The Stars Are Legion(18)
“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.