The Stars Are Legion

by Kameron Hurley

  “We’re not,” I sign.

  She leans toward me. “You are the smartest of the Katazyrnas,” she signs. “You conquered whole worlds. You can conquer one crazy woman.”

  “Soon,” I sign. “I need to find something.”

  “What’s taken you so long?” Sabita signs, and it’s the look on her face—exasperated, disbelieving—that shifts something inside of me.

  The Jayd she remembers would not sit here in bed, unwashed, melancholy. The Jayd she remembers would fight. And fight. And fight. I can smile and pretend at servitude, but all that pretending has finally caught up with me. It’s in that moment that I realize I have become what Rasida believes me to be. I have fought so hard to convince her that I am hers that I have allowed myself to be cowed. I fear her. I want to please her. I’m not just pretending anymore. I have become everything I wanted Rasida to think I was. I can’t do this anymore.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I sign.

  Sabita raises her brows. “That is something I never thought you would say.”

  “Best I never say it out loud, then,” I sign, and push away from the table.

  It’s time to court Rasida again. It’s time to find the world.

  “WORLDS ARE BORN, AND WORLDS DIE. I JUST NEVER EXPECTED THE DYING WORLD WOULD BE MINE.”

  —LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION

  23

  ZAN

  What happened to the Mokshi?” I ask Das Muni. My fingers are trembling.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “We were attacked. Recycled, most of us. Some there, but many here.”

  “Who attacked the Mokshi? The Bhavajas? The Katazyrnas?”

  “I don’t know,” Das Muni says. “It was a long time ago.”

  “How long?” I’ve raised my voice, and she cringes.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It was long ago. I’m sorry. Meatmoth—”

  “I don’t give a care for Meatmoth,” I say. I throw the parchment at the wall, because it means nothing. Das Muni scrambles after it. None of this is helpful. It’s just one more mystery piled on top of another mystery. I feel like I’m being used, and that everyone in this foul place knows more about me than I do.

  “If you’ve been here before,” Casamir says, “recycled by your people up there, you have any tips on how to open this door?”

  “Isn’t that what you were here for?” I say, too short, again.

  “Just trying to make it easier,” Casamir grumbles. She pulls off her pack and unrolls an intricate kit of metal files and organic potions. “It could take a while,” she says.

  “Your test is getting it open?” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “It’s a complicated lock, organic and nonorganic. Very precise. There’s a cache on the other side. I’ll take an artifact from it and go back. You can carry on.”

  “If you get it open,” I say.

  “A little optimism,” Casamir says. She glances over her shoulder, into the dark. “Keep watch for mutants. And all that other stuff.”

  I lift the torch high and stare at the door. What world was I telling myself to capture? This one? The Mokshi? I shiver, though the air is warm, and turn back to the darkness. Das Muni sits against the door, the bit of parchment gripped tightly in her hands. She is shaking. I don’t want to ask her any more questions, because I’m angry, and she just shuts down when I yell. I need to wait until I’m calm again. Das Muni has lived a long time with horror. Horrifying her more won’t help.

  Casamir continues to work at the door. I watch her fiddle with it, hoping it evokes some shard of memory. The mechanism she is working on is a round raised disk with interlocking sections. It’s less grimy than the rest of the door, which is coated in viscous ooze from above and calcified knobs of some sediment or other.

  Time passes slowly. I eat one of the apples from Casamir’s pack, spitting out the soft hairs buried in its interior. I peer out at the darkness and listen to the hooting of the black insects.

  After a time, Das Muni gets up and sits next to me.

  Casamir sweats and mutters to herself in her language. It’s starting to sound familiar now. I think I understand a few words, but that may be hubris.

  “I’ve got it!” Casamir says. The great door clicks. Something heaves and rumbles inside.

  I stand back, pulling Das Muni with me. She grips my arm. I hand Das Muni the light and raise my walking stick.

  Casamir glances back at me and grins as the great door thunders open. “It’s all right,” she says, “it’s only—”

  A screeching howl comes from the darkness beyond. I see a flurry of movement, a sea of gaunt limbs and massive eyes, and then the mutants are upon us.

  “MUTANTS MAKE FOR GOOD EATING. IT WAS NEVER MY CHOICE TO PURGE THEM FROM THE WORLD. IT WAS THE KATAZYRNAS WHO GOT THERE FIRST.”

  —LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION

  24

  ZAN

  Das Muni had been called a mutant by Casamir’s people, but she is nothing like the horde that descends on us through the great eye of the door.

  If they are or once were human, it’s difficult to tell. They are a snarling, hairy mass of flesh and teeth and claws. Some gallop on all fours; others stagger forward on great clubbed feet. They are a riotous, screaming mob, and I lash out at them instinctively.

  Casamir has her knife out, and she’s yelling at me to fall back. I stab the first mutant to reach me in the throat. It falls, and more stream past it. I bring my stick up but find that they aren’t attacking me—they’re running past me, arms and other appendages flailing. They aren’t attacking us. They’re running away from an attack.

  I push past the mob, getting bitten for my trouble. It takes only a few elbow jabs to keep the others in line. As I cross the threshold of the door, I see two women standing back to back, their fallen companions around them. They are fighting three large mutants with crescent-shaped faces and bony arms that have just two and three digits at the ends where hands should be. But their teeth are sharp, and they are holding their own against the armed women, who wield clubs layered in sharpened bone and skin, making them into effective maces.

  I stagger forward and bark at the mutants. “That’s enough! Get off!”

  The women don’t turn to me. One goes down under the jaws of the largest mutant, and I leap forward and thump the mutant hard on the back of the head. It yelps and runs. Its one big eye is watery, covered in a gray film.

  Another swipes at the last woman standing. She takes the hit and bashes its head in. It crumples. The other two mutants gallop away after their herd.

  I walk up to the fallen women. All but one is already dead, and she’s bleeding out too fast to stop the inevitable.

  The last woman standing crumples. She holds her club in front of her, baring her teeth, as if daring me to act.

  “I’m here to help,” I say, holding up my hands. “What are you called?”

  She peers at me. Spits at my feet. “Arankadash,” she says.

  “Is that your name, or a curse?” I ask.

  Casamir and Das Muni come up behind me. Casamir is limping. “Some help you were back there,” Casamir says.

  “They were running,” I say, “not attacking.”

  “From these people?”

  I nod. “You know them?”

  “Maybe,” Casamir says. She tries a couple more languages, but from the look this giant of a woman is giving me, I have a feeling she understands me just fine.

  “I’m Zan,” I say, “or at least that’s what I’m told.” I introduce Casamir and Das Muni and tell her we’re looking to go up another level. “Above,” I say, pointing. “To the surface. You know the surface of the world?”

  “The sea,” she says.

  I know the word; in my mind I picture a flat, viscous expanse of dark water in a deep, cavernous crag of the world. “You’ve been to the sea?” I say, wondering if there’s one of them, or many.

  “Above us is the sea,” she says. “We all come from the sea, a
nd we all return to it.” She crouches next to her dead companions, and I have a twinge of sympathy, remembering the slaughter of my sisters.

  I kneel next to her. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save them,” I say.

  “You saved me,” she says. “It has to be enough.”

  “Were they attacking you?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. She pulls a bracelet made of bone beads strung in sinew from the wrist of one of the dead and slides it onto her own wrist, which is already heavy with a dozen of them. “We are a hunting party,” she says. “We hunt them. They kill our birthers and our chattel. They eat flesh without honor. They do not understand sacrifice.”

  “If you point us in the direction of the sea,” I say, “we’ll go.”

  She stares at the bodies, then her open palms. Shakes her head. “I cannot leave their bodies here for the scavengers. I must bring them back.”

  The six dead will not be easy to carry, not for her or for us. Das Muni won’t even be able to move a single thigh, let alone a body.

  “I’m not sure we’re the best at helping with that,” I say.

  When she raises her head now, her eyes are filled with tears. “Help me bring them home,” she says, “and I will guide you to the sea.”

  I glance back at Casamir. She hugs her shard of diamond to her chest. “You going back?” I say.

  “I have what I came for,” she says.

  I nod and point back into the dark. “You’re free to go back, then,” I say.

  She picks up her torch and heads to the door.

  I survey the bodies and try to figure out a way to transport them. “We can make ropes,” I say, “maybe haul them behind us?”

  “Can we make a sledge?” Arankadash says.

  I pull the twisted garrote from my pocket. “Maybe if we twist together—”

  Casamir sighs and trudges back to us. She sets down her pack. “You can carry them on long bone poles,” she says, “from the boneyard. Tie them up and suspend them between you. There’s four of us. We can manage two, carrying two bodies apiece.”

  “That’s still heavy,” I say.

  “Easier than dragging them,” she says. “Must I think of everything?”

  Casamir and I head back to the foot of the mountains, hunting for bones long enough to suspend between two people. Luckily, we don’t have to go far. Our scavenging turns up four good-sized poles.

  When we return, Das Muni is keening. I drop my bones and run through the door to find her on the ground, Arankadash on top of her, hands around her throat.

  I rush Arankadash and knock her clear of Das Muni. I pin her to the ground. She fights me, but I’m heavier and faster. I lock her arms at her sides. “What are you doing?

  “She is a mutant!” Arankadash spits. “She must die like the others!”

  “She’s my friend!” I say. “You accept my help, you accept hers. You understand? She may be a mutant, but she is my mutant. I’m responsible for her.”

  Arankadash sneers at me but stops struggling. “Fool,” she says. “They all turn. They seem normal, for a time, but they all become mad. They eat flesh and murder and hunt. That is all they do.”

  “You tell me you were the one hunting,” I say. “They were running from you into us. So, who’s the hunter, then?”

  “Do not trust her!” Arankadash says.

  Casamir comes up behind me, still carrying her bones. “She’s all right for a mutant,” Casamir says. “Just ugly.”

  “Fools,” Arankadash says.

  “Do you want the help of us fools or not?” I say. “Because I’m happy to leave you here to haul your kin back one by one and get eaten by mutants or bugs or whatever else is up here along the way.”

  She snarls something in another language. Then: “Fine, but we are enemies now.”

  “All right,” I say, “as long as you’re the type of enemy who keeps her promises, and you’ve promised to take me to the sea.”

  “You are undeserving,” she says.

  I release her. “I can say the same of you. Apologize to Das Muni.”

  “No.”

  “Then at least promise not to harm her again. Because the next time you try, I’m not going to be so nice.”

  “I’m not nice either.”

  “We make a good pair, then,” I say. “Well?”

  Arankadash grimaces. “I will not harm her while she is yours,” she says.

  I get up.

  “Great,” Casamir says. “Can we get to work now? I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.”

  “You’re coming with us?” I say.

  Casamir is already busily knotting rope from her pack onto the ends of the bones. “You would be lost without me,” she says. “Besides, I’ve never seen the sea.”

  “And it’s a long way home in the dark,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m a scavenger. I crawl into the very bowels of the world to—”

  “I’ve got it,” I say. “We’ll agree to disagree.”

  While Casamir and Arankadash work, I go over to Das Muni. Her cowl is thrown back. Her face is dirty again. I lick my finger and wipe a bit of blood from her face. Hers?

  “You all right?” I ask.

  She tilts her enormous eyes up to me. This close, I see how strange her irises are, little crescents of color. It’s unnerving. Her ears are so large, I wonder how she didn’t hear the mutants beyond the door well before it opened.

  “I told you that traveling with others is not good,” she says softly.

  “If I’d thought that, I wouldn’t have taken you with me either,” I say. “It cuts both ways.”

  “I want to go home,” she says. She presses her hands to her eyes.

  “No one knows how to get back to the Mokshi,” I say. “A lot of people have tried. Including me.”

  “Not the Mokshi,” she says. “I was nothing there. I want to go home to Sledgemaw and Meatmoth.”

  “That is no place for you,” I say, but I look back at Casamir and Arankadash and realize this isn’t any place for her either. At least to the monsters she is just another piece of meat, no different from any other. I don’t understand the hatred I see for people like her. People on every level look different. Why do they hate mutants and people off-world? It all gets recycled the same. We’re all made of meat.

  I help Casamir and Arankadash finish tying off the bodies to the makeshift litters. Casamir hangs her torch from the one she and Arankadash carry, and Das Muni and I come from behind. The litter is too heavy for her, I know, but I want to see how far we can get before thinking of another option.

  But when Das Muni shoulders her end, I’m surprised to find that she doesn’t complain at all. She keeps trekking after me, slower than I’d like, but not so slow that I lose sight of Casamir and Arankadash. There’s not much to see outside our pool of light. There are long lines of bioluminescent flora or fauna lining the rolling ground and the far walls. I see the occasional protuberance or fallen fold of the ceiling. After a break for water at a bubbling pool oozing up from the spongy ground, we keep on. My mouth tastes of copper after I drink, as if the water is tinged with blood.

  Eventually, we come to a broad path, a well-worn depression in the ground that signals human habitation. Casamir and I are exhausted, but Arankadash and Das Muni barely seem winded. We rest again, and Arankadash suggests sleep.

  “I will keep watch,” Arankadash says.

  Casamir shares food from her pack. “I bet this is farther than anyone I know has gone,” she says.

  “You are of the Bharataiv?” Arankadash says. “The tinkers?”

  “Engineers,” Casamir says.

  “Yes, the peddlers,” Arankadash says. “Sometimes our traders meet with you, near the golden veil.”

  “What’s the golden veil?” I ask.

  “Oh, nothing,” Casamir says. “You want some mushrooms?”

  “No,” I say. Then, to Arankadash: “What’s the golden veil?”
>
  “Thirty thousand steps back,” she says, “near the mountains. It’s a far easier route up here than the one you came. Going through the door is only something foolish tinkers do, because you have to cross the valley of beasts, and the mutant camps.”

  I stare at Casamir. “You could have taken us here through there? We’d have saved all those steps! And the bugs, those crawlers, and door—”

  “I had to complete my initiation,” Casamir says. “You can’t take the shortcut or it doesn’t count.”

  I rub my face. “I am so tired of your shit, Casamir.”

  “You would have wanted to take the shortcut!” Casamir says. “Let me tell you a story about someone who took the shortcut. It starts with—”

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “—this woman who wore her womb as a hat, because—”

  “Who did what?” I say.

  “On her head,” Casamir says, patting her crown of braided hair, “but that’s not important. It just identifies her, you see. Anyway, it made her look taller and more imposing, so she took the shortcut, thinking that—”

  “Is this a real story?” I ask.

  Casamir sniffs. “I only share real stories.”

  “People can’t just take out their wombs,” I say.

  “Of course they can,” Casamir says. “People swap wombs all the time.”

  “What?”

  She munches at a fist-sized mushroom. Every time I think we’ll run out of food, I catch her foraging for more. I wouldn’t have thought there was so much of it here, but that’s because I can’t tell the difference between food and refuse.

  “We all give birth to different stuff,” Casamir says. “Sometimes, what one person wants isn’t what another person wants, but you can’t decide what you give birth to. The Godhead decides, but like with anything, you can change your fate. You can swap out with a family member, if you have a good surgeon.”

  I think of the long cut on my stomach. “Can you take it out altogether?”

  “That’s not advisable,” Casamir says. “Don’t you know anything? You two really are very mad.”

  “We don’t do anything like that,” Arankadash says. “That’s an affront to the sea that birthed us.”