“More wine?” Rasida asks. She opens up a great globular wardrobe made of wood, an impossible expense. I wonder which world she salvaged that from. The wood is dark and shiny, ancient.
“Yes,” I say, because I have some idea of what we are here for, and I need the courage. Rasida is a handsome woman, and though she presses me close and offers me baubles, I am fighting hard to remember that she is dangerous, too.
But so are Zan and I.
Rasida pours me a drink from a very old, very used metal decanter. The liquid is poured not into bulbs but into beautiful metal glasses inscribed with fanciful geometric designs. I have seen a few such things come out of the craftspeople in the lower levels of Katazyrna, but ones this beautiful tend to be salvage. I know the Katazyrnas have murdered and pillaged many worlds, but the things Anat keeps are the people, the organics, not these sorts of objects.
I sip the wine and make an appreciative noise. I expected wine to taste more like beer. I know, vaguely, that they are made from different types of plants. I tremble. It has been a long time since I inhabited another world. A long time since I had to learn other rules.
Rasida sits next to me. I am aware of the warmth and softness of her. The room is cool, and I am drawn to her in a way I find distracting. She radiates a calm confidence. The ropy muscles in her arms, the heavy thighs, the keen, dark stare she fixes on me, as if I am the most interesting person in the world, make me want to straddle Rasida like a pleasure seeker and press myself into her, become part of her, like we are all a part of the ships.
Don’t be a fool, I think, but Rasida is gazing at me with her big dark eyes now, and I get a little thrill at this idea that a woman so powerful is so smitten with me. I could control her utterly.
“This ship is yours,” Rasida says, “as it is mine. You have total freedom here. I hope you understand that.”
“That is kind,” I say, and try to scramble back to my purpose. I am not here to fuck Rasida. I am here to get what I need from her and save the Legion.
“You are my consort,” Rasida says, “not just a petty bit of organic fodder. You understand? If that was all I wanted, I could have any number of women from other worlds. What I wanted was you. Always you. From the time we were both small.” She places her fingers on my arm, runs them from wrist to elbow. When she pulls her hand away, my skin is warm where she has touched me. It has been some time since anyone touched me with desire, not since the last time Zan was herself. Oh, how I love Zan, the Zan she was before all this started, before we gave up everything to get me here, trembling under Rasida’s fingers.
I finish the wine, hoping for courage or perhaps sense. I wish for a message or sign from the Lord of War that tells me how to handle myself now that this plan has worked. I never counted on Rasida being so irresistible, after all this time. I never counted on the desire that lights me up like a torch when she looks at me. I feel that my body is betraying me and my purpose. I don’t know why desire has to be so complicated. I know what I need and what I want, and there is a place where those two things intersect, but it is a dangerous place.
I want it nonetheless.
Rasida sets aside her own glass and gets onto her knees in front of me. She bends her head and gently parts my knees.
I freeze, uncertain of how to react. I wear only a long tunic, with nothing beneath. I feel Rasida’s hot breath against my skin. Then her tongue.
I gasp. My precious metal goblet falls to the floor. The thirsty flooring laps up the wine as Rasida presses her lips to me, as if her tongue seeks to find the heart of me. She is a flickering, insistent whisper.
I dig my hands into Rasida’s long hair and cry out. Rasida pushes up my tunic, stripping me bare. Rasida pulls me against her, hungry and passionate, the way Zan had taken me in the early days, before she was rewritten and erased into some pale shadow; a woman without a past, only purpose.
Is that me? Can I be a woman without a past, in this moment? I want that, desperately. I want to start over the way that Zan has.
Rasida’s desire is contagious. I wrap myself around Rasida’s thigh and cry out.
“I love you,” Rasida says into my hair. “You make the very Lord of War tremble. I am yours. I am your lord.”
“My lord,” I gasp. I hold Rasida’s head against my chest, feeling the warmth and power of her. How exhilarating, to hold this woman in my arms. I am drunk on her desire of me.
“You are the love of my life, the mother of worlds,” Rasida murmurs, stroking my belly.
I move Rasida’s hands away. “I am more than that, love,” I say, and it tastes strange on my lips, to call some other woman love. My enemy. My love.
“Of course,” Rasida says, and she strokes my cheek and moves her hands lower.
“When will we be joined?” I say, and I don’t say, “Because I want to see Zan again,” because I am not a fool, but with Rasida’s hands on me, I see Zan again, the way she was before all of this started, and I want Zan. I want our old life. I want to see her one more time before I do what must be done.
“Soon,” Rasida says. “Let us slake our thirst first.”
“My family will be there?” I ask.
“They are invited to the world of the joining,” Rasida says, and her fingers find me again, and I close my eyes and think of Zan. “But first,” Rasida says, “I must do one last thing.”
“ONCE YOU HAVE THE HEART, TAKE THE HEAD.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
11
ZAN
It’s Sabita who wakes me while the glowing blue lights of the wall in my room tangle before me. I spray on a simple suit, something a bottom-worlder left for me before I went to sleep. It is red and black, and clings to my skin the same way my suit did, only it does not cover my hands or face.
“Maibe says you were reassigned,” I say to Sabita.
Sabita gives a small smile but says nothing. She leads me to the hangar and the stir of my sisters, where we gather to attend Jayd’s binding.
“Sabita?” I say as she moves away.
She opens her mouth. Her tongue is gone. I open my own mouth to cry after her, but she closes the hangar door behind her, leaving me with Anat and the others. I’m struck dumb with both shock and horror.
Anat is pulling at the collar of a suit. The others are dressed in far too many clothes, it seems to me, vests and long jackets over their regular clothing.
“Sabita—” I begin, but Anka, one of the twins, shushes me.
“Let it lie,” Anka says.
“Who did that to Sabita?” I say.
“Why aren’t you wearing your exterior suit?” Anat spits.
“Who did that?” I say, louder this time.
“Who do you think?” Anat says. “Jayd, of course. Sabita talks too much. She gets you overly agitated.”
I gape.