Sabita takes me back to my quarters to rest. “You should know that I will do what I can to help you,” she whispers, as if fearing the walls themselves can hear her.
“Unless you can give me back my memory,” I say, “or tell me how to board the Mokshi, there’s no useful help you can offer me. Why is it Jayd tries to keep me away from everyone else?”
“You’re kept cloistered while you’re in recovery,” Sabita says. “Some of that is for your protection, and the protection of others. Sometimes, when you come back, you have very violent fits. Perhaps that’s to do with the means through which you lose your memory. I don’t know. But I have cared for you in recovery. Many times.”
“This is a fool’s game,” I mutter.
“It’s coming back, isn’t it? You should have had some memories resurface by now.”
“How do you know that?”
“We have done this many times,” she says again. A cry comes from the corridor. “I must go,” she says.
“Wait—” I say, but she runs into the hall, and the door purls shut behind her.
Outside, someone is screaming.
And screaming.
I cover my ears, and the screaming stops. My legs are shaky; hunger pinches my belly.
I lie back on the bed, thinking over all that has happened, and all that I remember so far. Every new memory brings with it a knot of horror that grows every moment. The panel of the wall lights up, and tangled blue and red geometric designs dance there. Is it a language, as I suspect? What is it telling me about the ship?
I don’t know how long it is before the door opens, but it’s long enough for me to consider if it’s possible to eat through the door.
Jayd enters, her face looking haggard and drawn.
“The bargain,” I say.
“Rasida Bhavaja, Lord Bhavaja, has always loved me,” Jayd says. “Or perhaps just been obsessed with me. We have parlayed with their family many times over the years. And now I carry something else that they have been fighting many other worlds to get a hold of. That combination . . . is potent. Anat proposes that I give myself to Rasida in exchange for peace, so you can board the Mokshi unhindered.”
“You agreed to this?” I say, incredulous.
“One does not disagree with Anat.”
“Don’t do it,” I say. “I can take the Mokshi without a truce. I can go in alone. No armies. If I go in alone—”
“When you go in alone, you come back without a memory,” Jayd says. “To protect you from whatever happens in there, and to take the Mokshi properly, you must get more women in there with you, and we can’t do that with the Bhavajas picking off whatever the Mokshi doesn’t. You can’t do it alone. We’ve tried.” She presses her lips firmly together, as if she’s said too much.
“We can try again,” I say.
“With another army?” Jayd says. “We’ve lost too many of our sisters, Zan. It’s not working.”
“I can protect you,” I say, and I know in that moment I can. I feel it fiercely.
“Oh, Zan,” Jayd says, and she opens her arms and I fall into them, resting my cheek against Jayd’s head, holding her close enough that I can feel the trembling of her heart. She is afraid. I don’t trust anything she says, but this fear is not a lie. “This is everything we wanted, Zan. But I’m going to have to do so many terrible things.”
“Why?” I say.
She does not answer, only continues stroking my hair. This is among the many things she does not want me to know. I wonder if they are the things that would make me go mad.
“You can convince Anat to hold off,” I say.
“There have been many chances,” Jayd says, pulling away. She wraps her hands in mine. “This is the only way to have peace.”
“Peace for who?” I say. “There’s no peace when you’re a slave.”
“It isn’t like that,” Jayd says. “Rasida Bhavaja is a smart, handsome woman—”
“She’s bought you like some animal!”
“It will be a fair exchange,” Jayd says, and her tone is dark. “I will make sure of that. She has asked for me many times. She once told Anat she would exchange a whole world for me, but Anat knows the Bhavajas too well. She knew Rasida would do something like attack and retake that world the moment we were joined.”
“But you believe she’ll be peaceful this time?” I say.
“I believe there will be peace long enough for you to get to the Mokshi,” Jayd says. “That’s all that matters. Once you have it, Anat will follow you there, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“The rest of what?”
“The world is dying,” Jayd says. “This is the best option.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“The answers will come in time. You have to trust this.”
“Don’t do this.” She is all I know of the world. And she will be leaving it.
“If I say no, she’ll recycle me. We must be united in this. If the Bhavajas think you harbor any ill will, it can turn out very badly. Please, Zan. This is what we wanted.”
I can’t see any way to fight my way out of this that doesn’t involve trying to turn Anat’s whole army on her. The army Anat last raised is dead back at the Mokshi, and I don’t know how many more conscripts she has somewhere in the other levels of the world. Getting them to fight for me instead of Anat would require me to have far more power than I command now. Right now I’m little more than a conscripted soldier, myself.
And then something far darker occurs to me, and I ask, “What will happen to me when you’re gone?”
“You’ll be all right,” Jayd says, but she does not look at me.
“You want to go,” I say flatly.
“This is the way it’s supposed to go, Zan,” she says, lowering her voice further still. “This is all we ever hoped for, I promise you.”
“You speak words without saying anything.”
“I’m saving you.”
“Have Anat send me. Have her marry me to Rasida.”
“Oh, Zan.”
“Why can’t they take me?”
Jayd leans into me, so close I feel her breath on my cheek. “I have something inside of me,” Jayd says. “Something they want so badly they will stop fighting if I go with Rasida. This womb I carry will save us, Zan, and the Legion.” She caresses my cheek. “Let this go, Zan. Let’s go forward.”
Something inside of me, Jayd says.
A memory blooms.
A three-headed woman, screaming. Blood on my arms. A big obsidian machete in my hand. They know too much, too much, I think as I swing the machete, and lop off one of the heads.
I jerk away from Jayd. “What are we?” I say. “What have we done?”
“We’ve done what we had to do,” Jayd says. She pulls away from me.
“WAR MAKES MONSTERS OF US ALL. BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE OF US WHO NO LONGER WISH TO BE MONSTERS?”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
8
JAYD