The Stars Are Legion(98)

I have a memory then, of waking up in a sea of pain and blood. My left arm was a red, gory wound. In the memory, I’m naked, and the first thing I do is look beside me to where I should find the woman who shares my bed. Where I should find Jayd. But she is gone. And that’s when the world trembles.

Jayd stole everything from me.

The Mokshi is my world, Rasida had said. But not my world in the same way it is Das Muni’s world. I built that world. I freed it from the core of the Legion, and I designed it to leave the Legion. But something went wrong. Something inside of it failed, and then the Katazyrnas attacked me. Jayd attacked me. I thought I could convince her of my purpose. But her first loyalty had been to Anat. She feared Anat far more than me.

I tremble as I slip my left arm into the metal one. The interior is slimy with the green lubricant.

But the arm fits like a glove tailored just for me.

The arm warms around me. My fingers slide into the metal sheaths at the end. I squeeze my fist, and I can feel a terrible power there at the center of it.

Why did Jayd want the arm? A trophy for her mother, no doubt, but as I stare at my fist, I see this is the key to something. It’s why we needed the arm, too, and not just the world. Jayd had no idea what it contains, what it can do. To be honest, in this moment, I don’t either. But it’s more than a trophy.

I raise my hand; a ripple of heated air flows around me as I do. I imagine the ruined door ahead of me becoming whole. I imagine it sealing itself back up. Soldering itself together.

Green mist emanates from the center of my palm, and then the skin of the world is rippling and growing over the ruined doorway. It forms a perfect spiraling circle, then blooms open, a fresh seal without even a scab. All that’s left to signal anything happened to the door at all are the blistered pieces of it lying at my feet; as I watch, they are being absorbed into the floor.

I was not a general, a leader of armies, as Jayd told me when I first woke. No, it seems my skill was in something else. My skill was never in death but in making life.

I have the arm now.

Does Jayd have the world?

Together, we’ll get to the Mokshi. And I will have my real answers.





“WE ALL SAY WE WANT THE TRUTH. WE’RE LYING.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





37


ZAN


I race back to the heart room and turn the corner just in time to see Arankadash and Casamir step inside.

Das Muni waits in the threshold. She gazes in, once, then back at me. She removes her cowl and stares at me with her big eyes. I see something there that makes time seem to slow down. I listen to my heartbeat and the pulse of the world beneath my feet. I see her look at me just this way in another life, another time, only that time, she is kneeling at my feet, because I am her lord.

Her lord. She must have known this whole time.

I hear a hiss. Something thuds into Das Muni’s chest, and she sprawls back hard. Her little body hits the opposite wall.

I yell. What I yell, I don’t know, but I run to her, still yelling whatever formless thing that’s burst up from my chest.

She is lying in a pool of blood rapidly expanding from the hole in her chest. Inside her chest cavity is a pulsing black bit of charged bone or other organic material. It’s neatly burst her open.

“Das Muni,” I say, and I pull her into my arms. Her blood runs hot and wet into my lap. She is so light.

Her mouth moves. Blood colors her teeth and tongue. I see that she’s bitten her tongue hard.

I turn, unbelieving, back toward the heart room. Jayd is there, slumped on a long console that dances with lights. Threads of red and yellow and blue tangle in the air above her. She is heavily pregnant and holding a massive weapon. I recognize it as the kind I took out on my attack on the Mokshi. Her face is drawn and haggard, and though her belly is distended, her face is hollowed: her eyes are sunken, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes. A tangled mass of arms and legs and heads is huddled up in the corner, and as they unfold themselves, I see that they are a single body. I shudder, wondering what new horror the world has for us.

Arankadash fires at Jayd and misses.

“Don’t kill her!” I say. “That’s Jayd.”

Casamir’s eyes bulge. She has her own weapon now, and she does not take her finger from the trigger. “Are you mad?” she says.

“Jayd, why did—” I begin.

“For fuck’s sake!” Jayd says. “She was . . . Listen to me. She knew who you were. She was serving on this level. I can’t have . . . We can’t . . .” Her eyes fill. She fights it. “I can’t start over. Yes, I recycled her. So what? She recognized you. We can’t start over. This is the endgame, Zan. She can’t . . . She can’t ruin this. I just . . . I shot her without thinking. We can’t start over. This is the end. This has to be the end. I can’t do this again, Zan. I can’t.”

“Das Muni, what’s she—”

Das Muni brings up her long fingers to my face and shows her teeth. “I am yours, Lord,” she says.

I cradle her head in my iron arm. “I’m not just another woman from the Mokshi, am I?” I whisper, because though I know it now, have known it for too long now, I want to hear it from her.

She shakes her head.

“Why didn’t you kill me down there?” I ask. “I failed the Mokshi, didn’t I? Failed you and everyone who lived there. This traitor recycled you. And I took her back after. I took her back because we could not go on without her.”