The Stars Are Legion(64)

“That’s all,” the witches said. They looked amused, as if they had just told some recycler girl that the cog she bore to replace the dying one inside the core atmospheric lung of the world was just what they wanted, everything they had hoped for.

It was the first time I realized that we had some power over what the ship did to us. It was the first time I dared to hope that we could escape the Legion. I realized I could build a future instead of just a fate.

When I took the new womb, the one I knew Rasida would need, and my mother learned it wasn’t going to be just another bit of organic shielding or some new recycler monster, Anat put me on a regular schedule of what she called “treatments,” though the witches begged and pleaded for reason every time, because it’s been so long since we had a womb like this on the first level of the world that they considered it a great portent.

“We don’t need it yet,” Anat said, as if what I bore could happen only so many times, and maybe she was right. I didn’t know. I’d never had any contact with people who gave birth to what I could now. I started to wonder what she was saving it for.

I learned to recognize my mother’s look of distaste every time the witches made their case—suspicion, fear, and something else, something more—a realization that I was not the daughter she had hoped for. She had wanted me to lead an army. But I had fallen in love and given myself a valuable womb and failed to give her the Mokshi. It was not the future she wanted.

“Get rid of it,” Anat said, every time.

The witches would bow and scrape before her, nodding all three of their heads. “She is necessary. It’s necessary. Please, we must have this one. This one is for us. Please. We must have it.”

“End it. You know what happens.”

“It’s the will of the world. A world without issue—”

“She hasn’t birthed it yet, has she? Get rid of it or I’ll have you recycled after all, the way I promised when I sent Zan out. It’s not as if she’s giving birth to a world, just another sorry piece of it.”

This is how I know that Rasida is not taking the same treatments that I am. I know the signs and symptoms. If she is going to give birth, if she is pregnant or has recently aborted, she shows no signs of it. When Rasida invites me to dinner, I accept. When she brushes my fingers, I do not flinch. When she speaks to me of the troubles of the world, I listen with my most sympathetic expression, the one I used on Anat throughout my whole childhood.

And this is how I come to realize that Rasida doesn’t have the world, the same way that Zan no longer has her own womb. Rasida has given it to someone else, and I need to find out who.

And then after dinner one night, I sit on Rasida’s bed, drink in hand, and she lies down in my lap, and I stroke her cheek, and she says, “It is very lonely, being the lord.”

“I imagine so,” I say, and I do not say, “Because you have murdered everyone who has ever cared for you or could ever care for you.” No, we are past that. I know what will happen if I say that. I have shifted how I am playing this game, though it is no easier than the last.

She presses her hands to my belly. “I can feel it moving,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, “sometimes it does that.”

She coos at my belly. “You have never taken it this far?” she says.

“No,” I say. She smiles and closes her eyes, and finally, I ask, “What about your own issue? I have not seen you pregnant in all this time.”

“Pregnancy is a risk,” she says. “Each of them, no matter what you birth. I need to stay fit to lead the Legion.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that,” she says. “There is only one that will ever come to term. You must be absolutely sure it is the right time to birth it. It could destroy you in the birthing. As with any birth. Too dangerous for me. I did what many women do. I gave it to someone else to bear.”

“Does it take a long time to come to term?” I ask, because the question of where her womb is now is far too obvious.

“No,” she says. “I believe in absolute control over what I have to bear. It’s incubating now. It will be born when we are ready to go to Katazyrna. While we are there, it will remake Bhavaja into a new world.”

“How will it do that?” I ask. Ignorance worked with Anat.

“Did they not tell you?” Rasida asks. “How cruel, not to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Rasida rises. Her hands move to my neck, and I stiffen, but she only rubs my shoulders, as if I am some creature in need of comfort. “I can give birth to worlds,” she says. “Surely you had heard of that on Katazyrna.”

“There were rumors,” I say. “We always thought it was a rumor you planted to make you seem very powerful.”

“Patience,” Rasida says. “Everything is coming together.”

“It’s difficult to be patient, without answers.”

“I anticipate your little experiment with Zan was also aggravating for her.”

“Are you comparing what’s happened with Zan with what you’re doing to me?”

“Not at all,” Rasida says. She shifts away from me.

“That’s not convincing,” I say, and my tone is wrong. I’ve misstepped. I wish, again, that I could slough off my memory the way Zan can. She can afford to be decent. I can’t.