“What’s taken you so long?” Sabita signs, and it’s the look on her face—exasperated, disbelieving—that shifts something inside of me.
The Jayd she remembers would not sit here in bed, unwashed, melancholy. The Jayd she remembers would fight. And fight. And fight. I can smile and pretend at servitude, but all that pretending has finally caught up with me. It’s in that moment that I realize I have become what Rasida believes me to be. I have fought so hard to convince her that I am hers that I have allowed myself to be cowed. I fear her. I want to please her. I’m not just pretending anymore. I have become everything I wanted Rasida to think I was. I can’t do this anymore.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I sign.
Sabita raises her brows. “That is something I never thought you would say.”
“Best I never say it out loud, then,” I sign, and push away from the table.
It’s time to court Rasida again. It’s time to find the world.
“WORLDS ARE BORN, AND WORLDS DIE. I JUST NEVER EXPECTED THE DYING WORLD WOULD BE MINE.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
23
ZAN
What happened to the Mokshi?” I ask Das Muni. My fingers are trembling.
“I don’t know,” she says. “We were attacked. Recycled, most of us. Some there, but many here.”
“Who attacked the Mokshi? The Bhavajas? The Katazyrnas?”
“I don’t know,” Das Muni says. “It was a long time ago.”
“How long?” I’ve raised my voice, and she cringes.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It was long ago. I’m sorry. Meatmoth—”
“I don’t give a care for Meatmoth,” I say. I throw the parchment at the wall, because it means nothing. Das Muni scrambles after it. None of this is helpful. It’s just one more mystery piled on top of another mystery. I feel like I’m being used, and that everyone in this foul place knows more about me than I do.
“If you’ve been here before,” Casamir says, “recycled by your people up there, you have any tips on how to open this door?”
“Isn’t that what you were here for?” I say, too short, again.
“Just trying to make it easier,” Casamir grumbles. She pulls off her pack and unrolls an intricate kit of metal files and organic potions. “It could take a while,” she says.
“Your test is getting it open?” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “It’s a complicated lock, organic and nonorganic. Very precise. There’s a cache on the other side. I’ll take an artifact from it and go back. You can carry on.”
“If you get it open,” I say.
“A little optimism,” Casamir says. She glances over her shoulder, into the dark. “Keep watch for mutants. And all that other stuff.”
I lift the torch high and stare at the door. What world was I telling myself to capture? This one? The Mokshi? I shiver, though the air is warm, and turn back to the darkness. Das Muni sits against the door, the bit of parchment gripped tightly in her hands. She is shaking. I don’t want to ask her any more questions, because I’m angry, and she just shuts down when I yell. I need to wait until I’m calm again. Das Muni has lived a long time with horror. Horrifying her more won’t help.
Casamir continues to work at the door. I watch her fiddle with it, hoping it evokes some shard of memory. The mechanism she is working on is a round raised disk with interlocking sections. It’s less grimy than the rest of the door, which is coated in viscous ooze from above and calcified knobs of some sediment or other.
Time passes slowly. I eat one of the apples from Casamir’s pack, spitting out the soft hairs buried in its interior. I peer out at the darkness and listen to the hooting of the black insects.
After a time, Das Muni gets up and sits next to me.
Casamir sweats and mutters to herself in her language. It’s starting to sound familiar now. I think I understand a few words, but that may be hubris.
“I’ve got it!” Casamir says. The great door clicks. Something heaves and rumbles inside.
I stand back, pulling Das Muni with me. She grips my arm. I hand Das Muni the light and raise my walking stick.
Casamir glances back at me and grins as the great door thunders open. “It’s all right,” she says, “it’s only—”
A screeching howl comes from the darkness beyond. I see a flurry of movement, a sea of gaunt limbs and massive eyes, and then the mutants are upon us.
“MUTANTS MAKE FOR GOOD EATING. IT WAS NEVER MY CHOICE TO PURGE THEM FROM THE WORLD. IT WAS THE KATAZYRNAS WHO GOT THERE FIRST.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
24
ZAN
Das Muni had been called a mutant by Casamir’s people, but she is nothing like the horde that descends on us through the great eye of the door.
If they are or once were human, it’s difficult to tell. They are a snarling, hairy mass of flesh and teeth and claws. Some gallop on all fours; others stagger forward on great clubbed feet. They are a riotous, screaming mob, and I lash out at them instinctively.
Casamir has her knife out, and she’s yelling at me to fall back. I stab the first mutant to reach me in the throat. It falls, and more stream past it. I bring my stick up but find that they aren’t attacking me—they’re running past me, arms and other appendages flailing. They aren’t attacking us. They’re running away from an attack.
I push past the mob, getting bitten for my trouble. It takes only a few elbow jabs to keep the others in line. As I cross the threshold of the door, I see two women standing back to back, their fallen companions around them. They are fighting three large mutants with crescent-shaped faces and bony arms that have just two and three digits at the ends where hands should be. But their teeth are sharp, and they are holding their own against the armed women, who wield clubs layered in sharpened bone and skin, making them into effective maces.
I stagger forward and bark at the mutants. “That’s enough! Get off!”
The women don’t turn to me. One goes down under the jaws of the largest mutant, and I leap forward and thump the mutant hard on the back of the head. It yelps and runs. Its one big eye is watery, covered in a gray film.
Another swipes at the last woman standing. She takes the hit and bashes its head in. It crumples. The other two mutants gallop away after their herd.
I walk up to the fallen women. All but one is already dead, and she’s bleeding out too fast to stop the inevitable.
The last woman standing crumples. She holds her club in front of her, baring her teeth, as if daring me to act.
“I’m here to help,” I say, holding up my hands. “What are you called?”
She peers at me. Spits at my feet. “Arankadash,” she says.
“Is that your name, or a curse?” I ask.
Casamir and Das Muni come up behind me. Casamir is limping. “Some help you were back there,” Casamir says.
“They were running,” I say, “not attacking.”
“From these people?”
I nod. “You know them?”