The Stars Are Legion(39)

“Now that I have the opportunity—”

“Yes, of course,” Rasida says. “We’ll make sure you are cared for. You know that’s all I want. To care for you.”

“I know,” I say.

As we finish our meal, Rasida talks of the salvage work on the neighboring world, petty insurgencies in the level below, and relates a story about how one of her sisters burned out an infestation of vermin on the upper level. The conversation seems trivial, but I note that she is careful about how much she tells me. I never hear more of her sisters’ names, nor the name of the world they are salvaging from, nor what is being salvaged.

We are interrupted by Rasida’s mother, Nashatra.

I make to stand as she enters, a show of respect, but Rasida waves me back down.

“What do you want, you old fool?” Rasida says.

Nashatra ducks her head. “Apologies, Lord, you’re needed on the fourth level.”

“The fourth? Fuck and fire,” Rasida mutters. “You can’t take care of it yourself?”

“You asked to be alerted any time the—”

“Shut your fool mouth,” Rasida says.

I close my own mouth, even though she is not talking to me. I can’t help being shocked at Rasida’s tone. If I had spoken to Anat that way, I’d have been recycled.

Rasida gets up. Nashatra backs away, trying to give her room to go past, but as she does, she knocks the table, and Rasida’s goblet falls to the floor.

Rasida raises her arm, but Nashatra is already getting to her knees—painfully, from the look on her face—and babbling apologies.

“I’m sorry, daughter,” Nashatra says. She pulls the goblet off the floor and begins to wipe it clean on her tunic.

I try to get down beside her to help, but Rasida snaps her fingers at me. “You go back to your rooms,” she says. “Samdi, escort my consort to her rooms.”

“I’m sorry,” I say to Nashatra stupidly, because what do I have to be sorry for? We’re all just things here, owned by the most powerful person in the Legion.

When I finally go back to my rooms, the light on the walls feels very bright, and I’m exhausted from my long performance. The girls are still there, though, turning down my bed and pouring fresh, warm water into a bowl so I can wash my face before I go to sleep. I say nothing to them as I disrobe and bathe and slip into bed. The semidarkness is welcome, because it is the only time I can be certain no one can see my face.

Yet I still pull the blankets over my head before I let my face relax. The temperature inside Katazyrna was always more or less constant, but here on Bhavaja, it fluctuates. It’s warm now, but in a few breaths, it could cool to something less comfortable. Cowering under the covers this way, I can pretend I’m back on Katazyrna, though I find that memory brings me little solace. Life on Katazyrna, before Zan, was little better than my situation here. It was Zan who gave me hope that we could be something else, after I nearly destroyed her.

When I wake, the girls are rubbing the walls alight, and I find I have another long cycle of nothing before me. I make myself get up and dress. When the girls run off to get my food, I walk out into the courtyard outside my rooms and begin walking the circumference of it. I’m too nauseous to eat but hope that exercise eases both my stomach and my anxiousness. I have never been a prisoner before. I understand now how Zan felt.

When the girls arrive with the food, there is someone with them. It’s Nashatra.

“Hello, Mother,” I say. I expect to see Rasida there behind her, but she is alone. She is lanky in the arms and legs but soft in the middle, with a round, fleshy face and firm mouth that put me in mind of Rasida. Her eyes are hooded; she doesn’t fully open the lids, making her expression difficult to read. I expect that is a blessing here.

“Walk with me, child,” she says.

I follow her into the foyer. We walk in silence past the guards in the outer corridor and down a series of twisting passages. Finally, we come to a large, bowed room. Half the ceiling has collapsed, revealing brittle layers of the world above it, all fused and twisted together like scar tissue.

“We are alone,” she says.

“I can see that.”

“Your family is dead, and you owe us your womb,” she says.

“That’s correct.”

“I told Rasida we should trade only for your womb and have one of her sisters carry it. She refused. She wanted you. All of you, against my better judgment. I don’t trust Katazyrnas.”

“Yet you are here alone with me,” I say.

“You are not so foolish that you’d do harm to me here. You don’t yet know the full extent of Rasida’s wrath, but you will, child. Rasida always gets what she wants.”

“I have seen what she does to her own mother,” I say.

“I never wanted war,” Nashatra says. “Rasida’s aunt was Lord before Rasida was. I never held the title. You can see why.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Don’t I?” she says.

“Why have you taken me here?”

“The girls are Rasida’s,” she says, “like most people here. But not all of us. Not all of us, child. You understand? Just because I raised that girl doesn’t mean I will stand by while our world rots around her.”