Green mist emanates from the center of my palm, and then the skin of the world is rippling and growing over the ruined doorway. It forms a perfect spiraling circle, then blooms open, a fresh seal without even a scab. All that’s left to signal anything happened to the door at all are the blistered pieces of it lying at my feet; as I watch, they are being absorbed into the floor.
I was not a general, a leader of armies, as Jayd told me when I first woke. No, it seems my skill was in something else. My skill was never in death but in making life.
I have the arm now.
Does Jayd have the world?
Together, we’ll get to the Mokshi. And I will have my real answers.
“WE ALL SAY WE WANT THE TRUTH. WE’RE LYING.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
37
ZAN
I race back to the heart room and turn the corner just in time to see Arankadash and Casamir step inside.
Das Muni waits in the threshold. She gazes in, once, then back at me. She removes her cowl and stares at me with her big eyes. I see something there that makes time seem to slow down. I listen to my heartbeat and the pulse of the world beneath my feet. I see her look at me just this way in another life, another time, only that time, she is kneeling at my feet, because I am her lord.
Her lord. She must have known this whole time.
I hear a hiss. Something thuds into Das Muni’s chest, and she sprawls back hard. Her little body hits the opposite wall.
I yell. What I yell, I don’t know, but I run to her, still yelling whatever formless thing that’s burst up from my chest.
She is lying in a pool of blood rapidly expanding from the hole in her chest. Inside her chest cavity is a pulsing black bit of charged bone or other organic material. It’s neatly burst her open.
“Das Muni,” I say, and I pull her into my arms. Her blood runs hot and wet into my lap. She is so light.
Her mouth moves. Blood colors her teeth and tongue. I see that she’s bitten her tongue hard.
I turn, unbelieving, back toward the heart room. Jayd is there, slumped on a long console that dances with lights. Threads of red and yellow and blue tangle in the air above her. She is heavily pregnant and holding a massive weapon. I recognize it as the kind I took out on my attack on the Mokshi. Her face is drawn and haggard, and though her belly is distended, her face is hollowed: her eyes are sunken, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes. A tangled mass of arms and legs and heads is huddled up in the corner, and as they unfold themselves, I see that they are a single body. I shudder, wondering what new horror the world has for us.
Arankadash fires at Jayd and misses.
“Don’t kill her!” I say. “That’s Jayd.”
Casamir’s eyes bulge. She has her own weapon now, and she does not take her finger from the trigger. “Are you mad?” she says.
“Jayd, why did—” I begin.
“For fuck’s sake!” Jayd says. “She was . . . Listen to me. She knew who you were. She was serving on this level. I can’t have . . . We can’t . . .” Her eyes fill. She fights it. “I can’t start over. Yes, I recycled her. So what? She recognized you. We can’t start over. This is the endgame, Zan. She can’t . . . She can’t ruin this. I just . . . I shot her without thinking. We can’t start over. This is the end. This has to be the end. I can’t do this again, Zan. I can’t.”
“Das Muni, what’s she—”
Das Muni brings up her long fingers to my face and shows her teeth. “I am yours, Lord,” she says.
I cradle her head in my iron arm. “I’m not just another woman from the Mokshi, am I?” I whisper, because though I know it now, have known it for too long now, I want to hear it from her.
She shakes her head.
“Why didn’t you kill me down there?” I ask. “I failed the Mokshi, didn’t I? Failed you and everyone who lived there. This traitor recycled you. And I took her back after. I took her back because we could not go on without her.”
“You are not the same, Lord Mokshi,” Das Muni says. “You are a different woman. I am too.” She huffs up blood.
“You want answers?” Jayd says. She points her weapon at me now. “Get us both to the Mokshi.”
I squeeze Das Muni to my chest. Her blood slicks my suit. “No,” I say. “You kill her, you kill me.”
“You don’t care about her,” Jayd says.
“Maybe some other version of me didn’t,” I say, “but I do. I won’t leave her here to die like this.”
“She is already dead,” Jayd says.
Blood is bubbling on Das Muni’s lips. “Save her,” I say, “or kill me here with her.”
Something in Jayd’s face twists. Is it wonder? Surprise? She gazes back into the room and at the many-headed woman there. “Can you repair her?” Jayd asks it.
The left head says, “What will we get in return?”
“I won’t shoot you,” Jayd says.
“A hard bargain,” the right head says. They bumble forward.
“Will you make sure she’s all right?” I ask Casamir and Arankadash.
They exchange looks. Arankadash says, “Hole up here, hoping you return alive? Not a chance, after this.”
“If I’m not back in an hour, come for me,” I say.
Casamir knits her brows. “Come for you how?”
“I’ll show you,” I say.
*
Jayd leads us to the hangar. Or marches us there; I don’t know which. Maybe both. Part of me wants to take her in my arms. The other part wants to disarm her and scream. I show Casamir the hangar and explain it. She gives a low whistle.
“You can watch from the observation window,” Jayd says, motioning Casamir out.
“You sure about this?” Casamir asks me.
“No,” I say, “but the Mokshi has always been where I get my answers.”
“One hour,” Casamir says. She shuts the hangar door behind her and goes up to the observation room.
Jayd limps toward one of the vehicles. I noticed on the way here that something had happened to her leg.
“What have you done?” I ask.
She’s breathing hard and clutching at her belly. “I’ve done everything we promised,” she says. “You clearly don’t remember yet, but you will. You must. On the Mokshi. I’m sure. I’m so sure you’ll remember.”
“It won’t let us in,” I say.
“It will let you in,” she says. “It always does, eventually, because you remember how to disarm it. But now you even have . . .” She trails off into a deep breath, winces. “You have the arm.”
“The arm and the world,” I say. “You have the world, don’t you?”
She nods. “Trust me one last time, Zan. Just one last time. You remember this was our plan?”
“I remember we agreed to bring the arm and the world to the Mokshi,” I say.
“Good,” she says. Her tone is lighter, relieved. “Good, yes, that’s something.”