The Stars Are Legion(2)

“You are blessed of the War God, sister mine,” Jayd says, but she is looking at Gavatra as she says it. It’s like being a child again, stuck in a room with people who have a deep history between them; too deep and complicated for a child to fathom. Even more curious is that if Jayd is really my sister, then the feeling that stirs my gut when she twines her fingers in my hair is entirely wrong.

I lift my gaze to Gavatra and firm my jaw. A grim purpose fills me. “I wish to know what happened to me,” I say. “You can tell me or have me wrest it from you.” I can make both hands into fists now. That action feels more natural than anything I’ve done so far.

Gavatra barks out a laugh. She swipes at the table and pulls a nest of dancing lights from its surface and into the air. I watch them tangle above her, fascinated. She swipes them back onto another part of the table.

“You’re fulfilling your duty to your mother, the Lord of Katazyrna,” Gavatra says, “as are we all. But perhaps Jayd is right this time. Perhaps it’s time we retire you.”

“I feel you owe me a memory,” I say.

“Then you must retake the Mokshi,” Gavatra says. “We don’t have your memory here. That ship ate it. It seems to eat it every time. You want your memory, you take the Mokshi . . . and get a squad in there with you this time.”

“I will go again, then,” I say.

“Mother can’t afford to risk another squad,” Jayd says, “not with the Bhavajas lying in wait for us in orbit around the Mokshi. The Bhavajas have taken another ship since you’ve been gone, Zan.”

“What’s a Bhavaja?” I say.

Gavatra rolls her eyes. “These cycles get tiring,” she says.

“They are the greatest enemy of our family,” Jayd says. “A family we have been feuding with since Mother was a child. It’s only a matter of time before they take the Mokshi out from under us too. Maybe even all the Katazyrna ships.” This time, I am sure she says ship and not world, because taking an entire world seems impossible.

“The Mokshi has destroyed a good many people,” Gavatra says. “Your mother will just steal more from some other distressed world. If Zan is ready to assault the Mokshi again, I won’t deny her.”

Jayd slumps in her chair, defeated. Am I something to be fought over and won? “This is a foolish enterprise,” Jayd says. “It’s just as likely that Zan will die as it is she’ll retrieve her memory. Some of it comes back without you going to the Mokshi, Zan. If you stay—”

“No,” I say. I press my finger against the long ridge of the scar on my face again. “I would like to finish what’s been started.”

Gavatra waves her hand over the table, and the patterns of light fade, revealing the table surface for what it is: a smooth, stitched-together canvas of human skin.

I jerk up from the bench. The trembling in my arm becomes a spasm, and I lash out and smash the wall. The wall gives under my fist, as if I’ve mashed it into a lung. When I pull my hand away, it is moist. My body begins to shake; my breath comes hard and fast.

Jayd wraps her arms around me. “Hush, it will pass,” she says.

I feel as if I’m watching my body from a great height, unable to contain or control it. The panic is a monstrous thing. My body is trying to fight or flee, and I can’t allow it to do either until I understand what’s happening here. The attack is so sudden, so consuming, that it terrifies me.

Gavatra snorts and stands. “She’s going to pop again,” Gavatra says, and she scratches at the scars on her head.

My heart hammers loudly in my chest. A dark and twisted impulse seizes me; an uncoiling of everything I have held back while pushed and prodded in my sick room.

I leap across the table and take Gavatra by the throat. We collide with the wall and fall into a tangle on the floor. Gavatra writhes beneath me, gasping like a dying woman, and perhaps she is. As I straddle her and look at my hands, I fear my weaker left is not up to the task of strangling a woman to death.

I bare my teeth at Gavatra. “I do not believe a word of what you have told me,” I say.

Gavatra twists my weaker arm. Pain rushes through me, blinding my panic. She head-butts me in the face, so fast and unexpected that I reel back in shock as much as pain, clutching at my face as blackness judders across my vision.

Jayd rushes between me and Gavatra. She slides across the floor to wrap me again in her arms, as if I am a prize animal gone feral.

Gavatra uses the table to lever herself up. She rubs at her throat and gives a wry grin. “Perhaps there is something of the old Zan in this one,” she says.

“My memory!” I say.

“You fool,” Gavatra says. “You have no idea what a gift that loss is for you.” And then Gavatra smiles, her wrinkles deepening, her face cavernous in the dim light. “The truth is worse than you can possibly imagine.”

“Get me out of here,” I say. The panic is subsiding now, but the pulsing walls feel closer, as if the room itself is going to swallow me whole.

Jayd presses her cheek to mine. I take a fistful of her hair and squeeze gently. “Who are you, really?” I whisper.

I feel her mouth turn up at the corners. “I am your sister, Zan mine.”

And I smile in turn because my face is throbbing, and a trickle of blood runs from my nose, and I remember my other injuries. I have two choices here: to fight them and risk being recycled—whatever that is—or to go along with it, to give them what they want, and figure out where my memory has really gone and why these people are going to so much trouble to pretend I am their kin.