Shall Machines Divide the Earth, Benjanun Sriduangkaew [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“I want to try something first. It should stall them a little.” To ask for privacy is pointless: Houyi can see anything going on within this fortress. “I’m going to contact Recadat.”

Recadat answers. I did not expect her to.

Our shared virtuality is the bank of a river, and this time the details are precise: we both know Ayothaya the same way we know our own breath, our own dreams. And she, it’s always struck me, is a patriot. Someone who truly loves Ayothaya, who carries it with her wherever she goes. The rich mulch in the lines of her palms, the sky-lanterns and riverbanks folded into the chambers of her heart.

A single person may hold within her the light of an entire world, making of herself a living memorial.

“I still remember the night we met,” she says as we materialize into the visual field. “After we came out of that basement—your face. I saw your face and it was my salvation, my lifeline. I was reborn. A war god brought me out of the dark; my war god. You came with me for therapy. You came with me for every appointment because you knew I had no one else. I never wanted anyone else so badly.”

“You held back.” I never noticed her attraction, the same way she didn’t notice mine. I may always wonder if there was room I could have made, room for Recadat. But as with my love for Eurydice, no other was possible. My ex-wife and I consumed each other. Daji and I do the same. Ten years ago I tried to make a pinhole for Recadat to inhabit, but a pinhole is no place for an entire woman, an entire person.

“Even if you weren’t married, I’d have been—intimidated. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, and if you didn’t feel anything for me I’d have broken our friendship for nothing.” She looks down. “After Eurydice left you, why didn’t you come to me?”

I pick up a lantern float, an arrangement of pandan leaves and asters. Not a traditional choice: Recadat’s selection. “And sully your career? By that point I was practically a criminal. You wouldn’t have given up public security for me.”

“I would have.” She trembles. “For you, anything.”

Anything encompasses so much, and too much. Was I ever willing to dedicate the same to her? No. My choices in the last decade have made that clear. Selfishness has been my compass, and it has undone us both. “I couldn’t have asked that of you. Public security was your life.”

“You were my life.”

There’s no answer I can offer to that, no adequate apologies I can make. My errors were repeated and egregious. Instead I say, “Chun Hyang’s Glaive was going to sell you out. It contacted me offering to become my regalia in exchange for murdering you. I turned it down.”

Recadat stares at me then laughs, a short glassy sound. “Of course it would. Of course you did. I appreciate that, at least.”

“Leave the game,” I say. “Chun Hyang can’t possibly mean you well.”

“You don’t know the half of it. As for giving up, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

Those rapid drops in duelist count. “The people Chun Hyang massacred—”

“I knew.” Recadat clenches her hands. “I’d do anything to save Ayothaya. You’d do anything to bring back Eurydice.”

“I already have what I want. If you forfeit the Divide, I’ll make sure the Hellenes are dealt with.”

“You already have—” All of her goes still. Her jaw tenses. “Then I have no reason to believe you, Thannarat. My regalia’s right about that. Once you’ve won you could use your prize for anything and Ayothaya is far down your list—why would that change now? Your regalia leads you by the nose. She’ll persuade you to waste your wish and play you to the Mandate’s benefits.”

Chun Hyang’s words, almost certainly, in Recadat’s mouth. “She will do no such thing. I’m not so weak-willed as that.” I hold my hand out to her. “Leave Chun Hyang to its devices. Let the Mandate have its sick game. We can still leave this behind and leave this world together.”

“You mean you’ll leave this world with Daji.” For a moment she looks like she’s going to cry, all that careful composure shredded, but she shakes herself and turns away. “I blindly believed in you and that’s never done me any good. You never came here to save Ayothaya.”

The link cuts.

I stare down at my hands, lit by the opulence of Houyi’s fortress. The Mandate may be unthinkably powerful but even they may not rewind time, repair my indecisions in those lost ten years. I am vain. I think of myself as a creature of seamless armor, impregnable to feeling. Again and again I’ve been proven wrong. First by Eurydice then by Recadat, and once more by Daji. In the end, all I am is a faulty clock.

I’ve never been anyone’s deliverance, much less Recadat’s.

Nothing for that, now; I am even less capable of bending time’s arrow than the Mandate. I return to Ouru and Houyi’s Chariot, informing them that my effort has not yielded result and that we should ready ourselves.

Daji does not ask. Instead she turns her fox proxy into gloves once more and helps me put them on. She holds my hands like a vow.

Chapter Eight

Ballistic corposant blasts the sky. Recadat and Ouru burn through their Retribution overrides so quickly that there’s barely any transatmospheric delay, each orbital strike spearing through cloud cover like divine vectors. The fortresses light up, aegis flashing as they dissipate each hit: pure blinding conflagrations that whip across the retina, quick to fade and just as quick to flare again. It brings me unpleasantly back to the Hellenic invasion, though it does not paralyze me. By chance and temperament I escaped the rewriting of neural pathways that might have left me a quivering shell whenever I’m exposed to sudden noise. There’s something to be said for prior