The Stars Are Legion(21)

Peace or no, Anat has been fighting a long time, and the instincts of a fighter die hard. I know, because I still want to rip Rasida limb from limb.

The procession passes me. The first wave comes to the air port and steps inside. The film of the room closes over them, and they are whisked outside. I see them floating free out on the surface, kicking off the skin of the world and hurling themselves onto their great vehicles.

Anat did not let them park in the hangar, which is, at least, practical. Bhavaja vehicles have weapons mounted on them, and if they had something explosive . . . I ponder that thought awhile longer, wondering at my own assumptions. Is that something I would have done? Brought weapons to a peaceful trade meeting?

Jayd steps past me with barely a glance, and my heart clenches. Is this how it all ends, then? Jayd sold off to the Bhavajas so I can get to the Mokshi unhindered? What does that get her or me? Peace? Is peace worth it? What do she and I care about peace for?

Jayd walks another four steps, then turns. She breaks from Rasida’s arm and runs to me. It has the feeling of a dream, or of something I’ve seen happen before.

I push through the crowd to meet her, and Jayd hurls herself into my embrace. For one heady moment, I believe Jayd has changed her mind. But she only holds me and whispers, “I’ll bring you the world once you’re on the Mokshi. Wait for me with Anat and her arm.”

Then she runs back to Rasida, and Rasida wraps her arm around Jayd’s waist and pulls her close, and Jayd gazes up into Rasida’s face, and Jayd’s gaze is so loving, so radiant, that I almost believe she never ran into my arms at all, and she didn’t just promise to bring me a world.

Jayd is escaping Anat, escaping Katazyrna, escaping this rotting world. I want to be happy for her, but the darkness in Rasida’s eyes is not diminished when she smiles. I can see that as well as anything. The darkness is not eclipsed by the crinkling at the edges of her eyes, by the flash of her white teeth, by the little pink tongue she bites when she is paying especial attention to Jayd’s words, rapt like a hopeless lover. No, the darkness is there, always, and I worry. I worry that back on Bhavaja, away from me, from Anat, from Katazyrna, the darkness will crawl out.

Rasida sprays on her suit, then Jayd’s, and they step into the air port with the last of her little party, including Rasida’s mother Nashatra and her sisters, Aditva and Samdi. Their family could be a mirror of Anat’s.

I watch them through the tear in the world as they are sucked onto the surface. I watch them until Jayd is secured to Rasida’s vehicle, and they shoot out after the others, toward the trailing necklace of the Bhavaja worlds. So far away.

The mood becomes somber. I half-expect everyone to cheer, but it takes Anat to inspire that. Anat gets up on the backs of three bottom-worlders and shouts into the silence, “Peace! We rule the Outer Rim in peace henceforth! And soon, the Legion!”

Then the cheers rise up, from the bottom-worlders and the rest, and even a few of Jayd’s sisters, who I suppose aren’t cheering so much for peace as they are at the idea they weren’t the ones sacrificed to it.

I stand mute in the corridor as the people sieve away from it, and Anat closes the skin of the world once again.

As the hall clears, Anat comes up to me and sets her heavy iron hand on my shoulder. “Now we get to business,” Anat says. “They agreed the Mokshi is ours. After the joining on Bhavaja tomorrow, you will take the Mokshi for Katazyrna, and I will be the only Lord of the Legion.”

“And what becomes of me after that?” I say.

Anat pulls her arm away. “That will depend entirely on how well you do,” she says.

*

Without Jayd’s guidance, I find myself adrift. I go to the hangar and take comfort in cleaning the vehicles. I am here again repairing broken organic tubing and removing the hard, cracked shells of the vehicle casings, and the vehicles, at least, seem to appreciate my efforts. After that disastrous attempt at boarding the Mokshi and the loss of Jayd, this effort restores some of my confidence.

I work alone and in silence for a long time. When I look up from my work, one of the sisters from the banquet hall is standing a few paces distant. I remember her name is Maibe. She’s the one who told me I was a poor copy of myself.

If we were standing side by side, Maibe would barely reach my shoulder, but I am lying on my back now, covered in the juice of the organic fuel system, hands deep in the guts of a vehicle, and from that vantage Maibe looks formidable, a mountain of a woman with a face made more severe through the lack of hair. I see wounds on her head, nicks from the knife she must have used to shave away her hair. Metal seems to be a rare and expensive commodity here, and I wonder if it was a bone knife instead.

“She sending you to the Mokshi right after the joining?” Maibe asks.

“That’s what they’ve been telling me,” I say. “Been there once already, though, and not much came of that.” I think about amending that based on what I’ve been told, but I have never been given a hard number about how many times I’ve been to the Mokshi.

“You should talk to the witches first,” Maibe says.

“The . . . witches?”

Maibe shrugs. “That’s what Mother calls them. They can . . . talk to the world. The world sees things sometimes. Things you and I don’t see. They’re a good source for old Legion stuff.”

“Whatever the witches said about the Mokshi, Anat would have told me already.”