Now Will Machines Hollow the Beast by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (e books free to read txt) 📗

If your tastes run to royalty—though really Rajathi’s not much to look at, Savita’s a little better but she’s no great beauty. I’m much prettier, commander, and I could play at being a princess if you ever feel the need. In seriousness, should you promise her the run of the place, Rajathi would sell her mother out in a heartbeat and bring you her sister’s eyeballs on a platter. As a treat.”

She runs her fingers back and forth over a ceramic-clad hip, draws circles over a pale stomach. “Suppose we do that, would you like to be installed in Nirupa’s place? Rule a little kingdom of your own, we can claim it as an Amaryllis protectorate.”

“I’d look good with a crown on my head. Nowhere near as good as being under you, though.” Xuejiao grins. “At heart and soul, I’m a soldier; better conquer this place and sell it off. And I don’t want to be away from you, Admiral. I want to belong to you forever.”

Forever, a word often said and not always meant—a word Anoushka has heard often, pledged to her. She hikes Xuejiao’s skirt up and kisses a narrow, pointed knee, circling one small ankle with her hand. “In a century you may feel differently.”

“In a century,” Xuejiao says, her breathing a little fast, “I’ll remain as true to you as I am now, as absolute. By then you’ll finally treat me as permanent as Lady Numadesi.”

“I adore you, my beautiful doll.” She parts the lieutenant’s enameled thighs. “All the same, forever is a long time. One of us may change. Inevitably people do. But to have now, that is itself a gift.”

“Now. With you. Ah. Deeper, commander.” The lieutenant lets out a sharp breath. “I don’t know how soundproof these walls are.”

“What of it? People know what married women do with one another.” Anoushka nibbles her way down, leaving teeth-prints on the taut belly, the hard muscles that armor Xuejiao’s ribcage. How she relishes this, the richness of a woman’s arousal, the adrenaline-bright knowledge that she can bring it on with a gaze, a touch. She bites deeply into the cool, tender skin of an inner thigh. Above her, Xuejiao moans through her teeth.

Later she withdraws her drenched fingers and licks them as though they are coated in honey. Her wife lies spent, sweat pearling her breasts and celadon parts.

“You’ve been trying to drive me clear out of my wits,” Xuejiao says, hoarse. “And as usual you’ve been succeeding. But, Admiral, I’ve noticed you have been . . . angry. Since we boarded. Something about this place gets under your skin. The people too—the servants, the royalty, all of this.”

Anoushka strokes the spots where she has imprinted her teeth. “Perhaps.” Too much of an open book to her wives. Whom she did, after all, choose partly for their ability, their intelligence. For the way their brilliance can strike her deep and ignite the fire of her want. She switches to an Amaryllis cipher. “This place has a certain significance, and I’ve allowed that to twist my temper. One day I’ll tell you, just not while we’re in enemy territory. Until then I ask you, my wife, to have patience and to anchor me.”

“That’ll be my honor, Admiral.” Xuejiao laces her fingers through Anoushka’s. Then pecks their tips, one by one. “Another titbit. Princess Rajathi said an odd thing about AI allying with humans and it makes me think she’s aware the Armada’s done business with Shenzhen Sphere before. While I wouldn’t make much of it—that information’s not hard to acquire—I didn’t expect her to be that informed.”

“The princess must have made inquiries.” She leans close, trailing her nails along her lieutenant’s jawline. “But we must be off to that recreation deck or Savita will get very cross.”

“You can always suggest you’re amenable to taking her against a tree,” Xuejiao says brightly. “That’ll uncross her fast enough, if Rajathi’s gossip is anything to go by.”

Anoushka laughs, startled, delighted. Even if her wife doesn’t quite know it, cannot yet access the whole of Anoushka’s history, this centers her. She kisses Xuejiao and thinks keeping hold of herself in this world-beast, this abattoir, will not be so impossible—what is impossible in her long life? Nothing. Vishnu’s Leviathan is merely another battle, Queen Nirupa no more than a trifling obstacle. Soon the sequence of her self, the fight that began in this leviathan’s belly and her genesis there, will come to a catharsis and she will at last be free of it: she will be perfect and absolute.

“I am surprised,” Numadesi says slowly, “that you’d take such interest in a person as unremarkable as myself.”

The AI remains where xe is, nearly pressing up against her. Even this close there is still no physical evidence xe is anything other than what the haruspex surface suggests: a Thai woman in her prime with dermal implants, decorative but nothing more. There’s nothing in the eyes, no electric coronae around the pupils or some buzzing radiance that emanates from the irises. The eyes, Numadesi thinks, humans are obsessed with divining a deep truth from them. Pointless, of course. A person with mastery of their face can hide anything and the eyes are no more communicative than the mouth, the creasing of the brows or the clenching of the fists.

Benzaiten steps back. Lowers xer hands to xer sides. “It is insulting,” xe says slowly. “You don’t believe in haruspices, do you? As far as you’re concerned, Krissana isn’t real at all but a threadbare veneer I put on for no explicable reason. What do you suppose I’d gain from it?”

A sudden shift in subject. Numadesi considers whether the young sergeant will arrive in time should she summon them; probably not. Nor would they accomplish much against a haruspex. “I suppose you’d be able to infiltrate human society, insofar as you need to. I’m not familiar with the interior of the AI mind, guest of my lord. There could be a thousand reasons, as varied as the stars and