The Stars Are Legion(20)
Zan does not reply. Only stares hard at Rasida. Her shoulders are stiff, and I fear she’s going to do something unwise. I pray to the Lord of War that her clean memory holds. It’s never come back entirely, but with the luck we’ve had these many turns, some stray thought will trickle in now, and we’ll be ruined. The first few times Zan came back without her memory, I had thought Zan was playing a trick on me to get back at me for what I’d done. Then I realized how much better it was this way. Now, sometimes, I pray for her to go back to the Mokshi before she remembers too much. Remembering hurts her. And me.
I put my hand over Zan’s. “That’s so,” I say.
“Let me introduce you to my companions,” Rasida says, and she points out the other women in her retinue. Her mother, a wizened old woman called Nashatra; two of her “near-sisters,” she says, called Aditva and Samdi; and various security personnel. I watch Zan weigh and measure them all. It is what she is best at, after all: assessing threats.
“A pack of animals,” Zan says.
Anat returns. She raises her voice. “That’s enough,” Anat says. “Curb your tongue, Zan, or I’ll have you recycled again.”
“She will,” I say to Zan, low. “We don’t want that.” Zan has been recycled before and survived it, but I don’t want to risk a second time. My pulse quickens. I feel as if I spend all of my time trying to quell Zan’s darker nature, trying to turn her self-destructive impulses into action, but she could say the same of me.
Rasida picks up two fingers of mashed plantains from Zan’s plate and puts both fingers into her own mouth, sucking them clean.
My physical reaction to this is less than dignified. I have to turn away from her as heat moves up my face. She is the enemy, I remind myself, but that doesn’t matter. It never matters. Maybe it makes it more of a challenge for me. Rasida is a problem to be puzzled out, and my body has already announced itself more than willing to try.
“Anything else you want to fight about?” Rasida says. “I suspect you and I have played before . . . Zan. Let’s play again and see how we fare this time.”
“Please,” I say loudly. “Zan, let us have peace.”
“Let us drink!” Anat says, and raises her fist to the ceiling. The lights change colors, back to white and blue. It’s a nice little trick, but a trick nonetheless. The arm is useless to her on this world. But Rasida does not know that. The lights glimmer in Rasida’s gaze, and I see her hunger again. Not for me, but for all Anat has, including me.
I gaze longingly at the ceiling, begging the world for a respite. I want this over. I want to be on Bhavaja.
The bottom-worlders bring out the beer, and my sisters fill the tremulous air with their light chatter, avoiding all the contentious topics. Rasida rises and goes back to her seat. She squeezes my shoulder as she goes.
When dinner is finished, Anat asks Rasida to her quarters. I sit up a little to see if Rasida is bringing anything with her, but no. This is where they will discuss formal terms, the terms that will save Katazyrna.
When they are gone, Zan leans into me. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for all that,” she says.
“You should be relieved.”
“She’ll say anything to make sure you go with her,” Zan says. “Who knows what will happen when you’re away from your family? I can’t protect you out there, Jayd.”
“I won’t need protecting.”
But then she says what is really at issue, and it cuts my heart. “Who’ll be here to help me remember?” Zan says. “Who will care about me now, with you gone?”
“THE COMMON PEOPLE DON’T WANT WAR. BETTER TO BROKER PEACE, AND BREAK IT, SO THEY ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR WHAT THEY HAVE LOST, THAN PRETEND THAT SPILLING COLD BLOOD WILL WARM WEARY HEARTS.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
9
ZAN
The whole of Katazyrna, more people than I have yet seen, pour out into the hangar to watch Jayd go. All of them bear faces so similar to those of Jayd and Anat and the women I met in the banquet hall that it is easy to see they are related. I know from seeing it from the outside that the world is enormous, though, so even this gathering is likely only a slim number of the world’s actual inhabitants.
Anat seems to pull open the skin of the world with her iron arm without letting in the cold; this display must be for the benefit of the Bhavajas, because Jayd whispered at dinner that the arm does nothing on Katazyrna, and is just a trophy. Out there in the black waits a whole fleet of Bhavaja vehicles mounted with cephalopod cannons. I think it’s disingenuous of them to come here with weapons mounted on their vehicles, but at least they didn’t try to carry any inside. I’m stuck with the horde of others I’ve never seen before, just a spectator. I see a few people with extra limbs, and one woman with eight fingers on one hand, and I wonder what they do here. Most are thin; I doubt they’ve seen a meal like the one we all just ate in their whole lives. There is something about their skin that bothers me, and I see a woman beside me scratching at a lesion. Growths bloom from the necks and arms of many; several bare-chested women only have one breast. They are cancerous. This horde of women is dying of starvation and cancer, slowly but inevitably.
The crowd parts for Jayd and Rasida and the rest of the Bhavaja clan. Gavatra and our sister Neith are to accompany Jayd as well, at least for a turn. I think that’s a small kindness of Anat’s, but realize she probably hopes to gain keen intelligence from Gavatra about the real state of the Bhavaja worlds. I wonder if it’s as bad as Katazyrna.