The Stars Are Legion(12)

Love worked far better on Zan than fear, I found. At least until she found out what I did to what she loved most. I have made many mistakes. I am the first to admit that. But forgiveness is a luxury I cannot afford to court. I’m not convinced I would deserve it, even if I got down on my knees and cut open my palms and begged Zan for it.

I press the wrinkles from my slick outer coat and ask for admittance into our mother’s corridor. The big women on either side of the door press the flesh of the door, and it blooms open, but it is not my mother on the other side; it is the gaggle of witches, shuffling their way down the corridor, quickly ducking from my view, fleeing my approach. Unlike Zan, witches have long memories. They remember what Zan and I had to do to them to keep them quiet. But they didn’t dare give away our secrets after that. Every time the witches are recycled, they lose a little bit of their sanity on rebirth. A secret like ours is worth keeping if it means they won’t have to be reborn again for another few turns, at least. Until it’s Anat who tires of them.

I have not seen the witches since the day Zan came back without her memory. Some days, I wish I understood their loyalties. Do they belong to the ship or to Mother? Like everything else that belongs to the world, they are reborn in the womb of a woman, usually the same one, but if we kill that woman, the ship simply gives another one the task of birthing the witches, and we start again. We can never get rid of the witches, no matter how many times they are killed or recycled. They always come back.

Like Zan. Like me.

I find my mother in the long translucent stretch of the world called the reflective pool, though there is no water, only a sheen of filmy skin so thin that it reveals the faces and forms of the dead and half-undone floating in the guts of ship’s walls. All those bits of bodies we have recycled eventually pass through here on their way to being devoured and repurposed. Sometimes, if I stand here long enough, I can see the faces of my dead sisters. Everyone is a sister here because we are all of the world, all but those we have scavenged from other worlds. The corridor stretches on and on until it comes to a crumpled ruin, something purposely destroyed to ensure no one went any farther down that way, I expect. There have been countless insurrections and blight over the rotations. I once asked Mother why she didn’t fix it, and she snarled something at me—I don’t even remember what—and I let it drop. I suspect Mother has far less power than she pretends. It’s why I am willing to take the risks that I do.

Anat is talking loudly to three of her secretaries, all bottom-world people she has raised up to serve her. Raising them from below instead of capturing them from other worlds makes them more loyal, she always says, but I think my mother conflates fear and loyalty far too often. I fear her, yes, but I’ve never been loyal. She is gesturing to them with her great metal arm. The metal covers a heated green organic core, which can be seen through the grill on the underside of her arm. She likes to wave it around like the war trophy it is, but seeing it always makes my stomach turn. It reminds me of my mistakes.

“Zan came back alive from the latest assault,” I say.

Anat keeps talking to the secretaries in their patois. I can speak half a dozen bottom-world languages, and I can hear them talking about trading contracts. A group in the level below has broken out in civil strife over the matter of tariffs. Anat uses those goods in her bid to win the hearts of the people she intends to conquer. The witches on every world plead with us, often, to stop sharing materials among worlds. They say it has contributed to the rotting of the Legion. Worldships are meant to be self-sustaining, they say, and the more we swap resources among worlds, the more we upset the delicate balance of the ships. But I have seen ships that never shared resources. I have conquered them. They died out faster than those who traded on the Outer Rim. When I cracked those supposedly self-sustaining worlds open, the only people alive were barely sentient, scrabbling out a living at the very center of the world, where it was still warm. I think the witches give us advice from some dead time, a time when the longevity of the worlds was never in question. But we have moved long past that. The witches haven’t.

My mother’s response to the witches’ proclamations is less rational but just as dismissive. She says she is the only thing keeping the Legion together, and she answers only to the Lord of War. Anat believes she can do whatever she wants as long as she holds the surface of the world. That has been true here for a long time. It’s why Zan and I needed to be smarter than Anat, because no one rules with a bloodier fist than Anat.

Finally, Anat dismisses her secretaries, who scuttle off on their clacking little feet, and she rounds on me. “Did Zan gain control of the Mokshi or not?” she says.

“No, but—”

“Then don’t waste my time,” Anat says. She nods at the reports under my arm; little slips of light escape the hemp folders. “It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it? The cancer on the surface of the world?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “The technicians were out running another scan at the poles when Zan came back from the assault. It’s the only reason we got her back inside in time. We almost lost her, Anat.”

“This scheme of yours has yet to pay off. I’m getting tired of her, and you.”

“She has gotten closer to the Mokshi than any of us,” I say carefully, and move on to the more pressing subject, because the less we speak of my schemes, the better. “It’s clear that the rot on the skin of the world is cancerous. It’s eating right through the world’s skin. We are only a rotation away from a breach. They hardly had to break the skin to let Zan back in.”