The Stars Are Legion(52)

Nashatra sighs. “Is there anything else, Lord?” she says.

“Yes,” Rasida says. “Samdi, take Mother to the witches.”

“The witches?” Nashatra says. “What—”

“I heard you wanted to save the world,” Rasida says, “so I decided to help you do that.”

“What? No, I—”

Samdi takes Nashatra by the arm. The other security women help her, and they escort Nashatra out of the room.

“What will you do to her?” I ask.

“What do you care?” Rasida says.

“You’re my family now,” I say. “She’s my mother too.”

Rasida wipes her bloody bone knife on her tunic and sheathes it. “Walk with me, love,” she says, and holds out her bloody hand.

I take it.

We walk back to my quarters. I see a familiar corridor along this route. It’s the same corridor I first came down, the one leading back to the hangar. I make a note of that and count the steps back to my rooms. I’d been a fool not to do this when I first came in, but I hadn’t been expecting Rasida’s betrayal. I thought I had this whole situation well in hand. But I had spent so much time trying to understand Anat that I never considered what would happen with Rasida.

Rasida sits on the edge of my bed and pulls me gently down next to her. She smooths my hair from my face. “Was that enough?” she says.

“Enough for what?” I say.

“Enough to dissuade you from what you’re planning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is my home now.”

“Yes,” Rasida says. “We must make sure you stay here.”

“What do you mean?” My voice comes out a whisper.

“Shhhhh . . . ,” she says.

There is something in her hand. It’s the bone knife.

I leap up from the bed. I make it three steps. I grab the edge of the doorway.

I feel a hot, burning pain across the back of my right knee. I stumble and fall heavily onto my side, screaming.

Rasida leers over me. She wipes her bloody dagger on my shoulder. Kneels beside me. “You will be better now,” she says. “Clearer-headed. Pain does that. There will be no running, love, because you have nowhere to go. Do you understand?”

She’s cut the tendon in my leg. I don’t want to understand. I don’t want it to be true.

When I have the arm and the world, I will have to leave quickly. And now she has hobbled me.

“I hate you,” I say. “I’ve always hated you.”

“I know,” Rasida says, “I know. It’s why we are so perfect together.” She wipes the blade of her knife on her knee. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”





“TO ESCAPE THE LEGION, YOU MUST FIRST UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS. MY MISTAKE WAS IN ASSUMING I UNDERSTOOD HOW THE WORLDS WORKED.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





21


ZAN


We scale a range of mountains built of human bones. Mostly human, anyway. I can see as we struggle over the piles, all soldered together with some calcified substance, that some of the skulls are too big, the pelvises too wide, to be fully human. I don’t know whose graveyard this is, then. Everyone’s, I suppose. Everything’s.

Time is impossible to measure at the bottom of the world. After a few sleeping periods, the moths become less and less, and are replaced by skittering beetles with great glowing abdomens. Sometimes we exist in complete darkness, and Casamir brings out a small, portable version of the tentacle globes, which she simply calls a torch.

The way would be grim and quiet if it were just Das Muni and I, but Casamir chatters ceaselessly. When we camp, Casamir tells stories, most of which make little sense to me. As we bed down for what must be our thirteenth or fourteenth time, Casamir tells a long and involved story about a woman with a cog that defecates in her hat each morning. I only half pay attention to it as I eat the tepid stew she’s mixed up for us from her pack.

Casamir ends her story with “And that’s why they call her Lord Knots!” She slaps her knee and guffaws.

I shake my head. “I don’t understand,” I say.

“It’s a joke,” Casamir says. “Because of science.”

“I see,” I say.

“I’m very funny,” Casamir says. “Everyone loves that joke. Let me tell it again. Maybe you missed the middle. This woman—”

“That’s all right,” I say.

Das Muni mumbles something about defecating scientists and wanders off to, I presume, defecate.

I watch Casamir hum to herself as she eats.

“Do you believe me,” I say, “that I’m from the surface?”

“Oh, sure,” Casamir says.

“That means no.”

Casamir shrugs. “What is reality, anyway? Reality is something we make with our minds. Yours exists as certainly as mine.”

“You think I’m insane,” I say.

“Oh, no,” Casamir says. “Just mentally delusional. It’s all right. Very common. Especially among those who’ve been discarded by their people.”

“So, you agree there are upper levels?”