For as long as I’ve been alive, Rasida Bhavaja and her family have been the only things I truly fear. I fear her more than I fear my mother, because they are the only family in the Legion strong enough to defy her. My fear, however, is mixed with respect, as Rasida has been able to do what I have not. She has been able to get Anat to fear her.
Yet if the Katazyrnas are to survive, and the Legion is to be spared, it was inevitable that one of us would have to either kill Rasida or marry her to end the war. What I never told Anat was that it had to be me. She needed to think that was her idea. When I came to Anat after doing what I did during the war with the Mokshi and told her what I had stolen, she had rejoiced. For a time, she praised me as her best daughter. Her smartest daughter. Her most ruthless daughter. But I had made the wrong choice. I knew it as we recycled all those people, and Katazyrna still rotted around us. I had chosen to please Anat over my own sense, and I feared I would never be able to make it right.
But now I have the chance to do what I should have done in the first place. Now I can atone for all those bodies, all that betrayal.
Even as Anat held the iron arm aloft, that great glimmering trophy I had brought home for her, I knew that she would never make me Lord of Katazyrna as I had hoped. I would never be given the power I needed to defeat the Bhavajas and steal the womb we all knew they had, the one that could save far more than just Katazyrna. I had to go back to the Mokshi and atone.
And this was the way Zan and I came up with to get what we needed. It was a foolish, dangerous plan, but this was indeed a foolish, dangerous place.
We prepare to receive the Bhavajas in the great reception hall. All of my best sisters are with me—little Maibe with the shaved head; tall Neith, who looks nearly as old as our mother, one eye gouged out and crossed with a scar; stocky Suld with the twisted hand; Anka and Aiju, the young twins just past menarche; and Prisha, a slip of a woman with soft hands and softer features.
I pretend not to notice when Maibe slides up beside Zan, clasps her elbow, and says, “You look like a poorer copy every time you come back. Something about your eyes. Always so blankly stupid, getting stupider every time.”
“Your face is stupider,” Zan says, and I probably laugh too hard at that, but I’m so full of anxiety and anticipation and fear and hope that I’m almost trembling. I hope that this will all be over very soon, because to stand here much longer with Zan’s desperate, innocent stare on me will break my heart.
While we wait for the arrival of the Bhavajas, Zan stares at the coiling streamers of lights dancing along the ceiling, and I follow her gaze. I’m not sure if she understands what they are yet. I don’t think so. But Zan has always kept her thoughts close. The last time we went through the stumbling memory-loss-and-recovery, she had tried to kill me twice before she fully understood what had brought us to this place, and the depth of my betrayal. This is all necessary. I know that, but it doesn’t make it hurt less when she remembers why.
When Anat enters, holding her iron arm aloft, its green glowing core painting harsh shadows across her face, I straighten and move closer to Zan. Even now, I feel protective of her. It’s my fault she’s in the position she is.
Gavatra comes in behind Anat. “Our guests have arrived,” Gavatra says. “Let us assemble for the exchange.”
I take a deep breath and move away from Zan so I stand halfway between Gavatra and my sisters.
Anat comes up beside me, and it is not difficult to pretend at apprehension. So much depends on this moment.
Anat’s boxy face is split wide with a little half-grin that I find repulsive. Two skinny bottom-worlders stand beside her, armed with burst weapons, which I think would provoke more than reassure, but I say nothing. These talks have been going on for some time. We have fought the Bhavajas for generations, since long before the Mokshi appeared on the Outer Rim, cut loose from the Core. Whatever the Katazyrnas want, the Bhavajas want, and vice versa. It’s been a long, weary dance.
Rasida Bhavaja strides into our assembly room with a great retinue of her family behind her; a dozen, all told. I recognize her mother, Nashatra, and two of her sisters, Aditva and Samdi, and Rasida introduces them and the others to Anat and my sisters. It seems like a terrible number of Bhavajas to have on our world, but we are armed, and they would not have been allowed weapons. I honestly expected Rasida to send one of her sisters in her stead. But no. I know her face because I know all the faces of my enemies intimately. It is in my best interest to know them. I glance over at Zan.
“You’ve grown, Jayd,” Rasida says. She is a tall, handsome woman, with not a single visible scar. I know she has others underneath the long drape she wears, but from a distance, she is untouched. One might think her soft for all that, if not for her flinty eyes. She stares at me, unblinking, as if a predator peers out from her eyes. Her gaze at once thrills and haunts me, as it has since I was small. The last time I saw her was during a parlay on another world, now long dead, when my sister Nhim commanded the Katazyrna armies, long before Zan joined us. Nhim had been an intimidating person too, but Rasida seemed to loom over her, though she was shorter and thinner than Nhim. When Nhim left the room to send a message to Anat, Rasida leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What would we do here, alone, you and I, if we were not enemies?” and the question haunted me afterward, because the desire was so thick in her voice that it made me tremble. Why is it we always want a thing we should not have?
“Growing is a thing children do,” Anat barks.
I wish there was a soft, politic bone in Anat’s body, but that is like wishing I could swim through the walls of the world.
Anat holds out her left arm, the great iron one, and Rasida glances from the arm to me, then to Zan. For a moment, I think Rasida is going to say something, but she lets it lie. The arm is clearly a war trophy—no one knows how to make anything so fine anymore. Wearing it in Rasida’s presence could be seen as an insult, or perhaps a reminder, that all Katazyrnas are warmongers.
“You have seen my daughter,” Anat says, “now where is my peace offering? Do I get a kiss?”
Rasida shows her teeth. “We have been at this too long, Katazyrna.”
“Let’s sit and pretend at friendship,” I say. “I’ve been waiting for this war to end all my life.”
Anat glares at me. Rasida’s expression is more calculating. Does she think I’m insincere? It’s true I’ve always wanted the war to end. I never said I wanted it to end like this.