Rasida clasps Anat’s iron arm, and Anat grins.
The room takes a collective breath. Rasida and Anat move to the high table. Zan leans into me, whispers, “What if they’d brought some weapon with them, or are launching an assault on the Mokshi right now? How can you or her trust people who are no better than bandits?”
I gaze at the human skin stretched over the table. Zan follows my look and quiets. “We are all villains here,” I say.
“I’m not,” Zan says, and I do not correct her.
We assemble at the table with great ceremony. A bevy of elevated bottom-worlders begin to spin stories, accompanied by the high, thin voices of the chorus behind them. I pay only half attention to them. My gaze returns again and again to Anat and Rasida. I am passably good at reading lips, but they are eating and speaking at the same time, and that complicates things.
Rasida sneaks looks at me often, enough that Zan grumbles about it. When Anat toddles off to go relieve herself, Rasida rises and comes to me.
Zan shifts so she is pressed hard against me.
Rasida takes my hand and says, “You will be my shining star. The mother of a new world.”
“I’m just a woman,” I say, “not a star.”
“You will be my star,” Rasida says fiercely, and her intensity surprises me, though of course it should not. She has been waiting for this day a long time. Maybe a part of me has been too, a part I don’t allow myself to think about, because it feels like another betrayal, and I am tired of being a traitor.
Zan says, “For all the talk of stars, what do you have to give her in return?”
I shush Zan, but Rasida laughs. “And what are you calling this one, Jayd?” Rasida says. “She looks like some conscript. What world is she from?”
“This is my sister Zan,” I say quickly.
“Is that so?” Rasida says. “Is that who you are?”
Zan does not reply. Only stares hard at Rasida. Her shoulders are stiff, and I fear she’s going to do something unwise. I pray to the Lord of War that her clean memory holds. It’s never come back entirely, but with the luck we’ve had these many turns, some stray thought will trickle in now, and we’ll be ruined. The first few times Zan came back without her memory, I had thought Zan was playing a trick on me to get back at me for what I’d done. Then I realized how much better it was this way. Now, sometimes, I pray for her to go back to the Mokshi before she remembers too much. Remembering hurts her. And me.
I put my hand over Zan’s. “That’s so,” I say.
“Let me introduce you to my companions,” Rasida says, and she points out the other women in her retinue. Her mother, a wizened old woman called Nashatra; two of her “near-sisters,” she says, called Aditva and Samdi; and various security personnel. I watch Zan weigh and measure them all. It is what she is best at, after all: assessing threats.
“A pack of animals,” Zan says.
Anat returns. She raises her voice. “That’s enough,” Anat says. “Curb your tongue, Zan, or I’ll have you recycled again.”
“She will,” I say to Zan, low. “We don’t want that.” Zan has been recycled before and survived it, but I don’t want to risk a second time. My pulse quickens. I feel as if I spend all of my time trying to quell Zan’s darker nature, trying to turn her self-destructive impulses into action, but she could say the same of me.
Rasida picks up two fingers of mashed plantains from Zan’s plate and puts both fingers into her own mouth, sucking them clean.
My physical reaction to this is less than dignified. I have to turn away from her as heat moves up my face. She is the enemy, I remind myself, but that doesn’t matter. It never matters. Maybe it makes it more of a challenge for me. Rasida is a problem to be puzzled out, and my body has already announced itself more than willing to try.
“Anything else you want to fight about?” Rasida says. “I suspect you and I have played before . . . Zan. Let’s play again and see how we fare this time.”
“Please,” I say loudly. “Zan, let us have peace.”
“Let us drink!” Anat says, and raises her fist to the ceiling. The lights change colors, back to white and blue. It’s a nice little trick, but a trick nonetheless. The arm is useless to her on this world. But Rasida does not know that. The lights glimmer in Rasida’s gaze, and I see her hunger again. Not for me, but for all Anat has, including me.
I gaze longingly at the ceiling, begging the world for a respite. I want this over. I want to be on Bhavaja.
The bottom-worlders bring out the beer, and my sisters fill the tremulous air with their light chatter, avoiding all the contentious topics. Rasida rises and goes back to her seat. She squeezes my shoulder as she goes.
When dinner is finished, Anat asks Rasida to her quarters. I sit up a little to see if Rasida is bringing anything with her, but no. This is where they will discuss formal terms, the terms that will save Katazyrna.
When they are gone, Zan leans into me. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for all that,” she says.
“You should be relieved.”
“She’ll say anything to make sure you go with her,” Zan says. “Who knows what will happen when you’re away from your family? I can’t protect you out there, Jayd.”
“I won’t need protecting.”
But then she says what is really at issue, and it cuts my heart. “Who’ll be here to help me remember?” Zan says. “Who will care about me now, with you gone?”
“THE COMMON PEOPLE DON’T WANT WAR. BETTER TO BROKER PEACE, AND BREAK IT, SO THEY ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR WHAT THEY HAVE LOST, THAN PRETEND THAT SPILLING COLD BLOOD WILL WARM WEARY HEARTS.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
9
ZAN