I begin to rise in fits and starts as they pull me up and up, into the light.
I stare up one more time, squinting, because I want to see and understand what I’m getting into, even knowing it’s far too late.
“THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT MATTER TO THE LEGION: TOO MANY PEOPLE. AND NOT ENOUGH.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
28
JAYD
The cycles pass, one bleeding into another, as my belly grows and the thing inside of me comes to life. It’s such a strange feeling, to know that there is a potential bit of life growing inside of you, to both fear for it and hope for it all at once. Life here in the Legion seems especially precious. This thing, this life, most of all. If it dies before I bear it . . . then Rasida will surely recycle me. And then what will become of us all? When I took this womb from Zan, she admitted she had never borne anything in it to term. She did not need more life on the Mokshi. She could hardly save the lives she already had to care for.
And I certainly didn’t help her in that.
When I go into labor, finally, it is Sabita who takes my hands while the girls run off to find Rasida. I had wanted to get more done before now. I had wanted to find out where Rasida was hiding her own womb. But my body has betrayed me. I’ve been sick and exhausted, and now I am here, writhing in pain while I birth the very thing I was brokered to the Bhavajas for.
I have never given birth before, not in all these many rotations of treatments, but I have attended so many births, I think I know what I’m in for.
I’m wrong.
My whole body seizes up as if attached to a series of wiry strings. Every muscle contracts, my body cramps up, and I can do nothing but howl.
Sabita rubs my back and legs. I yell at her only once, because I soon lose the energy for it.
Rasida and her mother arrive. I am shocked to see Nashatra here because I thought her maimed or dead or recycled.
“I expected a first birth to take longer,” Nashatra says. She is clean and well kept, only slightly stooped. Her silver hair is knotted into a rope that circles her head. She puts her leathery hands on mine, and I am in so much shock and pain I don’t think to sign at her and ask what’s going on.
Behind her comes a two-headed woman with three legs and three arms, and as the four eyes roll at me, I suspect these are the Bhavaja witches.
“Not ours! Not ours!” the witches say, and Rasida hisses at them to be quiet and help me.
“The worlds are dying because we won’t share resources,” Rasida says. “The only reason we’re alive now is because we are willing to merge with others to become stronger.”
The witches push and prod at me while Sabita continues her shushing. I follow the heave of her breath until we are breathing together, snorting through the pain that comes in endless waves.
I don’t notice what the witches are doing. I am aware only of my own pain. It is while I huff and pant and squeeze here on the bed that I wonder again why Rasida has gone through all this with me. She could have given my womb to Sabita or the girls. Someone she had more control over.
But as Rasida looms over me, I am reminded that she wants me more than what I carry. She wants to have a Katazyrna under her heel. Maybe even a Katazyrna who loves her, because she has taken away everything else I could possibly love.
Lord of War be merciful, I despise her. I despise her and she is all I have.
“Here it is,” the witches say, and I squeeze Sabita’s hand and wail, and it’s as if my body splits in two. It’s as if I can see myself and the whole room; I’m floating far away, contained only by the world’s gravity.
Another heave, and the thing is out.
I come back to myself.
The witches hold my offspring aloft. I am still shuddering as they hand the gift of my womb over to Rasida. I hear a mewling cry.
Rasida takes the thing into her arms and cradles it. From here, the child appears to have the expected number of limbs, but I can’t be sure. Let it be perfect.
Rasida’s mother takes the child from Rasida and inspects it, as if it is some prized piece of the ship, and I suppose it is.
Finally, she nods and hands it back to Rasida. “It’s a perfect child,” her mother says. “Just what they promised.”
I am exhausted, still trembling. Sabita pulls a blanket up over me and rubs my cramping legs. I don’t have the strength to tell her to go away.
“Can I see it?” I say.
Rasida considers me a moment. She sits beside me. She does not hand me the child but holds it up near my face. It is very small, purplish and still covered in afterbirth. The child makes a little moue with its mouth, its tiny fists held tight, and I cannot help but feel a squeeze of love for this thing I carried all this time, this thing I made with Zan’s help.
Zan’s child. Not mine.
I caress the infant’s cheek. Oh Zan, I have failed you. I don’t have the arm. I don’t have the world. I only have this child, this child doomed to die here, trapped in a dying world.
Rasida rests next to me with the child in her arms and coos at it. She tickles its little lips with her fingers. “It will be hungry,” she says. “I have a nurse for her. You can rest.”
“Yes,” I say. “Rest.”
Rasida leans over me. Her face is beaming, beatific. “You have achieved a lovely thing,” she says. “We will celebrate when you are well. Soon, you and I will be back on Katazyrna. You’ll like that, won’t you? Being among the flesh where you were birthed? We will build a whole new world, love, a whole new society.”
She gets up and hands the child over to her mother. Nashatra stands a moment longer over us. It’s then that I see the swell of Nashatra’s belly, and all the long conversations with Rasida begin to make some semblance of sense.
“You want to save the world?” Rasida said to Nashatra, and she took her mother away, and now here was her mother, long past the age at which her own womb would give issue, standing visibly pregnant beside me.
I stare hard at the ceiling as Nashatra takes the child with her and leaves the room, the witches following close beside her. Birthing a world is dangerous, but all birth is dangerous. This is Nashatra’s punishment, to stay here and birth the world while the rest of Bhavaja is moved to Katazyrna to await the remaking of Bhavaja. Rasida’s plan is almost as grand as mine. I admire it, even if it makes what I need to do that much more difficult.
The girls arrive with water and towels and clean me up. Sabita helps them. I have nothing for the pain, which is deep and intense, but I am so exhausted that I’m able to sleep, if only in snatches.
When I wake, it’s to find Sabita trying to express the milk from my breasts. She signs at me that Rasida has requested it. I’m uncertain why, as she said she had a nurse, but no milk is forthcoming. It’s not time yet.
I wonder if the milk is for Rasida, not the child, and with that thought, I sleep again.
Some time passes, and when I come to next, Sabita is lying on the floor next to me. I tap her on the arm. Her eyes open. I sign at her, “We need to move now. I know where to find what we need.”
Sabita’s eyes widen. I have not confided in her over all this time, but now that the child is here, my time is running short. The child will be able to breed more children, unlike many of the other child-bearers that Anat could have offered Rasida. Zan had that peculiar specialty with her womb. A specialty she had no use for. Rasida may keep me for a few more births, or not. She has me beaten.
Sabita signs, “I know you despise me, but I am not your enemy.”
“We are both captive,” I sign.
“I know a way out,” she signs.
“I can’t leave without Rasida’s womb.”
“What does she carry?”
I hesitate, then sign, “What she carries can save worlds. I think she’s given it to her mother, Nashatra. We must get Nashatra off Bhavaja.”
“You intend to save Katazyrna with it?” Sabita signs.
I’m still
worried about telling her too much. So I lie and sign, “Yes.”
Sabita is silent for a time. She folds her hands across her chest and gazes at the ceiling.
“Will you help me?” I sign. “She won’t keep you any longer than she will keep me. This may be over now that the child’s here. You understand?”
Sabita makes a quick sign. “Yes.”
I let out my breath and sign, “I will need you to cover for me in my absence. Soon.”
“What will you do?” Sabita signs.
“It’s best you don’t know,” I sign. “You can tell them I forced you to it, if we’re caught.”
She does not answer. If she is going to betray me, she will betray me in the morning.
When I wake, it is with the knowledge that this could be my last day breathing, one way or another.
But when I see Sabita wake on the floor next to me, she signs, “Let me tell you about the tunnel I’ve been making,” and hope blooms within me anew.
* * *
It’s another ten cycles before I feel well enough to leave our quarters. Even then, it takes three attempts. The girls are always awake, always eager to please Rasida, and there are women outside the large foyer who guard our way.
But Sabita is a tissue technician, and she has been burrowing out an old doorway in one of my rooms, slowly carving away the slab of meaty flesh so that it opens now like the peel of a fruit. Sabita takes her place in my bed, pulling the covers up over her head, and I sneak out twice before eventually finding my way back to Rasida’s quarters. Sneaking is painful; I cannot move very quickly. My walk is more a shuffle, but my advantage is that Rasida will not think me capable of walking even this far.
She has visited me several times during my recovery, always bringing small gifts, bits of other worlds, sheets of paper, colorful strands for the loom. I gave her a fine colorful cape I had woven for her, and she wears it now like a fine suit.
I, too, can smile like a villain.
The door to Rasida’s rooms opens at my touch. Like her wardrobe, she does not bother with locks. Or perhaps there are none here. Perhaps the world doesn’t know how to create them anymore. One more broken piece.
I go to her wardrobe and open it. Inside are a line of suits and some piles of embroidered bags and two obsidian machetes. Has she moved it already? I wonder where else she would have put it, and turn to look under the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Rasida is standing in the doorway.
She is wearing the iron arm.
My legs nearly give out from under me. I have to catch myself against the wardrobe. I want to scream. Seeing her wearing that arm reminds me of the last time I stole it, and what I had to sacrifice for it, but I clench my teeth and say nothing. Try to feel nothing.
Rasida smiles and holds up the arm. “Fits well, doesn’t it?”
“How did you get it on?” I ask. “Anat had to . . . It didn’t fit her very well.”
“I have my ways,” she says. She comes around the bed to me. Grabs the edge of the wardrobe door with her iron fingers. “You know what I loved about you when you were a child?” she says.
I shake my head.
“Boundless curiosity,” she says. “Fearlessness. When we first came to talk peace with your mother all those rotations ago, do you remember it? You weren’t even at menarche yet. My aunt still led us then, but I would supplant her soon. And when we met Anat, you stood beside her with your sisters and stared us all down. My mother, my aunt, and me. You didn’t care. And when your mother and sisters left, you came right up to me, though I am ten rotations your senior, and you lit into me with a barrage of questions. Fearless.” She shuts the wardrobe with her iron arm.
I flinch.
“What’s your game here, Jayd?” she says. “You have given birth to my child. You say you are my family. But still you creep about, sniffing after something. What do you need this arm for, if it only works on Katazyrna? Do you think you’re going back?”
“That’s not what I came for,” I say. “I just . . . I didn’t know where you were. You haven’t been to see me in some time. I thought I’d look for you.”
“When I am able to see you, I come to see you. That’s why I brought you Sabita, to give you comfort when I cannot. The wars I must wage to unite the Legion are many. They keep me very busy.”
“I feel like a prisoner,” I say, and sit on the bed.
“That is not my intention. You know that.”
“If you’re wearing the arm,” I say, “we must be very close to going home. Did you find the Katazyrna witches?”
She flexes her fist. “You say it works on Katazyrna, but I have tried it there, with no luck. Perhaps only a Katazyrna can wield it. Your daughter will wield it.”
I say nothing. She hasn’t found the Katazyrna witches yet, then.
Rasida watches me. Drums her metal fingers on the wardrobe door. Finally, she sits beside me. “I am a woman who is meant to conquer worlds,” she says, “not birth them.”
“I would like to birth your worlds,” I say.
She kisses me.
Fear and desire are tangled things in this place. She has not kissed me since that first night, and I am angry at my body’s response to her touch. But Rasida simply lies beside me and holds me close. I exhale, relieved and grateful and hating myself for feeling either.
It’s only as she settles her iron arm around me that I understand the importance of the gesture. She holds me close with my mother’s arm.
I take the arm in mine and hold her.
“You are the mother to Bhavaja’s children,” she says. “Let’s keep you as such.”
“But who is better suited to birth worlds than you?”
“My mother,” she says.
I hold the arm in my hands, but it’s attached to a woman who will crush me with it as surely as Anat would. While it was unattached, I had a chance. Now . . . I don’t know. Without the arm, I will never be able to get inside the Mokshi.
“Don’t fret for Bhavaja,” she says. “The world grows inside of my mother now. When we move enough to Katazyrna, she will stay here and birth a world. That world will begin to remake Bhavaja. When you and I return here, we will be Lords of not only Bhavaja but of the whole Outer Rim, and then the Legion.”
Her mother. I have never been so disappointed to be right. With the arm, I could have carved my way to Nashatra. We could have had a chance to fight our way out of Bhavaja. Now that Rasida has put it on, I’ll have to kill her in order to leave. I don’t have the option of doing what I did on the Mokshi.
“It is a grand vision,” I say.
“I want you by my side for it,” she says.
“I will be,” I say. “But, Rasida, please, I must feel less like a prisoner. I want to be happy here, but I can’t feel that way as a kept thing.”
Rasida kisses my neck. She rolls over on top of me, straddles me, and takes my face into her hands. Peers into my eyes. I let my expression soften. I push away the fear. I remember what it was when I first feared Zan.
“All right,” Rasida say. “So long as the girls are with you.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I kiss her, and the gratefulness I feel in that moment is not feigned. I hold her iron arm tight and wonder how I am going to cut it off of her and leave this dismal place.
* * *
Rasida offers to lead me back to my rooms, but I challenge her. “So soon after saying I’m not a prisoner, you wish to give me escort?”
She sighs and says, “You will learn that it is more for your safety than mine. But go.”
I consider that as I make my way back to the heavy foyer. The women posted there do a double take as I enter, but I ignore them.
I cross the foyer and find that the door to my rooms is open. I move over the threshold and note that the room is very still.
There’s a low-hanging arch leading to my bedroom. I see a dark spill of something there and walk around it.
My bed is empty.
/> The girls are lying dead on the floor.
I limp into the next room, and the next, searching for Sabita, calling for her, but she is gone.
I lean against the outer door, trying to catch my breath. I’ve told Sabita about Nashatra. I told Sabita about the world.
What is she going to do with it?
“I CAN’T TELL YOU WHAT I THOUGHT THE FIRST TIME THE KATAZYRNAS TRIED TO BOARD THE MOKSHI. NO, WAIT. I CAN. I CAN TELL YOU THE WOMAN WHO LED THEM FOUGHT LIKE A DEMON. SHE FOUGHT LIKE THE MOTHER OF WORLDS.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
29
ZAN
I come up through the hole in the sky and into a world of light. I shield my eyes. Hands grab my arms and waist and haul me over onto solid ground. Or mostly solid. My feet sink into a soggy mire.
They’re untying the ropes. I can see hands if I squint. “Where’s Das Muni?”
“I’m here.” I see her little grayish hands and let out a breath. My eyes are starting to adjust. “Where are—”And then I look up from the hands to the room, and I stop speaking. I stop moving. I stare.
The room is a massive circular space, voluminous like the region below, but lined in row upon row of massive bodies. The bodies are suspended in glowing amber. Light beams from their eyes and mouths and wafts up to a great orb at the center of the room that hovers above them. I have a long breath where I realize the orb reminds me of the artificial sun at the center of the Legion. But the bodies?
They are giants, these bodies. Three times taller than me, with hooked noses and hairless heads and faces. They are twisted unnaturally in their amber prisons. Some are half sunk in the floor, others reach out at us from the ceiling, only their hands visible, as if they have been consumed by the ship itself.
“We think they’re gods,” Das Muni says.
Casamir lets the balloon go, and it wafts out across the great room. The sense of space, flooded with light, is so great that I feel almost as if I’m outside of the ship.
“Giants,” I say.
Arankadash presses her hand to the amber casing of a figure, its torso bent half-backward, a rictus forever marked on its face. “Is this what they do to the babies?” she says softly.
The Stars Are Legion Page 23