“There is nothing for me here,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Then let’s start over.”
“I HAVE SPENT MY LIFE BATTLING MONSTERS. IT WAS ONLY IN REALIZING THAT I WAS THE MONSTER, AND CHOOSING TO DESTROY HER, THAT I COULD SAVE THE WORLD.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
39
ZAN
The massive organic tube pops free of the Mokshi and enters the long, quiet dark of the Legion. It is the silence that comforts me. I got tired of listening to my own voice. I hold Jayd against me until her trembling subsides. She drifts in and out of wakefulness.
We begin to circle the Mokshi, just another bit of detritus caught in its gravity well. This is the part I haven’t thought through. When I escaped before, no doubt Jayd or Anat came for me, but now we are alone.
We are alone.
I hope that Jayd sleeps through it. I hope she does not wake to find that we’re doomed out here together like two young stupid lovers. I gaze out at the Mokshi and raise my hand to it. The auroras light back up. They are beautiful to look at. A fitting final view. Maybe we can watch the Mokshi be reborn. I wonder if what I did to it means it can leave the Legion without a pilot. Maybe this reborn world will be a sentinel for the whole Legion, an ambassador to Legions that circle all those other stars. Maybe it will be ripped apart and used for scrap out there the same way it was here.
The air becomes stale. I drift in and out of consciousness as we float free. I think of all that I’m told I was, and all that I have become. All that I could be. That we could be, together, if we had the courage to start again.
Just like the Mokshi.
It’s then that I see the vehicle speeding toward us from the Katazyrna. I can’t make out the figure, but I can see the big cephalopod gun.
I pull Jayd closer. She murmurs something. “Sabita,” she says. “Sabita held off the Bhavajas. I let her go. I let her do it.”
It’s only as I raise my arm that I see the rider’s face.
It’s Casamir.
Casamir gives me a little two-fingered salute. She clumsily attaches her vehicle to the tube’s outer face. Her first walk in the blackness, her first view of the Legion. I should not be surprised that she has taken it all in stride. She has always been an intrepid explorer. I just never thought she’d take the leap and believe me.
She burns the vehicle’s yellow fuel and tows us back to the open hangar of Katazyrna.
From this vantage, the world looks as if it has an open wound. I see the great blackened patches of skin surrounding the hangar and wonder how long it will hold out. How many can we move to the Mokshi? The whole world? Can we really start again? And from there, then what? The whole of Katazyrna is still swarming with Bhavajas, all of them running around without someone to lead them. It will be a mess to clean up, and doing it will require a great deal of help from the levels below.
Casamir lands. The great hangar doors close and I see the blinking tangles of light shift in the viewing port above. Casamir tugs at her suit and manages to squeeze the wrist of it to get it to melt off her. She always was a quick study. The interior hangar door opens, and Arankadash comes in and leans over our sticky translucent pod.
I figure out how to pop it open. Clean air rushes in. I breathe deeply. Jayd opens her eyes.
Casamir offers me her hand. I raise my eyebrows at her. “So,” I say, “you believe me now?”
“Never doubted,” Casamir says.
“Where’s Das Muni?” I say.
“In the medical lounge,” Arankadash says. “Your witches can do wonders here. We’d like some of these tricks back home.”
“You’ll get them,” I say, “but first we need to get somewhere safe. The Bhavajas are still running around.”
“The infirmary,” Casamir says. “We’ve barricaded it up.”
“Let’s go, then,” I say, “Jayd needs help, but . . .” I hesitate. I think of all that has been sacrificed for me. “Can you go out one more time? Can you look for a woman? Sabita. It would please Jayd.”
*
Jayd spends time in the infirmary, or what I take to be one. There are few people left on the first level of the ship. We discover a half a dozen Bhavajas and a whole section of Katazyrnas who have held off incursion for all this time. But I recognize none of them. Jayd is their lord now. What that makes me, I’m uncertain. But they are loyal to her; they recognize her and are willing to help secure the first level.
While Jayd is being tended by the witches, I sit down next to Das Muni. Her breathing is shallow. Her wounds are coming back together, all slathered in greenish-amber salve. Her eyelids flutter open. She squints at me. Frowns.
“Are we all dead?” she says. “Have we been freed?”
“Not dead,” I say, “but free, in our own way. You’ll get to go back to the Mokshi.”
“I was never happy there,” she says. “I didn’t fit there, either.”
“You will now,” I say. I take her hand.
“I have always loved you, Lord,” she says.
“Just Zan,” I say. “I’m Zan, always.”
She closes her eyes. I let her rest.
Casamir did indeed find Sabita hiding in the salvage that orbited Katazyrna. She lay snoozing now on the slab opposite Jayd. I go to Sabita’s side, but she does not wake. What did I confess to her before I lost my memory? Maybe I could ask her when she wakes. Or perhaps it’s best to just let it be.
Arankadash and Casamir are sitting up on a slab near Jayd now, eating prickly mushrooms. Arankadash is drawing a map of the first level on the wall, cutting into it with her knife.
“We should consider what happens when the other Bhavajas get here,” I say. “The reinforcements from their world.”
“No,” Jayd says, and I turn to see that though her eyes are closed, she is awake. “Nashatra will want peace. There was . . . a civil war. It’s a very long story. But I think she can hold them there if we can stabilize Katazyrna.”
“That’s our goal, then,” I say. “We need to secure the first level at least. If we can hold that while the Mokshi is reborn, then we can decide who wants to go over and who wants to stay.”
It’s Casamir who finds the temple room on one of her excursions with a handful of Katazyrnas as they patrol the first level. When she returns, her eyes are big, and she’s talking about the eyes of the War God. She takes me and Arankadash down to the room, which is one level below. I don’t admonish her for taking her group a level below when our goal was to secure only the first level, because I don’t think she’s listening to anything I’m saying at this point. She’s so excited about her find, I think her head may burst.