The Stars Are Legion(105)

Casamir lands. The great hangar doors close and I see the blinking tangles of light shift in the viewing port above. Casamir tugs at her suit and manages to squeeze the wrist of it to get it to melt off her. She always was a quick study. The interior hangar door opens, and Arankadash comes in and leans over our sticky translucent pod.

I figure out how to pop it open. Clean air rushes in. I breathe deeply. Jayd opens her eyes.

Casamir offers me her hand. I raise my eyebrows at her. “So,” I say, “you believe me now?”

“Never doubted,” Casamir says.

“Where’s Das Muni?” I say.

“In the medical lounge,” Arankadash says. “Your witches can do wonders here. We’d like some of these tricks back home.”

“You’ll get them,” I say, “but first we need to get somewhere safe. The Bhavajas are still running around.”

“The infirmary,” Casamir says. “We’ve barricaded it up.”

“Let’s go, then,” I say, “Jayd needs help, but . . .” I hesitate. I think of all that has been sacrificed for me. “Can you go out one more time? Can you look for a woman? Sabita. It would please Jayd.”

*

Jayd spends time in the infirmary, or what I take to be one. There are few people left on the first level of the ship. We discover a half a dozen Bhavajas and a whole section of Katazyrnas who have held off incursion for all this time. But I recognize none of them. Jayd is their lord now. What that makes me, I’m uncertain. But they are loyal to her; they recognize her and are willing to help secure the first level.

While Jayd is being tended by the witches, I sit down next to Das Muni. Her breathing is shallow. Her wounds are coming back together, all slathered in greenish-amber salve. Her eyelids flutter open. She squints at me. Frowns.

“Are we all dead?” she says. “Have we been freed?”

“Not dead,” I say, “but free, in our own way. You’ll get to go back to the Mokshi.”

“I was never happy there,” she says. “I didn’t fit there, either.”

“You will now,” I say. I take her hand.

“I have always loved you, Lord,” she says.

“Just Zan,” I say. “I’m Zan, always.”

She closes her eyes. I let her rest.

Casamir did indeed find Sabita hiding in the salvage that orbited Katazyrna. She lay snoozing now on the slab opposite Jayd. I go to Sabita’s side, but she does not wake. What did I confess to her before I lost my memory? Maybe I could ask her when she wakes. Or perhaps it’s best to just let it be.

Arankadash and Casamir are sitting up on a slab near Jayd now, eating prickly mushrooms. Arankadash is drawing a map of the first level on the wall, cutting into it with her knife.

“We should consider what happens when the other Bhavajas get here,” I say. “The reinforcements from their world.”

“No,” Jayd says, and I turn to see that though her eyes are closed, she is awake. “Nashatra will want peace. There was . . . a civil war. It’s a very long story. But I think she can hold them there if we can stabilize Katazyrna.”

“That’s our goal, then,” I say. “We need to secure the first level at least. If we can hold that while the Mokshi is reborn, then we can decide who wants to go over and who wants to stay.”

It’s Casamir who finds the temple room on one of her excursions with a handful of Katazyrnas as they patrol the first level. When she returns, her eyes are big, and she’s talking about the eyes of the War God. She takes me and Arankadash down to the room, which is one level below. I don’t admonish her for taking her group a level below when our goal was to secure only the first level, because I don’t think she’s listening to anything I’m saying at this point. She’s so excited about her find, I think her head may burst.

“The lights were simple enough to figure out,” Casamir says. “They’re a language, writing. They give you instructions on how to work things once you know the code.”

Casamir tangles with the lights in the walls, and suddenly the whole room becomes translucent. From here I can see all the worlds around us, as if we are sitting at the very center of Katazyrna and staring out at the dark spaces that surround us. I have a perfect view of the whole of the Outer Rim.

The Mokshi is out there, a strange planet folding in on itself, wrapped in great brazen tentacles, pulsing with a bold new heart. A world that was not supposed to exist. Yet here it is, remaking itself to leave the Legion.

Arankadash says, “What will you do with that world? Will you abandon us?”

“I’ll take you with me,” I say, “if you’d be willing.”

“I don’t know,” Arankadash says. “We are of the world. Leaving it . . .”

“I’m not dying with the world,” Casamir says. “That’s defeatist. After all you’ve seen, you still think we should stay?”

Arankadash gazes out at the Mokshi. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but I suspect it’s to do with the child she lost and all the offspring she bore for the world itself. I wonder then what Jayd did with the womb I gave her when she took Rasida’s. Where is that child? Who cares for it? Because I know who should.

“I will consider it,” Arankadash says. “I will put the question to my people. But they must have a choice. To stay with the world and the Legion or to risk the unknown in that new world.”