The Stars Are Legion(24)

I have spent so many nights locked in my rooms on Katazyrna, cursing my mother, that this treatment is not surprising, only disappointing. I will need to work harder to get close to Rasida if I’m not allowed to go to her. I have already tried the great door out of the foyer, but Rasida has two stout guards there who glare at me whenever I open the door.

“You wish to know me better?” Rasida says, passing me the bulb of wine.

“We’re to be paired,” I say, and drink.

To my surprise, she lies down in my lap and rests her head against my stomach. She presses her ear to my belly and sighs. I carefully smooth the hair away from her brow, uncertain as to what comes next.

“You will be the mother of a new generation,” she says. “My witches foretold it.”

“Your witches still live?” I ask.

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Well, so much of this world is . . . I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says, sighing and pressing herself closer to me. “You are right. Bhavaja is deteriorating. But all that will change soon.”

“How?”

She moves her mouth into that smile-that-is-not-a-smile. “You will see.”

“I have heard . . .” And I must be careful here. My breath catches. “I have heard you can birth worlds. Is that what you will do?”

She sits up. My heart races, and I lean back, instinctively, fearful I have overstepped.

Rasida gets up and opens the door. She gestures to me. “Come to my quarters,” she says.

I finish the wine, and I follow her. I tell myself that my smile is more convincing than hers.

Rasida takes me through a circuitous route to another level of the world. It seems we have gone up, but I can’t be certain. There are heavily armed women on this level, posted every hundred paces. Rasida invites me inside a great room with high ceilings layered in lacy bones. She urges me to sit on a lavish divan layered in hemp cloth. Golden trinkets grace the walls. It takes me a moment to understand what they are. They are trophies, of a sort—pendants and religious symbols from lost worlds. I recognize two of them from a dead world called Valante, a silver-striped pin that was worn by all the daughters of the lord of that world. Now they lie scattered across whatever worlds salvaged the wreckage of that place before it rotted away.

“More wine?” Rasida asks. She opens up a great globular wardrobe made of wood, an impossible expense. I wonder which world she salvaged that from. The wood is dark and shiny, ancient.

“Yes,” I say, because I have some idea of what we are here for, and I need the courage. Rasida is a handsome woman, and though she presses me close and offers me baubles, I am fighting hard to remember that she is dangerous, too.

But so are Zan and I.

Rasida pours me a drink from a very old, very used metal decanter. The liquid is poured not into bulbs but into beautiful metal glasses inscribed with fanciful geometric designs. I have seen a few such things come out of the craftspeople in the lower levels of Katazyrna, but ones this beautiful tend to be salvage. I know the Katazyrnas have murdered and pillaged many worlds, but the things Anat keeps are the people, the organics, not these sorts of objects.

I sip the wine and make an appreciative noise. I expected wine to taste more like beer. I know, vaguely, that they are made from different types of plants. I tremble. It has been a long time since I inhabited another world. A long time since I had to learn other rules.

Rasida sits next to me. I am aware of the warmth and softness of her. The room is cool, and I am drawn to her in a way I find distracting. She radiates a calm confidence. The ropy muscles in her arms, the heavy thighs, the keen, dark stare she fixes on me, as if I am the most interesting person in the world, make me want to straddle Rasida like a pleasure seeker and press myself into her, become part of her, like we are all a part of the ships.

Don’t be a fool, I think, but Rasida is gazing at me with her big dark eyes now, and I get a little thrill at this idea that a woman so powerful is so smitten with me. I could control her utterly.

“This ship is yours,” Rasida says, “as it is mine. You have total freedom here. I hope you understand that.”

“That is kind,” I say, and try to scramble back to my purpose. I am not here to fuck Rasida. I am here to get what I need from her and save the Legion.

“You are my consort,” Rasida says, “not just a petty bit of organic fodder. You understand? If that was all I wanted, I could have any number of women from other worlds. What I wanted was you. Always you. From the time we were both small.” She places her fingers on my arm, runs them from wrist to elbow. When she pulls her hand away, my skin is warm where she has touched me. It has been some time since anyone touched me with desire, not since the last time Zan was herself. Oh, how I love Zan, the Zan she was before all this started, before we gave up everything to get me here, trembling under Rasida’s fingers.

I finish the wine, hoping for courage or perhaps sense. I wish for a message or sign from the Lord of War that tells me how to handle myself now that this plan has worked. I never counted on Rasida being so irresistible, after all this time. I never counted on the desire that lights me up like a torch when she looks at me. I feel that my body is betraying me and my purpose. I don’t know why desire has to be so complicated. I know what I need and what I want, and there is a place where those two things intersect, but it is a dangerous place.