“Wait—” I say, but she runs into the hall, and the door purls shut behind her.
Outside, someone is screaming.
And screaming.
I cover my ears, and the screaming stops. My legs are shaky; hunger pinches my belly.
I lie back on the bed, thinking over all that has happened, and all that I remember so far. Every new memory brings with it a knot of horror that grows every moment. The panel of the wall lights up, and tangled blue and red geometric designs dance there. Is it a language, as I suspect? What is it telling me about the ship?
I don’t know how long it is before the door opens, but it’s long enough for me to consider if it’s possible to eat through the door.
Jayd enters, her face looking haggard and drawn.
“The bargain,” I say.
“Rasida Bhavaja, Lord Bhavaja, has always loved me,” Jayd says. “Or perhaps just been obsessed with me. We have parlayed with their family many times over the years. And now I carry something else that they have been fighting many other worlds to get a hold of. That combination . . . is potent. Anat proposes that I give myself to Rasida in exchange for peace, so you can board the Mokshi unhindered.”
“You agreed to this?” I say, incredulous.
“One does not disagree with Anat.”
“Don’t do it,” I say. “I can take the Mokshi without a truce. I can go in alone. No armies. If I go in alone—”
“When you go in alone, you come back without a memory,” Jayd says. “To protect you from whatever happens in there, and to take the Mokshi properly, you must get more women in there with you, and we can’t do that with the Bhavajas picking off whatever the Mokshi doesn’t. You can’t do it alone. We’ve tried.” She presses her lips firmly together, as if she’s said too much.
“We can try again,” I say.
“With another army?” Jayd says. “We’ve lost too many of our sisters, Zan. It’s not working.”
“I can protect you,” I say, and I know in that moment I can. I feel it fiercely.
“Oh, Zan,” Jayd says, and she opens her arms and I fall into them, resting my cheek against Jayd’s head, holding her close enough that I can feel the trembling of her heart. She is afraid. I don’t trust anything she says, but this fear is not a lie. “This is everything we wanted, Zan. But I’m going to have to do so many terrible things.”
“Why?” I say.
She does not answer, only continues stroking my hair. This is among the many things she does not want me to know. I wonder if they are the things that would make me go mad.
“You can convince Anat to hold off,” I say.
“There have been many chances,” Jayd says, pulling away. She wraps her hands in mine. “This is the only way to have peace.”
“Peace for who?” I say. “There’s no peace when you’re a slave.”
“It isn’t like that,” Jayd says. “Rasida Bhavaja is a smart, handsome woman—”
“She’s bought you like some animal!”
“It will be a fair exchange,” Jayd says, and her tone is dark. “I will make sure of that. She has asked for me many times. She once told Anat she would exchange a whole world for me, but Anat knows the Bhavajas too well. She knew Rasida would do something like attack and retake that world the moment we were joined.”
“But you believe she’ll be peaceful this time?” I say.
“I believe there will be peace long enough for you to get to the Mokshi,” Jayd says. “That’s all that matters. Once you have it, Anat will follow you there, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“The rest of what?”
“The world is dying,” Jayd says. “This is the best option.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“The answers will come in time. You have to trust this.”
“Don’t do this.” She is all I know of the world. And she will be leaving it.
“If I say no, she’ll recycle me. We must be united in this. If the Bhavajas think you harbor any ill will, it can turn out very badly. Please, Zan. This is what we wanted.”
I can’t see any way to fight my way out of this that doesn’t involve trying to turn Anat’s whole army on her. The army Anat last raised is dead back at the Mokshi, and I don’t know how many more conscripts she has somewhere in the other levels of the world. Getting them to fight for me instead of Anat would require me to have far more power than I command now. Right now I’m little more than a conscripted soldier, myself.
And then something far darker occurs to me, and I ask, “What will happen to me when you’re gone?”
“You’ll be all right,” Jayd says, but she does not look at me.
“You want to go,” I say flatly.
“This is the way it’s supposed to go, Zan,” she says, lowering her voice further still. “This is all we ever hoped for, I promise you.”
“You speak words without saying anything.”
“I’m saving you.”
“Have Anat send me. Have her marry me to Rasida.”
“Oh, Zan.”
“Why can’t they take me?”
Jayd leans into me, so close I feel her breath on my cheek. “I have something inside of me,” Jayd says. “Something they want so badly they will stop fighting if I go with Rasida. This womb I carry will save us, Zan, and the Legion.” She caresses my cheek. “Let this go, Zan. Let’s go forward.”
Something inside of me, Jayd says.
A memory blooms.
A three-headed woman, screaming. Blood on my arms. A big obsidian machete in my hand. They know too much, too much, I think as I swing the machete, and lop off one of the heads.
I jerk away from Jayd. “What are we?” I say. “What have we done?”
“We’ve done what we had to do,” Jayd says. She pulls away from me.
“WAR MAKES MONSTERS OF US ALL. BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE OF US WHO NO LONGER WISH TO BE MONSTERS?”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
8
JAYD
For as long as I’ve been alive, Rasida Bhavaja and her family have been the only things I truly fear. I fear her more than I fear my mother, because they are the only family in the Legion strong enough to defy her. My fear, however, is mixed with respect, as Rasida has been able to do what I have not. She has been able to get Anat to fear her.
Yet if the Katazyrnas are to survive, and the Legion is to be spared, it was inevitable that one of us would have to either kill Rasida or marry her to end the war. What I never told Anat was that it had to be me. She needed to think that was her idea. When I came to Anat after doing what I did during the war with the Mokshi and told her what I had stolen, she had rejoiced. For a time, she praised me as her best daughter. Her smartest daughter. Her most ruthless daughter. But I had made the wrong choice. I knew it as we recycled all those people, and Katazyrna still rotted around us. I had chosen to please Anat over my own sense, and I feared I would never be able to make it right.
But now I have the chance to do what I should have done in the first place. Now I can atone for all those bodies, all that betrayal.
Even as Anat held the iron arm aloft, that great glimmering trophy I had brought home for her, I knew that she would never make me Lord of Katazyrna as I had hoped. I would never be given the power I needed to defeat the Bhavajas and steal the womb we all knew they had, the one that could save far more than just Katazyrna. I had to go back to the Mokshi and atone.
And this was the way Zan and I came up with to get what we needed. It was a foolish, dangerous plan, but this was indeed a foolish, dangerous place.
We prepare to receive the Bhavajas in the great reception hall. All of my best sisters are with me—little Maibe with the shaved head; tall Neith, who looks nearly as old as our mother, one eye gouged out and crossed with a scar; stocky Suld with the twisted hand; Anka and Aiju, the young twins just past menarche; and Prisha, a slip of a woman with soft hands and softer features.
I pretend not to notice when
Maibe slides up beside Zan, clasps her elbow, and says, “You look like a poorer copy every time you come back. Something about your eyes. Always so blankly stupid, getting stupider every time.”
“Your face is stupider,” Zan says, and I probably laugh too hard at that, but I’m so full of anxiety and anticipation and fear and hope that I’m almost trembling. I hope that this will all be over very soon, because to stand here much longer with Zan’s desperate, innocent stare on me will break my heart.
While we wait for the arrival of the Bhavajas, Zan stares at the coiling streamers of lights dancing along the ceiling, and I follow her gaze. I’m not sure if she understands what they are yet. I don’t think so. But Zan has always kept her thoughts close. The last time we went through the stumbling memory-loss-and-recovery, she had tried to kill me twice before she fully understood what had brought us to this place, and the depth of my betrayal. This is all necessary. I know that, but it doesn’t make it hurt less when she remembers why.
When Anat enters, holding her iron arm aloft, its green glowing core painting harsh shadows across her face, I straighten and move closer to Zan. Even now, I feel protective of her. It’s my fault she’s in the position she is.
Gavatra comes in behind Anat. “Our guests have arrived,” Gavatra says. “Let us assemble for the exchange.”
I take a deep breath and move away from Zan so I stand halfway between Gavatra and my sisters.
Anat comes up beside me, and it is not difficult to pretend at apprehension. So much depends on this moment.
Anat’s boxy face is split wide with a little half-grin that I find repulsive. Two skinny bottom-worlders stand beside her, armed with burst weapons, which I think would provoke more than reassure, but I say nothing. These talks have been going on for some time. We have fought the Bhavajas for generations, since long before the Mokshi appeared on the Outer Rim, cut loose from the Core. Whatever the Katazyrnas want, the Bhavajas want, and vice versa. It’s been a long, weary dance.
Rasida Bhavaja strides into our assembly room with a great retinue of her family behind her; a dozen, all told. I recognize her mother, Nashatra, and two of her sisters, Aditva and Samdi, and Rasida introduces them and the others to Anat and my sisters. It seems like a terrible number of Bhavajas to have on our world, but we are armed, and they would not have been allowed weapons. I honestly expected Rasida to send one of her sisters in her stead. But no. I know her face because I know all the faces of my enemies intimately. It is in my best interest to know them. I glance over at Zan.
“You’ve grown, Jayd,” Rasida says. She is a tall, handsome woman, with not a single visible scar. I know she has others underneath the long drape she wears, but from a distance, she is untouched. One might think her soft for all that, if not for her flinty eyes. She stares at me, unblinking, as if a predator peers out from her eyes. Her gaze at once thrills and haunts me, as it has since I was small. The last time I saw her was during a parlay on another world, now long dead, when my sister Nhim commanded the Katazyrna armies, long before Zan joined us. Nhim had been an intimidating person too, but Rasida seemed to loom over her, though she was shorter and thinner than Nhim. When Nhim left the room to send a message to Anat, Rasida leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What would we do here, alone, you and I, if we were not enemies?” and the question haunted me afterward, because the desire was so thick in her voice that it made me tremble. Why is it we always want a thing we should not have?
“Growing is a thing children do,” Anat barks.
I wish there was a soft, politic bone in Anat’s body, but that is like wishing I could swim through the walls of the world.
Anat holds out her left arm, the great iron one, and Rasida glances from the arm to me, then to Zan. For a moment, I think Rasida is going to say something, but she lets it lie. The arm is clearly a war trophy—no one knows how to make anything so fine anymore. Wearing it in Rasida’s presence could be seen as an insult, or perhaps a reminder, that all Katazyrnas are warmongers.
“You have seen my daughter,” Anat says, “now where is my peace offering? Do I get a kiss?”
Rasida shows her teeth. “We have been at this too long, Katazyrna.”
“Let’s sit and pretend at friendship,” I say. “I’ve been waiting for this war to end all my life.”
Anat glares at me. Rasida’s expression is more calculating. Does she think I’m insincere? It’s true I’ve always wanted the war to end. I never said I wanted it to end like this.
Rasida clasps Anat’s iron arm, and Anat grins.
The room takes a collective breath. Rasida and Anat move to the high table. Zan leans into me, whispers, “What if they’d brought some weapon with them, or are launching an assault on the Mokshi right now? How can you or her trust people who are no better than bandits?”
I gaze at the human skin stretched over the table. Zan follows my look and quiets. “We are all villains here,” I say.
“I’m not,” Zan says, and I do not correct her.
We assemble at the table with great ceremony. A bevy of elevated bottom-worlders begin to spin stories, accompanied by the high, thin voices of the chorus behind them. I pay only half attention to them. My gaze returns again and again to Anat and Rasida. I am passably good at reading lips, but they are eating and speaking at the same time, and that complicates things.
Rasida sneaks looks at me often, enough that Zan grumbles about it. When Anat toddles off to go relieve herself, Rasida rises and comes to me.
Zan shifts so she is pressed hard against me.
Rasida takes my hand and says, “You will be my shining star. The mother of a new world.”
“I’m just a woman,” I say, “not a star.”
“You will be my star,” Rasida says fiercely, and her intensity surprises me, though of course it should not. She has been waiting for this day a long time. Maybe a part of me has been too, a part I don’t allow myself to think about, because it feels like another betrayal, and I am tired of being a traitor.
Zan says, “For all the talk of stars, what do you have to give her in return?”
I shush Zan, but Rasida laughs. “And what are you calling this one, Jayd?” Rasida says. “She looks like some conscript. What world is she from?”
“This is my sister Zan,” I say quickly.
“Is that so?” Rasida says. “Is that who you are?”
Zan does not reply. Only stares hard at Rasida. Her shoulders are stiff, and I fear she’s going to do something unwise. I pray to the Lord of War that her clean memory holds. It’s never come back entirely, but with the luck we’ve had these many turns, some stray thought will trickle in now, and we’ll be ruined. The first few times Zan came back without her memory, I had thought Zan was playing a trick on me to get back at me for what I’d done. Then I realized how much better it was this way. Now, sometimes, I pray for her to go back to the Mokshi before she remembers too much. Remembering hurts her. And me.
I put my hand over Zan’s. “That’s so,” I say.
“Let me introduce you to my companions,” Rasida says, and she points out the other women in her retinue. Her mother, a wizened old woman called Nashatra; two of her “near-sisters,” she says, called Aditva and Samdi; and various security personnel. I watch Zan weigh and measure them all. It is what she is best at, after all: assessing threats.
“A pack of animals,” Zan says.
Anat returns. She raises her voice. “That’s enough,” Anat says. “Curb your tongue, Zan, or I’ll have you recycled again.”
“She will,” I say to Zan, low. “We don’t want that.” Zan has been recycled before and survived it, but I don’t want to risk a second time. My pulse quickens. I feel as if I spend all of my time trying to quell Zan’s darker nature, trying to turn her self-destructive impulses into action, but she could say the same of me.
Rasida picks up two fingers of mashed plantains from Zan’s plate and puts both fingers into her own mouth, sucking them clean.
My physical reac
tion to this is less than dignified. I have to turn away from her as heat moves up my face. She is the enemy, I remind myself, but that doesn’t matter. It never matters. Maybe it makes it more of a challenge for me. Rasida is a problem to be puzzled out, and my body has already announced itself more than willing to try.
“Anything else you want to fight about?” Rasida says. “I suspect you and I have played before . . . Zan. Let’s play again and see how we fare this time.”
“Please,” I say loudly. “Zan, let us have peace.”
“Let us drink!” Anat says, and raises her fist to the ceiling. The lights change colors, back to white and blue. It’s a nice little trick, but a trick nonetheless. The arm is useless to her on this world. But Rasida does not know that. The lights glimmer in Rasida’s gaze, and I see her hunger again. Not for me, but for all Anat has, including me.
I gaze longingly at the ceiling, begging the world for a respite. I want this over. I want to be on Bhavaja.
The bottom-worlders bring out the beer, and my sisters fill the tremulous air with their light chatter, avoiding all the contentious topics. Rasida rises and goes back to her seat. She squeezes my shoulder as she goes.
When dinner is finished, Anat asks Rasida to her quarters. I sit up a little to see if Rasida is bringing anything with her, but no. This is where they will discuss formal terms, the terms that will save Katazyrna.
When they are gone, Zan leans into me. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for all that,” she says.
“You should be relieved.”
“She’ll say anything to make sure you go with her,” Zan says. “Who knows what will happen when you’re away from your family? I can’t protect you out there, Jayd.”
“I won’t need protecting.”
But then she says what is really at issue, and it cuts my heart. “Who’ll be here to help me remember?” Zan says. “Who will care about me now, with you gone?”
“THE COMMON PEOPLE DON’T WANT WAR. BETTER TO BROKER PEACE, AND BREAK IT, SO THEY ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR WHAT THEY HAVE LOST, THAN PRETEND THAT SPILLING COLD BLOOD WILL WARM WEARY HEARTS.”
The Stars Are Legion Page 6