The Stars Are Legion(99)

“You are not the same, Lord Mokshi,” Das Muni says. “You are a different woman. I am too.” She huffs up blood.

“You want answers?” Jayd says. She points her weapon at me now. “Get us both to the Mokshi.”

I squeeze Das Muni to my chest. Her blood slicks my suit. “No,” I say. “You kill her, you kill me.”

“You don’t care about her,” Jayd says.

“Maybe some other version of me didn’t,” I say, “but I do. I won’t leave her here to die like this.”

“She is already dead,” Jayd says.

Blood is bubbling on Das Muni’s lips. “Save her,” I say, “or kill me here with her.”

Something in Jayd’s face twists. Is it wonder? Surprise? She gazes back into the room and at the many-headed woman there. “Can you repair her?” Jayd asks it.

The left head says, “What will we get in return?”

“I won’t shoot you,” Jayd says.

“A hard bargain,” the right head says. They bumble forward.

“Will you make sure she’s all right?” I ask Casamir and Arankadash.

They exchange looks. Arankadash says, “Hole up here, hoping you return alive? Not a chance, after this.”

“If I’m not back in an hour, come for me,” I say.

Casamir knits her brows. “Come for you how?”

“I’ll show you,” I say.

*

Jayd leads us to the hangar. Or marches us there; I don’t know which. Maybe both. Part of me wants to take her in my arms. The other part wants to disarm her and scream. I show Casamir the hangar and explain it. She gives a low whistle.

“You can watch from the observation window,” Jayd says, motioning Casamir out.

“You sure about this?” Casamir asks me.

“No,” I say, “but the Mokshi has always been where I get my answers.”

“One hour,” Casamir says. She shuts the hangar door behind her and goes up to the observation room.

Jayd limps toward one of the vehicles. I noticed on the way here that something had happened to her leg.

“What have you done?” I ask.

She’s breathing hard and clutching at her belly. “I’ve done everything we promised,” she says. “You clearly don’t remember yet, but you will. You must. On the Mokshi. I’m sure. I’m so sure you’ll remember.”

“It won’t let us in,” I say.

“It will let you in,” she says. “It always does, eventually, because you remember how to disarm it. But now you even have . . .” She trails off into a deep breath, winces. “You have the arm.”

“The arm and the world,” I say. “You have the world, don’t you?”

She nods. “Trust me one last time, Zan. Just one last time. You remember this was our plan?”

“I remember we agreed to bring the arm and the world to the Mokshi,” I say.

“Good,” she says. Her tone is lighter, relieved. “Good, yes, that’s something.”

She gestures me toward the table where the suits and the vehicle guts are. She sprays on a suit. I do too. Then she waves me over to one of the vehicles and tells me to be still. She programs the release sequence, using a tangle of lights near the door. I look up at the observation window and see Casamir up there, hefting her weapon and peering at us. Will she be brave enough to come after me, really, once she sees the blackness of open space? She didn’t believe a single word of this a rotation ago. I worry it will test her sanity.

Jayd slips onto the vehicle behind me. I feel the heat of her, and the pulsing thing inside of her. I flex my arm. The lights above us move as the skin of the world thins.

I start the vehicle, and we pop free of Katazyrna.

I have been underground so long that the sight of the Legion takes my breath away. The great orb of the artificial sun is shuttering open, and it spills across my vision like a promise of rebirth. Behind me, Jayd is tense. I am too. I wonder at both of our motives.

I pilot toward the Mokshi, and in my bones I know this route so well that it feels like the most natural thing in the world. There are dead vehicles circling Katazyrna, and abandoned bodies that no one has bothered to collect and recycle. When I gaze back at Katazyrna, I see that half the world’s tentacles are now dead and withered, tucked close to the rotten black skin of the world. How long have I been gone?

I want to say something to Jayd, but we have no way to communicate in our suits except by sign language, and what I have to say is far too long and complex for that while I’m piloting a vehicle.

As we near the Mokshi, I see its defenses light up, the same blue and green auroras I saw the last time I tried to take it. This time, Jayd taps my iron arm and points to the Mokshi.

I raise the arm and make a fist.

The aurora dissipates.

I stare into my upraised hand and marvel at it. Once again, I am ushering my enemy into the Mokshi. I am inviting her and her weapons and her motives, and I understand even less of them this time than I did the last.

I fly us straight toward the hole in the world, and though Jayd points the way as we sink below the skin of the ship, I pilot my way there of my own volition, like taking a long journey home.

We part layer upon layer. I expect to see bodies, but there are none this deep into the world. Of course not. They were all recycled by Jayd. How did I forgive her? How? I don’t trust who I used to be any more than I trust Jayd. There’s dripping ichor from the ruined levels, much of it frozen and blistered, peeling back.