Chapter 108:

Rajani managed to hold back her tears as Lady Nari dismissed them. She kept herself under control the whole day, all the way back to the greenhouse the Cursed had been taken to. They took a detour through another greenhouse to get stores of water and food; even then Rajani held it in. Only after the guards deposited Rajani and Sukren just inside the Cursed greenhouse gate did she allow herself to let go.

“I didn’t want it this way!” she cried. “I didn’t want it this way!”

Sukren’s arms were around her, his hands holding the back of her head. Rajani clung to him with her good arm. “I didn’t want it this way! I didn’t want it this way!”

The grief Rajani had forced herself to put off was all-consuming. You have to keep going, she’d told herself. Wait, wait, until the Cursed are safe. But becoming a lodge mother, receiving her heart’s desire like this, no, Rajani could no longer hold herself back. Weeping wildly, she mourned the destruction of her people, of the life the Cursed had once known. She buried her face in Sukren’s chest and cried out against the deaths of Tanush and Kishi, and against the loss of her sister.

Sukren held her until her sobs quieted. Even then they didn’t let go of each other. Instead, Rajani clung to him all the more tightly.

“Help me,” she begged. “I’m going to need you.”

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

***

Sukren stood behind Rajani and listened through an interpreter as she explained to the Cursed the arrangement she had worked out with Lady Nari. As Rajani continued, a murmur began to grow.

Rajani responded to it. “I’m not done. Listen to me. Lady Nari told us that we could worship our own gods for now. We know what that means. It means we will never cease to worship Hunt and Gather. It means we will never stop telling their stories about who we are. It means we will do it in the open when we can, and in secret when we must.”

The murmur quieted. Rajani continued. “These overbelters want to label us the children of mutineers. They want us to embrace our mistreatment at their hands as deserved. This is a story they’ve created. They’re forcing us to play a role in it, but it will never be our story. We will tell our own stories to each other. We will never forget that we are the Cursed.”

Sukren heard Rajani pause, heard her take a breath before she said, “We will obey the overbelters. We will submit to them fully, recognizing that the gods brought us here to be disciplined. When they told us to share with the Gather’s Children, we should have obeyed. Out of fear that the gods would not provide enough for us, we refrained from giving them our holy share. That is why we are here right now in this greenhouse. Here, where we cannot ensure for ourselves that we will have enough, we will be freed from the fear of not having enough. It is here that we will learn how to be satisfied.

“But no matter how long that takes, we will never forget that while the overbelters can tell us what to do, they can’t tell us who we are. We are the Cursed. The rescued ones. Of Hunt’s Table. Brought here to Chudami by the gods and not by mutiny. Every morntide and every eventide we will recite the First Recitations. When you greet another Cursed, you will ask him, have the gods rescued you today, and he will say yes, they have. We will not let the overbelters define us as a broken, conquered people.”

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There was silence. Then a voice called out, saying something Sukren didn’t understand. The translator told him, “She’s asking, what about you?”

Sukren waited for Rajani’s response. “Sukren is the one who ensured that we would stay together and not be separated and killed. He’s here to join us, to become one of the Cursed.”

Another voice rang out. “She’s asking, how can you join the Cursed? There’s no run anymore, and you can’t be brought in without someone doing the run for you.”

A third voice responded. Sukren heard the translator say, “He’s saying, if you married one of the Cursed, you could be brought in that way as well.”

Sukren felt Rajani tighten in front of him. He knew what she was going to do. He knew what Rajani saw when she looked at him. The man who’d defied the Chenta for the sake of her people, the man who knew the Chenta and their politics, history, language, and leaders, the man who would help her people navigate their slavery with knowledge and not fear.

Sukren was not surprised, therefore, to feel Rajani’s hand on his. He listened as the interpreter translated her words. “This is the way it will happen from now on. If we find men and women among the overbelters who are willing to lay aside their stories in exchange for ours, we will accept them. No longer will they be overbelters. They will worship with us. We will belong together to Hunt’s Table.”

***

Rajani couldn’t look into the crowd. She knew Jiat was watching her. Her heart broke – oh, the life they could have had! – as she told the crowd that she would marry Sukren to make him Cursed. But she said the words anyway. This was not about Jiat, or herself, or their feelings. This was about the Cursed. About the survival of her people as members of Hunt’s Table.

“Our story isn’t over yet,” Rajani said. She forced herself to remember the light that had spilled over the Cursed urb in her vision, the joy on the faces of her fellow citizens. “The gods will bring us back. They will bring us home. We will wait for them here, and while we wait, we will know them anew.”

***

Mayah sat on the sleeping mat and looked out the window-wall of the panoramic tower. The glass surrounded her like a bowl. If she squinted, she could see the edge of LakeCentral to the right, and the lake and its Temple straight ahead.

Sukren’s notebook was still there, underneath the straw scattered around the tower floor. She didn’t touch it. Instead, Mayah thought about the journal of the Lost Princess. The Lost Princess had been held prisoner inside this very tower by Queen Kalia. She had written the first of her journals where Mayah was now sitting.

I have lost everything, the journal had said. Even who I am has been taken from me.

Slowly, Mayah began reciting the first stanza of the Prophetess Darshana’s prophecy. First she said it in the castle serf pidgin. Then, some perversity led her to repeat it in Rajim, but under her breath, so quietly that even she couldn’t hear herself.

Have confidence and not fear.

This exile you endure under the dome will not last.

Sky and star await you!

They await you with longing.

For a Rajas Daughter is Promised unto you,

And she will lead her people back to Earth.

Your hearts will be filled,

And the Starfolk will live again.