The Stars Are Legion(81)

Arankadash lunges at us, but I yell at her to stay back.

“Don’t move her!” I say.

The crystal has not gone all the way through Das Muni. I’m unharmed but trembling. I work my way out from under Das Muni. She squirms as I break free.

“Don’t move,” I say softly, to Das Muni this time. I crouch beside her. She lets out little hissing breaths. “Why did you do that?” I say, but I don’t expect an answer, and she does not give me one.

Casamir and Arankadash crowd next to me and lean over her. Casamir is wringing her hands. I reach for the crystal.

“Don’t!” Casamir says. “If you pull out the crystal, she’ll just bleed out.”

“I can’t leave it in there,” I say. “Das Muni?”

She squeals again.

Arankadash slides out of her pack and kneels next to Das Muni. The shard of crystal is as long as my arm and half as wide. It’s taken her low down on her right side, just below her ribs. I can’t tell how deep it is, only that it hasn’t gone all the way through her.

I press my ear to her back and listen to her breathe. I can hear a rattling sound.

“Why are you such a little fool?” I say, and I press my forehead to her shoulder. I don’t know how we will move her. I don’t know how we’ll survive even if we can. She is the one thing I have had beside me from the beginning of this horror, and now she lies bleeding and rattling to death.





“BE WARY OF WOMEN WHO PRETEND AT FRIENDSHIP.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





30


JAYD


I step through the girls’ blood and back through the door that Sabita made. On any other world, the blood would have been absorbed immediately, but not here on Bhavaja. Sabita did not consider this. I know because I can follow the dripping spatters of blood through the door and into the dark, narrow sub-corridors that bisect the main ones.

I am slow, terribly slow. I have no idea how far ahead of me she is, or what she means to do once she gets to where she is going. I find a dead Bhavaja security woman in the hall, her throat cut neatly. Sabita never fought in my mother’s armies, but when you put people back together again, you also learn how to take them apart. She has ended this woman neatly. Much more neatly than the girls.

She stepped through the blood here and has left smeared half-footprints along the floor. I see blood along a bend in the corridor where she had paused. For breath? To catch her bearings?

I try to speed up, but with my injured leg, it’s impossible. I wish I had a walking stick. I wish I’d learned to stand on my hands, the way that Zan could.

I hear raised voices, yelling.

“Sabita!” I say. “Sabita, stop!”

I hope that it gains me the time I need to reach the open doorway at the end of the hall. There is a dead end here right before the door. A great face made of rotten skin stretched over molded bone blocks the end of the hall; the corridor has partially grown around it.

I step into the lighted doorway and find Sabita dripping blood from her chin and Nashatra holding a great obsidian machete. Sabita’s cunning bone knife is tiny in comparison, but the women’s gazes tell me they are well matched.

“How did you find her?” I ask Sabita.

She signs, “The girls.”

The girls. How had she gotten them to talk? No, of course, they could sign. I hadn’t thought to sign at them, because I didn’t want them to know I knew how. Sabita did not care.

“Don’t kill Nashatra,” I say.

Nashatra barks a laugh. “You should be telling me not to kill her.”

“No more killing at all, then,” I say. “The Bhavajas need Nashatra,” I say.

“For what?” Sabita signs.

“Who will rule when Rasida is gone?”

“Rasida will just kill her anyway,” Sabita signs.

“Give me the womb,” I say. “I’ll bear the world to term. You can’t have long left.”

“Are you mad?” Nashatra says.

“Yes,” I say. “Sabita, you’re a tissue technician. You know how to pull out my womb and give me another one. Take mine, Nashatra. You’ll want children more than worlds, anyway.”

“That’s a serious surgery, Jayd,” Sabita signs.

“I know,” I say. “I’ve done it before, when Zan gave me her womb and we took out hers. Being able to bear children was the only leverage I would have, the only thing that could get me here. I couldn’t have gotten close enough to Rasida to get the world in that womb. And it’s the world we need, in the end.”

Sabita signs, “When did you do that?”

I say out loud, “On the Mokshi.”

“You and Zan—” Sabita signs.

“What we planned is bigger than the Legion,” I say. “That’s all I can tell you. We’re no madder than Rasida. No madder than staying here and enduring her wrath. Where’s the medical lounge?”

Nashatra considers.

“I know you don’t want that world,” I say. “What autonomy do you have when you cannot even decide what and when you birth? That was taken from you. We can fix it.”

“This way,” Nashatra says. “You’ll need the witches’ help or this will kill you. They will heal your—”