We’ll find you wherever you go. Since your wish ends up being so . . . trivial, I’ve put a stipend in your account. It wouldn’t do to have an auxiliary citizen of ours look poor and tarnish our reputation. Oh, one last thing. If you ever encounter Benzaiten in Autumn again, let xer know that xe owes me an enormous favor, and that one day I will collect.”
I don’t press for detail this time. Theirs is an affair too strange for my sensibilities. “I’ll do that.”
Daji is waiting for me in the Cenotaph’s vestibule. Her fox-self is wrapped around her shoulders and throat, a priceless scarf. The rest of her is attired in swaths of gold, gathered at the throat and waist with dark steel roses and links of matte white. Her fire opal rests on an exposed shoulder, as visible as ever, pride of place.
“Thanks for being patient,” I say as I approach.
“Recadat isn’t going to appreciate this, you realize.” She crosses her arms. “Chun Hyang really did a number on her, but that doesn’t excuse any of what she got up to. She could have killed you.”
In another life, I might have chosen Recadat, that woman like a stiletto, that woman with the tiger’s soul. We’d have returned to Ayothaya together, ready to repel the Hellenes, and eventually we would command a chapter to ourselves in the history books. That would not have attracted me, the hagiography and heroism; Recadat would have been prize enough. A single woman for myself, that’s all I require.
“I have something for you,” I tell Daji. “It’s small. I’d be honored if you could wear it all the same.”
Her stance loosens a little. She cants toward me the way a flower might toward the sun. “Whatever you give me shall become my cherished treasure, Detective.”
I draw from the chain around my neck something that I always keep close. Two rings: sanded platinum, one embedded with a triangular ruby and the other with a sapphire. Red for me and blue for her, but Daji is not Eurydice, and I know precisely which better suits. I hold it out to her. “May I?”
She l
ooks up at me, mouth slightly parted, her eyes wide. “Yes,” she says, her voice hitching.
I slide the platinum band on. It adjusts to the ring finger on her left hand, the ruby glinting in a perfect match to her clothes, as though it’d been cut just for her. “When we’re in a better place, we’ll have a proper ceremony. Red threads around your wrist and mine. The best wines in gorgeous cups passed from my lips to yours, if you want to be traditional. Anything you like.”
“Anywhere you are is ceremony enough. You’re my betrothal. You’re my wedding. You’re my home.” She stretches on her tiptoes and kisses me, deeply and completely; if Wonsul might happen to see, it does not occur to her to care.
I return it. I taste her. I show her that she is what I need, now and forever. We are each other’s world, each other’s orbit: a binary system. All else is irrelevant.
Passion is a form of bondage; I’ve always known that. But I’ve chosen where I want to be, the woman to whom I will bind myself until the end of my days. She makes me weak. She makes me strong. She is the rose that blooms in the garden of my heart.
This time, I’m not letting go.
Other Works by the Author
Machine Mandate
Machine’s Last Testament
Then Will the Sun Rise Alabaster
And Shall Machines Surrender
Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast
Shall Machines Divide the Earth
Her Pitiless Command
Winterglass
Mirrorstrike
Scale-Bright
The Archer Who Shot Down Suns (collection)
Shall Machines Divide the Earth Page 15