“The lights were simple enough to figure out,” Casamir says. “They’re a language, writing. They give you instructions on how to work things once you know the code.”
Casamir tangles with the lights in the walls, and suddenly the whole room becomes translucent. From here I can see all the worlds around us, as if we are sitting at the very center of Katazyrna and staring out at the dark spaces that surround us. I have a perfect view of the whole of the Outer Rim.
The Mokshi is out there, a strange planet folding in on itself, wrapped in great brazen tentacles, pulsing with a bold new heart. A world that was not supposed to exist. Yet here it is, remaking itself to leave the Legion.
Arankadash says, “What will you do with that world? Will you abandon us?”
“I’ll take you with me,” I say, “if you’d be willing.”
“I don’t know,” Arankadash says. “We are of the world. Leaving it . . .”
“I’m not dying with the world,” Casamir says. “That’s defeatist. After all you’ve seen, you still think we should stay?”
Arankadash gazes out at the Mokshi. I don’t know what she’s thinking about, but I suspect it’s to do with the child she lost and all the offspring she bore for the world itself. I wonder then what Jayd did with the womb I gave her when she took Rasida’s. Where is that child? Who cares for it? Because I know who should.
“I will consider it,” Arankadash says. “I will put the question to my people. But they must have a choice. To stay with the world and the Legion or to risk the unknown in that new world.”
“I’m not going to make anyone do what they don’t want to do,” I say. “I should bring Jayd here, though. This is what all the madness was for. To watch this.”
When I go back to the infirmary, Jayd is sitting up and speaking to Das Muni. I stay in the doorway for a time before they notice I’m there. I enjoy that because it also gives me time to observe Sabita. Though Sabita’s eyes are closed, I doubt she sleeps. I don’t know how she and Jayd will ever reconcile. I don’t want to know what there is between them, but I can feel it the same way I can feel what is between Jayd and Das Muni.
Das Muni is frowning, fists knotted in the sheets. She is not yet well enough to even sit up. Jayd is apologizing, though what she’s done is something that no apology will fix. I appreciate the gesture, though.
“Can you walk?” I ask Jayd. “I’d like to show you something.”
When she looks at me, I see a great sadness. I have two competing emotions—I want to hold her, and I want to push her away. I extend my hand instead. When you start over, you must start again with the small things. Jayd takes my hand and then my arm.
Whatever has been done to her leg is not something the witches have fixed. I wonder if they even can. Because of this, our walk to the temple room is long and slow. We have time to talk in the mostly empty corridors, but we don’t. The silence is oddly soothing. Maybe we’ve said all we can say now.
We step inside the temple room, and Jayd gapes. Outside, the Mokshi is a heaving ball of red and orange light. There is a new band of tissue spreading out from its core, splitting the broken world in two, like a great new skin.
“It’s working,” she says.
“Yes,” I say.
We watch the Mokshi in silence for some time.
Then she says, “I’m afraid we can’t be together after what we’ve done to each other.”
“We can’t,” I say.
She wipes at her face. I’m surprised she has any tears left. I don’t.
“You’re the Lord of Katazyrna,” I say. “Your people will look to you now to figure out what to do next. I can take them on the Mokshi. We can all leave the Legion together, go out into the unknown. But that’s up to you and them. You’re Lord of Katazyrna now, and I’m Lord of the Mokshi. That’s all we are. That’s all we can be after this.”
Jayd nods. “You said the Mokshi could go anywhere once it was repaired. But I’m afraid, seeing all this darkness . . . What if there’s nowhere else to go? What if there’s only the Legion?”
“The stars are legion,” I say. “Look at them. All those other suns. There could be many other worlds like ours circling them. Maybe worlds very different from ours. We can learn from them.”
“Better worlds?” Jayd says.
“Different ones,” I say. “I don’t know if where we’ll go will be better, but we’ll be free, finally. Free of what the Legion made of us.”
“When we first met—”
“No,” I say. “No more about the past. We’re building the future now.”
“I’m afraid,” she says.
“I know,” I say, “but it’s the fear that’s wounded us. We must stop being afraid.”
“I don’t know how,” she says.
“We’ll learn together,” I say.
We raise our faces again to the pulsing light of the Mokshi. We are two women standing at the edge of the Legion, our armies dead, our people broken, with a history between us that I no longer want filled in any further. Instead, in my mind I construct a future. In my future, we break loose from the Legion, and Casamir helms the Mokshi, and Arankadash is at my right hand, and Jayd is at my left, and Das Muni spends her time on the shores of some sea inside the Mokshi, collecting bits of detritus and teaching herself to sing. Arankadash holds a child, and Jayd finds love with some bottom-world mechanic, and Sabita takes charge of the infirmary, and perhaps we become something more, Sabita and I, and I stand in a room like this on the Mokshi, looking forward, ever forward, into endless possibilities. It’s a potential future for us, as real as the potential of the child I sacrificed to get here, as real as the dreams of the people who helped me get this far.
“I need to go back,” Jayd says, tugging at my arm.
I know what she means—she wants to go lie down in the infirmary—but I still think: we can never go back, only forward. Ever forward.
I put my hand on hers. We step away from the dazzling room and the rebirth of the world, and enter the heart of Katazyrna. We walk arm in arm, two lords without a Legion, into our uncertain future.