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

which must have parched. She swallows, visibly working against the panic response, the amygdala’s raw instincts. “The sabotage from years ago, the assassination attempt on me, those are connected. My enemy’s been playing a long game. I may well have been maneuvered into opening my world to outsiders and I must find out who’s behind this.”

“I’ll need all the data you have on both, of course.”

“Yes.” A pulse of connection from the queen. “You’ll have the gratitude of Vishnu’s Leviathan always, Admiral.”

“Very good, Your Majesty. I trust we’ll all benefit.” She inclines her head.

I will destroy everything you love, she thinks, and then I will destroy you.

In her long decades Anoushka has learned the value of setting the stage, of all the things that contribute to awe or intimidation, of engineering the reactions she wants to elicit. And so when she returns to her harrier, she seats herself and drapes Xuejiao over her lap like a beautiful pelt made of woman and electrum and gemstones. She knows the mores on the leviathan, and knows that this display will shock. For Savita, it will look like a prelude.

She brushes Xuejiao’s hair in slow, careful strokes, sable bristles susurrating through seal-black hair. Her wife leans into the touch, into her, the portrait of obedience—a pet tamed, and content to stay that way.

Opposite them, putting herself as far as she can, Savita sits with her mouth rigid and her expression like stone. She does not make herself small—still too much pride for that. “You’ve spoken to my mother.”

“So I have.” Anoushka sets down the hairbrush and slides one hand into her lieutenant’s diminutive dress, taking firm hold of a small breast and drawing it free of the silk. Her thumb circles a cobalt nipple. “My Xuejiao used to be a priestess who dedicated her chastity to a barbaric god. I sacked her city and scorched her temple. The clergy there was chosen for their beauty and I found her the most tantalizing among them, so I seized her for my personal use. At first she hated me and cursed me for a devil, a monster from the most outlandish sort of afterlife you can imagine. I took my time with her, though. I broke her in and trained her, made of her a fine stiletto. Now she’ll let me do anything to her, and she’ll do anything for me. What do you think of that, Your Highness?” Pure invention, but it fits her reputation well enough.

From Savita’s expression, the tale—virgin priestess and all—is more than credible. The princess opens her mouth and shuts it with a click. “I have no opinion, Admiral. It hardly seems relevant.”

She can shatter this girl; she can crumple this brittleness to dust. The virulence of the thought catches Anoushka by surprise. “Your mother gave you to me. You’re her collateral against the safety of Vishnu’s Leviathan and, I would guess, that of herself and your sister.” She pulls a slim choker out of her coat, placing it on the table. “This is a network nullifier. It will lock and form temporary bridges to your implants, so please don’t try to take it off. Without my key, attempted removal will fry some of your nerve clusters and disable motor control. Not fatal, but not pleasant.”

The princess looks at her. “I’m not putting that on.”

Anoushka kisses her lieutenant on the ear before gently setting her aside. In an instant she is on her feet, grabs the choker, and steps behind Savita. She closes the device around the royal throat: the click is loud, final.

Savita tries to twist away from her but there is little room, and she blocks the way, looming over the girl, nearly straddling the chair.

“There’s no need to be so distraught, Your Highness, I’ve never pressed my attentions on anyone who doesn’t want it—though many have been known to beg for it in the end, isn’t that curious?” Anoushka smooths down a nonexistent crease on her sleeve. “Queen Nirupa has sent me a fair amount of intelligence; with time I’ll discover who’s behind all this easily enough. But there is missing information. How is it possible that an imposter was able to infiltrate the ranks of your servants? I don’t mean copying the phenotype. I mean that the leviathan has its own verification system. An outsider may imitate the phenotype but not certain characteristics for which your servants are bred. An imposter would’ve been found out immediately—both the leviathan and the symbiotes would have rejected them.”

Savita moves her lips but no word comes out. Her respiration rate has spiked. She inhales and flinches from the scent of Anoushka’s cologne, the sharpness of bergamot and clementine. “I don’t . . . ”

“You do, princess. You’ve been prepared for the throne.” Anoushka places her knee on an armrest. “Your mother must have some idea of where the leak is. How it happened. How it happened so badly that someone was able to suborn the recreation deck’s systems—and those also require leviathan overrides. The ones only you, your sister, and your mother should have.”

The princess trembles—Anoushka imagines how long the girl would have lasted in the leviathan’s belly. “It was . . . ” Savita licks her lips. “Over a century ago, closer to two. Before I was even born. Ventral-deck servants escaped and it was a catastrophe. Our enemies must have captured them and made copies of their leviathan implants. We’ve been dealing with hostile action since, but Mother kept us in lacunal space to escape the worst of it.”

Leviathan implants. An understatement; in truth they are more like extra organs, built into the body of a servant to make them instruments and appendages to the world-beast. She thinks of the hollow places in her own body, the craters and absences that once harbored the pheromonal transmitters and receivers. Her old body—little remains of her original tissue, after those initial cheap body mods and then a total body revision under the scalpel of an Amaryllis doctor. How she exulted in those, even in the pain,