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 Copyright

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actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by N. K. Jemisin Excerpt from The Hundred Thousand

Kingdoms copyright © 2010 by N. K. Jemisin Excerpt from Wake of Vultures ©
2015 by Delores S. Dawson Map © Tim Paul

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jemisin, N. K.,

author.
Title: The stone sky / N.K. Jemisin.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Orbit, 2017. | Series: The broken earth ;
book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017064| ISBN 9780316229241 (paperback) | ISBN
9781478916291 (audio book downloadable) | ISBN 9780316229258 (ebook
open) Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy Epic. | FICTION Action &
Adventure. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3610.E46 S76 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017064

ISBNs: 978-0-31622924-1 (trade paperback), 978-0-31622925-8 (ebook) E3-

20170628-JV-PC
 Contents

COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
MAP

PROLOGUE: ME, WHEN I WAS I

1: YOU, IN WAKING AND DREAMING
2: NASSUN FEELS LIKE BUSTING LOOSE
SYL ANAGIST: FIVE
3: YOU, IMBALANCED
4: NASSUN, WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS
SYL ANAGIST: FOUR
5: YOU ARE REMEMBERED
6: NASSUN MAKES HER FATE
SYL ANAGIST: THREE
7: YOU’RE PLANNING AHEAD
8: NASSUN UNDERGROUND
SYL ANAGIST: TWO
9: THE DESERT, BRIEFLY, AND YOU
10: NASSUN, THROUGH THE FIRE
SYL ANAGIST: ONE
11: YOU’RE ALMOST HOME
12: NASSUN, NOT ALONE
SYL ANAGIST: ZERO
13: NASSUN AND ESSUN, ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE WORLD
14: I, AT THE END OF DAYS
CODA: ME, AND YOU

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX 1: A CATALOG OF FIFTH SEASONS THAT HAVE BEEN
RECORDED PRIOR TO AND SINCE THE FOUNDING OF THE SANZED
EQUATORIAL AFFILIATION, FROM MOST RECENT TO OLDEST
APPENDIX 2: A GLOSSARY OF TERMS COMMONLY USED IN ALL
QUARTENTS OF THE STILLNESS
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
A PREVIEW OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS
A PREVIEW OF WAKE OF VULTURES
BY N. K. JEMISIN
PRAISE FOR THE OBELISK GATE
ORBIT NEWSLETTER
 To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more.
Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is
a victory.
 prologue
me, when I was I

TIME GROWS SHORT, MY LOVE. Let’s end with the beginning of the world, shall
we? Yes. We shall.
It’s strange, though. My memories are like insects fossilized in amber. They
are rarely intact, these frozen, long-lost lives. Usually there’s just a leg, some
wing-scales, a bit of lower thorax—a whole that can only be inferred from
fragments, and everything blurred together through jagged, dirty cracks. When I
narrow my gaze and squint into memory, I see faces and events that should hold
meaning for me, and they do, but … they don’t. The person who witnessed these
things firsthand is me, and yet not.
In those memories I was someone else, just as the Stillness was someworld
else. Then, and now. You, and you.
Then. This land, then, was three lands—though these are in virtually the
same position as what will someday be called the Stillness. Repeated Seasons
will eventually create more ice at the poles, sinking the sea and making your
“Arctics” and “Antarctics” larger and colder. Then, though—
—now, it feels of now as I recall myself of then, this is what I mean when I
say that it is strange—
Now, in this time before the Stillness, the far north and south are decent
farmland. What you think of as the Western Coastals is mostly wetland and
rainforest; those will die out in the next millennium. Some of the Nomidlats
doesn’t yet exist, and will be created by volcanic effusion over several thousand
years of eruptive pulses. The land that becomes Palela, your hometown? Doesn’t
exist. Not so much change, all things considered, but then now is nothing ago,
tectonically speaking. When we say that “the world has ended,” remember—it is
usually a lie. The planet is just fine.
What do we call this lost world, this now, if not the Stillness?
Let me tell you, first, of a city.
It is a city built wrong, by your standards. This city sprawls in a way that no
modern comm would be permitted to do, since that would require too many
miles of walls. And this city’s outermost sprawls have branched off along rivers
and other lifelines to spawn additional cities, much in the manner of mold
forking and stretching along the rich veins of a growth medium. Too close
together, you would think. Too much overlap of territory; they are too
connected, these sprawling cities and their snaking spawn, each unable to
survive should it be cut off from the rest.
Sometimes they have distinct local nicknames, these child-cities, especially
where they are large or old enough to have spawned child-cities of their own, but
this is superficial. Your perception of their connectedness is correct: They have
the same infrastructure, the same culture, the same hungers and fears. Each city
is like the other cities. All of the cities are, effectively, one city. This world, in
this now, is the city’s name: Syl Anagist.
Can you truly understand what a nation is capable of, child of the Stillness?
The entirety of Old Sanze, once it finally stitches itself together from fragments
of the hundred “civilizations” that live and die between now and then, will be
nothing by comparison. Merely a collection of paranoid city-states and
communes agreeing to share, sometimes, for survival’s sake. Ah, the Seasons
will reduce the world to such miserly dreams.
Here, now, dreams have no limit. The people of Syl Anagist have mastered
the forces of matter and its composition; they have shaped life itself to fit their
whims; they have so explored the mysteries of the sky that they’ve grown bored
with it and turned their attention back toward the ground beneath their feet. And
Syl Anagist lives, oh how it lives, in bustling streets and ceaseless commerce
and buildings that your mind would struggle to define as such. The buildings
have walls of patterned cellulose that can barely be seen beneath leaves, moss,
grasses, and clusters of fruit or tubers. Some rooftops fly banners that are
actually immense, unfurled fungus flowers. The streets teem with things you
might not recognize as vehicles, except in that they travel and convey. Some
crawl on legs like massive arthropods. Some are little more than open platforms
that glide on a cushion of resonant potential—ah, but you would not understand
this. Let me say only that these vehicles float a few inches off the ground. No
animals draw them. No steam or chemical fuels them. Should something, a pet
or child perhaps, pass underneath, it will temporarily cease to exist, then resume
on the other side, with no interruption of velocity or awareness. No one thinks of
this as death.
There is one thing you would recognize here, standing up from the core of
the city. It is the tallest, brightest thing for miles, and every rail and path
connects to it in some way or another. It’s your old friend, the amethyst obelisk.
It isn’t floating, not yet. It sits, not quite quiescent, in its socket. Now and again
it pulses in a way that will be familiar to you from Allia. This is a healthier pulse
than that was; the amethyst is not the damaged, dying garnet. Still, if the
similarity makes you shiver, that’s not an unhealthy reaction.
All over the three lands, wherever there is a large-enough node of Syl
Anagist, an obelisk sits at the center of each. They dot the face of the world, two
hundred and fifty-six spiders in two hundred and fifty-six webs, feeding each
city and being fed in turn.
Webs of life, if you want to think of them that way. Life, you see, is sacred in
Syl Anagist.
Now imagine, surrounding the base of the amethyst, a hexagonal complex of
buildings. Whatever you imagine will look nothing like the actuality, but just
imagine something pretty and that will do. Look closer at this one here, along the
southwestern rim of the obelisk—the one on a slanting hillock. There are no bars
on the building’s crystal windows, but visualize a faint darker lacing of tissue
over the clear material. Nematocysts, a popular method of securing windows
against unwanted contact—although these exist only on the outward-facing
surface of the windows, to keep intruders out. They sting, but do not kill. (Life is
sacred in Syl Anagist.) Inside, there are no guards on the doors. Guards are
inefficient in any case. The Fulcrum is not the first institution to have learned an
eternal truth of humankind: No need for guards when you can convince people
to collaborate in their own internment.
Here is a cell within the pretty prison.
It doesn’t look like one, I know. There’s a beautifully sculpted piece of
furniture that you might call a couch, though it has no back and consists of
several pieces arranged in clusters. The rest of the furniture is common stuff you
would recognize; every society needs tables and chairs. The view through the
window is of a garden, on the roof of one of the other buildings. At this time of
day, the garden catches sunlight slanting through the great crystal, and the
flowers growing in the garden have been bred and planted with this effect in
mind. Purple light paints the paths and beds, and the flowers seem to glow
faintly in reaction to the color. Some of these tiny white flower-lights wink out
now and again, which makes the whole flower bed seem to sparkle like the night
sky.
Here is a boy, staring through the window at the winking flowers.
He’s a young man, really. Superficially mature, in an ageless sort of way. Not
so much stocky as compact in his design. His face is wide and cheeky, his mouth
small. Everything about him is white: colorless skin, colorless hair, icewhite
eyes, his elegantly draped clothing. Everything about the room is white:
furniture, rugs, the floor under the rugs. The walls are bleached cellulose, and
nothing grows on them. Only the window displays color. Within this sterile
space, in the reflected purple light of the outside, only the boy is obviously alive.
Yes, the boy is me. I don’t truly remember his name, but I do remember that
it had too many rusting letters. Let us therefore call him Houwha—the same
sound, just padded with all manner of silent letters and hidden meanings. That’s
close enough, and appropriately symbolic of—
Oh. I am angrier than I should be. Fascinating. Let’s change tracks, then, to
something less fraught. Let us return to the now that will be, and a far different
here.
Now is the now of the Stillness, through which the reverberations of the
Rifting still echo. The here is not the Stillness, precisely, but a cavern just above
the main lava chamber of a vast, ancient shield volcano. The volcano’s heart, if
you prefer and have a sense of metaphor; if not, this is a deep, dark, barely stable
vesicle amid rock that has not cooled much in the thousands of years since
Father Earth first burped it up. Within this cavern I stand, partially fused with a
hump of rock so that I may better watch for the minute perturbations or major
deformations that presage a collapse. I don’t need to do this. There are few
processes more unstoppable than the one I have set in motion here. Still, I
understand what it is to be alone when you are confused and afraid and unsure of
what will happen next.
You are not alone. You will never be, unless you so choose. I know what
matters, here at the world’s end.
Ah, my love. An apocalypse is a relative thing, isn’t it? When the earth
shatters, it is a disaster to the life that depends on it—but nothing much to Father
Earth. When a man dies, it should be devastating to a girl who once called him
Father, but this becomes as nothing when she has been called monster so many
times that she finally embraces the label. When a slave rebels, it is nothing much
to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper worn finer
by the friction of history. (“So you were slaves, so what?” they whisper. Like it’s
nothing.) But to the people who live through a slave rebellion, both those who
take their dominance for granted until it comes for them in the dark, and those
who would see the world burn before enduring one moment longer in “their
place”—
 That is not a metaphor, Essun. Not hyperbole. I did watch the world burn.
Say nothing to me of innocent bystanders, unearned suffering, heartless
vengeance. When a comm builds atop a fault line, do you blame its walls when
they inevitably crush the people inside? No; you blame whoever was stupid
enough to think they could defy the laws of nature forever. Well, some worlds
are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those
worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.
So now I will tell you the way that world, Syl Anagist, ended. I will tell you
how I ended it, or at least enough of it that it had to start over and rebuild itself
from scratch.
I will tell you how I opened the Gate, and flung away the Moon, and smiled
as I did it.
And I will tell you everything of how, later, as the quiet of death descended, I
whispered:
Right now.
Right now.
And the Earth whispered back:
Burn.
 1
you, in waking and dreaming

NOW. LET’S REVIEW.

You are Essun, the sole surviving orogene in all the world who has opened
the Obelisk Gate. No one expected this grand destiny of you. You were once of
the Fulcrum, but not a rising star like Alabaster. You were a feral, found in the
wild, unique only in that you had more innate ability than the average rogga born
by random chance. Though you started well, you plateaued early—not for any
clear reason. You simply lacked the urge to innovate or the desire to excel, or so
the seniors lamented behind closed doors. Too quick to conform to the
Fulcrum’s system. It limited you.
Good thing, because otherwise they’d never have loosened your leash the
way they did, sending you forth on that mission with Alabaster. He scared the
rust out of them. You, though … they thought you were one of the safe ones,
properly broken in and trained to obey, unlikely to wipe out a town by accident.
Joke’s on them; how many towns have you wiped out now? One semi-
intentionally. The other three were accidents, but really, does that matter? Not to
the dead.
Sometimes you dream of undoing it all. Not flailing for the garnet obelisk in
Allia, and instead watching happy black children play in the surf of a black-sand
beach while you bled out around a Guardian’s black knife. Not being taken to
Meov by Antimony; instead, you would’ve returned to the Fulcrum to give birth
to Corundum. You’d have lost him after that birth, and you would never have
had Innon, but both of them would probably still be alive. (Well. For values of
“alive,” if they’d put Coru in a node.) But then you would never have lived in
Tirimo, never have borne Uche to die beneath his father’s fists, never have
raised Nassun to be stolen by her father, never have crushed your once-
neighbors when they tried to kill you. So many lives saved, if only you had
stayed in your cage. Or died on demand.
And here, now, long free from the ordered, staid strictures of the Fulcrum,
you have become mighty. You saved the community of Castrima at the cost of
Castrima itself; this was a small price to pay, compared to the cost in blood that
the enemy army would have extracted if they’d won. You achieved victory by
unleashing the concatenated power of an arcane mechanism older than (your)
written history—and because you are who you are, while learning to master this
power, you murdered Alabaster Tenring. You didn’t mean to. You actually
suspect he wanted you to do it. Either way, he’s dead, and this sequence of
events has left you the most powerful orogene on the planet.
It also means that your tenure as most powerful has just acquired an
expiration date, because the same thing is happening to you that happened to
Alabaster: You’re turning to stone. Just your right arm, for now. Could be worse.
Will be worse, the next time you open the Gate, or even the next time you wield
enough of that strange silvery not-orogeny, which Alabaster called magic. You
don’t have a choice, though. You’ve got a job to do, courtesy of Alabaster and
the nebulous faction of stone eaters who’ve been quietly trying to end the
ancient war between life and Father Earth. The job you have to do is the easier
of the two, you think. Just catch the Moon. Seal the Yumenes Rifting. Reduce
the current Season’s predicted impact from thousands or millions of years back
down to something manageable—something the human race has a chance of
surviving. End the Fifth Seasons for all time.
The job you want to do, though? Find Nassun, your daughter. Take her back
from the man who murdered your son and dragged her halfway across the world
in the middle of the apocalypse.
About that: I have good news, and bad news. But we’ll get to Jija presently.
You’re not really in a coma. You are a key component of a complex system,
the whole of which has just experienced a massive, poorly controlled start-up
flux and emergency shutoff with insufficient cooldown time, expressing itself as
arcanochemical phase-state resistance and mutagenic feedback. You need time
to … reboot.
This means you’re not unconscious. It’s more like periods of half-waking and
half-sleeping, if that makes sense. You’re aware of things, somewhat. The
bobbing of movement, occasional jostling. Someone puts food and water into
your mouth. Fortunately you have the presence of mind to chew and swallow,
because the end of the world on the ash-strewn road is a bad time and place to
need a feeding tube. Hands pull on your clothing and something girds your hips
—a diaper. Bad time and place for that, too, but someone’s willing to tend you
this way, and you don’t mind. You barely notice. You feel no hunger or thirst
before they give you sustenance; your evacuations bring no particular relief. Life
endures. It doesn’t need to do so enthusiastically.
Eventually the periods of waking and sleep become more pronounced things.
Then one day you open your eyes to see the clouded sky overhead. Swaying
back and forth. Skeletal branches occasionally occlude it. Faint shadow of an
obelisk through the clouds: That’s the spinel, you suspect. Reverted to its usual
shape and immensity, ah, and following you like a lonely puppy, now that
Alabaster is dead.
Staring at the sky gets boring after a while, so you turn your head and try to
understand what’s going on. Figures move around you, dreamlike and swathed
in gray-white … no. No, they’re wearing ordinary clothing; it’s just covered with
pale ash. And they’re wearing a lot of clothes because it’s cold—not enough to
freeze water, but close. It’s nearly two years into the Season; two years without
the sun. The Rifting’s putting out a lot of heat up around the equator, but that’s
not nearly enough to make up for the lack of a giant fireball in the sky. Still,
without the Rifting, the cold would be worse—well below freezing, instead of
nearly freezing. Small favors.
In any case, one of the ash-swathed figures seems to notice that you’re
awake, or to feel the shift of your weight. A head wrapped in face mask and
goggles swivels back to consider you, then faces ahead again. There are
murmured words between the two people in front of you, which you don’t
understand. They’re not in another language. You’re just half out of it and the
words are partially absorbed by the ash falling around you.
Someone speaks behind you. You start and look back to see another goggled,
masked face. Who are these people? (It does not occur to you to be afraid. Like
hunger, such visceral things are more detached from you now.) Then something
clicks and you understand. You’re on a stretcher, just two poles with some
stitched hide between them, being carried by four people. One of them calls out,
and other calls respond from farther away. Lots of calls. Lots of people.
Another call from somewhere far away, and the people carrying you come to
a halt. They glance at each other and set you down with the ease and uniformity
of people who’ve practiced doing the same maneuver in unison many times. You
feel the stretcher settle onto a soft, powdery layer of ash, over a thicker layer of
ash, over what might be a road. Then your stretcher-bearers move away, opening
packs and settling down in a ritual that is familiar from your own months on the
road. Breaktime.
You know this ritual. You should get up. Eat something. Check your boots
for holes or stones, your feet for unnoticed sores, make sure your mask—wait,
are you wearing one? If everyone else is … You kept that in your runny-sack,
didn’t you? Where is your runny-sack?
Someone walks out of the gloom and ashfall. Tall, plateau-broad, identity
stripped by the clothes and mask but restored by the familiar frizzy texture of the
ashblow mane. She crouches near your head. “Hnh. Not dead, after all. Guess I
lose that bet with Tonkee.”
“Hjarka,” you say. Your voice rasps worse than hers does.
You guess by the flexing of her mask that she grins. It feels odd to perceive
her smile without the usual undercurrent of menace from her sharp-filed teeth.
“And your brains are probably still intact. I win the bet with Ykka, at least.” She
glances around and bellows, “Lerna!”
You try to lift a hand to grab her pants leg. It feels like trying to move a
mountain. You ought to be able to move mountains, so you concentrate and get
it halfway up—and then forget why you wanted Hjarka’s attention. She glances
around then, fortunately, and eyes your upraised hand. It’s shaking with the
effort. After a moment’s consideration, she sighs and takes your hand, then looks
away as if embarrassed.
“Happening,” you manage.
“Rust if I know. We didn’t need another break this soon.”
Not what you meant, but it takes too much of an effort to try to say the rest.
So you lie there, with your hand being held by a woman who clearly would
rather be doing anything else, but who’s deigning to show you compassion
because she thinks you need it. You don’t, but you’re glad she’s trying.
Two more forms resolve out of the swirl, both recognizable by their familiar
shapes. One is male and slight, the other female and pillowy. The narrow one
displaces Hjarka at your head and leans in to pull off the goggles that you hadn’t
realized you were wearing. “Give me a rock,” he says. It’s Lerna, making no
sense.
“What?” you say.
He ignores you. Tonkee, the other person, elbows Hjarka, who sighs and
rummages through her bag until she finds something small. She offers it to
Lerna.
He lays a hand on your cheek while holding the object up. The thing starts to
glow with a familiar tone of white light. You realize it’s a piece of a Castrima-
under crystal—lighting up because they do that in contact with orogenes, as
Lerna is now in contact with you. Ingenious. Using this light, he leans in and
peers closely at your eyes. “Pupils contracting normally,” he murmurs to
himself. His hand twitches on your cheek. “No fever.”
“I feel heavy,” you say.
“You’re alive,” he says, as if this is a completely reasonable response. No
one is speaking a language you can understand today. “Motor skills sluggish.
Cognition …?”
Tonkee leans in. “What did you dream?”
It makes as much sense as Give me a rock, but you try to answer because
you’re too out of it to realize you shouldn’t. “There was a city,” you murmur. A
bit of ash falls onto your lashes and you twitch. Lerna puts your goggles back
on. “It was alive. There was an obelisk above it.” Above it? “In it, maybe. I
think.”
Tonkee nods. “Obelisks rarely linger directly over human habitations. I had a
friend back at Seventh who had some theories about that. Want to hear them?”
Finally it sinks in that you’re doing something stupid: encouraging Tonkee.
You put a mighty effort into glaring at her. “No.”
Tonkee glances at Lerna. “Her faculties seem intact. Little sluggish, maybe,
but then she always is.”
“Yes, thank you for confirming that.” Lerna finishes doing whatever he’s
doing, and sits back on his heels. “Want to try walking, Essun?”
“Isn’t that kind of sudden?” asks Tonkee. She’s frowning, which is visible
even around her goggles. “What with the coma and all.”
“You know as well as I do that Ykka’s not going to give her much more
recovery time. It might even be good for her.”
Tonkee sighs. But she’s the one to help when Lerna slides an arm under you,
levering you up from prone to sitting. Even this takes an effort of ages. You get
dizzy the instant you’re upright, but it passes. Something’s wrong, though. It’s a
testament to how much you’ve been through, maybe, that you seem to have
developed a permanently crooked posture, your right shoulder sagging and arm
dragging as if
as if it is made of
Oh. Oh.
The others stop bothering you as you realize what’s happened. They watch
you heft the shoulder, as much as you can, to try to drag your right arm more
into view. It’s heavy. Your shoulder hurts when you do this, even though most
of the joint is still flesh, because the weight pulls against that flesh. Some of the
tendons have transformed, but they’re still attached to living bone. Gritty bits of
something chafe within what should be a smooth ball-and-socket. It doesn’t hurt
as much as you thought it would, though, after watching Alabaster go through
this. So that’s something.
The rest of the arm, from which someone has stripped your shirt and jacket
sleeves in order to bare it, has changed nearly past recognition. It’s your arm,
you’re pretty sure. Beyond the fact that it’s still attached to your body, it’s got
the shape you know like your own—well. Not as graceful and tapered as it used
to be when you were young. You were heavyset for a while, and that still shows
along the plush-looking forearm and slight sag under your upper arm. The bicep
is more defined than it used to be; two years of surviving. The hand is clamped
into a fist, the whole arm slightly cocked at the elbow. You always did tend to
make fists while you were wrestling with a particularly difficult bit of orogeny.
But the mole, which once sat in the middle of your forearm like a tiny black
target, is gone. You can’t turn the arm over for a look at your elbow, so you
touch it. The keloid scar from where you once fell is impossible to feel anymore,
though it should be slightly raised compared to the skin around it. That level of
fine definition has vanished into a texture that is gritty and dense, like
unpolished sandstone. Perhaps self-destructively you rub it, but no particles
break off beneath your fingertips; it’s more solid than it looks. The color is an
even, allover grayish tan that looks nothing like your skin.
“It was like this when Hoa brought you back.” Lerna, who has been silent
throughout your examination. His voice is neutral. “He says he needs your
permission to, ah …”
You stop trying to rub your stone skin off. Maybe it’s shock, maybe fear has
robbed you of shock, maybe you’re really not feeling anything.
“So tell me,” you say to Lerna. The effort of sitting up, and seeing your arm,
have restored your wits a little. “In your, uh, professional opinion, what should I
do about this?”
“I think you should either let Hoa eat it off, or let one of us take a
sledgehammer to it.”
You wince. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think anything lighter would put a dent in it. You forget I had plenty
of chances to examine Alabaster when this was happening to him.”
Out of nowhere, you think of Alabaster having to be reminded to eat because
he no longer felt hunger. It’s not relevant, but the thought just pops in there. “He
let you?”
“I didn’t give him a choice. I needed to know if it was contagious, since it
seemed to be spreading on him. I took a sample once, and he joked that
Antimony—the stone eater—would want it back.”
It wouldn’t have been a joke. Alabaster always smiled when he spoke the
rawest truths. “And did you give it back?”
“You better believe I did.” Lerna runs a hand over his hair, displacing a small
pile of ash. “Listen, we have to wrap the arm at night so that the chill of it
doesn’t depress your body temperature. You’ve got stretch marks on the
shoulder where it pulls your skin. I suspect it’s deforming the bones and
straining the tendons; the joint isn’t built to carry this kind of weight.” He
hesitates. “We can take it off now and give it to Hoa later, if you like. I don’t see
any reason why you have to … to do it his way.”
You think Hoa is probably somewhere below your feet at this very moment,
listening. But Lerna is being oddly squeamish about this. Why? You take a
guess. “I don’t mind if Hoa eats it,” you say. You aren’t saying it just for Hoa.
You really mean it. “If it will do him good, and get the thing off me in the
process, why not?”
Something flickers in Lerna’s expression. His emotionless mask slips, and
you see all of a sudden that he’s revolted by the idea of Hoa chewing the arm off
your body. Well, put like that, the concept is inherently revolting. It’s too
utilitarian a way of thinking about it, though. Too atavistic. You know
intimately, from hours spent delving between the cells and particles of
Alabaster’s transforming body, what’s happening in your arm. Looking at it, you
can all but see the silvery lines of magic realigning infinitesimal particles and
energies of your substance, moving this bit so that it’s oriented along the same
path as that bit, carefully tightening into a lattice that binds the whole together.
Whatever this process is, it’s simply too precise, too powerful, to be chance—or
for Hoa’s ingestion of it to be the grotesquerie that Lerna plainly sees. But you
don’t know how to explain that to him, and you wouldn’t have the energy to try
even if you did.
“Help me up,” you say.
Tonkee gingerly takes hold of the stone arm, helping to support it so it
doesn’t shift or flop and wrench your shoulder. She throws a glare at Lerna until
he finally gets over himself and slides an arm under you again. Between the two
of them, you manage to gain your feet, but it’s hard going. You’re panting by the
end, and your knees are distinctly wobbly. The blood in your body is less
committed to the cause, and momentarily you sway, dizzy and light-headed.
Lerna immediately says, “All right, let’s get her back down.” Abruptly you’re
sitting down again, out of breath this time, the arm awkwardly jacking up your
shoulder until Tonkee adjusts it. The thing really is heavy.
(Your arm. Not “the thing.” It’s your right arm. You’ve lost your right arm.
You’re aware of that, and soon you’ll mourn it, but for now it’s easier to think of
it as a thing separate from yourself. An especially useless prosthesis. A benign
tumor that needs to be removed. These things are all true. It’s also your rusting
arm.)
You’re sitting there, panting and willing the world to stop spinning, when
you hear someone else approach. This one’s speaking loudly, calling for
everyone to pack up, break’s over, they need to do another five miles before
dark. Ykka. You lift your head as she gets close enough, and it’s in this moment
that you realize you think of her as a friend. You realize it because it feels good
to hear her voice, and to see her resolve out of the swirling ash. Last time you
saw her, she was in serious danger of being murdered by hostile stone eaters
attacking Castrima-under. That’s one of the reasons you fought back, using the
crystals of Castrima-under to ensnare the attackers; you wanted her, and all the
other orogenes of Castrima, and by extension all the people of Castrima who
depended on those orogenes, to live.
So you smile. It’s weak. You’re weak. Which is why it actually hurts when
Ykka turns to you and her lips tighten in what is unmistakably disgust.
She’s pulled the cloth wrapping off the lower half of her face. Beyond her
gray-and-kohl eye makeup, which not even the end of the world will stop her
from wearing, you can’t make out her eyes behind her makeshift goggles—a pair
of spectacles that she’s wrapped rags around to keep ash out. “Shit,” she says to
Hjarka. “You’re never going to let me hear the end of it, are you?”
Hjarka shrugs. “Not till you pay up, no.”
You’re staring at Ykka, the tentative little smile freezing off your face.
“She’ll probably make a full recovery,” Lerna says. His voice is neutral in a
way that you immediately sense is careful. Walking-over-a-lava-tube careful.
“It’ll be a few days before she can keep up on foot, though.”
Ykka sighs, putting a hand on her hip and very obviously rifling through a
series of things to say. What she finally settles on is neutral, too. “Fine. I’ll
extend the rotation of people carrying the stretcher. Get her walking as soon as
possible, though. Everyone carries their own weight in this comm, or gets left
behind.” She turns and heads off.
“Yeah, so,” Tonkee says in a low voice, once Ykka’s out of earshot. “She’s a
little pissed about you destroying the geode.”
You flinch. “Destroying—” Oh, but. Locking all those stone eaters into the
crystals. You meant to save everyone, but Castrima was a machine—a very old,
very delicate machine that you didn’t understand. And now you’re topside,
traipsing through the ashfall … “Oh, rusting Earth, I did.”
“What, you didn’t realize?” Hjarka laughs a little. It’s got a bitter edge. “You
actually thought we were all up here topside, the whole rusting comm traveling
north in the ash and cold, for fun?” She strides away, shaking her head. Ykka’s
not the only one pissed about it.
“I didn’t …” You start to say, I didn’t mean to, and stop. Because you never
mean it, and it never matters in the end.
Watching your face, Lerna lets out a small sigh. “Rennanis destroyed the
comm, Essun. Not you.” He’s helping you shift back down into a prone position,
but not meeting your eyes. “We lost it the minute we infested Castrima-over
with boilbugs to save ourselves. It’s not like they would’ve just gone away, or
left anything in the territory to eat. If we’d stayed in the geode, we’d have been
doomed, one way or another.”
It’s true, and perfectly rational. Ykka’s reaction, though, proves that some
things aren’t about rationality. You can’t take away people’s homes and sense of
security in such an immediate, dramatic way, and expect them to consider
extended chains of culpability before they get angry about it.
“They’ll get over it.” You blink to find Lerna looking at you now, his gaze
clear and expression frank. “If I could, they can. It’ll just take a while.”
You hadn’t realized he had gotten over Tirimo.
He ignores your staring, then gestures to the four people who have gathered
nearby. You’re lying down already, so he tucks your stone arm in beside you,
making sure the blankets cover it. The stretcher-bearers take up their task again,
and you have to clamp down on your orogeny, which—now that you’re awake—
insists upon reacting to every lurch as if it’s a shake. Tonkee’s head pokes into
view as they start to carry you along. “Hey, it’ll be all right. Lots of people hate
me.”
That is entirely unreassuring. It’s also frustrating that you care, and that
others can tell you care. You used to be such a steelheart.
But you know why you aren’t, all of a sudden.
“Nassun,” you say to Tonkee.
“What?”
“Nassun. I know where she is, Tonkee.” You try to raise your right hand to
catch hers, and there is a sensation that thrums through your shoulder like aching
and floating. You hear a ringing sound. It doesn’t hurt, but you privately curse
yourself for forgetting. “I have to go find her.”
Tonkee darts a look at your stretcher-bearers, and then in the direction Ykka
went. “Speak softer.”
“What?” Ykka knows full well you’re going to want to go find your
daughter. That was practically the first thing you ever said to her.
“If you want to be dumped on the side of the rusting road, keep talking.”
That shuts you up, along with the continued effort of restraining your
orogeny. Oh. So Ykka’s that pissed.
The ash keeps falling, eventually obscuring your goggles because you don’t
have the energy to brush it away. In the gray dimness that results, your body’s
need to recover takes precedence; you fall asleep again. The next time you wake
and brush the ash off your face, it’s because you’ve been put down again, and
there’s a rock or branch or something poking you in the small of the back. You
struggle to sit up on one elbow and it’s easier, though you still can’t manage
much else.
Night has fallen. Several dozen people are settling onto some kind of rock
outcropping amid a scraggly not-quite forest. The outcropping sesses familiar
from your orogenic explorations of Castrima’s surroundings, and it helps you
place yourself: a bit of fresh tectonic uplift that’s about a hundred and sixty
miles north of the Castrima geode. That tells you that the journey from Castrima
must have only just begun a few days before, since a large group can only walk
so fast; and that there’s only one place you could be going, if you’re headed
north. Rennanis. Somehow everyone must know that it’s empty and habitable.
Or maybe they’re just hoping that it is, and they’ve got nothing else to hope for.
Well, at least on that point, you can reassure them … if they’ll listen to you.
The people around you are setting up campfire circles, cooking spits, latrines.
In a few spots throughout the camp, little piles of broken, lumpy Castrima
crystals provide additional illumination; good to know there must be enough
orogenes left to keep them working. Some of the activity is inefficient where
people are unused to it, but for the most part it’s well-ordered. Castrima having
more than its share of members who know how to live on the road is turning out
to be a boon. Your stretcher-bearers have left you where they dumped you,
though, and if anyone’s going to build you a fire or bring you food, they haven’t
started yet. You spot Lerna crouching amid a small group of people who are also
prone, but he’s busy. Ah, yes; there must have been a lot of wounded after
Rennanis’s soldiers got into the geode.
Well, you don’t need a fire, and you’re not hungry, so the others’ indifference
doesn’t trouble you for the moment, except emotionally. What does bother you
is that your runny-sack is gone. You carried that thing halfway across the
Stillness, stashed your old rank-rings in it, even saved it from getting scorched to
powder when a stone eater transformed himself in your quarters. There wasn’t
much in it that still mattered to you, but the bag itself holds a certain sentimental
value, at this point.
Well. Everyone’s lost something.
A mountain suddenly weighs down your nearby perception. In spite of
everything, you find yourself smiling. “I wondered when you would show up.”
Hoa stands over you. It’s still a shock to see him like this: a mid-sized adult
rather than a small child, veined black marble instead of white flesh. Somehow,
though, it’s easy to perceive him as the same person—same face shape, same
haunting icewhite eyes, same ineffable strangeness, same whiff of lurking
whimsy—as the Hoa you’ve known for the past year. What’s changed, that a
stone eater no longer seems alien to you? Only superficial things about him.
Everything about you.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Better.” The arm pulls when you shift to look up at him, a constant reminder
of the unwritten contract between you. “Were you the one who told them about
Rennanis?”
“Yes. And I’m guiding them there.”
“You?”
“To the degree that Ykka listens. I think she prefers her stone eaters as silent
menaces rather than active allies.”
This pulls a weary laugh out of you. But. “Are you an ally, Hoa?”
“Not to them. Ykka understands that, too, though.”
Yes. This is probably why you’re still alive. As long as Ykka keeps you safe
and fed, Hoa will help. You’re back on the road and everything’s a rusting
transaction again. The comm that was Castrima lives, but it isn’t really a
community anymore, just a group of like-minded travelers collaborating to
survive. Maybe it can become a true comm again later, once it’s got another
home to defend, but for now, you get why Ykka’s angry. Something beautiful
and wholesome has been lost.
Well. You look down at yourself. You’re not wholesome anymore, but
what’s left of you can be strengthened; you’ll be able to go after Nassun soon.
First things first, though. “We going to do this?”
Hoa does not speak for a moment. “Are you certain?”
 “The arm’s not doing me any good, as it is.”
There is the faintest of sounds. Stone grinding on stone, slow and inexorable.
A very heavy hand comes to rest on your half-transformed shoulder. You have
the sense that, despite the weight, it is a delicate touch by stone eater standards.
Hoa’s being careful with you.
“Not here,” he says, and pulls you down into the earth.
It’s only for an instant. He always keeps these trips through the earth quick,
probably because longer would make it hard to breathe … and stay sane. This
time is little more than a blurring sensation of movement, a flicker of darkness, a
whiff of loam richer than the acrid ash. Then you’re lying on another rocky
outcropping—probably the same one that the rest of Castrima is settling on, just
away from the encampment. There are no campfires here; the only light is the
ruddy reflection of the Rifting off the thick clouds overhead. Your eyes adjust
quickly, though there’s little to see but rocks and the shadows of nearby trees.
And a human silhouette, which now crouches beside you.
Hoa holds your stone arm in his hands gently, almost reverently. In spite of
yourself, you sense the solemnity of the moment. And why shouldn’t it be
solemn? This is the sacrifice demanded by the obelisks. This is the pound of
flesh you must pay for the blood-debt of your daughter.
“This isn’t what you think of it,” Hoa says, and for an instant you worry that
he can read your mind. More likely it’s just the fact that he’s as old as the literal
hills, and he can read your face. “You see what was lost in us, but we gained,
too. This is not the ugly thing it seems.”
It seems like he’s going to eat your arm. You’re okay with it, but you want to
understand. “What is it, then? Why …” You shake your head, unsure of even
what question to ask. Maybe why doesn’t matter. Maybe you can’t understand.
Maybe this isn’t meant for you.
“This is not sustenance. We need only life, to live.”
The latter half of that was nonsensical, so you latch onto the former half. “If
it isn’t sustenance, then …?”
Hoa moves slowly again. They don’t do this often, stone eaters. Movement is
the thing that emphasizes their uncanny nature, so like humanity and yet so
wildly different. It would be easier if they were more alien. When they move like
this, you can see what they once were, and the knowledge is a threat and
warning to all that is human within you.
And yet. You see what was lost in us, but we gained, too.
He lifts your hand with both his own, one positioned under your elbow, his
fingers lightly braced under your closed, cracked fist. Slowly, slowly. It doesn’t
hurt your shoulder this way. Halfway to his face he moves the hand that had
been under your elbow, shifting it to cup the underside of your upper arm. His
stone slides against yours with a faint grinding sound. It is surprisingly sensual,
even though you can’t feel a thing.
Then your fist rests against his lips. The lips don’t move as he says, from
within his chest, “Are you afraid?”
You consider this for a long moment. Shouldn’t you be? But … “No.”
“Good,” he replies. “I do this for you, Essun. Everything is for you. Do you
believe that?”
You don’t know, at first. On impulse you lift your good hand, smooth fingers
over his hard, cool, polished cheek. It’s hard to see him, black against the dark,
but your thumb finds his brows and traces out his nose, which is longer in its
adult shape. He told you once that he thinks of himself as human in spite of his
strange body. You belatedly realize that you’ve chosen to see him as human, too.
That makes this something other than an act of predation. You’re not sure what
it is instead, but … it feels like a gift.
“Yes,” you say. “I believe you.”
His mouth opens. Wide, wider, wider than any human mouth can open. Once
you worried his mouth was too small; now it’s wide enough to fit a fist. And
such teeth he has, small and even and diamond-clear, glinting prettily in the red
evening light. There is only darkness beyond those teeth.
You shut your eyes.

She was in a foul mood. Old age, one of her children told me. She said it
was just the stress of trying to warn people who didn’t want to hear that
bad times were coming. It wasn’t a foul mood, it was the privilege that
age had bought her, to dispense with the lie of politeness.
“There isn’t a villain in this story,” she said. We sat in the garden
dome, which was only a dome because she’d insisted. The Syl Skeptics
still claim there’s no proof things will happen the way she said, but she’s
never been wrong in one of her predictions, and she’s more Syl than they
are, so. She was drinking sef, as if to mark a truth in chemicals.
“There isn’t a single evil to point to, a single moment when everything
changed,” she went on. “Things were bad and then terrible and then better
and then bad again, and then they happened again, and again, because no
 and then bad again, and then they happened again, and again, because no
one stopped it. Things can be … adjusted. Lengthen the better, predict and
shorten the terrible. Sometimes prevent the terrible by settling for the
merely bad. I’ve given up on trying to stop you people. Just taught my
children to remember and learn and survive … until someone finally
breaks the cycle for good.”
I was confused. “Are you talking about Burndown?” That was what
I’d come to talk about, after all. One hundred years, she predicted, fifty
years ago. What else mattered?
She only smiled.
—Transcribed interview, translated from Obelisk-Builder C, found in Tapita
Plateau Ruin #723 by Shinash Innovator Dibars. Date unknown, transcriber
unknown. Speculation: the first lorist? Personal: ’Baster, you should see this
place. Treasures of history everywhere, most of them too degraded to
decipher, but still … Wish you were here.
 2
Nassun feels like busting loose

NASSUN STANDS OVER THE BODY of her father, if one can call a tumbled mass of
broken jewels a body. She’s swaying a little, light-headed because the wound in
her shoulder—where her father has stabbed her—is bleeding profusely. The
stabbing is the outcome of an impossible choice he demanded of her: to be either
his daughter or an orogene. She refused to commit existential suicide. He refused
to suffer an orogene to live. There was no malice in either of them in that final
moment, only the grim violence of inevitability.
To one side of this tableau stands Schaffa, Nassun’s Guardian, who stares
down at what is left of Jija Resistant Jekity in a combination of wonder and cold
satisfaction. At Nassun’s other side is Steel, her stone eater. It is appropriate to
call him that now, hers, because he has come in her hour of need—not to help,
never that, but to provide her with something nevertheless. What he offers, and
what she has finally realized she needs, is purpose. Not even Schaffa has given
her this, but that’s because Schaffa loves her unconditionally. She needs that
love, too, oh how she needs it, but in this moment when her heart has been most
thoroughly broken, when her thoughts are at their least focused, she craves
something more … solid.
She will have the solidity that she wants. She will fight for it and kill for it,
because she’s had to do that again and again and it is habit now, and if she is
successful she will die for it. After all, she is her mother’s daughter—and only
people who think they have a future fear death.
In Nassun’s good hand thrums a three-foot-long, tapering shard of crystal,
deep blue and finely faceted, though with some slight deformations near its base
that have resulted in something like a hilt. Now and again this strange longknife
flickers into a translucent, intangible, debatably real state. It’s very real; only
Nassun’s attention keeps the thing in her hands from turning her to colored stone
the way it did her father. She’s afraid of what might happen if she passes out
from blood loss, so she would really like to send the sapphire back up into the
sky to resume its default shape and immense size—but she can’t. Not yet.
 There, by the dormitory, are the two reasons: Umber and Nida, the other two
Guardians of Found Moon. They’re watching her, and when her gaze lands on
them, there is a flicker in the lacing tendrils of silver that drift between the pair.
No exchanged words or looks, just that silent communion which would have
been imperceptible, if Nassun were anyone but who she was. Beneath each
Guardian, delicate silvery tethers wend up from the ground into their feet,
connected by the nerve-and-vein glimmer of their bodies to tiny shards of iron
embedded in their brains. These taproot-like tethers have always been there, but
maybe it’s the tension of the moment that makes Nassun finally notice how thick
those lines of light are for each Guardian—much thicker than the one linking the
ground to Schaffa. And at last she understands what that means: Umber and
Nida are just puppets of a greater will. Nassun has tried to believe better of them,
that they are their own people, but here, now, with the sapphire in her hands and
her father dead at her feet … some maturations cannot wait for a more
convenient season.
So Nassun roots a torus deep within the earth, because she knows that Umber
and Nida will sense this. It’s a feint; she doesn’t need the power of the earth, and
she suspects they know it. Still, they react, Umber unfolding his arms and Nida
straightening from where she’d been leaning on the porch railing. Schaffa reacts,
too, his eyes shifting sideways to meet hers. It’s an unavoidable tell that Umber
and Nida will notice, but it cannot be helped; Nassun has no piece of the Evil
Earth lodged in her brain to facilitate communication. Where matter fails, care
makes do. He says, “Nida,” and that is all she needs.
Umber and Nida move. It’s fast—so fast—because the silver lattice within
each has strengthened their bones and tightened the cords of their muscles so
that they can do what ordinary human flesh cannot. A pulse of negation moves
before them with storm-surge inexorability, immediately striking the major lobes
of Nassun’s sessapinae numb, but Nassun is already on the offensive. Not
physically; she cannot contest them in that sphere of battle, and besides she can
barely stand. Will and the silver are all she’s got left.
So Nassun—her body still, her mind violent—snatches at the silver threads of
the air around her, weaving them into a crude but efficient net. (She’s never done
this before, but no one has ever told her that it can’t be done.) She wraps part of
this around Nida, ignoring Umber because Schaffa told her to. And indeed, she
understands in the next instant why he told her to concentrate on only one of the
enemy Guardians. The silver she’s woven around Nida should catch the woman
up fast, like an insect slamming into a spiderweb. Instead, Nida stumbles to a
halt, then laughs while threads of something else curl forth from within her and
lash the air, shredding the net around her. She lunges for Nassun again, but
Nassun—after boggling at the speed and efficacy of the Guardian’s retaliation—
snatches stone up from within the earth to spear Nida’s feet. This impedes Nida
only a little. She bulls forward, breaking the rock shards off and charging with
them still jutting through her boots. One of her hands is held like a claw, the
other a flat, finger-stiffened blade. Whichever of them reaches Nassun first will
dictate how she begins tearing Nassun apart with her bare hands.
Here Nassun panics. Just a little, because she would lose control of the
sapphire otherwise—but some. She can sense a raw, hungry, chaotic
reverberation to the silver threads thrumming through Nida, like nothing she’s
ever perceived before, and it is somehow, suddenly, terrifying. She doesn’t know
what that strange reverberation will do to her, if any part of Nida should touch
Nassun’s bare skin. (Her mother knows, though.) She takes a step back, willing
the sapphire longknife to move between her and Nida in a defensive position.
Her good hand is still on the sapphire’s hilt, so it looks as if she’s brandishing a
weapon with a shaking and far-too-slow hand. Nida laughs again, high and
delighted, because they can both see that not even the sapphire will be enough to
stop her. Nida’s claw-hand flails out, fingers splaying and reaching for Nassun’s
cheek even as she weaves like a snake around Nassun’s wild slash—
Nassun drops the sapphire and screams, her dulled sessapinae flexing
desperately, helplessly—
But all of the Guardians have forgotten Nassun’s other guardian.
Steel does not appear to move. In one instant he stands as he has for the past
few minutes, with his back to the tumbled pile of Jija, expression serene, posture
languid as he faces the northern horizon. In the next he is closer, right beside
Nassun, having transported himself so quickly that Nassun hears a sharp clap of
displaced air. And Nida’s forward momentum abruptly stops as her throat is
caught tight within the circle of Steel’s upraised hand.
She shrieks. Nassun has heard Nida ramble for hours in her fluttery voice,
and perhaps that’s made her think of Nida as a songbird, chattery and chirruping
and harmless. This shriek is the cry of a raptor, savagery turning to fury as she is
thwarted from stooping on her prey. She tries to wrench herself back, risking
skin and tendon to get loose, but Steel’s grip is as firm as stone. She’s caught.
A sound behind Nassun makes her jerk around. Ten feet from where she
stands, Umber and Schaffa have blurred together in hand-to-hand combat. She
can’t see what’s happening. They’re both moving too fast, their strikes swift and
vicious. By the time her ears process the sounds of a blow, they’ve already
shifted to a different position. She can’t even tell what they’re doing—but she is
afraid, so afraid, for Schaffa. The silver in Umber flows like rivers, power being
steadily fed to him through that glimmering taproot. The thinner streams in
Schaffa, however, are a wild chain of rapids and clogs, yanking at his nerves and
muscles and flaring unpredictably in an attempt to distract him. Nassun can see
by the concentration in Schaffa’s face that he is still in control, and that this is
what has saved him; his movements are unpredictable, strategic, considered.
Still. That he can fight at all is astonishing.
How he ends the fight, by driving his hand up to the wrist through the
underside of Umber’s jaw, is horrifying.
Umber makes an awful sound, jerking to a halt—but an instant later, his hand
lunges for Schaffa’s throat again, blurring in its speed. Schaffa gasps—so
quickly that it might be just a breath, but Nassun hears the alarm in it—and
shunts away the strike, but Umber’s still moving, even though his eyes have
rolled back in his head and the movements are twitchy, clumsy. Nassun
understands then: Umber’s not home anymore. Something else is, working his
limbs and reflexes for as long as crucial connections remain in place. And yes:
In the next breath, Schaffa flings Umber to the ground, wrenches his hand free,
and stomps on his opponent’s head.
Nassun can’t look. She hears the crunch; that’s enough. She hears Umber
actually continue twitching, his movements more feeble but persistent, and she
hears the faint rustle of Schaffa’s clothes as he bends. Then she hears something
that her mother last heard in a little room in the Guardians’ wing of the Fulcrum,
some thirty years before: bone cracking and gristle tearing, as Schaffa works his
fingers into the base of Umber’s broken skull.
Nassun can’t close her ears, so instead she focuses on Nida, who’s still
fighting to get free from Steel’s unbreakable grip.
“I—I—” Nassun attempts. Her heart’s slowed only a little. The sapphire
shakes harder in her hands. Nida still wants to kill her. Steel, who has
established himself as merely a possible ally and not a definite one, need only
loosen his grip, and Nassun will die. But. “I d-don’t want to kill you,” she
manages. It’s even true.
Nida abruptly goes still and silent. The fury in her expression gradually fades
to no expression at all. “It did what it had to do, last time,” she says.
Nassun’s skin prickles with the realization that something intangible has
changed. She’s not sure what, but she doesn’t think this is quite Nida anymore.
She swallows. “Did what? Who?”
Nida’s gaze falls on Steel. There is a faint grinding sound as Steel’s mouth
curves into a wide, toothy smile. Then, before Nassun can think of another
question to ask, Steel’s grip shifts. Not loosening; turning, with that unnaturally
slow motion which perhaps is meant to imitate human movement. (Or mock it.)
He draws in his arm and pivots his wrist to turn Nida around, her back to his
front. The nape of her neck to his mouth.
“It’s angry,” Nida continues calmly, though now she faces away from both
Steel and Nassun. “Yet even now it may be willing to compromise, to forgive. It
demands justice, but—”
“It has had its justice a thousand times over,” says Steel. “I owe it no more.”
Then he opens his mouth wide.
Nassun turns away, again. On a morning when she has rent her father to
pieces, some things remain too obscene for her child’s eyes. At least Nida does
not move again once Steel has dropped her body to the ground.
“We cannot remain here,” Schaffa says. When Nassun swallows hard and
focuses on him, she sees that he stands over Umber’s corpse, holding something
small and sharp in one gore-flecked hand. He gazes at this object with the same
detached coldness that he turns upon those he means to kill. “Others will come.”
Through the clarity of near-death adrenaline, Nassun knows that he means
other contaminated Guardians—and not half-contaminated ones like Schaffa
himself, who have somehow managed to retain some measure of free will.
Nassun swallows and nods, feeling calmer now that no one is actively trying to
kill her anymore. “Wh-what about the other kids?”
Some of the children in question are standing on the porch of the dormitory,
awakened by the concussion of the sapphire when Nassun summoned it into
longknife form. They have witnessed everything, Nassun sees. A couple are
weeping at the sight of their Guardians dead, but most just stare at her and
Schaffa in silent shock. One of the smaller children is vomiting off the side of
the steps.
Schaffa gazes at them for a long moment, and then glances sidelong at her.
Some of the coldness is still there, saying what his voice does not. “They’ll need
to leave Jekity, quickly. Without Guardians, the commfolk are unlikely to
tolerate their presence.” Or Schaffa can kill them. That’s what he’s done with
every other orogene they’ve met who isn’t under his control. They are either his,
or they are a threat.
“No,” Nassun blurts. Speaking to that silent coldness, not to what he’s said.
The coldness increases fractionally. Schaffa never likes it when she says no. She
takes a deep breath, marshaling a little more calm, and corrects herself. “Please,
Schaffa. I just … I can’t take any more.”
This is rank hypocrisy. The decision Nassun has recently made, a silent
promise over her father’s corpse, belies it. Schaffa cannot know what she has
chosen, but at the corner of her vision, she is painfully aware of Steel’s
lingering, blood-painted smile.
She presses her lips together and means it anyway. It isn’t a lie. She can’t
take the cruelty, the endless suffering; that’s the whole point. What she means to
do will be, if nothing else, quick and merciful.
Schaffa regards her for a moment. Then he twitch-winces a little, as she has
seen him do often in the past few weeks. When the spasm passes, he puts on a
smile and comes over to her, though first he closes his hand firmly around the
metal bit he’s taken from Umber. “How is your shoulder?”
She reaches up to touch it. The cloth of her sleep-shirt is wet with blood, but
not sodden, and she can still use the arm. “It hurts.”
“That will last for a time, I’m afraid.” He looks around, then rises and goes to
Umber’s corpse. Ripping off one of Umber’s shirtsleeves—one that isn’t as
splattered with blood as the other, Nassun notes with distant relief—he comes
over and pushes up her sleeve, then helps her tie the strip of cloth around her
shoulder. He ties it tight. Nassun knows this is good and will possibly prevent
her from needing to have the wound sewn up, but for a moment the pain is worse
and she leans against him briefly. He allows this, stroking her hair with his free
hand. The gore-flecked other hand, Nassun notes, stays clenched tight around
that metal shard.
“What will you do with it?” Nassun asks, staring at the clenched hand. She
cannot help imagining something malevolent there, snaking its tendrils forth and
looking for another person to infect with the Evil Earth’s will.
“I don’t know,” Schaffa says in a heavy voice. “It’s no danger to me, but I
remember that in …” He frowns for a moment, visibly groping for a memory
that is gone. “That once, elsewhere, we simply recycled them. Here, I suppose
I’ll have to find somewhere isolated to drop it, and hope no one stumbles across
it anytime soon. What will you do with that?”
Nassun follows his gaze to where the sapphire longknife, untended, has
floated around behind her and positioned itself in the air, hovering precisely a
foot away from her back. It moves slightly with her movements, humming
faintly. She doesn’t understand why it’s doing that, though she takes some
comfort from its looming, quiescent strength. “I guess I should put it back.”
“How did you …?”
“I just needed it. It knew what I needed and changed for me.” Nassun shrugs
a little. It’s so hard to explain these things in words. Then she clutches at his
shirt with her uninjured hand, because she knows that when Schaffa doesn’t
answer a question, it isn’t a good thing. “The others, Schaffa.”
He sighs finally. “I’ll help them prepare packs. Can you walk?”
Nassun’s so relieved that for the moment she feels like she can fly. “Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, Schaffa!”
He shakes his head, clearly rueful, though he smiles again. “Go to your
father’s house and take anything useful and portable, little one. I’ll meet you
there.”
She hesitates. If Schaffa decides to kill the other children of Found Moon …
He won’t, will he? He’s said he won’t.
Schaffa pauses, raising an eyebrow above his smile, the picture of polite,
calm inquiry. It’s an illusion. The silver is still a lashing whip within Schaffa,
trying to goad him into killing her. He must be in astonishing pain. He resists the
goad, however, as he has for weeks. He does not kill her, because he loves her.
And she can trust nothing, no one, if she does not trust him.
“Okay,” Nassun says. “I’ll see you at Daddy’s.”
As she pulls away from him, she glances at Steel, who has turned to face
Schaffa as well. Somewhere in the past few breaths, Steel has gotten the blood
off his lips. She doesn’t know how. But he has held out one gray hand toward
them—no. Toward Schaffa. Schaffa tilts his head at this for a moment,
considering, and then after a moment he deposits the bloody iron shard into
Steel’s hand. Steel’s hand flicks closed, then uncurls again, slowly, as if
performing a sleight-of-hand trick. But the iron shard is gone. Schaffa inclines
his head in polite thanks.
Her two monstrous protectors, who must cooperate on her care. Yet is
Nassun not a monster, too? Because the thing that she sensed just before Jija
came to kill her—that spike of immense power, concentrated and amplified by
dozens of obelisks working in tandem? Steel has called this the Obelisk Gate: a
vast and complex mechanism created by the deadciv that built the obelisks, for
some unfathomable purpose. Steel has also mentioned a thing called the Moon.
Nassun has heard the stories; once, long ago, Father Earth had a child. That
child’s loss is what angered him and brought about the Seasons.
The tales offer a message of impossible hope, and a mindless expression that
lorists use to intrigue restless audiences. One day, if the Earth’s child ever
returns …The implication is that, someday, Father Earth might be appeased at
last. Someday, the Seasons might end and all could become right with the world.
Except fathers will still try to murder their orogene children, won’t they?
Even if the Moon comes back. Nothing will ever stop that.
Bring home the Moon, Steel has said. End the world’s pain.
Some choices aren’t choices at all, really.
Nassun wills the sapphire to come hover before her again. She can sess
nothing in the wake of Umber and Nida’s negation, but there are other ways to
perceive the world. And amid the flickering un-water of the sapphire, as it
unmakes and remakes itself from the concentrated immensity of silver light
stored within its crystal lattice, there is a subtle message written in equations of
force and balance that Nassun solves instinctively, with something other than
math.
Far away. Across the unknown sea. Her mother may hold the Obelisk Gate’s
key, but Nassun learned on the ash roads that there are other ways to open any
gate—hinges to pop, ways to climb over or dig under. And far away, on the
other side of the world, is a place where Essun’s control over the Gate can be
subverted.
“I know where we need to go, Schaffa,” Nassun says.
He eyes her for a moment, his gaze flicking to Steel and back. “Do you,
now?”
“Yes. It’s a really long way, though.” She bites her lip. “Will you go with
me?”
He inclines his head, his smile wide and warm. “Anywhere, my little one.”
Nassun lets out a long breath of relief, smiling up at him tentatively. Then she
deliberately turns her back on Found Moon and its corpses, and walks down the
hill without ever once looking back.

2729 Imperial: Witnesses in the comm of Amand (Dibba Quartent,

western Nomidlats) report an unregistered rogga female opening up a gas
pocket near the town. Unclear what gas was; killed in seconds, purpling of
tongue, suffocation rather than toxicity? Both? Another rogga female
reportedly stopped the first one’s effort, somehow, and shunted the gas
back into the vent before sealing it. Amand citizens shot both as soon as
possible to prevent further incidents. Gas pocket assessed by Fulcrum as
possible to prevent further incidents. Gas pocket assessed by Fulcrum as
substantial—enough to have killed most people and livestock in western
half of Nomidlats, with follow-up topsoil contamination. Initiating female
age seventeen, reacting to reported molester of younger sister. Quelling
female age seven, sister of first.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 Syl Anagist: Five

HOUWHA,” SAYS A VOICE BEHIND me.

(Me? Me.)
I turn from the stinging window and the garden of winking flowers. A
woman stands with Gaewha and one of the conductors, and I do not know her.
To the eyes, she is one of them—skin a soft allover brown, eyes gray, hair black-
brown and curling in ropes, tall. There are hints of other in the breadth of her
face—or perhaps, viewing this memory now through the lens of millennia, I see
what I want to see. What she looks like is irrelevant. To my sessapinae, her
kinship to us is as obvious as Gaewha’s puffy white hair. She exerts a pressure
upon the ambient that is a churning, impossibly heavy, irresistible force. This
makes her as much one of us as if she’d been decanted from the same
biomagestric mix.
(You look like her. No. I want you to look like her. That is unfair, even if it’s
true; you are like her, but in other ways than mere appearance. My apologies for
reducing you in such a way.)
The conductor speaks as her kind do, in thin vibrations that only ripple the air
and barely stir the ground. Words. I know this conductor’s name-word, Pheylen,
and I know too that she is one of the nicer ones, but this knowledge is still and
indistinct, like so much about them. For a very long time I could not tell the
difference between one of their kind and another. They all look different, but
they have the same non-presence within the ambient. I still have to remind
myself that hair textures and eye shapes and unique body odors each have as
much meaning to them as the perturbations of tectonic plates have to me.
I must be respectful of their difference. We are the deficient ones, after all,
stripped of much that would’ve made us human. This was necessary and I do not
mind what I am. I like being useful. But many things would be easier if I could
understand our creators better.
 So I stare at the new woman, the us-woman, and try to pay attention while
the conductor introduces her. Introduction is a ritual that consists of explaining
the sounds of names and the relationships of the … families? Professions?
Honestly, I don’t know. I stand where I am supposed to and say the things I
should. The conductor tells the new woman that I am Houwha and that Gaewha
is Gaewha, which are the name-words they use for us. The new woman, the
conductor says, is Kelenli. That’s wrong, too. Her name is actually deep stab,
breach of clay sweetburst, soft silicate underlayer, reverberation, but I will try
to remember “Kelenli” when I use words to speak.
The conductor seems pleased that I say “How do you do” when I’m supposed
to. I’m glad; introduction is very difficult, but I’ve worked hard to become good
at it. After this she starts speaking to Kelenli. When it becomes clear that the
conductor has nothing more to say to me, I move behind Gaewha and begin
plaiting some of her thick, poufy mane of hair. The conductors seem to like it
when we do this, though I don’t really know why. One of them said that it was
“cute” to see us taking care of one another, just like people. I’m not sure what
cute means.
Meanwhile, I listen.
“Just doesn’t make sense,” Pheylen is saying, with a sigh. “I mean, the
numbers don’t lie, but …”
“If you’d like to register an objection,” begins Kelenli. Her words fascinate
me in a way that words never have before. Unlike the conductor, her voice has
weight and texture, strata-deep and layered. She sends the words into the ground
while she speaks, as a kind of subvocalization. It makes them feel more real.
Pheylen, who doesn’t seem to notice how much deeper Kelenli’s words are—or
maybe she just doesn’t care—makes an uncomfortable face in reaction to what
she’s said. Kelenli repeats, “If you’d like to, I can ask Gallat to take me off the
roster.”
“And listen to his shouting? Evil Death, he’d never stop. Such a savage
temper he has.” Pheylen smiles. It’s not an amused smile. “It must be hard for
him, wanting the project to succeed, but also wanting you kept—well. I’m fine
with you on standby-only, but then I haven’t seen the simulation data.”
“I have.” Kelenli’s tone is grave. “The delay-failure risk was small, but
significant.”
“Well, there you are. Even a small risk is too much, if we can do something
about it. I think they must be more anxious than they’re letting on, though, to
involve you—” Abruptly, Pheylen looks embarrassed. “Ah … sorry. No offense
meant.”
Kelenli smiles. Both I and Gaewha can see that it is only a surface layering,
not a real expression. “None taken.”
Pheylen exhales in relief. “Well, then, I’ll just withdraw to Observation and
let you three get to know each other. Knock when you’re done.”
With that, Conductor Pheylen leaves the room. This is a good thing, because
when conductors are not around, we can speak more easily. The door closes and
I move to face Gaewha (who is actually cracked geode taste of adularescent
salts, fading echo). She nods minutely because I have correctly guessed that she
has something important to tell me. We are always watched. A certain amount of
performance is essential.
Gaewha says with her mouth, “Coordinator Pheylen told me they’re making a
change to our configuration.” With the rest of her she says, in atmospheric
perturbations and anxious plucking of the silver threads, Tetlewha has been
moved to the briar patch.
“A change at this late date?” I glance at the us-woman, Kelenli, to see if she
is following the whole conversation. She looks so much like one of them, all that
surface coloring and those long bones that make her a head taller than both of us.
“Do you have something to do with the project?” I ask her, while also
responding to Gaewha’s news about Tetlewha. No.
My “no” is not denial, just a statement of fact. We can still detect Tetlewha’s
familiar hot spot roil and strata uplift, grind of subsidence, but … something is
different. He’s not nearby anymore, or at least he’s not anywhere that is in range
of our seismic questings. And the roil and grind of him have gone nearly still.
Decommissioned is the word the conductors prefer to use, when one of us is
removed from service. They have asked us, individually, to describe what we
feel when the change happens, because it is a disruption of our network. By
unspoken agreement each of us speaks of the sensation of loss—a pulling away,
a draining, a thinning of signal strength. By unspoken agreement none of us
mentions the rest, which in any case is indescribable using conductor words.
What we experience is a searing sensation, and prickling all over, and the
tumbledown resistance tangle of ancient pre-Sylanagistine wire such as we
sometimes encounter in our explorations of the earth, gone rusted and sharp in
its decay and wasted potential. Something like that.
Who gave the order? I want to know.
Gaewha has become a slow fault ripple of stark, frustrated, confused patterns.
Conductor Gallat. The other conductors are angry about it and someone
reported it to the higher-ups and that’s why they have sent Kelenli here. It took
all of us together to hold the onyx and the moonstone. They are concerned about
our stability.
Annoyed, I return, Perhaps they should have thought of that before—
“I do have something to do with the project, yes,” interrupts Kelenli, though
there has been no break or disruption of the verbal conversation. Words are very
slow compared to earthtalk. “I have some arcane awareness, you see, and similar
abilities to yours.” Then she adds, I’m here to teach you.
She switches as easily as we do between the words of the conductors and our
language, the language of the earth. Her communicative presence is radiant
heavy metal, searing crystallized magnetic lines of meteoric iron, and more
complex layers underneath this, all so sharp-edged and powerful that Gaewha
and I both inhale in wonder.
But what is she saying? Teach us? We don’t need to be taught. We were
decanted knowing nearly everything we needed to know already, and the rest we
learned in the first few weeks of life with our fellow tuners. If we hadn’t, we
would be in the briar patch, too.
I make sure to frown. “How can you be a tuner like us?” This is a lie spoken
for our observers, who see only the surface of things and think we do, too. She is
not white like us, not short or strange, but we have known her for one of ours
since we felt the cataclysm of her presence. I do not disbelieve that she is one of
us. I can’t disbelieve the incontrovertible.
Kelenli smiles, with a wryness that acknowledges the lie. “Not quite like you,
but close enough. You’re the finished artwork, I’m the model.” Threads of
magic in the earth heat and reverberate and add other meanings. Prototype. A
control to our experiment, made earlier to see how we should be done. She has
only one difference, instead of the many that we possess. She has our carefully
designed sessapinae. Is that enough to help us accomplish the task? The certainty
in her earth-presence says yes. She continues in words: “I’m not the first that
was made. Just the first to survive.”
We all push a hand at the air to ward off Evil Death. But I allow myself to
look like I don’t understand as I wonder if we dare trust her. I saw how the
conductor relaxed around her. Pheylen is one of the nice ones, but even she
never forgets what we are. She forgot with Kelenli, though. Perhaps all humans
think she is one of them, until someone tells them otherwise. What is that like,
being treated as human when one is not? And then there’s the fact that they’ve
left her alone with us. We they treat like weapons that might misfire at any
moment … but they trust her.
“How many fragments have you attuned to yourself?” I ask aloud, as if this is
a thing that matters. It is also a challenge.
“Only one,” Kelenli says. But she’s still smiling. “The onyx.”
Oh. Oh, that does matter. Gaewha and I exchange a look of wonder and
concern before facing her again.
“And the reason I’m here,” Kelenli continues, abruptly insistent upon
delivering this important information with mere words, which somehow
perversely serves to emphasize them, “is because the order has been issued. The
fragments are at optimum storage capacity and are ready for the generative
cycle. Corepoint and Zero Site go live in twenty-eight days. We’re finally
starting up the Plutonic Engine.”
(In tens of thousands of years, after people have repeatedly forgotten what
“engines” are and know the fragments as nothing but “obelisks,” there will be a
different name for the thing that rules our lives now. It will be called the Obelisk
Gate, which is both more poetic and quaintly primitive. I like that name better.)
In the present, while Gaewha and I stand there staring, Kelenli drops one last
shocker into the vibrations between our cells:
That means I have less than a month to show you who you really are.
Gaewha frowns. I manage not to react because the conductors watch our
bodies as well as our faces, but it is a narrow thing. I’m very confused, and not a
little unnerved. I have no idea, in the present of this conversation, that it is the
beginning of the end.
Because we tuners are not orogenes, you see. Orogeny is what the difference
of us will become over generations of adaptation to a changed world. You are
the shallower, more specialized, more natural distillation of our so-unnatural
strangeness. Only a few of you, like Alabaster, will ever come close to the power
and versatility we hold, but that is because we were constructed as intentionally
and artificially as the fragments you call obelisks. We are fragments of the great
machine, too—just as much a triumph of genegineering and biomagestry and
geomagestry and other disciplines for which the future will have no name. By
our existence we glorify the world that made us, like any statue or scepter or
other precious object.
We do not resent this, for our opinions and experiences have been carefully
constructed, too. We do not understand that what Kelenli has come to give us is
a sense of peoplehood. We do not understand why we have been forbidden this
self-concept before now … but we will.
 And then we will understand that people cannot be possessions. And because
we are both and this should not be, a new concept will take shape within us,
though we have never heard the word for it because the conductors are forbidden
to even mention it in our presence. Revolution.
Well. We don’t have much use for words, anyway. But that’s what this is.
The beginning. You, Essun, will see the end.
 3
you, imbalanced

IT TAKES A FEW DAYS for you to recover enough to walk on your own. As soon as
you can, Ykka reappropriates your stretcher-bearers to perform other tasks,
which leaves you to hobble along, weak and made clumsy by the loss of your
arm. The first few days you lag well behind the bulk of the group, catching up to
camp with them only hours after they’ve settled for the night. There isn’t much
left of the communal food by the time you go to take your share. Good thing you
don’t feel hunger anymore. There aren’t many spaces left to lay out your bedroll,
either—though they did at least give you a basic pack and supplies to make up
for your lost runny-sack. What spaces there are aren’t good, located near the
edges of the camp or off the road altogether, where the danger of attack by
wildlife or commless is greater. You sleep there anyway because you’re
exhausted. You suppose that if there’s any real danger, Hoa will carry you off
again; he seems able to transport you for short distances through the earth with
no trouble. Still, Ykka’s anger is a hard thing to bear, in more ways than one.
Tonkee and Hoa lag behind with you. It’s almost like the old days, except
that now Hoa appears as you walk, gets left behind as you keep walking, then
appears again somewhere ahead of you. Most times he adopts a neutral posture,
but occasionally he’s doing something ridiculous, like the time you find him in a
running pose. Apparently stone eaters get bored, too. Hjarka stays with Tonkee,
so that’s four of you. Well, five: Lerna lingers to walk with you, too, angry at
what he perceives as the mistreatment of one of his patients. He didn’t think a
recently comatose woman should be made to walk at all, let alone left to fall
behind. You try to tell him not to stick with you, not to draw Castrima’s wrath
upon himself, but he snorts and says that if Castrima really wants to antagonize
the only person in the comm who’s formally trained to do surgery, they don’t
deserve to keep him. Which is … well, it’s a very good point. You shut up.
You’re managing better than Lerna expected, at least. That’s mostly because
it wasn’t really a coma, and also because you hadn’t lost all of your road
conditioning during the seven or eight months that you lived in Castrima. The
old habits come back easily, really: finding a steady, if slow, pace that
nevertheless eats up the miles; wearing your pack low so that the bulk of its
weight braces against your butt rather than pulling on your shoulders; keeping
your head down as you walk so that the falling ash doesn’t cover your goggles.
The loss of the arm is more a nuisance than a real hardship, at least with so many
willing helpers around. Aside from throwing off your balance and plaguing you
with phantom itches or aches from fingers or an elbow that doesn’t exist, the
hardest part is getting dressed in the morning. It’s surprising how quickly you
master squatting to piss or defecate without falling over, but maybe you’re just
more motivated after days in a diaper.
So you’re holding your own, just slowly at first, and you’re getting faster as
the days go by. But here’s the problem with all of this: You’re going the wrong
way.
Tonkee comes over to sit by you one evening. “You can’t leave until we’re a
lot further west,” she says without preamble. “Almost to the Merz, I’m thinking.
If you want to make it that far, you’re going to have to patch things up with
Ykka.”
You glare at her, though for Tonkee, this is discreet. She’s waited till Hjarka
is snoring in her bedroll and Lerna’s gone off to use the camp latrine. Hoa is still
nearby, standing unsubtle guard over your small group within the comm
encampment, the curves of his black marble face underlit by your fire. Tonkee
knows he’s loyal to you, though, to the degree that loyalty means anything to
him.
“Ykka hates me,” you finally say, after glaring fails to produce anything like
chagrin or regret in Tonkee.
She rolls her eyes. “Trust me, I know hate. What Ykka’s got is … scared, and
a good bit of mad, but some of that you deserve. You’ve put her people in
danger.”
“I saved her people from danger.”
Across the encampment, as if to illustrate your point, you notice someone
moving about clunkily. It’s one of the Rennanis soldiers, a few of whom were
captured alive after the last battle. They’ve put a pranger on her—a hinged
wooden collar round her neck, with holes in the planks holding her arms up and
apart, linked by two chains to manacles on her ankles. Primitive but effective.
Lerna’s been tending the prisoners’ chafing sores, and you understand they’re
allowed to put the prangers aside at night. It’s better treatment than Castrimans
would have gotten from Rennanis if the situations were reversed, but still, it
makes everything awkward. It’s not like the Rennies can leave, after all. Even
without the prangers, if any one of them escapes now, with no supplies and
lacking the protection of a large group, they’ll be meat within days. The prangers
are just insult on top of injury, and a disquieting reminder to all that things could
be worse. You look away.
Tonkee sees you looking. “Yeah, you saved Castrima from one danger and
then delivered them into something just as bad. Ykka only wanted the first half
of that.”
“I couldn’t have avoided the second half. Should I have just let the stone
eaters kill all the roggas? Kill her? If they’d succeeded, none of the geode’s
mechanisms would’ve worked anyway!”
“She knows that. That’s why I said it wasn’t hate. But …” Tonkee sighs as if
you’re being especially stupid. “Look. Castrima was—is—an experiment. Not
the geode, the people. She’s always known it was precarious, trying to make a
comm out of strays and roggas, but it was working. She made the old-timers
understand that we needed the newcommers. Got everybody to think of roggas
as people. Got them to agree to live underground, in a deadciv ruin that could’ve
killed us all at any moment. Even kept them from turning on each other when
that gray stone eater gave them a reason—”
“I stopped that,” you mutter. But you’re listening.
“You helped,” Tonkee concedes, “but if it had just been you? You know full
well it wouldn’t have worked. Castrima works because of Ykka. Because they
know she’ll die to keep this comm going. Help Castrima, and Ykka will be on
your side again.”
It will be weeks, maybe even months, before you reach the now-vacant
Equatorial city of Rennanis. “I know where Nassun is now,” you say, seething.
“By the time Castrima gets to Rennanis, she might be somewhere else!”
Tonkee sighs. “It’s been a few weeks already, Essun.”
And Nassun was probably somewhere else before you even woke up. You’re
shaking. It’s not rational and you know it, but you blurt, “But if I go now, maybe
—maybe I can catch up, maybe Hoa can tune in on her again, maybe I can—”
Then you falter silent because you hear the shaky, high-pitched note of your own
voice and your mother instincts kick back in, rusty but unblunted, to chide you:
Stop whining. Which you are. So you bite back more words, but you’re still
shaking, a little.
Tonkee shakes her head, an expression on her face that might be sympathy,
or maybe it’s just rueful acknowledgment of how pathetic you sound. “Well, at
least you know it’s a bad idea. But if you’re that determined, then you’d better
get started now.” She turns away. Can’t really blame her, can you? Venture into
the almost certainly deadly unknown with a woman who’s destroyed multiple
communities, or stay with a comm that at least theoretically will soon have a
home again? That’s barely even a question.
But you should really know better than to try to predict what Tonkee will do.
She sighs, after you subside and sit back on the rock you’ve been using for a
chair. “I can probably wrangle some extra supplies out of the quartermaster, if I
tell them I need to go scout something for the Innovators. They’re used to me
doing that. But I’m not sure I can convince them to give me enough for two.”
It’s a surprise to realize how grateful you are, for her—hmm. Loyalty isn’t
the word for it. Attachment? Maybe. Maybe it’s just that you’ve been her
research subject for all this time already, so of course she’s not going to let you
slip away when she’s followed you across decades and half the Stillness.
But then you frown. “Two? Not three?” You thought things were working
out with her and Hjarka.
Tonkee shrugs, then awkwardly bends to tuck into the little bowl of rice and
beans she has from the communal pot. After she swallows, she says, “I prefer to
make conservative estimates. You’d better, too.”
She means Lerna, who seems to be in the process of attaching himself to you.
You don’t know why. You’re not exactly a prize, dressed in ash and with no
arm, and half the time he seems to be furious with you. You’re still surprised it’s
not all the time. He always was a strange boy.
“Anyway, here’s a thing I want you to think about,” Tonkee continues.
“What was Nassun doing when you found her?”
And you flinch. Because, damn it, Tonkee has once again said aloud a thing
that you would have preferred to leave unsaid, and unconsidered.
And because you remember that moment, with the power of the Gate sluicing
through you, when you reached and touched and felt a familiar resonance touch
back. A resonance backed, and amplified, by something blue and deep and
strangely resistant to the Gate’s linkage. The Gate told you—somehow—that it
was the sapphire.
What is your ten-year-old daughter doing playing with an obelisk?
How is your ten-year-old daughter alive after playing with an obelisk?
You think of how that momentary contact felt. Familiar vibration-taste of an
orogeny which you’ve been quelling since before she was born and training
since she was two—but so much sharper and more intense now. You weren’t
trying to take the sapphire from Nassun, but the Gate was, following instructions
that long-dead builders somehow wrote into the layered lattices of the onyx.
Nassun kept the sapphire, though. She actually fought off the Obelisk Gate.
What has your little girl been doing, this long dark year, to develop such
skill?
“You don’t know what her situation is,” Tonkee continues, which makes you
blink out of this terrible reverie and focus on her. “You don’t know what kind of
people she’s living with. You said she’s in the Antarctics, somewhere near the
eastern coast? That part of the world shouldn’t be feeling the Season much yet.
So what are you going to do, then, snatch her out of a comm where she’s safe
and has enough to eat and can still see the sky, and drag her north to a comm
sitting on the Rifting, where the shakes will be constant and the next gas vent
might kill everyone?” She looks hard at you. “Do you want to help her? Or just
have her with you again? Those two things aren’t the same.”
“Jija killed Uche,” you snap. The words don’t hurt, unless you think about
them as you speak. Unless you remember your son’s smell or his little laugh or
the sight of his body under a blanket. Unless you think of Corundum—you use
anger to press down the twin throbs of grief and guilt. “I have to get her away
from him. He killed my son!”
“He hasn’t killed your daughter yet. He’s had, what, twenty months? Twenty-
one? That means something.” Tonkee spies Lerna coming back toward you
through the crowd, and sighs. “There are just things you ought to think about, is
all I’m saying. And I can’t even believe I’m saying it. She’s another obelisk-
user, and I can’t even go investigate it.” Tonkee utters a frustrated grumbly
sound. “I hate this damn Season. I have to be so rusting practical now.”
You’re surprised into a chuckle, but it’s weak. The questions Tonkee’s raised
are good ones, of course, and some of them you can’t answer. You think about
them for a long time that night, and in the days thereafter.
Rennanis is nearly into the Western Coastals, just past the Merz Desert.
Castrima is going to have to go through the desert to get there, because skirting
around it would drastically increase the length of your journey—a difference of
months versus years. But you’re making good time through the central
Somidlats, where the roads are decently passable and you haven’t been bothered
by many raiders or significant wildlife. The Hunters have been able to find a lot
of forage to supplement the comm’s stores, including a little more game than
before. Unsurprising, since they’re no longer competing against hordes of
insects. It’s not enough—small voles and birds just aren’t going to hold a comm
of a thousand-plus people for long. But it’s better than nothing.
When you start noticing changes in the land that presage desert—thinning of
the skeletal forest, flattening of the topography, a gradual drawing away of the
water table amid the strata—you decide that it’s time to finally try to talk to
Ykka.
By now you’ve entered a stone forest: a place of tall, sharp-edged black
spires that claw irregularly at the sky above and around you as the group edges
through its depths. There aren’t many of these in the world. Most get shattered
by shakes, or—back when there was a Fulcrum—deliberately destroyed by
Fulcrum blackjackets at local comms’ commissioned request. No comm lives in
a stone forest, see, and no well-run comm wants one nearby. Apart from stone
forests’ tendency to collapse and crush everything within, they tend to be riddled
with wet caves and other water-hewn formations that make marvelous homes for
dangerous flora and fauna. Or people.
The road runs straight through this stone forest, which is bullshit. That is to
say, no one in their right mind would have built a road through a place like this.
If a quartent governor had proposed using people’s taxes on this dangerous bit of
bandit-bait, that governor would’ve been replaced in the next election … or
shanked in the night. So that’s your first clue that something’s off about the
place. The second is that there’s not much vegetation in the forest. Not much
anywhere this far into the Season, but also no sign that there was ever any
vegetation here in the first place. That means this stone forest is recent—so
recent that there’s been no time for wind or rain to erode the stone and permit
plant growth. So recent that it didn’t exist before the Season.
Clue number three is what your own sessapinae tell you. Most stone forests
are limestone, made by water erosion over hundreds of millions of years. This
one is obsidian—volcanic glass. Its jagged spikes aren’t straight up and down,
but more inwardly curved; there are even a few unbroken arcs stretching over
the road. Impossible to see up close, but you can sess the overall pattern: The
whole forest is a blossom of lava, solidified mid-blast. Not a line of the road has
been knocked out of place by the tectonic explosion around it. Beautiful work,
really.
Ykka’s in the middle of an argument with another comm member when you
find her. She’s called for a halt about a hundred feet away from the forest, and
people are milling about, looking confused about whether this is just a rest stop
or whether they should be making camp since it’s relatively late in the day. The
comm member is one you finally recognize as Esni Strongback Castrima, the
use-caste’s spokesperson. She throws you an uneasy glance as you come to a
halt beside them, but then you take off your goggles and mask, and her
expression softens. She didn’t recognize you before because you’ve stuffed rags
into the sleeve of your missing arm to keep warm. Her reaction is a welcome
reminder that not everybody in Castrima is angry with you. Esni is alive because
the worst part of the attack—Rennanis soldiers trying to carve a bloody path
through the Strongbacks holding Scenic Overlook—ended when you locked the
enemy stone eaters into crystals.
Ykka, though, doesn’t turn, although she should easily be able to sess your
presence. She says, you think to Esni, though it works for you as well, “I really
don’t want to hear any more arguments right now.”
“That’s good,” you say. “Because I understand exactly why you’ve stopped
here, and I think it’s a good idea.” It’s a bit louder than it needs to be. You
eyeball Esni so she’ll know you mean to have it out with Ykka right now, and
maybe Esni doesn’t want to be here for that. But a woman who leads the comm’s
defenders isn’t going to scare easily, so you’re not entirely surprised when Esni
looks amused and folds her arms, ready to enjoy the show.
Ykka turns to you, slowly, a look of mingled annoyance and incredulity on
her face. She says, “Nice to know you approve,” in a tone that sounds anything
but pleased. “Not that I actually care if you do.”
You set your jaw. “You sess it, right? I’d call it the work of a four-or five-
ringer, except I know now that ferals can have unusual skill.” You mean her. It’s
an olive branch. Or maybe just flattery.
She doesn’t fall for it. “We’re going as far as we can before nightfall, and
setting up camp in there.” She nods toward the forest. “It’s too big to get through
in a day. Maybe we could go around, but there’s something …” Her eyes
unfocus, and then she frowns and turns away, grimacing at having revealed a
weakness to you. She’s sensitive enough to sess the something, but not to know
exactly what she’s sessing.
You’re the one who spent years learning to read underground rocks with
orogeny, so you fill in the detail. “There’s a leaf-covered spike trap in that
direction,” you say, nodding toward the long-dead grass edging the stone forest
on one side. “Beyond it is an area of snares; I can’t tell how many, but I can sess
a lot of kinetic tension from wire or rope. If we go around the other way, though,
there are partially sheared-off stone columns and boulders positioned at points
along the edge of the stone forest. Easy to start a rockslide. And I can sess holes
positioned at strategic points along the outer columns. A crossbow, or even an
ordinary bow and arrow, could do a lot of damage from there.”
Ykka sighs. “Yeah. So through really is the best way.” She eyes Esni, who
must have been arguing for around. Esni sighs, too, and then shrugs, conceding
the argument.
You face Ykka. “Whoever made this forest, if they’re still alive, has the skill
to precision-ice half the comm in seconds, with little warning. If you’re
determined to go through, we’re going to have to set up a watch/chore rotation—
the orogenes with better control, I mean, when I say ‘we.’ You need to keep us
all awake tonight.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why?”
“Because if any of us are asleep when the attack comes”—you’re pretty sure
there’ll be an attack—“we’ll react instinctively.”
Ykka grimaces. She’s not the average feral, but she’s feral enough to know
what will likely happen if something causes her to react orogenically in her
sleep. Whoever the attacker doesn’t kill, she very well might, completely by
accident. “Shit.” She looks away for a moment, and you wonder if she doesn’t
believe you, but apparently she’s just thinking. “Fine. We’ll split watches, then.
Put the roggas not on watch to work, oh, shelling those wild peas we found a few
days back. Or repairing the harnesses the Strongbacks use for hauling. Since
we’ll have to be carried on the wagons tomorrow, when we’re too sleepy and
useless to walk on our own.”
“Right. And—” You hesitate. Not yet. You can’t admit your weakness to
these women, not yet. But. “Not me.”
Ykka’s eyes narrow immediately. Esni throws you a skeptical look, as if to
say, And you were doing so well. Quickly you add, “I don’t know what I’m
capable of now. After what I did back in Castrima-under … I’m different.”
It’s not even a lie. Without really thinking about it, you reach for your
missing arm, your hand fumbling against the sleeve of your jacket. No one can
see the stump, but you’re hyperaware of it all of a sudden. Hoa didn’t think
much of the way Antimony left visible tooth-marks on Alabaster’s stumps, it
turns out. Yours is smooth, rounded, nearly polished. Rusting perfectionist.
Ykka’s gaze follows that self-conscious touch of yours; she winces. “Huh.
Yeah, I guess you would be.” Her jaw tenses. “Seems like you can sess all right,
though.”
“Yes. I can help keep watch. I just shouldn’t … do anything.”
Ykka shakes her head but says, “Fine. You’ll take last watch of the night,
then.”
 It’s the least desirable watch—when it’s coldest, now that the night
temperatures have started to dip below freezing. Most people would rather be
asleep in warm bedrolls. It’s also the most dangerous time of the watch, when
any attackers with sense will hit a large group like this in hopes of catching
defenders sleepy and sluggish. You can’t decide whether this is a sign of trust, or
a punishment. Experimentally, you say, “Can I have a weapon, at least?” You
haven’t carried anything since a few months after you left Tirimo, when you
traded away your knife for dried rose hips to stave off scurvy.
“No.”
For rust’s sake. You start to fold your arms, remember you can’t when your
empty sleeve twitches, and grimace instead. (Ykka and Esni grimace, too.)
“What am I supposed to do, then, yell really loud? Are you seriously going to
put the comm at risk because of your grudge against me?”
Ykka rolls her eyes. “For rust’s sake.” It’s so much an echo of your own
thought that you frown. “Unbelievable. You think I’m pissed about the geode,
don’t you?”
You can’t help looking at Esni. She stares at Ykka as if to say, What, you
aren’t? It’s eloquent enough for both of you.
Ykka glares, then scrubs at her face and lets out a mortal sigh. “Esni, go …
shit, go do something Strongbackish. Essie—here. Come here. Rusting walk
with me.” She beckons sharply, in frustration. You’re too confused to be
offended; she turns to go and you follow. Esni shrugs and walks away.
The two of you move through the camp in silence for a few moments.
Everyone seems keenly aware of the danger that the stone forest presents, so this
has become one of the busier rest stops you’ve seen. Some of the Strongbacks
are transferring items between the wagons so as to put essentials onto those with
sturdier wheels, which will be less heavily loaded. Easier to grab and run under
pressure. The Hunters are whittling sharpened poles from some of the dead
saplings and branches near the camp. These will be positioned around the
perimeter when the comm finally sets up camp, so as to funnel attackers into kill
zones. The rest of the Strongbacks are catching naps while they can, knowing
they’ll either be patrolling or made to sleep on the outer edges of camp when
night falls. Use strong backs to guard them all, says stonelore. Strongbacks who
don’t like being human shields can either find a way to distinguish themselves
and join another caste, or go join another comm.
Your nose wrinkles as you pass the hastily dug roadside ditch that is
currently occupied by six or seven people, with a few of the younger Resistants
standing around to do the unhappy duty of shoveling dirt over the results.
Unusually, there’s a brief line of people waiting for their turn to squat. Not
surprising that so many people need to evacuate their bowels at once; here in the
looming shadow of the stone forest, everyone’s on edge. Nobody wants to get
caught with their pants down after dark.
You’re thinking you might need to take a turn in the ditch yourself when
Ykka surprises you out of this scintillating rumination. “So do you like us yet?”
“What?”
She gestures over the camp. The people of the comm. “You’ve been with
Castrima for the better part of a year now. Got any friends?”
You, you think, before you can stop yourself. “No,” you say.
She eyes you for a moment, and guiltily you wonder if she was expecting you
to name her. Then she sighs. “Started rolling Lerna yet? No accounting for taste,
I guess, but the Breeders say the signs are all there. Me, when I want a man, I
pick one who doesn’t talk so much. Women are a surer bet. They know not to
ruin the mood.” She starts to stretch, grimacing as she works out a kink in her
back. You use the time to get control of the horrified embarrassment on your
face. The rusting Breeders obviously aren’t busy enough.
“No,” you say.
“Not yet?”
You sigh. “Not … yet.”
“The rust are you waiting for? The road’s not getting any safer.”
You glare at her. “I thought you didn’t care?”
“I don’t. But giving you shit about it is helping me make a point.” Ykka’s
leading you toward the wagons, or so you think at first. Then you move past the
wagons, and stiffen in surprise.
Here, seated and eating, are the seven Rennanese prisoners. Even sitting
they’re different from the people of Castrima—all of the Rennanese being pure
Sanzed or close enough not to matter, bigger than average even for that race,
with fully grown ashblow manes or shorn-sided braids or short bottlebrushes to
heighten the effect. Their prangers have been put aside for the moment—though
the chains linking each prisoner to their set are still in place—and there are a few
Strongbacks standing guard nearby.
You’re surprised that they’re eating, since you haven’t made full camp for
the night yet. The Strongbacks on guard are eating, too, but that only makes
sense; they’ve got a long night ahead of them. The Rennies look up as you and
Ykka approach, and that makes you stop in your tracks, because you recognize
one of the prisoners. Danel, the general of the Rennanis army. She’s healthy and
whole, apart from red marks around her neck and wrists from the pranger. The
last time you saw her up close, she was summoning a shirtless Guardian to kill
you.
She recognizes you, too, and her mouth flattens into a resigned, ironic line.
Then, very deliberately, she nods to you before turning back to her bowl.
Ykka hunkers down to a crouch beside Danel, to your surprise. “So, how’s
the food?”
Danel shrugs, still eating. “Better than starving.”
“It’s good,” says another prisoner, across the ring. He shrugs when one of the
others glares at him. “Well, it is.”
“They just want us to be able to haul their wagons,” says the man who glared.
“Yeah,” Ykka interrupts. “That’s precisely right. Strongbacks in Castrima get
a comm share and a bed, when we have one to give, in exchange for their
contribution. What’d you get from Rennanis?”
“Some rusting pride, maybe,” says the glarer, glaring harder.
“Shut up, Phauld,” says Danel.
“These mongrels think they—”
Danel sets her bowl of food down. The glarer immediately shuts up and
tenses, his eyes going a little wide. After a moment, Danel picks up her bowl and
resumes eating. Her expression hasn’t changed the whole time. You find
yourself suspecting that she’s raised children.
Ykka, elbow propped on one knee, rests her chin on her fist and watches
Phauld for a moment. To Danel, she says, “So what do you want me to do about
that one?”
Phauld immediately frowns. “What?”
Danel shrugs. Her bowl’s empty now, but she runs a finger around its curve
to sweep up the last sauce. “Not for me to say anymore.”
“Doesn’t seem very bright.” Ykka purses her lips, considering the man. “Not
bad-looking, but harder to breed for brains than looks.”
Danel says nothing for a moment, while Phauld looks from her to Ykka and
back in growing incredulity. Then, with a heavy sigh, Danel looks up at Phauld,
too. “What do you want me to say? I’m not his commander anymore. Never
wanted to be in the first place; I got drafted. Now I don’t rusting care.”
“I can’t believe you,” Phauld says. His voice is too loud, rising in panic. “I
fought for you.”
“And lost.” Danel shakes her head. “Now it’s about surviving, adapting.
Forget all that crap you heard back in Rennanis about Sanzeds and mongrels;
that was just propaganda to unite the comm. Things are different now.
‘Necessity is the only law.’”
“Don’t you rusting quote stonelore at me!”
“She’s quoting stonelore because you don’t get it,” snaps the other man—the
one who liked the food. “They’re feeding us. They’re letting us be useful. It’s a
test, you stupid shit. To see if we’re willing to earn a place in this comm!”
“This comm?” Phauld gestures around at the camp. His laugh echoes off the
rock faces. People look around, trying to figure out if the yelling means there’s
some kind of problem. “Do you hear yourself? These people haven’t got a
chance. They should be finding somewhere to bunker down, maybe rebuild one
of the comms we razed along the way. Instead—”
Ykka moves with a casualness that doesn’t deceive you. Everyone could see
this coming, including Phauld, but he’s too stubborn to acknowledge reality. She
stands up and unnecessarily brushes ash off her shoulders and steps across the
circle and then puts a hand on the crown of Phauld’s head. He tries to twitch
back, swatting at her. “Don’t rusting touch—”
But then he stops. His eyes glaze over. Ykka’s done that thing to him—the
thing she did to Cutter back in Castrima-under when people were working
themselves into an orogene-lynching mob. Because you knew it was coming this
time, you’re able to get a better handle on how she does the strange pulse. It’s
definitely magic, some kind of manipulation of the thin, silvery filaments that
dance and flicker between the motes of a person’s substance. Ykka’s pulse cuts
through the knot of threads at the base of Phauld’s brain, just above the
sessapinae. Everything’s still intact physically, but magically it’s as if she’s
chopped his head off.
He sags backward, and Ykka steps aside to let him flop bonelessly to the
ground.
One of the other Rennanis women gasps and scoots back, her chains jangling.
The guards glance at each other, uncomfortably, but they’re not surprised; word
of what Ykka did to Cutter spread through the comm afterward. A Rennanese
man who hasn’t spoken before utters a swift oath in one of the Coaster creole
languages; it’s not Eturpic so you don’t understand it, but his fear is clear
enough. Danel only sighs.
Ykka sighs, too, looking at the dead man. Then she eyes Danel. “I’m sorry.”
Danel smiles thinly. “We tried. And you said it yourself: He wasn’t very
bright.”
 Ykka nods. For some reason she glances up at you for a moment. You have
no idea what lesson you’re supposed to take from this. “Unlock the manacles,”
she says. You’re confused for an instant before you realize it’s an order for the
guards. One of them moves over to speak to the other, and they start sorting
through a ring of keys. Then Ykka looks disgusted with herself as she says
heavily, “Who’s on quartermaster duty today? Memsid? Tell him and some of
the other Resistants to come handle this.” She jerks her head toward Phauld.
Everyone goes still. No one protests, though. The Hunters have been finding
more game and forage, but Castrima has a lot of people who need more protein
than they’ve been getting, and the desert is coming. It was always going to come
to this.
After a moment of silence, though, you step over to Ykka. “You sure about
this?” you ask softly. One of the guards comes over to unlock Danel’s ankle
chains. Danel, who tried to kill every living member of Castrima. Danel, who
tried to kill you.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ykka shrugs. Her voice is loud enough that the
prisoners can hear her. “We’ve been short on Strongbacks since Rennanis
attacked. Now we’ve got six replacements.”
“Replacements who’ll stab us—or maybe just you—in the back first chance!”
“If I don’t see them coming and kill them first, yeah. But that would be pretty
stupid of them, and I killed the stupidest one for a reason.” You get the sense
that Ykka’s not trying to scare the Rennanis people. She’s just stating facts.
“See, this is what I keep trying to tell you, Essie: The world isn’t friends and
enemies. It’s people who might help you, and people who’ll get in your way.
Kill this lot and what do you get?”
“Safety.”
“Lots of ways to be safe. Yeah, there’s now a bigger chance I’ll get shanked
in the night. More safety for the comm, though. And the stronger the comm is,
the better the chance we’ll all get to Rennanis alive.” She shrugs, then glances
around at the stone forest. “Whoever built this is one of us, with real skill. We’re
going to need that.”
“What, now you want to adopt …” You shake your head, incredulous.
“Violent bandit ferals?”
But then you stop. Because once upon a time, you loved a violent pirate feral.
Ykka watches while you remember Innon and mourn him anew. Then, with
remarkable gentleness, she says, “I play a longer game than just making it to the
next day, Essie. Maybe you ought to try it for a change.”
 You look away, feeling oddly defensive. The luxury of thinking beyond the
next day isn’t something you’ve ever had much of a chance to try. “I’m not a
headwoman. I’m just a rogga.”
Ykka tilts her head in ironic acknowledgment. You don’t use that word
nearly as often as she does. When she says it, it’s pride. When you use it, it’s
assault.
“Well, I’m both,” Ykka says. “A headwoman, and a rogga. I choose to be
both, and more.” She steps past you, and throws her next words at you over her
shoulder, as if they’re meaningless. “You didn’t think about any of us while you
were using those obelisks, did you? You thought about destroying your enemies.
You thought about surviving—but you couldn’t get beyond that. That’s why I’ve
been so pissed at you, Essie. Months in my comm, and still all you are is ‘just a
rogga.’”
She walks off then, yelling to everyone in earshot that the rest break is over.
You watch until she vanishes amid the stretching, grumbling crowd, then you
glance over at Danel, who’s since stood up and is rubbing the red mark on one of
her wrists. There’s a carefully neutral look on the woman’s face as she watches
you.
“She dies, you die,” you say. If Ykka won’t look after herself, you’ll do what
you can for her.
Danel lets out a brief, amused breath. “That’s true whether you threaten me
or not. Not like anybody else here would give me a chance.” She throws you a
skeptical look, all her Sanzed pride completely intact despite the change in
circumstances. “You really aren’t very good at this, are you?”
Earthfires and rustbuckets. You walk away, because if Ykka already thinks
less of you for destroying all threats, she’s really not going to like it if you start
killing people who annoy you, for sheer pique.

2562: Niner shake in Western Coastals, epicenter somewhere in Baga

Quartent. Lorist accounts from the time note that the shake “turned the
ground to liquid.” (Poetic?) One fishing village survived intact. From a
villager’s written account: “Bastard roggye killed lah shake then we killed
hym.” Report filed at the Fulcrum (shared with permission) by Imperial
Orogene who later visited the area notes also that an underwater oil
reservoir off the coast could have been breached by the shake, but the
unregistered rogga in the village prevented this. Would have poisoned
unregistered rogga in the village prevented this. Would have poisoned
water and beaches for miles down the coast.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 4
Nassun, wandering in the wilderness

SCHAFFA IS KIND ENOUGH TO guide the other eight children of Found Moon out
of Jekity along with Nassun and himself. He tells the headwoman that they’re all
going on a training trip some miles away so that the comm won’t be disturbed by
additional seismics. Since Nassun has just returned the sapphire to the sky—
loudly, thanks to the thunderclap of displaced air; dramatically, because
suddenly there it was overhead, huge and deep blue and too close—the
headwoman just about falls over herself to provide the children with runny-sacks
containing travel food and supplies so they can hurry on their way. These aren’t
the kinds of top-notch supplies one needs for a long journey. No compasses,
only moderately good boots, the kinds of rations that won’t last more than a
couple of weeks before going bad. Still, it’s much better than leaving empty-
handed.
None of the people of the comm know that Umber and Nida are dead.
Schaffa carried their bodies into the Guardians’ dorm and laid them out on their
respective beds, arranged in dignified poses. This worked better for Nida, who
looked more or less intact but for the nape of her neck, than Umber, whose head
was a ruin. Schaffa then threw dirt over the bloodstains. Jekity will figure it out
eventually, but by that time, Found Moon’s children will be out of reach, if not
safe.
Jija, Schaffa left piled where Nassun felled him. The corpse is nothing but a
pile of pretty rocks, really, until one looks closely at some of the pieces.
The children are subdued as they leave the comm that has sheltered them, in
some cases for years. They leave via the rogga steps, as they have come to be
informally (and rudely) called—the series of basalt columns on the comm’s
north side that only orogenes can traverse. Wudeh’s orogeny is steadier than
Nassun has ever sessed it when he takes them down to ground level by pushing
one of the pieces of columnar basalt back into the ancient volcano. Still, she can
see the look of despair on his face, and it makes her ache inside.
They walk westward as a group, but before they’ve gone a mile, one or two
of the children are quietly weeping. Nassun, whose eyes have remained dry even
through stray thoughts like I killed my father and Daddy, I miss you, grieves with
them. It’s cruel that they must suffer this, being ashed out during a Season,
because of what she has done. (Because of what Jija tried to do, she tries to tell
herself, but she does not believe this.) Yet it would be crueler still to leave them
in Jekity, where the commfolk will eventually realize what has happened and
turn on the children.
Oegin and Ynegen, the twins, are the only ones who look at Nassun with
anything resembling understanding. They were the first to come outside after
Nassun snatched the sapphire out of the sky. While the others mostly saw
Schaffa fight Umber, and Steel kill Nida, those two saw what Jija tried to do to
Nassun. They understand that Nassun fought back as anyone would have.
Everyone, though, remembers that she killed Eitz. Some have since forgiven her
for that, as Schaffa predicted—especially shy, scarred Peek, who privately spoke
to Nassun of what she did to the grandmother who stabbed her in the face so
long ago. Orogene children learn early what it means to regret.
That doesn’t mean they don’t still fear Nassun, though, and fear lends a
clarity that cuts right through childish rationalizations. They are not killers at
heart, after all … and Nassun is.
(She does not want to be, any more than you do.)
Now the group stands at a literal crossroads, where a local trail running
northeast to southeast meets the more westerly Jekity-Tevamis Imperial Road.
Schaffa says the Imperial Road will eventually lead to a highroad, which is
something Nassun has heard of but never seen in all her travels. The crossroads,
however, is the place where Schaffa has chosen to inform the other children that
they can follow him no longer.
Shirk is the only one who protests this. “We won’t eat much,” she says to
Schaffa, a little desperately. “You … you don’t have to feed us. You could just
let us follow you. We’ll find our own food. I know how!”
“Nassun and I will likely be pursued,” Schaffa says. His voice is unfailingly
gentle. Nassun knows that this delivery actually makes the words worse; his
gentleness makes it easy to see that Schaffa truly cares. Farewells are easier
when they are cruel. “We will also be making a long journey that’s very
dangerous. You’re safer on your own.”
“Safer commless,” Wudeh says, and laughs. It’s the most bitter sound Nassun
has ever heard him utter.
Shirk has started to cry. The tears leave streaks of startling cleanliness in the
ash that’s beginning to gray her face. “I don’t understand. You took care of us.
You like us, Schaffa, more than even Nida and Umber did! Why would you … if
you were just going to—to …”
“Stop it,” says Lashar. She’s gotten taller in the past year, like a good well-
bred Sanzed girl. While most of her my-grandfather-was-an-Equatorial
arrogance has faded with time, she still defaults to hauteur when she’s upset
about something. She’s folded her arms and is looking away from the trail, off at
a group of bare foothills in the near distance. “Have some rusting pride. We’ve
been ashed, but we’re still alive and that’s what matters. We can take shelter in
those hills for the night.”
Shirk glares at her. “There isn’t any shelter! We’re going to starve to death,
or—”
“We won’t.” Deshati, who’s been looking at the ground while she scuffs the
still-thin ash with one foot, looks up suddenly. She’s watching Schaffa as she
speaks to Shirk and the others. “There are places we can live. We just have to get
them to open the gates.”
There’s a tight, determined look on her face. Schaffa turns a sharp gaze on
Deshati, and to her credit, she does not flinch. “You mean to force your way in?”
he asks her.
“That’s what you want us to do, isn’t it? You wouldn’t be sending us away if
you weren’t okay with us … doing what we have to.” She tries to shrug. She’s
too tense for such a casual gesture; it makes her look briefly twitchy, as if with a
palsy. “We wouldn’t still be alive if you weren’t okay with that.”
Nassun looks at the ground. It’s her fault that the other children’s choices
have been whittled down to this. There was beauty in Found Moon; among her
fellow children, Nassun has known the delight of reveling in what she is and
what she can do, among people who understand and share that delight. Now
something once wholesome and good is dead.
You’ll kill everything you love, eventually, Steel has told her. She hates that
he is right.
Schaffa regards the children for a long, thoughtful moment. His fingers
twitch, perhaps remembering another life and another self who could not have
endured the idea of unleashing eight young Misalems upon the world. That
version of Schaffa, however, is dead. The twitch is only reflexive.
“Yes,” he says. “That is what I want you to do, if you need to hear it said
aloud. You have a better chance in a large, thriving comm than you do on your
own. So allow me to make a suggestion.” Schaffa steps forward and crouches to
look Deshati in the eye, reaching out also to grip Shirk’s thin shoulder. He says
to all of them, with that same gentle intensity that he used before, “Kill only one,
initially. Pick someone who tries to harm you—but only one, even if more than
one tries. Disable the others, but take your time killing that one person. Make it
painful. Make sure your target screams. That’s important. If the first one that you
kill remains silent … kill another.”
They stare back at him. Even Lashar seems nonplussed. Nassun, however,
has seen Schaffa kill. He has given up some of who he was, but what remains is
still an artist of terror. If he has seen fit to share the secrets of his artistry with
them, they’re lucky. She hopes they appreciate it.
He goes on. “When the killing is done, make it clear to those present that you
acted only in self-defense. Then offer to work in the dead person’s place, or to
protect the rest from danger—but they’ll recognize the ultimatum. They must
accept you into the comm.” He pauses, then fixes his icewhite gaze on Deshati.
“If they refuse, what do you do?”
She swallows. “K-kill them all.”
He smiles again, for the first time since leaving Jekity, and cups the back of
her head in fond approval.
Shirk gasps a little, shocked out of tears. Oegin and Ynegen hold each other,
their expressions empty of anything but despair. Lashar’s jaw has tightened, her
nostrils flaring. She means to take Schaffa’s words to heart. Deshati does, too,
Nassun can tell … but it will kill something in Deshati to do so.
Schaffa knows this. When he stands to kiss Deshati’s forehead, there is so
much sorrow in the gesture that Nassun aches afresh. “‘All things change during
a Season,’” he says. “Live. I want you to live.”
A tear spills from one of Deshati’s eyes before she can blink it away. She
swallows audibly. But then she nods and steps away from him, and backs up to
stand with the others. There’s a gulf between them now: Schaffa and Nassun on
one side, Found Moon’s children on the other. The ways have parted. Schaffa
does not show discomfort with this. He should; Nassun notices that the silver is
alive and throbbing within him, protesting his choice to allow these children to
go free. He does not show the pain, though. When he’s doing what he feels is
right, pain only strengthens him.
He stands. “And should the Season ever show real signs of abating … flee.
Scatter and blend in elsewhere as best you can. The Guardians aren’t dead, little
ones. They will return. And once word spreads of what you’ve done, they’ll
come for you.”
 The regular Guardians, Nassun knows he means—the “uncontaminated”
ones, like he used to be. Those Guardians have been missing since the start of
the Season, or at least Nassun hasn’t heard of any joining comms or being seen
on the road. Return suggests they’ve all gone somewhere specific. Where?
Somewhere that Schaffa and the other contaminated ones did not or could not
go.
But what matters is that this Guardian, however contaminated, is helping
them. Nassun feels a sudden surge of irrational hope. Surely Schaffa’s advice
will keep them safe, somehow. So she swallows and adds, “All of you are really
good at orogeny. Maybe the comm you pick … maybe they’ll …”
She trails off, unsure of what she wants to say. Maybe they’ll like you, is what
she’s thinking, but that just seems foolish. Or maybe you can be useful, but that’s
not how it used to work. Comms used to hire Fulcrum orogenes only for brief
periods, or so Schaffa has told her, to do needed work and then leave. Even
comms near hot spots and fault lines hadn’t wanted orogenes around
permanently, no matter how much they’d needed them.
Before Nassun can think of a way to grope out the words, however, Wudeh
glares at her. “Shut up.”
Nassun blinks. “What?”
Peek hisses at Wudeh, trying to shush him, but he ignores her. “Shut up. I
rusting hate you. Nida used to sing to me.” Then, without warning, he bursts into
sobs. Peek looks confused, but some of the others surround him, murmuring and
patting comfort into him.
Lashar watches this, then throws a last reproachful look at Nassun before
saying, to Schaffa, “We’ll be on our way, then. Thank you, Guardian, for … for
what it’s worth.”
She turns and begins herding them away. Deshati walks with her head down,
not looking back. Ynegen lingers for a moment between the groups, then glances
at Nassun and whispers, “Sorry.” Then she, too, leaves, hurrying to catch up
with the others.
As soon as the children are completely out of sight, Schaffa puts a hand on
Nassun’s shoulder to steer her away, westward along the Imperial Road.
After several miles of silence, she says, “Do you still think it would have
been better to kill them?”
“Yes.” He glances at her. “And you know that as well as I do.”
Nassun sets her jaw. “I know.” All the more reason to stop this. Stop
everything.
 “You have a destination in mind,” Schaffa says. It’s not a question.
“Yes. I … Schaffa, I have to go to the other side of the world.” This feels
rather like saying I need to go to a star, but since that’s not too far off from what
she actually needs to do, she decides not to feel self-conscious about this smaller
absurdity.
To her surprise, however, he tilts his head instead of laughing. “To
Corepoint?”
“What?”
“A city on the other side of the world. There?”
She swallows, bites her lip. “I don’t know. I just know that what I need is—”
She doesn’t have the words for it, and instead makes a pantomime with her
cupped hands and waggling fingers, sending imaginary wavelets to clash and
mesh with each other. “The obelisks … pull on that place. It’s what they’re made
to do. If I go there, I think I might be able to, uh, pull back? I can’t do it
anywhere else, because …” She can’t explain it. Lines of force, lines of sight,
mathematical configurations; all of the knowledge that she needs is in her mind,
but cannot be reproduced by her tongue. Some of this is a gift from the sapphire,
and some is application of theories her mother taught her, and some is simply
from tying theory to observation and wrapping the whole thing in instinct. “I
don’t know which city over there is the right one. If I get closer, and travel
around a little, maybe I can—”
“Corepoint is the only thing on that side of the world, little one.”
“It’s … what?”
Schaffa stops abruptly, tugging off his pack. Nassun does the same, reading
this as a signal that it’s time for a rest stop. They’re just on the leeward side of a
hill, which is really just a spar of old lava from the great volcano that lies
beneath Jekity. There are natural terraces all around this area, weathered out of
the obsidian by wind and rain, though the rock a few inches down is too hard for
farming or even much in the way of forestation. Some determined, shallow-
rooted trees wave over the empty, ash-frosted terraces, but most are now being
killed by the ashfall. Nassun and Schaffa will be able to see potential threats
coming from a good ways off.
While Nassun pulls out some food they can share, Schaffa draws something
in a nearby patch of windblown ash with his finger. Nassun cranes her neck to
see that he’s made two circles on the ground. In one, he sketches a rough outline
of the Stillness that is familiar to Nassun from geography lessons back in creche
—except this time, he draws the Stillness in two pieces, with a line of separation
near the equator. The Rifting, yes, which has become a boundary more
impassable than even thousands of miles of ocean.
The other circle, however, which Nassun now understands to be a
representation of the world, he leaves blank save for a single spot just above the
equator and slightly to the east of the circle’s middle longitude. He doesn’t
sketch an island or continent to put it on. Just that lone dot.
“Once, there were more cities on the empty face of the world,” Schaffa
explains. “A few civilizations have built upon or under the sea, over the
millennia. None of those lasted long, though. All that remains is Corepoint.”
It is literally a world away. “How could we get there?”
“If—” He pauses. Nassun’s belly clenches when the blurry look crosses his
face. This time he winces and shuts his eyes, too, as if even the attempt to access
his old self has added to his pain.
“You don’t remember?”
He sighs. “I remember that I used to.”
Nassun realizes she should have expected this. She bites her lip. “Steel might
know.”
There is a slight flex of muscle along Schaffa’s jaw, quick and there and then
gone. “Indeed he might.”
Steel, who vanished while Schaffa was putting away the other Guardians’
bodies, might also be listening from within the stone somewhere nearby. Does it
mean something that he hasn’t popped up to tell them what to do yet? Maybe
they don’t need him. “And what about the Antarctic Fulcrum? Don’t they have
records and things?” She remembers seeing the Fulcrum’s library before she and
Schaffa and Umber sat down with its leaders, had a cup of safe, then killed them
all. The library was a strange high room filled floor to ceiling with shelves of
books. Nassun likes books—her mother used to splurge and buy one every few
months, and sometimes Nassun got the hand-me-downs if Jija deemed them
appropriate for children—and she remembers boggling in awe, for she’d never
seen so many books in her life. Surely some of those contained information
about … very old cities no one has ever heard of, that only Guardians know how
to get to. Um. Hmm.
“Unlikely,” Schaffa says, confirming Nassun’s misgivings. “And by now,
that Fulcrum has probably been annexed by another comm, or perhaps even
taken over by commless rabble. Its fields were full of edible crops, after all, and
its houses were livable. Returning there would be a mistake.”
Nassun bites her lower lip. “Maybe … a boat?” She doesn’t know anything
about boats.
“No, little one. A boat won’t do for such a long journey.”
He pauses significantly, and with this as warning Nassun tries to brace
herself. Here is where he will abandon her, she feels painfully, fearfully certain.
Here is where he will want to know what she’s up to—and then want no part of
it. Why would he? Even she knows that what she wants is a terrible thing.
“I take it, then,” Schaffa says, “that you mean to assume control of the
Obelisk Gate.”
Nassun gasps. Schaffa knows what the Obelisk Gate is? When Nassun herself
only learned the term that morning from Steel? But then, the lore of the world,
all its strange mechanisms and workings and aeons of secrets, is mostly still
intact within Schaffa. It’s only things connected to his old self that are
permanently lost … which means that the route to Corepoint is something that
Old Schaffa needed to know, particularly. What does that mean? “Uh, yes.
That’s why I want to go to Corepoint.”
His mouth quirks at her surprise. “Finding an orogene who could activate the
Gate was our original purpose, Nassun, in creating Found Moon.”
“What? Why?”
Schaffa glances up at the sky. The sun’s beginning to set. They could get
maybe another hour of walking in before it gets too dark to continue. What he’s
looking at is the sapphire, though, which hasn’t noticeably moved from its
position over Jekity. Rubbing absently at the back of his head, Schaffa gazes at
its faint outline through the thickening clouds and nods, as if to himself.
“I and Nida and Umber,” he says. “Perhaps ten years ago, we were all …
instructed … to travel southward, and to find one another. We were bidden to
seek and train any orogenes who had the potential to connect to obelisks. This is
not a thing Guardians normally do, understand, because there can be only one
reason to encourage an orogene along the obelisk path. But it’s what the Earth
wanted. Why, I don’t know. During that time, I was … less questioning.” His
mouth curves in a brief, rueful smile. “Now I have guesses.”
Nassun frowns. “What guesses?”
“That the Earth has its own plans for human—”
Abruptly Schaffa tenses all over, and he sways in his crouch. Quickly Nassun
grabs him so he won’t fall over, and reflexively he puts an arm around her
shoulders. The arm is very tight, but she does not protest. That he needs the
comfort of her presence is obvious. That the Earth is angrier than ever with him,
perhaps because he’s giving away its secrets, is as palpable as the raw, flensing
pulse of the silver along every nerve and between every cell of his body.
“Don’t talk,” Nassun says, her throat tight. “Don’t say anything else. If it’s
going to hurt you like this—”
“It does not rule me.” Schaffa has to say this in quick blurts, between pants.
“It did not take the core of me. I may have … nnh … put myself into its kennel,
but it cannot leash me.”
“I know.” Nassun bites her lip. He’s leaning on her heavily, and that’s made
her knee, where it braces against the ground, ache something awful. She doesn’t
care, though. “But you don’t have to say everything now. I’m figuring it out on
my own.”
She has all the clues, she thinks. Nida once said, of Nassun’s ability to
connect to obelisks, This is a thing that we culled for in the Fulcrum. Nassun
hadn’t understood at the time, but after perceiving something of the Obelisk
Gate’s immensity, now she can guess why Father Earth wants her dead if she is
no longer under Schaffa’s—and through him, the Earth’s—control.
Nassun chews her lip. Will Schaffa understand? She isn’t sure she can take it
if he decides to leave—or worse, if he turns on her. So she takes a deep breath.
“Steel says the Moon is coming back.”
For an instant there is silence from Schaffa’s direction. It has the weight of
surprise. “The Moon.”
“It’s real,” she blurts. She has no idea if this is true, though, does she?
There’s only Steel’s word to go on. She’s not even sure what a moon is, beyond
being Father Earth’s long-lost child, like the tales say. And yet somehow she
knows that this much of what Steel says is true. She doesn’t quite sess it, and
there are no telltale threads of silver forming in the sky, but she believes it the
way she believes that there is another side of the world even though she’s never
seen it, and the way she knows how mountains form, and the way she’s certain
Father Earth is real and alive and an enemy. Some truths are simply too great to
deny.
To her surprise, however, Schaffa says, “Oh, I know the Moon is real.”
Perhaps his pain has faded somewhat; now his expression has hardened as he
gazes at the hazy, intermittent disc of the sun where it’s managed to not quite
pierce the clouds near the horizon. “That, I remember.”
“You—really? Then you believe Steel?”
“I believe you, little one, because orogenes know the pull of the Moon when
it draws near. Awareness of it is as natural to you as sessing shakes. But also, I
have seen it.” Then his gaze narrows sharply to focus on Nassun. “Why, then,
did the stone eater tell you about the Moon?”
Nassun takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh.
“I really just wanted to live somewhere nice,” she says. “Live somewhere
with … with you. I wouldn’t have minded working and doing things to be a
good comm member. I could have been a lorist, maybe.” She feels her jaw
tighten. “But I can’t do that, not anywhere. Not without having to hide what I
am. I like orogeny, Schaffa, when I don’t have to hide it. I don’t think having it,
being a—a r-rogga—” She has to stop, and blush, and shake off the urge to feel
ashamed for saying such a bad word, but the bad word is the right word for now.
“I don’t think being one makes me bad or strange or evil—”
She cuts herself off again, yanks her thoughts out of that track, because it
leads right back to But you have done such evil things.
Unconsciously, Nassun bares her teeth and clenches her fists. “It isn’t right,
Schaffa. It isn’t right that people want me to be bad or strange or evil, that they
make me be bad …” She shakes her head, fumbling for words. “I just want to be
ordinary! But I’m not and—and everybody, a lot of people, all hate me because
I’m not ordinary. You’re the only person who doesn’t hate me for … for being
what I am. And that’s not right.”
“No, it isn’t.” Schaffa shifts to sit back against his pack, looking weary. “But
you speak as though it’s an easy thing to ask people to overcome their fears,
little one.”
And he does not say it, but suddenly Nassun thinks: Jija couldn’t.
Nassun’s gorge rises suddenly, sharply enough that she must clap a fist to her
mouth for a moment and think hard of ash and how cold her ears are. There’s
nothing in her stomach except the handful of dates she just ate, but the feeling is
awful anyway.
Schaffa, uncharacteristically, does not move to comfort her. He only watches
her, expression weary but otherwise unreadable.
“I know they can’t do it.” Yes. Speaking helps. Her stomach doesn’t settle,
but she no longer feels on the brink of dry heaves. “I know they—the stills—
won’t ever stop being afraid. If my father couldn’t—” Queasiness. She jerks her
thoughts away from the end of that sentence. “They’ll just go on being scared
forever, and we’ll just go on living like this forever, and it isn’t right. There
should be a—a fix. It isn’t right that there’s no end to it.”
“But do you mean to impose a fix, little one?” Schaffa asks. It’s soft. He’s
guessed already, she realizes. He knows her so much better than she knows
herself, and she loves him for it. “Or an end?”
 She gets to her feet and starts pacing, tight little circles between his pack and
hers. It helps the nausea and the jittery, rising tension beneath her skin that she
cannot name. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
But that is not the whole truth, and Schaffa scents lies the way predators
scent blood. His eyes narrow. “If you did know how, would you fix it?”
And then, in a sudden blaze of memory that Nassun has not permitted herself
to see or consider for more than a year, she remembers her last day in Tirimo.
Coming home. Seeing her father standing in the middle of the den breathing
hard. Wondering what was wrong with him. Wondering why he did not quite
look like her father, in that moment—his eyes too wide, his mouth too loose, his
shoulders hunched in a way that seemed painful. And then Nassun remembers
looking down.
Looking down and staring and staring and thinking What is that? and staring
and thinking Is it a ball? like the ones that the kids at creche kick around during
lunchtime, except those balls are made of leather while the thing at her father’s
feet is a different shade of brown, brown with purplish mottling all over its
surface, lumpy and leathery and half-deflated but No, it’s not a ball, wait is that
an eye? Maybe but it’s so swollen shut that it looks like a big fat coffee bean.
Not a ball at all because it’s wearing her brother’s clothes including the pants
Nassun put on him that morning while Jija was busy trying to get their lunch
satchels together for creche. Uche didn’t want to wear those pants because he
was still a baby and liked to be silly so Nassun had done the butt dance for him
and he’d laughed so hard, so hard! His laugh was her favorite thing ever, and
when the butt dance was over he’d let her put his pants on as a thank-you, which
means the unrecognizable deflated ball-thing on the floor is Uche that is Uche he
is Uche—
“No,” Nassun breathes. “I wouldn’t fix it. Not even if I knew how.”
She has stopped pacing. She has one arm wrapped around her middle. The
other hand is a fist, crammed against her mouth. She spits out words around it
now, she chokes on them as they gush up her throat, she clutches her belly,
which is full of such terrible things that she must let them out somehow or be
torn apart from within. These things have distorted her voice, made it a shaky
growl that randomly spikes into a higher pitch and a louder volume, because it’s
everything she can do not to just start screaming. “I wouldn’t fix it, Schaffa, I
wouldn’t, I’m sorry, I don’t want to fix it I want to kill everybody that hates me
—”
Her middle is so heavy that she can’t stand. Nassun drops into a crouch, then
to her knees. She wants to vomit but instead she spits words onto the ground
between her splayed hands. “G-g-gone! I want it all GONE, Schaffa! I want it to
BURN, I want it burned up and dead and gone, gone, NOTHING l-l-left, no
more hate and no more killing just nothing, r-rusting nothing, nothing
FOREVER—”
Schaffa’s hands, hard and strong, pull her up. She flails against him, tries to
hit him. It isn’t malice or fear. She never wants to hurt him. She just has to let
some of what’s in her out somehow, or she will go mad. For the first time she
understands her father, as she screams and kicks and punches and bites and
yanks at her clothes and her hair and tries to slam her forehead against his.
Quickly, Schaffa turns her about and wraps one of his big arms around her,
pinning her arms to her sides so that she cannot hurt him or herself in the
transport of her rage.
This is what Jija felt, observes a distant, detached, floating-obelisk part of
herself. This is what came up inside him when he realized Mama lied, and I lied,
and Uche lied. This is what made him push me off the wagon. This is why he
came up to Found Moon this morning with a glassknife in his hand.
This. This is the Jija in her, making her thrash and shout and weep. She feels
closer than ever to her father in this moment of utter broken rage.
Schaffa holds her until she is exhausted. Finally she slumps, shaking and
panting and moaning a little, her face all over tears and snot.
When it’s clear that Nassun will not lash out again, Schaffa shifts to sit down
cross-legged, pulling Nassun into his lap. She curls against him the way another
child curled against him once, many years before and many miles away, when he
told her to pass a test for him so that she could live. Nassun’s test has already
been met, though; even the old Schaffa would agree with that assessment. In all
her rage, Nassun’s orogeny did not twitch once, and she did not reach for the
silver at all.
“Shhh,” Schaffa soothes. He’s been doing this all the while, though now he
rubs her back and thumbs away her occasional tears. “Shhh. Poor thing. How
unfair of me. When only this morning—” He sighs. “Shhh, my little one. Just
rest.”
Nassun is wrung out and empty of everything but the grief and fury that run
in her like fast lahars, grinding everything else away in a churning hot slurry.
Grief and fury and one last precious, whole feeling.
“You’re the only one I love, Schaffa.” Her voice is raw and weary. “You’re
the only reason I w-wouldn’t. But … but I …”
 He kisses her forehead. “Make the end you need, my Nassun.”
“I don’t want.” She has to swallow. “I want you to—to be alive!”
He laughs softly. “Still a child, despite all you’ve been through.” This stings,
but his meaning is clear. She cannot have both Schaffa alive and the world’s
hatred dead. She must choose one ending or the other.
But then, firmly, Schaffa says again: “Make the end you need.”
Nassun pulls back so she can look at him. He’s smiling again, clear-eyed.
“What?”
He squeezes her, very gently. “You’re my redemption, Nassun. You are all
the children I should have loved and protected, even from myself. And if it will
bring you peace …” He kisses her forehead. “Then I shall be your Guardian till
the world burns, my little one.”
It is a benediction, and a balm. The nausea finally releases its hold on
Nassun. In Schaffa’s arms, safe and accepted, she sleeps at last, amid dreams of
a world glowing and molten and in its own way, at peace.

“Steel,” she calls, the next morning.

Steel blurs into presence before them, standing in the middle of the road with
his arms folded and an expression of faint amusement on his face.
“The nearest way to Corepoint is not far, relatively speaking,” he says when
she has asked him for the knowledge that Schaffa lacks. “A month’s travel or so.
Of course …” He lets this trail off, conspicuously. He has offered to take Nassun
and Schaffa to the other side of the world himself, which is apparently a thing
that stone eaters can do. It would save them a great deal of hardship and danger,
but they would have to entrust themselves to Steel’s care as he transports them in
the strange, terrifying manner of his kind, through the earth.
“No, thank you,” Nassun says again. She doesn’t ask Schaffa for his opinion
on this, though he leans against a boulder nearby. She doesn’t need to ask him.
That Steel’s interest is wholly in Nassun is obvious. It would be nothing to him
to simply forget to bring Schaffa—or lose him along the way to Corepoint. “But
could you tell us about this place we have to go? Schaffa doesn’t remember.”
Steel’s gray gaze shifts to Schaffa. Schaffa smiles back, deceptively serene.
Even the silver inside him goes still, just for this moment. Maybe Father Earth
doesn’t like Steel, either.
 “It’s called a station,” Steel explains, after a moment. “It’s old. You would
call it a deadciv ruin, although this one is still intact, nestled within another set
of ruins that aren’t. A long time ago, people used stations, or rather the vehicles
kept within them, to travel long distances far more efficiently than walking.
These days, however, only we stone eaters and the Guardians remember that the
stations exist.” His smile, which hasn’t changed since he appeared, is still and
wry. It seems meant for Schaffa somehow.
“We all pay a price for power,” Schaffa says. His voice is cool and smooth in
that way he gets when he’s thinking about doing bad things.
“Yes.” Steel pauses for just a beat too long. “A price must be paid to use this
method of transportation, as well.”
“We don’t have any money or anything good to barter,” Nassun says,
troubled.
“Fortunately, there are other ways to pay.” Steel abruptly stands at a different
angle, his face tilted upward. Nassun follows this, turning, and sees—oh. The
sapphire, which has gotten a little closer overnight. Now it’s halfway between
them and Jekity.
“The station,” Steel continues, “is from a time before the Seasons. The time
when the obelisks were built. All the lingering artifacts of that civilization
recognize the same power source.”
“You mean …” Nassun inhales. “The silver.”
“Is that what you call it? How poetic.”
Nassun shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know what else to call it.”
“Oh, how the world has changed.” Nassun frowns, but Steel does not explain
this cryptic statement. “Stay on this road until you reach the Old Man’s Pucker.
Do you know where that is?”
Nassun remembers seeing it on maps of the Antarctics a lifetime ago, and
giggling at the name. She glances at Schaffa, who nods and says, “We can find
it.”
“Then I’ll meet you there. The ruin is at the exact center of the grass forest,
within the inner ring. Enter the Pucker just after dawn. Don’t dawdle reaching
the center; you won’t want to still be in the forest after dusk.” Then Steel pauses,
shifting into a new position—one that is distinctly thoughtful. His face is turned
off to the side, fingers touching his chin. “I thought it would be your mother.”
Schaffa goes still. Nassun is surprised by the flash of heat, then cold, that
moves through her. Slowly, while sifting through this strange complexity of
emotion, she says, “What do you mean?”
 “I expected her to be the one to do this, is all.” Steel doesn’t shrug, but
something in his voice suggests nonchalance. “I threatened her comm. Her
friends, the people she cares about now. I thought they would turn on her, and
then this choice would seem more palatable to her.”
The people she cares about now. “She’s not in Tirimo anymore?”
“No. She has joined another comm.”
“And they … didn’t turn on her?”
“No. Surprisingly.” Steel’s eyes slide over to meet Nassun’s. “She knows
where you are now. The Gate told her. But she isn’t coming, or at least not yet.
She wants to see her friends safely settled first.”
Nassun sets her jaw. “I’m not in Jekity anymore, anyway. And soon she
won’t have the Gate, either, so she won’t be able to find me again.”
Steel turns fully to face her, this movement too slow and human-smooth to be
human, though his astonishment seems genuine. She hates it when he moves
slowly. It makes her get goose bumps.
“Nothing lasts forever, indeed,” he says.
“What’s that mean?”
“Only that I’ve underestimated you, little Nassun.” Nassun instantly dislikes
this term of address. He shifts again to the thoughtful pose, fast this time, to her
relief. “I think I’d better not do so again.”
With that, he vanishes. Nassun frowns at Schaffa, who shakes his head. They
shoulder their packs and head west.

2400: Eastern Equatorials (check if node network was thin in this area,
because …), unknown comm. Old local song about a nurse who stopped a
sudden eruption and pyroclastic flow by turning it to ice. One of her
patients threw himself in front of a crossbow bolt to protect her from the
mob. Mob let her go; she vanished.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 Syl Anagist: Four

ALL ENERGY IS THE SAME, through its different states and names. Movement
creates heat which is also light that waves like sound which tightens or loosens
the atomic bonds of crystal as they hum with strong and weak forces. In
mirroring resonance with all of this is magic, the radiant emission of life and
death.
This is our role: To weave together those disparate energies. To manipulate
and mitigate and, through the prism of our awareness, produce a singular force
that cannot be denied. To make of cacophony, symphony. The great machine
called the Plutonic Engine is the instrument. We are its tuners.
And this is the goal: Geoarcanity. Geoarcanity seeks to establish an energetic
cycle of infinite efficiency. If we are successful, the world will never know want
or strife again … or so we are told. The conductors explain little beyond what we
must know to fulfill our roles. It is enough to know that we—small, unimportant
we—will help to set humanity on a new path toward an unimaginably bright
future. We may be tools, but we are fine ones, put to a magnificent purpose. It is
easy to find pride in that.
We are attuned enough to each other that the loss of Tetlewha causes trouble
for a time. When we join to form our initializing network, it’s imbalanced.
Tetlewha was our countertenor, the half wavelengths of the spectrum; without
him I am closest, but my natural resonance is a little high. The resulting network
is weaker than it should be. Our feeder threads keep trying to reach for
Tetlewha’s empty middle range.
Gaewha is able to compensate for the loss, finally. She reaches deeper,
resonates more powerfully, and this plugs the gap. We must spend several days
reforging all the network’s connections to create new harmony, but it isn’t
difficult to do this, just time-consuming. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to do
it.
 Kelenli joins us in the network only occasionally. This is frustrating, because
her voice—deep and powerful and foot-tingling in its sharpness—is perfect.
Better than Tetlewha’s, wider ranging than all of us together. But we are told by
the conductors not to get used to her. “She’ll serve during the actual start-up of
the Engine,” one of them says when I ask, “but only if she can’t manage to teach
you how to do what she does. Conductor Gallat wants her on standby only, come
Launch Day.”
This seems sensible, on the surface.
When Kelenli is part of us, she takes point. This is simply natural, because
her presence is so much greater than ours. Why? Something in the way she is
made? Something else. There is a … held note. A perpetual hollow burn at the
midpoint of her balanced lines, at their fulcrum, which none of us understand. A
similar burn rests in each of us, but ours is faint and intermittent, occasionally
flaring only to quickly fade back to quiescence. Hers blazes steadily, its fuel
apparently limitless.
Whatever this held-note burn is, the conductors have discovered, it meshes
beautifully with the devouring chaos of the onyx. The onyx is the control
cabochon of the whole Plutonic Engine, and while there are other ways to start
up the Engine—cruder ways, workarounds involving subnetworks or the
moonstone—on Launch Day we will absolutely need the onyx’s precision and
control. Without it, our chances of successfully initiating Geoarcanity diminish
greatly … but none of us, thus far, has had the strength to hold the onyx for more
than a few minutes. We observe in awe, however, as Kelenli rides it for a solid
hour, then actually seems unfazed when she disengages from it. When we
engage the onyx, it punishes us, stripping everything we can spare and leaving
us in a shutdown sleep for hours or days—but not her. Its threads caress rather
than rip at her. The onyx likes her. This explanation is irrational, but it occurs to
all of us, so that’s how we begin to think of it. Now she must teach us to be more
likable to the onyx, in her stead.
When we are done rebalancing and they let us up from the wire chairs that
maintain our bodies while our minds are engaged, and we stagger and must lean
on the conductors to make it back to our individual quarters … when all of this is
done, she comes to visit us. Individually, so the conductors won’t suspect
anything. In face-to-face meetings, speaking audible nonsense—and meanwhile,
earthspeaking sense to all of us at once.
She feels sharper than the rest of us, she explains, because she is more
experienced. Because she’s lived outside of the complex of buildings that
surround the local fragment, and which has comprised the entirety of our world
since we were decanted. She has visited more nodes of Syl Anagist than just the
one we live in; she has seen and touched more of the fragments than just our
local amethyst. She has even been to Zero Site, where the moonstone rests. We
are in awe of this.
“I have context,” she says to us—to me, rather. She’s sitting on my couch. I
am sprawled facedown on the window seat, face turned away from her. “When
you do, too, you’ll be just as sharp.”
(It is a kind of pidgin between us, using the earth to add meaning to audible
words. Her words are simply, “I’m older,” while a whitter of subsidence adds the
nuancing deformation of time. She is metamorphic, having transformed to bear
unbearable pressure. To make this telling simpler, I will translate it all as words,
except where I cannot.)
“It would be good if we were as sharp as you now,” I reply wearily. I am not
whining. Rebalancing days are always hard. “Give us this context, then, so the
onyx will listen and my head can stop hurting.”
Kelenli sighs. “There’s nothing within these walls on which you can sharpen
yourself.” (Crumble of resentment, ground up and quickly scattered. They have
kept you so safe and sheltered.) “But I think there’s a way I can help you and the
others do that, if I can get you out of this place.”
“Help me … sharpen myself?”
(She soothes me with a polishing stroke. It is not a kindness that you are kept
so dull.) “You need to understand more about yourself. What you are.”
I don’t understand why she thinks I don’t understand. “I’m a tool.”
She says: “If you’re a tool, shouldn’t you be honed as fine as possible?”
Her voice is serene. And yet a pent, angry jitter of the entire ambient—air
molecules shivering, strata beneath us compressing, a dissonant grinding whine
at the limit of our ability to sess—tells me that Kelenli hates what I have just
said. I turn my head to her and find myself fascinated by the way this dichotomy
fails to show in her face. It’s another way she’s like us. We have long since
learned not to show pain or fear or sorrow in any space aboveground or below
the sky. The conductors tell us we are built to be like statues—cold, immovable,
silent. We aren’t certain why they believe we actually are this way; after all, we
are as warm to the touch as they. We feel emotion, as they seem to, although we
do seem less inclined to display it in face or body language. Perhaps this is
because we have earthtalk? (Which they don’t seem to notice. This is good. In
the earth, we may be ourselves.) It has never been clear to us whether we were
built wrong, or whether their understanding of us is wrong. Or whether either
matters.
Kelenli is outwardly calm while she burns inside. I watch her for so long that
abruptly she comes back to herself and catches me. She smiles. “I think you like
me.”
I consider the possible implications of this. “Not that way,” I say, out of
habit. I have had to explain this to junior conductors or other staff on occasion.
We are made like statues in this way as well—a design implementation that
worked in this case, leaving us capable of rutting but disinterested in the attempt,
and infertile should we bother. Is Kelenli the same? No, the conductors said she
was made different in only one way. She has our powerful, complex, flexible
sessapinae, which no other people in the world possess. Otherwise she’s like
them.
“How fortunate that I wasn’t talking about sex.” There’s a drawling hum of
amusement from her; it both bothers and pleases me. I don’t know why.
Oblivious to my sudden confusion, Kelenli gets to her feet. “I’ll be back,” she
says, and leaves.
She doesn’t return for several days. She remains a detached part of our last
network, though, so she is present for our wakings, our meals, our defecations,
our inchoate dreams when we sleep, our pride in ourselves and each other. It
doesn’t feel like watching when she does it, even if she is watching. I cannot
speak for the others, but I like having her around.
Not all of the others do like Kelenli. Gaewha in particular is belligerent about
it, and she sends this through our private discussion. “She appears just as we lose
Tetlewha? Just as the project concludes? We’ve worked hard to become what we
are. Will they praise her for our work, when it’s done?”
“She’s only a standby,” I say, trying to be the voice of reason. “And what she
wants is what we want. We need to cooperate.”
“So she says.” That is Remwha, who considers himself smarter than the rest
of us. (We’re all made to be equally intelligent. Remwha is just an ass.) “The
conductors kept her away until now for a reason. She may be a troublemaker.”
That is foolish, I believe, though I don’t let myself say it even in earthtalk.
We are part of the great machine. Anything that improves the machine’s
function matters; anything unrelated to this purpose does not. If Kelenli were a
troublemaker, Gallat would have sent her to the briar patch with Tetlewha. This
is a thing we all understand. Gaewha and Remwha are just being difficult.
“If she is some sort of troublemaker, that will show itself with time,” I say
firmly. That does not end, but at least postpones, the argument.
Kelenli returns the next day. The conductors bring us together to explain.
“Kelenli has asked to take you on a tuning mission,” says the man who comes to
deliver the briefing. He’s much taller than us, taller even than Kelenli, and
slender. He likes to dress in perfectly matched colors and ornate buttons. His
hair is long and black; his skin is white, though not so much as ours. His eyes are
like ours, however—white within white. White as ice. We’ve never seen another
one of them with eyes like ours. He is Conductor Gallat, head of the project. I
think of Gallat as a plutonic fragment—a clear one, diamond-white. He is
precisely angled and cleanly faceted and beautiful in a unique way, and he is
also implacably deadly if not handled with precision. We don’t let ourselves
think about the fact that he’s the one who killed Tetlewha.
(He isn’t who you think he is. I want Gallat to look like him the way I want
you to look like her. This is the hazard of a flawed memory.)
“A tuning … mission,” Gaewha says slowly, to show that she doesn’t
understand.
Kelenli opens her mouth to speak and then stops, turning to Gallat. Gallat
smiles genially at this. “Kelenli’s performance is what we were hoping for with
all of you, and yet you’ve consistently underperformed,” he says. We tense,
uncomfortable, hyperconscious of criticism, though he merely shrugs. “I’ve
consulted with the chief biomagestre, and she’s insistent that there’s no
significant difference in your relative abilities. You have the same capability that
she has, but you don’t demonstrate the same skill. There are any number of
alterations we could make to try to resolve the discrepancy, fine-tuning so to
speak, but that’s a risk we’d rather not take so close to launch.”
We reverberate in one accord for a moment, all of us very glad for this. “She
said that she was here to teach us context,” I venture, very carefully.
Gallat nods to me. “She believes the solution is outside experience. Increased
exposure to stimuli, challenging your problem-solving cognition, things like that.
It’s a suggestion that has merit and the benefit of being minimally invasive—but
for the sake of the project, we can’t send you all out at once. What if something
happened? Instead we will split you into two groups. Since there’s only one of
Kelenli, that means half of you will go with her now, and half in a week.”
Outside. We’re going outside. I’m desperate to be in the first group, but we
know better than to show desire before the conductors. Tools should not want to
escape their box so obviously.
I say, instead, “We’ve been more than sufficiently attuned to one another
without this proposed mission.” My voice is flat. A statue’s. “The simulations
show that we are reliably capable of controlling the Engine, as expected.”
“And we might as well do six groups as two,” adds Remwha. By this asinine
suggestion do I know his eagerness. “Will each group not have different
experiences? As I understand the … outside … there’s no way to control for
consistency of exposure. If we must take time away from our preparations for
this, surely it should be done in a way that minimizes risk?”
“I think six wouldn’t be cost-effective or efficient,” Kelenli says, while
silently signaling approval and amusement for our playacting. She glances at
Gallat and shrugs, not bothering to pretend that she is emotionless; she simply
seems bored. “We might as well do one group as two or six. We can plan the
route, position extra guards along the way, involve the nodal police for
surveillance and support. Honestly, repeated trips would just increase the chance
that disaffected citizens might anticipate the route and plan … unpleasantness.”
We are all intrigued by the possibility of unpleasantness. Kelenli quells our
excited tremors.
Conductor Gallat winces as she does this; that one struck home. “The
potential for significant gains are why you will go,” Conductor Gallat says to us.
He’s still smiling, but there’s an edge to it now. Was the word will ever so
slightly emphasized? So minute, the perturbations of audible speech. What I take
from this is that not only will he let us go, but he has also changed his mind
about sending us in multiple groups. Some of this is because Kelenli’s
suggestion was the most sensible, but the rest is because he’s irritated with us for
our apparent reluctance.
Ah, Remwha wields his annoying nature like a diamond chisel as usual.
Excellent work, I pulse. He returns me a polite thank-you waveform.
We are to leave that very day. Clothing suitable for travel outdoors is brought
to my quarters by junior conductors. I pull on the thicker cloth and shoes
carefully, fascinated by the different textures, and then sit quietly while the
junior conductor plaits my hair into a single white braid. “Is this necessary for
outside?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious, since the conductors wear their hair in
many styles. Some of them I can’t emulate, because my hair is poufy and coarse
and will not hold a curl or bear straightening. Only we have hair like this. Theirs
comes in many textures.
“It might help,” says the junior. “You lot are going to stand out no matter
what, but the more normal we can make you seem, the better.”
“People will know we’re part of the Engine,” I say, straightening just a little
in pride.
His fingers slow for a moment. I don’t think he notices. “That’s not exactly
… They’re more likely to think you’re something else. Don’t worry, though;
we’ll send guards along to make sure there’s no trouble. They’ll be unobtrusive,
but there. Kelenli insists that you can’t be made to feel sheltered, even if you
are.”
“They’re more likely to think we’re something else,” I repeat slowly,
thoughtfully.
His fingers twitch, pulling a few strands harder than necessary. I don’t wince
or pull away. They’re more comfortable thinking of us as statues, and statues
aren’t supposed to feel pain. “Well, it’s a distant possibility, but they have to
know you aren’t—I mean, it’s …” He sighs. “Oh, Evil Death. It’s complicated.
Don’t worry about it.”
Conductors say this when they’ve made a mistake. I don’t ping the others
with it right away, because we minimize communication outside of sanctioned
meetings. People who are not tuners can perceive magic only in rudimentary
ways; they use machines and instruments to do what is natural for us. Still,
they’re always monitoring us in some measure, so we cannot allow them to learn
the extent to which we speak to each other, and hear them, when they think we
cannot.
Soon I’m ready. After conferring with other conductors over the vine, mine
decides to brush my face with paint and powder. It’s supposed to make me look
like them. It actually makes me like someone whose white skin has been painted
brown. I must look skeptical when he shows me the mirror; my conductor sighs
and complains that he’s not an artist.
Then he brings me to a place that I’ve seen only a few times before, within
the building that houses me: the downstairs foyer. Here the walls aren’t white;
the natural green and brown of self-repairing cellulose has been allowed to
flourish unbleached. Someone has seeded the space with vining strawberries that
are half in white flower, half in ripening red fruit; it’s quite lovely. The six of us
stand near the floor pool waiting for Kelenli, trying not to notice the other
personnel of the building coming and going and staring at us: six smaller-than-
average, stocky people with puffy white hair and painted faces, our lips arranged
in defensively pleasant smiles. If there are guards, we do not know how to tell
them from the gawkers.
When Kelenli comes toward us, though, I finally notice guards. Hers move
with her, not bothering to be unobtrusive—a tall brown woman and man who
might have been siblings. I realize I have seen them before, trailing her on other
occasions that she’s come to visit. They hang back as she reaches us.
“Good, you’re ready,” she says. Then she grimaces, reaching out to touch
Dushwha’s cheek. Her thumb comes away dusted with face powder. “Really?”
Dushwha looks away, uncomfortable. They have never liked being pushed
into any emulation of our creators—not in clothing, not in gender, definitely not
in this. “It’s meant to help,” they mutter unhappily, perhaps trying to convince
themselves.
“It makes you more conspicuous. And they’ll know what you are, anyway.”
She turns and looks at one of her guards, the woman. “I’m taking them to clean
this dreck off. Want to help?” The woman just looks at her in silence. Kelenli
laughs to herself. It sounds genuinely mirth filled.
She herds us into a personal-needs alcove. The guards station themselves
outside while she splashes water on our faces from the clean side of the latrine
pool, and scrubs the paint away with an absorbent cloth. She hums while she
does it. Does that mean she’s happy? When she takes my arm to wipe the gunk
off my face, I search hers to try to understand. Her gaze sharpens when she
notices.
“You’re a thinker,” she says. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
“We all are,” I say. I allow a brief rumble of nuance. We have to be.
“Exactly. You think more than you have to.” Apparently a bit of brown near
my hairline is especially stubborn. She wipes it off, grimaces, wipes it again,
sighs, rinses the cloth and wipes at it again.
I continue searching her face. “Why do you laugh at their fear?”
It’s a stupid question. Should’ve asked it through the earth, not out loud. She
stops wiping my face. Remwha glances at me in bland reproach, then goes to the
entrance of the alcove. I hear him asking the guard there to please ask a
conductor whether we are in danger of sun damage without the protection of the
paint. The guard laughs and calls over her companion to relay this question, as if
it’s ridiculous. During the moment of distraction purchased for us by this
exchange, Kelenli then resumes scrubbing me.
“Why not laugh at it?” she says.
“They would like you better if you didn’t laugh.” I signal nuance: alignment,
harmonic enmeshment, compliance, conciliation, mitigation. If she wants to be
liked.
“Maybe I don’t want to be liked.” She shrugs, turning to rinse the cloth again.
“You could be. You’re like them.”
 “Not enough.”
“More than me.” This is obvious. She is their kind of beautiful, their kind of
normal. “If you tried—”
She laughs at me, too. It isn’t cruel, I know instinctively. It’s pitying. But
underneath the laugh, her presence is suddenly as still and pent as pressurized
stone in the instant before it becomes something else. Anger again. Not at me,
but triggered by my words nevertheless. I always seem to make her angry.
They’re afraid because we exist, she says. There’s nothing we did to provoke
their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval,
except stop existing—so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their
cowardice and go on with our lives.
I think at first that I don’t understand everything she just told me. But I do,
don’t I? There were sixteen of us once; now we are but six. The others
questioned and were decommissioned for it. Obeyed without question, and were
decommissioned for it. Bargained. Gave up. Helped. Despaired. We have tried
everything, done all they asked and more, and yet now there are only six of us
left.
That means we’re better than the others were, I tell myself, scowling.
Smarter, more adaptable, more skilled. This matters, does it not? We are
components of the great machine, the pinnacle of Sylanagistine biomagestry. If
some of us had to be removed from the machine because of flaws—
Tetlewha was not flawed, Remwha snaps like a slipstrike fault.
I blink and glance at him. He’s back in the alcove, waiting over near
Bimniwha and Salewha; they’ve all used the fountain to strip off their own paint
while Kelenli worked on me and Gaewha and Dushwha. The guards Remwha
distracted are just outside, still chuckling to themselves over what he said to
them. He’s glaring at me. When I frown, he repeats: Tetlewha was not flawed.
I set my jaw. If Tetlewha was not flawed, then that means he was
decommissioned for no reason at all.
Yes. Remwha, who rarely looks pleased on a good day, has now curled his lip
in disgust. At me. I’m so shocked by this that I forget to pretend indifference.
That is precisely her point. It doesn’t matter what we do. The problem is them.
It doesn’t matter what we do. The problem is them.
When I am clean, Kelenli cups my face in her hands. “Do you know the word
‘legacy’?”
I’ve heard it and guessed its meaning from context. It’s difficult to pull my
thoughts back on track after Remwha’s angry rejoinder. He and I have never
much liked one another, but … I shake my head and focus on what Kelenli has
asked me. “A legacy is something obsolete, but which you cannot get rid of
entirely. Something no longer wanted, but still needed.”
She grimace-smiles, first at me and then at Remwha. She’s heard everything
he said to me. “That will do. Remember that word today.”
Then she gets to her feet. The three of us stare at her. She’s not only taller
and browner, but she moves more, breathes more. Is more. We worship what she
is. We fear what she will make of us.
“Come,” she says, and we follow her out into the world.

2613: A massive underwater volcano erupted in the Tasr Straits between

the Antarctic Polar Waste and the Stillness. Selis Leader Zenas,
previously unknown to be an orogene, apparently quelled the volcano,
although she was unable to escape the tsunami that it caused. Skies in the
Antarctics darkened for five months, but cleared just before a Season
could be officially declared. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami,
Selis Leader’s husband—the comm head at the time of the eruption,
deposed by emergency election—attempted to defend their one-year-old
child from a mob of survivors and was killed. Cause disputed: Some
witnesses say the mob stoned him, others say the former comm head was
strangled by a Guardian. Guardian took the orphaned infant to Warrant.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 5
you are remembered

THE ATTACK COMES, LIKE CLOCKWORK, near dawn.

Everyone’s ready for it. The camp is about a third of the way into the stone
forest, which is as far as Castrima was able to get before full darkness made
further progress treacherous. The group should be able to get all the way through
the forest before sunset the next day—assuming everyone lives through the
night.
Restlessly you prowl the camp, and you are not the only one to do so. The
Hunters are supposed to all be sleeping, since during the day they act as scouts
as well as ranging afield to forage and catch game. You see quite a few of them
awake, too. The Strongbacks are supposed to be sleeping in shifts, but all of
them are up, as are a good number of the other castes. You spot Hjarka sitting
atop a pile of baggage, her head down and eyes shut, but otherwise her legs are
braced for a quick lunge and there’s a glassknife in each hand. Her fingers
haven’t loosened with sleep.
It’s a stupid time to attack, given all this, but there isn’t a better one, so
apparently your assailants decide to work with what they’ve got. You’re the first
to sess it, and you’re pivoting on the ball of one foot and shouting a warning
even as you narrow your perception and drop into that space of mind from which
you can command volcanoes. A fulcrum, deep and strong, has been rooted in the
earth nearby. You follow it to the midpoint of its potential torus, the center of the
circle, like a hawk sighting prey. Right side of the road. Twenty feet into the
stone forest, out of line of sight amid the wends and drooping greenery. “Ykka!”
She appears at once from wherever she was sitting amid the tents. “Yeah, felt
it.”
“Not active yet.” By this you mean that the torus hasn’t begun to draw heat or
movement from the ambient. But that fulcrum is deep as a taproot. There’s not
much seismic potential gathered in this region—and indeed, much of the
pressure on the lower-level strata has been absorbed by the creation of the stone
forest. Still, there’s always heat if you go deep enough, and this is deep. Solid.
Fulcrum-precise.
“We don’t have to fight,” Ykka yells, suddenly, into the forest. You start,
though you shouldn’t. You’re shocked that she was serious, though you really
should know better by now. She stalks forward, body taut, knees bent as if she’s
about to sprint into the forest, hands held out before her and fingertips wiggling.
It’s easier now to reach for magic, though you still focus on the stump of
your own arm to begin, out of habit. It will never feel natural for you to use this
instead of orogeny, but at least your perception shifts quickly. Ykka’s way ahead
of you. Wavelets and arcs of silver dance along the ground around her, mostly in
front of her, spreading and flickering as she draws them up from the ground and
makes them hers. What little vegetation you can sess in the stone forest makes it
easier; the seedling vines and light-starved mosses act like wires, channeling and
aligning the silver into patterns that make sense. Are predictable. Are searching
… ah. You tense in the same moment that Ykka does. Yes. There.
Above that deep-rooted fulcrum, at the center of a torus that has not yet
begun to spin, crouches a body etched out in silver. For the first time, in
comparison, you notice that an orogene’s silver is both brighter and less complex
than that of the plants and insects around it. The same … er, amount, if that word
applies, if not capacity or potential or aliveness, but not the same design. This
orogene’s silver is concentrated into a relative few bright lines that all align in
similar directions. They don’t flicker, and neither does his torus. He—you guess
that, but it feels right—is listening.
Ykka, another outline of precise, concentrated silver, nods in satisfaction. She
climbs up on top of some of the wagon cargo so her voice will carry better.
“I’m Ykka Rogga Castrima,” she calls. You guess that she points at you.
“She’s a rogga, too. So’s he.” Temell. “So are those kids over there. We don’t
kill roggas here.” She pauses. “You hungry? We’ve got a little to spare. You
don’t need to try to take it.”
That fulcrum doesn’t budge.
Something else does, though—from the other side of the stone forest, as thin,
attenuated agglomerations of silver suddenly blur into chaotic movement and
come charging toward you. Other raiders; Evil Earth, you were all so focused on
the rogga that you didn’t even notice the ones behind you. You hear them now,
though, voices rising, cursing, feet pounding on ashy sand. The Strongbacks near
the barrier of stakes on that side cry warning. “They’re attacking,” you call.
“No shit,” Ykka snaps, drawing a glassknife.
You retreat to within the tent circle, acutely aware of your vulnerability in a
way that’s strange and deeply unpleasant. It’s worse because you can still sess,
and because your instincts prompt you to respond when you see where you could
help. A cluster of attackers comes at a part of the perimeter that’s light on stakes
and defenders, and you open your eyes so you can actually see them trying to
fight their way in. They’re typical commless raiders—filthy, emaciated, dressed
in an ash-faded combination of rags and newer, pilfered clothing. You could take
out all six in half a breath, with a single precision torus.
But you can also feel how … what? How aligned you are. Ykka’s silver is
concentrated like that of the other roggas you’ve observed, but hers is still
layered, jagged, a little jittery. It flows every-which-way within her as she jumps
down from the cargo wagon and shouts for people to help the sparse
Strongbacks near that cluster of raiders, running to help herself. Your magic
flows with smooth clarity, every line matching perfectly in direction and flow to
every other line. You don’t know how to change it back to the way it was, if
that’s even possible. And you know instinctively that using the silver when
you’re like this will pack every particle of your body together as neatly as a
mason lays a wall of bricks. You’ll be stone the same way.
So you fight your instincts and hide, much as that rankles. There are others
here, crouching amid the central circle of tents—the comm’s smaller children, its
bare handful of elders, one woman so pregnant that she can’t move with any real
flexibility even though she’s got a loaded crossbow in her hands, two knife-
wielding Breeders who’ve obviously been charged with defending her and the
children.
When you poke your head up to observe the fighting, you catch a glimpse of
something stunning. Danel, having appropriated one of the spear-whittled sticks
that form the fence, is using it to carve a bloody swath through the raiders. She’s
phenomenal, spinning and stabbing and blocking and stabbing again, twirling the
stick in between attacks as if she’s fought commless a million times. That’s not
just being an experienced Strongback; that’s something else. She’s just too good.
But it follows, doesn’t it? Not like Rennanis made her the general of their army
for her charm.
It isn’t much of a fight in the end. Twenty or thirty scrawny commless
against trained, fed, prepared comm members? This is why comms survive
Seasons, and why long-term commlessness is a death sentence. This lot was
probably desperate; there can’t have been much traffic along the road in the past
few months. What were they thinking?
Their orogene, you realize. That’s who they expected to win this fight for
them. But he’s still not moving, orogenically or physically.
You get up, walking past the lingering knots of fighting. Self-consciously
adjusting your mask, you step off the road and slip through the perimeter stakes,
moving into the deeper darkness of the stone forest. The firelight of the camp
leaves you night-blind, so you stop a moment to allow your eyes to adjust. No
telling what kinds of traps the commless have left here; you shouldn’t be doing
this alone. Again you’re surprised, though, because between one blink and the
next, you suddenly begin to see in silver. Insects, leaf litter, a spiderweb, even
the rocks—all of it now flickers in wild, veined patterns, their cells and
particulates etched out by the lattice that connects them.
And people. You stop as you make them out, well camouflaged against the
silver bloom of the forest. The rogga is still where he’s been, a brighter etching
against more delicate lines. But there are also two small shapes crouched in a
cavelet, about twenty feet further into the forest. Two other bodies, somehow
high overhead atop the jagged, curving rocks of the forest. Lookouts, maybe?
None of them move much. Can’t tell if they’ve seen you, or if they’re watching
the battle somehow. You’re frozen, startled by this sudden shift in your
perception. Is this some by-product of learning to see silver in yourself and the
obelisks? Maybe once you can do that, you see it everywhere. Or maybe you’re
hallucinating all of it now, like an afterimage against your eyelids. After all,
Alabaster never mentioned being able to see like this—but then, when did
Alabaster ever try to be a good teacher?
You grope forward for a bit, hand out in front of you in case it is some kind
of illusion, but if so, it’s at least an accurate one. While it’s strange to put your
foot down on a lattice of silver, after a while you get used to it.
The orogene’s distinctive lattice and that still-held torus aren’t far, but he’s
somewhere higher up than the ground. Maybe ten feet above where you stand.
This is explained somewhat when the ground abruptly slopes upward and your
hand touches stone. Your regular vision has adapted enough that you can see
there’s a pillar here, crooked and probably climbable, at least by someone who’s
got more than one arm. So you stop at the foot of it and say, “Hey.”
No response. You become aware of breathing: quick, shallow, pent. Like
someone who’s trying not to be heard breathing.
“Hey.” Squinting in the dark, you finally make out some kind of structure of
stacked branches and old boards and debris. A blind, maybe. From up there in
the blind, it must be possible to see the road. Sight doesn’t matter for the average
orogene; untrained ones can’t direct their power at all. A Fulcrum-trained
orogene, though, needs line of sight to be able to distinguish between freezing
useful supplies, or just freezing the people defending same.
Something shifts in the blind above you. Has there been a catch in the
breathing? You try to think of something to say, but all that’s in your head is a
question: What’s a Fulcrum-trained orogene doing among the commless? Must
have been out on an assignment when the Rifting occurred. Without a Guardian
—or he’d be dead—so that means he’s fifth ring or higher, or maybe a three-or
four-ringer who’s lost their higher-ranked partner. You envision yourself, if
you’d been on the road to Allia when the Rifting struck. Knowing your Guardian
might come for you, but gambling that he might instead write you off for dead
… no. That ends the imagining right there. Schaffa would have come for you.
Schaffa did come for you.
But that was between Seasons. Guardians supposedly do not join comms
when Seasons come, which means they die—and, in fact, the only Guardian
you’ve seen since the Rifting was that one with Danel and the Rennanis army.
She died in the boilbug storm that you invoked, and you’re glad of it, since she
was one of the bare-skin killers and there’s more than the usual wrong with that
kind. Either way, here’s another ex-blackjacket out here alone, and maybe
afraid, and maybe hair-triggered to kill. You know what that’s like, don’t you?
But this one hasn’t attacked yet. You have to find some way to make a
connection.
“I remember,” you say. It’s soft, a murmur. Like you don’t want to hear even
yourself. “I remember the crucibles. The instructors, killing us to save us. Did
they m-make you have children, too?” Corundum. Your thoughts jerk away from
memories. “Did they—shit.” The hand that Schaffa once broke, your right hand,
is somewhere in whatever passes for Hoa’s belly. You still feel it, though.
Phantom ache across phantom bones. “I know they broke you. Your hand. All of
us. They broke us so they could—”
You hear, very clearly, a soft, horrified inhalation from within the blind.
The torus whips into a blurring, blistering spin, and explodes outward.
You’re so close that it almost catches you. That gasp was enough warning,
though, and so you’ve braced yourself orogenically, even if you couldn’t do so
physically. Physically you flinch and it’s too much for your precarious, one-
armed balance. You fall backward, landing hard on your ass—but you’ve been
drilled since childhood in how to retain control on one level even as you lose it
in another, so in the same instant you flex your sessapinae and simply slap his
fulcrum out of the earth, inverting it. You’re much stronger; it’s easy. You react
magically, too, grabbing those whipping tendrils of silver that the torus has
stirred—and belatedly you realize orogeny affects magic, but isn’t magic itself,
in fact the magic flinches away from it; that’s why you can’t work high-level
orogeny without negatively impacting your ability to deploy magic, how nice to
finally understand! Regardless, you tamp the wild threads of magic back down,
and quell everything at once, so that nothing worse than a rime of frost dusts
your body. It’s cold, but only on your skin. You’ll live.
Then you let go—and all the orogeny and magic snaps away from you like
stretched rubber. Everything in you seems to twang in response, in resonance,
and—oh—oh no—you feel the amplitude of the resonance rise as your cells
begin to align … and compress into stone.
You can’t stop it. You can, however, direct it. In the instant that you have,
you decide which body part you can afford to lose. Hair! No, too many strands,
too much of it distant from the live follicles; you can do it but it’ll take too long
and half your scalp will be stone by the time you’re done. Toes? You need to be
able to walk. Fingers? You’ve only got one hand, need to keep it intact as long
as you can.
Breasts. Well, you’re not planning on having more children anyway.
It’s enough to channel the resonance, the stoning, into just one. Have to take
it through the glands under the armpit, but you manage to keep it above the
muscle layer; that might keep the damage from impairing your movement and
breathing. You pick the left breast, to offset your missing right arm. The right
breast is the one you always liked better, anyway. Prettier. And then you lie
there when it’s done, still alive, hyperaware of the extra weight on your chest,
too shocked to mourn. Yet.
Then you’re pushing yourself up, awkwardly, grimacing, as the person in the
blind utters a nervous little chuckle and says, “Oh, rust. Oh, Earth. Damaya? It
really is you. Sorry about the torus, I was just—You don’t know what it’s been
like. I can’t believe it. Do you know what they did to Crack?”
Arkete, says your memory. “Maxixe,” says your mouth.
It’s Maxixe.

Maxixe is half the man he used to be. Physically, anyway.

He’s got no legs below the thighs. One eye, or rather only one that works.
The left one is clouded with damage, and it doesn’t track quite with the other.
The left side of his head—he’s got almost nothing left of that lovely blond
ashblow that you remember, just a knife-hacked bottlebrush—is a mess of
pinkish scars, amid which you think the ear is healed shut. The scars have
seamed his forehead and cheek, and pull his mouth a little out of true on that
side.
Yet he wriggles down from the blind nimbly, walking on his hands and
lifting his torso and stumpy legs with sheer muscle as he does so. He’s too good
at getting around without legs; must have been doing it for a while now. He
makes it over to you before you’re able to climb to your feet. “It really is you. I
thought, I heard you were only fourth ring, did you really punch through my
torus? I’m a sixer. Six! But that’s how I knew, see, you still sess the same, still
quiet on the outside and rusting furious on the inside, it really is you.”
The other commless are starting to creep down from their spires and such.
You tense as they appear—scarecrow figures, thin and ragged and stinking,
watching you from stolen or homemade goggles and above wraparound masks
that obviously used to be somebody’s clothes. They do not attack, however.
They gather and watch you with Maxixe.
You stare as he circles you, levering himself along rapidly. He’s wearing
commless rags, long-sleeved and layered, but you can see how big his shoulder
and arm muscles are under the tattered cloth. The rest of him is scrawny. The
gauntness of his face is painful to see, but it’s clear what his body has prioritized
during the long hungry months.
“Arkete,” you say, because you remember that he always preferred the name
he was born with.
He stops circling and peers at you for a moment, head tilted. Maybe this
helps him see better with one functioning eye. The look on his face tells you off,
though. He’s not Arkete, any more than you are Damaya. Too much has
changed. Maxixe it is, then.
“You remembered,” he says, though. In that moment of stillness, this eye in
his previous storm of words, you glimpse the thoughtful, charming boy you
remember. Even though the coincidence of this is almost too much to digest. The
only thing stranger would be running into … the brother you actually forgot you
had, until just now. What was his name? Earthfires, you’ve forgotten that, too.
But you probably wouldn’t recognize him, if you saw him. The grits of the
Fulcrum were your siblings, in pain if not in blood.
You shake your head to focus, and nod. You’re on your feet now, dusting
leaf litter and ash off your butt, though awkwardly around the pulling weight on
your chest. “I’m surprised I remembered, too. You must have made an
impression.”
He smiles. It’s lopsided. Only half his face works the way it should. “I forgot.
Tried hard to, anyway.”
You set your jaw, steeling yourself. “I’m—sorry.” It’s pointless. He probably
doesn’t even remember what you’re sorry about.
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
“No.” He looks away for a moment. “I should have talked to you, after.
Shouldn’t have hated you the way I did. Shouldn’t have let her, them, change
me. But I did, and now … none of that matters.”
You know exactly which “her” he’s referring to. After that whole incident
with Crack, bullying that exposed a whole network of grits just trying to survive
and a larger network of adults exploiting their desperation … You remember.
Maxixe, returning to the grit barracks one day with both his hands broken.
“Better than what they did to Crack,” you murmur, before it occurs to you not
to say this.
Yet he nods, unsurprised. “Went to a node station once. It wasn’t her. Rust
knows what I was thinking … But I wanted to search them all. Before the
Season.” He utters a ragged, bitter chuckle. “I didn’t even like her. Just needed
to know.”
You shake your head. Not that you don’t understand the impulse; you’d be
lying if you said you hadn’t thought it, too, in the years since you learned the
truth. Go to all the stations. Figure out some way to restore their damaged
sessapinae and set them free. Or kill them as a kindness; ah, you’d have been
such a good instructor, if the Fulcrum had ever given you a chance. But of
course you did nothing. And of course Maxixe didn’t do anything to save the
node maintainers, either. Only Alabaster ever managed that.
You take a deep breath. “I’m with them,” you say, jerking your head back
toward the road. “You heard what the headwoman said. Orogenes welcome.”
He sways a little, there on his stumps and arms. It’s hard to see his face in the
dark. “I can sess her. She’s the headwoman?”
“Yeah. And everyone in the comm knows it. They’re—This comm is—” And
you take a deep breath. “We. Are a comm that’s trying to do something different.
Orogenes and stills. Not killing each other.”
He laughs, which sets off a few moments of coughing. The other stick figures
chuckle, too, but it’s Maxixe’s cough that worries you. It’s dry, hacking, pebbly;
not a good sound. He’s been breathing too much ash without a mask. It’s loud,
too. If the Hunters aren’t nearby, watching and perhaps ready to shoot him and
his people, you’ll eat your runny-sack.
At the end of the coughing fit, he tilts his head up at you again, with an
amused look in his eye. “I’m doing the same thing,” he drawls. With his chin, he
points toward his gathered people. “These rusters stick with me because I’m not
going to eat them. They don’t fuck with me because I’ll kill them. There:
peaceful coexistence.”
You look around at them and frown. Hard to see their expressions. “They
didn’t attack my people, though.” Or they’d be dead.
“Nah. That was Olemshyn.” Maxixe shrugs; it makes his whole body move.
“Half-Sanzed bastard. Got kicked out of two comms for ‘anger management
issues,’ he said. He would’ve gotten us all killed raiding, so I told anybody who
wanted to live and could stand me to come follow me, and we did our own thing.
This side of the forest is ours, that side was theirs.”
Two commless tribes, not one. Maxixe’s hardly qualifies, though; only a
handful of people besides himself? But he said it: Those who could endure living
with a rogga went with him. That just didn’t turn out to be a lot of people.
Maxixe turns and climbs halfway up to the blind again, so that he can sit
down and also be on an eye level with you. He lets out another rattly cough from
the effort of doing this. “I figure he was expecting me to hit you lot,” he
continues, once the cough subsides. “That’s how we usually do it: I ice ’em, his
group grabs what it can before I and mine can show up, we both get enough to
go on a little longer. But I was all fucked up from what your headwoman said.”
He looks away, shaking his head. “Olemshyn should’ve broken off once he saw
I wasn’t going to ice you, but, well. I did say he was gonna get them killed.”
“Yeah.”
“Good riddance. What happened to your arm?” He’s looking at you now. He
can’t see your left breast, even though you’re slouching a little to the left. It
hurts, weighing on your flesh.
You counter, “What happened to your legs?”
He smiles, lopsidedly, and doesn’t answer. Neither do you.
“So, not killing each other.” Maxixe shakes his head. “And that’s actually
working out?”
“So far. We’re trying, anyway.”
“Won’t work.” Maxixe shifts again and darts another look at you. “How
much did it cost you, to join them?”
You don’t say nothing, because that’s not what he’s asking, anyway. You can
see the bargain he’s made for survival here: his skills in exchange for the raiders’
limited food and dubious shelter. This stone forest, this death trap, is his doing.
How many people did he kill for his raiders?
How many have you killed, for Castrima?
Not the same.
How many people were in Rennanis’s army? How many of them did you
sentence to be steam-cooked alive by insects? How many ash-mounds dot
Castrima-over now, each with a hand or booted foot poking out?
Not the rusting same. That was them or you.
Just like Maxixe, trying to survive. Him or them.
You set your jaw to silence this internal argument. There isn’t time for this.
“We can’t—” you attempt, then shift. “There are other ways besides killing.
Other … We don’t just have to be … this.” Ykka’s words, awkward and oily
with hypocrisy from your mouth. And are those words even true anymore?
Castrima no longer has the geode to force cooperation between orogene and still.
Maybe it’ll all fall apart tomorrow.
Maybe. But until then, you force yourself to finish. “We don’t have to be
what they made us, Maxixe.”
He shakes his head, staring at the leaf litter. “You remember that name, too.”
You lick your lips. “Yeah. I’m Essun.”
He frowns a little at this, perhaps because it isn’t a stone-themed name.
That’s why you picked it. He doesn’t question it, though. At last he sighs.
“Rusting look at me, Essun. Listen to the rocks in my chest. Even if your
headwoman will take half a rogga, I’m not going to last much longer. Also—”
Because he’s sitting, he can use his hands; he gestures around at the other
scarecrow figures.
“No comm will let us in,” says one of the smaller figures. You think that’s a
woman’s voice, but it’s so hoarse and weary you can’t tell. “Don’t even play that
game.”
You shift, uncomfortable. The woman is right; Ykka might be willing to take
in a commless rogga, but not the rest. Then again, you can never figure out quite
what Ykka will do. “I can ask.”
Chuckles all around, jaded and thin and tired. A few more rattly coughs in
addition to Maxixe’s. These people are starved nearly to death, and half of them
are sick. This is pointless. Still. To Maxixe, you say, “If you don’t come with us,
you’ll die here.”
“Olemshyn’s people had most of the supplies. We’ll go take ’em.” That
sentence ends on a pause: the opening bid in a bargain. “And it’s all of us, or
none of us.”
“Up to the headwoman,” you say, refusing to commit. But you know
haggling when you hear it. His Fulcrum-trained orogeny in exchange for comm
membership for him and his handful, with the deal sweetened by the raiders’
supplies. And he’s fully prepared to walk away if Ykka can’t meet his opening
price. It bothers you. “I’ll also put in a good word for your character, or at least
your character thirty years ago.”
He smiles a little. Hard not to see that smile as patronizing. Look at you,
trying to make this something more than it is. You’re probably projecting. “I also
know a little about the area. Might be useful, since you’re obviously going
somewhere.” He jerks his chin toward firelight reflecting off the crags closer to
the road. “You are going somewhere?”
“Rennanis.”
“Assholes.”
Which means the Rennanis army must have come through the area on its way
south. You let yourself smile. “Dead assholes.”
“Huh.” He squints his good eye. “They’ve been smashing comms all over the
area. That’s why we’ve had such a hard time; no trade caravans to raid once the
Rennies were done. I did sess something weird in the direction they went,
though.”
He falls silent, watching you, because of course he knows. Any rogga with
rings should have sessed the activity of the Obelisk Gate when you ended the
Rennanis-Castrima war so decisively. They might not have known what they
were sessing, and unless they knew magic, they wouldn’t have perceived the
totality of it even if they’d known, but they would have at least picked up the
backwash.
“That … was me,” you say. It’s surprisingly hard to admit.
“Rusting Earth, Da—Essun. How?”
You take a deep breath. Extend a hand to him. So much of your past keeps
coming back to haunt you. You can never forget where you came from, because
it won’t rusting let you. But maybe Ykka’s got the right of it. You can reject
these dregs of your old self and pretend that nothing and no one else matters …
or you can embrace them. Reclaim them for what they’re worth, and grow
stronger as a whole.
 “Let’s go talk to Ykka,” you say. “If she adopts you—and your people, I
know—I’ll tell you everything.” And if he’s not careful, you’ll end up teaching
him how to do it, too. He’s a six-ringer, after all. If you fail, someone else will
have to take up the mantle.
To your surprise, he regards your hand with something akin to wariness. “Not
sure I want to know everything.”
It makes you smile. “You really don’t.”
He smiles lopsidedly. “You don’t want to know everything that’s happened
to me, either.”
You incline your head. “Deal, then. Only the good parts.”
He grins. One of his teeth is missing. “That’s too short to even make a good
pop lorist tale. Nobody would buy a story like that.”
But. Then he shifts his weight and lifts his right hand. The skin is thick as
horn, beyond callused, and filthy. You wipe your hand on your pants without
thinking, after. His people chuckle at this.
Then you lead him back toward Castrima, into the light.

2470: Antarctics. Massive sinkhole began to open beneath city of Bendine

(comm died shortly after). Karst soils, not seismic, but the sinking of the
city generated waves that Antarctic Fulcrum orogenes detected. From the
Fulcrum, somehow shifted whole city to more stable position, saving most
of population. Fulcrum records note that doing this killed three senior
orogenes.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 6
Nassun makes her fate

THE MONTHLONG JOURNEY TO STEEL’S deadciv ruin is uneventful by the

standards of mid-Season travel. Nassun and Schaffa have or forage sufficient
food to sustain themselves, though both of them begin to lose weight. Nassun’s
shoulder heals without trouble, though she is feverish and weak for a couple of
days at one point, and on those days Schaffa calls a halt for rest sooner than she
thinks he normally would have. On the third day the fever is gone, the wound is
beginning to scab, and they resume.
They encounter almost no one else on the road, though that is unsurprising a
year and a half into the Season. Anyone still commless at this point has joined a
raider band, and there won’t be many of those left—just the most vicious, or the
ones with some kind of edge beyond savagery and cannibalism. Most of those
will have gone north, into the Somidlats where there are more comms to prey
upon. Not even raiders like the Antarctics.
In many ways the near-solitude suits Nassun fine. No other Guardians to
tiptoe around. No commfolk whose irrational fears must always be planned for.
Not even other orogene children; Nassun misses the others, misses their chatter
and the comradeship that she enjoyed with them for so brief a time, but at the
end of the day, she resented how much time and attention Schaffa had to give
them. She’s old enough to know that it’s childish for her to be jealous of such a
thing. (Her parents doted on Uche, too, but it is horrifyingly obvious now that
getting more attention isn’t necessarily favoritism.) Doesn’t mean she isn’t glad,
and greedy, for the chance to have Schaffa all to herself.
Their time together is companionable, and largely silent, by day. At night
they sleep, curled together against the deepening cold, secure because Nassun
has reliably demonstrated that the slightest shift in the ambient, or footstep upon
the nearby ground, is enough to wake her. Sometimes Schaffa does not sleep; he
tries, but instead lies shuddering minutely, catching his breath now and again
with half-suppressed muscle twitches, trying not to disturb her in his quiet
agonies. When he does sleep, it is fitful and shallow. Sometimes Nassun does
not sleep, either, aching in silent sympathy.
So she resolves to do something about it. It’s the thing she learned to do back
in Found Moon, though to a lesser degree: She sometimes lets the little corestone
in his sessapinae have some of her silver. She doesn’t know why it works, but
she recalls seeing the Guardians in Found Moon all taking bits of silver from
their charges and exhaling afterward, as if it eased something in them to give the
corestone someone else to chew on.
Schaffa, however, has not taken silver from her or anyone else since the day
she offered all of hers to him—the day she realized the true nature of the metal
shard in his brain. She thinks maybe she understands why he stopped. Something
changed between them that day, and he can no longer bring himself to feed on
her like some sort of parasite. But that is why Nassun sneaks him magic now.
Because something changed between them, and he’s not a parasite if she needs
him, too, and if she gives what he will not take.
(One day soon, she will learn the word symbiosis and nod, pleased to have a
name for it at last. But long before that, she will have already decided that family
will do.)
When Nassun gives Schaffa her silver, though he is asleep, his body
swallows it so quickly that she must snatch her hand away to avoid losing too
much. She can spare only dribbles. Any more and she will be the one tired and
unable to travel the next day. Even that tiny amount is enough to let him sleep,
however—and as the days pass, Nassun finds herself gradually making more
silver, somehow. It’s a welcome change; now she can ease his pain better
without wearying herself. Every time she sees Schaffa settle into a deep,
peaceful sleep, she feels proud and good, even though she knows she isn’t.
Doesn’t matter. She is determined to be a better daughter to Schaffa than she
was to Jija. Everything will be better, until the end.
Schaffa sometimes tells stories in the evenings, while dinner cooks. In them,
the Yumenes of the past is a place both wondrous and strange, as alien as the
bottom of the sea. (It is always the Yumenes of the past. Recent Yumenes is lost
to him, along with his memories of the Schaffa he used to be.) Even the idea of
Yumenes is hard for Nassun to comprehend: millions of people, none of them
farmers or miners or anything that fits within the range of her experience, many
of them obsessed with strange fads and politics and alignments far more
complex than those of caste or race. Leaders, but also the elite Yumenescene
Leadership families. Strongbacks of the union and those without, varying by
their connections and financial security. Innovators from generations-old
families who competed to be sent off to the Seventh University, and Innovators
who merely built and repaired trinkets out of the city’s shantytowns. It is strange
to realize that much of Yumenes’s strangeness was simply because it lasted so
long. It had old families. Books in its libraries that were older than Tirimo.
Organizations that remembered, and avenged, slights from three or four Seasons
back.
Schaffa also tells her about the Fulcrum, although not much. There is another
memory hole here, deep and fathomless as an obelisk—though Nassun finds
herself unable to resist probing its edges. It is a space that her mother once
inhabited, after all, and in spite of everything, this fascinates her. Schaffa
remembers Essun poorly, however, even when Nassun works up the courage to
ask direct questions about the matter. He tries to answer Nassun, but his speech
is halting when he does, and the look that crosses his face is pained, troubled,
paler than usual. She therefore forces herself to ask these questions slowly, hours
or days apart, to give him time to recover in between. What she learns is little
more than she has already guessed about her mother and the Fulcrum and life
before the Season. It helps to hear it, nevertheless.
The miles pass like this, in memory and edged-around pain.
Conditions in the Antarctics grow worse by the day. The ashfall is no longer
intermittent, and the landscape has begun to turn into a still life of hills and
ridges and dying plants chiseled in gray-white. Nassun starts to miss the sight of
the sun. One night they hear the squeals of what must be a large kirkhusa romp
out hunting, though fortunately the sound is distant. One day they pass a pond
whose surface is mirror-gray from floating ash; the water underneath is
disturbingly still, given that the pond is fed by a rapid stream. Although their
canteens are low, Nassun looks at Schaffa, and Schaffa nods in silent, wary
agreement. There’s nothing overtly wrong, but … well. Surviving a Season is as
much a matter of having the right instincts as having the right tools. They avoid
the still water, and live.
On the evening of the twenty-ninth day, they reach a place where the
Imperial Road abruptly plateaus and veers southward. Nassun sesses that the
road edges along something that feels a bit like a crater rim. They have crested
the ridge that surrounds this circular, unusually flat region, and the road follows
the ridge in an arc around the zone of old damage, resuming its westward track
on the other side. In the middle, though, Nassun at last beholds a wonder.
The Old Man’s Pucker is a sommian—a caldera inside a caldera. This one is
unusual in being so perfectly formed; from what Nassun has read, usually the
outer, older caldera is badly damaged by the eruption that creates the inner,
newer caldera. In this case the outer one is an intact, nearly perfect circle, though
heavily eroded by time and forested over; Nassun can’t really see it under the
greenery, though she can sess it clearly. The inner caldera is a little more oblong,
and it gleams so brightly from a distance that Nassun can guess what happened
without even sessing it. The eruption must have been so hot, at least at one point,
that the whole geological formation nearly destroyed itself. What remains has
gone to glass, naturally tempered enough that not even centuries of weathering
has damaged it much. The volcano that created this sommian is extinct now, its
ancient magma chamber long since emptied, not even a whiff of leftover heat
lingering. Once upon a time, though, the Pucker was the site of a truly awesome
—and horrific—puncturing of the world’s crust.
As Steel instructed, they camp for the night a mile or two back from the
Pucker. In the small hours before dawn, Nassun wakes, hearing a distant screech,
but Schaffa soothes her. “I’ve heard that now and again,” he says softly, over the
crackling of the fire. He insisted on a watch this time, so Nassun took the earlier
shift. “Something in the Pucker forest. It doesn’t seem to be coming this way.”
She believes him. But neither of them sleeps well that night.
In the morning, they rise before dawn and start up the road. In the early-
morning light, Nassun stares at the deceptively still double crater before them.
Up close, it’s easier to see that there are breaks in the inner caldera’s walls at
regular intervals; someone meant for people to be able to get inside. The outer
caldera’s floor is completely overgrown, however, yellow-green and waving
with a forest of treelike grass that has apparently choked out every other form of
vegetation in the area. There’s no sess of even game trails across it.
The real surprise, though, is underneath the Pucker.
“Steel’s deadciv ruin,” she says. “It’s underground.”
Schaffa glances at her in surprise, but he does not protest. “In the magma
chamber?”
“Maybe?” Nassun can’t believe it, either, at first, but the silver does not lie.
She notices something else strange as she expands her sesunal awareness of the
area. The silver mirrors the perturbations of topography and the forest here—the
same way it does everywhere. Yet the silver here is brighter, somehow, and it
seems to flow more readily from plant to plant and rock to rock. These blend to
become larger, dazzling flows that all run together like streams, until the ruin sits
within a pool of glimmering, churning light. She can’t make out details, there’s
so much of it—just empty space, and an impression of buildings. It’s huge, this
ruin. A city, like no city Nassun has ever sessed.
But she has sessed this torrential churn of silver before. She cannot help
turning to glance back toward the sapphire that is faintly visible some miles off.
They’ve outpaced it, but it’s still following.
“Yes,” Schaffa says. He’s been watching her, and missing nothing as she
makes the connections. “I don’t remember this city, but I know of others like it.
The obelisks were made in such places.”
She shakes her head, trying to fathom it all. “What happened to this city?
There must have been a lot of people here once.”
“The Shattering.”
She inhales. She’s heard of it, of course, and believed in it the way children
believe most stories. She remembers seeing an artist’s line rendering of the event
in one of her creche books: lightning and rocks falling from the sky, fire erupting
from the ground, tiny human figures running and doomed. “So that’s what it was
like? A big volcano?”
“The Shattering was like this here.” Schaffa gazes out over the waving forest.
“Elsewhere, it was different. The Shattering was a hundred different Seasons,
Nassun, all over the world, all striking at once. It is a marvel that anything of
humanity survived.”
The way he’s talking … It seems impossible, but Nassun bites her lip. “Were
you … do you remember it?”
He glances at Nassun, surprised, and then smiles in a way that is equal parts
weary and wry. “I don’t. I think … I suspect that I was born sometime after,
though I have no proof of that. Even if I could remember the Shattering, though,
I feel fairly certain that I wouldn’t want to.” He sighs, then shakes his head. “The
sun is up. Let’s face the future, at least, and leave the past to itself.” Nassun
nods, and they step off the trail into the trees.
The trees are strange things, with long, thin leaves like elongated grass
blades, and narrow, flexible trunks that grow no more than a couple of feet apart.
In some places Schaffa has to stop and push apart two or three trees so that they
can wriggle through. This makes for hard going, though, and before long Nassun
is out of breath. She stops, dripping sweat, but Schaffa pushes on. “Schaffa,” she
says, about to ask for a break.
“No,” he says, pushing over another tree with a grunt. “Remember the stone
eater’s warning, little one. We must reach the center of this forest by dusk. It’s
now clear we will need every moment of that time.”
He’s right. Nassun swallows, starts taking deeper breaths so she can work
better, and then resumes pushing through the forest with him.
She develops a rhythm, working with him. She’s good at finding the quickest
paths that don’t require pushing through, and when she does, he follows her.
When these paths end, however, he shoves and kicks and breaks trees until the
way is clear, while she follows. She can catch her breath during these brief lulls,
but it’s never quite enough. A stitch develops in her side. She starts having
trouble seeing because the tree leaves keep pulling some of her hair loose from
its twin buns, and sweat has made the curls lengthen and dangle into her eyes.
She wants desperately to rest for an hour or so. Drink some water. Eat
something. The clouds overhead get grayer as the hours pass, however, and it
becomes increasingly hard to tell how much daylight is left.
“I can,” Nassun tries at one point, while trying to think of how she can use
orogeny, or the silver, or something, to clear the way.
“No,” Schaffa says, somehow intuiting what she would have said. He’s
produced a black glass poniard from somewhere. It’s not a useful knife for this
situation, although somehow he has made it so by stabbing each of the grass-tree
trunks before kicking them down. That helps them break more easily. “Freezing
these plants would only make them more difficult to get through, and a shake
could cause the magma chamber below us to collapse.”
“The s-silver, then—”
“No.” He stops for only a moment and turns to fix a hard gaze on her. He’s
not breathing harder, she notes with great chagrin, although a faint sheen of
sweat does glisten on his forehead. His iron shard punishes him, but still
grudgingly grants him greater strength. “Other Guardians may be near, Nassun.
It’s unlikely at this point, but still a possibility.”
All Nassun can do is grope for another question, because this momentary
pause is giving her time to catch her breath. “Other Guardians?” Ah, but then he
has said that they all go somewhere during a Season, and that this station that
Steel told them about is the means by which they do it. “Do you remember
something?”
“Nothing more, sadly.” He smiles a little, knowingly, as if he can tell what
she’s doing. “Only that this is how we get there.”
“Get where?”
His smile fades, expression settling into that familiar, disturbing blankness
for the briefest of instants. “Warrant.”
She remembers, belatedly, that his full name is Schaffa Guardian Warrant. It
has never occurred to her to wonder where the comm of Warrant is. But what
does it mean that the way to Warrant is through a buried dead city? “Wh-why—”
He shakes his head then, expression hardening. “Stop stalling. In this low
light, not every nocturnal hunter will wait for night.” He glances up at the sky
with a look that is only mildly annoyed, as if it does not threaten their lives.
It’s pointless to complain that she is ready to drop. It’s a Season. If she drops,
she dies. So she forces herself through the gap he has broken, and starts questing
again for the best route.
In the end they make it, which is good because otherwise this would become
the rather straightforward tale of you learning that your daughter is dead, and
letting the world wither in your grief.
It isn’t even a near thing. Abruptly the last patch of thick grass-trees thins
out, revealing a smooth-cut pass through the inner caldera ring. The walls of the
pass loom high overhead, though they did not look so tall from far away, and the
pass itself is wide enough for two horse-drawn carriages to travel side by side
without crowding. The walls of these passages are covered in tenacious mosses
and some sort of woody vine, the latter of which is fortunately dead because
otherwise it might entangle them and slow their progress more. Instead they
hurry forward, cracking the dead branches aside, and then abruptly Nassun and
Schaffa stumble out of the pass onto a wide, round slab of perfectly white
material that is neither metal nor stone. Nassun’s seen something like it before,
near other deadciv ruins; sometimes the stuff glows faintly at night. This
particular slab fills the entirety of the space within the inner caldera.
Steel has told them that the deadciv ruin is here, at the center—but all Nassun
sees ahead of them is a dainty, rising curl of metal, seemingly set directly into
the white material. She tenses, as wary of something new as any Seasoned
survivor. Schaffa, however, walks over to it without hesitation. He stops beside
it, and for an instant there is an odd expression on his face that Nassun suspects
is caused by the momentary conflict between what his body has done out of
habit and what his mind cannot remember—but then he puts a hand on the
curlicue at the tip of the metal.
Flat shapes and lines of light suddenly appear out of nothingness on the stone
around him. Nassun gasps, but they do nothing other than march and ignite
others in turn, spreading and glowing until a roughly rectangular shape has been
etched out on the stone at Schaffa’s feet. There is a faint, barely audible hum that
makes Nassun twitch and look around wildly, but a moment later the white
material in front of Schaffa vanishes. It doesn’t slide aside, or open like a door;
it’s just gone. But it is a doorway, Nassun abruptly realizes. “And here we are,”
Schaffa murmurs. He sounds a little surprised himself.
Beyond this doorway is a tunnel that curves gradually down into the ground
and out of sight. Narrow rectangular panels of light edge the steps on either side,
illuminating the way. The curling bit of metal is a railing, she sees now, her
perception reorienting as she moves to stand beside Schaffa. Something to hold
on to, as one walks down into the depths.
In a distant part of the grass forest that they just traversed, there is a high-
pitched grating noise that Nassun immediately identifies as animal. Chitinous,
maybe. A closer, louder version of the screeches they heard the night before.
Nassun flinches and looks at Schaffa.
“Some sort of grasshopper, I believe,” he says. His jaw is tight as he gazes
back at the pass they just traversed, though nothing moves there—yet. “Or
cicadas, perhaps. Inside now. I’ve seen something like this mechanism before; it
should close after we pass through.”
He gestures for her to go first so that he can guard the rear. Nassun takes a
deep breath and reminds herself that this is what is necessary to make a world
that will hurt no one else. Then she trots down the stairs.
The light panels ignite five or six steps ahead as she progresses, and fade
three steps behind. Once they’re a few feet down, just as Schaffa predicted, the
white material that covered the stairwell reappears, cutting off further screeches
from the forest.
Then there is nothing but the light, and the stairs, and the long-forgotten city
somewhere below.

2699: Two Fulcrum blackjackets summoned to Deejna comm (Uher

Quartent, Western Coastals, near Kiash Traps) when Mount Imher
showed eruption signs. Blackjackets informed comm officials that
eruption was imminent, and that it would likely touch off the whole Kiash
cluster, including Madness (local name for the supervolcano that triggered
the Madness Season; Imher sits on the same hot spot). Upon determining
that Imher was beyond their ability to quell, the blackjackets—one three-
ringer, the other supposedly seven although did not wear rings for some
reason—made the attempt anyway, due to insufficient time to send for
higher-ringed Imperial Orogenes. They successfully stilled the eruption
long enough for a nine-ring senior Imperial Orogene to arrive and push it
back into dormancy. (Three-ringer and seven-ringer found holding hands,
back into dormancy. (Three-ringer and seven-ringer found holding hands,
charred, frozen.)
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 Syl Anagist: Three

FASCINATING. ALL OF THIS GROWS easier to remember with the telling … or

perhaps I am still human, after all.

At first our field excursion is simply the act of walking through the city. We
have spent the brief years since our initial decanting immersed in sesuna, the
sense of energy in all its forms. A walk outside forces us to pay attention to our
other, lesser senses, and this is initially overwhelming. We flinch at the
springiness of pressed-fiber sidewalks under our shoes, so unlike the hard
lacquerwood of our quarters. We sneeze trying to breathe air thick with smells of
bruised vegetation and chemical by-product and thousands of exhaled breaths.
Their first sneeze frightens Dushwha into tears. We clap hands over our ears to
try, and fail, to screen out many voices talking and walls groaning and leaves
rustling and machinery whining in the distance. Bimniwha tries to yell over it
all, and Kelenli must stop and soothe her before she will try speaking normally
again. I duck and yelp in fear of the birds that sit in a nearby bush, and I am the
calmest of us.
What settles us, at last, is finally having the chance to gaze upon the full
beauty of the amethyst plutonic fragment. It is an awesome thing, pulsing with
the slow flux of magic as it towers over the city-node’s heart. Every node of Syl
Anagist has adapted in unique ways to suit its local climate. We have heard of
nodes in the desert where buildings are grown from hardened giant succulents;
nodes on the ocean built by coral organisms engineered to grow and die on
command. (Life is sacred in Syl Anagist, but sometimes death is necessary.) Our
node—the node of the amethyst—was once an old-growth forest, so I cannot
help thinking that something of ancient trees’ majesty is in the great crystal.
Surely this makes it more stately and strong than other fragments of the
machine! This feeling is completely irrational, but I look at my fellow tuners’
faces as we gaze at the amethyst fragment, and I see the same love there.
(We have been told stories of how the world was different, long ago. Once,
cities were not just dead themselves, stone and metal jungles that did not grow or
change, but they were actually deadly, poisoning soil and making water
undrinkable and even changing the weather by their very existence. Syl Anagist
is better, but we feel nothing when we think of the city-node itself. It is nothing
to us—buildings full of people we cannot truly understand, going about business
that should matter but does not. The fragments, though? We hear their voices.
We sing their magic song. The amethyst is part of us, and we it.)
“I’m going to show you three things during this trip,” Kelenli says, once
we’ve gazed at the amethyst enough to calm down. “These things have been
vetted by the conductors, if that matters to you.” She makes a show of eying
Remwha as she says this, since he was the one who made the biggest stink about
having to go on this trip. Remwha affects a bored sigh. They are both excellent
actors, before our watching guards.
Then Kelenli leads us forward again. It’s such a contrast, her behavior and
ours. She walks easily with head high, ignoring everything that isn’t important,
radiating confidence and calm. Behind her, we start-and-stop-and-scurry, all
timid clumsiness, distracted by everything. People stare, but I don’t think it’s
actually our whiteness that they find so strange. I think we just look like fools.
I have always been proud, and their amusement stings, so I straighten and try
to walk as Kelenli does, even though this means ignoring many of the wonders
and potential threats around me. Gaewha notices, too, and tries to emulate both
of us. Remwha sees what we are doing and looks annoyed, sending a little ripple
through the ambient: We will never be anything but strange to them.
I answer in an angry basso push-wave throb. This is not about them.
He sighs but begins emulating me, too. The others follow suit.
We have traveled to the southernmost quartent of the city-node, where the air
is redolent with faint sulfur smells. Kelenli explains that the smell is because of
the waste reclamation plants, which grow thicker here where sewers bring the
city’s gray water near the surface. The plants make the water clean again and
spread thick, healthy foliage over the streets to cool them, as they were designed
to do—but not even the best genegineers can stop plants that live on waste from
smelling a bit like what they eat.
“Do you mean to show us the waste infrastructure?” Remwha asks Kelenli. “I
feel more contextual already.”
Kelenli snorts. “Not exactly.”
She turns a corner, and then there is a dead building before us. We all stop
and stare. Ivy wends up this building’s walls, which are made of some sort of red
clay pressed into bricks, and around some of its pillars, which are marble. Aside
from the ivy, though, nothing of the building is alive. It’s squat and low and
shaped like a rectangular box. We can sess no hydrostatic pressure supporting its
walls; it must use force and chemical fastenings to stay upright. The windows
are just glass and metal, and I can see no nematocysts growing over their
surfaces. How do they keep safe anything inside? The doors are dead wood,
polished dark red-brown and carved with ivy motifs; pretty, surprisingly. The
steps are a dull tawny-white sand suspension. (Centuries before, people called
this concrete.) The whole thing is stunningly obsolete—yet intact, and
functional, and thus fascinating for its uniqueness.
“It’s so … symmetrical,” says Bimniwha, curling her lip a little.
“Yes,” says Kelenli. She’s stopped before this building to let us take it in.
“Once, though, people thought this sort of thing was beautiful. Let’s go.” She
starts forward.
Remwha stares after her. “What, inside? Is that thing structurally sound?”
“Yes. And yes, we’re going inside.” Kelenli pauses and looks back at him,
perhaps surprised to realize that at least some of his reticence wasn’t an act.
Through the ambient, I feel her touch him, reassure him. Remwha is more of an
ass when he is afraid or angry, so her comfort helps; the spiky jitter of his nerves
begins to ease. She still has to play the game, however, for our many observers.
“Though I suppose you could stay outside, if you wanted.”
She glances at her two guards, the brown man and woman who stay near her.
They have not kept back from our group, unlike the other guards of whom we
catch glimpses now and again, skirting our periphery.
Woman Guard scowls back at her. “You know better.”
“It was a thought.” Kelenli shrugs then, and gestures with her head toward
the building, speaking to Remwha now. “Sounds like you don’t actually have a
choice. But I promise you, the building won’t collapse on your head.”
We move to follow. Remwha walks a little slower, but eventually he comes
along, too.
A holo-sign writes itself in the air before us as we cross the threshold. We
have not been taught to read, and the letters of this sign look strange in any case,
but then a booming voice sounds over the building’s audio system: “Welcome to
the story of enervation!” I have no idea what this means. Inside, the building
smells … wrong. Dry and dusty, the air stale as if there’s nothing taking in its
carbon dioxide. There are other people here, we see, gathered in the building’s
big open foyer or making their way up its symmetrical twin curving stairs,
peering in fascination at the panels of carved wooden decoration which line each
stair. They don’t look at us, distracted by the greater strangeness of our environs.
But then, Remwha says, “What is that?”
His unease, prickling along our network, makes us all look at him. He stands
frowning, tilting his head from one side to the other.
“What is—” I start to ask, but then I hear? sess? it too.
“I’ll show you,” says Kelenli.
She leads us deeper into the boxy building. We walk past display crystals,
each holding preserved within itself a piece of incomprehensible—but obviously
old—equipment. I make out a book, a coil of wire, and a bust of a person’s head.
Placards near each item explain its importance, I think, but I cannot fathom any
explanation sufficient to make sense of it all.
Then Kelenli leads us onto a wide balcony with an old-fashioned ornate-
wood railing. (This is especially horrifying. We are to rely on a rail made from a
dead tree, unconnected to the city alarm grid or anything, for safety. Why not
just grow a vine that would catch us if we fell? Ancient times were horrible.)
And there we stand above a huge open chamber, gazing down at something that
belongs in this dead place as much as we do. Which is to say, not at all.
My first thought is that it is another plutonic engine—a whole one, not just a
fragment of a larger piece. Yes, there is the tall, imposing central crystal; there is
the socket from which it grows. This engine has even been activated; much of its
structure hovers, humming just a little, a few feet above the floor. But this is the
only part of the engine that makes sense to me. All around the central crystal
float longer, inward-curving structures; the whole of the design is somehow
floral, a stylized chrysanthemum. The central crystal glows a pale gold, and the
supporting crystals fade from green bases to white at the tips. Lovely, if
altogether strange.
Yet when I look at this engine with more than my eyes, and touch it with
nerves attuned to the perturbations of the earth, I gasp. Evil Death, the lattice of
magics created by the structure is magnificent! Dozens of silvery, threadlike
lines supporting one another; energies across spectra and forms all interlinked
and state-changing in what seems to be a chaotic, yet utterly controlled, order.
The central crystal flickers now and again, phasing through potentialities as I
watch. And it’s so small! I have never seen an engine so well constructed. Not
even the Plutonic Engine is this powerful or precise, for its size. If it had been
built as efficiently as this tiny engine, the conductors would never have needed
to create us.
And yet this structure makes no sense. There isn’t enough magic being fed
into the mini-engine to produce all the energy I detect here. And I shake my
head, but now I can hear what Remwha heard: a soft, insistent ringing. Multiple
tones, blending and haunting and making the little hairs on the back of my neck
rise … I look at Remwha, who nods, his expression tight.
This engine’s magics have no purpose that I can see, other than to look and
sound and be beautiful. And somehow—I shiver, understanding instinctively but
resisting because this contradicts everything I have learned from the laws of both
physics and arcanity—somehow this structure is generating more energy than it
consumes.
I frown at Kelenli, who’s watching me. “This should not exist,” I say. Words
only. I don’t know how else to articulate what I’m feeling. Shock. Disbelief?
Fear, for some reason. The Plutonic Engine is the most advanced creation of
geomagestry ever built. That is what the conductors have told us, over and over
again for all the years since we were decanted … and yet. This tiny, bizarre
engine, sitting half-forgotten in a dusty museum, is more advanced. And it seems
to have been built for no purpose other than beauty.
Why does this realization frighten me?
“But it does exist,” Kelenli says. She leans back against the railing, looking
lazily amused—but through the soft shimmering harmony of the structure on
display, I sess her ping on the ambient.
Think, she says without words. She watches me in particular. Her thinker.
I glance around at the others. As I do, I notice Kelenli’s guards again.
They’ve taken up positions on either end of the balcony, so that they can see the
corridor we came down as well as the display room. They both look bored.
Kelenli brought us here. Got the conductors to agree to bringing us here. Means
for us to see something in this ancient engine that her guards do not. What?
I step forward, putting my hands on the dead railing, and peer intently at the
thing as if that will help. What to conclude? It has the same fundamental
structure as other plutonic engines. Only its purpose is different—no, no. That’s
too simple an assessment. What’s different here is … philosophical. Attitudinal.
The Plutonic Engine is a tool. This thing? Is … art.
And then I understand. No one of Syl Anagist built this.
 I look at Kelenli. I must use words, but the conductors who hear the guards’
report should not be able to guess anything from it. “Who?”
She smiles, and my whole body tingles all over with the rush of something I
cannot name. I am her thinker, and she is pleased with me, and I have never been
happier.
“You,” she replies, to my utter confusion. Then she pushes away from the
railing. “I have much more to show you. Come.”

All things change during a Season.

—Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse two
 7
you’re planning ahead

YKKA IS MORE INCLINED TO adopt Maxixe and his people than you were
expecting. She’s not happy that Maxixe has an advanced case of ash lung—as
Lerna confirms after they’ve all had sponge baths and he’s given them a
preliminary examination. Nor does she like that four of his people have other
serious medical issues, ranging from fistulas to the complete lack of teeth, or that
Lerna says they’re all going to be touch and go on surviving refeeding. But, as
she informs those of you on her impromptu council, loudly so that anyone
listening will hear, she can put up with a lot from people who bring in extra
supplies, knowledge of the area, and precision orogeny that can help safeguard
the group against attack. And, she adds, Maxixe doesn’t have to live forever.
Long enough to help the comm will be enough for her.
She doesn’t add, Not like Alabaster, which is kind—or at least conspicuously
not-cruel—of her. It’s surprising that she respects your grief, and maybe it’s also
a sign that she is beginning to forgive you. It’ll be good to have a friend again.
Friends. Again.
That’s not enough, of course. Nassun is alive and you’ve more or less
recovered from your post-Gate coma, so now it becomes a struggle, daily, to
remember why you’re staying with Castrima. It helps, sometimes, to go through
the reasons for staying. For Nassun’s future, that’s one, so that you can have
somewhere to shelter her once you’ve found her again. Because you can’t do it
alone is the second reason—and you can’t rightly let Tonkee come with you
anymore, however willing she might be. Not with your orogeny compromised;
the long journey back south would be a death sentence for both of you. Hoa isn’t
going to be able to help you get dressed, or cook food, or do any of the other
things one needs two good hands for. And Reason Number Three, the most
important of the set: You don’t know where to go anymore. Hoa has confirmed
that Nassun is on the move, and has been traveling away from the site of the
sapphire since you opened the Obelisk Gate. It was too late to find her before
you ever woke up.
 But there is hope. In the small hours of one morning after Hoa has taken the
stone burden of your left breast from you, he says quietly, “I think I know where
she’s going. If I’m right, she’ll stop soon.” He sounds uncertain. No, not
uncertain. Troubled.
You sit on a rocky outcrop some ways from the encampment, recovering
from the … excision. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it would be.
You pulled off your clothing layers to bare the stoned breast. He put a hand on it
and it came away from your body, cleanly, into his palm. You asked why he
didn’t do that for your arm and he said, “I do what’s most comfortable for you.”
Then he lifted your breast to his lips and you decided to become fascinated by
the flat, slightly roughened cautery of stone over the space where your breast
was. It aches a little, but you’re not sure whether this is the pain of amputation or
something more existential.
(Three bites, it takes him, to eat the breast that Nassun liked best. You’re
perversely proud to feed someone else with it.)
As you awkwardly pull undershirts and shirts back on with one arm—
stuffing one side of your bra with the lightest undershirt so it won’t slip off—you
probe after that hint of unease that you heard in Hoa’s voice earlier. “You know
something.”
Hoa doesn’t answer at first. You think you’re going to have to remind him
that this is a partnership, that you’re committed to catching the Moon and ending
this endless Season, that you care about him but he can’t keep hiding things
from you like this—and then he finally says, “I believe Nassun seeks to open the
Obelisk Gate herself.”
Your reaction is visceral and immediate. Pure fear. It probably isn’t what you
should feel. Logic would dictate disbelief that a ten-year-old girl can manage a
feat that you barely accomplished. But somehow, maybe because you remember
the feel of your little girl thrumming with angry blue power, and you knew in
that instant that she understood the obelisks better than you ever will, you have
no trouble believing Hoa’s core premise—that your little girl is bigger than you
thought.
“It will kill her,” you blurt.
“Very likely, yes.”
Oh, Earth. “But you can track her again? You lost her after Castrima.”
“Yes, now that she is attuned to an obelisk.”
Again, though, that odd hesitation is in his voice. Why? Why would it bother
him that—Oh. Oh, rusty burning Earth. Your voice shakes as you understand.
“Which means that any stone eater can ‘perceive’ her now. Is that what you’re
saying?” Castrima all over again. Ruby Hair and Butter Marble and Ugly Dress,
may you never see those parasites again. Fortunately, Hoa killed most of them.
“Your kind get interested in us then, right? When we start using obelisks, or
when we’re close to being able to.”
“Yes.” Inflectionless, that one soft word, but you know him by now.
“Earthfires. One of you is after her.”
You didn’t think stone eaters were capable of sighing, but sure enough the
sound emerges from Hoa’s chest. “The one you call Gray Man.”
Cold runs through you. But yes. You’d guessed already, really. There have
been, what, three orogenes in the world lately who mastered connecting to the
obelisks? Alabaster and you and now Nassun. Uche, maybe, briefly—and maybe
there was even a stone eater lurking about Tirimo back then. Rusting bastard
must be terribly disappointed that Uche died by filicide rather than stoning.
Your jaw tightens as your mouth tastes of bile. “He’s manipulating her.” To
activate the Gate and transform herself into stone, so that she can be eaten.
“That’s what he tried to do at Castrima, force Alabaster, or me, or—rust it, or
Ykka, any of us, to try to do something beyond our ability so we might turn
ourselves into—” You put a hand on the stone marker of your breast.
“There have always been those who use despair and desperation as
weapons.” This is delivered softly, as if in shame.
Suddenly you’re furious with yourself, and your impotence. Knowing that
you’re the real target of your own anger doesn’t stop you from taking it out on
him. “Seems to me all of you do that!”
Hoa has positioned himself to gaze out at the dull red horizon, a statue paying
homage to nostalgia in pensive shadowed lines. He does not turn, but you hear
hurt in his voice. “I haven’t lied to you.”
“No, you’ve just withheld the truth so much it’s the same fucking thing!”
You rub your eyes. Had to take the goggles off to put your shirt back on, and
now you’ve got ash in them. “You know what, just—I don’t want to hear
anything else right now. I need to rest.” You get to your feet. “Take me back.”
His hand is abruptly extended in your direction. “One more thing, Essun.”
“I told you—”
“Please. You need to know this.” He waits until you settle into a fuming
silence. Then he says, “Jija is dead.”
You freeze.
In this moment I remind myself of why I continue to tell this story through your
eyes rather than my own: because, outwardly, you’re too good at hiding
yourself. Your face has gone blank, your gaze hooded. But I know you. I know
you. Here is what’s inside you.

You surprise yourself by being surprised. Surprised, that is, and not angry, or
thwarted, or sad. Just … surprised. But that is because your first thought, after
relief that Nassun’s safe now, is …
Isn’t she?
And then you surprise yourself by being afraid. You aren’t sure of what, but
it’s a stark, sour thing in your mouth. “How?” you ask.
Hoa says, “Nassun.”
The fear increases. “She couldn’t have lost control of her orogeny, she hasn’t
done that since she was five—”
“It was not orogeny. And it was intentional.”
There, at last: the foreshock of a Rifting-level shake, inside you. It takes you
a moment to say aloud, “She killed him? On purpose?”
“Yes.”
You fall silent then, dazed, troubled. Hoa’s hand is still extended toward you.
An offer of answers. You aren’t sure you want to know, but … but you take his
hand anyway. Perhaps it’s for comfort. You don’t imagine that his hand folds
about your own and squeezes, just a little, in a way that makes you feel better.
Still he waits. You’re very, very glad for his consideration.
“Is he … Where is,” you begin, when you feel ready. You’re not ready. “Is
there a way I can go there?”
“There?”
You’re pretty sure he knows where you mean. He’s just making sure you
know what you’re asking for.
You swallow hard and try to reason it out. “They were in the Antarctics. Jija
didn’t keep her on the road forever. She had somewhere safe, time to get
stronger.” A lot stronger. “I can hold my breath underground, if you … Take me
to where she w—” But no. That’s not really where you want to go. Stop dancing
around it. “Take me to where Jija is. To … to where he died.”
Hoa doesn’t move for perhaps half a minute. You’ve noticed this about him.
He takes varying amounts of time to respond to conversational cues. Sometimes
his words nearly overlap yours when he replies, and sometimes you think he
hasn’t heard you before he finally gets around to replying. You don’t think he’s
thinking during that time, or anything. You think it just doesn’t mean anything to
him—one second or ten, now or later. He heard you. He’ll get around to it
eventually.
In token of which, at last, he blurs a bit, though you see the slowness of the
end of the gesture as he puts his other hand over yours as well, sandwiching you
between his hard palms. The pressure of both hands increases until the grip is
quite firm. Not uncomfortable, but still. “Close your eyes.”
He’s never suggested this before. “Why?”
He takes you down. It’s further down than you’ve ever been before, and it
isn’t instantaneous this time. You gasp inadvertently—somehow—and thus
discover that you don’t need to hold your breath after all. As the dark gets
darker, it brightens with flashes of red, and then for just a moment you blur
through molten reds and oranges and catch the most fleeting glimpse of a
wavering open space where something in the distance is bursting apart in a
shower of semiliquid glowing chunks—and then there is black around you again,
and then you stand on open ground beneath a thinly clouded sky.
“That’s why,” Hoa says.
“Rusty flaking fuck!” You try to yank your hand free and fail. “Shit, Hoa!”
Hoa’s hands stop pressing so hard on yours, so that you can slip free. You
stagger a few feet away and then clap hands over yourself, checking for injury.
You’re fine—not burned to death, not crushed by the pressure as you should
have been, not suffocated, not even shaken up. Much.
You straighten and rub your face. “Okay. I’m really going to have to
remember that stone eaters don’t say anything without reason. Never wanted to
actually see the Fire-Under-Earth.”
But you’re here now, standing atop a hill that is itself on some kind of
plateau. The sky is your place-marker. It’s later in the morning here than it was
where you were—a little after dawn, instead of predawn. The sun is actually
visible, though thin through the scrim of ash clouds overhead. (You surprise
yourself by feeling an ache of longing at the sight.) But the fact that you can see
it means that you’re much farther from the Rifting than you were a few moments
ago. You glance to the west, and the faint shimmer of a dark blue obelisk in the
distance confirms your guess. This is where, a month or so ago when you opened
the Obelisk Gate, you felt Nassun.
(That way. She’s gone that way. But that way lies thousands of square miles
of the Stillness.)
You turn to find that you’re standing amid a small cluster of wooden
buildings positioned at the top of the hill, including one storeshack on stilts, a
few lean-tos, and what look like dormitories or classroom buildings. All of it is
surrounded, however, by a neat, precisely level fence of columnar basalt. That an
orogene has made this, harnessing the slow explosion of the great volcano
beneath your feet, is as plain to you as the sun in the sky. But equally obvious is
the fact that the compound is empty. There’s no one in sight, and the
reverberations of footprints on the ground are farther away, beyond the fence.
Curious, you walk to a break in the basalt fence, where a pathway that is half
dirt and half cobbles wends down. At the foot of the hill is a village, occupying
the rest of the plateau. The village could be any comm anywhere. You make out
houses in varying shapes, most with still-growing housegreens, several standing
storecaches, what looks like a bathhouse, a kiln shed. The people moving among
the buildings don’t glance up to notice you, and why would they? It’s a lovely
day, here where the sun still mostly shines. They’ve got fields to tend and—are
those little rowboats tied to one of the watchtowers?—trips to the nearby sea to
organize. This compound, whatever it is, is unimportant to them.
You turn away from the village, and that’s when you spot the crucible.
It’s near the edge of the compound, elevated a little above the rest of it,
though visible from where you are. When you climb the path to look into the
crucible bowl, which is marked out in cobbles and brick, it’s old habit to thrust
your senses into the ground to find the nearest marked stone. Not far, only
maybe five or six feet down. You search its surface and find the faint pressure
indentations of a chisel, maybe a hammer. FOUR. It’s too easy; in your day the
stones were marked with paint and numbers, which made them less distinctive.
Still, the stone is small enough that, yes, anyone below a four-ringer would have
trouble finding and identifying it. They’ve got the details of the training wrong,
but the basics are spot-on.
“This can’t be the Antarctic Fulcrum,” you say, crouching to finger one of
the stones of the ring. Just pebbles instead of the beautiful tile mosaic you
remember, but again, they’ve got the idea.
Hoa’s still standing where you emerged from the ground, hands still
positioned to press down on yours, perhaps for the return trip. He doesn’t
answer, but then you’re mostly talking to yourself.
“I always heard that Antarctic was small,” you continue, “but this is nothing.
This is a camp.” There’s no Ring Garden. No Main building. Also, you’ve heard
that the Arctic and Antarctic Fulcrums were lovely, despite their size and remote
location. That makes sense; the Fulcrum’s beauty was all that official, state-
sanctioned orogene-kind ever had to show for itself. This sorry collection of
shacks doesn’t fit the ideology. Also—“It’s on a volcano. And too close to those
stills down the hill.” That village isn’t Yumenes, surrounded on all sides by node
maintainers and with the added protection of the most powerful senior orogenes.
One overwrought grit’s tantrum could turn this whole region into a crater.
“It isn’t the Antarctic Fulcrum,” Hoa says. His voice is usually soft, but he’s
turned away now, and that makes him softer. “That’s farther to the west, and it
has been purged. No orogenes live there anymore.”
Of course it’s been purged. You set your jaw against sorrow. “So this is
somebody’s idea of homage. A survivor?” Inadvertently you find another marker
underground—a small round pebble, maybe fifty feet down. NINE is written on it,
in ink. You have no trouble reading it. Shaking your head, you rise and turn to
explore the compound further.
Then you stop, tensing, as a man limps out of one of the dormitory-looking
buildings. He stops, too, staring at you in surprise. “Who the rust are you?” he
asks, in a noticeable Antarctic drawl.
Your awareness plummets into the earth—and then you wrench it back up.
Stupid, because remember? Orogeny will kill you? Also, the man isn’t even
armed. He’s fairly young, probably only in his twenties despite an already-
receding hairline. The limp is an easy thing, and one of his shoes is built higher
than the other—ah. The village handyman, probably, come to do some basic
caretaking on buildings that might again be needed someday.
“Uh, hi,” you stammer. Then you fall silent, not sure what to say from there.
“Hi.” The man sees Hoa and flinches, then stares with the open shock of
someone who’s only heard of stone eaters in lorist tales, and maybe didn’t quite
believe them. Only belatedly does he seem to remember you, frowning a little at
the ash on your hair and clothing, but it’s clear you’re not as impressive a sight.
“Tell me that’s a statue,” he says to you. Then he laughs a little, nervously.
“Except it wasn’t here when I came up the hill. Uh, hi, I guess?”
Hoa doesn’t bother replying, though you see his eyes have shifted to watch
the man instead of you. You steel yourself and step forward. “Sorry to alarm
you,” you say. “You from this comm?”
 The man finally focuses on you. “Uh, yeah. And you’re not.” Instead of
showing unease, however, he blinks. “You another Guardian?”
Your skin prickles all over. For an instant you want to shout no, and then
sense reasserts itself. You smile. They always smile. “Another?”
The young man’s looking you up and down now, maybe suspicious. You
don’t care, as long as he answers your questions and doesn’t attack you. “Yeah,”
he says, after a moment. “We found the two dead ones after the children left on
that training trip.” His lip curls, just a little. You’re not sure whether he doesn’t
believe the children have gone off training, whether he’s really upset about “the
two dead ones,” or whether that’s just the usual lip-curl that people wear when
they talk about roggas, since it’s obvious that’s what the children in question
must be. If Guardians were here. “Headwoman did say there might be other
Guardians along someday. The three we had all popped up out of nowhere, after
all, at different times down the years. You’re just a late one, I guess.”
“Ah.” It is surprisingly easy to pretend to be a Guardian. Just keep smiling,
and never offer information. “And when did the others leave on their … training
trip?”
“About a month ago.” The young man shifts, getting comfortable, and turns
to gaze after the sapphire obelisk in the distance. “Schaffa said they were going
far enough away that we wouldn’t feel any aftershakes of what the kids did.
Guess that’s pretty far.”
Schaffa. The smile freezes on your face. You can’t help hissing it. “Schaffa.”
The young man frowns at you. Definitely suspicious now. “Yeah. Schaffa.”
It can’t be. He’s dead. “Tall, black hair, icewhite eyes, strange accent?”
The young man relaxes somewhat. “Oh. You know him, then?”
“Yes, very well.” So easy to smile. Harder to wrestle down the urge to
scream, to grab Hoa, to demand that he plunge you both into the earth now, now,
now, so you can go and rescue your daughter. Hardest of all not to fall to the
ground and curl into a ball, trying to clench the hand you no longer have but that
hurts; Evil Earth, it aches like it’s broken all over again, phantom pain so real
your eyes prickle with pain tears.
Imperial Orogenes do not lose control. You haven’t been a blackjacket for
going on twenty years, and you lose control all the rusting time—but
nevertheless the old discipline helps you pull yourself together. Nassun, your
baby, is in the hands of a monster. You need to understand how this happened.
“Very well,” you repeat. No one will think repetition strange, from a
Guardian. “Can you tell me about one of his charges? Midlatter girl, brown and
willowy, curly hair, gray eyes—”
“Nassun, right. Jija’s girl.” The young man relaxes completely now, not
noticing that you’ve tensed that much more. “Evil Earth, I hope Schaffa kills her
while they’re on that trip.”
The threat is not to you, but your awareness dips again anyway, before you
drag it back. Ykka’s right: You really do need to stop defaulting to kill
everything. At least your smile hasn’t faltered. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I think she’s the one who did it … Rust, could’ve been any of ’em,
though. That girl’s just the one who gave me the shivers the most.” His jaw
tightens as he finally notices the sharp edges of your smile. But that, too, isn’t
something that anyone familiar with Guardians would question. He just looks
away.
“‘Did it’?” you ask.
“Oh. Guess you wouldn’t know. Come on, I’ll show you.”
He turns and limps toward the northern end of the compound. You follow,
after a moment’s exchanged glance with Hoa. There’s another slight rise here,
culminating in a flat area that’s clearly been used before for stargazing or just
staring at the horizon; you can see much of the surrounding countryside, which
still shows shocking amounts of green beneath a relatively recent and still-thin
layer of whitening ash.
But here, though, is something strange: a pile of rubble. You think at first it’s
a glass recycling pile; Jija used to keep one of those near the house back in
Tirimo, and neighbors would dump their broken glasses and such there for him
to use in glassknife hilts. Some of this looks like higher-quality stuff than just
glass; maybe someone’s tossed in some unworked semiprecious stone. All
jumbled colors, tan and gray and a bit of blue, but rather a lot of red. But there’s
a pattern to it, something that makes you pause and tilt your head and try to take
in the whole of what you’re seeing. When you do, you notice that the colors and
arrangement of stones at the nearer edge of the pile vaguely resemble a mosaic.
Boots, if someone had sculpted boots out of pebbles and then knocked them
over. Then those would be pants, except there’s the off-white of bone among
them and—
No.
Fire. Under. Earth.
No. Your Nassun didn’t do this, she couldn’t have, she—
She did.
The young man sighs, reading your face. You’ve forgotten to smile, but even
a Guardian would be sobered by this. “Took us a while to realize what we were
seeing, too,” he says. “Maybe this is something you understand.” He glances at
you hopefully.
You just shake your head, and the man sighs.
“Well. It was just before they all left. One morning we hear something like
thunder. Go outside and the obelisk—big blue one that had been lurking around
for a few weeks, you know how they are—is gone. Then later that day there’s
the same loud ch-kow—” He claps his hands as he imitates the sound. You
manage not to jump. “And it’s back. And then Schaffa suddenly tells the
headwoman he’s got to take the kids away. No explanation for the obelisk stuff.
No mention that Nida and Umber—those are the other two, the Guardians who
used to run this place with Schaffa—are dead. Umber’s head is staved in. Nida
…” He shakes his head. The look on his face is pure revulsion. “The back of her
head is … But Schaffa doesn’t say anything. Just takes the kids away. Lot of us
are starting to hope he never brings them back.”
Schaffa. That’s the part you should focus on. That’s what matters, not what
was but what is … but you can’t take your eyes off Jija. Burning rust, Jija. Jija.

I wish I were still flesh, for you. I wish that I were still a tuner, so that I could
speak to you through temperatures and pressures and reverberations of the earth.
Words are too much, too indelicate, for this conversation. You were fond of Jija,
after all, to the degree that your secrets allowed. You thought he loved you—and
he did, to the degree that your secrets allowed. It’s just that love and hate aren’t
mutually exclusive, as I first learned so very long ago.
I’m sorry.

You make yourself say, “Schaffa won’t be coming back.” Because you need to
find him and kill him—but even through your fear and horror, reason asserts
itself. This strange imitation Fulcrum, which is not the true Fulcrum that he
should have brought Nassun to. These children, gathered and not slaughtered.
Nassun, openly controlling an obelisk well enough to do this … and yet Schaffa
has not killed her. Something’s going on here that you’re not getting.
“Tell me more about this man,” you say, lifting your chin toward the pile of
jumbled jewels. Your ex-husband.
The young man shrugs in an audible stirring of cloth. “Oh, right, uh. So, his
name was Jija Resistant Jekity.” Because the young man is sighing down at the
pile of rubble, you don’t think he sees you twitch at the wrongness of the comm
name. “New to the comm, a knapper. We got too many men, but we needed a
knapper bad, so when he turned up, we basically would’ve taken him in as long
as he wasn’t old or sick or obviously crazy. You know?” He shrugs. “The girl
seemed all right when they first got here. Wouldn’t know her for one of them,
she was so proper and polite. Somebody raised her right.” You smile again.
Perfect tight-jawed Guardian smile. “We only knew what she was because Jija
had come here, see. Heard the rumors about how roggas could become … un-
roggas, I guess. We get a lot of visitors who ask about that.”
You frown and nearly look away from Jija. Un-roggas?
“Not that it ever happened.” The young man sighs and adjusts his cane for
comfort. “And not that we’d have taken in a kid who used to be one of them,
right? What if that kid grew up and had kids who were wrong, too? Got to breed
the taint out somehow. Anyway, the girl minded her father well enough until a
few weeks ago. Neighbors said they heard him shouting at her one night, and
then she moved up here to the compound with the others. You could see how the
change sort of … untied Jija. He started talking to himself about how she wasn’t
his daughter anymore. Cursing out loud, now and again. Hitting things—walls
and such—when he thought you weren’t looking.
“And the girl, she pulled away. Can’t say I blame her; everybody was on
eggshells around him for that while. Always the quiet ones, right? So I saw her
hanging around Schaffa more. Like a duckling, always right there in his shadow.
Whenever he’d hold still, she’d take his hand. And he—” The young man eyes
you warily. “Don’t usually see you lot being affectionate. But he seemed to think
the world of her. I hear he nearly killed Jija when the man came at her, actually.”
The hand that you don’t have twinges again, but it is more tentative this time
and not the throb of before. Because … he wouldn’t have had to break Nassun’s
hand, would he? No, no, no. You did that to her yourself. And Uche was another
broken hand, inflicted by Jija. Schaffa protected her from Jija. Schaffa was
affectionate with her, as you struggled to be. And now everything inside you
shudders at the thought that follows, and it takes the willpower that has
destroyed cities to keep this shudder internal, but …
But …
How much more welcome would a Guardian’s conditional, predictable love
have been to Nassun, after her parents’ unconditional love had betrayed her
again and again?
You close your eyes for a moment, because you don’t think Guardians cry.
With an effort, you say, “What is this place?”
He looks at you in surprise, then glances at Hoa, a ways behind you. “This is
the comm of Jekity, Guardian. Though Schaffa and the others—” He gestures
around you, at the compound. “They called this part of the comm ‘Found
Moon.’”
Of course they did. And of course Schaffa already knew the secrets of the
world that you’ve paid in flesh and blood to learn.
In your silence, the young man regards you thoughtfully. “I can introduce
you to the headwoman. I know she’ll be glad to have Guardians around again.
Good help against raiders.”
You’re looking at Jija again. You see one piece of jewel in the perfect
likeness of a pinky finger. You know that pinky finger. You kissed that pinky
finger—
It’s too much, you can’t do this, you’ve got to get a grip, get out of here
before you break down any further. “I—I n-need—” Deep breath for calm. “I
need some time to consider the situation. Would you go and let your headwoman
know I’ll come pay my respects shortly?”
The young man side-gazes you for a moment, but you know now that it’s not
a bad thing if you seem a little off. He’s used to Guardian-style offness. Perhaps
because of this, he nods and shuffles back awkwardly. “Can I ask you a
question?”
No. “Yes?”
He bites his lip. “What’s going on? It feels like … Nothing that’s happening
is normal lately. I mean, it’s a Season, but even that feels wrong. Guardians not
taking roggas to the Fulcrum. Roggas doing things nobody’s ever heard of them
doing.” He chin-points toward the pile of Jija. “Whatever the rust went on up
north. Even those things in the sky, the obelisks … It’s all … People are talking.
Saying maybe the world’s not going to go back to normal. Ever.”
You’re staring at Jija, but you’re thinking of Alabaster. Don’t know why.
“One person’s normal is another person’s Shattering.” Your face aches from
smiling. There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe, and you’re
terrible at it. “Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but
not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.”
He stares at you for a long, vaguely horrified moment. Then he mumbles
something and finally goes away, skirting wide around Hoa. Good riddance.
You crouch beside Jija. He is beautiful like this, all jewels and colors. He is
monstrous like this. Beneath the colors you perceive the crazed every-which-
wayness of the magic threads in him. It’s wholly different from what happened
to your arm and your breast. He has been smashed apart and rearranged at
random, on an infinitesimal level.
“What have I done?” you ask. “What have I made her?”
Hoa’s toes have appeared in your peripheral vision. “Strong,” he suggests.
You shake your head. Nassun was that on her own.
“Alive.”
You close your eyes again. It’s the only thing that should matter, that you’ve
brought three babies into the world and this one, this precious last one, is still
breathing. And yet.
I made her me. Earth eat us both, I made her into me.
And maybe that’s why Nassun is still alive. But it’s also, you realize as you
stare at what she’s done to Jija, and as you realize you can’t even get revenge on
him for Uche because your daughter has done that for you … why you are
terrified of her.
And there it is—the thing you haven’t faced in all this time, the kirkhusa with
ash and blood on its muzzle. Jija owed you a debt of pain for your son, but you
owe Nassun, in turn. You didn’t save her from Jija. You haven’t been there
when she’s needed you, here at the literal end of the world. How dare you
presume to protect her? Gray Man and Schaffa; she has found her own, better,
protectors. She has found the strength to protect herself.
You are so very proud of her. And you don’t dare go anywhere near her, ever
again.
Hoa’s heavy, hard hand presses down on your good shoulder. “It isn’t wise
for us to stay here.”
You shake your head. Let the people of this comm come. Let them realize
you aren’t a Guardian. Let one of them finally notice how alike you and Nassun
look. Let them bring their crossbows and slingshots and—
Hoa’s hand curves to grip your shoulder, vise-tight. You know it’s coming
and still you don’t bother to brace yourself as he drags you into the earth, back
north. You keep your eyes open on purpose this time, and the sight doesn’t
bother you. The fires within the earth are nothing to what you’re feeling right
now, failed mother that you are.
The two of you emerge from the ground in a quiet part of the encampment,
though it’s near a small stand of trees that a lot of people, by the stink, have
apparently been using for a pisser. When Hoa lets you go, you start to walk away
and then stop again. Your thoughts have gone blank. “I don’t know what to do.”
Silence from Hoa. Stone eaters don’t bother with unnecessary movement or
words, and Hoa has already made his intentions clear. You imagine Nassun
talking with Gray Man, and you laugh softly, because he seems more animate
and talkative than most of his kind. Good. He’s a good stone eater, for her.
“I don’t know where to go,” you say. You’ve been sleeping in Lerna’s tent
lately, but that isn’t what you mean. Inside you, there’s a clump of emptiness. A
raw hole. “I don’t have anything left now.”
Hoa says, “You have comm and kin. You’ll have a home, once you reach
Rennanis. You have your life.”
Do you really have these things? The dead have no wishes, says stonelore.
You think of Tirimo, where you didn’t want to wait for death to come for you,
and so you killed the comm. Death is always with you. Death is you.
Hoa says to your slumped back, “I can’t die.”
You frown, jarred out of melancholy by this apparent non sequitur. Then you
understand: He’s saying you won’t ever lose him. He will not crumble away like
Alabaster. You can’t ever be surprised by the pain of Hoa’s loss the way you
were with Corundum or Innon or Alabaster or Uche, or now Jija. You can’t hurt
Hoa in any way that matters.
“It’s safe to love you,” you murmur, in startled realization.
“Yes.”
Surprisingly, this eases the knot of silence in your chest. Not much, but …
but it helps.
“How do you do it?” you ask. It’s hard to imagine. Not being able to die even
when you want to, even as everything you know and care about falters and fails.
Having to go on, no matter what. No matter how tired you are.
“Move forward,” Hoa says.
“What?”
“Move. Forward.”
And then he is gone, into the earth. Nearby, somewhere, if you need him.
Right now, though, he’s right: you don’t.
Can’t think. You’re thirsty, and hungry and tired besides. It stinks in this part
of camp. The stump of your arm hurts. Your heart hurts more.
You take a step, though, toward the camp. And then another. And another.
Forward.
2490: Antarctics near eastern coast; unnamed farming comm twenty miles
from Jekity City. Initially unknown event caused everyone in the comm to
turn to glass. (?? Is this right? Glass, not ice? Find tertiary sources.) Later,
headman’s second husband found alive in Jekity City; discovered to be
rogga. Under intensive questioning by comm militia, he admitted to
somehow doing the deed. Claimed that it was the only way to stop the
Jekity volcano from erupting, though no eruption signs were observed.
Reports indicate the man’s hands were also stone. Questioning interrupted
by a stone eater, who killed seventeen militia members and took rogga
into earth; both vanished.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 8
Nassun underground

THE WHITE STAIR WINDS DOWNWARD for quite some while. The tunnel walls are
close and claustrophobic, but the air somehow isn’t stale. Just being free of the
ashfall is novelty enough, but Nassun notices that there’s not much dust, either.
That’s weird, isn’t it? All of this is weird.
“Why isn’t there dust?” Nassun asks as they walk. She speaks in hushed
tones at first, but gradually she relaxes—a little. It’s still a deadciv ruin, after all,
and she’s heard lots of lorist tales about how dangerous such places can be.
“Why do the lights still work? That door we came through back there, why did it
still work?”
“I haven’t a clue, little one.” Schaffa now precedes her down the steps, on the
theory that anything dangerous should encounter him first. Nassun can’t see his
face, and must gauge his mood by his broad shoulders. (It bothers her that she
does this, watching him constantly for shifts of mood or warnings of tension. It
is another thing she learned from Jija. She cannot seem to shed it with Schaffa,
or anyone else.) He’s tired, she can see, but otherwise well. Satisfied, perhaps,
that they have made it here. Wary, of what they might find—but that makes two
of them. “With deadciv ruins, sometimes the answer is simply ‘because.’”
“Do you … remember anything, Schaffa?”
A shrug, not as nonchalant as it should be. “Some. Flashes. The why, rather
than the what.”
“Then, why? Why do Guardians come here, during a Season? Why don’t
they just stay wherever they are, and help the comms they join the way you
helped Jekity?”
The stairs are ever so slightly too wide for Nassun’s stride, even when she
keeps to the more narrow inner bend. Periodically she has to stop and put both
feet on one step in order to rest, then trot to catch up. He is drumbeat-steady,
proceeding without her—but abruptly, just as she asks these questions, they
reach a landing within the stairwell. To Nassun’s great relief, Schaffa stops at
last, signaling that they can sit down and rest. She’s still soaked with sweat from
the frantic scrabble through the grass forest, though it has begun to dry now that
she’s moving slower. The first drink of water from her canteen is sweet, and the
floor feels comfortingly cool, though hard. She’s abruptly sleepy. Well, it is
night outside, up on the surface where grasshoppers or cicadas now cavort.
Schaffa rummages in his pack and hands her a slab of dried meat. She sighs
and begins the laborious process of gnawing on it. He smiles at her grumpiness,
and perhaps to soothe her, he finally answers her question.
“We leave during Seasons because we have nothing to offer to a comm, little
one. I cannot have children, for one thing, which makes me a less than ideal
community adoptee. However much I might contribute toward the survival of
any comm, its investment in me will return only short-term gains.” He shrugs.
“And without orogenes to tend, over time, we Guardians become … difficult to
live with.”
Because the things in their heads make them want magic all the time, she
realizes. And although orogenes make enough of the silver to spare, stills don’t.
What happens when a Guardian takes silver from a still? Maybe that’s why
Guardians leave—so no one will find out.
“How do you know you can’t have children?” she presses. This is maybe too
personal a question, but he has never minded her asking those. “Did you ever
try?”
He’s taking a drink from his canteen. When he lowers it, he looks bemused.
“It would be clearer to say that I should not,” he says. “Guardians carry the trait
of orogeny.”
“Oh.” Schaffa’s mother or father must have been an orogene! Or maybe his
grandparents? Anyway, the orogeny didn’t come out in him the way it has in
Nassun. His mother—she decides arbitrarily that it was his mother, for no
particular reason—never needed to train him, or teach him to lie, or break his
hand. “Lucky,” she murmurs.
He’s in the middle of raising the canteen again when he pauses. Something
flows over his face. She’s learned to read this look of his in particular, despite
the fact that it’s such a rare one. Sometimes he’s forgotten things he wishes he
could remember, but right now, he is remembering what he wishes he could
forget.
“Not so lucky.” He touches the nape of his neck. The bright, nerve-etched
network of searing light within him is still active—hurting him, driving at him,
trying to break him. At the center of that web is the shard of corestone that
someone put into him. For the first time, Nassun wonders how it was put into
him. She thinks about the long, ugly scar down the back of his neck, which she
thinks he keeps his hair long to cover. She shivers a little with the implications
of that scar.
“I don’t—” Nassun tries to drag her thoughts away from the image of Schaffa
screaming while someone cuts him. “I don’t understand Guardians. The other
kind of Guardian, I mean. I don’t … They’re awful.” And she cannot even begin
to imagine Schaffa being like them.
He doesn’t reply for a while, as they chew through their meal. Then, softly,
he says, “The details are lost to me, and the names, and most of the faces. But
the feelings remain, Nassun. I remember that I loved the orogenes to whom I was
Guardian—or at least, I believed that I loved them. I wanted them to be safe,
even if that meant inflicting small cruelties to hold the greater at bay. Anything, I
felt, was better than genocide.”
Nassun frowns. “What’s genocide?”
He smiles again, but it is sad. “If every orogene is hunted down and slain, and
if the neck of every orogene infant born thereafter is wrung, and if every one like
me who carries the trait is killed or effectively sterilized, and if even the notion
that orogenes are human is denied … that would be genocide. Killing a people,
down to the very idea of them as a people.”
“Oh.” Nassun feels queasy again, inexplicably. “But that’s …”
Schaffa inclines his head, acknowledging her unspoken But that’s what’s
been happening. “This is the task of the Guardians, little one. We prevent
orogeny from disappearing—because in truth, the people of the world would not
survive without it. Orogenes are essential. And yet because you are essential,
you cannot be permitted to have a choice in the matter. You must be tools—and
tools cannot be people. Guardians keep the tool … and to the degree possible,
while still retaining the tool’s usefulness, kill the person.”
Nassun stares back at him, understanding shifting within her like an out-of-
nowhere niner. It is the way of the world, but it isn’t. The things that happen to
orogenes don’t just happen. They’ve been made to happen, by the Guardians,
after years and years of work on their part. Maybe they whispered ideas into the
ears of every warlord or Leader, in the time before Sanze. Maybe they were even
there during the Shattering—inserting themselves into ragged, frightened
pockets of survivors to tell them who to blame for their misery, and how to find
them, and what to do with the culprits found.
Everybody thinks orogenes are so scary and powerful, and they are. Nassun
is pretty sure she could wipe out the Antarctics if she really wanted, though she
would probably need the sapphire to do it without dying. But despite all her
power, she’s still just a little girl. She has to eat and sleep like every other little
girl, among people if she hopes to keep eating and sleeping. People need other
people to live. And if she has to fight to live, against every person in every
comm? Against every song and every story and history and the Guardians and
the militia and Imperial law and stonelore itself? Against a father who could not
reconcile daughter with rogga? Against her own despair when she contemplates
the gargantuan task of simply trying to be happy?
What can orogeny do against something like that? Keep her breathing,
maybe. But breathing doesn’t always mean living, and maybe … maybe
genocide doesn’t always leave bodies.
And now she is more certain than ever that Steel was right.
She looks up at Schaffa. “Till the world burns.” It’s what he said to her, when
she told him what she meant to do with the Obelisk Gate.
Schaffa blinks, then smiles the tender, awful smile of a man who has always
known that love and cruelty are two faces of the same coin. He pulls her close
and kisses her forehead, and she hugs him tight, so very glad to have one parent,
at last, who loves her as he should.
“Till the world burns, little one,” he murmurs against her hair. “Of course.”

In the morning, they resume walking down the winding stair.

The first sign of change is the appearance of another railing on the other side
of the stairwell. The railing itself is made of strange stuff, bright gleaming metal
not marred at all by verdigris or tarnish. Now, though, there are twin railings,
and the stairwell widens enough that two people can walk abreast. Then the
winding stairwell begins to unwind—still descending at the same angle, but less
and less curved, until finally it extends straight ahead, into darkness.
After an hour or so of walking, the tunnel suddenly opens out, walls and roof
vanishing. Now they descend along a trail of lighted, linked stairs that are
completely unsupported, somehow, in open air. The stairs should not be
possible, held up as they are by nothing but the railing and, apparently, each
other—but there is no judder or creak as Nassun and Schaffa walk down.
Whatever the stuff that comprises the steps is, it’s much stronger than ordinary
stone.
 And now they’re descending into a massive cavern. It’s impossible to see
how large it is in the darkness, although shafts of illumination slant down from
occasional circles of cool white light that dot the cavern’s ceiling at irregular
intervals. The light illuminates … nothing. The cavern’s floor is a vast expanse
of empty space filled with irregular, lumpen piles of sand. But now that they are
within what Nassun once thought was an empty magma chamber, she can sess
things more clearly, and all at once she realizes just how wrong she was.
“This isn’t a magma chamber,” she tells Schaffa in an awed tone. “It wasn’t a
cavern at all when this city was built.”
“What?”
She shakes her head. “It wasn’t enclosed. It must have been … I don’t know?
Whatever’s left when a volcano blows up completely.”
“A crater?”
She nods quickly, excited with the realization. “It was open to the sky then.
People built the city in the crater. But then there was another eruption, right in
the middle of the city.” She points ahead of them, into the dark; the stairwell is
going right toward what she sesses is the epicenter of this ancient destruction.
But that can’t be right. Another eruption, depending on the type of lava,
should simply have destroyed the city and filled the old crater. Instead,
somehow, all the lava went up and over the city, spreading out like a canopy and
solidifying over it to form this cavern. Leaving the city within the crater more or
less intact.
“Impossible,” Schaffa says, frowning. “Not even the most viscous lava would
behave that way. But …” His expression clouds. Again he is trying to sift
through memories truncated and trimmed, or perhaps simply dimmed by age. On
impulse Nassun grabs his hand, to encourage him. He glances at her, smiles
absently, and resumes frowning. “But I think … an orogene could do such a
thing. It would take one of rare power, however, and probably the aid of an
obelisk. A ten-ringer. At least.”
Nassun frowns in confusion at this. The gist of what he’s said fits, though:
Someone did this. Nassun looks up at the ceiling of the cavern and realizes
belatedly that what she thought were odd stalactites are actually—she gasps—
the leftover impressions of buildings that are no longer there! Yes, there is a
narrowing point that must have been a spire; here a curving arch; there a
geometric strangeness of spokes and curves that looks oddly organic, like the
under-ribs of a mushroom cap. But while these imprints fossil all over the ceiling
of the cavern, the solidified lava itself stops a few hundred feet above the
ground. Belatedly, Nassun realizes that the “tunnel” from which they emerged is
also the remains of a building. Looking back, she sees that the outside of the
tunnel looks like one of the cuttlebones that her father once used for fine
knapping work—more solid, and made from the same strange white material as
the slab up on the surface. That must have been the top of the building. But a
few feet below where the canopy ends, the building does, too, to be replaced by
this strange white stair. That must have been done sometime after the disaster—
but how? And by whom? And why?
Trying to understand what she’s seeing, Nassun looks more closely at the
cavern’s floor. The sand is mostly pale, though there are mottling patches of
darker gray and brown laced throughout. In a few places, twisted lengths of
metal or immense broken fragments of something larger—other buildings,
maybe—poke through the sand like bones from a half-unearthed grave.
But this is wrong, too, Nassun realizes. There isn’t enough material here to be
the remnants of a city. She hasn’t seen many deadciv ruins, or cities for that
matter, but she’s read about them and heard stories. She’s pretty sure that cities
are supposed to be full of stone buildings and wooden storecaches and maybe
metal gates and cobbled streets. This city is nothing, relatively speaking. Just
metal and sand.
Nassun puts down her hands, which she’s raised without thinking while her
fleshless senses flicker and search. Inadvertently she glances down, which makes
the distance between the stair she stands on and that sandy cavern floor yawn
and seem to stretch. This makes her step back closer to Schaffa, who puts a
reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“This city,” Schaffa says. She glances at him in surprise; he looks thoughtful.
“There is a word in my mind, but I don’t know what it is. A name? Something
that holds meaning in another language?” He shakes his head. “But if this is the
city I think it is, I have heard tales of its grandeur. Once, they say, this city held
billions of people.”
That seems impossible. “In one city? How big was Yumenes?”
“A few million.” He smiles at her openmouthed gape, then sobers somewhat.
“And now there can’t be many more people than that, altogether, across the
whole of the Stillness. When we lost the Equatorials, we lost the bulk of
humanity. Still. Once, the world was even bigger.”
It can’t be. The volcanic crater is only so vast. And yet … Delicately, Nassun
sesses below the sand and debris, searching for evidence of the impossible. The
sand is much deeper than she thought. Far beneath its surface, though, she finds
pressed pathways in long, straight lines. Roads? Foundations, too, though they
are in oblong and round and other odd shapes: hourglass loops and fat S-curves
and bowl-shaped dips. Not a single square. She puzzles over the odd
composition of these foundations, and then abruptly realizes that it all has the
sess of something mineralized, alkaline. Oh, it’s petrifying! Which means that
originally—Nassun gasps.
“It’s wood,” she blurts aloud. A building foundation of wood? No, it’s
something like wood, but also a bit like the polymer stuff that her father used to
make, and a little like the strange not-stone of the stair they’re standing on. All
the roads she can sess are something similar. “Dust. Everything down there,
Schaffa. It’s not sand, it’s dust! It’s plants, lots of them, dead so long ago that
it’s all just dried up and crumbled away. And …” Her gaze is drawn back up to
the lava canopy overheard. What must it have been like? The whole cavern lit up
in red. The air too hot to breathe. The buildings lasted longer, long enough for
the lava to start to cool around them, but every person in this city would have
roasted within the first few hours of being buried under a bubble of fire.
That’s what’s in the sand, too, then: countless people, cooked into char and
crumbled away.
“Intriguing,” Schaffa says. He leans on the railing, heedless of the distance to
the ground as he gazes out over the cavern. Nassun’s belly clenches in fear for
him. “A city built of plants.” Then his gaze sharpens. “But nothing’s growing
here now.”
Yes. That’s the other thing Nassun has noticed. She’s traveled enough now,
and seen enough other caves to know that this place should be teeming with life,
like lichens and bats and blind white insects. She shunts her perception into the
realm of the silver, searching for the delicate lines that should be everywhere
amid so much living detritus. She finds them, lots of them, but … Something is
strange. The lines flow together and focus, tiny threads becoming thicker
channels—much like the way magic flows within an orogene. She’s never seen
this happen in plants or animals or soil before. These more concentrated flows
come together and continue forward—the direction in which the stairway is
going. She follows them well past the stairway she can see, thickening,
brightening … and then somewhere ahead, they abruptly stop.
“Something bad is here,” Nassun says, her skin prickling. Abruptly she stops
sessing. She does not want to sess what’s ahead, for some reason.
“Nassun?”
“Something is eating this place.” She blurts the words, then wonders why
she’s said them. But now that she’s said it, she feels like it was the right thing to
say. “That’s why nothing grows. Something is taking all the magic away.
Without that, everything’s dead.”
Schaffa regards her for a long moment. One of his hands, Nassun sees, is on
the hilt of his black glass poniard, where it’s strapped against his thigh. She
wants to laugh at this. What’s ahead isn’t something he can stab. She doesn’t
laugh because it’s cruel, and because she’s suddenly so scared that if she starts
laughing, she might not stop.
“We don’t have to go forward,” Schaffa suggests. It is gentle, and badly
needed reassurance that he will not lose respect for her if she abandons her
mission out of fear.
It bothers Nassun, though. She has her pride. “N-no. Let’s keep going.” She
swallows hard. “Please.”
“Very well, then.”
They proceed. Someone or something has dug a channel through the dust,
beneath and around the impossible stair. As they continue to descend, they pass
mountains of the stuff. Presently, though, Nassun sees another tunnel looming
ahead. This one is set against the floor of the cavern—at last—and its mouth is
immense. Concentric arches, each carved from marble in different shades, loom
high overhead as the stairway finally reaches the ground and flattens into the
surrounding stones. The tunnel narrows further in; there’s only darkness beyond.
The floor of the entryway is something that looks like lacquer, tiled in gradient
shades of blue and black and dark red. It is rich and lovely color, a relief to the
eyes after so much white and gray, and yet it, too, is impossibly strange.
Somehow, none of the city’s dust has blown or subsided into this entryway.
Dozens of people could pass through that archway. Hundreds in a minute.
Now, however, only one stands here, watching them from under a band of rose
marble that contrasts sharply against his paler, colorless lines. Steel.
He doesn’t move as Nassun walks over to him. (Schaffa comes over, too, but
he is slower, tense.) Steel’s gray gaze is fixed on an object beside him that is not
familiar to Nassun but which would be to her mother: a hexagonal plinth rising
from the floor, like a smoky quartz crystal shaft that has been sheared off
halfway. Its topmost surface is at a slight angle. Steel’s hand is held toward it in
a gesture of presentation. For you.
So Nassun focuses on the plinth. She reaches toward it and jerks back as
something lights up around its rim before her fingers can touch the slanted
surface. Bright red marks float in the air above the crystal, etching symbols into
empty space. She cannot fathom their meaning, but the color unnerves her. She
looks up at Steel, who has not moved and looks as if he’s been in the same
position since this place was built. “What does it say?”
“That the transport vehicle I told you about is currently nonfunctional,” says
the voice from within Steel’s chest. “You’ll need to power and reboot the system
before we can use this station.”
“‘R-re … boot?’” She tries to figure out what putting on boots has to do with
ancient ruins, then decides to run with the part she understands. “How do I give
it power?”
Abruptly, Steel is in a different position, facing the archway that leads deeper
into the station. “Go inside and provide power at the root. I’ll stay here and key
in the start-up sequence once there’s enough power.”
“What? I don’t—”
His gray-on-gray eyes shift over to her. “You’ll see what to do inside.”
Nassun chews on the inside of her cheek, looking into the archway. It’s really
dark in there.
Schaffa’s hand touches her shoulder. “I’ll go with you, of course.”
Of course. Nassun swallows and nods, grateful. Then she and Schaffa walk
into the dark.
It doesn’t stay dark for long. Like on the white stair, small panels of light
begin glowing along the sides of the tunnel as they progress. The lights are dim,
and yellowy in a way that suggests age, weathering, or … well, or weariness.
That’s the word that pops into Nassun’s head for some reason. The light is
enough to glimmer off the edges of the tiles beneath their feet. There are doors
and alcoves along the tunnel walls, and at one point Nassun spots a strange
contraption jutting out about ten feet up. It looks like … a wagon bed? Without
wheels or a yoke, and as if that wagon bed was made of the same smooth
material as the stair, and as if that wagon bed ran along some kind of track set
into the wall. It seems obviously made to transport people; maybe it’s how
people who couldn’t or wouldn’t walk got around? Now it is still and dark,
locked to the wall forever where its last driver left it.
They notice the peculiar bluish light illuminating the tunnel up ahead, but
that still isn’t adequate warning enough to prepare them for when the path
suddenly curves left, and they find themselves in a new cavern. This much
smaller cavern isn’t full of dust, or at least not much of it. What it does contain,
instead, is a titanic column of solid blue-black volcanic glass.
The column is huge, and irregular, and impossible. Nassun just stares,
openmouthed, at this thing that fills nearly the whole cavern, ground to ceiling
and beyond. That it is the solidified, rapidly cooled product of what must have
been a titanic explosion is immediately obvious. That it is somehow the source
of the lava canopy which flowed into the adjoining cavern is equally
indisputable.
“I see,” Schaffa says. Even he sounds overwhelmed, his voice softened by
awe. “Look.” He points down. This is what finally provides Nassun the focal
point to establish perspective, and size, and distance. The thing is huge, because
now she can see tiers that descend toward its base, ringing it in concentric
octagons. Three of them. On the outermost tier are buildings, she thinks. They’re
badly damaged, half fallen in, just shells, but she sesses at once why they still
exist where the ones in the cavern beyond have crumbled. The heat that must
have filled this cavern has metamorphized something in the buildings’
construction, hardening and preserving them. Some sort of concussion has done
damage, too: All the buildings are torn open on the same side, facing the great
glass column. Looking from what she guesses is a three-story building to the
glass column, she guesstimates that the column is not as far away as it looks; it’s
just much bigger than she initially guessed. The size of … oh.
“An obelisk,” she whispers. And then she can sess and guess what happened,
as clearly as if she were there.
Long ago, an obelisk sat here, at the bottom of this cavern, one of its points
jammed into the ground like some kind of bizarre plant. At some point, the
obelisk lifted free of the pit, to float and shimmer like its fellows above the
strange immensity of the city—and then something went very, very wrong. The
obelisk … fell. Where it struck the earth, Nassun imagines she can hear the echo
of the concussion; it did not merely fall, it drove its way in, punching through
and churning down and down and down, powered by all the force of
concentrated silver within its core. Nassun can’t track its path for more than a
mile or so down, but there’s no reason to think it didn’t just keep going. To
where, she cannot guess.
And in its wake, channeled straight up from the most molten part of the earth,
came a literal fountain of earthfire to bury this city.
There’s still nothing around that looks like a way to supply power to the
station. Nassun notices, though, that the cavern’s illumination comes from
enormous pylons of blue light near the base of the glass column. These make up
the lower-and innermost tier of the chamber. Something is making that light.
Schaffa, too, has come to the same conclusion. “The tunnel ends here,” he
says, gesturing toward the blue pylons and the column’s base. “There’s nowhere
else to go but to the foot of this monstrosity. But are you certain you want to
follow in the footsteps of whoever did this?”
Nassun bites her bottom lip. She does not. Here is the wrongness that she
sessed from the stair, though she cannot tell its source yet. Still … “Steel wants
me to see whatever is down there.”
“Are you certain you want to do what he wishes, Nassun?”
She isn’t. Steel cannot be trusted. But she’s already committed herself to the
path of destroying the world; whatever Steel wants cannot be worse than this. So
when Nassun nods, Schaffa simply inclines his head in acquiescence, and offers
her his hand so that they can walk down the road to the pylons together.
Walking past the tiers feels like moving through a graveyard, and Nassun
feels compelled to a respectful silence for that reason. Between the buildings,
she can make out carbonized walkways, melted-glass troughs that must have
once held plants, strange posts and structures whose purpose she isn’t sure she’d
be able to fathom even if they weren’t half-melted. She decides that this post is
for tying horses, and that frame is where the tanners racked drying hides.
Remapping the familiar onto the strange doesn’t work very well, of course,
because nothing about this city is normal. If the people who lived here rode
mounts, they were not horses. If they made pottery or tools, those were not
shaped from clay or obsidian, and the crafters who made such things were not
merely knappers. These are people who built, and then lost control of, an
obelisk. There is no telling what wonders and horrors filled their streets.
In her anxiety, Nassun reaches up to touch the sapphire, mostly just to
reassure herself that she can do so through tons of cooled lava and petrifying
decayed city. It is as easy to connect to here as it was up there, which is a relief.
It tugs at her gently—or as gently as any obelisk does—and for a moment she
lets herself be drawn into its flowing, watery light. It does not frighten her to be
so drawn in; to the degree that one can trust an inanimate object, Nassun trusts
the sapphire obelisk. It is the thing that told her about Corepoint, after all, and
now she senses another message in the shimmering interstices of its tight-packed
lines—
“Up ahead,” she blurts, startling herself.
Schaffa stops and looks at her. “What?”
Nassun has to shake her head, drawing her mind back into itself and out of all
that blue. “The … the place to put in power. Is up ahead, like Steel said. Past the
track.”
 “Track?” Schaffa turns, gazing down the sloping walkway. Up ahead is the
second tier—a smooth, featureless plane of more of that not-stone white stuff.
The people who built the obelisks seem to have used that stuff in all their oldest
and most enduring ruins.
“The sapphire … knows this place,” she tries to explain. It’s a fumbling sort
of explanation, as hard as trying to describe orogeny to a still. “Not this place
specifically, but somewhere like it …” She reaches for it again, asking for more
without words, and is nearly overwhelmed with a blue flicker of images,
sensations, beliefs. Her perspective changes. She stands at the center of three
tiers, no longer in a cavern but facing a blue horizon across which pleasant
clouds churn and race and vanish and are reborn. The tiers around her teem with
activity—though it all blurs together, and what she can discern of the few
instants of stillness makes no sense. Strange vehicles like the car she saw in the
tunnel run along the sides of buildings, following tracks of differently colored
light. The buildings are covered in green, vines and grassy rooftops and flowers
curling over lintels and walls. People, hundreds of them, go in and out of these,
and walk up and down the paths in unbroken blurs of motion. She cannot see
their faces, but she catches glimpses of black hair like Schaffa’s, earrings of
artfully curled vine motifs, a dress swirling about ankles, fingers flicking while
adorned with sheaths of colored lacquer.
And everywhere, everywhere, is the silver that lies beneath heat and motion,
the stuff of the obelisks. It spiders and flows, converging not just into trickles but
rivers, and when she looks down she sees that she stands in a pool of liquid
silver, soaking in through her feet—
Nassun staggers a little as she comes back this time, and Schaffa’s hand lands
firmly on her shoulder to steady her. “Nassun.”
“I’m all right,” she says. She isn’t sure of that, but she says it anyway
because she doesn’t want him to worry. And because it is easier to say this than I
think I was an obelisk for a minute.
Schaffa moves around to crouch in front of her, gripping her shoulders. The
concern in his expression almost, almost, eclipses the weary lines, the hint of
distraction, and the other signs of struggle that are building beneath the surface
of him. His pain is worse, here underground. He hasn’t said that it is, and Nassun
doesn’t know why it’s getting worse, but she can tell.
But. “Don’t trust the obelisks, little one,” he says. This does not seem nearly
as strange or wrong a thing for him to say as it should. On impulse Nassun hugs
Schaffa; he holds her tight, rubbing comfort into her back. “We allowed a few to
progress,” he murmurs in her ear. Nassun blinks, remembering poor, mad,
murderous Nida, who said the same thing once. “Back in the Fulcrum. I was
permitted to remember that much because it’s important. The few who reached
ninth-or tenth-ring status … they were always able to sense the obelisks, and the
obelisks could sense them in turn. They would have drawn you to them one way
or another. They’re missing something, incomplete somehow, and that’s what
they need an orogene to provide.
“But the obelisks killed them, my Nassun.” He presses his face into her hair.
She’s filthy and hasn’t truly washed since Jekity, but his words strip away such
mundane thoughts. “The obelisks … I remember. They will change you, remake
you, if they can. That’s what that rusting stone eater wants.”
His arms tighten for an instant, with a hint of his old strength, and it is the
most beautiful feeling in the world. She knows in this moment that he will never
falter, never not be there when she needs him, never devolve into a mere fallible
human being. And she loves him more than life for his strength.
“Yes, Schaffa,” she promises. “I’ll be careful. I won’t let them win.”
Him, she thinks, and she knows he thinks it too. She won’t let Steel win. At
least not without getting what she wants first.
So they are resolved. When Nassun pulls back, Schaffa nods before getting to
his feet. They go forward again.
The innermost tier sits in the glass column’s blue, gloomy shadow. The
pylons are bigger than they looked from afar—perhaps twice as tall as Schaffa,
three or four times as wide, and humming faintly now that Nassun and Schaffa
are close enough to hear. They’re arranged in a ring around what must have once
been the resting place of an obelisk, like a buffer protecting the outer two tiers.
Like a fence, separating the bustling life of the city from … this.
This: At first Nassun thinks it is a thicket of thorns. The thornvines curl and
tangle along the ground and up the inner surface of the pylons, filling all the
available space between them and the glass column itself. Then she sees that
they aren’t thornvines: no leaves. No thorns. Just these curling, gnarling,
ropelike twists of something that looks woody but smells a little like fungus.
“How odd,” Schaffa says. “Something alive at last?”
“M-maybe they aren’t alive?” They do look dead, though they stand out by
being still recognizably plants and not crumbled bits of decay on the ground.
Nassun does not like it here, amid these ugly vines and in the shadow of the
glass column. Is that what the pylons are for, to cut off sight of the vines’
grotesquerie from the rest of the city? “And maybe they grew here after … the
rest.”
Then she blinks, noticing something new about the vine nearest her. It’s
different from the others around it. Those are obviously dead, withered and
blackened and broken off in places. This one, however, looks as though it might
be alive. It is ropy and knotted in places, with a wood-like surface that looks old
and rough, but whole. Debris litters the floor beneath it—grayish lumps and
dust, scraps of dry-rotted cloth, and even a moldering length of frayed rope.
There is a thing Nassun has resisted doing since entering the cavern of the
glass column; some things she doesn’t quite want to know. Now, however, she
closes her eyes and reaches inside the vine with her sense of the silver.
At first it’s hard. The cells of the thing—because it is alive, more like a
fungus than a plant, but there is also something artificial and mechanical about
the way it has been made to function—press together so tightly that she doesn’t
expect to see any silver between them. More dense than the stuff in people’s
bodies. The arrangement of its substance is almost crystalline, in fact, cells lined
up in neat little matrices, which she’s never seen in a living thing before.
And now that Nassun has seen down into the interstices of the vine’s
substance, she can see that it doesn’t have any silver in it. What it has instead are
… She isn’t sure how to describe it. Negative spaces? Where silver should be,
but isn’t. Spaces that can be filled with silver. And as she gingerly explores
them, fascinated, she begins to notice the way they pull at her perception, more
and more, until—with a gasp, Nassun jerks her perception free.
You’ll see what to do, Steel has said. It should be obvious.
Schaffa, who has crouched to peer at the bit of rope, pauses and glances at
her, frowning. “What is it?”
She stares back at him, but she doesn’t have the words to say what needs to
be done. The words do not exist. She knows, however, what she needs to do.
Nassun takes a step closer to the living vine.
“Nassun,” Schaffa says, his voice tight and warning with sudden alarm.
“I have to, Schaffa,” she says. She’s already lifting her hands. This is where
all the silver of the outer cavern has been going, she realizes now; these vines
have been eating it up. Why? She knows why, in the deepest and most ancient
design of her flesh. “I have to, um, power the system.”
Then, before Schaffa can stop her, Nassun wraps both hands around the vine.
It does not hurt. That’s the trap of it. The sensation that spreads throughout
her body is pleasant, in fact. Relaxing. If she could not perceive the silver, or the
way the vine instantly starts dragging every bit of silver out of the spaces
between her cells, she would think it was doing something good for her. As it is,
it will kill her in moments.
She has access to more silver than just her own, though. Lazily, through the
languor, Nassun reaches for the sapphire—and the sapphire responds instantly,
easily.
Amplifiers, Alabaster called them, long before Nassun was ever born.
Batteries is how you think of them, and how you once explained them to Ykka.
What Nassun understands the obelisks to be is simply engines. She’s seen
engines at work—the simple pump-and-turbine things that regulated geo and
hydro back in Tirimo, and occasionally more complex things like grain
elevators. What she understands about engines would fill less than a thimble, but
this much is clear even to a ten-year-old: To work, engines need fuel.
So she flows with the blue, and the sapphire’s power flows through her. The
vine in her hands seems to gasp at the sudden influx, though this is just her
imagination, she’s sure. Then it hums in her hands, and she sees how the empty,
yawning spaces of its matrices fill and flow with glimmering silver light, and
something immediately shunts that light away to somewhere else—
A loud clack echoes through the cavern. This is followed by other, fainter
clacks, ramping up to a rhythm, and then a rising, low hum. The cavern
brightens suddenly as the blue pylons turn white and blaze brighter, as do the
tired yellow lights that they followed down the mosaic tunnel. Nassun flinches
even in the depths of the sapphire, and in half a breath Schaffa has grabbed her
away from the vine. His hands shake as he holds her close, but he doesn’t say
anything, his relief palpable as he lets Nassun flop against him. She’s suddenly
so drained that only his grip holds her up.
And in the meantime, something is coming along the track.
It is a ghostly thing, iridescent beetle green, graceful and sleek and nearly
silent as it emerges from somewhere behind the glass column. Nothing of it
makes sense to Nassun’s eyes. The bulk of it is roughly teardrop-shaped, though
its narrower, pointy end is asymmetrical, the tip curving high off the ground in a
way that makes her think of a crow’s beak. It’s huge, easily the size of a house,
and yet it floats a few inches above the track, unsupported. The substance of it is
impossible to guess, though it seems to have … skin? Yes; up close, Nassun can
see that the surface of the thing has the same finely wrinkled texture as thick,
well-worked leather. Here and there on that skin she glimpses odd, irregular
lumps, each perhaps the size of a fist; they seem to have no visible purpose.
It blurs and flickers, though, the thing. From solidity to translucence and
back, just like an obelisk.
“Very good,” says Steel, who is suddenly in front of them and to one side of
the thing.
Nassun is too drained to flinch, though she’s recovering. Schaffa’s hands
tighten on her shoulders in reflex, then relax. Steel ignores them both. One of the
stone eater’s hands is upraised toward the strange floating thing, like a proud
artist displaying his latest creation. He says, “You gave the system rather more
power than absolutely necessary. The overflow has gone into lighting, as you
can see, and other systems such as environmental controls. Pointless, but I
suppose it does no harm. They’ll run down again in a few months, without any
source to provide additional power.”
Schaffa’s voice is very soft and cold. “This could have killed her.”
Steel is still smiling. Nassun finally begins to suspect that this is Steel’s
attempt to mock a Guardian’s frequent smiles. “Yes, if she hadn’t used the
obelisk.” There is nothing of apology in his tone. “Death is what usually happens
when someone charges the system. Orogenes capable of channeling magic can
survive it, however—as can Guardians, who usually can draw upon an outside
source.”
Magic? Nassun thinks in fleeting confusion.
But Schaffa stiffens. Nassun is confused by his fury at first, and then she
realizes: Ordinary Guardians, the uncontaminated kind, draw silver from the
earth and put it into the vines. Guardians like Umber and Nida can probably do
the same, though they would try only if it served Father Earth’s interests. But
Schaffa, despite his corestone, cannot rely on the Earth’s silver, and cannot draw
more of it at will. If Nassun was in danger from the vine, that was because of
Schaffa’s inadequacy.
Or so Steel means to suggest. Nassun stares at him incredulously, then turns
back to Schaffa. She’s getting some of her strength back already. “I knew I could
do it,” she says. Schaffa is still glaring at Steel. Nassun balls up her fists in his
shirt and tugs to make him look at her. He blinks and does so, in surprise. “I
knew! And I wouldn’t have let you do the vines, Schaffa. It’s because of me that
—”
She falters then, her throat closing with impending tears. Some of this is just
nerves and exhaustion. Much of it, though, is the sense of guilt that has been
lurking and growing within her for months, only now spilling out because she’s
too tired to keep it in. It’s her fault that Schaffa has lost everything: Found
Moon, the children he cared for, the companionship of his fellow Guardians, the
reliable power that should have come from his corestone, even peaceful sleep at
night. She’s why he’s down here in the dust of a dead city, and why they’re
about to entrust themselves to machinery older than Sanze and maybe the whole
Stillness, to go to an impossible place and do an impossible thing.
Schaffa sees all this instantly, with the skill of a longtime caretaker of
children. The frown clears from his face, and he shakes his head and crouches to
face her. “No,” he says. “Nothing is your fault, my Nassun. No matter what it
has cost me, and no matter what it may cost yet, always remember that I—that I
—”
His expression falters. For a fleeting instant, that horrible, blurry confusion is
there, threatening to wipe away even this moment in which he means to declare
his strength to her. Nassun catches her breath and focuses on him in the silver
and bares her teeth as she sees that the corestone in him is alive again, working
viciously along his nerves and spidering over his brain, even now trying to force
him to heel.
No, she thinks in a sudden fury. She grips his shoulders and shakes him. It
takes her whole body to do this because he’s such a big man, but it makes him
blink and focus through the blur. “You’re Schaffa,” she says. “You are! And …
and you chose.” Because that’s important. That’s the thing the world doesn’t
want people like them to do. “You’re not my Guardian anymore, you’re—” She
dares to say it aloud at last. “You’re my new father. Okay? And th-that means
we’re family, and … and we have to work together. That’s what family does,
right? You let me protect you sometimes.”
Schaffa stares at her, then he sighs and leans forward to kiss her forehead. He
stays there after the kiss, nose pressed into her hair; Nassun makes a mighty
effort and does not burst into tears. When he speaks at last, the horrible
blurriness has faded, as have even some of the pain-lines around his eyes. “Very
well, Nassun. Sometimes, you may protect me.”
That settled, she sniffs, wipes her nose on a sleeve, and then turns to face
Steel. He hasn’t changed position, so she pulls away from Schaffa and goes over
to him, stopping right in front of him. His eyes shift to follow her, lazily slow.
“Don’t do that again.”
She half expects him to say, in his too-knowing voice, Do what? Instead he
says, “It’s a mistake to bring him with us.”
Cold washes through Nassun, followed by hot. Is it a threat, or a warning?
She doesn’t like it, either way. Her jaw feels so tight that she almost bites her
tongue trying to speak. “I don’t care.”
 Silence in reply. Is this capitulation? Agreement? Refusal to argue? Nassun
doesn’t know. She wants to yell at him: Say you won’t hurt Schaffa again! Even
though it feels wrong to yell at any adult. Yet she has also spent the past year
and a half learning that adults are people, and sometimes they are wrong, and
sometimes somebody should yell at them.
But Nassun is tired, so instead she retreats to Schaffa, taking his hand tightly
and glaring back at Steel, daring him to say anything else. He doesn’t, though.
Good.
The huge green thing sort of ripples then, and they all turn to face it.
Something is—Nassun shudders, both revolted and fascinated. Something is
growing from the weird nodules all over the thing’s surface. Each is several feet
long, narrow, featherlike, attenuating near the tips. In a moment there are dozens
of them, curling and waving gently in an unfelt breeze. Cilia, Nassun thinks
suddenly, remembering a picture in an old biomestry creche book. Of course.
Why wouldn’t people who made buildings out of plants also make carriages that
look like germs?
Some of the feathers are flickering faster than others, clustering together for a
moment at a point along the thing’s side. Then the feathers all peel back,
flattening against the mother-of-pearl surface, to reveal a soft rectangle of a
door. Beyond, Nassun can see gentle light and surprisingly comfortable-looking
chairs, in rows. They will ride in style to the other side of the world.
Nassun looks up at Schaffa. He nods back at her with jaw tight. She does not
look at Steel, who hasn’t moved and makes no attempt to join them.
Then they climb aboard, and the feathers weave the door shut behind them.
As they sit down, the great vehicle utters a low, resonant tone, and begins to
move.

Wealth has no value when the ash falls.

—Tablet Three, “Structures,” verse ten
 Syl Anagist: Two

IT’S A MAGNIFICENT HOUSE, COMPACT but elegantly designed and full of beautiful
furnishings. We stare at its arches and bookcases and wooden bannisters. There
are only a few plants growing from the cellulose walls, so the air is dry and a
little stale. It feels like the museum. We cluster together in the big room at the
front of the house, afraid to move, afraid to touch anything.
“Do you live here?” one of the others asks Kelenli.
“Occasionally,” she says. Her face is expressionless, but there is something in
her voice that troubles me. “Follow me.”
She leads us through the house. A den of stunning comfort: every surface soft
and sittable, even the floor. What strikes me is that nothing is white. The walls
are green and in some places painted a deep, rich burgundy. In the next room,
the beds are covered in blue and gold fabric in contrasting textures. Nothing is
hard and nothing is bare and I have never thought before that the chamber I live
in is a prison cell, but now for the first time, I do.
I have thought many new things this day, especially during our journey to
this house. We walked the whole way, our feet aching with the unaccustomed
use, and the whole way, people stared. Some whispered. One reached out to
stroke my hair in passing, then giggled when I belatedly twitched away. At one
point a man followed us. He was older, with short gray hair almost the same
texture as ours, and he began to say angry things. Some of the words I did not
know (“Niesbred” and “forktongue,” for example). Some I knew, but did not
understand. (“Mistakes” and “We should have wiped you out,” which makes no
sense because we were very carefully and intentionally made.) He accused us of
lying, though none of us spoke to him, and of only pretending to be gone
(somewhere). He said that his parents and his parents’ parents taught him the
true horror, the true enemy, monsters like us were the enemy of all good people,
and he was going to make sure we didn’t hurt anyone else.
 Then he came closer, big fists balled up. As we stumbled along gawping, so
confused that we did not even realize we were in danger, some of our
unobtrusive guards abruptly became more obtrusive and pulled the man into a
building alcove, where they held him while he shouted and struggled to get at us.
Kelenli kept walking forward the whole time, her head high, not looking at the
man. We followed, knowing nothing else to do, and after a while the man fell
behind us, his words lost to the sounds of the city.
Later, Gaewha, shaking a little, asked Kelenli what was wrong with the angry
man. Kelenli laughed softly and said, “He’s Sylanagistine.” Gaewha subsided
into confusion. We all sent her quick pulses of reassurance that we are equally
mystified; the problem was not her.
This is normal life in Syl Anagist, we understand, as we walk through it.
Normal people on the normal streets. Normal touches that make us cringe or
stiffen or back up quickly. Normal houses with normal furnishings. Normal
gazes that avert or frown or ogle. With every glimpse of normalcy, the city
teaches us just how abnormal we are. I have never minded before that we were
merely constructs, genegineered by master biomagests and developed in capsids
of nutrient slush, decanted fully grown so that we would need no nurturing. I
have been … proud, until now, of what I am. I have been content. But now I see
the way these normal people look at us, and my heart aches. I don’t understand
why.
Perhaps all the walking has damaged me.
Now Kelenli leads us through the fancy house. We pass through a doorway,
however, and find an enormous sprawling garden behind the house. Down the
steps and around the dirt path, there are flower beds everywhere, their fragrance
summoning us closer. These aren’t like the precisely cultivated, genegineered
flower beds of the compound, with their color-coordinated winking flowers;
what grows here is wild, and perhaps inferior, their stems haphazardly short or
long and their petals frequently less than perfect. And yet … I like them. The
carpet of lichens that covers the path invites closer study, so we confer in rapid
pulse-waves as we crouch and try to understand why it feels so springy and
pleasant beneath our feet. A pair of scissors dangling from a stake invites
curiosity. I resist the urge to claim some of the pretty purple flowers for myself,
though Gaewha tries the scissors and then clutches some flowers in her hand,
tightly, fiercely. We have never been allowed possessions of our own.
I watch Kelenli surreptitiously, compulsively, while she watches us play. The
strength of my interest confuses and frightens me a little, though I seem unable
to resist it. We’ve always known that the conductors failed to make us
emotionless, but we … well. I thought us above such intensity of feeling. That’s
what I get for being arrogant. Now here we are, lost in sensation and reaction.
Gaewha huddles in a corner with the scissors, ready to defend her flowers to the
death. Dushwha spins in circles, laughing deliriously; I’m not sure exactly at
what. Bimniwha has cornered one of our guards and is peppering him with
questions about what we saw during the walk here; the guard has a hunted look
and seems to be hoping for rescue. Salewha and Remwha are in an intense
discussion as they crouch beside a little pond, trying to figure out whether the
creatures moving in the water are fish or frogs. Their conversation is entirely
auditory, no earthtalk at all.
And I, fool that I am, watch Kelenli. I want to understand what she means us
to learn, either from that art-thing at the museum or our afternoon garden idyll.
Her face and sessapinae reveal nothing, but that’s all right. I also want to simply
look at her face and bask in that deep, powerful orogenic presence of hers. It’s
nonsensical. Probably disturbing to her, though she ignores me if so. I want her
to look at me. I want to speak to her. I want to be her.
I decide that what I’m feeling is love. Even if it isn’t, the idea is novel
enough to fascinate me, so I decide to follow where its impulses lead.
After a time, Kelenli rises and walks away from where we wander the
garden. At the center of the garden is a small structure, like a tiny house but
made of stone bricks rather than the cellulose greenstrate of most buildings. One
determined ivy grows over its nearer wall. When she opens the door of this
house, I am the only one who notices. By the time she’s stepped inside, all the
others have stopped whatever they were doing and stood to watch her, too. She
pauses, amused—I think—by our sudden silence and anxiety. Then she sighs
and jerks her head in a silent Come on. We scramble to follow.
Inside—we cram carefully in after Kelenli; it’s a tight fit—the little house has
a wooden floor and some furnishings. It’s nearly as bare as our cells back at the
compound, but there are some important differences. Kelenli sits down on one of
the chairs and we realize: This is hers. Hers. It is her … cell? No. There are
peculiarities all around the space, things that offer intriguing hints as to Kelenli’s
personality and past. Books on a shelf in the corner mean that someone has
taught her to read. A brush on the edge of the sink suggests that she does her
own hair, impatiently to judge by the amount of hair caught in its bristles. Maybe
the big house is where she is supposed to be, and maybe she actually sleeps there
sometimes. This little garden house, however, is … her home.
 “I grew up with Conductor Gallat,” Kelenli says softly. (We’ve sat down on
the floor and chairs and bed around her, rapt for her wisdom.) “Raised alongside
him, the experiment to his control—just as I’m your control. He’s ordinary,
except for a drop of undesirable ancestry.”
I blink my icewhite eyes, and think of Gallat’s, and suddenly I understand
many new things. She smiles when my mouth drops open in an O. Her smile
doesn’t last long, however.
“They—Gallat’s parents, who I thought were my parents—didn’t tell me at
first what I was. I went to school, played games, did all the things a normal
Sylanagistine girl does while growing up. But they didn’t treat me the same. For
a long time I thought it was something I’d done.” Her gaze drifts away, weighty
with old bitterness. “I wondered why I was so horrible that even my parents
couldn’t seem to love me.”
Remwha crouches to rub a hand along the wooden slats of the floor. I don’t
know why he does anything. Salewha is still outside, since Kelenli’s little house
is too cramped for her tastes; she has gone to stare at a tiny, fast-moving bird
that flits among the flowers. She listens through us, though, through the house’s
open door. We all need to hear what Kelenli says, with voice and vibration and
the steady, heavy weight of her gaze.
“Why did they deceive you?” Gaewha asks.
“The experiment was to see if I could be human.” Kelenli smiles to herself.
She’s sitting forward in her chair, elbows braced on her knees, looking at her
hands. “See if, raised among decent, natural folk, I might turn out at least decent,
if not natural. And so my every achievement was counted a Sylanagistine
success, while my every failure or display of poor behavior was seen as proof of
genetic degeneracy.”
Gaewha and I look at each other. “Why would you be indecent?” she asks,
utterly mystified.
Kelenli blinks out of her reverie and stares at us for a moment, and in that
time we feel the gulf between us. She thinks of herself as one of us, which she is.
She thinks of herself as a person, too, though. Those two concepts are
incompatible.
“Evil Death,” she says softly, wonderingly, echoing our thoughts. “You
really don’t know anything, do you?”
Our guards have taken up positions at the top of the steps leading into the
garden, nowhere in earshot. This space is as private as anything we have had
today. It is almost surely bugged, but Kelenli does not seem to care, and we
don’t, either. She draws up her feet and wraps her arms around her knees,
curiously vulnerable for someone whose presence within the strata is as deep and
dense as a mountain. I reach up to touch her ankle, greatly daring, and she blinks
and smiles at me, reaching down to cover my fingers with her hand. I will not
understand my feelings for centuries afterward.
The contact seems to strengthen Kelenli. Her smile fades and she says, “Then
I’ll tell you.”
Remwha is still studying her wooden floor. He rubs the grain of it with his
fingers and manages to send along its dust molecules: Should you? I am
chagrined because it’s something I should have considered.
She shakes her head, smiling. No, she shouldn’t.
But she does anyway, through the earth so we will know it’s true.

Remember what I have told you: The Stillness in these days is three lands, not
one. Their names, if this matters, are Maecar, Kakhiarar, and Cilir. Syl Anagist
started out as part of Kakhiarar, then all of it, then all of Maecar, too. All became
Syl Anagist.
Cilir, to the south, was once a small and nothing land occupied by many
small and nothing peoples. One of these groups was the Thniess. It was hard to
say their name with the proper pronunciation, so Sylanagistines called them
Niess. The two words did not mean the same thing, but the latter is what caught
on.
The Sylanagistines took their land. The Niess fought, but then responded like
any living thing under threat—with diaspora, sending whatever was left of
themselves flying forth to take root and perhaps survive where it could. The
descendants of these Niess became part of every land, every people, blending in
among the rest and adapting to local customs. They managed to keep hold of
who they were, though, continuing to speak their own language even as they
grew fluent in other tongues. They maintained some of their old ways, too—like
splitting their tongues with salt acid, for reasons known only to them. And while
they lost much of the distinctive look that came of isolation within their small
land, many retained enough of it that to this day, icewhite eyes and ashblow hair
carry a certain stigma.
Yes, you see now.
But the thing that made the Niess truly different was their magic. Magic is
everywhere in the world. Everyone sees it, feels it, flows with it. In Syl Anagist,
magic is cultivated in every flower bed and tree line and grapevine-draped wall.
Each household or business must produce its share, which is then funneled away
in genegineered vines and pumps to become the power source for a global
civilization. It is illegal to kill in Syl Anagist because life is a valuable resource.
The Niess did not believe this. Magic could not be owned, they insisted, any
more than life could be—and thus they wasted both, by building (among many
other things) plutonic engines that did nothing. They were just … pretty. Or
thought-provoking, or crafted for the sheer joy of crafting. And yet this “art” ran
more efficiently and powerfully than anything the Sylanagistine had ever
managed.
How did it begin? You must understand that fear is at the root of such things.
Niespeople looked different, behaved differently, were different—but every
group is different from others. Differences alone are never enough to cause
problems. Syl Anagist’s assimilation of the world had been over for a century
before I was ever made; all cities were Syl Anagist. All languages had become
Sylanagistine. But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as
conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will
someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims
couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in
dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
So when Niess magic proved more efficient than Sylanagistine, even though
the Niess did not use it as a weapon …
This is what Kelenli told us. Perhaps it began with whispers that white Niess
irises gave them poor eyesight and perverse inclinations, and that split Niess
tongues could not speak truth. That sort of sneering happens, cultural bullying,
but things got worse. It became easy for scholars to build reputations and careers
around the notion that Niess sessapinae were fundamentally different, somehow
—more sensitive, more active, less controlled, less civilized—and that this was
the source of their magical peculiarity. This was what made them not the same
kind of human as everyone else. Eventually: not as human as everyone else.
Finally: not human at all.
Once the Niess were gone, of course, it became clear that the fabled Niess
sessapinae did not exist. Sylanagistine scholars and biomagestres had plenty of
prisoners to study, but try as they might, no discernible variance from ordinary
people could be found. This was intolerable; more than intolerable. After all, if
the Niess were just ordinary human beings, then on what basis had military
appropriations, pedagogical reinterpretation, and entire disciplines of study been
formed? Even the grand dream itself, Geoarcanity, had grown out of the notion
that Sylanagistine magestric theory—including its scornful dismissal of Niess
efficiency as a fluke of physiology—was superior and infallible.
If the Niess were merely human, the world built on their inhumanity would
fall apart.
So … they made us.
We, the carefully engineered and denatured remnants of the Niess, have
sessapinae far more complex than those of ordinary people. Kelenli was made
first, but she wasn’t different enough. Remember, we must be not just tools, but
myths. Thus we later creations have been given exaggerated Niess features—
broad faces, small mouths, skin nearly devoid of color, hair that laughs at fine
combs, and we’re all so short. They’ve stripped our limbic systems of
neurochemicals and our lives of experience and language and knowledge. And
only now, when we have been made over in the image of their own fear, are they
satisfied. They tell themselves that in us, they’ve captured the quintessence and
power of who the Niess really were, and they congratulate themselves on having
made their old enemies useful at last.
But we are not the Niess. We aren’t even the glorious symbols of intellectual
achievement that I believed we were. Syl Anagist is built on delusions, and we
are the product of lies. They have no idea what we really are.
It’s up to us, then, to determine our own fate and future.

When Kelenli’s lesson is done, a few hours have passed. We sit at her feet,
stunned, changed and changing by her words.
It’s getting late. She gets up. “I’m going to get us some food and blankets,”
she says. “You’ll stay here tonight. We’ll visit the third and final component of
your tuning mission tomorrow.”
We have never slept anywhere but our cells. It’s exciting. Gaewha sends little
pulses of delight through the ambient, while Remwha is a steady buzz of
pleasure. Dushwha and Bimniwha spike now and again with anxiety; will we be
all right, doing this thing that human beings have done throughout history—
sleeping in a different place? The two of them curl together for security, though
this actually increases their anxiety for a time. We are not often allowed to
touch. They stroke one another, though, and this gradually calms them both.
Kelenli is amused by their fear. “You’ll be all right, though I suppose you’ll
figure that out for yourselves in the morning,” she says. Then she heads for the
door to go. I am standing at the door, looking through its window at the newly
risen Moon. She touches me because I’m in her way. I don’t move at once,
though. Because of the direction that the window in my cell faces, I don’t get to
see the Moon often. I want to savor its beauty while I can.
“Why have you brought us here?” I ask Kelenli, while still staring at it. “Why
tell us these things?”
She doesn’t answer at once. I think she’s looking at the Moon, too. Then she
says, in a thoughtful reverberation of the earth, I’ve studied what I could of the
Niess and their culture. There isn’t much left, and I have to sift the truth from all
the lies. But there was a … a practice among them. A vocation. People whose
job it was to see that the truth got told.
I frown in confusion. “So … what? You’ve decided to carry on the traditions
of a dead people?” Words. I’m stubborn.
She shrugs. “Why not?”
I shake my head. I’m tired, and overwhelmed, and perhaps a little angry. This
day has upended my sense of self. I’ve spent my whole life knowing I was a
tool, yes; not a person, but at least a symbol of power and brilliance and pride.
Now I know I’m really just a symbol of paranoia and greed and hate. It’s a lot to
deal with.
“Let the Niess go,” I snap. “They’re dead. I don’t see the sense in trying to
remember them.”
I want her to get angry, but she merely shrugs. “That’s your choice to make
—once you know enough to make an informed choice.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to be informed.” I lean against the glass of the door,
which is cool and does not sting my fingers.
“You wanted to be strong enough to hold the onyx.”
I blurt a soft laugh, too tired to remember I should pretend to feel nothing.
Hopefully our observers won’t notice. I shift to earthtalk, and speak in an acid,
pressurized boil of bitterness and contempt and humiliation and heartbreak.
What does it matter? is what it means. Geoarcanity is a lie.
She shakes apart my self-pity with gentle, inexorable slipstrike laughter. “Ah,
my thinker. I didn’t expect melodrama from you.”
“What is melo—” I shake my head and fall silent, tired of not knowing
things. Yes, I’m sulking.
 Kelenli sighs and touches my shoulder. I flinch, unused to the warmth of
another person’s hand, but she keeps it in place and this quiets me.
“Think,” she repeats. “Does the Plutonic Engine work? Do your sessapinae?
You aren’t what they made you to be; does that negate what you are?”
“I—That question doesn’t make sense.” But now I’m just being stubborn. I
understand her point. I’m not what they made me; I’m something different. I am
powerful in ways they did not expect. They made me but they do not control me,
not fully. This is why I have emotions though they tried to take them away. This
is why we have earthtalk … and perhaps other gifts that our conductors don’t
know about.
She pats my shoulder, pleased that I seem to be working through what she’s
told me. A spot on the floor of her house calls to me; I will sleep so well tonight.
But I fight my exhaustion, and remain focused on her, because I need her more
than sleep, for now.
“You see yourself as one of these … truth-tellers?” I ask.
“Lorist. The last Niess lorist, if I have the right to claim such a thing.” Her
smile abruptly fades, and for the first time I realize what a wealth of weariness
and hard lines and sorrow her smiles cover. “Lorists were warriors, storytellers,
nobility. They told their truths in books and song and through their art engines. I
just … talk. But I feel like I’ve earned the right to claim some part of their
mantle.” Not all fighters use knives, after all.
In earthtalk there can be nothing but truth—and sometimes more truth than
one wants to convey. I sense … something, in her sorrow. Grim endurance. A
flutter of fear like the lick of salt acid. Determination to protect … something.
It’s gone, a fading vibration, before I can identify more.
She takes a deep breath and smiles again. So few of them are real, her smiles.
“To master the onyx,” she continues, “you need to understand the Niess.
What the conductors don’t realize is that it responds best to a certain emotional
resonance. Everything I’m telling you should help.”
Then, finally, she pushes me gently aside so that she can go. The question
must be asked now. “So what happened,” I say slowly, “to the Niess?”
She stops, and chuckles, and for once it is genuine. “You’ll find out
tomorrow,” she says. “We’re going to see them.”
I’m confused. “To their graves?”
“Life is sacred in Syl Anagist,” she says over her shoulder. She’s passed
through the door; now she keeps going without stopping or turning back. “Don’t
you know that?” And then she is gone.
 It is an answer that I feel I should understand—but in my own way, I am still
innocent. Kelenli is kind. She lets me keep that innocence for the rest of the
night.

To: Alma Innovator Dibars

From: Yaetr Innovator Dibars

Alma, the committee can’t pull my funding. Look, this is just the dates of
the incidents I’ve gathered. Just look at the last ten!
2729
2714–2719: Choking
2699
2613
2583
2562
2530
2501
2490
2470
2400
2322–2329: Acid

Is Seventh even interested in the fact that our popular conception of the
frequency of Season-level events is completely wrong? These things
aren’t happening every two hundred or three hundred years. It’s more like
every thirty or forty! If not for roggas, we’d be a thousand times dead.
And with these dates and the others I’ve compiled, I’m trying to put
together a predictive model for the more intensive Seasons. There’s a
cycle here, a rhythm. Don’t we need to know in advance if the next
Season is going to be longer or worse somehow? How can we prepare for
the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?
 9
the desert, briefly, and you

DESERTS ARE WORSE THAN MOST places, during Seasons. Tonkee lets Ykka know
that water will be easy; Castrima’s Innovators have already assembled a number
of contraptions they’re calling dew-catchers. The sun won’t be an issue either,
thanks to the ash clouds that you never thought you’d have cause to thank. It will
be chilly, in fact, though less so by day. You might even get a bit of snow.
No, the danger of deserts during a Season is simply that nearly all animals
and insects there hibernate, deep under the sand where it’s still warm. There are
those who claim to have figured out a surefire method of digging up sleeping
lizards and such, but those are usually scams; the few comms that edge the
desert guard such secrets jealously. The surface plants will have already
shriveled away or been eaten by creatures preparing for hibernation, leaving
nothing aboveground but sand and ash. Stonelore’s advice on entering deserts
during Seasons is simply: don’t. Unless you mean to starve.
The comm spends two days camped at the edge of the Merz, preparing,
though the truth is—as Ykka has confided in you, while you sat with her sharing
your last mellow—there’s really no amount of preparation that will make the
journey any easier. People are going to die. You won’t be one of them; it’s a
curious feeling knowing that Hoa can whisk you away to Corepoint if there’s
any real danger. It’s cheating, maybe. Except it’s not. Except you’re going to
help as much as you can—and because you won’t die, you’re going to watch a
lot of other people suffer. That’s the least you can do, now that you’ve
committed to the cause of Castrima. Bear witness, and fight like earthfires to
keep death from claiming more than its share.
In the meantime, the folks on cookfire duty pull double shifts roasting
insects, drying tubers, baking the last of the grain stores into cakes, salting meat.
After they were fed enough to have some strength, Maxixe’s surviving people
turned out to be especially helpful with foraging, since several are locals and
remember where there might be abandoned farms or debris from the Rifting
shake that hasn’t been too picked over. Speed will be of the essence; survival
means winning the race between the Merz’s width and Castrima’s supplies.
Because of this, Tonkee—who is increasingly becoming a spokesperson for the
Innovators, much to her own disgruntlement—oversees a quick and dirty
breakdown and rebuilding of the storage wagons to a new lighter, more shock-
resistant design that should pull more easily over desert sand. The Resistants and
Breeders redistribute the remaining supplies to make sure the loss of any one
wagon, if it must be abandoned, won’t cause some kind of critical shortage.
The night before the desert, you’re hunkered down beside one of the
cookfires, still-awkwardly navigating how to feed yourself with one arm, when
someone sits down beside you. It startles you a little, and you jerk enough to
knock your cornbread off the plate. The hand that reaches into your view to
retrieve it is broad and bronze and nicked with combat scars, and there’s a bit of
yellow watered silk—filthy and ragged now, but still recognizable as such—
looped around the wrist. Danel.
“Thanks,” you say, hoping she won’t use the opportunity to strike up a
conversation.
“They say you were Fulcrum once,” she says, handing the cornbread back to
you. No such luck, then.
It really shouldn’t surprise you that the people of Castrima have been
gossiping. You decide not to care, using the cornbread to sop up another
mouthful of stew. It’s especially good today, thickened with corn flour and rich
with the tender, salty meat that’s been plentiful since the stone forest. Everybody
needs as much fat on them as they can pack away, to prepare for the desert. You
don’t think about the meat.
“I was,” you say, in what you hope sounds like a tone of warning.
“How many rings?”
You grimace in distaste, consider trying to explain the “unofficial” rings that
Alabaster gave you, consider how far you’ve come beyond even those, consider
being humble … and then finally you settle for accuracy. “Ten.” Essun Tenring,
the Fulcrum would call you now, if the seniors would bother to acknowledge
your current name, and if the Fulcrum still existed. For what it’s worth.
Danel whistles appreciatively. So strange to encounter someone who knows
and cares about such things. “They say,” she continues, “that you can do things
with the obelisks. That’s how you beat us, at Castrima; I had no idea you’d be
able to rile up the bugs that way. Or trap so many of the stone eaters.”
You pretend not to care and concentrate on the cornbread. It’s just a little
sweet; the cookfire squad is trying to use up the sugar, to make room for edibles
with more nutritional value. It’s delicious.
“They say,” Danel continues, watching you sidelong, “that a ten-ring rogga
broke the world, up in the Equatorials.”
Okay, no. “Orogene.”
“What?”
“Orogene.” It’s petty, maybe. Because of Ykka’s insistence on making rogga
a use-caste name, all the stills are tossing the word around like it doesn’t mean
anything. It’s not petty. It means something. “Not ‘rogga.’ You don’t get to say
‘rogga.’ You haven’t earned that.”
Silence for a few breaths. “All right,” Danel says then, with no hint of either
apology or humoring you. She just accepts the new rule. She also doesn’t
insinuate again that you’re the person who caused the Rifting. “Point stands,
though. You can do things most orogenes can’t. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You blow a stray ash flake off the baked potato.
“They say,” Danel says, planting her hands on her knees and leaning forward,
“that you know how to end this Season. That you’re going to be leaving soon to
go somewhere and actually try. And that you’ll need people to go with you,
when you do.”
What. You frown at your potato. “Are you volunteering?”
“Maybe.”
You stare at her. “You just got accepted into the Strongbacks.”
Danel regards you for a moment longer, expression unreadably still. You
don’t realize she’s wavering, trying to decide whether to reveal something about
herself to you, until she sighs and does it. “I’m Lorist caste, actually. Danel
Lorist Rennanis, once. Danel Strongback Castrima’s never gonna sound right.”
You must look skeptical as you try to visualize her with black lips. She rolls
her eyes and looks away. “Rennanis didn’t need lorists, the headman said. It
needed soldiers. And everybody knows lorists are good in a fight, so—”
“What?”
She sighs. “Equatorial lorists, I mean. Those of us who come out of the old
Lorist families train in hand-to-hand, the arts of war, and so forth. It makes us
more useful during Seasons, and in the task of defending knowledge.”
You had no idea. But—“Defending knowledge?”
A muscle flexes in Danel’s jaw. “Soldiers might get a comm through a
Season, but storytellers are what kept Sanze going through seven of them.”
“Oh. Right.”
She makes a palpable effort to not shake her head at Midlatter provincialism.
“Anyway. Better to be a general than cannon fodder, since that was the only
choice I was given. But I’ve tried not to forget who I really am …” Abruptly her
expression grows troubled. “You know, I can’t remember the exact wording of
Tablet Three anymore? Or the Tale of Emperor Mutshatee. Just two years
without stories, and I’m losing them. Never thought it would happen so fast.”
You’re not sure what to say to that. She looks so grim that you almost want
to reassure her. Oh, it’ll be all right now that you’re no longer occupying your
mind with the wholesale slaughter of the Somidlats, or something like that. You
don’t think you could pull that off without sounding a little snide, though.
Danel’s jaw tightens in a determined sort of way anyway as she looks sharply
at you. “I know when I see new stories being written, though.”
“I … I don’t know anything about that.”
She shrugs. “The hero of the story never does.”
Hero? You laugh a little, and it’s got an edge. Can’t help thinking of Allia,
and Tirimo, and Meov, and Rennanis, and Castrima. Heroes don’t summon
swarms of nightmare bugs to eat their enemies. Heroes aren’t monsters to their
daughters.
“I won’t forget what I am,” Danel continues. She’s braced one hand on her
knee and is leaning forward, insistent. Somewhere in the last few days, she’s
gotten her hands on a knife, and used it to shave the sides of her scalp. It gives
her a naturally lean, hungry look. “If I’m possibly the last Equatorial lorist left,
then it’s my duty to go with you. To write the tale of what happens—and if I
survive, to make sure the world hears it.”
This is ridiculous. You stare at her. “You don’t even know where we’re
going.”
“Figured we’d settle the issue of whether I’m going first, but we can skip to
the details if you want.”
“I don’t trust you,” you say, mostly in exasperation.
“I don’t trust you, either. But we don’t have to like each other to work
together.” Her own plate is empty; she picks it up and waves to one of the kids
on cleanup duty to come take it. “It’s not like I have a reason to kill you,
anyway. This time.”
And it’s worse that Danel has said this—that she remembers siccing a
shirtless Guardian on you and is unapologetic about it. Yes, it was war and, yes,
you later slaughtered her army, but … “People like you don’t need a reason!”
“I don’t think you have any real idea who or what ‘people like me’ are.”
She’s not angry; her statement was matter-of-fact. “But if you need more
reasons, here’s another: Rennanis is shit. Sure, there’s food, water, and shelter;
your headwoman’s right to lead you there if it’s true that the city is empty now.
Better than commlessness, or rebuilding somewhere with no storecaches. But
shit otherwise. I’d rather stay on the move.”
“Bullshit,” you say, frowning. “No comm is that bad.”
Danel just lets out a single bitter snort. It makes you uneasy.
“Just think about it,” she says finally, and gets up to leave.

“I agree that Danel should come with us,” Lerna says, later that night when you
tell him about the conversation. “She’s a good fighter. Knows the road. And
she’s right: she has no reason to betray us.”
You’re half-asleep, because of the sex. It’s an anticlimactic thing now that
it’s finally happened. What you feel for Lerna will never be intense, or guilt-free.
You’ll always feel too old for him. But, well. He asked you to show him the
truncated breast and you did, thinking that would mark the end of his interest in
you. The sandy patch is crusty and rough amid the smoother brown of your torso
—like a scab, though the wrong color and texture. His hands were gentle as he
examined the spot and pronounced it sound enough to need no further
bandaging. You told him that it didn’t hurt. You didn’t say that you were afraid
you couldn’t feel anything anymore. That you were changing, hardening in more
ways than one, becoming nothing but the weapon everyone keeps trying to make
of you. You didn’t say, Maybe you’re better off with unrequited love.
But even though you didn’t say any of these things, after the examination he
looked at you and replied, “You’re still beautiful.” You apparently needed to
hear that a lot more than you realized. And now here you are.
So you process his words slowly because he’s made you feel relaxed and
boneless and human again, and it’s a good ten seconds before you blurt, “‘Us’?”
He just looks at you.
“Shit,” you say, and drape an arm over your eyes.
The next day, Castrima enters the desert.

There comes a time of greater hardship for you.

 All Seasons are hardship, Death is the fifth, and master of all, but this time is
different. This is personal. This is a thousand people trying to cross a desert that
is deadly even when acid rain isn’t sheeting from the sky. This is a group force-
march along a highroad that is shaky and full of holes big enough to drop a
house through. Highroads are built to withstand shakes, but there’s a limit, and
the Rifting definitely surpassed it. Ykka decided to take the risk because even a
damaged highroad is faster to travel than the desert sand, but this takes a toll.
Every orogene in the comm has to stay on alert, because anything worse than a
microshake while you’re up here could spell disaster. One day Penty, too
exhausted to pay attention to her own instincts, steps on a patch of cracked
asphalt that’s completely unstable. One of the other rogga kids snatches her
away just as a big piece simply falls through the substructure of the road. Others
are less careful, and less lucky.
The acid rain was unexpected. Stonelore does not discuss the ways in which
Seasons can impact weather, because such things are unpredictable at the best of
times. What happens here is not entirely surprising, however. Northward, at the
equator, the Rifting pumps heat and particulates into the air. Moisture-laden
tropical winds coming off the sea hit this cloud-seeding, energy-infusing wall,
which whips them into storm. You remember being worried about snow. No. It’s
endless, miserable rain.
(The rain is not so very acid, as these things go. In the Season of Turning Soil
—long before Sanze, you would not know of it—there was rain that stripped
animals’ fur and peeled the skins off oranges. This is nothing compared to that,
and diluted as it is by water. Like vinegar. You’ll live.)
Ykka sets a brutal pace while you’re on the highroad. On the first day
everyone makes camp well after nightfall, and Lerna does not come to the tent
after you wearily put it up. He’s busy tending half a dozen people who are going
lame from slips or twisted ankles, and two elders who are having breathing
problems, and the pregnant woman. The latter three are doing all right, he tells
you when he finally crawls into your bedroll, near dawn; Ontrag the potter lives
on spite, and the pregnant woman has both her household and half the Breeders
taking care of her. What’s troubling are the injuries. “I have to tell Ykka,” he
says as you push a slab of rain-soaked cachebread and sour sausage into his
mouth, then cover him up and make him lie still. He chews and swallows almost
without noticing. “We can’t keep going at this pace. We’ll start losing people if
we don’t—”
“She knows,” you tell him. You’ve spoken as gently as you can, but it still
silences him. He stares until you lie back down beside him—awkwardly, with
only one arm, but successfully. Eventually exhaustion overwhelms anguish, and
he sleeps.
You walk with Ykka one day. She’s setting the pace like a good comm leader
should, pushing no one harder than herself. At the lone midday rest stop, she
takes off one boot and you see that her feet are streaked with blood from blisters.
You look at her, frowning, and it’s eloquent enough that she sighs. “Never got
around to requisitioning better boots,” she says. “These are too loose. Always
figured I’d have more time.”
“If your feet rot off,” you begin, but she rolls her eyes and points toward the
supply pile in the middle of the camp.
You glance at it in confusion, start to resume your scolding, and then pause.
Think. Look at the supply pile again. If every wagon carries a crate of the salted
cachebread and another of sausage, and if those casks are pickled vegetables,
and those are the grains and beans …
The pile is so small. So little, for a thousand people who have weeks yet to go
through the Merz.
You shut up about the boots. Though she gets some extra socks from
someone; that helps.
It shocks you that you’re doing as well as you are. You’re not healthy, not
exactly. Your menstrual cycle has stopped, and it’s probably not menopause yet.
When you undress to basin-wash, which is sort of pointless in the constant rain
but habit is habit, you notice that your ribs show starkly beneath loose skin.
That’s only partly because of all the walking, though; some of it is because you
keep forgetting to eat. You feel tired at the end of the day, but it’s a distant,
detached sort of thing. When you touch Lerna—not for sex, you don’t have the
energy, but cuddling for warmth saves calories, and he needs the comfort—it
feels good, but in an equally detached way. You feel as though you’re floating
above yourself, watching him sigh, listening to someone else yawn. Like it’s
happening to someone else.
This is what happened to Alabaster, you remember. A detachment from the
flesh, as it became no longer flesh. You resolve to do a better job of eating at
every opportunity.
Three weeks into the desert, as expected, the highroad veers off to the west.
From there on, Castrima must descend to the ground and contend with desert
terrain up close and personal. It’s easier, in some ways, because at least the
ground isn’t likely to crumble away beneath your feet. On the other hand, sand is
harder to walk on than asphalt. Everyone slows down. Maxixe earns his keep by
drawing enough of the moisture out of the topmost layer of sand and ash and
icing it a few inches down, to firm it up beneath everyone’s feet. It exhausts him
to do this on a constant basis, though, so he saves it for the worst patches. He
tries to teach Temell how to do the same trick, but Temell’s an ordinary feral; he
can’t manage the necessary precision. (You could have done it once. You don’t
let yourself think about this.)
Scouts sent forth to try to find a better path all come back and report the same
thing: rusting sand-ash-mud everywhere. There is no better path.
Three people got left behind on the highroad, unable to walk any further
because of sprains or breaks. You don’t know them. In theory, they’ll catch up
once they’ve recovered, but you can’t see how they’ll recover with no food or
shelter. Here on the ground it’s worse: a half-dozen broken ankles, one broken
leg, one wrenched back among the Strongbacks pulling the wagons, all in the
first day. After a while, Lerna stops going to them unless they ask for his help.
Most don’t ask. There’s nothing he can do, and everyone knows it.
On a chilly day, Ontrag the potter just sits down and says she doesn’t feel like
going any further. Ykka actually argues with her, which you weren’t expecting.
Ontrag has passed on her skill of pottery to two younger comm members. She’s
redundant, long past childbearing; it should be an easy headwoman’s choice, by
the rules of Old Sanze and the tenets of stonelore. But in the end, Ontrag herself
has to tell Ykka to shut up and walk away.
It’s a warning sign. “I can’t do this anymore,” you hear Ykka say later, when
Ontrag has fallen out of sight behind you. She plods forward, her pace steady
and ground-eating as usual, but her head is down, hanks of wet ashblow hair
obscuring her face. “I can’t. It isn’t right. It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t
just be—there’s more to being Castrima than being rusting useful, for Earth’s
sake, she used to teach me in creche, she knows stories, I rusting can’t.”
Hjarka Leadership Castrima, who was taught from an early age to kill the few
so the many might live, only touches her shoulder and says, “You’ll do what you
have to do.”
Ykka doesn’t say anything for the next few miles, but maybe that’s just
because there’s nothing to say.
The vegetables run out first. Then the meat. The cachebread Ykka tries to
ration for as long as she can, but the plain fact is that people can’t travel at this
speed on nothing. She has to give everyone at least a wafer a day. That’s not
enough, but it’s better than nothing—until there is nothing. And you keep
walking anyway.
In the absence of all else, people run on hope. On the other side of the desert,
Danel tells everyone around a campfire one night, there’s another Imperial Road
you can pick up. Easy traveling all the way to Rennanis. It’s a river delta region,
too, with good soil, once the breadbasket of the Equatorials. Lots of now-
abandoned farms outside of any comm. Danel’s army had good foraging there
on its way south. If you can get through the desert, there will be food.
If you can get through the desert.
You know the end to this. Don’t you? How could you be here listening to this
tale if you didn’t? But sometimes it is the how of a thing, not just the endgame,
that matters most.
So this is the endgame: Of the nearly eleven hundred souls who went into the
desert, a little over eight hundred and fifty reach the Imperial Road.
For a few days after that, the comm effectively dissolves. Desperate people,
no longer willing to wait for orderly foraging by the Hunters, stagger off to dig
through sour soil for half-rotted tubers and bitter grubs and barely chewable
woody roots. The land around here is scraggly, treeless, half-desert and half-
fertile, long depopulated by the Rennies. Before she loses too many people,
Ykka orders camp made on an old farm with several barns that have managed to
survive the Season thus far. The walls, apart from basic framing, haven’t fared as
well, but then they haven’t collapsed, either. It’s the roofs she wanted, since the
rain still falls here on the desert’s edge, though it’s lighter and intermittent. Nice
to sleep dry, at last.
Three days, Ykka gives it. During that time, people creep back in ones and
twos, some bringing food to share with others too weak to forage. The Hunters
who bother to return bring fish from one of the river branches that’s relatively
nearby. One of them finds the thing that saves you, the thing that feels like life
after all the death behind you: a farmer’s private housecache of cornmeal, sealed
in clay urns and kept hidden under the floorboards of the ruined house. You have
nothing to mix it with, no milk or eggs or dried meat, just the acid water, but
food is that which nourishes, stonelore says. The comm feasts on fried corn
mush that night. One urn has cracked and teems with mealybugs, but no one
cares. Extra protein.
A lot of people don’t come back. It’s a Season. All things change.
At the end of three days, Ykka declares that anyone still in the camp is
Castrima; anyone who hasn’t returned is now ashed out and commless. Easier
than speculating on how they might have died, or who might have killed them.
What’s left of the group strikes camp. You head north.

Was this too fast? Perhaps tragedies should not be summarized so bluntly. I
meant to be merciful, not cruel. That you had to live it is the cruelty … but
distance, detachment, heals. Sometimes.
I could have taken you from the desert. You did not have to suffer as they
did. And yet … they have become part of you, the people of this comm. Your
friends. Your fellows. You needed to see them through. Suffering is your
healing, at least for now.
Lest you think me inhuman, a stone, I did what I could to help. Some of the
beasts that hibernate beneath the sand of the desert are capable of preying on
humans; did you know that? A few woke as you passed, but I kept them away.
One of the wagons’ wooden axles partially dissolved in the rain and began to
sag, though none of you noticed. I transmuted the wood—petrified it, if you
prefer to think that way—so that it would last. I am the one who moved the
moth-eaten rug in that abandoned farmhouse, so that your Hunter found the
cornmeal. Ontrag, who had not told Ykka about the growing pain in her side and
chest, or her shortness of breath, did not live long after the comm left her behind.
I went back to her on the night that she died, and tuned away what little pain she
felt. (You’ve heard the song. Antimony sang it for Alabaster once. I’ll sing it for
you, if …) She was not alone, at the end.
Does any of this comfort you? I hope so. I’m still human, I told you. Your
opinion matters to me.
Castrima survives; that is also what matters. You survive. For now, at least.
And at last, some while later, you reach the southernmost edge of Rennanis’s
territory.

Honor in safety, survival under threat. Necessity is the only law.

—Tablet Three, “Structures,” verse four
 10
Nassun, through the fire

ALL OF THIS HAPPENS IN the earth. It is mine to know, and to share with you. It is
hers to suffer. I’m sorry.
Inside the pearlescent vehicle, the walls are inlaid with elegant vining designs
wrought of what looks like gold. Nassun isn’t sure if the metal is purely
decorative or has some sort of purpose. The hard, smooth seats, which are pastel
colors and shaped something like the shells of mussels that she ate sometimes at
Found Moon, have amazingly soft cushions. They are locked to the floor,
Nassun finds, and yet it is possible to turn them from side to side or lean back.
She cannot fathom what the chairs are made of.
To her greater shock, a voice speaks in the air a moment after they settle in.
The voice is female, polite, detached, and somehow reassuring. The language is
… incomprehensible, and not remotely familiar. However, the pronunciation of
the syllables is no different from that of Sanze-mat, and something about the
rhythm of the sentences, their order, fits the expectations of Nassun’s ear. She
suspects that part of the first sentence is a greeting. She thinks a word that keeps
being repeated, amid a passage that has the air of a command, might be a
softening word, like please. The rest, however, is wholly foreign.
The voice speaks only briefly, and then falls silent. Nassun glances at Schaffa
and is surprised to see him frowning, eyes narrowed in concentration—though
some of that is also tension in his jaw, and a hint of extra pallor around his lips.
The silver is hurting him more, and it must be bad this time. Still, he looks up at
her in something like wonder. “I remember this language,” he says.
“Those weird words? What did she say?”
“That this …” He grimaces. “Thing. It’s called a vehimal. The announcement
says it will depart from this city and begin the transit to Corepoint in two
minutes, to arrive in six hours. There was something about other vehicles, other
routes, return trips to various … nodes? I don’t remember what that means. And
she hopes we will enjoy the ride.” He smiles thinly.
“Oh.” Pleased, Nassun kicks a little in her chair. Six hours to travel all the
way to the other side of the planet? But she shouldn’t be amazed by that, maybe,
since these are the people who built the obelisks.
There seems to be nothing to do but get comfortable. Cautiously, Nassun
unslings her runny-sack and lets it hang from the back of her chair. This causes
her to notice that something like lichen grows all over the floor, though it cannot
be natural or accidental; the blooms of it spread out in pretty, regular patterns.
She stretches down a foot and finds that it is soft, like carpet.
Schaffa is more restless, pacing around the comfortable confines of the …
vehimal … and touching its golden veins now and again. It’s slow, methodical
pacing, but even that is unusual for him, so Nassun is restless, too. “I have been
here,” he murmurs.
“What?” She heard him. She’s just confused.
“In this vehimal. Perhaps in that very seat. I have been here, I feel it. And that
language—I don’t remember ever having heard it, and yet.” He bares his teeth
suddenly, and thrusts his fingers into his hair. “Familiarity, but no, no …
context! No meaning! Something about this journey is wrong. Something is
wrong and I don’t remember what.”
Schaffa has been damaged for as long as Nassun has known him, but this is
the first time he has seemed damaged to her. He’s speaking faster, words
tumbling over one another. There is an oddness to the way his eyes dart around
the vehimal interior that makes Nassun suspect he’s seeing things that aren’t
there.
Trying to conceal her anxiety, she reaches out and pats the shell-chair beside
her. “These are soft enough to sleep in, Schaffa.”
It’s too obvious a suggestion, but he turns to gaze at her, and for a moment
the haunted tension of his expression softens. “Always so concerned for me, my
little one.” But it stops the restlessness as she’d hoped, and he comes over to sit.
Just as he does—Nassun starts—the woman’s voice speaks again. It’s asking
a question. Schaffa frowns and then translates, slowly, “She—I think this is the
vehimal’s voice. It speaks to us now, specifically. Not just an announcement.”
Nassun shifts, suddenly less comfortable inside the thing. “It talks. It’s
alive?”
“I’m not certain the distinction between living creature and lifeless object
matters to the people who built this place. Yet—” He hesitates, then raises his
voice to haltingly speak strange words to the air. The voice answers again,
repeating something Nassun heard before. She’s not sure where some of the
words begin or end, but the syllables are the same. “It says that we are
approaching the … transition point. And it asks if we would like to …
experience?” He shakes his head, irritable. “To see something. Finding the
words in our own tongue is more difficult than understanding what’s being
said.”
Nassun twitches with nerves. She draws her feet up into her chair, irrationally
afraid of hurting the creature-thing’s insides. She isn’t sure what she means to
ask. “Will it hurt, to see?” Hurt the vehimal, she means, but she cannot help also
thinking, Hurt us.
The voice speaks again before Schaffa has time to translate Nassun’s
question. “No,” it says.
Nassun jumps in pure shock, her orogeny twitching in a way that would have
earned her a shout from Essun. “Did you say no?” she blurts, looking around at
the vehimal’s walls. Maybe it was a coincidence.
“Biomagestric storage surpluses permit—” The voice slips back into the old
language, but Nassun is certain she did not imagine hearing those oddly
pronounced words of Sanze-mat. “—processing,” it concludes. Its voice is
soothing, but it seems to come from the very walls, and it troubles Nassun that
she has nothing to look at, no face to orient on while she’s listening to it. How is
it even speaking with no mouth, no throat? She imagines the cilia on the outside
of the vehicle somehow rubbing together like insects’ legs, and her skin crawls.
It continues, “Translation—” Something. “—linguistic drift.” That sounded
like Sanze-mat, but she doesn’t know what it means. It continues for a few more
words, incomprehensible again.
Nassun looks at Schaffa, who’s also frowning in alarm. “How do I answer
what it was asking before?” she whispers. “How do I tell it that I want to see
whatever it’s talking about?”
In answer, though Nassun had not meant to ask this question directly of the
vehimal, the featureless wall in front of them suddenly darkens into round black
spots, as if the surface has suddenly sprouted ugly mold. These spread and
merge rapidly until half of the wall is nothing but blackness. As if they’re
looking through a window into the bowels of the city, but outside the vehimal
there’s nothing to see but black.
Then light appears on the bottom edge of this window—which really is a
window, she realizes; the entire front end of the vehimal has somehow become
transparent. The light, in rectangular panels like the ones that lined the stairway
from the surface, brightens and marches forward into the darkness ahead, and by
its illumination Nassun is able to see walls arching around them. Another tunnel,
this one only large enough for the vehimal, and curving through dark rocky walls
that are surprisingly rough-hewn given the obelisk-builders’ penchant for
seamless smoothness. The vehimal is moving steadily along this tunnel, though
not quickly. Propelled by its cilia? By some other means Nassun cannot fathom?
She finds herself simultaneously fascinated and a little bored, if that is possible.
It seems impossible that something which goes so slow can get them to the other
side of the world in six hours. If all of those hours will be like this, riding a
smooth white track through a rocky black tunnel, with nothing to occupy them
except Schaffa’s restlessness and a disembodied voice, it will feel much longer.
And then the curve of the tunnel straightens out, and up ahead Nassun sees
the hole for the first time.
The hole isn’t large. There’s something about it that is immediately,
viscerally impressive nevertheless. It sits at the center of a vaulted cavern,
surrounded by more panel lights, which have been set into the ground. As the
vehimal approaches, these turn from white to bright red in a way that Nassun
decides is another signal of warning. Down the hole is a yawning blackness.
Instinctively she sesses, trying to grasp its dimensions—but she cannot. The
circumference of the hole, yes; it’s only about twenty feet across. Perfectly
circular. The depth, though … she frowns, uncurls from her chair, concentrates.
The sapphire tickles at her mind, inviting use of its power, but she resists this;
there are too many things in this place that respond to the silver, to magic, in
ways she doesn’t understand. And anyway, she’s an orogene. Sessing the depth
of a hole should be easy … but this hole stretches deep, deep, beyond her range.
And the vehimal’s track runs right up to the hole, and over its edge.
Which is as it should be, should it not? The goal is to reach Corepoint. Still,
Nassun cannot help a surge of alarm that is powerful enough to edge along
panic. “Schaffa!” He immediately reaches for her hand. She grips it tightly with
no fear of hurting him. His strength, which has only ever been used to protect
her, never in threat, is desperately needed reassurance right now.
“I have done this before,” he says, but he sounds uncertain. “I have survived
it.”
But you don’t remember how, she thinks, feeling a kind of terror that she
doesn’t know the word for.
(That word is premonition.)
Then the edge is there, and the vehimal tips forward. Nassun gasps and
clutches at the armrests of her chair—but bizarrely, there is no vertigo. The
vehimal does not speed up; its movement pauses for a moment, in fact, and
Nassun catches a fleeting glimpse of a few of the thing’s cilia blurring at the
edges of the view, as they somehow adjust the trajectory of the vehimal from
forward to down. Something else has adjusted with this change, so that Nassun
and Schaffa do not fall forward out of their seats; Nassun finds that her back and
butt are just as firmly tucked into the chair now as before, even though this is
impossible.
And meanwhile, a faint hum within the vehimal, which until now has been
too low to be much more than subliminal, abruptly begins to grow louder.
Unseen mechanisms reverberate faster in an unmistakable cycling-up pattern. As
the vehimal completes its tilt, the view fills with darkness again, but this time
Nassun knows it is the yawning black of the pit. There’s nothing ahead anymore.
Only down.
“Launch,” says the voice within the vehimal.
Nassun gasps and clutches Schaffa’s hand harder as she is pressed back into
her seat then by motion. It isn’t as much momentum as she should be feeling,
however, because her every sense tells her that they have just shot forward at a
tremendous rate, going much, much faster than even a running horse.
Into the dark.
At first the darkness is absolute, though broken periodically by a ring of light
that blurs past as they hurtle through the tunnel. Their speed continues to
increase; presently these rings pass so quickly that they are just flashes. It takes
three before Nassun is able to discern what she’s seeing and sessing, and then
only once she watches a ring as they pass it: windows. There are windows set
into the walls of the tunnel, illuminated by the light. There’s living space down
here, at least for the first few miles. Then the rings stop, and the tunnel is
nothing but dark for a while.
Nassun sesses impending change an instant before the tunnel suddenly
brightens. They can see a new, ruddy light that intersperses the rock walls of the
tunnel. Ah, yes; they’ve gone far enough down that some of the rock has melted
and glows bright red. This new light paints the vehimal’s interior bloody and
makes the gold filigree along its walls seem to catch fire. The forward view is
indistinct at first, just red amid gray and brown and black, but Nassun
understands instinctively what she’s seeing. They have entered the mantle, and
her fear finally begins to ebb amid fascination.
“The asthenosphere,” she murmurs. Schaffa frowns at her, but naming what
she sees has eased her fear. Names have power. She bites her lip, then finally lets
go of Schaffa’s hand to rise and approach the forward view. Up close it’s easier
to tell that what she’s seeing is just an illusion of sorts—tiny diamonds of color
rising on the vehimal’s inner skin, like a blush, to form a mosaic of moving
images. How does it work? She can’t begin to fathom it.
Fascinated, she reaches up. The vehimal’s inner skin gives off no heat,
though she knows they are already at a level underground where human flesh
should burn up in an instant. When she touches the image on the forward view, it
ripples ever so slightly around her finger, like waves in water. Putting her whole
hand on a roil of brown-red color, she cannot help smiling. Just a few feet away,
on the other side of the vehimal’s skin, is the burning earth. She’s touching the
burning earth, thinly removed. She puts her other hand up, presses her cheek
against the smooth plates. Here in this strange deadciv contraption, she is part of
the earth, perhaps more so than any orogene before her has ever been. It is her, it
is in her, she is in it.
When Nassun glances back over her shoulder at Schaffa, he’s smiling,
despite the lines of pain around his eyes. It’s different from his usual smile.
“What?” she asks.
“The Leadership families of Yumenes believed that orogenes once ruled the
world,” he says. “That their duty was to keep your kind from ever regaining that
much power. That you would be monstrous rulers of the world, doing back to
ordinary folk what had been done to you, if you ever got the chance. I don’t
think they were right about any of it—and yet.” He gestures, as she stands there
illuminated by the fire of the earth. “Look at you, little one. If you are the
monster they imagined you to be … you are also glorious.”
Nassun loves him so much.
It’s why she gives up the illusion of power and goes back to sit beside him.
But when she gets close, she sees just how much strain he’s under. “Your head
hurts a lot.”
His smile fades. “It’s bearable.”
Troubled, she puts her hands on his shoulders. Dozens of nights of easing his
pain have made it easy—but this time when she sends silver into him, the white-
hot burn of lines between his cells does not fade. In fact, they blaze brighter, so
sharply that Schaffa tenses and pulls away from her, rising to begin pacing
again. He has plastered a smile on his face, more of a rictus as he prowls
restlessly back and forth, but Nassun can tell that the smile-endorphins are doing
nothing.
Why did the lines get brighter? Nassun tries to understand this by examining
herself. Nothing of her silver is different; it flows in its usual clearly delineated
lines. She turns her silver gaze on Schaffa—and then, belatedly, notices
something stunning.
The vehimal is made of silver, and not just fine lines of it. It is surrounded by
silver, permeated with it. What she perceives is a wave of the stuff, rippling in
ribbons around herself and Schaffa, starting at the nose of the vehicle and
enclosing them behind. This sheath of magic, she understands suddenly, is
what’s pushing away the heat and pushing back on the pressure and tilting the
lines of force within the vehimal so that gravity pulls toward its floor and not
toward the center of the earth. The walls are only a framework; something about
their structure makes it easier for the silver to flow and connect and form
lattices. The gold filigree helps to stabilize the churn of energies at the front of
the vehicle—or so Nassun guesses, since she cannot understand all the ways in
which these magic mechanisms work together. It’s just too complex. It is like
riding inside an obelisk. It’s like being carried by the wind. She had no idea the
silver could be so amazing.
But there is something beyond the miracle of the vehimal’s walls. Something
outside the vehimal.
At first Nassun isn’t sure what she’s perceiving. More lights? No. She’s
looking at it all wrong.
It’s the silver, same as what flows between her own cells. It’s a single thread
of silver—and yet it is titanic, curling away between a whorl of soft, hot rock
and a high-pressure bubble of searing water. A single thread of silver … and it is
longer than the tunnel they have traversed so far. She can’t find either of its
ends. It’s wider than the vehimal’s circumference and then some. Yet otherwise
it’s just as clear and focused as any one of the lines within Nassun herself. The
same, just … immense.
And Nassun understands then, she understands, so suddenly and
devastatingly that her eyes snap open and she stumbles backward with the force
of the realization, bumping into another chair and nearly falling before she grabs
it to hold herself upright. Schaffa makes a low, frustrated sound and turns in an
attempt to respond to her alarm—but the silver within his body is so bright that
when it flares, he doubles over, clutching at his head and groaning. He is in too
much pain to fulfill his duty as a Guardian, or to act on his concern for her,
because the silver in his body has grown to be as bright as that immense thread
out in the magma.
Magic, Steel called the silver. The stuff underneath orogeny, which is made
by things that live or once lived. This silver deep within Father Earth wends
between the mountainous fragments of his substance in exactly the same way
that they twine among the cells of a living, breathing thing. And that is because a
planet is a living, breathing thing; she knows this now with the certainty of
instinct. All the stories about Father Earth being alive are real.
But if the mantle is Father Earth’s body, why is his silver getting brighter?
No. Oh no.
“Schaffa,” Nassun whispers. He grunts; he has sagged to one knee, gasping
shallowly as he clutches at his head. She wants to go to him, comfort him, help
him, but she stands where she is, her breath coming too fast from rising panic at
what she suddenly knows is coming. She wants to deny it, though. “Schaffa, p-
please, that thing in your head, the piece of iron, you called it a corestone,
Schaffa—” Her voice is fluttery. She can’t catch her breath. Fear has nearly
closed her throat. No. No. She did not understand, but now she does and she has
no idea how to stop it. “Schaffa, where does it come from, that corestone thing in
your head?”
The vehimal’s voice speaks again with that greeting language, and then it
continues, obscene in its detached pleasantry. “—a marvel, only available—”
Something. “—route. This vehimal—” Something. “—heart, illuminated—”
Something. “—for your pleasure.”
Schaffa does not reply. But Nassun can sess the answer to her question now.
She can feel it as the paltry thin silver that runs through her own body resonates
—but that is a faint resonance, from her silver, generated by her own flesh. The
silver in Schaffa, in all Guardians, is generated by the corestone that sits lodged
in their sessapinae. She’s studied this stone sometimes, to the degree that she is
able while Schaffa sleeps and she feeds him magic. It’s iron, but like no other
iron she’s ever sessed. Oddly dense. Oddly energetic, though some of that is the
magic that it channels into him from … somewhere. Oddly alive.
And when the whole right side of the vehimal dissolves to let its passengers
glimpse the rarely seen wonder that is the world’s unfettered heart, it already
blazes before her: a silver sun underground, so bright that she must squint, so
heavy that perceiving it hurts her sessapinae, so powerful with magic that it
makes the lingering connection of the sapphire feel tremulous and weak. It is the
Earth’s core, the source of the corestones, and before her it is a world in itself,
swallowing the viewscreen and growing further still as they hurtle closer.
It does not look like rock, Nassun thinks faintly, beneath the panic. Maybe
that’s just the waver of molten metal and magic all round the vehimal, but the
immensity before her seems to shimmer when she tries to focus on it. There’s
some solidity to it; as they draw closer, Nassun can detect anomalies dotting the
surface of the bright sphere, made tiny by contrast—even as she realizes they are
obelisks. Several dozen of them, jammed into the heart of the world like needles
in a pincushion. But these are nothing. Nothing.
And Nassun is nothing. Nothing before this.
It’s a mistake to bring him, Steel had said, of Schaffa.
Panic snaps. Nassun runs to Schaffa as he falls to the floor, thrashing. He
does not scream, though his mouth is open and his icewhite eyes have gone wide
and his every limb, when she wrestles him onto his back, is muscle-stiff. One
flailing arm hits her collarbone, flinging her back, and there is a flash of terrible
pain, but Nassun barely spares a thought for it before she scrambles back to him.
She grabs his arm with both of her own and tries to hold on because he is
reaching for his head and his hands are forming claws and his nails are raking at
his scalp and face—“ Schaffa, no!” she cries. But he cannot hear her.
And then the vehimal goes dark inside.
It’s still moving, though slower. They’ve actually passed into the semisolid
stuff of the core, the vehimal’s route skimming its surface—because of course
the people who built the obelisks would revel in their ability to casually pierce
the planet for entertainment. She can feel the blaze of that silver, churning sun
all around her. Behind her, however, the wall-window goes suddenly dim.
There’s something just outside the vehimal, pressing against its sheath of magic.
Slowly, with Schaffa writhing in silent agony in her lap, Nassun turns to face
the core of the Earth.
And here, within the sanctum of its heart, the Evil Earth notices her back.
When the Earth speaks, it does not do so in words, exactly. This is a thing
you know already, but that Nassun only learns in this moment. She sesses the
meanings, hears the vibrations with the bones of her ears, shudders them out
through her skin, feels them pull tears from her eyes. It is like drowning in
energy and sensation and emotion. It hurts. Remember: The Earth wants to kill
her.
But remember, too: Nassun wants it just as dead.
So it says, in microshakes that will eventually stir a tsunami somewhere in
the southern hemisphere, Hello, little enemy.
(This is an approximation, you realize. This is all her young mind can bear.)
And as Schaffa chokes and goes into convulsions, Nassun clutches at his
pain-wracked form and stares at the wall of rusty darkness. She isn’t afraid
anymore; fury has steeled her. She is so very much her mother’s daughter.
 “You let him go,” she snarls. “You let him go right now.”
The core of the world is metal, molten and yet crushed into solidity. There is
some malleability to it. The surface of the red darkness begins to ripple and
change as Nassun watches. Something appears that for an instant she cannot
parse. A pattern, familiar. A face. It is just a suggestion of a person, eyes and a
mouth, shadow of a nose—but then for just an instant the eyes are distinct in
shape, the lips lined and detailed, a mole appearing beneath the eyes, which
open.
No one she knows. Just a face … where there should be none. And as Nassun
stares at this, dawning horror slowly pushing aside her anger, she sees another
face—and another, more of them appearing all at once to fill the view. Each is
pushed aside as another rises from underneath. Dozens. Hundreds. This one
jowled and tired-looking, that one puffy as if from crying, that one openmouthed
and screaming in silence, like Schaffa. Some look at her pleadingly, mouthing
words she wouldn’t be able to understand even if she could hear.
All of them ripple, though, with the amusement of a greater presence. He is
mine. Not a voice. When the Earth speaks, it is not in words. Nevertheless.
Nassun presses her lips together and reaches into the silver of Schaffa and
ruthlessly cuts as many of the tendrils etched into his body as she can, right
around the corestone. It doesn’t work like it usually does when she uses the
silver for surgery. The silver lines in Schaffa reestablish themselves almost
instantly, and throb that much harder when they do. Schaffa shudders each time.
She’s hurting him. She’s making it worse.
There’s no other choice. She wraps her own threads around his corestone to
perform the surgery he would not permit her to do a few months before. If it
shortens his life, at least he will not suffer for what is left of it.
But another ripple of amusement makes the vehimal shudder, and a flare of
silver blazes through Schaffa that shrugs off her paltry threads. The surgery fails.
The corestone is seated as firmly as ever amid the lobes of his sessapinae, like
the parasitic thing it is.
Nassun shakes her head and looks around for something, anything else, that
might help. She is distracted momentarily by the boil and shift of faces in the
surface of the rusty dark. Who are these people? Why are they here, churning
amid the Earth’s heart?
Obligation, the Earth returns, in wavelets of heat and crushing pressure.
Nassun bares her teeth, struggling against the weight of its contempt. What was
stolen, or lent, must be recompensed.
 And Nassun cannot help but understand this too, here within the Earth’s
embrace, with its meaning thrumming through her bones. The silver—magic—
comes from life. Those who made the obelisks sought to harness magic, and they
succeeded; oh, how they succeeded. They used it to build wonders beyond
imagining. But then they wanted more magic than just what their own lives, or
the accumulated aeons of life and death on the Earth’s surface, could provide.
And when they saw how much magic brimmed just beneath that surface, ripe for
the taking …
It may never have occurred to them that so much magic, so much life, might
be an indicator of … awareness. The Earth does not speak in words, after all—
and perhaps, Nassun realizes, having seen entirely too much of the world to still
have much of a child’s innocence, perhaps these builders of the great obelisk
network were not used to respecting lives different from their own. Not so very
different, really, from the people who run the Fulcrums, or raiders, or her father.
So where they should have seen a living being, they saw only another thing to
exploit. Where they should have asked, or left alone, they raped.
For some crimes, there is no fitting justice—only reparation. So for every iota
of life siphoned from beneath the Earth’s skin, the Earth has dragged a million
human remnants into its heart. Bodies rot in soil, after all—and soil sits upon
tectonic plates, plates eventually subduct into the fire under the Earth’s crust,
which convect endlessly through the mantle … and there within itself, the Earth
eats everything they were. This is only fair, it reasons—coldly, with an anger
that still shudders up from the depths to crack the world’s skin and touch off
Season after Season. It is only right. The Earth did not start this cycle of
hostilities, it did not steal the Moon, it did not burrow into anyone else’s skin
and snatch bits of its still-living flesh to keep as trophies and tools, it did not plot
to enslave humans in an unending nightmare. It did not start this war, but it will
rusting well have. Its. Due.
And oh. Does Nassun not understand this? Her hands tighten in Schaffa’s
shirt, trembling as her hatred wavers. Can she not empathize?
For the world has taken so much from her. She had a brother once. And a
father, and a mother whom she also understands but wishes she did not. And a
home, and dreams. The people of the Stillness have long since robbed her of
childhood and any hope of a real future, and because of this she is so angry that
she cannot think beyond THIS MUST STOP and I WILL STOP IT—
—so does she not resonate with the Evil Earth’s wrath, herself?
She does.
 Earth eat her, she does.
Schaffa has gone still in her lap. There is wetness beneath one of her legs;
he’s urinated on himself. His eyes are still open, and he breathes in shallow
gasps. His taut muscles still twitch now and again. Everyone breaks, if torture
goes on long enough. The mind bears the unbearable by going elsewhere.
Nassun is ten years old, going on a hundred, but she has seen enough of the
world’s evil to know this. Her Schaffa. Has gone away. And might never, ever,
come back.
The vehimal speeds onward.
The view begins to grow bright again as it emerges from the core. Interior
lights resume their pleasant glow. Nassun’s fingers curl loosely in Schaffa’s
clothes now. She gazes back at the turning mass of the core until the stuff of the
sidewall turns opaque again. The forward view lingers, but it, too, begins to
darken. They have entered another tunnel, this one wider than the first, with
solid black walls somehow holding back the churning heat of the outer core and
mantle. Now Nassun senses that the vehimal is tilted up, away from the core.
Headed back toward the surface, but this time on the other side of the planet.
Nassun whispers, to herself since Schaffa has gone away, “This has to stop. I
will stop it.” She closes her eyes and the lashes stick together, wet. “I promise.”
She does not know to whom she makes this promise. It doesn’t matter, really.
Not long after, the vehimal reaches Corepoint.
 Syl Anagist: One

THEY TAKE KELENLI AWAY IN the morning.

It is unexpected, at least by us. It also isn’t really about us, we realize fairly
quickly. Conductor Gallat arrives first, although I see several other high-ranking
conductors talking in the house above the garden. He does not look displeased as
he calls Kelenli outside and speaks to her in a quiet but intent voice. We all get
up, vibrating guilt though we have done nothing wrong, just spent a night lying
on a hard floor and listening to the strange sound of others’ breath and
occasional movement. I watch Kelenli, fearing for her, wanting to protect her,
though this is inchoate; I don’t know what the danger is. She stands straight and
tall, like one of them, as she speaks to Gallat. I sess her tension, like a fault line
poised to slip.
They are outside of the little garden house, fifteen feet away, but I hear
Gallat’s voice rise for a moment. “How much longer do you mean to keep up
this foolishness? Sleeping in the shed?”
Kelenli says, calmly, “Is there a problem?”
Gallat is the highest ranked of the conductors. He is also the cruelest. We
don’t think he means it. It’s just that he does not seem to understand that cruelty
is possible, with us. We are the machine’s tuners; we ourselves must be attuned
for the good of the project. That this process sometimes causes pain or fear or
decommissioning to the briar patch is … incidental.
We have wondered if Gallat has feelings himself. He does, I see when he
draws back now, expression all a-ripple with hurt, as if Kelenli’s words have
struck him some sort of blow. “I’ve been good to you,” he says. His voice
wavers.
“And I’m grateful.” Kelenli hasn’t shifted the inflection of her voice at all, or
a muscle of her face. She looks and sounds, for the first time, like one of us. And
as we so often do, she and he are having a conversation that has nothing to do
with the words coming from their mouths. I check; there’s nothing in the
ambient, save the fading vibrations of their voices. And yet.
Gallat stares at her. Then the hurt and anger fade from his expression,
replaced by weariness. He turns away and snaps, “I need you back at the lab
today. There are fluctuations in the subgrid again.”
Kelenli’s face finally moves, her brows drawing down. “I was told I had
three days.”
“Geoarcanity takes precedence over your leisure plans, Kelenli.” He glances
toward the little house where I and the others cluster, and catches me staring at
him. I don’t look away, mostly because I’m so fascinated by his anguish that I
don’t think to. He looks fleetingly embarrassed, then irritated. He says to her,
with his usual air of impatience, “Biomagestry can only do distance scans
outside of the compound, but they say they’re actually detecting some interesting
flow clarification in the tuners’ network. Whatever you’ve been doing with them
obviously isn’t a complete waste of time. I’ll take them, then, to wherever you
were planning to go today. Then you can go back to the compound.”
She glances around at us. At me. My thinker.
“It should be an easy enough trip,” she says to him, while looking at me.
“They need to see the local engine fragment.”
“The amethyst?” Gallat stares at her. “They live in its shadow. They see it
constantly. How does that help?”
“They haven’t seen the socket. They need to fully understand its growth
process—more than theoretically.” All at once she turns away from me, and
from him, and begins walking toward the big house. “Just show them that, and
then you can drop them off at the compound and be done with them.”
I understand precisely why Kelenli has spoken in this dismissive tone, and
why she hasn’t bothered to say farewell before leaving. It’s no more than any of
us do, when we must watch or sess another of our network punished; we pretend
not to care. (Tetlewha. Your song is toneless, but not silent. From where do you
sing?) That shortens the punishment for all, and prevents the conductors from
focusing on another, in their anger. Understanding this, and feeling nothing as
she walks away, are two very different things, however.
Conductor Gallat is in a terrible mood after this. He orders us to get our
things so we can go. We have nothing, though some of us need to eliminate
waste before we leave, and all of us need food and water. He lets the ones who
need it use Kelenli’s small toilet or a pile of leaves out back (I am one of these; it
is very strange to squat, but also a profoundly enriching experience), then tells us
to ignore our hunger and thirst and come on, so we do. He walks us very fast,
even though our legs are shorter than his and still aching from the day before.
We are relieved to see the vehimal he’s summoned, when it comes, so that we
can sit and be carried back toward the center of town.
The other conductors ride along with us and Gallat. They keep speaking to
him and ignoring us; he answers in terse, one-word replies. They ask him mostly
about Kelenli—whether she is always so intransigent, whether he believes this is
an unforeseen genegineering defect, why he even bothers to allow her input on
the project when she is, for all intents and purposes, just an obsolete prototype.
“Because she’s been right in every suggestion she’s made thus far,” he snaps,
after the third such question. “Which is the very reason we developed the tuners,
after all. The Plutonic Engine would need another seventy years of priming
before even a test-firing could be attempted, without them. When a machine’s
sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make
the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed.”
That seems to mollify them, so they leave him alone and resume talking—
though to each other, not to him. I am sitting near Conductor Gallat. I notice how
the other conductors’ disdain actually increases his tension, making anger radiate
off his skin like the residual heat of sunlight from a rock, long after night has
fallen. There have always been odd dynamics to the conductors’ relationships;
we’ve puzzled them out as best we could, while not really understanding. Now,
however, thanks to Kelenli’s explanation, I remember that Gallat has
undesirable ancestry. We were made this way, but he was simply born with pale
skin and icewhite eyes—traits common among the Niess. He isn’t Niess; the
Niess are gone. There are other races, Sylanagistine races, with pale skin. The
eyes suggest, however, that somewhere in his family’s history—distant, or he
would not have been permitted schooling and medical care and his prestigious
current position—someone made children with a Niesperson. Or not; the trait
could be a random mutation or happenstance of pigment expression. Apparently
no one thinks it is, though.
This is why, though Gallat works harder and spends more hours at the
compound than anyone, and is in charge, the other conductors treat him as if he
is less than what he is. If he did not pass on the favor in his dealings with us, I
would pity him. As it is, I am afraid of him. I always have been afraid of him.
But for Kelenli, I decide to be brave.
“Why are you angry with her?” I ask. My voice is soft, and hard to hear over
the humming metabolic cycle of the vehimal. Few of the other conductors notice
my comment. None of them care. I have timed the asking well.
Gallat starts, then stares at me as if he has never seen me before. “What?”
“Kelenli.” I turn my eyes to meet his, although we have learned over time
that the conductors do not like this. They find eye contact challenging. But they
also dismiss us more easily when we do not look at them, and I don’t want to be
dismissed in this moment. I want him to feel this conversation, even if his weak,
primitive sessapinae cannot tell him that my jealousy and resentment have raised
the temperature of the city’s water table by two degrees.
He glares at me. I gaze impassively back. I sense tension in the network. The
others, who of course have noticed what the conductors ignore, are suddenly
afraid for me … but I am almost distracted from their concern by the difference I
suddenly perceive in us. Gallat is right: We are changing, complexifying, our
ambient influence strengthening, as a result of the things Kelenli has shown us.
Is this an improvement? I’m not certain yet. For now, we are confused where
before, we were mostly unified. Remwha and Gaewha are angry at me for taking
this risk without seeking consensus first—and this recklessness, I suppose, is my
own symptom of change. Bimniwha and Salewha are, irrationally, angry at
Kelenli for the strange way she is affecting me. Dushwha is done with all of us
and just wants to go home. Beneath her anger, Gaewha is afraid for me but she
also pities me, because I think she understands that my recklessness is a
symptom of something else. I have decided that I am in love, but love is a
painful hotspot roil beneath the surface of me in a place where once there was
stability, and I do not like it. Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever
created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled
together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity. I don’t
know how to feel, except reckless.
None of them are angry at Gallat for being too dangerous to have a simple
conversation with, though. There’s something very wrong with that.
Finally, Gallat says, “What makes you think I’m angry with Kelenli?” I open
my mouth to point out the tension in his body, his vocal stress, the look on his
face, and he makes an irritated sound. “Never mind. I know how you process
information.” He sighs. “And I suppose you’re right.”
I am definitely right, but I know better than to remind him of what he doesn’t
want to know. “You want her to live in your house.” I was unsure that it was
Gallat’s house until the morning’s conversation. I should have guessed, though;
it smelled like him. None of us is good at using senses other than sesuna.
“It’s her house,” he snaps. “She grew up there, same as me.”
 Kelenli has told me this. Raised alongside Gallat, thinking she was normal,
until someone finally told her why her parents did not love her. “She was part of
the project.”
He nods once, tightly, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “So was I. A human
child was a necessary control, and I had … useful characteristics for comparison.
I thought of her as my sister until we both reached the age of fifteen. Then they
told us.”
Such a long time. And yet Kelenli must have suspected that she was
different. The silver glimmer of magic flows around us, through us, like water.
Everyone can sess it, but we tuners, we live it. It lives in us. She cannot have
ever thought herself normal.
Gallat, however, had been completely surprised. Perhaps his view of the
world had been as thoroughly upended as mine has been now. Perhaps he
floundered—flounders—in the same way, struggling to resolve his feelings with
reality. I feel a sudden sympathy for him.
“I never mistreated her.” Gallat’s voice has gone soft, and I’m not certain
he’s still speaking to me. He has folded his arms and crossed his legs, closing in
on himself as he gazes steadily through one of the vehimal’s windows, seeing
nothing. “Never treated her like …” Suddenly he blinks and darts a hooded
glance at me. I start to nod to show that I understand, but some instinct warns me
against doing this. I just look back at him. He relaxes. I don’t know why.
He doesn’t want you to hear him say “like one of you,” Remwha signals,
humming with irritation at my obtuseness. And he doesn’t want you to know
what it means, if he says it. He reassures himself that he is not like the people
who made his own life harder. It’s a lie, but he needs it, and he needs us to
support that lie. She should not have told us that we were Niess.
We aren’t Niess, I gravitic-pulse back. Mostly I’m annoyed that he had to
point this out. Gallat’s behavior is obvious, now that Remwha has explained.
To them we are. Gaewha sends this as a single microshake whose
reverberations she kills, so that we sess only cold silence afterward. We stop
arguing because she’s right.
Gallat continues, oblivious to our identity crisis, “I’ve given her as much
freedom as I can. Everyone knows what she is, but I’ve allowed her the same
privileges that any normal woman would have. Of course there are restrictions,
limitations, but that’s reasonable. I can’t be seen to be lax, if …” He trails off,
into his own thoughts. Muscles along his jaw flex in frustration. “She acts as if
she can’t understand that. As if I’m the problem, not the world. I’m trying to
help her!” And then he lets out a heavy breath of frustration.
We have heard enough, however. Later, when we process all this, I will tell
the others, She wants to be a person.
She wants the impossible, Dushwha will say. Gallat thinks it better to own
her himself, rather than allow Syl Anagist to do the same. But for her to be a
person, she must stop being … ownable. By anyone.
Then Syl Anagist must stop being Syl Anagist, Gaewha will add sadly.
Yes. They will all be right, too, my fellow tuners … but that does not mean
Kelenli’s desire to be free is wrong. Or that something is impossible just because
it is very, very hard.
The vehimal stops in a part of town that, amazingly, looks familiar. I have
seen this area only once and yet I recognize the pattern of the streets, and the
vineflowers on one greenstrate wall. The quality of the light through the
amethyst, as the sun slants toward setting, stirs a feeling of longing and relief in
me that I will one day learn is called homesickness.
The other conductors leave and head back to the compound. Gallat beckons
to us. He’s still angry, and wants this over with. So we follow, and fall slowly
behind because our legs are shorter and the muscles burn, until finally he notices
that we and our guards are ten feet behind him. He stops to let us catch up, but
his jaw is tight and one hand taps a brisk pattern on his folded arms.
“Hurry up,” he says. “I want to do start-up trials tonight.”
We know better than to complain. Distraction is often useful, however.
Gaewha says, “What are we hurrying to see?”
Gallat shakes his head impatiently, but answers. As Gaewha planned, he
walks slower so that he can speak to us, which allows us to walk slower as well.
We desperately catch our breath. “The socket where this fragment was grown.
You’ve been told the basics. For the time being each fragment serves as the
power plant for a node of Syl Anagist—taking in magic, catalyzing it, returning
some to the city and storing the surplus. Until the Engine is activated, of course.”
Abruptly he stops, distracted by our surroundings. We have reached the
restricted zone around the base of the fragment—a three-tiered park with some
administrative buildings and a stop on the vehimal line that (we are told) does a
weekly run to Corepoint. It’s all very utilitarian, and a little boring.
Still. Above us, filling the sky for nearly as high as the eye can see, is the
amethyst fragment. Despite Gallat’s impatience, all of us stop and stare up at it
in awe. We live in its colored shadow, and were made to respond to its needs and
control its output. It is us; we are it. Yet rarely do we get to see it like this,
directly. The windows in our cells all point away from it. (Connectivity,
harmony, lines of sight and waveform efficiency; the conductors want to risk no
accidental activation.) It is a magnificent thing, I think, both in its physical state
and its magical superposition. It glows in the latter state, crystalline lattice nearly
completely charged with the stored magic power that we will soon use to ignite
Geoarcanity. When we have shunted the world’s power systems over from the
limited storage-and-generation of the obelisks to the unlimited streams within
the earth, and when Corepoint has gone fully online to regulate it, and when the
world has finally achieved the dream of Syl Anagist’s greatest leaders and
thinkers—
—well. Then I, and the others, will no longer be needed. We hear so many
things about what will happen once the world has been freed from scarcity and
want. People living forever. Travel to other worlds, far beyond our star. The
conductors have assured us that we won’t be killed. We will be celebrated, in
fact, as the pinnacle of magestry, and as living representations of what humanity
can achieve. Is that not a thing to look forward to, our veneration? Should we not
be proud?
But for the first time, I think of what life I might want for myself, if I could
have a choice. I think of the house that Gallat lives in: huge, beautiful, cold. I
think of Kelenli’s house in the garden, which is small and surrounded by small
growing magics. I think of living with Kelenli. Sitting at her feet every night,
speaking with her as much as I want, in every language that I know, without
fear. I think of her smiling without bitterness and this thought gives me
incredible pleasure. Then I feel shame, as if I have no right to imagine these
things.
“Waste of time,” Gallat mutters, staring at the obelisk. I flinch, but he does
not notice. “Well. Here it is. I’ve no idea why Kelenli wanted you to see it, but
now you see it.”
We admire it as bidden. “Can we … go closer?” Gaewha asks. Several of us
groan through the earth; our legs hurt and we are hungry. But she replies with
frustration. While we’re here, we might as well get the most out of it.
As if in agreement, Gallat sighs and starts forward, walking down the sloping
road toward the base of the amethyst, where it has been firmly lodged in its
socket since the first growth-medium infusion. I have seen the top of the
amethyst fragment, lost amid scuds of cloud and sometimes framed by the white
light of the Moon, but this part of it is new to me. About its base are the
transformer pylons, I know from what I have been taught, which siphon off
some of the magic from the generative furnace at the amethyst’s core. This
magic—a tiny fraction of the incredible amount that the Plutonic Engine is
capable of producing—is redistributed via countless conduits to houses and
buildings and machinery and vehimal feeding stations throughout the city-node.
It is the same in every city-node of Syl Anagist, all over the world—two hundred
and fifty-six fragments in total.
My attention is suddenly caught by an odd sensation—the strangest thing I
have ever sessed. Something diffuse … something nearby generates a force that
… I shake my head and stop walking. “What is that?” I ask, before I consider
whether it is wise to speak again, with Gallat in this mood.
He stops, glowers at me, then apparently understands the confusion in my
face. “Oh, I suppose you’re close enough to detect it here. That’s just sinkline
feedback.”
“And what is a sinkline?” asks Remwha, now that I have broken the ice. This
causes Gallat to glare at him in fractionally increased annoyance. We all tense.
“Evil Death,” Gallat sighs at last. “Fine, easier to show than to explain. Come
on.”
He speeds up again, and this time none of us dares complain even though we
are pushing our aching legs on low blood sugar and some dehydration.
Following Gallat, we reach the bottommost tier, cross the vehimal track, and
pass between two of the huge, humming pylons.
And there … we are destroyed.
Beyond the pylons, Conductor Gallat explains to us in a tone of unconcealed
impatience, is the start-up and translation system for the fragment. He slips into
a detailed technical explanation that we absorb but do not really hear. Our
network, the nigh-constant system of connections through which we six
communicate and assess each other’s health and rumble warnings or reassure
with songs of comfort, has gone utterly silent and still. This is shock. This is
horror.
The gist of Gallat’s explanation is this: The fragments could not have begun
the generation of magic on their own, decades ago when they were first grown.
Nonliving, inorganic things like crystal are inert to magic. Therefore, in order to
help the fragments initiate the generative cycle, raw magic must be used as a
catalyst. Every engine needs a starter. Enter the sinklines: They look like vines,
thick and gnarled, twisting and curling to form a lifelike thicket around the
fragment’s base. And ensnared in these vines—
We’re going to see them, Kelenli told me, when I asked her where the Niess
were.
They are still alive, I know at once. Though they sprawl motionless amid the
thicket of vines (lying atop the vines, twisted among them, wrapped up in them,
speared by them where the vines grow through flesh), it is impossible not to sess
the delicate threads of silver darting between the cells of this one’s hand, or
dancing along the hairs of that one’s back. Some of them we can see breathing,
though the motion is so very slow. Many wear tattered rags for clothes, dry-
rotted with years; a few are naked. Their hair and nails have not grown, and their
bodies have not produced waste that we can see. Nor can they feel pain, I sense
instinctively; this, at least, is a kindness. That is because the sinklines take all the
magic of life from them save the bare trickle needed to keep them alive. Keeping
them alive keeps them generating more.
It is the briar patch. Back when we were newly decanted, still learning how to
use the language that had been written into our brains during the growth phase,
one of the conductors told us a story about where we would be sent if we became
unable to work for some reason. That was when there were fourteen of us. We
would be retired, she said, to a place where we could still serve the project
indirectly. “It’s peaceful there,” the conductor said. I remember it clearly. She
smiled as she said it. “You’ll see.”
The briar patch’s victims have been here for years. Decades. There are
hundreds of them in view, and thousands more out of sight if the sinkline thicket
extends all the way around the amethyst’s base. Millions, when multiplied by
two hundred and fifty-six. We cannot see Tetlewha, or the others, but we know
that they, too, are here somewhere. Still alive, and yet not.
Gallat finishes up as we stare in silence. “So after system priming, once the
generative cycle is established, there’s only an occasional need to reprime.” He
sighs, bored with his own voice. We stare in silence. “Sinklines store magic
against any possible need. On Launch Day, each sink reservoir should have
approximately thirty-seven lammotyrs stored, which is three times …”
He stops. Sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s no point to this.
She’s playing you, fool.” It is as if he does not see what we’re seeing. As if these
stored, componentized lives mean nothing to him. “Enough. It’s time we got all
of you back to the compound.”
So we go home.
And we begin, at last, to plan.
 Thresh them in
Line them neat
Make them part of the winter wheat!
Tamp them down
Shut them up
Just a hop, a skip, and a jump!
Seal those tongues
Shut those eyes
Never you stop until they cry!
Nothing you hear
Not one you’ll see
This is the way to our victory!
—Pre-Sanze children’s rhyme popular in Yumenes, Haltolee, Nianon, and
Ewech Quartents, origin unknown. Many variants exist. This appears to be
the baseline text.
 11
you’re almost home

THE GUARDS AT THE NODE station actually seem to think they can fight when you
and the other Castrimans walk out of the ashfall. You suppose that the lot of you
do look like a larger-than-usual raider band, given your ashy, acid-worn clothing
and skeletal looks. Ykka doesn’t even have time to get Danel to try to talk them
down before they start firing crossbows. They’re terrible shots, which is lucky
for you; the law of averages is on their side, which isn’t. Three Castrimans go
down beneath the bolts before you realize Ykka hasn’t got a clue how to use a
torus as a shield—but after you’ve remembered that you can’t do it, either,
without Consequences. So you shout at Maxixe and he does it with diamond
precision, shredding the incoming bolts into wood-flecked snow, not so
differently from the way you started things off in Tirimo that last day.
He’s not as skilled now as you were then. Part of the torus remains around
him; he just stretches and reshapes its forward edge to form a barrier between
Castrima and the big scoria gates of the node station. Fortunately there’s no one
in front of him (after you shouted at people to get out of the way). Then with a
final flick of redirected kinetics he smashes the gates apart and ices the crossbow
wielders before letting the torus spin away. Then while Castrima’s Strongbacks
charge in and take care of things, you go over to find Maxixe sprawled in the
wagon bed, panting.
“Sloppy,” you say, catching one of his hands and pulling it to you, since you
can’t exactly chafe it between your own. You can feel the cold of his skin
through four layers of clothing. “Should’ve anchored that torus ten feet away, at
least.”
He grumbles, eyes drifting shut. His stamina’s gone completely to rust, but
that’s probably because starvation and orogeny don’t mix well. “Haven’t needed
to do anything fancier than just freeze people, for a couple of years now.” Then
he glowers at you. “You didn’t bother, I see.”
You smile wearily. “That’s because I knew you had it.” Then you scrape
away a patch of ice from the wagon bed so you can have somewhere to sit until
the fighting’s done.
When it’s over, you pat Maxixe—who’s fallen asleep—and then get up to go
find Ykka. She’s just inside the gates with Esni and a couple of other
Strongbacks, all of them looking at the tiny paddock in wonder. There’s a goat
in there, eying everyone with indifference as it chews on some hay. You haven’t
seen a goat since Tirimo.
First things first, though. “Make sure they don’t kill the doctor, or doctors,”
you say to Ykka and Esni. “They’re probably barricaded in with the node
maintainer. Lerna won’t know how to take care of the maintainer; it takes special
skills.” You pause. “If you’re still committed to this plan.”
Ykka nods and glances at Esni, who nods and glances at another woman,
who eyeballs a young man, who then runs into the node facility. “What are the
chances the doctor will kill the maintainer?” Esni asks. “For mercy?”
You resist the urge to say, Mercy is for people. That way of thinking needs to
die, even if you’re thinking it in bitterness. “Slim. Explain through the door that
you’re not planning to kill anyone who surrenders, if you think that will help.”
Esni sends another runner to do this.
“Of course I’m still committed to the plan,” Ykka says. She’s rubbing her
face, leaving streaks in the ash. Beneath the ash there’s just more ash, deeper
ingrained. You’re forgetting what her natural coloring looks like, and you can’t
tell if she’s wearing eye makeup anymore. “I mean, most of us can handle
shakes in a controlled way, even the kids by now, but …” She looks up at the
sky. “Well. There’s that.” You follow her gaze, but you know what you’ll see
already. You’ve been trying not to see it. Everyone has been.
The Rifting.
On this side of the Merz, the sky doesn’t exist. Further south, the ash that the
Rifting pumps forth has had time to rise into the atmosphere and thin out
somewhat, forming the rippling clouds that have dominated the sky as you’ve
known it for the past two years. Here, though. Here you try to look up, but
before you even get to the sky, what grabs your eyes is something like a slow-
boiling wall of black and red across the entire visible northern horizon. In a
volcano, what you’re seeing would be called an eruption column, but the Rifting
is not just some solitary vent. It is a thousand volcanoes put end-to-end, an
unbroken line of earthfire and chaos from one coast of the Stillness to the other.
Tonkee’s been trying to get everyone to call what you’re seeing by its proper
term: Pyrocumulonimbus, a massive stormwall cloud of ash and fire and
lightning. You’ve already heard people using a different term, however—simply,
the Wall. You think that’s going to stick. You suspect, in fact, that if anybody’s
still alive in a generation or two to name this Season, they’ll call it something
like the Season of the Wall.
You can hear it, faint but omnipresent. A rumble in the earth. A low,
ceaseless snarl against your middle ear. The Rifting isn’t just a shake; it is the
still-ongoing, dynamic divergence of two tectonic plates along a newly created
fault line. The aftershakes from the initial Rifting won’t stop for years. Your
sessapinae have been all a-jangle for days now, warning you to brace or run,
twitching with the need to do something about the seismic threat. You know
better, but here’s the problem: Every orogene in Castrima is sessing what you’re
sessing. Feeling the same twitchy urge to react. And unless they happen to be
Fulcrum-precise highringers able to yoke other highringers before activating an
ancient network of deadciv artifacts, doing something will kill them.
So Ykka is now coming to terms with a truth you’ve understood since you
woke up with a stone arm: To survive in Rennanis, Castrima will need the node
maintainers. It will need to take care of them. And when those node maintainers
die, Castrima will need to find some way to replace them. No one’s talking about
that last part yet. First things first.
After a while, Ykka sighs and glances at the open doorway of the building.
“Sounds like the fighting’s done.”
“Sounds like,” you say. Silence stretches. A muscle in her jaw tightens. You
add, “I’ll go with you.”
She glances at you. “You don’t have to.” You’ve told her about your first
time seeing a node maintainer. She heard the still-fresh horror in your voice.
But no. Alabaster showed you the way, and you no longer shirk the duty he’s
bestowed upon you. You’ll turn the maintainer’s head, let Ykka see the scarring
in the back, explain about the lesioning process. You’ll need to show her how
the wire minimizes bedsores. Because if she’s going to make this choice, then
she needs to know exactly what price she—and Castrima—must pay.
You will do this—make her see these things, make yourself face it again,
because this is the whole truth of what orogenes are. The Stillness fears your
kind for good reason, true. Yet it should also revere your kind for good reason,
and it has chosen to do only one of these things. Ykka, of all people, needs to
hear everything.
Her jaw tightens, but she nods. Esni watches you both, curious, but then she
shrugs and turns away as you and Ykka walk into the node facility, together.
The node has a fully stocked storeroom, which you guess is meant to be an
auxiliary storage site for the comm itself. It’s more than even hungry, commless
Castrima can eat, and it includes things everyone’s been increasingly desperate
for, like dried red and yellow fruit and canned greens. Ykka stops people from
turning the occasion into an impromptu feast—you’ve still got to make the stores
last for Earth knows how long—but that doesn’t prevent the bulk of the comm
from getting into a nearly festive mood as everyone bunkers for the night with
full bellies for the first time in months.
Ykka posts guards at the entrance to the node maintainer’s chamber
—“Nobody but us needs to see that shit,” she declares, and by this you suspect
that she doesn’t want any of the comm’s stills getting ideas—and on the
storeroom. She puts a triple guard on the goat. There’s an Innovator girl from a
farming comm who’s been assigned to figure out how to milk the creature; she
manages. The pregnant woman, who lost one of her household mates in the
desert, gets first dibs on the milk. This might be pointless. Starvation and
pregnancy don’t mesh, either, and she says the baby hasn’t moved in days.
Probably best that she lose it now, if she’s going to, here where Lerna’s got
antibiotics and sterile instruments available and can at least save the mother’s
life. Still, you see her take the little pot of milk when it’s given to her, and drink
it down even though she grimaces at the taste. Her jaw is set and hard. There’s a
chance. That’s what matters.
Ykka also sets up monitors at the node station’s shower room. They’re not
guards, exactly, but they’re necessary, because a lot of people in Castrima are
from rough little Midlatter comms and they don’t know how indoor plumbing
works. Also, some people have been just standing under the hot spray for an
hour or more, weeping as the ash and leftover desert sand comes off their acid-
dried skins. Now, after ten minutes, the monitors gently nudge people out and
over to benches along the sides of the room, where they can keep crying while
others get their turn.
You take a shower and feel nothing, except clean. When you claim a corner
of the station’s mess hall—which has been emptied of furnishings so that several
hundred people can sleep ash-free for the night—you sit there atop your bedroll,
leaning against the scoria wall, letting your thoughts drift. It’s impossible not to
notice the mountain lurking within the stone just behind you. You don’t call him
out because the other people of Castrima are leery of Hoa. He’s the only stone
eater still around, and they remember that stone eaters are not neutral, harmless
parties. You do reach back and pat the wall with your one hand, however. The
mountain stirs a little, and you feel something—a hard nudge—against the small
of your back. Message received and returned. It’s surprising how good this
private moment of contact makes you feel.
You need to feel again, you think, as you watch a dozen small tableaus play
out before you. Two women argue over which of them gets to eat the last piece
of dried fruit in their comm share. Two men, just beyond them, furtively
exchange whispers while one passes over a small soft sponge—the kind
Equatorials like to use for wiping after defecation. Everyone likes their little
luxuries, when fortune provides. Temell, the man who now teaches the comm’s
orogene children, lies buried in them as he snores on his bedroll. One boy is
nestled in a curl at his belly; meanwhile, Penty’s sock-clad foot rests on the back
of his neck. Across the room, Tonkee stands with Hjarka—or rather, Hjarka’s
holding her hands and trying to coax her into some kind of slow dance, while
Tonkee stands still and tries to just roll her eyes and not smile.
You’re not sure where Ykka is. Probably spending the night in one of the
sheds or tents outside, knowing her, but you hope she lets one of her lovers stay
with her this time. She’s got a rotating stable of young women and men, some of
them time-sharing with other partners and some singles who don’t seem to mind
Ykka using them for occasional stress relief. Ykka needs that now. Castrima
needs to take care of its headwoman.
Castrima needs, and you need, and just as you think this, Lerna comes out of
nowhere and settles beside you.
“Had to end Chetha,” he says quietly. Chetha, you know, is one of the three
Strongbacks shot by the Rennies—ironically, a former Rennie herself,
conscripted into the army along with Danel. “The other two will make it,
probably, but the bolt perforated Chetha’s bowel. It would’ve been slow and
awful. Plenty of painkillers here, though.” He sighs and rubs his eyes. “You’ve
seen that … thing … in the wire chair.”
You nod, hesitate, then reach for his hand. He’s not particularly affectionate,
you’ve been relieved to discover, but he does need little gestures sometimes. A
reminder that he is not alone, and that all is not hopeless. To this end you say, “If
I succeed in shutting down the Rifting, you may not need to keep the node
maintainers.” You’re not sure that’s true, but you hope it is.
He clasps your hand lightly. It’s been fascinating to realize that he never
initiates contact between you. He waits for you to offer, and then he meets your
gestures with as much or as little intensity as you’ve brought to the effort.
Respecting your boundaries, which are sharp-edged and hair-triggered. You
never knew he was so observant, all these years—but then, you should’ve
guessed. He figured out you were an orogene just by watching you, years ago.
Innon would’ve liked him, you decide.
As if he has heard your thoughts, Lerna then looks over at you, and his gaze
is troubled.
“I’ve been thinking about not telling you something,” he says. “Or rather, not
pointing out something you’ve probably chosen not to notice.”
“What an opening.”
He smiles a little, then sighs and looks down at your clasped hands, the smile
fading. The moment attenuates; the tension grows in you, because this is so
unlike him. Finally, though, he sighs. “How long has it been since you last
menstruated?”
“How—” You stop talking.
Shit.
Shit.
In your silence, Lerna sighs and leans his head back against the wall.
You try to make excuses in your own head. Starvation. Extraordinary
physical effort. You’re forty-four years old—you think. Can’t remember what
month it is. The chances are slimmer than Castrima’s were of surviving the
desert. But … your menses have run strong and regular for your entire life,
stopping only on three prior occasions. Three significant occasions. That’s why
the Fulcrum decided to breed you. Half-decent orogeny, and good Midlatter
hips.
You knew. Lerna’s right. On some level, you noticed. And then chose not to
notice, because—
Lerna has been silent beside you for some while, watching the comm unwind,
his hand limp in yours. Very softly he says, “Am I correct in understanding that
you need to finish your business at Corepoint within a time frame?”
His tone is too formal. You sigh, shutting your eyes. “Yes.”
“Soon?”
Hoa has told you that perigee—when the Moon is closest—will be in a few
days. After that, it will pass the Earth and pick up velocity, slingshotting back
into the distant stars or wherever it’s been all this time. If you don’t catch it now,
you won’t.
 “Yes,” you say. You’re tired. You … hurt. “Very soon.”
It is a thing you haven’t discussed, and probably should have for the sake of
your relationship. It is a thing you never needed to discuss, because there was
nothing to be said. Lerna says, “Using all the obelisks once did that to your
arm.”
You glance at the stump unnecessarily. “Yes.” You know where he’s going
with the conversation, so you decide to skip to the end. “You’re the one who
asked what I was going to do about the Season.”
He sighs. “I was angry.”
“But not wrong.”
His hand twitches a little on your own. “What if I asked you not to do it?”
You don’t laugh. If you did, it would be bitter, and he doesn’t deserve that.
Instead, you sigh and shift to lie down, pushing him until he does the same thing.
He’s a little shorter than you, so you’re the big spoon. This of course puts your
face in his gray hair, but he’s availed himself of the shower, too, so you don’t
mind. He smells good. Healthy.
“You wouldn’t ask,” you say against his scalp.
“But what if I did?” It’s weary and heatless. He doesn’t mean it.
You kiss the back of his neck. “I’d say, ‘Okay,’ and then there would be three
of us, and we’d all stay together until we die of ash lung.”
He takes your hand again. You didn’t initiate it this time, but it doesn’t bother
you. “Promise,” he says.
He doesn’t wait for your answer before falling asleep.

Four days later, you reach Rennanis.

The good news is that you’re no longer plagued by ashfall. The Rifting’s too
close, and the Wall is busy carrying the lighter particulates upward; you’ll never
have to worry about that again. What you have instead are periodic gusts laden
with incendiary material—lapilli, tiny bits of volcanic material that are too big to
inhale easily but are still burning as they come down. Danel says the Rennies
called it sparkfall, and that it’s mostly harmless, though you should keep spare
canteens of water situated at strategic points throughout the caravan in case any
of the sparks should catch and smolder.
More dramatic than the sparkfall, however, is the way lightning dances over
the city’s skyline, this close to the Wall. The Innovators are excited about this.
Tonkee says there are all sorts of uses for reliable lightning. (This would have
made you stare at her, if it hadn’t come from Tonkee.) None of it strikes the
ground, though—only the taller buildings, which have all been fitted with
lightning rods by the city’s previous denizens. It’s harmless. You’ll just have to
get used to it.
Rennanis isn’t what you were expecting, quite. Oh, it’s a huge city:
Equatorial styling all over the place, still-functioning hydro and filtered well
water running smoothly, tall black obsidian walls etched over with dire images
of what happens to the city’s enemies. Its buildings aren’t nearly as beautiful or
impressive as those of Yumenes, but then Yumenes was the greatest of the
Equatorial cities, and Rennanis barely merited the title. “Only half a million
people,” you remember someone sneering, a lifetime ago. But two lives ago, you
were born in a humble Nomidlats village, and to what remains of Damaya,
Rennanis is still a sight to behold.
There are less than a thousand of you to occupy a city that once held
hundreds of thousands. Ykka orders everyone to take over a small complex of
buildings near one of the city’s greenlands. (It has sixteen.) The former
inhabitants have conveniently labeled the city’s buildings with a color code
based on their structural soundness, since the city didn’t survive the Rifting
entirely unscathed. Buildings marked with a green X are known to be safe. A
yellow X means damage that could spell a collapse, especially if another major
shake hits the city. Red-marked buildings are noticeably damaged and
dangerous, though you see signs that they were inhabited, too, perhaps by those
willing to take any shelter rather than be ashed out. There are more than enough
green-X buildings for Castrima, so every household gets its pick of apartments
that are furnished, sound, and still have working hydro and geo.
There are several wild flocks of chickens running about, and more goats,
which have actually been breeding. The greenlands’ crops are all dead, however,
having gone months unwatered and untended between you killing the Rennies
and Castrima’s arrival. Despite this, the seed stocks contain lots of dandelion and
other hardy, low-light-tolerant edibles, including Equatorial staples like taro.
Meanwhile, the city’s storecaches are overflowing with cachebread, cheeses, fat-
flecked spicy sausages, grains and fruit, herbs and leaves preserved in oil, more.
Some of it’s fresher than the rest, brought back by the marauding army. All of it
is more than the people of Castrima could eat if they threw a feast every night
for the next ten years.
 It’s amazing. But there are a few catches.
The first is that it’s more complicated to run Rennanis’s water treatment
facility than anyone expected. It’s running automatically and thus far hasn’t
broken down, but no one knows how to work the machinery if it does. Ykka sets
the Innovators to the task of figuring that out, or coming up with a workable
alternative if the equipment fails. Tonkee is highly annoyed: “I trained for six
years at Seventh to learn how to clean shit out of sewer water?” But despite her
complaining, she’s on it.
The second catch is that Castrima cannot possibly guard the city’s walls. The
city is simply too big, and there are too few of you. You’re protected, for now,
by the fact that no one comes north if they can possibly help it. If anyone does
come a-conquering, however, nothing will stand between the comm and
conquest except its wall.
There’s no solution to this problem. Even orogenes can only do so much in
the martial sense, here in the shadow of the Rifting where orogeny is dangerous.
Danel’s army was Rennanis’s surplus population, and it’s currently feeding a
boilbug boom down in the southeastern Midlats—not that you’d want them here,
anyway, treating you like the interlopers you are. Ykka orders the Breeders to
ramp up to replacement-level production, but even if they recruit every healthy
comm member to assist, Castrima won’t have enough people to secure the comm
for generations. Nothing to do but at least guard the portion of the city that the
comm now occupies, as best you can.
“And if another army comes along,” you catch Ykka muttering, “we’ll just
invite them in and assign them each a room. That ought to settle it.”
The third catch—and the biggest one, existentially if not logistically—is this:
Castrima must live amid the corpses of its conquered.
The statues are everywhere. Standing in apartment kitchens washing dishes.
Lying in beds that have sagged or broken beneath their stone weight. Walking up
the parapet steps to take over from other statues on guard duty. Sitting in
communal kitchens sipping tea long since dried to dregs. They are beautiful in
their way, with wild smoky-quartz manes of hair and smooth jasper skin and
clothes of tourmaline or turquoise or garnet or citrine. They wear expressions
that are smiles or eye rolls or yawns of boredom—because the shockwave of
Obelisk Gate power that transformed them was fast, mercifully. They didn’t
even have time to be afraid.
The first day, everyone edges around the statues. Tries not to sit in their line
of sight. To do anything else would be … disrespectful. And yet. Castrima has
survived both a war that these people initiated, and life as that war’s refugees. It
would be equally disrespectful of Castrima’s dead to let guilt eclipse this truth.
So after a day or two, people start to simply … accept the statues. Can’t do
anything else, really.
Something about it bothers you, though.
You find yourself wandering one night. There’s a yellow-X building that’s
not too far from the complex, and it’s beautiful, with a facade covered in etched
vinework and floral motifs, some glimmering with peeling gold foil. The foil
catches the light and flickers a little as you move, its angles of reflection shifting
to create the overall illusion of a building covered in living, moving greenery.
It’s an older building than most of those in Rennanis. You like it, though you’re
not sure why. You go up to the roof, finding only the usual apartments inhabited
by statues along the way. The door here is unlocked and stands open; maybe
someone was on the roof when the Rifting struck. You check to make sure
there’s a lightning rod in place before you step through the door, of course; this
is one of the taller buildings of the city, though it’s only six or seven stories
altogether. (Only, sneers Syenite. Only? thinks Damaya, in wonder. Yes, only,
you snap at both, to shut them up.) There’s not only a rod, there’s an empty
water tower, so as long as you don’t go leaning on any metal surfaces or linger
in the rod’s immediate vicinity, you probably won’t die. Probably.
And here, poised to face the Rifting cloudwall as if he were built up here,
gazing north since the building’s floral motifs were new, Hoa awaits.
“There aren’t as many statues here as there should be,” you say as you stop
beside him.
You can’t help following Hoa’s gaze. From here, you still can’t see the
Rifting itself; looks like there’s a dead rainforest and some hilly ridges between
the city and the monster. The Wall is bad enough, however.
And maybe one existential horror is easier to face than another, but you
remember using the Obelisk Gate on these people, twisting the magic between
their cells and transmuting the infinitesimal parts of them from carbon to silicate.
Danel told you how crowded Rennanis was—so much that it had to send out a
conquering army to survive. Now, however, the city is not crowded with statues.
There are signs that it was, once: statues deep in conversation with partners that
seem to be missing; only two people sitting at a table set for six. In one of the
bigger green-X buildings there’s a statue that is lying naked in bed, mouth open
and penis permanently stiff and hips thrusting up, hands positioned in just the
right places to grip someone’s legs. He’s alone, though. Someone’s horrible,
morbid joke.
“My kind are opportunistic feeders,” Hoa says.
Yeah, that’s exactly what you were afraid he would say.
“And apparently very damned hungry? There were a lot of people here. Most
of them must be missing.”
“We, too, put aside surplus resources for later, Essun.”
You rub your face with your one remaining hand, trying and failing to not
visualize a gigantic stone eater larder somewhere, now stuffed full of brightly
colored statues. “Evil Earth. Why do you bother with me, then? I’m not as—easy
a meal as those.”
“Lesser members of my kind need to strengthen themselves. I don’t.” There
is a very slight shift in the inflection of Hoa’s voice. By this point you know
him; that was contempt. He’s a proud creature (even he will admit). “They are
poorly made, weak, little better than beasts. We were so lonely in those early
years, and at first we had no idea what we were doing. The hungry ones are the
result of our fumbling.”
You waver, because you don’t really want to know … but you haven’t been a
coward for some years now. So you steel yourself and turn to him and then say,
“You’re making another one now. Aren’t you? From—from me. If it’s not about
food for you, then it’s … reproduction.” Horrifying reproduction, if it is
dependent on the death-by-petrification of a human being. And there must be
more to it than just turning people to stone. You think about the kirkhusa at the
roadhouse, and Jija, and the woman back in Castrima whom you killed. You
think about how you hit her, smashed her with magic, for the not-crime of
making you relive Uche’s murder. But Alabaster was not the same, in the end, as
what you did to that woman. She was a shining, brightly colored collection of
gemstones. He was an ugly lump of brown rock—and yet the brown rock was
finely made, precisely crafted, careful, where the woman was a disorderly mess
beneath her surface beauty.
Hoa is silent in answer to your question, which is an answer in itself. And
then you finally remember. Antimony, in the moments after you closed the
Obelisk Gate, but before you teetered into magic-traumatized slumber. Beside
her, another stone eater, strange in his whiteness, disturbing in his familiarity.
Oh, Evil Earth, you don’t want to know, but—“Antimony used that …” Too-
small lump of brown stone. “Used Alabaster. As raw material to—to, oh rust, to
make another stone eater. And she made it look like him.” You hate Antimony
all over again.
 “He chose his own shape. We all do.”
This slaps your rage out of its spiral. Your stomach clenches, this time in
something other than revulsion. “That—then—” You have to take a deep breath.
“Then it’s him? Alabaster. He’s … he’s …” You can’t make yourself say the
word.
Flick and Hoa faces you, expression compassionate, but somehow also
warning. “The lattice doesn’t always form perfectly, Essun,” he says. The tone is
gentle. “Even when it does, there is always … loss of data.”
You have no idea what this means and yet you’re shaking. Why? You know
why. Your voice rises. “Hoa, if that’s Alabaster, if I can talk to him—”
“No.”
“Why the rust not?”
“Because it must be his choice, first.” Harder voice here. A reprimand. You
flinch. “More importantly, because we are fragile at the beginning, like all new
creatures. It takes centuries for us, the who of us, to … cool. Even the slightest of
pressures—like you, demanding that he fit himself to your needs rather than his
own—can damage the final shape of his personality.”
You take a step back, which surprises you because you hadn’t realized you
were getting in his face. And then you sag. Alabaster is alive, but not. Is Stone
Eater Alabaster even remotely the same as the flesh-and-blood man you knew?
Does that even matter anymore, now that he has transformed so completely?
“I’ve lost him again, then,” you murmur.
Hoa doesn’t seem to move at first, but there’s a brief flit of wind against your
side, and abruptly a hard hand nudges the back of your soft one. “He will live for
an eternity,” Hoa says, as softly as his hollow voice can manage. “For as long as
the Earth exists, something of who he was will, too. You’re the one still in
danger of being lost.” He pauses. “But if you choose not to finish what we have
begun, I will understand.”
You look up and then, for only maybe the second or third time, you think you
understand him. He knows you’re pregnant. Maybe he knew it before you did,
though what that means to him, you cannot guess. He knows what underlies your
thoughts about Alabaster, too, and he’s saying … that you aren’t alone. That you
don’t have nothing. You have Hoa, and Ykka and Tonkee and maybe Hjarka,
friends, who know you in all your rogga monstrosity and accept you despite it.
And you have Lerna—quietly demanding, relentless Lerna, who does not give
up and does not tolerate your excuses and does not pretend that love precludes
pain. He is the father of another child that will probably be beautiful. All of your
children so far have been. Beautiful, and powerful. You close your eyes against
regret.
But that brings the sounds of the city to your ears, and you are startled to
catch laughter on the wind, loud enough to carry up from the ground level,
probably over by one of the communal fires. Which reminds you that you have
Castrima, too, if you want it. This ridiculous comm of unpleasant people who
are impossibly still together, which you have fought for and which has, however
grudgingly, fought for you in return. It pulls your mouth into a smile.
“No,” you say. “I’ll do what needs doing.”
Hoa considers you. “You’re certain.”
Of course you are. Nothing has changed. The world is broken and you can fix
it; that’s what Alabaster and Lerna both charged you to do. Castrima is more
reason for you to do it, not less. And it’s time you stopped being a coward, too,
and went to find Nassun. Even if she hates you. Even if you left her to face a
terrible world alone. Even if you are the worst mother in the world … you did
your best.
And maybe it means you’re choosing one of your children—the one who has
the best chance of survival—over the other. But that’s no different from what
mothers have had to do since the dawn of time: sacrifice the present, in hopes of
a better future. If the sacrifice this time has been harder than most … Fine. So be
it. This is a mother’s job, too, after all, and you’re a rusting ten-ringer. You’ll see
to it.
“So what are we waiting for?” you ask.
“Only you,” Hoa replies.
“Right. How much time do we have?”
“Perigee is in two days. I can get you to Corepoint in one.”
“Okay.” You take a deep breath. “I need to say some goodbyes.”
With perfect bland casualness, Hoa says, “I can carry others with us.”
Oh.
You want it, don’t you? To not be alone at the end. To have Lerna’s quiet
implacable presence at your back. Tonkee will be furious at not getting a chance
to see Corepoint, if you leave her behind. Hjarka will be furious if you take
Tonkee without her. Danel wants to chronicle the world’s transformation, for
obscure Equatorial lorist reasons.
Ykka, though—
“No.” You sober and sigh. “I’m being selfish again. Castrima needs Ykka.
And they’ve all suffered enough.”
 Hoa just looks at you. How the rust does he manage to convey such emotion
with a stone face? Even if that emotion is dry skepticism of your self-abnegating
bullshit. You laugh—once, and it’s rusty. Been a while.
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to
choose how they love you back.”
So many layers in the strata of that statement.
Okay, though. Right. This isn’t just about you, and it never has been. All
things change in a Season—and some part of you is tired, finally, of the lonely,
vengeful woman narrative. Maybe Nassun isn’t the only one you needed a home
for. And maybe not even you should try to change the world alone.
“Let’s go ask them, then,” you say. “And then let’s go get my little girl.”

To: Yaetr Innovator Dibars

From: Alma Innovator Dibars

I’ve been asked to inform you that your funding has been cut. You are to
return to the University forthwith by the least expensive means possible.

And since I know you, old friend, let me add this. You believe in logic.
You think even our esteemed colleagues are immune to prejudice, or
politics, in the face of hard facts. This is why you’ll never be allowed
within a mile of the Funding and Allocations committee, no matter how
many masterships you earn.

Our funding comes from Old Sanze. From families so ancient that they
have books in their collections older than all the Universities—and they
won’t let us touch them. How do you think those families got to be so old,
Yaetr? Why has Sanze lasted this long? It’s not because of stonelore.

You cannot go to people like that and ask them to fund a research project
that makes heroes of roggas! You just can’t. They’ll faint, and when they
wake up, they’ll have you killed. They’ll destroy you as surely as they
would any threat to their livelihoods and legacy. Yes, I know that’s not
what you think you’re doing, but it is.
And if that isn’t enough, here is a fact that might be logical enough even
for you: The Guardians are starting to ask questions. I don’t know why.
No one knows what drives those monsters. But that’s why I voted with the
committee majority, even if it means you hate me from here on. I want
you alive, old friend, not dead in an alley with a glass poniard through
your heart. I’m sorry.

Safe travels homeward.

 12
Nassun, not alone

COREPOINT IS SILENT.
Nassun notices this when the vehimal in which she’s traversed the planet
emerges in its corresponding station, on the other side of the world. This is
located in one of the strange, slanting buildings that encircle the massive hole at
Corepoint’s center. She cries for help, cries for someone, cries, as the vehimal’s
door opens and she drags Schaffa’s limp, unresponsive body through the silent
corridors and then the silent streets. He’s big and heavy, so although she tries in
various ways to use magic to assist with dragging his weight—badly; magic is
not meant to be used for something so gross and localized, and her concentration
is poor in the moment—she makes it only a block or so away from the
compound before she, too, collapses, in exhaustion.

Somerusting day, somerusting year.

Found these books, blank. The stuff they’re made of isn’t paper. Thicker.
Doesn’t bend easily. Good thing, maybe, or would be dust by now. Preserve my
words for eternity! Ha! Longer than my rusting sanity.
Don’t know what to write. Innon would laugh and tell me to write about sex.
Right, so: I jerked off today, for the first time since A dragged me to this place.
Thought about him in the middle of it and couldn’t come. Maybe I’m too old?
That’s what Syen would say. She’s just mad I could still knock her up.
Forgetting how Innon used to smell. Everything smells like the sea here, but
it’s not like the sea near Meov. Different water? Innon used to smell like the
water there. Every time the wind blows I lose a little more of him.
Corepoint. How I hate this place.
Corepoint isn’t a ruin, quite. That is, it isn’t ruined, and it isn’t uninhabited.
On the surface of the open, endless ocean, the city is an anomaly of buildings
—not very tall compared to either the recently lost Yumenes or the longer-lost
Syl Anagist. Corepoint is unique, however, among both past and present
cultures. The structures of Corepoint are sturdily built, of rustless metal and
strange polymers and other materials that can withstand the often hurricane-force
salt winds that dominate this side of the world. The few plants that grow here, in
the parks that were constructed so long ago, are no longer the lovely, designer,
hothouse things favored by Corepoint’s builders. Corepoint trees—hybridized
and feral descendants of the original landscaping—are huge, woody things,
twisted into artful shapes by the wind. They have long since broken free of their
orderly beds and containers and now gnarl over the pressed-fiber sidewalks.
Unlike the architecture of Syl Anagist, here there are many more sharp angles,
meant to minimize the buildings’ resistance to the wind.
But there is more to the city than what can be seen.
Corepoint sits at the peak of an enormous underwater shield volcano, and the
first few miles of the hole drilled at its center are actually lined with a hollowed-
out complex of living quarters, laboratories, and manufactories. These
underground facilities, originally meant to house Corepoint’s geomagests and
genegineers, have long since been turned to a wholly different purpose—because
this flip side of Corepoint is Warrant, where Guardians are made and dwell
between Seasons.
We will speak more of this later.
Above the surface in Corepoint, though, it’s late afternoon, beneath a sky
whose clouds are sparse amid a shockingly bright blue sky. (Seasons that start in
the Stillness rarely have a severe impact on the weather in this hemisphere, or at
least not for several months or years after.) As befits the bright day, there are
people in the streets around Nassun as she struggles and weeps, but they do not
move to help. They do not move at all, mostly—for they are stone eaters, with
rose-marble lips and shining mica eyes and braids woven in pyrite gold or clear
quartz. They stand on the steps of buildings that have not known human feet for
tens of thousands of years. They sit along window ledges of stone or metal that
have begun to deform under the pressure of incredible weight applied over
decades. One sits with knees upraised and arms propped across them, leaning
against a tree whose roots have grown around her; mosses line the upper
surfaces of her arms and hair. She watches Nassun, only her eyes moving, in
what might be interest.
 They all watch, doing nothing, as this quick-moving, noisy human child sobs
into the salt-laden wind until she is exhausted, and then just sits there in a huddle
with her fingers still tangled in the cloth of Schaffa’s shirt.

Another day, same (?) year

No writing about Innon or Coru. Off-limits from now on.
Syen. I can still feel her—not sess, feel. There’s an obelisk here, I think it’s a
spinel. When I canneck connect to it, it’s like I can feel anything they’re
connected to. The amethyst is following Syen. Wonder if she knows.
Antimony says Syen made it to the mainland and is wannr wandering. That’s
why I feel like I’m wandering, I guess? She’s all that’s left but she ki—fuck.
This place is ridiculous. Anniemony was right that it’s a way to trigger the
Obelisk Gate without control cab? (Onyx. Too powerful, can’t risk it, would
trigger alignment too quickly and then who’s to make the second traj change?)
But the rusters that buildt it put everything into tht stupid hole. A told me some
of it. Great project, my ass. It’s worse to see, though. This whole rusting city is a
crime scene. Tooted around and found great big pipes running along the bottom
of the ocean. hu HUGE, ready to pump something from the hole all the way to
the continent. Magic, Animony says, did they really need so much????? More
than the Gate!
Asked Tinimony to take me into the hole today and she said no. What’s in the
hole, huh? What’s in the hole.

Near sunset, another stone eater appears. Here amid the elegantly gowned,
colorful variety of his people, he stands out even more with his gray coloring
and bare chest: Steel. He stands over Nassun for several minutes, perhaps
expecting her to lift her gaze and notice him, but she does not. Presently, he
says, “The ocean winds can be cold at night.”
Silence. Her hands clench and unclench on Schaffa’s clothes, not quite
spasmodically. She’s just tired. She’s been holding him since the center of the
Earth.
After a while longer, as the sun inches toward the horizon, Steel says,
“There’s a livable apartment in a building two blocks from here. The food stored
in it should still be edible.”
Nassun says, “Where?” Her voice is hoarse. She needs water. There’s some
in her canteen, and in Schaffa’s canteen, but she hasn’t opened either.
Steel shifts posture, pointing. Nassun lifts her head to follow this and sees a
street, unnaturally straight, seemingly paved straight toward the horizon. Wearily
she gets up, takes a better grip on Schaffa’s clothes, and begins dragging him
again.

Who’s in the hole, what’s in the whole, where goes the hole, how holed am I!
SEs brought better food today because I don’t eat enough. So special,
delivery fressssh from the other sigh of the world. Going to dry the seeds, plant
them. Remember to scrrrape up tomato I threw at A.
Book language looks almost like Sanze-mat. Characters similar? Precursor?
Some words I almost recognize. Some old Eturpic, some Hladdac, a little early-
dynasty Regwo. Wish Shinash was here. He would scream to see me putting my
feet up on books older than forever. Always so easy to tease. Miss him.
Miss everyone, even people at the rusting Fulcrum (!) Miss voices that come
out of rusting mouths. SYENITE could make me eat, you talking rock. SYENITE
gave a shit about me and not just whether I could fix this world I don’t give a
shit about. SYENITE should be here with me, I would give anything to have her
here with me
No. She should forget me and In Meov. Find some boring fool she actually
wants to sleep with. Have a boring life. She deserves that.

Night falls in the time it takes Nassun to reach the building. Steel repositions,
appearing in front of a strange asymmetrical building, wedge-shaped, whose
high end faces the wind. The sloping roof of the building, in the lee of the wind,
is scraggly with overgrown, twisted vegetation. There’s plenty of soil on the
roof, more than is likely to have accumulated from the wind over centuries. It
looks planned, though overgrown. Yet amid the mess, Nassun can see that
someone has hacked out a garden. Recently; the plants are overgrown, too, new
growth springing up from dropped fruit and split, untended vines, but given the
relative dearth of weeds and the still-neat rows, this garden can’t be more than a
year or two neglected. The Season is now almost two years old.
Later. The building’s door moves on its own, sliding aside as Nassun
approaches. It closes on its own, too, once she’s gotten Schaffa far enough
within. Steel moves inside, pointing upstairs. She drags Schaffa to the foot of the
stairs and then drops beside him, shaking, too tired to think or go any farther.
Schaffa’s heart is still strong, she thinks, as she uses his chest for a pillow.
With her eyes shut, she can almost imagine that he’s holding her, rather than the
other way around. It is paltry comfort, but enough to let her sleep without
dreams.

In the morning, Nassun gets Schaffa up the steps. The apartment is thankfully on
only the second floor; the stairwell door opens right into it. Everything inside is
strange, to her eye, yet familiar in purpose. There’s a couch, though its back is at
one end of the long seat, rather than behind it. There are chairs, one fused to
some kind of big slanted table. For drawing, maybe. The bed, in the attached
room, is the strangest thing: a big wide hemisphere of brightly colored cushion
without sheets or pillows. When Nassun tentatively lies down on it, though, she
finds that it flattens and conforms to her body in ways that are stunningly
comfortable. It’s warm, too—actively heating up beneath her until the aches of
sleeping in a cold stairwell go away. Fascinated despite herself, Nassun
examines the bed and is shocked to realize that it is full of magic, and has
covered her in same. Threads of silver roam over her body, determining her
discomfort by touching her nerves and then repairing her bruises and scrapes;
other threads whip the particles of the bed until friction warms them; yet more
threads search her skin for infinitesimal dry flakes and flecks of dust, and scrub
them away. It’s like what she does when she uses the silver to heal or cut things,
but automatic, somehow. She can’t imagine who would make a bed that could
do magic. She can’t imagine why. She can’t fathom how anyone could have
convinced all this silver to do such nice things, but that’s what’s happening. No
wonder the people who built the obelisks needed so much silver, if they used it
in lieu of wearing blankets, or taking baths, or letting themselves heal over time.
Schaffa has soiled himself, Nassun finds. It makes her feel ashamed to have
to pull his clothes off and clean him, using stretchy cloths she finds in the
bathroom, but it would be worse to leave him in his own filth. His eyes are open
again, though he does not move while she works. They’ve opened during the
day, and they close at night, but though Nassun talks to Schaffa (pleads for him
to wake up, asks him to help her, tells him that she needs him), he does not
respond.
She gets him into the bed, leaving a pad of cloths under his bare bottom. She
trickles water from their canteens into his mouth, and when that runs out, she
cautiously tries to get more from the strange water pump in the kitchen. There
are no levers or handles on it, but when she puts her canteen beneath the spigot,
water comes out. She’s a diligent girl. First she uses the powder in her runny-
sack to make a cup of safe from the water, checking for contaminants. The safe
dissolves but stays cloudy and white, so she drinks that herself and then brings
more water to Schaffa. He drinks readily, which probably means he was really
thirsty. She gives him raisins that she first soaks in water, and he chews and
swallows, although slowly and without much vigor. She hasn’t done a good job
of taking care of him.
She will do better, she decides, and heads outside to the garden to pick food
for them both.

Syenite told me the date. Six years. It’s been six years? No wonder she’s so
angry. Told me to go jump in a hole, since it’s been so long. She doesn’t want to
see me again. Such a steelheart. Told her I was sorry. My fault, all of it.
My fault. My Moon. Turned the spare key today. (Lines of sight, lines of
force, three by three by three? Cubical arrangement, like a good little crystal
lattice.) The key unlocks the Gate. Dangerous to bring so many obelisks to
Yumenes, though; Guardians everywhere. Wouldn’t have time before they got
me. Better to make a spare key out of orogenes, and who can I use? Who is
strong enough. Syen isn’t, almost but not quite. Innon isn’t. Coru is but I can’t
find him. He’s just a baby anyway, not right. Babies. Lots of babies. Node
maintainers? Node maintainers!
No. They’ve suffered enough. Use the Fulcrum seniors instead.
Or the node maintainers.
Why should I do it here? Plugs the hole. Do it there, tho … Get Yumenes. Get
the Fulcrum. Get a lot of the Guardians.
Stop nagging me, woman. Go tell Innon to fuck you, or something. You’re
always so cranky when you haven’t gotten laid. I’ll jump in the hole tomorrow.

It becomes a routine.
She takes care of Schaffa in the mornings, then goes out in the afternoon to
explore the city and find things they need. There’s no need to bathe Schaffa, or
to clean up his waste again; astonishingly, the bed takes care of that, too. So
Nassun can spend her time with him talking, and asking him to wake up, and
telling him that she doesn’t know what to do.
Steel vanishes again. She doesn’t care.
Other stone eaters periodically show up, however, or at least she feels the
impact of their presence. She sleeps on the couch, and one morning wakes to
find a blanket covering her. It’s just a simple gray thing, but it’s warm, and she’s
grateful. When she starts picking apart one of her sausages to get the fat out of it,
intending to make tallow—the candles from her runny-sack are getting low—she
finds a stone eater in the stairwell, its finger curled in a beckoning gesture. When
she follows it, it stops beside a panel covered in curious symbols. The stone eater
is pointing toward one in particular. Nassun touches it and it alights with silver,
glowing golden and sending threads questing over her skin. The stone eater says
something in a language Nassun does not understand before it vanishes, but
when she returns to the apartment, it’s warmer, and soft white lights have come
on overhead. Touching squares on the wall makes the lights go off.
One afternoon she walks into the apartment to find a stone eater crouched
beside a pile of things that look to have come from some comm’s storecache:
burlap sacks full of root vegetables and mushrooms and dried fruit, a big round
of sharp white cheese, hide bags of packed pemmican, satchels of dried rice and
beans, and—precious—a small cask of salt. The stone eater vanishes when
Nassun approaches the pile, so she cannot even thank it. She has to blow ash off
of everything before she puts it away.
Nassun has figured out that the apartment, like the garden, must have been
used until recently. The detritus of another person’s life is everywhere: pants
much too big for her in the drawers, a man’s underwear beside them. (One day
these are replaced with clothing that fits Nassun. Another stone eater? Or maybe
the magic in the apartment is even more sophisticated than she thought.) Books
are piled in one of the rooms, many of them native to Corepoint—she’s
beginning to recognize the peculiar, clean, not-quite-natural look of Corepoint
things. A few, however, are normal-looking, with covers of cracking leather and
pages still stinky with chemicals and handwritten ink. Some of the books are in a
language she can’t read. Something Coaster.
One, however, is made of the Corepoint material, but its blank pages have
been handwritten over, in Sanze-mat. Nassun opens this one, sits down, and
begins to read.

WENT
IN THE HOLE
DON’T
don’t bury me
 please DON’T, Syen, I love you, I’m sorry, keep me safe, watch my back and
I’ll watch yours, there’s no one else who’s as strong as you, I wish so much that
you were here, please DON’T

Corepoint is a city in still life.

Nassun begins losing track of time. The stone eaters occasionally speak to
her, but most of them don’t know her language, and she doesn’t hear enough of
theirs to pick it up. She watches them sometimes, and is fascinated to realize that
some of them are performing tasks. She watches one malachite-green woman
who stands amid the windblown trees, and belatedly realizes the woman is
holding a branch up and to one side, to make it grow in a particular way. All of
the trees, which look windblown and yet are a little too dramatic, a little too
artful in their splaying and bending, have been shaped thus. It must take years.
And near the edge of the city, down by one of the strange spokelike things
that jut out into the water from its edge—not piers, really, just straight pieces of
metal that make no sense—another stone eater stands every day with one hand
upraised. Nassun just happens to be around when the stone eater blurs and there
is a splash and suddenly his upraised hand holds by the tail a huge, wriggling
fish that is as long as his body. His marble skin is sheened with wet. Nassun has
nowhere in particular to be, so she sits down to watch. After a time, an ocean
mammal—Nassun has read of these, creatures that look like fish but breathe air
—sidles up to the city’s edge. It is gray-skinned, tube-shaped; there are sharp
teeth along its jaw, but these are small. When it pushes up out of the water,
Nassun sees that it is very old, and something about the questing movements of
its head makes her realize it has gone blind. There’s old scarring on its forehead
as well; something has injured the creature’s head badly. The creature nudges
the stone eater, who of course does not move, and then nips at the fish in its
hand, tearing off chunks and swallowing them until the stone eater releases the
tail. When it is done, the creature utters a complex, high-pitched sound, like a …
chitter? Or a laugh. Then it slides further into the water and swims away.
The stone eater flickers and faces Nassun. Curious, Nassun gets to her feet to
go over and speak to him. By the time she’s standing, though, he has vanished.
This is what she comes to understand: There is life here, among these people.
It isn’t life as she knows it, or a life she would choose, but life nevertheless. That
gives her comfort, when she no longer has Schaffa to tell her that she is good
and safe. That, and the silence, give her time to mourn. She did not understand
before now that she needed this.

I’ve decided.
It’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. Some things are so broken that they can’t be
fixed. You just have to finish them off, sweep away the rubble, and start over.
Antimony agrees. Some of the other SEs do, too. Some don’t.
Rust those. They killed my life to make me their weapon, so that’s what I’m
going to be. My choice. My commandment. We’ll do it in Yumenes. A
commandment is set in stone.
I asked after Syen today. Don’t know why I care anymore. Antimony’s been
keeping tabs, though. (For me?) Syenite is living in some little shithole comm in
the Somidlats, I forget the name, playing creche teacher. Playing the happy little
still. Married with two new children. How about that. Not sure about the
daughter but the boy is pulling on the aquamarine.
Amazing. No wonder the Fulcrum bred you to me. And we did make a
beautiful child in spite of everything, didn’t we? My boy.
I won’t let them find your boy, Syen. I won’t let them take him, and burn his
brain, and put him in the wire chair. I won’t let them find your girl, either, if
she’s one of us, or even if she’s Guardian-potential. There won’t be a Fulcrum
left by the time I’m done. What follows won’t be good, but it’ll be bad for
everyone—rich and poor, Equatorials and commless, Sanzeds and Arctics, now
they’ll all know. Every season is the Season for us. The apocalypse that never
ends. They could’ve chosen a different kind of equality. We could’ve all been
safe and comfortable together, surviving together, but they didn’t want that. Now
nobody gets to be safe. Maybe that’s what it will take for them to finally realize
things have to change.
Then I’ll shut it down and put the Moon back. (It shouldn’t stone me, the first
trajectory adjustment. Unless I underestimate Shouldn’t.) All I’m rusting good
for anyway.
After that … it’ll be up to you, Syen. Make it better. I know I told you it
wasn’t possible, that there was no way to make the world better, but I was
wrong. I’m breaking it because I was wrong. Start it over, you were right,
change it. Make it better for the children you have left. Make a world Corundum
could have been happy in. Make a world where people like us, you and me and
Innon and our sweet boy, our beautiful boy, could have stayed whole.
Antimony says I might get to see that world. Guess we’ll see. Rust it. I’m
procrastinating. She’s waiting. Back to Yumenes today.
For you, Innon. For you, Coru. For you, Syen.

At night, Nassun can see the Moon.

This was terrifying, on the first night that she looked outside and noticed a
strange pale whiteness outlining the streets and trees of the city, and then looked
up to see a great white sphere in the sky. It is enormous, to her—bigger than the
sun, far larger than the stars, trailed by a faint streak of luminescence that she
does not know is the off-gassing of ice that has adhered to the lunar surface over
the course of its travels. The white of it is the true surprise. She knows very little
of the Moon—only what Schaffa told her. It is a satellite, he said, Father Earth’s
lost child, a thing whose light reflects the sun. She expected it to be yellow,
given that. It disturbs her to have been so wrong.
It disturbs her more that there is a hole in the thing, at nearly its dead center:
a great, yawning darkness like the pinpoint pupil of an eye. It’s too small to tell
for now, but Nassun thinks that maybe if she stares at it long enough, she will
see stars on the other side of the Moon, through this hole.
Somehow it’s fitting. Whatever happened ages ago to cause the Moon’s loss
was surely cataclysmic on multiple levels. If the Earth suffered the Shattering,
then the fact that the Moon also bears scars feels normal and right. With a
thumb, Nassun rubs the palm of her hand where her mother broke the bones, a
lifetime ago.
And yet, when she stands in the roof garden and stares at it for long enough,
she begins to find the Moon beautiful. It is an icewhite eye, and she has no
reason to think badly of those. Like the silver when it swirls and whorls within
something like a snail’s shell. It makes her think of Schaffa—that he is watching
over her in his way—and this makes her feel less alone.
Over time, Nassun discovers that she can use the obelisks to get a feel for the
Moon. The sapphire is on the other side of the world, but there are others here
above the ocean, drawn near in response to her summons, and she has been
tapping and taming each in turn. The obelisks help her feel (not sess) that the
Moon will soon be at its closest point. If she lets it go, it will pass, and begin to
rapidly diminish until it vanishes from the sky. Or she can open the Gate, and
tug on it, and change everything. The cruelty of the status quo, or the comfort of
oblivion. The choice feels clear to her … but for one thing.
One night, as Nassun sits gazing up at the great white sphere, she says aloud,
“It was on purpose, wasn’t it? You not telling me what would happen to Schaffa.
So you could get rid of him.”
The mountain that has been lingering nearby shifts slightly, to a position
behind her. “I did try to warn you.”
She turns to look at him. At the look on her face, he utters a soft laugh that
sounds self-deprecating. This stops, though, when she says, “If he dies, I’ll hate
you more than I hate the world.”
It is a war of attrition, she’s begun to realize, and she’s going to lose. In the
weeks (?) or months (?) since they came to Corepoint, Schaffa has noticeably
deteriorated, his skin developing an ugly pallor, his hair brittle and dull. People
aren’t meant to lie unmoving, blinking but not thinking, for weeks on end. She
had to cut his hair earlier that day. The bed cleans the dirt out of it, but it’s gotten
oily and lately it keeps getting tangled—and the day before, some of it must
have wrapped around his arm when she wrestled him onto his belly, cutting off
his circulation in a way she didn’t notice. (She keeps a sheet over him, even
though the bed is warm and does not need it. It bothers her that he is naked and
undignified.) This morning when she finally noticed the problem, the arm was
pale and a little gray. She’s loosed it, chafed it hoping to bring the color back,
but it doesn’t look good. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if something’s really
wrong with his arm. She might lose all of him like this, slowly but surely, little
bits of him dying because she was only almost-nine when this Season began and
she’s only almost-eleven now and taking care of invalids wasn’t something
anyone taught her in creche.
“If he lives,” Steel replies in his colorless voice, “he will never again
experience a moment without agony.” He pauses, gray eyes fixed on her face, as
Nassun reverberates with his words, with her own denial, with her own growing
sick fear that Steel is right.
Nassun gets to her feet. “I n-need to know how to fix him.”
“You can’t.”
She tightens her hands into fists. For the first time in what feels like
centuries, part of her reaches for the strata around her. This means the shield
volcano beneath Corepoint … but when she “grasps” it orogenically, she finds
with some surprise that it is anchored, somehow. This distracts her for a moment
as she has to alter her perception to shift to the silver—and there she finds solid,
scintillating pillars of magic driven into the volcano’s foundations, pinning it in
place. It’s still active, but it will never erupt because of those pillars. It is as
stable as bedrock despite the hole at its core burrowing down to the Earth’s
heart.
She shakes this off as irrelevant, and finally voices the thought that has been
gathering in her mind over all the days she has dwelled in this city of stone
people. “If … if I turn him into a stone eater, he’ll live. And he won’t have any
pain. Right?” Steel does not reply. In the lengthening silence, Nassun bites her
lip. “So you have to tell me how to—to make him like you. I bet I can do it if I
use the Gate. I can do anything with that. Except …”
Except. The Obelisk Gate doesn’t do small things. Just as Nassun feels,
sesses, knows that the Gate makes her temporarily omnipotent, she knows, too,
that she cannot use it to transform just one man. If she makes Schaffa into a
stone eater … every human being on the planet will change in the same manner.
Every comm, every commless band, every starving wanderer: Ten thousand still-
life cities, instead of just one. All the world will become like Corepoint.
But is that really so terrible a thing? If everyone is a stone eater, there will be
no more orogenes and stills. No more children to die, no more fathers to murder
them. The Seasons could come and go, and they wouldn’t matter. No one would
starve to death ever again. To make the whole world as peaceful as Corepoint …
would that not be a kindness?
Steel’s face, which has been tilted up toward the Moon even as his eyes
watch her, now slowly pivots to face her. It’s always unnerving to see him move
slowly. “Do you know what it feels like to live forever?”
Nassun blinks, thrown. She’s been expecting a fight. “What?”
The moonlight has transformed Steel into a thing of starkest shadows, white
and ink against the dimness of the garden. “I asked,” he says, and his voice is
almost pleasant, “if you know what it feels like to live forever. Like me. Like
your Schaffa. Do you have any inkling as to how old he is? Do you care?”
“I—” About to say that she does, Nassun falters. No. This is not a thing she
has ever considered. “I—I don’t—”
“I would estimate,” Steel continues, “that Guardians typically last three or
four thousand years. Can you imagine that length of time? Think of the past two
years. Your life since the beginning of the Season. Imagine another year. You
can do that, can’t you? Every day feels like a year here in Corepoint, or so your
kind tell me. Now put all three years together, and imagine them times one
thousand.” The emphasis he puts on this is sharp, precisely enunciated. In spite
of herself, Nassun jumps.
But also in spite of herself … she thinks. She feels old, Nassun, at the world-
weary age of not-quite-eleven. So much has happened since the day she came
home to find her little brother dead on the floor. She is a different person now,
hardly Nassun at all; sometimes she is surprised to realize Nassun is still her
name. How much more different will she be in three years? Ten? Twenty?
Steel pauses until he sees some change in her expression—some evidence,
perhaps, that she is listening to him. Then he says, “I have reason to believe,
however, that your Schaffa is much, much older than most Guardians. He isn’t
quite first-generation; those have all long since died. Couldn’t take it. He’s one
of the very early ones, though, still. The languages, you see; that’s how you can
always tell. They never quite lose those, even after they’ve forgotten the names
they were born with.”
Nassun remembers how Schaffa knew the language of the earth-traversing
vehicle. It is strange to think of Schaffa having been born back when that tongue
was still spoken. It would make him … she can’t even imagine. Old Sanze is
supposed to be seven Seasons old, eight if one counts the present Season.
Almost three thousand years. The Moon’s cycle of return and retreat is much
older than that, and Schaffa remembers it, so … yes. He’s very, very old. She
frowns.
“It’s rare to find one of them who can really go the distance,” Steel continues.
His tone is casual, conversational; he could be talking about Nassun’s old
neighbors back in Jekity. “The corestone hurts them so much, you see. They get
tired, and then they get sloppy, and then the Earth begins to contaminate them,
eating away at their will. They don’t usually last long once that starts. The Earth
uses them, or their fellow Guardians use them, until they outlive their usefulness
and one side or the other kills them. It’s a testament to your Schaffa’s strength
that he lasted so much longer. Or a testament to something else, maybe. What
kills the rest, you see, is losing the things that ordinary people need to be happy.
Imagine what that’s like, Nassun. Watching everyone you know and care about
die. Watching your home die, and having to find a new one—again, and again,
and again. Imagine never daring to get close to another person. Never having
friends, because you’ll outlive them. Are you lonely, little Nassun?”
She has forgotten her anger. “Yes,” she admits, before she can think not to.
 “Imagine being lonely forever.” There’s a very slight smile on his lips, she
sees. It’s been there the whole while. “Imagine living here in Corepoint forever,
with no one to talk to but me—when I bother to respond. What do you think that
will feel like, Nassun?”
“Terrible,” she says. Quietly now.
“Yes. So here is my theory: I believe your Schaffa survived by loving his
charges. You, and others like you, soothed his loneliness. He truly does love
you; never doubt that about him.” Nassun swallows back a dull ache. “But he
also needs you. You keep him happy. You keep him human, where otherwise
time would have long since transformed him into something else.”
Then Steel moves again. It’s inhuman because of its steadiness, Nassun
finally realizes. People are quick to do big movements and then slower with fine
adjustment. Steel does everything at the same pace. Watching him move is like
watching a statue melt. But then he stands with arms outstretched as if to say,
Take a look at me.
“I am forty thousand years old,” Steel says. “Give or take a few millennia.”
Nassun stares at him. The words are like the gibberish that the vehimal spoke
—almost comprehensible, but not really. Not real.
What does that feel like, though?
“You’re going to die when you open the Gate,” Steel says, after giving
Nassun a moment to absorb what he’s said. “Or if not then, sometime after. A
few decades, a few minutes, it’s all the same. And whatever you do, Schaffa will
lose you. He’ll lose the one thing that has kept him human throughout the
Earth’s efforts to devour his will. He’ll find no one new to love, either—not
here. And he won’t be able to return to the Stillness unless he’s willing to risk
the Deep Earth route again. So whether he heals somehow, or you change him
into one of my kind, he will have no choice but to go on, alone, endlessly
yearning for what he will never again have.” Slowly, Steel’s arms lower to his
sides. “You have no idea what that’s like.”
And then, suddenly, shockingly, he is right in front of Nassun. No blurring,
no warning, just flick and he is there, bent at the waist to put his face right in
front of hers, so close that she feels the wind of the air he’s displaced and smells
the whiff of loam and she can even see that the irises of his eyes are striated in
layers of gray.
“BUT I DO,” he shouts.
Nassun stumbles back and cries out. Between one blink and the next,
however, Steel returns to his former position, upright, arms at his sides, a smile
on his lips.
“So think carefully,” Steel says. His voice is conversational again, as if
nothing has happened. “Think with something more than the selfishness of a
child, little Nassun. And ask yourself: Even if I could help you save that
controlling, sadistic sack of shit that currently passes for your adoptive father
figure, why would I? Not even my enemy deserves that fate. No one does.”
Nassun’s still shaking. She blurts, bravely, “Sch-Schaffa might want to live.”
“He might. But should he? Should anyone, forever? That is the question.”
She feels the absent weight of countless years, and is obliquely ashamed of
being a child. But at her core, she is a kind child, and it’s impossible for her to
have heard Steel’s story without feeling something other than her usual anger at
him. She looks away twitchily. “I’m … sorry.”
“So am I.” There’s a moment’s silence. In it, Nassun pulls herself together
slowly. By the time she focuses on him again, Steel’s smile has vanished.
“I cannot stop you, once you’ve opened the Gate,” he says. “I’ve manipulated
you, yes, but the choice is still ultimately yours. Consider, however. Until the
Earth dies, I live, Nassun. That was its punishment for us: We became a part of
it, chained fate to fate. The Earth forgets neither those who stabbed it in the back
… nor those who put the knife in our hand.”
Nassun blinks at our. But she loses this thought amid misery at the realization
that there can be no fixing Schaffa. Until now, some part of her has nursed the
irrational hope that Steel, as an adult, had all the answers, including some sort of
cure. Now she knows that her hope has been foolish. Childish. She is a child.
And now the only adult she has ever been able to rely on will die naked and hurt
and helpless, without ever being able to say goodbye.
It’s too much to bear. She sinks into a crouch, wrapping one arm round her
knees and folding the other over her head, so that Steel will not see her cry even
if he knows that’s exactly what’s happening.
He lets out a soft laugh at this. Surprisingly, it does not sound cruel.
“You achieve nothing by keeping any of us alive,” he says, “except cruelty.
Put us broken monsters out of our misery, Nassun. The Earth, Schaffa, me, you
… all of us.”
Then he vanishes, leaving Nassun alone beneath the white, burgeoning
Moon.
 Syl Anagist: Zero

A MOMENT IN THE PRESENT, BEFORE I speak again of the past.

Amid the heated, fuming shadows and unbearable pressure of a place that has
no name, I open my eyes. I’m no longer alone.
Out of the stone, another of my kind pushes forth. Her face is angular, cool,
as patrician and elegant as any statue’s should be. She’s shed the rest, but kept
the pallor of her original coloring; I notice this at last, after tens of thousands of
years. All this reminiscing has made me nostalgic.
In token of which, I say aloud, “Gaewha.”
She shifts slightly, as close as any of us gets to an expression of …
recognition? Surprise? We were siblings once. Friends. Since then, rivals,
enemies, strangers, legends. Lately, cautious allies. I find myself contemplating
some of what we were, but not all. I’ve forgotten the all, just as much as she has.
She says, “Was that my name?”
“Close enough.”
“Hmm. And you were …?”
“Houwha.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“You prefer Antimony?”
Another slight movement, the equivalent of a shrug. “I have no preference.”
I think, Nor do I, but that is a lie. I would never have given my new name to
you, Hoa, if not in homage to what I remember of that old name. But I’m
woolgathering.
I say, “She is committed to the change.”
Gaewha, Antimony, whoever and whatever she is now, replies, “I noticed.”
She pauses. “Do you regret what you did?”
It’s a foolish question. All of us regret that day, in different ways and for
different reasons. But I say, “No.”
 I expect comment in return, but I suppose there’s really nothing to be said
anymore. She makes minute sounds, settling into the rock. Getting comfortable.
She means to wait here with me. I’m glad. Some things are easier when not
faced alone.

There are things Alabaster never told you, about himself.

I know these things because I studied him; he is part of you, after all. But not
every teacher needs every protégé to know of his every stumble on the journey
to mastery. What would be the point? None of us got here overnight. There are
stages to the process of being betrayed by your society. One is jolted from a
place of complacency by the discovery of difference, by hypocrisy, by
inexplicable or incongruous ill treatment. What follows is a time of confusion—
unlearning what one thought to be the truth. Immersing oneself in the new truth.
And then a decision must be made.
Some accept their fate. Swallow their pride, forget the real truth, embrace the
falsehood for all they’re worth—because, they decide, they cannot be worth
much. If a whole society has dedicated itself to their subjugation, after all, then
surely they deserve it? Even if they don’t, fighting back is too painful, too
impossible. At least this way there is peace, of a sort. Fleetingly.
The alternative is to demand the impossible. It isn’t right, they whisper,
weep, shout; what has been done to them is not right. They are not inferior. They
do not deserve it. And so it is the society that must change. There can be peace
this way, too, but not before conflict.
No one reaches this place without a false start or two.
When Alabaster was a young man, he loved easily and casually. Oh, he was
angry, even then; of course he was. Even children notice when they are not
treated fairly. He had chosen to cooperate, however, for the time being.
He met a man, a scholar, during a mission he’d been assigned by the
Fulcrum. Alabaster’s interest was prurient; the scholar was quite handsome, and
charmingly shy in response to Alabaster’s flirtations. If the scholar hadn’t been
busy excavating what turned out to be an ancient lore cache, there would be
nothing more to the story. Alabaster would have loved him and left him, perhaps
with regret, more likely with no hard feelings.
Instead, the scholar showed Alabaster his findings. There were more,
Alabaster told you, than just three tablets of stonelore, originally. Also, the
current Tablet Three was rewritten by Sanze. It was actually rewritten again by
Sanze; it had been rewritten several times prior to that. The original Tablet Three
spoke of Syl Anagist, you see, and how the Moon was lost. This knowledge, for
many reasons, has been deemed unacceptable again and again down the
millennia since. No one really wants to face the fact that the world is the way it
is because some arrogant, self-absorbed people tried to put a leash on the rusting
planet. And no one was ready to accept that the solution to the whole mess was
simply to let orogenes live and thrive and do what they were born to do.
For Alabaster, the lore cache’s knowledge was overwhelming. He fled. It was
too much for him, the knowledge that all of this had happened before. That he
was the scion of a people abused; that those people’s forebears were, too, in their
turn; that the world as he knew it could not function without forcing someone
into servitude. At the time he could see no end to the cycle, no way to demand
the impossible of society. So he broke, and he ran.
His Guardian found him, of course, three quartents away from where he was
supposed to be and with no inkling of where he was going. Instead of breaking
his hand—they used different techniques with highringers like Alabaster—
Guardian Leshet took him to a tavern and bought him a drink. He wept into his
wine and confessed to her that he couldn’t take much more of the world as it
was. He had tried to submit, tried to embrace the lies, but it was not right.
Leshet soothed him and took him back to the Fulcrum, and for one year they
allowed Alabaster time to recover. To accept again the rules and role that had
been created for him. He was content during this year, I believe; Antimony
believes it, in any case, and she is the one who knew him best during this time.
He settled, did what was expected of him, sired three children, and even
volunteered to be an instructor for the higher-ringed juniors. He never got the
chance to act on this, however, because the Guardians had decided already that
Alabaster could not go unpunished for running away. When he met and fell in
love with an older ten-ringer named Hessionite—
I have told you already that they use different methods on highringers.
I ran away, too, once. In a way.

It is the day after our return from Kelenli’s tuning mission, and I am different. I
look through the nematode window at the garden of purple light, and it is no
longer beautiful to me. The winking of the white star-flowers lets me know that
some genegineer made them, tying them into the city power network so that they
can be fed by a bit of magic. How else to get that winking effect? I see the
elegant vinework on the surrounding buildings and I know that somewhere, a
biomagest is tabulating how many lammotyrs of magic can be harvested from
such beauty. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist—sacred, and lucrative, and useful.
So I am thinking this, and I am in a foul mood, when one of the junior
conductors comes in. Conductor Stahnyn, she is called, and ordinarily I like her.
She’s young enough to have not yet picked up the worst of the more experienced
conductors’ habits. And now as I turn to gaze at her with eyes that Kelenli has
opened, I notice something new about her. A bluntness to her features, a
smallness to her mouth. Yes, it’s much more subtle than Conductor Gallat’s
icewhite eyes, but here is another Sylanagistine whose ancestors clearly didn’t
understand the whole point of genocide.
“How are you feeling today, Houwha?” she asks, smiling and glancing at her
noteboard as she comes in. “Up to a medical check?”
“I’m feeling up to a walk,” I say. “Let’s go out to the garden.”
Stahnyn starts, blinking at me. “Houwha, you know that’s not possible.”
They keep such lax security on us, I have noticed. Sensors to monitor our
vitals, cameras to monitor our movements, microphones to record our sounds.
Some of the sensors monitor our magic usage—and none of them, not one, can
measure even a tenth of what we really do. I would be insulted if I had not just
been shown how important it is to them that we be lesser. Lesser creatures don’t
need better monitoring, do they? Creations of Sylanagistine magestry cannot
possibly have abilities that surpass it. Unthinkable! Ridiculous! Don’t be foolish.
Fine, I am insulted. And I no longer have the patience for Stahnyn’s polite
patronization.
So I find the lines of magic that run to the cameras, and I entangle them with
the lines of magic that run to their own storage crystals, and I loop these
together. Now the cameras will display only footage that they filmed over the
last few hours—which mostly consists of me looking out the window and
brooding. I do the same to the audio equipment, taking care to erase that last
exchange between me and Stahnyn. I do all of this with barely a flick of my will,
because I was designed to affect machines the size of skyscrapers; cameras are
nothing. I use more magic reaching for the others to tell a joke.
The others sess what I am doing, however. Bimniwha gets a taste of my
mood and immediately alerts the others—because I am the nice one, usually. I’m
the one who, until recently, believed in Geoarcanity. Usually Remwha is the
resentful one. But right now Remwha is coldly silent, stewing on what we have
learned. Gaewha is quiet, too, in despair, trying to fathom how to demand the
impossible. Dushwha is hugging themselves for comfort and Salewha is sleeping
too much. Bimniwha’s alert falls on weary, frustrated, self-absorbed ears, and
goes ignored.
Meanwhile, Stahnyn’s smile has begun to falter, as she only now realizes I’m
serious. She shifts her stance, putting hands on her hips. “Houwha, this isn’t
funny. I understand you got the chance to leave the other day—”
I have considered the most efficient way to shut her up. “Does Conductor
Gallat know that you find him attractive?”
Stahnyn freezes, eyes going wide and round. Brown eyes in her case, but she
likes icewhite. I’ve seen how she looks at Gallat, though I never much cared
before. I don’t really care now. But I imagine that finding Niess eyes attractive is
a taboo thing in Syl Anagist, and neither Gallat nor Stahnyn can afford to be
accused of that particular perversion. Gallat would fire Stahnyn at the first
whisper of it—even a whisper from me.
I go over to her. She draws back a little, frowning at my forwardness. We do
not assert ourselves, we constructs. We tools. My behavior is anomalous in a
way that she should report, but that isn’t what has her so worried. “No one heard
me say that,” I tell her, very gently. “No one can see what’s happening in this
room right now. Relax.”
Her bottom lip trembles, just a little, before she speaks. I feel bad, just a little,
for having disturbed her so. She says, “You can’t get far. Th-there’s a vitamin
deficiency … You and the others were built that way. Without special food—the
food we serve you—you’ll die in just a few days.”
It only now occurs to me that Stahnyn thinks I mean to run away.
It only now occurs to me to run away.
What the conductor has just told me isn’t an insurmountable hurdle. Easy
enough to steal food to take with me, though I would die when it ran out. My life
would be short regardless. But the thing that truly troubles me is that I have
nowhere to go. All the world is Syl Anagist.
“The garden,” I repeat, at last. This will be my grand adventure, my escape. I
consider laughing, but the habit of appearing emotionless keeps me from doing
so. I don’t really want to go anywhere, to be honest. I just want to feel like I
have some control over my life, if only for a few moments. “I want to see the
garden for five minutes. That’s all.”
Stahnyn shifts from foot to foot, visibly miserable. “I could lose my position
for this, especially if any of the senior conductors see. I could be imprisoned.”
“Perhaps they will give you a nice window overlooking a garden,” I suggest.
She winces.
And then, because I have left her no choice, she leads me out of my cell and
downstairs, and outside.
The garden of purple flowers looks strange from this angle, I find, and it is an
altogether different thing to smell the star-flowers up close. They smell strange
—oddly sweet, almost sugary, with a hint of fermentation underneath where
some of the older flowers have wilted or been crushed. Stahnyn is fidgety,
looking around too much, while I stroll slowly, wishing I did not need her beside
me. But this is fact: I cannot simply wander the grounds of the compound alone.
If guards or attendants or other conductors see us, they will think Stahnyn is on
official business, and not question me … if she will only be still.
But then I stop abruptly, behind a lilting spider tree. Stahnyn stops as well,
frowning and plainly wondering what’s happening—and then she, too, sees what
I have seen, and freezes.
Up ahead, Kelenli has come out of the compound to stand between two
curling bushes, beneath a white rose arch. Conductor Gallat has followed her
out. She stands with her arms folded. He’s behind her, shouting at her back. We
aren’t close enough for me to hear what he’s saying, though his angry tone is
indisputable. Their bodies, however, are a story as clear as strata.
“Oh, no,” mutters Stahnyn. “No, no, no. We should—”
“Still,” I murmur. I mean to say be still, but she quiets anyway, so at least I
got the point across.
And then we stand there, watching Gallat and Kelenli fight. I can’t hear her
voice at all, and it occurs to me that she cannot raise her voice to him; it isn’t
safe. But when he grabs her arm and yanks her around to face him, she
automatically claps a hand over her belly. The hand on the belly is a quick thing.
Gallat lets go at once, seemingly surprised by her reaction and his own violence,
and she moves the hand smoothly back to her side. I don’t think he noticed.
They resume arguing, and this time Gallat spreads his hands as if offering
something. There is pleading in his posture, but I notice how stiff his back is. He
begs—but he thinks he shouldn’t have to. I can tell that when begging fails, he
will resort to other tactics.
I close my eyes, aching as I finally, finally, understand. Kelenli is one of us
in every way that matters, and she always has been.
Slowly, though, she unbends. Ducks her head, pretends reluctant capitulation,
says something back. It isn’t real. The earth reverberates with her anger and fear
and unwillingness. Still, some of the stiffness goes out of Gallat’s back. He
smiles, gestures more broadly. Comes back to her, takes her by the arms, speaks
to her gently. I marvel that she has disarmed his anger so effectively. It’s as if he
doesn’t see the way her eyes drift away while he’s talking, or how she does not
reciprocate when he pulls her closer. She smiles at something he says, but even
from fifty feet away I can see that it is a performance. Surely he can see it, too?
But I am also beginning to understand that people believe what they want to
believe, not what is actually there to be seen and touched and sessed.
So, mollified, he turns to leave—thankfully via a different path out of the
garden than the one Stahnyn and I currently lurk upon. His posture has changed
completely; he’s visibly in a better mood. I should be glad for that, shouldn’t I?
Gallat heads the project. When he’s happy, we are all safer.
Kelenli stands gazing after him until he is gone. Then her head turns and she
looks right at me. Stahnyn makes a choked sound beside me, but she is a fool. Of
course Kelenli will not report us. Why would she? Her performance was never
for Gallat.
Then she, too, leaves the garden, following Gallat.
It was a last lesson. The one I needed most, I think. I tell Stahnyn to take me
back to my cell, and she practically moans with relief. When I’m back and I
have unwoven the magics of the monitoring equipment, and sent Stahnyn on her
way with a gentle reminder not to be a fool, I lie down on my couch to ponder
this new knowledge. It sits in me, an ember causing everything around it to
smolder and smoke.

And then, several nights after we return from Kelenli’s tuning mission, the
ember catches fire in all of us.
It is the first time that all of us have come together since the trip. We entwine
our presences in a layer of cold coal, which is perhaps fitting as Remwha sends a
hiss through all of us like sand grinding amid cracks. It’s the sound/feel/sess of
the sinklines, the briar patch. It’s also an echo of the static emptiness in our
network where Tetlewha—and Entiwha, and Arwha, and all the others—once
existed.
This is what awaits us when we have given them Geoarcanity, he says.
Gaewha replies, Yes.
He hisses again. I have never sessed him so angry. He has spent the days
since our trip getting angrier and angrier. But then, so have the rest of us—and
now it’s time for us to demand the impossible. We should give them nothing, he
declares, and then I feel his resolve sharpen, turn vicious. No. We should give
back what they have taken.
Eerie minor-note pulses of impression and action ripple through our network:
a plan, at last. A way to create the impossible, if we cannot demand it. The right
sort of power surge at just the right moment, after the fragments have been
launched but before the Engine has been spent. All the magic stored within the
fragments—decades’ worth, a civilization’s worth, millions of lives’ worth—
will flood back into the systems of Syl Anagist. First it will burn out the briar
patches and their pitiful crop, letting the dead rest at last. Next the magic will
blast through us, the most fragile components of the great machine. We’ll die
when that happens, but death is better than what they intended for us, so we are
content.
Once we’re dead, the Plutonic Engine’s magic will surge unrestricted down
all the conduits of the city, frying them beyond repair. Every node of Syl Anagist
will shut down—vehimals dying unless they have backup generators, lights
going dark, machinery stilling, all the infinite conveniences of modern magestry
erased from furnishings and appliances and cosmetics. Generations of effort
spent preparing for Geoarcanity will be lost. The Engine’s crystalline fragments
will become so many oversized rocks, broken and burnt and powerless.
We need not be as cruel as they. We can instruct the fragments to come down
away from the most inhabited areas. We are the monsters they created, and
more, but we will be the sort of monsters we wish to be, in death.
And are we agreed, then?
Yes. Remwha, furious.
Yes. Gaewha, sorrowful.
Yes. Bimniwha, resigned.
Yes. Salewha, righteous.
Yes. Dushwha, weary.
And I, heavy as lead, say, Yes.
So we are agreed.
Only to myself do I think, No, with Kelenli’s face in my mind’s eye. But
sometimes, when the world is hard, love must be harder still.

Launch Day.
We are brought nourishment—protein with a side of fresh sweet fruit, and a
drink that we are told is a popular delicacy: sef, which turns pretty colors when
various vitamin supplements are added to it. A special drink for a special day.
It’s chalky. I don’t like it. Then it is time to travel to Zero Site.
Here is how the Plutonic Engine works, briefly and simply.
First we will awaken the fragments, which have sat in their sockets for
decades channeling life-energy through each node of Syl Anagist—and storing
some of it for later use, including that which was force-fed to them through the
briar patches. They have now reached optimum storage and generation,
however, each becoming a self-contained arcane engine of its own. Now when
we summon them, the fragments will rise from their sockets. We’ll join their
power together in a stable network and, after bouncing it off a reflector that will
amplify and concentrate the magic still further, pour this into the onyx. The onyx
will direct this energy straight into the Earth’s core, causing an overflow—which
the onyx will then shunt into Syl Anagist’s hungry conduits. In effect, the Earth
will become a massive plutonic engine too, the dynamo that is its core churning
forth far more magic than is put into it. From there, the system will become self-
perpetuating. Syl Anagist will feed upon the life of the planet itself, forever.
(Ignorance is an inaccurate term for what this was. True, no one thought of
the Earth as alive in those days—but we should have guessed. Magic is the by-
product of life. That there was magic in the Earth to take … We should all have
guessed.)
Everything we have done, up to now, has been practice. We could never have
activated the full Plutonic Engine here on Earth—too many complications
involving the obliqueness of angles, signal speed and resistance, the curvature of
the hemisphere. So awkwardly round, planets. Our target is the Earth, after all;
lines of sight, lines of force and attraction. If we stay on the planet, all we can
really affect is the Moon.
Which is why Zero Site has never been on Earth.
Thus in the small hours of the morning we are brought to a singular sort of
vehimal, doubtless genegineered from grasshopper stock or something similar. It
is diamond-winged but also has great carbon-fiber legs, steaming now with
coiled, stored power. As the conductors usher us aboard this vehimal, I see other
vehimals being made ready. A large party means to come with us to watch the
great project conclude at last. I sit where I am told, and all of us are strapped in
because the vehimal’s thrust can sometimes overcome geomagestric inertial …
Hmm. Suffice it to say, the launch can be somewhat alarming. It is nothing
compared to plunging into the heart of a living, churning fragment, but I suppose
the humans think it a grand, wild thing. The six of us sit, still and cold with
purpose as they chatter around us, while the vehimal leaps up to the Moon.
On the Moon is the moonstone—a massive, iridescent white cabochon
embedded in the thin gray soil of the place. It is the largest of the fragments,
fully as big as a node of Syl Anagist itself; the whole of the Moon is its socket.
Arranged around its edges sits a complex of buildings, each sealed against the
airless dark, which are not so very different from the buildings we just left.
They’re just on the Moon. This is Zero Site, where history will be made.
We are led inside, where permanent Zero Site staff line the halls and stare at
us in proud admiration, as one admires precision-made instruments. We are led
to cradles that look precisely like the cradles used every day for our practices—
although this time, each of us is taken to a separate room of the compound.
Adjoining each room is the conductors’ observation chamber, connected via a
clear crystal window. I’m used to being observed while I work—but not used to
being brought into the observation room itself, as happens today for the very first
time.
There I stand, short and plainly dressed and palpably uncomfortable amid tall
people in rich, complex clothing, while Gallat introduces me as “Houwha, our
finest tuner.” This statement alone proves that either the conductors really have
no clue how we function, or that Gallat is nervous and groping for something to
say. Perhaps both. Dushwha laughs a cascading microshake—the Moon’s strata
are thin and dusty and dead, but not much different from the Earth’s—while I
stand there and mouth pleasant greetings, as I am expected to do. Maybe that’s
what Gallat really means: I’m the tuner who is best at pretending that he cares
about conductor nonsense.
Something catches my attention, though, as the introductions are made and
small talk is exchanged and I concentrate on saying correct things at correct
times. I turn and notice a stasis column near the back of the room, humming
faintly and flickering with its own plutonic energies, generating the field that
keeps something within stable. And floating above its cut-crystal surface—
 There is a woman in the room who is taller and more elaborately dressed than
everyone else. She follows my gaze and says to Gallat, “Do they know about the
test bore?”
Gallat twitches and looks at me, then at the stasis column. “No,” he says. He
doesn’t name the woman or give her a title, but his tone is very respectful.
“They’ve been told only what’s necessary.”
“I would think context is necessary, even with your kind.” Gallat bristles at
being lumped in with us, but he says nothing in response to it. The woman looks
amused. She bends down to peer into my face, although I’m not that much
shorter than her. “Would you like to know what that artifact is, little tuner?”
I immediately hate her. “Yes, please,” I say.
She takes my hand before Gallat can stop her. It isn’t uncomfortable. Her
skin is dry. She leads me over near the stasis column, so that I can now get a
good look at the thing that floats above it.
At first I think that what I’m seeing is nothing more than a spherical lump of
iron, hovering a few inches above the stasis column’s surface and underlit by its
white glow. It is only a lump of iron, its surface crazed with slanting, circuitous
lines. A meteor fragment? No. I realize the sphere is moving—spinning slowly
on a slightly tilted north-south axis. I look at the warning symbols around the
column’s rim and see markers for extreme heat and pressure, and a caution
against breaching the stasis field. Within, the markers say, it has re-created the
object’s native environment.
No one would do this for a mere lump of iron. I blink, adjust my perception
to the sesunal and magical, and draw back quickly as searing white light blazes
at and through me. The iron sphere is full of magic—concentrated, crackling,
overlapping threads upon threads of it, some of them even extending beyond its
surface and outward and … away. I can’t follow the ones that whitter away
beyond the room; they extend beyond my reach. I can see that they stretch off
toward the sky, though, for some reason. And written in the jittering threads that
I can see … I frown.
“It’s angry,” I say. And familiar. Where have I seen something like this, this
magic, before?
The woman blinks at me. Gallat groans under his breath. “Houwha—”
“No,” the woman says, holding up a hand to quell him. She focuses on me
again with a gaze that is intent now, and curious. “What did you say, little
tuner?”
I face her. She is obviously important. Perhaps I should be afraid, but I’m
not. “That thing is angry,” I say. “Furious. It doesn’t want to be here. You took
it from somewhere else, didn’t you?”
Others in the room have noticed this exchange. Not all of them are
conductors, but all of them look at the woman and me in palpable unease and
confusion. I hear Gallat holding his breath.
“Yes,” she says to me, finally. “We drilled a test bore at one of the Antarctic
nodes. Then we sent in probes that took this from the innermost core. It’s a
sample of the world’s own heart.” She smiles, proud. “The richness of magic at
the core is precisely what will enable Geoarcanity. That test is why we built
Corepoint, and the fragments, and you.”
I look at the iron sphere again and marvel that she stands so close to it. It is
angry, I think again, without really knowing why these words come to me. It will
do what it has to do.
Who? Will do what?
I shake my head, inexplicably annoyed, and turn to Gallat. “Shouldn’t we get
started?”
The woman laughs, delighted. Gallat glowers at me, but he relaxes
fractionally when it becomes obvious that the woman is amused. Still, he says,
“Yes, Houwha. I think we should. If you don’t mind—”
(He addresses the woman by some title, and some name. I will forget both
with the passage of time. In forty thousand years I will remember only the
woman’s laugh, and the way she considers Gallat no different from us, and how
carelessly she stands near an iron sphere that radiates pure malice—and enough
magic to destroy every building in Zero Site.
And I will remember how I, too, dismissed every possible warning of what
was to come.)
Gallat takes me back into the cradle room, where I am bidden to climb into
my wire chair. My limbs are strapped down, which I’ve never understood
because when I’m in the amethyst, I barely notice my body, let alone move it.
The sef has made my lips tingle in a way that suggests a stimulant was added. I
didn’t need it.
I reach for the others, and find them granite-steady with resolve. Yes.
Images appear on the viewing wall before me, displaying the blue sphere of
the Earth, each of the other five tuners’ cradles, and a shot of Corepoint with the
onyx hovering ready above it. The other tuners look back at me from their
images. Gallat comes over and makes a show of checking the contact points of
the wire chair, which are meant to send measurements to the Biomagestric
division. “You’re to hold the onyx, today, Houwha.”
From another building of Zero Site, I feel Gaewha’s small twitch of surprise.
We’re very attuned to one another today. I say, “Kelenli holds the onyx.”
“Not anymore.” Gallat keeps his head down as he speaks, unnecessarily
reaching over to check my straps, and I remember him reaching the same way to
pull Kelenli back to him, in the garden. Ah, I understand, now. All this while he
has been afraid to lose her … to us. Afraid to make her just another tool in the
eyes of his superiors. Will they let him keep her, after Geoarcanity? Or does he
fear that she, too, will be thrown into the briar patch? He must. Why else make
such a significant change to our configuration on the most important day in
human history?
As if to confirm my guess, he says, “Biomagestry says you now show more
than sufficient compatibility to hold the connection for the required length of
time.”
He’s watching me, hoping I won’t protest. I realize suddenly that I can do so.
With so much scrutiny on Gallat’s every decision today, important people will
notice if I insist that the new configuration is a bad idea. I can, simply by raising
my voice, take Kelenli from Gallat. I can destroy him, as he destroyed Tetlewha.
But that’s a foolish, pointless thought, because how can I exercise my power
over him without hurting her? I’m going to hurt her enough as it is, when we
turn the Plutonic Engine back on itself. She should survive the initial convulsion
of magic; even if she’s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more
than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, she’ll be
just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really
is—or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free … to
struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion
of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?
Better than you could ever have given her, I think at Gallat.
“All right,” I say. He relaxes minutely.
Gallat leaves my chamber and goes back into the observation room with the
other conductors. I am alone. I am never alone; the others are with me. The
signal comes that we should begin, as the moment seems to hold its breath. We
are ready.
First the network.
Attuned as we are, it is easy, pleasurable, to modulate our silverflows and
cancel out resistance. Remwha plays yoke, but he hardly needs to goad any of us
to resonate higher or lower or to pull at the same pace; we are aligned. We all
want this.
Above us, yet easily within our range, the Earth seems to hum, too. Almost
like a thing alive. We have been to Corepoint and back, in our early training; we
have traveled through the mantle and seen the massive flows of magic that churn
naturally up from the iron-nickel core of the planet. To tap that bottomless font
will be the greatest feat of human accomplishment, ever. Once, that thought
would have made me proud. Now I share this with the others and a shiverstone
micaflake glimmer of bitter amusement ripples through all of us. They have
never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are
more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be
able to deny us this again.
Enough frivolity.
First the network, then the fragments of the Engine must be assembled. We
reach for the amethyst because it is nearest on the globe. Though we are a world
away from it, we know that it utters a low held note, its storage matrix glowing
and brimful with energy as we dive, up, into its torrential flow. Already it has
stopped suckling the last dregs from the briar patch at its roots, becoming a
closed system in itself; now it feels almost alive. As we coax it from quiescence
into resonant activity, it begins to pulse, and then finally to shimmer in patterns
that emulate life, like the firing of neurotransmitters or the contractions of
peristalsis. Is it alive? I wonder this for the first time, a question triggered by
Kelenli’s lessons. It is a thing of high-state matter, but it coexists simultaneously
with a thing of high-state magic made in its image—and taken from the bodies
of people who once laughed and raged and sang. Is there anything left of their
will in the amethyst?
If so … would the Niess approve of what we, their caricature children, mean
to do?
I can spare no more time for such thoughts. The decision has been made.
So we expand this macro-level start-up sequence throughout the network. We
sess without sessapinae. We feel the change. We know it in our bones—because
we are part of this engine, components of humanity’s greatest marvel. On Earth,
at the heart of every node of Syl Anagist, klaxons echo across the city and
warning pylons blaze red warnings that can be seen from far away as one by one,
the fragments begin to thrum and shimmer and detach from their sockets. My
breath quickens when I, resonant within each, feel the first peeling-away of
crystal from rougher stone, the drag as we alight and begin pulsing with the
state-change of magic and then begin to rise—
 (There is a stutter here, quick and barely noticeable in the heady moment,
though glaring through the lens of memory. Some of the fragments hurt us, just a
little, when they detach from their sockets. We feel the scrape of metal that
should not be there, the scratch of needles against our crystalline skin. We smell
a whiff of rust. It’s quick pain and quickly forgotten, as with any needle. Only
later will we remember, and lament.)
—rise, and hum, and turn. I inhale deeply as the sockets and their
surrounding cityscapes fall away below us. Syl Anagist shunts over to backup
power systems; those should hold until Geoarcanity. But they are irrelevant,
these mundane concerns. I flow, fly, fall up into rushing light that is purple or
indigo or mauve or gold, the spinel and the topaz and the garnet and the sapphire
—so many, so bright! So alive with building power.
(So alive, I think again, and this thought sends a shudder through the
network, because Gaewha was thinking it, too, and Dushwha, and it is Remwha
who takes us to task with a crack like a slipstrike fault: Fools, we will die if you
don’t focus! So I let this thought go.)
And—ah, yes, framed there on-screen, centered in our perception like an eye
glaring down at its quarry: the onyx. Positioned, as Kelenli last bade it, above
Corepoint.
I am not nervous, I tell myself as I reach for it.
The onyx isn’t like the other fragments. Even the moonstone is quiescent by
comparison; it is only a mirror, after all. But the onyx is powerful, frightening,
the darkest of dark, unknowable. Where the other fragments must be sought and
actively engaged, it snatches at my awareness the instant I come near, trying to
pull me deeper into its rampant, convecting currents of silver. When I have
connected to it before, the onyx has rejected me, as it has done for all the others
in turn. The finest magests in Syl Anagist could not fathom why—but now,
when I offer myself and the onyx claims me, suddenly I know. The onyx is alive.
What is just a question in the other fragments has been answered here: It sesses
me. It learns me, touching me with a presence that is suddenly undeniable.
And in the very moment when I realize this and have enough time to wonder
fearfully what these presences think of me, their pathetic descendant made from
the fusion of their genes with their destroyers’ hate—
—I perceive at last a secret of magestry that even the Niess simply accepted
rather than understood. This is magic, after all, not science. There will always be
parts of it that no one can fathom. But now I know: Put enough magic into
something nonliving, and it becomes alive. Put enough lives into a storage
matrix, and they retain a collective will, of sorts. They remember horror and
atrocity, with whatever is left of them—their souls, if you like.
So the onyx yields to me now because, it senses at last, I too have known
pain. My eyes have been opened to my own exploitation and degradation. I am
afraid, of course, and angry, and hurt, but the onyx does not scorn these feelings
within me. It seeks something else, however, something more, and finally finds
what it seeks nestled in a little burning knot behind my heart: determination. I
have committed myself to making, of all this wrongness, something right.
That’s what the onyx wants. Justice. And because I want that too—
I open my eyes in flesh. “I’ve engaged the control cabochon,” I report for the
conductors.
“Confirmed,” says Gallat, looking at the screen where Biomagestry monitors
our neuroarcanic connections. Applause breaks out among our observers, and I
feel sudden contempt for them. Their clumsy instruments and their weak, simple
sessapinae have finally told them what is as obvious to us as breathing. The
Plutonic Engine is up and running.
Now that the fragments have all launched, each one rising to hum and flicker
and hover over two hundred and fifty-six city-nodes and seismically energetic
points, we begin the ramp-up sequence. Among the fragments, the pale-colored
flow buffers ignite first, then we upcycle the deeper jewel tones of the
generators. The onyx acknowledges sequence initialization with a single, heavy
blat of sound that sends ripples across the Hemispheric Ocean.
My skin is tight, my heart a-thud. Somewhere, in another existence, I have
clenched my fists. We have done so, across the paltry separation of six different
bodies and two hundred and fifty-six arms and legs and one great black pulsing
heart. My mouth opens (our mouths open) as the onyx aligns itself perfectly to
tap the ceaseless churn of earth-magic where the core lies exposed far, far below.
Here is the moment that we were made for.
Now, we are meant to say. This, here, connect, and we will lock the raw
magical flows of the planet into an endless cycle of service to humankind.
Because this is what the Sylanagistines truly made us for: to affirm a
philosophy. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist—as it should be, for the city burns life
as the fuel for its glory. The Niess were not the first people chewed up in its
maw, just the latest and cruelest extermination of many. But for a society built
on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And
now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its
people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There’s
not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone
must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.
Better the earth, Syl Anagist reasons. Better to enslave a great inanimate
object that cannot feel pain and will not object. Better Geoarcanity. But this
reasoning is still flawed, because Syl Anagist is ultimately unsustainable. It is
parasitic; its hunger for magic grows with every drop it devours. The Earth’s
core is not limitless. Eventually, if it takes fifty thousand years, that resource will
be exhausted, too. Then everything dies.
What we are doing is pointless and Geoarcanity is a lie. And if we help Syl
Anagist further down this path, we will have said, What was done to us was right
and natural and unavoidable.
No.
So. Now, we say instead. This, here, connect: pale fragments to dark, all
fragments to the onyx, and the onyx … back to Syl Anagist. We detach the
moonstone from the circuit entirely. Now all the power stored in the fragments
will blast through the city, and when the Plutonic Engine dies, so will Syl
Anagist.
It begins and ends long before the conductors’ instruments even register a
problem. With the others joined to me, our tune gone silent as we settle and wait
for the feedback loop to hit us, I find myself content. It will be good not to die
alone.

But.
But.
Remember. We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day.
This is a thing I will realize only later, when I visit the ruins of Syl Anagist
and look into empty sockets to see iron needles protruding from their walls. This
is an enemy I will understand only after I have been humbled and remade at its
feet … but I will explain it now, so that you may learn from my suffering.
I spoke to you, not long ago, of a war between the Earth and the life upon its
surface. Here is some enemy psychology: The Earth sees no difference between
any of us. Orogene, still, Sylanagistine, Niess, future, past—to it, humanity is
humanity. And even if others had commanded my birth and development; even
if Geoarcanity has been a dream of Syl Anagist since long before even my
conductors were born; even if I was just following orders; even if the six of us
meant to fight back … the Earth did not care. We were all guilty. All complicit
in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself.
Now, though, having pronounced us all guilty, the Earth handed out
sentences. Here, at least, it was somewhat willing to offer credit for intent and
good behavior.
This is what I remember, and what I pieced together later, and what I believe.
But remember—never forget—that this was only the beginning of the war.

We perceive the disruption first as a ghost in the machine.

A presence alongside us, inside us, intense and intrusive and immense. It
slaps the onyx from my grasp before I know what’s happening, and silences our
startled signals of What? and Something is wrong and How did that happen?
with a shockwave of earthtalk as stunning to us as the Rifting will one day be to
you.
Hello, little enemies.
In the conductors’ observation chamber, alarms finally blare. We are frozen
in our wire chairs, shouting without words and being answered by something
beyond our comprehension, so Biomagestry only notices a problem when
suddenly nine percent of the Plutonic Engine—twenty-seven fragments—goes
offline. I do not see Conductor Gallat gasp and exchange a horrified look with
the other conductors and their esteemed guests; this is speculation, knowing
what I know of him. I imagine that at some point he turns to a console to abort
the launch. I also do not see, behind them, the iron sphere pulse and swell and
shatter, destroying its stasis field and peppering everyone in the chamber with
hot, needle-sharp iron shards. I do hear the screaming that follows while the iron
shards burn their way up veins and arteries, and the ominous silence afterward,
but I have my own problems to deal with in this particular moment.
Remwha, he of the quickest wit, slaps us from our shock with the realization
that something else is controlling the Engine. No time to wonder who or why.
Gaewha perceives how and signals frantically: The twenty-seven “offline”
fragments are still active. In fact, they have formed a kind of subnetwork—a
spare key. This is how the other presence has managed to dislodge the onyx’s
control. Now all of the fragments, which generate and contain the bulk of the
Plutonic Engine’s power, are under hostile foreign control.
I am a proud creature at my core; this is intolerable. The onyx was given to
me to hold—and so I seize it again and shove it back into the connections that
comprise the Engine, dislodging the false control at once. Salewha slams down
the shockwaves of magic that this violent disruption causes, lest they ricochet
throughout the Engine and touch off a resonance that will—well, we don’t
actually know what such resonance would do, but it would be bad. I hold on
throughout the reverberations of this, my teeth bared back in the real world,
listening while my siblings cry out or snarl with me or gasp amid the aftershakes
of the initial upheaval. Everything is confusion. In the realm of flesh and blood,
the lights of our chambers have gone out, leaving only emergency panels to glow
around the edges of the room. The warning klaxons are incessant, and elsewhere
in Zero Site I can hear equipment snapping and rattling with the overload that we
have put into the system. The conductors, screaming in the observation chamber,
cannot help us—not that they ever could. I don’t know what’s happening, not
really. I know only that this is a battle, full of moment-to-moment confusion as
all battles are, and from here forth nothing is quite clear—
That strange presence that has attacked us pulls hard against the Plutonic
Engine, trying to dislodge our control once more. I shout at it in wordless
geyserboil magmacrack fury. Get out of here! I rage. Leave us alone!
You started this, it hisses into the strata, trying again. When this fails,
however, it snarls in frustration—and then locks, instead, into those twenty-
seven fragments that have gone so mysteriously offline. Dushwha senses the
hostile entity’s intent and tries to grasp some of the twenty-seven, but the
fragments slip through their grasp as if coated with oil. This is true enough,
figuratively speaking; something has contaminated these fragments, leaving
them fouled and nearly impossible to grasp. We might manage it with concerted
effort, one by one—but there is no time. And until then, the enemy holds the
twenty-seven.
Stalemate. We still hold the onyx. We hold the other two hundred and
twenty-nine fragments, which are ready to fire the feedback pulse that will
destroy Syl Anagist—and ourselves. We’ve postponed that, however, because
we cannot leave matters like this. Where did this entity, so angry and
phenomenally powerful, come from? What will it do with the obelisks that it
holds? Long moments pass in pent silence. I cannot speak for the others, but I, at
least, begin to think there will be no further attacks. I have always been such a
fool.
 Into the silence comes the amused, malicious challenge of our enemy, ground
forth in magic and iron and stone.
Burn for me, says Father Earth.

I must speculate on some of what follows, even after all these ages spent seeking
answers.
I can narrate no more because in the moment everything was nigh-
instantaneous, and confusing, and devastating. The Earth changes only
gradually, until it doesn’t. And when it fights back, it does so decisively.
Here is the context. That first test bore that initiated the Geoarcanity project
also alerted the Earth to humanity’s efforts to take control of it. Over the decades
that followed, it studied its enemy and began to understand what we meant to do.
Metal was its instrument and ally; never trust metal for this reason. It sent
splinters of itself to the surface to examine the fragments in their sockets—for
here, at least, was life stored in crystal, comprehensible to an entity of inorganic
matter in a way that mere flesh was not. Only gradually did it learn how to take
control of individual human lives, though it required the medium of the
corestones to do so. We are such small, hard-to-grasp creatures, otherwise. Such
insignificant vermin, apart from our unfortunate tendency to sometimes make
ourselves dangerously significant. The obelisks, though, were a more useful tool.
Easy to turn back on us, like any carelessly held weapon.
Burndown.
Remember Allia? Imagine that disaster times two hundred and fifty-six.
Imagine the Stillness perforated at every nodal point and seismically active site,
and the ocean, too—hundreds of hot spots and gas pockets and oil reservoirs
breached, and the entire plate-tectonic system destabilized. There is no word for
such a catastrophe. It would liquefy the surface of the planet, vaporizing the
oceans and sterilizing everything from the mantle up. The world, for us and any
possible creature that might ever evolve in the future to hurt the Earth, would
end. The Earth itself would be fine, however.
We could stop it. If we wanted to.
I will not say we weren’t tempted, when faced with the choice between
permitting the destruction of a civilization, or of all life on the planet. Syl
Anagist’s fate was sealed. Make no mistake: We had meant to seal it. The
difference between what the Earth wanted and what we wanted was merely a
matter of scale. But which is the way the world ends? We tuners would be dead;
the distinction mattered little to me in that moment. It’s never wise to ask such a
question of people who have nothing to lose.
Except. I did have something to lose. In those eternal instants, I thought of
Kelenli, and her child.
Thus it was that my will took precedence within the network. If you have any
doubt, I’ll say it plainly now: I am the one who chose the way the world ended.
I am the one who took control of the Plutonic Engine. We could not stop
Burndown, but we could insert a delay into the sequence and redirect the worst
of its energy. After the Earth’s tampering, the power was too volatile to simply
pour back into Syl Anagist as we’d originally planned; that would have done the
Earth’s work for us. That much kinetic force had to be expended somewhere.
Nowhere on the planet, if I meant for humanity to survive—but here were the
Moon and the moonstone, ready and waiting.
I was in a hurry. There was no time to second-guess. The power could not
reflect from the moonstone, as it was meant to; that would only increase the
power of Burndown. Instead, with a snarl as I grabbed the others and forced
them to help me—they were willing, just slow—we shattered the moonstone
cabochon.
In the next instant, the power struck the broken stone, failed to reflect, and
began to chew its way through the Moon. Even with this to mitigate the blow,
the force of impact was devastating in itself. More than enough to slam the
Moon out of orbit.
The backlash of misusing the Engine this way should have simply killed us,
but the Earth was still there, the ghost in the machine. As we writhed in our
death throes, all of Zero Site crumbling apart around us, it took control again.
I have said that it held us responsible for the attempt on its life, and it did—
but somehow, perhaps through its years of study, it understood that we were
tools of others, not actors of our own volition. Remember, too, that the Earth
does not fully understand us. It looks upon human beings and sees short-lived,
fragile creatures, puzzlingly detached in substance and awareness from the
planet on which their lives depend, who do not understand the harm they tried to
do—perhaps because they are so short-lived and fragile and detached. And so it
chose for us what seemed, to it, a punishment leavened with meaning: It made us
part of it. In my wire chair, I screamed as wave upon wave of alchemy worked
over me, changing my flesh into raw, living, solidified magic that looks like
stone.
We didn’t get the worst of it; that was reserved for those who had offended
the Earth the most. It used the corestone fragments to take direct control of these
most dangerous vermin—but this did not work as it intended. Human will is
harder to anticipate than human flesh. They were never meant to continue.
I will not describe the shock and confusion I felt, in those first hours after my
change. I will not ever be able to answer the question of how I returned to Earth
from the Moon; I remember only a nightmare of endless falling and burning,
which may have been delirium. I will not ask you to imagine how it felt to
suddenly find oneself alone, and tuneless, after a lifetime spent singing to others
like myself. This was justice. I accept it; I admit my crimes. I have sought to
make up for them. But …
Well. What’s done is done.
In those last moments before we transformed, we did successfully manage to
cancel the Burndown command to the two hundred and twenty-nine. Some
fragments were shattered by the stress. Others would die over the subsequent
millennia, their matrices disrupted by incomprehensible arcane forces. Most
went into standby mode, to continue drifting for millennia over a world that no
longer needed their power—until, on occasion, one of the fragile creatures below
might send a confused, directionless request for access.
We could not stop the Earth’s twenty-seven. We did, however, manage to
insert a delay into their command lattices: one hundred years. What the tales get
wrong is only the timing, you see? One hundred years after Father Earth’s child
was stolen from him, twenty-seven obelisks did burn down to the planet’s core,
leaving fiery wounds all over its skin. It was not the cleansing fire that the Earth
sought, but it was still the first and worst Fifth Season—what you call the
Shattering. Humankind survives because one hundred years is nothing to the
Earth, or even to the expanse of human history, but to those who survived the
fall of Syl Anagist, it was just time enough to prepare.
The Moon, bleeding debris from a wound through its heart, vanished over a
period of days.
And …
I never saw Kelenli, or her child, again. Too ashamed of the monster I’d
become, I never sought them out. She lived, though. Now and again I heard the
grind and grumble of her stone voice, and those of her several children as they
were born. They were not wholly alone; with the last of their magestric
technology, the survivors of Syl Anagist decanted a few more tuners and used
them to build shelters, contingencies, systems of warning and protection. Those
tuners died in time, however, as their usefulness ended, or as others blamed them
for the Earth’s wrath. Only Kelenli’s children, who did not stand out, whose
strength hid in plain sight, continued. Only Kelenli’s legacy, in the form of the
lorists who went from settlement to settlement warning of the coming holocaust
and teaching others how to cooperate, adapt, and remember, remains of the
Niess.
It all worked, though. You survive. That was my doing, too, isn’t it? I did my
best. Helped where I could. And now, my love, we have a second chance.
Time for you to end the world again.

2501: Fault line shift along the Minimal-Maximal: massive. Shockwave

swept through half the Nomidlats and Arctics, but stopped at outer edge
of Equatorial node network. Food prices rose sharply following year, but
famine prevented.
—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars
 13
Nassun and Essun, on the dark side of the world

IT’S SUNSET WHEN NASSUN DECIDES to change the world.

She has spent the day curled beside Schaffa, using his still-ash-flecked old
clothes as a pillow, breathing his scent and wishing for things that cannot be.
Finally she gets up and very carefully feeds him the last of the vegetable broth
she has made. She gives him a lot of water, too. Even after she has dragged the
Moon into a collision course, it will take a few days for the Earth to be smashed
apart. She doesn’t want Schaffa to suffer too much in that time, since she will no
longer be around to help him.
(She is such a good child, at her core. Don’t be angry with her. She can only
make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn’t her fault that
so many of those experiences have been terrible. Marvel, instead, at how easily
she loves, how thoroughly. Love enough to change the world! She learned how
to love like this from somewhere.)
As she uses a cloth to dab spilled broth from his lips, she reaches up and
begins activation of her network. Here at Corepoint, she can do it without even
the onyx, but start-up will take time.
“‘A commandment is set in stone,’” she tells Schaffa solemnly. His eyes are
open again. He blinks, perhaps in reaction to the sound, though she knows this is
meaningless.
The words are a thing she read in the strange handwritten book—the one that
told her how to use a smaller network of obelisks as a “spare key” to subvert the
onyx’s power over the Gate. The man who wrote the book was probably crazy,
as evidenced by the fact that he apparently loved Nassun’s mother long ago.
That is strange and wrong and yet somehow unsurprising. As big as the world is,
Nassun is beginning to realize it’s also really small. The same stories, cycling
around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes
eternally repeated.
“Some things are too broken to be fixed, Schaffa.” Inexplicably, she thinks
of Jija. The ache of this silences her for a moment. “I … I can’t make anything
better. But I can at least make sure the bad things stop.” With that, she gets up to
leave.
She does not see Schaffa’s face turn, like the Moon sliding into shadow, to
watch her go.

It’s dawn when you decide to change the world. You’re still asleep in the bedroll
that Lerna has brought up to the roof of the yellow-X building. You and he spent
the night under the water tower, listening to the ever-present rumble of the
Rifting and the snap of occasional lightning strikes. Probably should’ve had sex
there one more time, but you didn’t think about it and he didn’t suggest, so oh
well. That’s gotten you into enough trouble, anyway. Had no business relying
solely on middle age and starvation for birth control.
He watches as you stand and stretch, and it’s a thing you’ll never fully
understand or be comfortable with—the admiration in his gaze. He makes you
feel like a better person than you are. And this is what makes you regret, again,
endlessly, that you cannot stay to see his child born. Lerna’s steady, relentless
goodness is a thing that should be preserved in the world, somehow. Alas.
You haven’t earned his admiration. But you intend to.
You head downstairs and stop. Last night, in addition to Lerna, you let
Tonkee and Hjarka and Ykka know that it was time—that you would leave after
breakfast in the morning. You left the question of whether they could come with
you or not open and unstated. If they volunteer, it’s one thing, but you’re not
going to ask. What kind of person would you be to pressure them into that kind
of danger? They’ll be in enough, just like the rest of humanity, as it is.
You weren’t counting on finding all of them in the lobby of the yellow-X
building as you come downstairs. All of them busy tucking away bedrolls and
yawning and frying sausages and complaining loudly about somebody drinking
up all the rusting tea. Hoa is there, perfectly positioned to see you come
downstairs. There’s a rather smug smile on his stone lips, but that doesn’t
surprise you. Danel and Maxixe do, the former up and doing some kind of
martial exercises in a corner while the latter dices another potato for the pan—
and yes, he’s built a campfire in the building lobby, because that’s what
commless people do sometimes. Some of the windows are broken; the smoke’s
going out through them. Hjarka and Tonkee are a surprise, too; they’re still
asleep, curled together in a pile of furs.
But you really, really weren’t expecting Ykka to walk in, with an air of
something like her old brashness and with her eye makeup perfectly applied,
once again. She looks around the lobby, taking you in along with the rest, and
puts her hands on her hips. “Catch you rusters at a bad time?”
“You can’t,” you blurt. It’s hard to talk. Knot in your throat. Ykka especially;
you stare at her. Evil Earth, she’s wearing her fur vest again. You thought she’d
left that behind in Castrima-under. “You can’t come. The comm.”
Ykka rolls her dramatically decorated eyes. “Well, fuck you, too. But you’re
right, I’m not coming. Just here to see you off, along with whoever goes with
you. I really should be having you killed, since you’re effectively ashing
yourselves out, but I suppose we can overlook that little technicality for now.”
“What, we can’t come back?” Tonkee blurts. She’s sitting up finally, though
at a distinct lean, and with her hair badly askew. Hjarka, muttering imprecations
at being awake, has gotten up and handed her a plate of potato hash from the pile
Maxixe has already cooked.
Ykka eyes her. “You? You’re traveling to an enormous, perfectly preserved
obelisk-builder ruin. I’ll never see you again. But sure, I suppose you could
come back, if Hjarka manages to drag you to your senses. I need her, at least.”
Maxixe yawns loudly enough to draw everyone’s attention. He’s naked,
which lets you see that he’s looking better at last—still nearly skeletal, but that’s
half the comm these days. He’s coughing less, though, and his hair’s starting to
grow fuller, although so far it’s only at that hilarious bottlebrush stage before
ashblow hair develops enough weight to flop decently. It’s the first time you’ve
seen his leg-stumps unclothed, and you belatedly realize the scars are far too
neat to have been done by some commless raider with a hacksaw. Well, that’s
his story to tell. You say to him, “Don’t be stupid.”
Maxixe looks mildly annoyed. “I’m not going, no. But I could be.”
“No, you rusting couldn’t,” Ykka snaps. “I already told you, we need a
Fulcrum rogga here.”
He sighs. “Fine. But no reason I can’t at least see you off. Now stop asking
questions and come get some food.” He reaches for his clothes and starts to pull
them on. You obediently go over to the fire to eat something. No morning
sickness yet; that’s a bit of luck.
As you eat, you watch everyone and find yourself overwhelmed, and also a
little frustrated. Of course it’s touching that they’ve come like this to say
goodbye. You’re glad of it; you can’t even pretend otherwise. When have you
ever left a place this way—openly, nonviolently, amid laughter? It feels … you
don’t know how it feels. Good? You don’t know what to do with that.
You hope more of them decide to stay behind, though. As it is, Hoa’s going
to be hauling a rusting caravan through the earth.
But when you eye Danel, you blink in surprise. She’s cut her hair again;
really doesn’t seem to like it long. Fresh shaving on the sides, and … black tint,
on her lips. Earth knows where she found it, or maybe she made it herself out of
charcoal and fat. But it’s suddenly hard to see her as the Strongback general she
was. Wasn’t. It changes things, somehow, to understand that you go to face a
fate that an Equatorial lorist wants to record for posterity. Now it’s not just a
caravan. It’s a rusting quest.
The thought pulls a snort-laugh out of you, and everyone pauses in what
they’re doing to stare. “Nothing,” you say, waving a hand and setting the empty
plate aside. “Just … shit. Come on, then, whoever’s coming.”
Someone’s brought Lerna his pack, which he dons quietly, watching you.
Tonkee curses and starts rushing to get herself together, while Hjarka patiently
helps. Danel uses a rag to mop sweat from her face.
You go over to Hoa, who has shaped his expression into one of wry
amusement, and stand beside him to sigh at the mess. “Can you bring this
many?”
“As long as they remain in contact with me or someone who’s touching me,
yes.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Weren’t you?”
You look at him, but then Tonkee—still chewing something and shouldering
her pack with her good arm—grabs his upraised hand, though she pauses to
blatantly stare at it in fascination. The moment passes.
“So how’s this supposed to work?” Ykka paces the room, watching everyone
and folding her arms. She’s noticeably more restless than usual. “You get there,
grab the Moon, shove it into position, and then what? Will we see any sign of the
change?”
“The Rifting will go cold,” you say. “That won’t change much in the short
term because there’s too much ash in the air already. This Season will have to
play itself out, and it’s going to be bad no matter what. The Moon might even
make things worse.” You can sess it pulling on the world already; yeah, you’re
pretty sure it’ll make things worse. Ykka nods, though. She can sess it, too.
But there’s a long-term loose end that you haven’t been able to figure out
yourself. “If I can do it, though, restore the Moon …” You shrug helplessly and
look at Hoa.
“It opens room for negotiation,” he says in his hollow voice. Everyone pauses
to stare at him. By the flinches, you can tell who’s used to stone eaters and who
isn’t. “And perhaps, a truce.”
Ykka grimaces. “‘Perhaps’? So we’ve gone through all this and you can’t
even be sure it will stop the Seasons? Evil Earth.”
“No,” you admit. “But it will stop this Season.” That much you’re sure of.
That much, alone, is worth it.
Ykka subsides, but she keeps muttering to herself now and again. This is how
you know she wants to go, too—but you’re very glad she seems to have talked
herself out of it. Castrima needs her. You need to know that Castrima will be
here after you’re gone.
Finally everyone is ready. You take Hoa’s right hand with your left. You’ve
got no other arm to spare for Lerna, so he wraps an arm around your waist; when
you glance at him he nods, steady, determined. On Hoa’s other side are Tonkee
and Hjarka and Danel, chain-linked hand to hand.
“This is going to blow, isn’t it?” Hjarka asks. She alone looks nervous, of the
set. Danel’s radiating calm, at peace with herself at last. Tonkee’s so excited she
can’t stop grinning. Lerna’s just leaning on you, rock-steady the way he always
is.
“Probably!” Tonkee says, bouncing a little.
“This seems like a spectacularly bad idea,” Ykka says. She’s leaned against a
wall of the room, arms folded, watching the group assemble. “Essie’s got to go, I
mean, but the rest of you …” She shakes her head.
“Would you be coming, if you weren’t headwoman?” Lerna asks. It’s quiet.
He always drops his biggest rocks like that, quietly and out of nowhere.
She scowls and glares at him. Then throws you a look that’s wary and maybe
a little embarrassed, before she sighs and pushes away from the wall. You saw,
though. The lump is back in your throat.
“Hey,” you say, before she can flee. “Yeek.”
She glares at you. “I hate that rusting nickname.”
You ignore this. “You told me a while back that you had a stash of seredis.
We were supposed to get drunk after I beat the Rennanis army. Remember?”
Ykka blinks, and then a slow smile spreads across her face. “You were in a
coma or something. I drank it all myself.”
You glare at her, surprised to find yourself honestly annoyed. She laughs in
your face. So much for tender farewells.
But … well. It feels good anyway.
“Close your eyes,” Hoa says.
“He’s not joking,” you add, in warning. You keep yours open, though, as the
world goes dark and strange. You feel no fear. You are not alone.

It’s nighttime. Nassun stands on what she thinks of as Corepoint’s town green. It
isn’t; a city built before the Seasons would have no need of such a thing. It’s just
a place near the enormous hole that is Corepoint’s heart. Around the hole are
strangely slanted buildings, like the pylons she saw in Syl Anagist—but these
ones are huge, stories high and a block wide apiece. She’s learned that when she
gets too near these buildings, which don’t have any doors or windows that she
can see, it sets off warnings composed of bright red words and symbols, several
feet high apiece, which blaze in the air over the city. Worse are the low, blatting
alarm-sounds that echo through the streets—not loud, but insistent, and they
make her teeth feel loose and itchy.
(She’s looked into the hole, despite all this. It’s enormous compared to the
one that was in the underground city—many times that one’s circumference, so
big that it would take her an hour or more to walk all the way around it. Yet for
all its grandeur, despite the evidence it offers of feats of geneering long lost to
humankind, Nassun cannot bring herself to be impressed by it. The hole feeds no
one, provides no shelter against ash or assault. It doesn’t even scare her—though
that is meaningless. After her journey through the underground city and the core
of the world, after losing Schaffa, nothing will ever frighten her again.)
The spot Nassun has found is a perfectly circular patch of ground just beyond
the hole’s warning radius. It’s odd ground, slightly soft to the touch and springy
beneath her feet, not like any material she’s ever touched before—but here in
Corepoint, that sort of experience isn’t rare. There’s no actual soil in this circle,
aside from a bit of windblown stuff piled up along the edges of the circle; a few
seagrasses have taken root here, and there’s the desiccated, spindly trunk of a
dead sapling that did its best before being blown over, many years before. That’s
all.
A number of stone eaters have appeared around the circle, she notes as she
takes up position at its center. No sign of Steel, but there must be twenty or thirty
others on street corners or in the street, sitting on stairs, leaning against walls. A
few turned their heads or eyes to watch as she passed, but she ignored and
ignores them. Perhaps they have come to witness history. Maybe some are like
Steel, hoping for an end to their horrifyingly endless existence; maybe the ones
who’ve helped her have done so because of that. Maybe they’re just bored. Not
the most exciting town, Corepoint.
Nothing matters, right now, except the night sky. And in that sky, the Moon
is beginning to rise.
It sits low on the horizon, seemingly bigger than it was the night before and
made oblong by the distortions of the air. White and strange and round, it hardly
seems worth all the pain and struggle that its absence has symbolized for the
world. And yet—it pulls on everything within Nassun that is orogene. It pulls on
the whole world.
Time for the world, then, to pull back.
Nassun shuts her eyes. They are all around Corepoint now—the spare key,
three by three by three, twenty-seven obelisks that she has spent the past few
weeks touching and taming and coaxing into orbit nearby. She can still feel the
sapphire, but it is far away and not in sight; she can’t use it, and it would take
months to arrive if she summoned it. These others will do, though. It’s strange to
see so many of the things in the sky all together, after a lifetime with only one—
or no—obelisks in sight at any given time. Stranger to feel them all connected to
her, thrumming at slightly different speeds, their wells of power each at slightly
different depths. The darker ones are deeper. No telling why, but it is a
noticeable difference.
Nassun lifts her hands, splaying her fingers in unconscious imitation of her
mother. Very carefully, she begins connecting each of the twenty-seven obelisks
—one to one, then those to two apiece, then others. She is compelled by lines of
sight, lines of force, strange instincts that demand mathematical relationships she
does not understand. Each obelisk supports the forming lattice, rather than
disrupting or canceling it out. It’s like putting horses in harness, sort of, when
you’ve got one with a naturally quick gait and another that plods along. This is
yoking twenty-seven high-strung racehorses … but the principle is the same.
And it is beautiful, the moment when all of the flows stop fighting Nassun
and shift into lockstep. She inhales, smiling in spite of herself, feeling pleasure
again for the first time since Father Earth destroyed Schaffa. It should be scary,
shouldn’t it? So much power. It isn’t, though. She falls up through torrents of
gray or green or mauve or clear white; parts of her that she has never known the
words for move and adjust in a dance of twenty-seven parts. Oh, it is so lovely!
If only Schaffa could—
Wait.
Something makes the hairs on the back of Nassun’s neck prickle. Dangerous
to lose concentration now, so she forces herself to methodically touch each
obelisk in turn and soothe it back into something like an idle state. They mostly
tolerate this, though the opal bucks a little and she has to force it into quiescence.
When all are finally stable, though, she cautiously opens her eyes and looks
around.
At first the black-and-white moonlit streets are as before: silent and still,
despite the crowd of stone eaters that has assembled to watch her work. (In
Corepoint, it is easy to feel alone in a crowd.) Then she spies … movement.
Something—some one—lurching from one shadow to another.
Startled, Nassun takes a step toward that moving figure. “H-hello?”
The figure staggers toward some kind of small pillar whose purpose Nassun
has never understood, though there seems to be one on every other corner of the
city. Nearly falling as it grabs the pillar for support, the figure twitches and looks
up at the sound of her voice. Icewhite eyes spear at Nassun from the shadows.
Schaffa.
Awake. Moving.
Without thinking, Nassun begins to trot, then run after him. Her heart is in
her mouth. She’s heard people say things like that and thought nothing of it
before—just poetry, just silliness—but now she knows what it means as her
mouth goes so dry that she can feel her own pulse through her tongue. Her eyes
blur. “Schaffa!”
He’s thirty, forty feet away, near one of the pylon buildings that surround
Corepoint’s hole. Close enough to recognize her—and yet there is nothing in his
gaze that seems to know who she is. Quite the contrary; he blinks, and then
smiles in a slow, cold way that makes her stumble to a halt in deep, skin-
twitching unease.
“Sch-Schaffa?” she says again. Her voice is very thin in the silence.
“Hello, little enemy,” Schaffa says, in a voice that reverberates through
Corepoint and the mountain below it and the ocean for a thousand miles around.
Then he turns to the pylon building behind him. A high, narrow opening
appears at his touch; he stagger-stumbles through. It vanishes behind him in an
instant.
Nassun screams and flings herself after him.
You are deep in the lower mantle, halfway through the world, when you sense
the activation of part of the Obelisk Gate.
Or so your mind interprets it, at first, until you master your alarm and reach
forth to confirm what you’re feeling. It’s hard. Here in the deep earth, there is so
much magic; trying to sift through it for whatever is happening on the surface is
like trying to hear a distant creek over a hundred thundering waterfalls nearby.
It’s worse the deeper Hoa takes you, until finally you have to “close your eyes”
and stop perceiving magic entirely—because there’s something immense nearby
that is “blinding” you with its brightness. It is as if there’s a sun underground,
silver-white and swirling with an unbelievably intense concentration of magic …
but you can also feel Hoa skirting wide around this sun, even though that means
the overall journey has taken longer than absolutely necessary. You’ll have to
ask him why later.
You can’t see much besides churning red here in the depths. How fast are
you going? Without referents, it’s impossible to tell. Hoa is an intermittent
shadow in the redness beside you, shimmering on the rare occasions when you
catch a glimpse of him—but then, you’re probably shimmering, too. He isn’t
pushing through the earth, but becoming part of it and transiting the particles of
himself around its particles, becoming a waveform that you can sess like sound
or light or heat. Disturbing enough if you don’t think about the fact that he’s
doing it to you, too. You can’t feel anything like this, except a hint of pressure
from his hand, and the suggestion of tension from Lerna’s arm. There’s no sound
other than an omnipresent rumble, no smell of sulfur or anything else. You don’t
know if you’re breathing, and you don’t feel the need for air.
But the distant awakening of multiple obelisks panics you, nearly makes you
try to pull away from Hoa so you can concentrate, even though—stupid—that
would not just kill you but annihilate you, turning you to ash and then
vaporizing the ashes and then setting the vapor on fire. “Nassun!” you cry, or try
to cry, but words are lost in the deep roar. There is no one to hear your cry.
Except. There is.
Something shifts around you—or, you realize belatedly, you are shifting
relative to it. It isn’t something you think about until it happens again, and you
think you feel Lerna jerk against your side. Then it finally occurs to you to look
at the silver wisps of your companions’ bodies, which at least you can make out
against the dense red material of the earth around you.
There is a human-shaped blaze linked to your hand, heavy as a mountain
upon your perception as it forges swiftly upward: Hoa. He is moving oddly,
however, periodically shifting to one side or another; that’s what you perceived
before. Beside Hoa are faint shimmers, delicately etched. One has a palpable
interruption in the silverflow of one arm; that has to be Tonkee. You cannot
distinguish Hjarka from Danel because you can’t see hair or relative size or
anything so detailed as teeth. Only knowing that Lerna is closer to you makes
him distinct. And beyond Lerna—
Something flashes past, mountain-heavy and magic-bright, human shaped but
not human. And not Hoa.
Another flash. Something streaks on a perpendicular trajectory, intercepting
and driving it away, but there are more. Hoa lunges aside again, and a new flash
misses. But it’s close. Lerna seems to twitch beside you. Can he see it, too?
You really hope not, because now you understand what’s happening. Hoa is
dodging. And you can do nothing, nothing, but trust Hoa to keep you safe from
the stone eaters who are trying to rip you away from him.
No. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re this afraid—when you’ve been
merged into the high-pressure semisolid rock of the planet’s mantle, and when
everyone you love will die in slow horror should you fail in your quest, and
when you’re surrounded by currents of magic that are so much more powerful
than anything you’ve ever seen, and when you’re under attack by murderous
stone eaters. But. You did not spend your childhood learning to perform under
the threat of death for nothing.
Mere threads of magic aren’t enough to stop stone eaters. The earth’s
winding rivers of the stuff are all you have to hand. Reaching for one feels like
plunging your awareness into a lava tube, and for an instant you’re distracted by
wondering whether this is what it will feel like if Hoa lets go—a flash of terrible
heat and pain, and then oblivion. You push that aside. A memory comes to you.
Meov. Driving a wedge of ice into a cliff face, shearing it off at just the precise
time to smash a ship full of Guardians—
You shape your will into a wedge and splint it into the nearest magic torrent,
a great crackling, wending coil of a thing. It works, but your aim is wild; magic
sprays everywhere, and Hoa must dodge again, this time from your efforts.
Fuck! You try again, concentrating this time, letting your thoughts loosen.
You’re already in the earth, red and hot instead of dark and warm, but how is
this any different? You’re still in the crucible, just literally instead of a symbolic
mosaic. You need to drive your wedge in here and aim it there as another flash
of person-shaped mountain starts to pace you and darts in for the kill—
—just as you shunt a stream of purest, brightest silver directly into its path. It
doesn’t hit. You’re still not good at aiming. You glimpse the stone eater stop
short, however, as the magic all but blazes past its nose. Here in the deep red it is
impossible to see expressions, but you imagine that the creature is surprised,
maybe even alarmed. You hope it is.
“Next one’s for you, bastard cannibalson ruster!” you try to shout, but you
are no longer in a purely physical space. Sound and air are extraneous. You
imagine the words, then, and hope the ruster in question gets the gist.
You do not imagine, however, the fact that the flitting, fleeting glimpses of
stone eaters stop. Hoa keeps going, but there are no more attacks. Well, then. It’s
good to be of some use.
He’s rising faster now that he is unimpeded. Your sessapinae start to perceive
depth as a rational, calculable thing again. The deep red turns deep brown, then
cools to deep black. And then—
Air. Light. Solidity. You become real again, flesh and blood unadulterated by
other matter, upon a road between strange, smooth buildings, tall as obelisks
beneath a night sky. The return of sensation is stunning, profound—but nothing
compared to the absolute shock you feel when you look up.
Because you have spent the past two years beneath a sky of variable ash, and
until now you had no idea that the Moon had come.
It is an icewhite eye against the black, an ill omen writ vast and terrifying
upon the tapestry of stars. You can see what it is, even without sessing it—a
giant round rock. Deceptively small against the expanse of the sky; you think
you’ll need the obelisks to sess it completely, but you can see on its surface
things that might be craters. You’ve traveled across craters. The craters on the
Moon are big enough to see from here, big enough to take years to cross on foot,
and that tells you the whole thing is incomprehensibly huge.
“Fuck,” says Danel, which makes you drag your eyes from the sky. She’s on
her hands and knees, as if clinging to the ground and grateful for its solidity.
Maybe she’s regretting her choice of duty now, or maybe she just didn’t
understand before this that being a lorist could be fully as awful and dangerous
as being a general. “Fuck! Fuck.”
“That’s it, then.” Tonkee. She’s staring up at the Moon, too.
You turn to see Lerna’s reaction, and—
Lerna. The space beside you, where he held on to you, is empty.
 “I didn’t expect the attack,” Hoa says. You can’t turn to him. Can’t turn away
from the empty space where Lerna should be. Hoa’s voice is its usual
inflectionless, hollow tenor—but is he shaken? Shocked? You don’t want him to
be shocked. You want him to say something like, But of course I was able to
keep everyone safe, Lerna is just over there, don’t worry.
Instead he says, “I should have guessed. The factions that don’t want peace
…” He trails off. Falls silent, just like an ordinary person who is at a loss for
words.
“Lerna.” That last jolt. The one you thought was a near miss.
It isn’t what should have happened. You’re the one nobly sacrificing yourself
for the future of the world. He was supposed to survive this.
“What about him?” That’s Hjarka, who’s standing but bent over with hands
on her knees, as if she’s thinking about throwing up. Tonkee’s rubbing the small
of her back as if this will somehow help, but Hjarka’s attention is on you. She’s
frowning, and you see the moment when she realizes what you’re talking about,
and her expression melts into shock.
You feel … numb. Not the usual non-feeling that comes of you being
halfway to a statue. This is different. This is—
“I didn’t even think I loved him,” you murmur.
Hjarka winces, but then makes herself straighten and take a deep breath. “All
of us knew this might be a one-way trip.”
You shake your head in … confusion? “He’s … he was … so much younger
than me.” You expected him to outlive you. That’s how it was supposed to work.
You’re supposed to die feeling guilty for leaving him behind and killing his
unborn child. He’s supposed to—
“Hey.” Hjarka’s voice sharpens. You know that look on her face now,
though. It’s a Leadership look, or one reminding you that you are the leader
here. But that’s right, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s running this little
expedition. You’re the one who didn’t make Lerna, or any of them, stay home.
You’re the one who didn’t have the courage to do this by yourself the way you
damn well should have, if you really didn’t want them hurt. Lerna’s death is on
you, not Hoa.
You look away from them and involuntarily reach for the stump of your arm.
This is irrational. You’re expecting battle wounds, scorch marks, something else
to show that Lerna was lost. But it’s fine. You’re fine. You look back at the
others; they’re all fine, too, because battles with stone eaters aren’t things that
anyone walks away from with mere flesh wounds.
 “It’s prewar.” While you stand there bereft, Tonkee has half turned away
from Hjarka, which is a problem because Hjarka’s currently leaning on her.
Hjarka grumbles and hooks an arm around Tonkee’s neck to keep her in place.
Tonkee doesn’t seem to notice, so wide are her eyes as she looks around. “Evil,
eating Earth, look at this place. Completely intact! Not hidden at all, no
defensive structuring or camouflage, but then not nearly enough green space to
make this place self-sufficient …” She blinks. “They would’ve needed regular
supply shipments to survive. The place isn’t built for survival. That means it’s
from before the Enemy!” She blinks. “The people here must have come from the
Stillness. Maybe there’s some means of transportation around here that we
haven’t seen yet.” She subsides into thought, muttering to herself as she
crouches to finger the substance of the ground.
You don’t care. But you don’t have time to mourn Lerna or hate yourself, not
now. Hjarka’s right. You have a job to do.
And you’ve seen the other things in the sky besides the Moon—the dozens of
obelisks that hover so close, so low, their energy pent and not a single one of
them acknowledging your touch when you reach for them. They aren’t yours.
But although they’ve been primed and readied, yoked to one another in a way
that you immediately recognize as Bad News, they’re not doing anything.
Something’s put them on hold.
Focus. You clear your throat. “Hoa, where is she?”
When you glance at him, you see he’s adopted a new stance: expression
blank, body facing slightly south and east. You follow his gaze, and see
something that at first awes you: a bank of buildings, six or seven stories high
that you can see, wedge-shaped and blank of feature. It’s easy to tell that they
form a ring, and it’s easy to guess what’s at the heart of that ring, even though
you can’t see it because of the angle of the buildings. Alabaster told you, though,
didn’t he? The city exists to contain the hole.
Your throat locks your breath.
“No,” Hoa says. Okay. You make yourself breathe. She’s not in the hole.
“Where, then?”
Hoa turns to look at you. He does this slowly. His eyes are wide. “Essun …
she’s gone into Warrant.”
As Corepoint above, so Warrant below.
Nassun runs through obsidian-carved corridors, close and low ceilinged and
claustrophobic. It’s warm down here—not oppressively so, but the warmth is
close and omnipresent. The warmth of the volcano, radiating up through the old
stone from its heart. She can sess echoes of what was done to create this place,
because it was orogeny, not magic, though a more precise and powerful orogeny
than anything she’s ever seen. She doesn’t care about any of that, though. She
needs to find Schaffa.
The corridors are empty, lit above by more of the strange rectangular lights
that she saw in the underground city. Nothing else about this place looks like
that place. The underground city felt leisurely in its design. There are hints of
beauty in the way the station was built that suggest it was developed gradually,
piece by piece, with time for contemplation between each phase of construction.
Warrant is dark, utilitarian. As Nassun runs down sloping ramps, past conference
rooms, classrooms, mess halls, lounges, she sees that all of them are empty. This
facility’s corridors were beaten and clawed out of the shield volcano over a
period of days or weeks—hurriedly, though it isn’t clear why. Nassun can tell
the hurried nature of the place, somehow, to her own amazement. Fear has
soaked into the walls.
But none of that matters. Schaffa is here, somewhere. Schaffa, who’s barely
moved for weeks and yet is now somehow running, his body driven by
something other than his own mind. Nassun tracks the silver of him, amazed that
he’s managed to get so far in the moments that it took her to try to reopen the
door he used and then, when it would not open for her, to use the silver to rip it
open. But now he is up ahead and—
—so are others. She stops for a moment, panting, suddenly uneasy. Many of
them. Dozens … no. Hundreds. And all are like Schaffa, their silver thinner,
stranger, and also bolstered from elsewhere.
Guardians. This, then, is where they go during Seasons … but Schaffa has
said they will kill him because he is “contaminated.”
They will not. She clenches her fists.
(It does not occur to her that they will kill her, too. Rather, it does, but They
will not looms larger in the scope of her reality.)
When Nassun runs through a door at the top of a short stair, however, the
close corridor suddenly opens out into a narrow but very long high-ceilinged
chamber. It’s high enough that its ceiling is nearly lost in shadow, and its length
stretches farther than her eye can see. And all along the walls of this chamber, in
neat rows that stack up to the ceiling, there are dozens—hundreds—of strange,
square holes. She is reminded of the chambers in a wasp’s nest, except the shape
is wrong.
And in every one of them is a body.
Schaffa isn’t far ahead. Somewhere in this room, no longer moving forward.
Nassun stops too, apprehension finally overwhelming her driving need to find
Schaffa. The silence makes her skin prickle. She cannot help fear. The analogy
of the wasp’s nest has stayed with her, and on some level she fears looking into
the cells to find a grub staring back at her, perhaps atop the corpse of some
creature (person) it has parasitized.
Inadvertently, she looks into the nearest cell. It’s barely wider than the
shoulders of the man within, who seems to be asleep. He’s youngish, gray-
haired, a Midlatter, wearing the burgundy uniform that Nassun has heard of but
never seen. He’s breathing, although slowly. The woman in the cell beside him
is wearing the same uniform, though she’s completely different in every other
way: an Eastcoaster with completely black skin, hair that has been braided along
her scalp in intricate patterns, and wine-dark lips. There is the slightest of smiles
on those lips—as if, even in sleep, she cannot lose the habit of it.
Asleep, and more than asleep. Nassun follows the silver in the people in the
cells, feeling out their nerves and circulation, and understands then that each is
in something like a coma. She thinks maybe normal comas aren’t like this,
though. None of these people seems to be hurt or sick. And within each
Guardian, there is that shard of corestone—quiescent here, instead of angrily
flaring like the one in Schaffa. Strangely, the silver threads in each Guardian are
reaching out to the ones around them. Networking together. Bolstering each
other, maybe? Charging one another to perform some sort of work, the way a
network of obelisks does? She cannot guess.
(They were never meant to continue.)
But then, from the center of the vaulted room, perhaps a hundred feet farther
in, she hears a sharp mechanical whirr.
She jumps and stumbles away from the cells, darting a quick, frightened look
around to see if the noise has awakened any of the cells’ occupants. They don’t
stir. She swallows and calls, softly, “Schaffa?”
Her answer, echoing through the high chamber, is a low, familiar groan.
Nassun stumbles forward, her breath catching. It’s him. Down the middle of
the strange chamber stand contraptions, arranged in rows. Each consists of a
chair attached to a complex arrangement of silver wire in loops and spars; she’s
never seen anything like it. (You have.) Each contraption seems big enough to
hold one person, but they’re all empty. And—Nassun leans closer for a better
look, then shivers—each rests against a stone pillar that holds an obscenely
complicated mechanism. It’s impossible not to notice the tiny scalpels, the
delicate forcepslike attachments of varying sizes, and other instruments clearly
meant for cutting and drilling …
Somewhere nearby, Schaffa groans. Nassun pushes the cutting things out of
her thoughts and hurries down the row—
—to stop in front of the room’s lone occupied wire chair.
The chair has been adjusted somehow. Schaffa sits in it, but he is facedown,
his body suspended by the wires, his chopped-off hair parting around his neck.
The mechanism behind the chair has come alive, extending up and over his body
in a way that feels predatory to her—but it is already retracting as she
approaches. The bloodied instruments disappear into the mechanism; she hears
more faint whirring sounds. Cleaning, maybe. One tiny, tweezer-like attachment
remains, however, holding up a prize that still glistens, faintly, with Schaffa’s
blood. A little metal shard, irregular and dark.
Hello, little enemy.
Schaffa isn’t moving. Nassun stares at his body, shaking. She cannot bring
herself to shift her perception back to the silver threads, back to magic, to see if
he is alive. The bloody wound high on the back of his neck has been neatly
stitched, right over the other old scar that she has always wondered about. It’s
still bleeding, but it’s clear the wound was inflicted quickly and sealed nearly as
fast.
Like a child willing the monster under the bed to not exist, Nassun wills
Schaffa’s back and sides to move.
They do, as he draws in a breath. “N-Nassun,” he croaks.
“Schaffa! Schaffa.” She flings herself to her knees and scooches forward to
look at his face from underneath the wire contraption, heedless of the blood still
dripping down the sides of his neck and face. His eyes, his beautiful white eyes,
are half-open—and they are him this time! She sees that and bursts into tears
herself. “Schaffa? Are you okay? Are you really okay?”
His speech is slow, slurred. Nassun will not think about why. “Nassun. I.”
Even more slowly, his expression shifts, a seaquake in his brows sending a
tsunami of slow realization across the rest. His eyes widen. “There’s. No pain.”
She touches his face. “The—the thing is out of you, Schaffa. That metal
thing.”
 He shuts his eyes and her belly clenches, but then the furrow vanishes from
his brow. He smiles again—and for the first time since Nassun met him, there is
nothing of tension or falsehood in it. He isn’t smiling to ease his pain or others’
fears. His mouth opens. She can see all his teeth, he’s laughing although weakly,
he’s weeping, too, with relief and joy, and it is the most beautiful thing she’s
ever seen. She cups his face, mindful of the wound on the back of his neck, and
presses her forehead against his, shaking with his soft laughter. She loves him.
She just loves him so much.
And because she is touching him, because she loves him, because she is so
attuned to his needs and his pain and making him happy, her perception slips
into the silver. She doesn’t mean for it to. She just wants to use her eyes to savor
the sight of him looking back at her, and her hands to touch his skin, and her ears
to hear his voice.
But she is orogene, and she can no longer shut off the sesuna than she can
sight or sound or touch. Which is why her smile falters, and her joy vanishes,
because the instant she sees how the network of threads within him is already
beginning to fade, she can no longer deny that he is dying.
It’s slow. He could last a few weeks or months, perhaps as much as a year,
with what’s left. But where every other living thing churns forth its own silver
almost by accident, where it flows and stutters and gums up the works between
cells, there is nothing between his cells but a trickle. What’s left in him mostly
runs along his nervous system, and she can see a glaring, gaping emptiness at
what used to be the core of his silver network, in his sessapinae. Without his
corestone, as he warned her, he will not last long.
Schaffa’s eyes have drifted shut. He’s asleep, exhausted by pushing his
weakened body through the streets. But he isn’t the one who did that, is he?
Nassun gets to her feet, shaking, keeping her hands on Schaffa’s shoulders. His
heavy head presses against her chest. She stares at the little metal shard bitterly,
understanding at once why Father Earth did this to him.
It knows she means to bring the Moon down, and that this will create a
cataclysm far worse than the Shattering. It wants to live. It knows Nassun loves
Schaffa, and that until now she has seen destroying the world as the only way to
give him peace. Now, however, it has remade Schaffa, offering him to Nassun as
a kind of living ultimatum.
Now he is free, the Earth taunts by this wordless gesture. Now he can have
peace without death. And if you want him to live, little enemy, there is only one
way.
 Steel never said it couldn’t be done, only that it shouldn’t. Maybe Steel is
wrong. Maybe, as a stone eater, Schaffa won’t be alone and sad forever. Steel is
mean and awful, which is why no one wants to be with him. But Schaffa is good
and kind. Surely he will find someone else to love.
Especially if all the world is stone eaters, too.
Humanity, she decides, is a small price to pay for Schaffa’s future.

Hoa says that Nassun has gone underground, to Warrant where the Guardians
lie, and the panic of this is sour in your mouth as you trot around the hole,
looking for a way in. You don’t dare ask Hoa to simply transport you to her;
Gray Man’s allies lurk everywhere now, and they will kill you as surely as they
did Lerna. Allies of Hoa are present, too; you have a blurry memory of seeing
two streaking mountains crash into one another, one driving the other off. But
until this business with the Moon is settled, going into the Earth is too
dangerous. All of the stone eaters are here, you sess; a thousand human-sized
mountains in and underneath Corepoint, some of them watching you run through
the streets looking for your daughter. All of their ancient factions and private
battles will come to a head tonight, one way or another.
Hjarka and the others have followed you, though more slowly; they do not
feel your panic. At last you spot one pylon building that’s been opened—cut
open, it seems, as if with an enormous knife; three irregular slashes and then
someone has made the door fall outward. It’s a foot thick. But beyond it is a
wide, low-ceilinged corridor going down into darkness.
Someone’s climbing out of it, though, as you reach it and stumble to a halt.
“Nassun!” you blurt, because it’s her.
The girl framed by the doorway is taller than you remember by several
inches. Her hair is longer now, braided back in two plaits that fall behind her
shoulders. You barely recognize her. She stops short at the sight of you, a faint
wrinkle of confusion between her brows, and you realize she’s having trouble
recognizing you, too. Then realization comes, and she stares as if you are the last
thing in the world she expected to see. Because you are.
“Hi, Mama,” Nassun says.
 14
I, at the end of days

I AM A WITNESS TO WHAT follows. I will tell this as such.

I watch you and your daughter face each other for the first time in two years,
across a gulf of hardship. Only I know what you both have been through. Each
of you can judge the other only on presences, actions, and scars, at least for now.
You: much thinner than the mother she last saw when she decided to skip creche
one day. The desert has weathered you, drying your skin; the acid rain has
bleached your locks to a paler brown than they should be, and the gray shows
more. The clothes that hang from your body are also bleached by ash and acid,
and the empty right sleeve of your shirt has been knotted; it dangles, obviously
empty, as you catch your breath. And, also a part of Nassun’s first impression of
the post-Rifting you: Behind you stands a group of people who all stare at
Nassun, some of them with palpable wariness. You, though, show only anguish.
Nassun is as still as a stone eater. She’s grown only four inches since the
Rifting, but it looks to you like a foot. You can see the advent of adolescence
upon her—early, but that is the nature of life in lean times. The body takes
advantage of safety and abundance when it can, and the nine months she spent in
Jekity were good for her. She’s probably going to start menstruating within the
next year, if she can find enough food. The biggest changes are immaterial,
though. The wariness in her gaze, nothing like the shy diffidence you remember.
Her posture: shoulders back, feet braced and square. You told her to stop
slouching a million times, and yes, she looks so tall and strong now that she’s
standing up straight. So beautifully strong.
Her orogeny sits on your awareness like a weight upon the world, rock-
steady and precise as a diamond drill. Evil Earth, you think. She sesses just like
you.
It’s over before it’s begun. You sense that as surely as you sess her strength,
and both make you desperate. “I’ve been looking for you,” you say. You’ve
raised your hand without thinking about it. Your fingers open and twitch and
close and open again in a gesture that is half grasping, half plea.
 Her gaze goes hooded. “I was with Daddy.”
“I know. I couldn’t find you.” It’s redundant, obvious; you hate yourself for
babbling. “Are you … all right?”
She looks away, troubled, and it bothers you that her concern so plainly isn’t
you. “I need to … My Guardian needs help.”
You go stiff. Nassun has heard from Schaffa of what he was like, before
Meov. She knows, intellectually, that the Schaffa you knew and the Schaffa she
loves are wholly different people. She’s seen a Fulcrum, and the ways in which
it warped its inmates. She remembers how you used to go stiff, just the way you
are now, at even a glimpse of the color burgundy—and finally, here at the end of
the world, she understands why. She knows you better now than ever before in
her life.
And yet. To her, Schaffa is the man who protected her from raiders—and
from her father. He is the man who soothed her when she was afraid, tucked her
into bed at night. She has seen him fight his own brutal nature, and the Earth
itself, in order to be the parent she needs. He has helped her learn to love herself
for what she is.
Her mother? You. Have done none of these things.
And in that pent moment, as you fight past the memory of Innon falling to
pieces and the burning ache of broken bones in a hand you no longer possess,
with Never say no to me ringing in your head, she intuits the thing that you have,
until now, denied:
That it is hopeless. That there can be no relationship, no trust, between you
and her, because the two of you are what the Stillness and the Season have made
you. That Alabaster was right, and some things really are too broken to fix.
Nothing to do but destroy them entirely, for mercy’s sake.
Nassun shakes her head once while you stand there twitching. She looks
away. Shakes her head again. Her shoulders bow a little, not in a lazy slouch, but
weariness. She does not blame you, but neither does she expect anything from
you. And right now, you’re just in the way.
So she turns to walk away, and that shocks you out of your fugue. “Nassun?”
“He needs help,” she says again. Her head is down, her shoulders tight. She
doesn’t stop walking. You inhale and start after her. “I have to help him.”
You know what’s happening. You’ve felt it, feared it, all along. Behind you,
you hear Danel stop the others. Maybe she thinks you and your daughter need
space. You ignore them and run after Nassun. You grab her shoulder, try to turn
her around. “Nassun, what—” She shrugs you off, so hard that you stagger. Your
balance has been shot since you lost the arm, and she’s stronger than she was.
She doesn’t notice you almost fall. She keeps going. “Nassun!” She doesn’t even
look back.
You’re desperate to get her attention, to get her to react, something.
Anything. You grope and then say, to her back, “I—I—I know about Jija!”
That makes her falter to a halt. Jija’s death is still a raw wound within her
that Schaffa has cleaned and stitched, but that will not heal for some time. That
you know what she has done makes her hunch in shame. That it was necessary,
self-defense, frustrates her. That you have reminded her of this, now, tips the
shame and frustration into anger.
“I have to help Schaffa,” she says again. Her shoulders are going up in a way
that you recognize from a hundred afternoons in your makeshift crucible, and
from when she was two and learned the word no. There’s no reasoning with her
when she gets like this. Words become irrelevant. Actions mean more. But what
actions could possibly convey the morass of your feelings right now? You look
back at the others helplessly. Hjarka is holding Tonkee back; Tonkee’s gaze is
fixed on the sky and the assemblage there of more obelisks than you’ve seen in
your whole life. Danel is a little apart from the rest, her hands behind her back,
her black lips moving in what you recognize as a lorist mnemonic exercise to
help her absorb everything she sees and hears, verbatim. Lerna—
You forgot. Lerna is not here. But if he were here, you suspect, he would be
warning you. He was a doctor. Wounds of the family weren’t really within his
purview … but anyone can see that something here has festered.
You trot after her again. “Nassun. Nassun, rust it, look at me when I’m
talking to you!” She ignores you, and it’s a slap in the face—the kind that clears
your head, though, and not the kind that makes you want to fight. Okay. She
won’t hear you until she’s helped … Schaffa. You push past this thought, though
it is like plodding through muck full of bones. Okay. “L-let me help you!”
This actually gets Nassun to slow down, and then stop. Her expression is
wary, so wary, when she turns back. “Help me?”
You look beyond her and see then that she was heading for another of the
pylon buildings—this one with a broad, railed staircase going up its sloping side.
The view of the sky would be excellent at the top … Irrationally you conclude
that you have to keep her from going up there. “Yes.” You hold out your hand
again. Please. “Tell me what you need. I’ll … Nassun.” You’re out of words.
You’re willing her to feel what you feel. “Nassun.”
It’s not working. She says, in a voice as hard as stone, “I need to use the
Obelisk Gate.”
You flinch. I told you this already, weeks ago, but apparently you did not
believe. “What? You can’t.”
You’re thinking: It will kill you.
Her jaw tightens. “I will.”
She’s thinking: I don’t need your permission.
You shake your head, incredulous. “To do what?” But it’s too late. She’s
done. You said you would help but then hesitated. She is Schaffa’s daughter,
too, in her heart of hearts; Earthfires, two fathers and you of all people to shape
her, is it any wonder that she’s turned out the way she has? To her, hesitation is
the same thing as no. She doesn’t like it when people say no to her.
So Nassun turns her back on you again and says, “Don’t follow me anymore,
Mama.”
You immediately start after her again, of course. “Nassun—”
She whips back around. She’s in the ground, you sess it, and she’s in the air,
you see the lines of magic, and suddenly the two weave together in a way that
you can’t even comprehend. The stuff of Corepoint’s ground, which is metals
and pressed fibers and substances for which you have no name, layered over
volcanic rock, heaves beneath your feet. Out of old habit, years spent containing
your children’s orogenic tantrums, you react even as you stagger, setting a torus
into the ground that you can use to cancel her orogeny. It doesn’t work, because
she isn’t just using orogeny.
She sesses it, though, and her eyes narrow. Your gray eyes, like ash. And an
instant later, a wall of obsidian slams up from the ground in front of you, tearing
through the fiber and metal of the city’s infrastructure, forming a barrier between
you and her that spans the road.
The force of this upheaval flings you to the ground. When the stars clear
from your vision and the dust dissipates enough, you stare up at the wall in
shock. Your daughter did this. To you.
Someone grabs you and you flinch. It’s Tonkee.
“I don’t know if it’s occurred to you,” she says, hauling you to your feet, “but
your child seems like she’s got your temper. So, you know, maybe you shouldn’t
get too pushy.”
“I don’t even know what she did,” you murmur, dazed, though you nod
thanks to Tonkee for helping you up. “That wasn’t … I don’t …” There was no
Fulcrum-esque precision in what Nassun did, even though you taught her
Fulcrum fundamentals. You lay your hand against the wall in confusion, and feel
the lingering flickers of magic within its substance, dancing from particle to
particle as they fade. “She’s blending magic and orogeny. I’ve never seen that
before.”
I have. We called it tuning.
Meanwhile. No longer hampered by you, Nassun has climbed the pylon
steps. She stands atop it now, surrounded by turning, bright red warning symbols
that dance in the air. A heavy, faintly sulfurous breeze wafts up from
Corepoint’s great hole, lifting the stray hairs from her twin plaits. She wonders if
Father Earth is relieved to have manipulated her into sparing its life.
Schaffa will live if she turns every person in the world into stone eaters. That
is all that matters.
“First, the network,” she says, lifting her eyes to the sky. The twenty-seven
obelisks flicker from solid to magic in unison as she reignites them. She spreads
her hands before her.
On the ground below her, you flinch as you sess—feel—are attuned to—the
lightning-fast activation of twenty-seven obelisks. They act as one in this instant,
thrumming so powerfully together that your teeth itch. You wonder why Tonkee
isn’t grimacing the way you are, but Tonkee is only a still.
Tonkee’s not stupid, though, and this is her life’s work. While you stare at
your daughter in awe, she narrows her eyes at the obelisks. “Three cubed,” she
murmurs. You shake your head, mute. She glares at you, irritated by your
slowness. “Well, if I was going to emulate a big crystal, I would start by putting
smaller crystals into a cubiform lattice configuration.”
Then you understand. The big crystal that Nassun means to emulate is the
onyx. You need a key to initialize the Gate; that’s what Alabaster told you. What
Alabaster didn’t tell you, the useless ass, was that there are many possible kinds
of keys. When he tore the Rifting across the Stillness, he used a network
composed of all the node maintainers in his vicinity, probably because the onyx
itself would have turned him to stone at once. The node maintainers were a
lesser substitute for the onyx—a spare key. You didn’t know what you were
doing that first time, when you yoked the orogenes in Castrima-under into a
network, but he knew the onyx was too much for you to just grab directly, back
then. You didn’t have Alabaster’s flexibility or creativity. He taught you a safer
way.
Nassun, though, is the student Alabaster always wanted. She cannot have
ever accessed the Obelisk Gate before—it’s been yours, till now—but as you
observe in shock, in horror, she reaches beyond her spare-key network, finding
other obelisks one by one and binding them. It’s slower than it would be with the
onyx, but you can tell that it’s just as effective. It’s working. The apatite,
connected and locked. The sardonyx, sending a little pulse from where it hovers
out of sight, somewhere over the southern sea. The jade—
Nassun will open the Gate.
You shove Tonkee away. “Get as far from me as you can. All of you.”
Tonkee doesn’t waste time arguing. Her eyes widen; she turns and runs. You
hear her shouting to the others. You hear Danel arguing. And then you can no
longer pay heed to them.
Nassun will open the Gate, turn to stone, and die.
Only one thing can stop Nassun’s network of obelisks: the onyx. You need to
reach it first, though, and right now it’s all the way on the other side of the
planet, halfway between Castrima and Rennanis where you left it. Once, long
ago at Castrima-over, it called you to itself. But do you dare wait for it to do that,
now, with Nassun grabbing control of every part of the Gate? You need to get to
the onyx first. For that, you need magic—much more of it than you can muster
just by yourself, here without a single obelisk to your name.
The beryl, the hematite, the iolite—
She’s going to die right in front of you if you don’t do something.
Frantically you throw your awareness into the earth. Corepoint sits on a
volcano, maybe you can—
Wait. Something pulls your attention back up to the volcano’s mouth.
Underground, but closer by. Somewhere underneath this city, you sense a
network. Lines of magic woven together, supporting one another, rooted deep to
draw up more … It’s faint. It’s slow. And there is a familiar, ugly buzz at the
back of your mind when you touch this network. Buzz upon buzz upon buzz.
Ah, yes. The network you’ve found is Guardians, nearly a thousand of them.
Of rusting course. You have never consciously sought the magic of them before,
but for the first time you understand what that buzz is—some part of you, even
before Alabaster’s training, felt the foreignness of the magic within them. The
knowledge sends a sharp, nearly paralyzing lance of fear through you. The
network of them is close by, easy to grab, but if you do this, what’s to stop all
these Guardians from boiling up out of Warrant like angry wasps from a
disturbed nest? Don’t you have enough problems?
Nassun groans, up on her pylon. To your shock, you can … Evil Earth, you
can see the magic around her, in her, beginning to flare up like a fire hitting oiled
kindling. She burns against your perception, the weight of her growing heavier
upon the world by the instant. The kyanite the orthoclase the scapolite—
And suddenly your fear is gone, because your baby needs you.
So you set your feet. You reach for that network you found, Guardians or no
Guardians. You growl through your teeth and grab everything. The Guardians.
The threads that trail from their sessapinae away into the depths, and as much of
the magic coming through these as you can pull. The iron shards themselves,
tiny depositories of the Evil Earth’s will.
You make it all yours, yoke it tight, and then you take it.
And somewhere down in Warrant there are Guardians screaming, coming
awake and writhing in their cells and grabbing at their heads as you do to every
single one of them what Alabaster once did to his Guardian. It is what Nassun
yearned to do for Schaffa … only there is no kindness in the way you’re doing it.
You don’t hate them; you just don’t care. You snatch the iron from their brains
and every bit of silvery light from between their cells—and as you feel them
crystallize and die, you finally have enough magic, from your makeshift
network, to reach the onyx.
It listens at your touch, far away above the ashscape of the Stillness. You fall
into it, diving desperately into the dark, to make your case. Please, you beg.
It considers the request. This is not in words or sensation. You simply know
its consideration. It examines you in turn—your fear, your anger, your
determination to put things right.
Ah—this last has resonance. You know yourself examined again, more
closely and with skepticism, since your last request was for something so
frivolous. (Merely wiping out a city? You of all people did not need the Gate for
that.) What the onyx finds within you, however, is something different this time:
Fear for kin. Fear of failure. The fear that accompanies all necessary change.
And underneath it all, a driving need to make the world better.
Somewhere far away, a billion dying things shiver as the onyx utters a low,
earthshaking blast of sound, and comes online.
Atop her pylon, beneath the pulse of the obelisks, Nassun feels that distant
upcycling darkness as a warning. But she is too deep in her summoning; too
many obelisks now fill her. She cannot spare any attention from her work.
And as each of the two hundred and sixteen remaining obelisks in turn
submits to her, and as she opens her eyes to stare at the Moon that she’s going to
let fly past untouched, and as she instead prepares to turn all the might of the
great Plutonic Engine back upon the world and its people, to transform them as I
was once transformed—
 —she thinks of Schaffa.
Impossible to delude oneself in a moment like this. Impossible to see only
what one wants to see, when the power to change the world ricochets through
mind and soul and the spaces between cells; oh, I learned this long before both
of you. Impossible not to understand that Nassun has known Schaffa for barely
more than a year, and does not truly know him, given how much of himself he
has lost. Impossible not to realize that she clings to him because she has nothing
else—
But through her determination, there is a glimmer of doubt in her mind. It is
nothing more than that. Barely even a thought. But it whispers, Do you really
have nothing else?
Is there not one person in this world besides Schaffa who cares about you?
And I watch Nassun hesitate, fingers curling and small face tightening in a
frown even as the Obelisk Gate weaves itself into completion. I watch the shiver
of energies beyond comprehension as they begin to align within her. I lost the
power to manipulate these energies tens of thousands of years ago, but I can still
see them. The arcanochemical lattice—what you think of as mere brown stone,
and the energetic state that produces it—is forming nicely.
I watch as you see this, too, and understand instantly what it means. I watch
you snarl and smash apart the wall between you and your daughter, not even
noticing that your fingers have turned to stone as you do it. I watch you run to
the foot of the pylon steps and shout at her. “Nassun!”
And in response to your sudden, raw, incontrovertible demand, the onyx
blasts out of nowhere to appear overhead.
The sound of it—a low, bone-shaking blat—is titanic. The blast of air that it
displaces is thunderous enough to knock both you and Nassun down. She cries
out and slides down a few steps, coming dangerously close to losing her grip on
the Gate as the impact jolts her concentration. You cry out as the impact makes
you notice your left forearm, which is stone, and collarbone, which is stone, and
left foot and ankle.
But you set your teeth. There is no pain in you anymore, save anguish for
your daughter. No need within you but one. She has the Gate, but you have the
onyx—and as you look up at it, at the Moon glaring through its murky
translucence, icewhite iris in a scleral sea of black, you know what you have to
do.
With the onyx’s help, you reach half a planet away and stab the fulcrum of
your intention into the wound of the world. The Rifting shudders as you demand
every iota of its heat and kinetic churn, and you shudder beneath the flux of so
much power that for a moment you think it’s just going to vomit out of you as a
column of lava, consuming all.
But the onyx is part of you, too, right now. Indifferent to your convulsions—
because you’re doing that, flopping along the ground and frothing at the mouth
—it takes and taps and balances the power of the Rifting with an ease that
humbles you. Automatically it links into the obelisks so conveniently nearby, the
network that Nassun assembled in order to try to replicate the onyx’s power. But
a replica has only power, no will, unlike the onyx. A network has no agenda.
The onyx takes the twenty-seven obelisks and immediately begins eating into the
rest of Nassun’s obelisk network.
Here, though, its will is no longer paramount. Nassun feels it. Fights it. She is
just as determined as you. Just as driven by love—you for her, and she for
Schaffa.
I love you both. How can I not, after all this? I am still human, after all, and
this is a battle for the fate of the world. Such a terrible and magnificent thing to
witness.
It is a battle, though, line by line, tendril by tendril of magic. The titanic
energies of the Gate, of the Rifting, whip and shiver around you both in a
cylindrical aurora borealis of energies and colors, visible light ranging to
wavelengths beyond the spectrum. (Those energies resonate in you, where the
alignment is already complete, and still oscillate in Nassun—though her
waveform has begun to collapse.) It is the onyx and the Rifting versus the Gate,
you against her, and all Corepoint trembles with the sheer force of it all. In the
dark halls of Warrant, among the jeweled corpses of the Guardians, walls groan
and ceilings crack, spilling dirt and pebbles. Nassun is straining to pull the magic
down from what’s left of the Gate, to target everyone around you and everyone
beyond them—and finally, finally, you understand that she’s trying to turn
everyone into rusting stone eaters. You, meanwhile, have reached up. To catch
the Moon, and perhaps earn humanity a second chance. But for either of you to
achieve your respective goals, you will need to claim both Gate and onyx, and
the additional fuel that the Rifting provides.
It is a stalemate that cannot continue. The Gate cannot maintain its
connections forever, and the onyx cannot contain the chaos of the Rifting forever
—and two human beings, however powerful and strong-willed, cannot survive
so much magic for long.
And then it happens. You cry out as you feel a change, a snapping-into-line:
Nassun. The magics of her substance are fully aligned; her crystallization has
begun. In desperation and pure instinct you grab some of the energy that seeks to
transform her and fling it away, though this only delays the inevitable. In the
ocean too near Corepoint, there is a deep judder that even the mountain’s
stabilizers cannot contain. To the west a mountain shaped like a knife jolts up
from the ocean floor; to the east another rises, hissing steam from the newness of
its birth. Nassun, snarling in frustration, latches onto these as new sources of
power, dragging the heat and violence from them; both crack and crumble away.
The stabilizers push the ocean flat, preventing tsunami, but they can do only so
much. They were not built for this. Much more and even Corepoint will crumble.
“Nassun!” you shout again, anguished. She cannot hear you. But you see,
even from where you are, that the fingers of her left hand have turned as brown
and stony as your own. She’s aware of it, you know somehow. She made this
choice. She is prepared for the inevitability of her own death.
You aren’t. Oh, Earth, you just can’t watch another of your children die.
So … you give up.
I ache with the look on your face, because I know what it costs you to give up
Alabaster’s dream—and your own. You so wanted to make a better world for
Nassun. But more than anything else, you want this last child of yours to live …
and so you make a choice. To keep fighting will kill you both. The only way to
win, then, is not to fight anymore.
I’m sorry, Essun. I’m so sorry. Goodbye.
Nassun gasps, her eyes snapping open as she feels your pressure upon the
Gate—upon her, while you dragged all of the terrible transforming curls of
magic toward yourself—suddenly relax. The onyx pauses in its onslaught,
shimmering in tandem with the dozens of obelisks it has claimed; it is full of
power that must, must be expended. For the moment, however, it holds. The
stabilizing magics finally settle the churning ocean around Corepoint. For this
one, pent moment, the world waits, still and taut.
She turns.
“Nassun,” you say. It’s a whisper. You’re on the bottom steps of the pylon,
trying to reach her, but that won’t be happening. Your arm has completely
solidified, and your torso is going. Your stone foot slides uselessly on the slick
material, then locks as the rest of your leg freezes up. With your good foot, you
can still push, but the stone of you is heavy; as crawling goes, you’re not doing a
very good job of it.
Her brow furrows. You look up at her, and it strikes you. Your little girl. So
big, here beneath the onyx and the Moon. So powerful. So beautiful. And you
cannot help it: You burst into tears at the sight of her. You laugh, though one of
your lungs has gone to stone and it’s only a soft wheeze instead. So rusting
amazing, your little girl. You are proud to lose to her strength.
She inhales, her eyes widening as if she cannot believe what she is seeing:
her mother, so fearsome, on the ground. Trying to crawl on stone limbs. Face
wet with tears. Smiling. You have never, ever smiled at her before.
And then the line of transformation moves over your face, and you are gone.
Still there physically, a brown sandstone lump frozen on the lower steps, with
only the barest suggestion of a smile on half-formed lips. Your tears are still
there, glistening upon stone. She stares at these.
She stares at these and sucks in a long hollow breath because suddenly there
is nothing, nothing inside her, she has killed her father and she has killed her
mother and Schaffa is dying and there is nothing left, nothing, the world just
takes and takes and takes from her and leaves nothing—
But she cannot stop staring at your drying tears.
Because the world took and took and took from you, too, after all. She knows
this. And yet, for some reason that she does not think she’ll ever understand …
even as you died, you were reaching for the Moon.
And for her.
She screams. Clutches her head in her hands, one of them now halfway stone.
Drops to her knees, crushed beneath the weight of grief as if it is an entire planet.
The onyx, patient but not, aware but indifferent, touches her. She is the only
remaining component of the Gate that has a functioning, complementary will.
Through this touch she perceives your plan as commands locked and aimed but
unfired. Open the Gate, pour the Rifting’s power through it, catch the Moon.
End the Seasons. Fix the world. This, Nassun sesses-feels-knows, was your last
wish.
The onyx says, in its ponderous, wordless way: Execute Y/N?
And in the cold stone silence, alone, Nassun chooses.
YES
 coda
me, and you

YOU ARE DEAD. BUT NOT you.

The recapture of the Moon is undramatic, from the perspective of the people
standing beneath it. At the top of the apartment building where Tonkee and the
others have taken shelter, she’s used an ancient writing instrument—long gone
dry, but resurrected with a bit of spit and blood at the tip—to try to track the
Moon’s movement between one hour and the next. It doesn’t help because she
hasn’t observed enough variables to do the math correctly, and because she’s not
some rusting hack astronomest, for Earth’s sake. She also isn’t sure if she got the
first measurement right because of the fiver or sixer shake that occurred right
around that moment, just before Hjarka dragged her away from the window.
“Obelisk-builder windows don’t shatter,” she complains afterward.
“My rusting temper does,” Hjarka retorts, and that ends the argument before
it can begin. Tonkee is learning to compromise for the sake of a healthy
relationship.
But the Moon has indeed changed, they see as days and then weeks pass. It
does not vanish. It fluxes through shapes and colors in a pattern that does not
initially make sense, but it grows no smaller in the sky on successive nights.
The dismantling of the Obelisk Gate is somewhat more dramatic. Having
expended its full capability in the achievement of something just as powerful as
Geoarcanity, the Gate proceeds as designed through its shutdown protocol. One
by one, the dozens of obelisks floating around the world drift toward Corepoint.
One by one, the obelisks—wholly dematerialized now, all quantum states
sublimated into potential energy, you need not understand it beyond that—drop
into the black chasm. This takes several days.
The onyx, however, last and greatest of the obelisks, instead drifts out to sea,
its hum deepening as its altitude decreases. It enters the sea gently, on a
preplanned course to minimize damage—since unlike its fellow obelisks, it
alone has retained material existence. This, as the conductors long ago intended,
preserves the onyx against future need. It also puts the last remnants of the Niess
to rest, finally, deep in a watery grave.
I suppose we must hope that no intrepid young future orogene ever finds and
raises it.
Tonkee is the one to go and find Nassun. It’s later in the morning, some
hours after your death, under a sun that has risen bright and warm in the ashless
blue sky. After pausing for a moment to stare at this sky in wonder and longing
and fascination, Tonkee goes back to the edge of the hole, and to the pylon stair.
Nassun’s still there, sitting on one of the lower steps next to the brown lump of
you. Her knees are drawn up, her head bowed, her completely solidified hand—
frozen in the splayed gesture that she used while activating the Gate—resting
awkwardly on the step beside her.
Tonkee sits down on your other side, gazing at you for a long moment.
Nassun starts and looks up as she becomes aware of another presence, but
Tonkee only smiles at her, and awkwardly rests a hand on what was once your
hair. Nassun swallows hard, scrubs at the dried tear-tracks on her face, and then
nods to Tonkee. They sit together, with you, grieving for a time.
Danel is the one who goes with Nassun, later, to fetch Schaffa from the dead
darkness of Warren. The other Guardians, who still had corestones, have turned
to jewel. Most seem to have simply died where they lay, though some fell out of
their cells in their thrashing, and their glittering bodies sprawl awkwardly against
the wall or along the floor.
Schaffa alone still lives. He’s disoriented, weak. As Danel and Nassun help
him back up into the surface light, it becomes clear that his hacked-off hair is
already streaked with gray. Danel’s worried about the stitched wound on the
back of his neck, though it has stopped bleeding and seems to cause Schaffa no
pain. That isn’t what’s going to kill him.
Nevertheless. Once he’s capable of standing and the sun has helped to clear
his mind somewhat, Schaffa holds Nassun, there beside what remains of you.
She doesn’t weep. Mostly she’s just numb. The others come out, Tonkee and
Hjarka joining Danel, and they stand with Schaffa and Nassun while the sun sets
and the Moon rises again. Maybe it’s a silent memorial service. Maybe they just
need time and company to recover from events too vast and strange to
comprehend. I don’t know.
Elsewhere in Corepoint, in a garden long since gone to wild meadow, I and
Gaewha face Remwha—Steel, Gray Man, whatever—beneath the now-waning
Moon.
He’s been here since Nassun made her choice. When he finally speaks, I find
myself thinking that his voice has become so thin and weary. Once, he made the
very stones ripple with the wry, edged humor of his earthtalk. Now he sounds
old. Thousands of years of ceaseless existence will do that to a man.
He says: “I only wanted it to end.”
Gaewha—Antimony, whatever—says, “That isn’t what we were made for.”
He turns his head, slowly, to look at her. It is tiring just to watch him do this.
Stubborn fool. There is the despair of ages on his face, all because he refuses to
admit that there’s more than one way to be human.
Gaewha offers a hand. “We were made to make the world better.” Her gaze
slides to me for support. I sigh inwardly, but offer a hand in truce as well.
Remwha looks at our hands. Somewhere, perhaps among the others of our
kind who have gathered to watch this moment, are Bimniwha and Dushwha and
Salewha. They forgot who they were long ago, or else they simply prefer to
embrace who they are now. Only we three have retained anything of the past.
This is both a good and bad thing.
“I’m tired,” he admits.
“A nap might help,” I suggest. “There is the onyx, after all.”
Well! Something of the old Remwha remains. I don’t think I deserved that
look.
But he takes our hands. Together, the three of us—and the others, too, all
who have come to understand that the world has to change, the war must end—
descend into the boiling depths.
The heart of the world is quieter than usual, we find as we take up positions
around it. That is a good sign. It does not rage us away at once, which is a better
one. We spell out the terms in placatory fluxes of reverberation: The Earth keeps
its life-magic, and the rest of us get to keep ours without interference. We have
given it back the Moon, and thrown the obelisks in as a surety of good faith. But
in exchange, the Seasons must cease.
There is a period of stillness. I know only later that this is several days. In the
moment, it feels like another millennium.
Then a heavy, lurching jolt of gravitation. Accepted. And—the best sign of
all—it sets loose the numberless presences that it has ingested over the past
epoch. They spin away, vanishing into the currents of magic, and I don’t know
what happens to them beyond that. I won’t ever know what happens to souls
after death—or at least, I won’t know for another seven billion years or so,
whenever the Earth finally dies.
An intimidating thing to contemplate. It’s been a challenging first forty
thousand years.
On the other hand … nowhere to go, but up.

I go back to them, your daughter and your old enemy and your friends, to tell
them the news. Somewhat to my surprise, several months have passed in the
interim. They’ve settled into the building that Nassun occupied, living off
Alabaster’s old garden and the supplies that we brought for him and Nassun.
That won’t be enough long term, of course, though they’ve supplemented it
admirably with improvised fishing lines and bird-catching traps and dried edible
seaweed, which Tonkee seems to have figured out a means of cultivating down
at the water’s edge. So resourceful, these modern people. But it is becoming
increasingly clear that they’ll have to go back to the Stillness soon, if they want
to keep living.
I find Nassun, who is sitting alone at the pylon again. Your body remains
where it fell, but someone has tucked fresh wildflowers into its one remaining
hand. There’s another hand beside it, I notice, positioned like an offering near
the stump of your arm. It’s too small for you, but she meant well. She doesn’t
speak for a long while after I appear, and I find that this pleases me. Her kind
talk so much. It goes on for long enough, though, even I get a little impatient.
I tell her, “You won’t see Steel again.” In case she was worried about that.
She jerks a little, as if she’s forgotten my presence. Then she sighs. “Tell him
I’m sorry. I just … couldn’t.”
“He understands.”
She nods. Then: “Schaffa died today.”
I had forgotten him. I should not have; he was part of you. Still. I say
nothing. She seems to prefer that.
She takes a deep breath. “Will you … The others say you brought them, and
Mama. Can you take us back? I know it’ll be dangerous.”
“There’s no longer any danger.” When she frowns, I explain all of it to her:
the truce, the release of hostages, the cessation of immediate hostilities in the
form of no more Seasons. It does not mean complete stability. Plate tectonics
will be plate tectonics. Season-like disasters will still occur, though with greatly
decreased frequency. I conclude: “You can take the vehimal back to the
Stillness.”
 She shudders. I belatedly recall what she suffered there. She also says, “I
don’t know if I can give it magic. I … I feel like …”
She lifts the stone-capped stump of her left wrist. I understand, then—and
yes, she’s right. She is aligned perfectly, and will be so for the rest of her life.
Orogeny is lost to her, forever. Unless she wants to join you.
I say, “I will power the vehimal. The charge should last six months or so.
Leave within that time.”
I adjust my position then, to the foot of the stairs. She starts, and looks
around to find me holding you. I’ve picked up her old hand, too, because our
children are always part of us. She stands, and for a moment I fear
unpleasantness. But the look on her face is not unhappy. Just resigned.
I wait, for a moment or a year, to see if she has any final words for your
corpse. She says, instead, “I don’t know what will happen to us.”
“‘Us’?”
She sighs. “Orogenes.”
Oh. “The current Season will last for some time, even with the Rifting
quelled,” I say. “Surviving it will require cooperation among many kinds of
people. Cooperation presents opportunities.”
She frowns. “Opportunities … for what? You said the Seasons would end
after this.”
“Yes.”
She holds up her hands, or one hand and one stump, to gesture in frustration.
“People killed us and hated us when they needed us. Now we don’t even have
that.”
Us. We. She still thinks of herself as orogene, though she will never again be
able to do more than listen to the earth. I decide not to point this out. I do say,
however, “And you won’t need them, either.”
She falls silent, perhaps in confusion. To clarify, I add, “With the end of the
Seasons and the death of all the Guardians, it will now be possible for orogenes
to conquer or eliminate stills, if they so choose. Previously, neither group could
have survived without the other’s aid.”
Nassun gasps. “That’s horrible!”
I don’t bother to explain that just because something is horrible does not
make it any less true.
“There won’t be any more Fulcrums,” she says. She looks away, troubled,
perhaps remembering her destruction of the Antarctic Fulcrum. “I think …
They’re wrong, but I don’t know how else …” She shakes her head.
 I watch her flounder in silence for a month, or a moment. I say, “The
Fulcrums are wrong.”
“What?”
“Imprisonment of orogenes was never the only option for ensuring the safety
of society.” I pause deliberately, and she blinks, perhaps remembering that
orogene parents are perfectly capable of raising orogene children without
disaster. “Lynching was never the only option. The nodes were never the only
option. All of these were choices. Different choices have always been possible.”
There is such sorrow in her, your little girl. I hope Nassun learns someday
that she is not alone in the world. I hope she learns how to hope again.
She lowers her gaze. “They’re not going to choose anything different.”
“They will if you make them.”
She’s wiser than you, and does not balk at the notion of forcing people to be
decent to each other. Only the methodology is a problem. “I don’t have any
orogeny anymore.”
“Orogeny,” I say, sharply so she will pay attention, “was never the only way
to change the world.”
She stares. I feel that I have said all I can, so I leave her there to contemplate
my words.
I visit the city’s station, and charge its vehimal with sufficient magic to return
to the Stillness. It will still take a journey of months or more for Nassun and her
companions to reach Rennanis from the Antarctics. The Season will likely get
worse while they travel, because we have a Moon again. Still … they are part of
you. I hope they survive.
Once they’re on their way, I come here, to the heart of the mountain beneath
Corepoint. To attend to you.
There is no one true way, when we initiate this process. The Earth—for the
sake of good relations I will no longer call it Evil—reordered us instantly, and
by now many of us are skilled enough to replicate that reordering without a
lengthy gestation. I have found that speed produces mixed results, however.
Alabaster, as you would call him, may not fully remember himself for centuries
—or ever. You, however, must be different.
I have brought you here, reassembled the raw arcanic substance of your
being, and reactivated the lattice that should have preserved the critical essence
of who you were. You’ll lose some memory. There is always loss, with change.
But I have told you this story, primed what remains of you, to retain as much as
possible of who you were.
 Not to force you into a particular shape, mind you. From here on, you may
become whomever you wish. It’s just that you need to know where you’ve come
from to know where you’re going. Do you understand?
And if you should decide to leave me … I will endure. I’ve been through
worse.
So I wait. Time passes. A year, a decade, a week. The length of time does not
matter, though Gaewha eventually loses interest and leaves to attend her own
affairs. I wait. I hope … no. I simply wait.
And then one day, deep in the fissure where I have put you, the geode splits
and hisses open. You rise from its spent halves, the matter of you slowing and
cooling to its natural state.
Beautiful, I think. Locs of roped jasper. Skin of striated ocher marble that
suggests laugh lines at eyes and mouth, and stratified layers to your clothing.
You watch me, and I watch you back.
You say, in an echo of the voice you once had, “What is it that you want?”
“Only to be with you,” I say.
“Why?”
I adjust myself to a posture of humility, with head bowed and one hand over
my chest. “Because that is how one survives eternity,” I say, “or even a few
years. Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward.”
Do you remember when I first told you this, back when you despaired of ever
repairing the harm you’d done? Perhaps. Your position adjusts, too. Arms
folded, expression skeptical. Familiar. I try not to hope and fail utterly.
“Friends, family,” you say. “Which am I, to you?”
“Both and more. We are beyond such things.”
“Hmm.”
I am not anxious. “What do you want?”
You consider. I listen to the slow ongoing roar of the volcano, down here in
the deep. Then you say, “I want the world to be better.”
I have never regretted more my inability to leap into the air and whoop for
joy.
Instead, I transit to you, with one hand proffered. “Then let’s go make it
better.”
You look amused. It’s you. It’s truly you. “Just like that?”
“It might take some time.”
“I don’t think I’m very patient.” But you take my hand.
Don’t be patient. Don’t ever be. This is the way a new world begins.
“Neither am I,” I say. “So let’s get to it.”
 Acknowledgments

Whew. That took a bit, didn’t it?

The Stone Sky marks more than just the end of another trilogy, for me. For a
variety of reasons, the period in which I wrote this book has turned out to be a
time of tremendous change in my life. Among other things, I quit my day job
and became a full-time writer in July of 2016. Now, I liked my day job, where I
got to help people make healthy decisions—or at least survive long enough to do
so—at one of the most crucial transition points of adult life. I do still help
people, I think, as a writer, or at least that’s the impression I get from those of
you who’ve sent letters or online messages telling me how much my writing has
touched you. But in my day job, the work was more direct, as were its agonies
and rewards. I miss it a lot.
Oh, don’t get me wrong; this was a good and necessary life transition to
make. My writing career has exploded in all the best ways, and after all, I love
being a writer, too. But it’s my nature to reflect in times of change, and to
acknowledge both what was lost as well as what was gained.
This change was facilitated by a Patreon (artist crowdfunding) campaign that
I began in May of 2016. And on a more somber note … this Patreon funding is
also what allowed me to focus wholly on my mother during the final days of her
life, in late 2016 and early 2017. I don’t often talk about personal things in
public, but you can perhaps see how the Broken Earth trilogy is my attempt to
wrestle with motherhood, among other things. Mom had a difficult last few
years. I think (so many of my novels’ underpinnings become clear in retrospect)
that on some level I suspected her death was coming; maybe I was trying to
prepare myself. Still wasn’t ready when it happened … but then, no one ever is.
So I’m grateful to everyone—my family, my friends, my agent, my Patrons,
the folks at Orbit, including my new editor, my former coworkers, the staff of
the hospice, everyone—who helped me through this.
And this is why I’ve worked so hard to get The Stone Sky out on time, despite
travel and hospitalizations and stress and all the thousand bureaucratic
indignities of life after a parent’s death. I definitely haven’t been in the best
place while working on this book, but I can say this much: Where there is pain in
this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is
love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always
going to get the best of what I’ve got. That’s what my mother would want.
 APPENDIX 1
A catalog of Fifth Seasons that have been recorded prior to and
since the founding of the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation, from most
recent to oldest

Choking Season: 2714–2719 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption.

Location: the Antarctics near Deveteris. The eruption of Mount Akok
blanketed a five-hundred-mile radius with fine ash clouds that solidified in
lungs and mucous membranes. Five years without sunlight, although the
northern hemisphere was not affected as much (only two years).
Acid Season: 2322–2329 Imperial. Proximate cause: plus-ten-level shake.
Location: unknown; far ocean. A sudden plate shift birthed a chain of
volcanoes in the path of a major jet stream. This jet stream became acidified,
flowing toward the western coast and eventually around most of the Stillness.
Most coastal comms perished in the initial tsunami; the rest failed or were
forced to relocate when their fleets and port facilities corroded and the fishing
dried up. Atmospheric occlusion by clouds lasted seven years; coastal pH
levels remained untenable for many years more.
Boiling Season: 1842–1845 Imperial. Proximate cause: hot spot eruption
beneath a great lake. Location: Somidlats, Lake Tekkaris quartent. The
eruption launched millions of gallons of steam and particulates into the air,
which triggered acidic rain and atmospheric occlusion over the southern half
of the continent for three years. The northern half suffered no negative
impacts, however, so archeomests dispute whether this qualifies as a “true”
Season.
Breathless Season: 1689–1798 Imperial. Proximate cause: mining accident.
Location: Nomidlats, Sathd quartent. An entirely human-caused Season
triggered when miners at the edge of the northeastern Nomidlats coalfields
set off underground fires. A relatively mild Season featuring occasional
sunlight and no ashfall or acidification except in the region; few comms
declared Seasonal Law. Approximately fourteen million people in the city of
Heldine died in the initial natural-gas eruption and rapidly spreading fire
 sinkhole before Imperial Orogenes successfully quelled and sealed the edges
of the fires to prevent further spread. The remaining mass could only be
isolated, where it continued to burn for one hundred and nine years. The
smoke of this, spread via prevailing winds, caused respiratory problems and
occasional mass suffocations in the region for several decades. A secondary
effect of the loss of the Nomidlats coalfields was a catastrophic rise in
heating fuel costs and the wider adaption of geothermal and hydroelectric
heating, leading to the establishment of the Geneer Licensure.
The Season of Teeth: 1553–1566 Imperial. Proximate cause: oceanic shake
triggering a supervolcanic explosion. Location: Arctic Cracks. An aftershock
of the oceanic shake breached a previously unknown hot spot near the north
pole. This triggered a supervolcanic explosion; witnesses report hearing the
sound of the explosion as far as the Antarctics. Ash went upper-atmospheric
and spread around the globe rapidly, although the Arctics were most heavily
affected. The harm of this Season was exacerbated by poor preparation on the
part of many comms, because some nine hundred years had passed since the
last Season; popular belief at the time was that the Seasons were merely
legend. Reports of cannibalism spread from the north all the way to the
Equatorials. At the end of this Season, the Fulcrum was founded in Yumenes,
with satellite facilities in the Arctics and Antarctics.
Fungus Season: 602 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption. Location:
western Equatorials. A series of eruptions during monsoon season increased
humidity and obscured sunlight over approximately 20 percent of the
continent for six months. While this was a mild Season as such things go, its
timing created perfect conditions for a fungal bloom that spread across the
Equatorials into the northern and southern Midlats, wiping out then-staple-
crop miroq (now extinct). The resulting famine lasted four years (two for the
fungus blight to run its course, two more for agriculture and food distribution
systems to recover). Nearly all affected comms were able to subsist on their
own stores, thus proving the efficacy of Imperial reforms and Season
planning, and the Empire was generous in sharing stored seed with those
regions that had been miroq-dependent. In its aftermath, many comms of the
middle latitudes and coastal regions voluntarily joined the Empire, doubling
its range and beginning its Golden Age.
Madness Season: 3 Before Imperial–7 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic
eruption. Location: Kiash Traps. The eruption of multiple vents of an ancient
supervolcano (the same one responsible for the Twin Season of
 approximately 10,000 years previous) launched large deposits of the dark-
colored mineral augite into the air. The resulting ten years of darkness was
not only devastating in the usual Seasonal way, but resulted in a higher than
usual incidence of mental illness. The Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation
(commonly called the Sanze Empire) was born in this Season as Warlord
Verishe of Yumenes conquered multiple ailing comms using psychological
warfare techniques. (See The Art of Madness, various authors, Sixth
University Press.) Verishe named herself Emperor on the day the first
sunlight returned.
[Editor’s note: Much of the information about Seasons prior to the founding of
Sanze is contradictory or unconfirmed. The following are Seasons agreed
upon by the Seventh University Archaeomestric Conference of 2532.]
Wandering Season: Approximately 800 Before Imperial. Proximate cause:
magnetic pole shift. Location: unverifiable. This Season resulted in the
extinction of several important trade crops of the time, and twenty years of
famine resulting from pollinators confused by the movement of true north.
Season of Changed Wind: Approximately 1900 Before Imperial. Proximate
cause: unknown. Location: unverifiable. For reasons unknown, the direction
of the prevailing winds shifted for many years before returning to normal.
Consensus agrees that this was a Season, despite the lack of atmospheric
occlusion, because only a substantial (and likely far-oceanic) seismic event
could have triggered it.
Heavy Metal Season: Approximately 4200 Before Imperial. Proximate cause:
volcanic eruption. Location: Somidlats near Eastern Coastals. A volcanic
eruption (believed to be Mount Yrga) caused atmospheric occlusion for ten
years, exacerbated by widespread mercury contamination throughout the
eastern half of the Stillness.
Season of Yellow Seas: Approximately 9200 Before Imperial. Proximate cause:
unknown. Location: Eastern and Western Coastals, and coastal regions as far
south as the Antarctics. This Season is only known through written accounts
found in Equatorial ruins. For unknown reasons, a widespread bacterial
bloom toxified nearly all sea life and caused coastal famines for several
decades.
Twin Season: Approximately 9800 Before Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic
eruption. Location: Somidlats. Per songs and oral histories dating from the
time, the eruption of one volcanic vent caused a three-year occlusion. As this
began to clear, it was followed by a second eruption of a different vent,
which extended the occlusion by thirty more years.
 APPENDIX 2
A Glossary of Terms Commonly Used in All Quartents of the
Stillness

Antarctics: The southernmost latitudes of the continent. Also refers to people

from antarctic-region comms.
Arctics: The northernmost latitudes of the continent. Also refers to people from
arctic-region comms.
Ashblow Hair: A distinctive Sanzed racial trait, deemed in the current
guidelines of the Breeder use-caste to be advantageous and therefore given
preference in selection. Ashblow hair is notably coarse and thick, generally
growing in an upward flare; at length, it falls around the face and shoulders.
It is acid-resistant and retains little water after immersion, and has been
proven effective as an ash filter in extreme circumstances. In most comms,
Breeder guidelines acknowledge texture alone; however, Equatorial Breeders
generally also require natural “ash” coloration (slate gray to white, present
from birth) for the coveted designation.
Bastard: A person born without a use-caste, which is only possible for boys
whose fathers are unknown. Those who distinguish themselves may be
permitted to bear their mother’s use-caste at comm-naming.
Blow: A volcano. Also called firemountains in some Coastal languages.
Boil: A geyser, hot spring, or steam vent.
Breeder: One of the seven common use-castes. Breeders are individuals
selected for their health and desirable conformation. During a Season, they
are responsible for the maintenance of healthy bloodlines and the
improvement of comm or race by selective measures. Breeders born into the
caste who do not meet acceptable community standards may be permitted to
bear the use-caste of a close relative at comm-naming.
Cache: Stored food and supplies. Comms maintain guarded, locked storecaches
at all times against the possibility of a Fifth Season. Only recognized comm
members are entitled to a share of the cache, though adults may use their
share to feed unrecognized children and others. Individual households often
maintain their own housecaches, equally guarded against non–family
 members.
Cebaki: A member of the Cebaki race. Cebak was once a nation (unit of a
deprecated political system, Before Imperial) in the Somidlats, though it was
reorganized into the quartent system when the Old Sanze Empire conquered
it centuries ago.
Coaster: A person from a coastal comm. Few coastal comms can afford to hire
Imperial Orogenes to raise reefs or otherwise protect against tsunami, so
coastal cities must perpetually rebuild and tend to be resource-poor as a
result. People from the western coast of the continent tend to be pale,
straight-haired, and sometimes have eyes with epicanthic folds. People from
the eastern coast tend to be dark, kinky-haired, and sometimes have eyes with
epicanthic folds.
Comm: Community. The smallest sociopolitical unit of the Imperial governance
system, generally corresponding to one city or town, although very large
cities may contain several comms. Accepted members of a comm are those
who have been accorded rights of cache-share and protection, and who in
turn support the comm through taxes or other contributions.
Commless: Criminals and other undesirables unable to gain acceptance in any
comm.
Comm Name: The third name borne by most citizens, indicating their comm
allegiance and rights. This name is generally bestowed at puberty as a
coming-of-age, indicating that a person has been deemed a valuable member
of the community. Immigrants to a comm may request adoption into that
comm; upon acceptance, they take on the adoptive comm’s name as their
own.
Creche: A place where children too young to work are cared for while adults
carry out needed tasks for the comm. When circumstances permit, a place of
learning.
Equatorials: Latitudes surrounding and including the equator, excepting coastal
regions. Also refers to people from equatorial-region comms. Thanks to
temperate weather and relative stability at the center of the continental plate,
Equatorial comms tend to be prosperous and politically powerful. The
Equatorials once formed the core of the Old Sanze Empire.
Fault: A place where breaks in the earth make frequent, severe shakes and
blows more likely.
Fifth Season: An extended winter—lasting at least six months, per Imperial
designation—triggered by seismic activity or other large-scale environmental
 alteration.
Fulcrum: A paramilitary order created by Old Sanze after the Season of Teeth
(1560 Imperial). The headquarters of the Fulcrum is in Yumenes, although
two satellite Fulcrums are located in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, for
maximum continental coverage. Fulcrum-trained orogenes (or “Imperial
Orogenes”) are legally permitted to practice the otherwise-illegal craft of
orogeny, under strict organizational rules and with the close supervision of
the Guardian order. The Fulcrum is self-managed and self-sufficient.
Imperial Orogenes are marked by their black uniforms, and colloquially
known as “blackjackets.”
Geneer: From “geoneer.” An engineer of earthworks—geothermal energy
mechanisms, tunnels, underground infrastructure, and mining.
Geomest: One who studies stone and its place in the natural world; general term
for a scientist. Specifically geomests study lithology, chemistry, and geology,
which are not considered separate disciplines in the Stillness. A few geomests
specialize in orogenesis—the study of orogeny and its effects.
Greenland: An area of fallow ground kept within or just outside the walls of
most comms as advised by stonelore. Comm greenlands may be used for
agriculture or animal husbandry at all times, or may be kept as parks or
fallow ground during non-Seasonal times. Individual households often
maintain their own personal housegreen, or garden, as well.
Grits: In the Fulcrum, unringed orogene children who are still in basic training.
Guardian: A member of an order said to predate the Fulcrum. Guardians track,
protect, protect against, and guide orogenes in the Stillness.
Imperial Road: One of the great innovations of the Old Sanze Empire,
highroads (elevated highways for walking or horse traffic) connect all major
comms and most large quartents to one another. Highroads are built by teams
of geneers and Imperial Orogenes, with the orogenes determining the most
stable path through areas of seismic activity (or quelling the activity, if there
is no stable path), and the geneers routing water and other important
resources near the roads to facilitate travel during Seasons.
Innovator: One of the seven common use-castes. Innovators are individuals
selected for their creativity and applied intelligence, responsible for technical
and logistical problem solving during a Season.
Kirkhusa: A mid-sized mammal, sometimes kept as a pet or used to guard
homes or livestock. Normally herbivorous; during Seasons, carnivorous.
Knapper: A small-tools crafter, working in stone, glass, bone, or other
 materials. In large comms, knappers may use mechanical or mass-production
techniques. Knappers who work in metal, or incompetent knappers, are
colloquially called “rusters.”
Lorist: One who studies stonelore and lost history.
Mela: A Midlats plant, related to the melons of Equatorial climates. Mela are
vining ground plants that normally produce fruit aboveground. During a
Season, the fruit grows underground as tubers. Some species of mela produce
flowers that trap insects.
Metallore: Like alchemy and astronomestry, a discredited pseudoscience
disavowed by the Seventh University.
Midlats: The “middle” latitudes of the continent—those between the equator
and the arctic or antarctic regions. Also refers to people from midlats regions
(sometimes called Midlatters). These regions are seen as the backwater of the
Stillness, although they produce much of the world’s food, materials, and
other critical resources. There are two midlat regions: the northern
(Nomidlats) and southern (Somidlats).
Newcomm: Colloquial term for comms that have arisen only since the last
Season. Comms that have survived at least one Season are generally seen as
more desirable places to live, having proven their efficacy and strength.
Nodes: The network of Imperially maintained stations placed throughout the
Stillness in order to reduce or quell seismic events. Due to the relative rarity
of Fulcrum-trained orogenes, nodes are primarily clustered in the Equatorials.
Orogene: One who possesses orogeny, whether trained or not. Derogatory:
rogga.
Orogeny: The ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic, and related forms of energy
to address seismic events.
Quartent: The middle level of the Imperial governance system. Four
geographically adjacent comms make a quartent. Each quartent has a
governor to whom individual comm heads report, and who reports in turn to a
regional governor. The largest comm in a quartent is its capital; larger
quartent capitals are connected to one another via the Imperial Road system.
Region: The top level of the Imperial governance system. Imperially recognized
regions are the Arctics, Nomidlats, Western Coastals, Eastern Coastals,
Equatorials, Somidlats, and Antarctics. Each region has a governor to whom
all local quartents report. Regional governors are officially appointed by the
Emperor, though in actual practice they are generally selected by and/or
come from the Yumenescene Leadership.
Resistant: One of the seven common use-castes. Resistants are individuals
selected for their ability to survive famine or pestilence. They are responsible
for caring for the infirm and dead bodies during Seasons.
Rings: Used to denote rank among Imperial Orogenes. Unranked trainees must
pass a series of tests to gain their first ring; ten rings is the highest rank an
orogene may achieve. Each ring is made of polished semiprecious stone.
Roadhouse: Stations located at intervals along every Imperial Road and many
lesser roads. All roadhouses contain a source of water and are located near
arable land, forests, or other useful resources. Many are located in areas of
minimal seismic activity.
Runny-sack: A small, easily portable cache of supplies most people keep in
their homes in case of shakes or other emergencies.
Safe: A beverage traditionally served at negotiations, first encounters between
potentially hostile parties, and other formal meetings. It contains a plant milk
that reacts to the presence of all foreign substances.
Sanze: Originally a nation (unit of a deprecated political system, Before
Imperial) in the Equatorials; origin of the Sanzed race. At the close of the
Madness Season (7 Imperial), the nation of Sanze was abolished and replaced
with the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation, consisting of six predominantly
Sanzed comms under the rule of Emperor Verishe Leadership Yumenes. The
Affiliation expanded rapidly in the aftermath of the Season, eventually
encompassing all regions of the Stillness by 800 Imperial. Around the time of
the Season of Teeth, the Affiliation came to be known colloquially as the Old
Sanze Empire, or simply Old Sanze. As of the Shilteen Accords of 1850
Imperial, the Affiliation officially ceased to exist, as local control (under the
advisement of the Yumenescene Leadership) was deemed more efficient in
the event of a Season. In practice, most comms still follow Imperial systems
of governance, finance, education, and more, and most regional governors
still pay taxes in tribute to Yumenes.
Sanzed: A member of the Sanzed race. Per Yumenescene Breedership
standards, Sanzeds are ideally bronze-skinned and ashblow-haired, with
mesomorphic or endomorphic builds and an adult height of minimum six
feet.
Sanze-mat: The language spoken by the Sanze race, and the official language of
the Old Sanze Empire, now the lingua franca of most of the Stillness.
Seasonal Law: Martial law, which may be declared by any comm head, quartent
governor, regional governor, or recognized member of the Yumenescene
 Leadership. During Seasonal Law, quartent and regional governance are
suspended and comms operate as sovereign sociopolitical units, though local
cooperation with other comms is strongly encouraged per Imperial policy.
Seventh University: A famous college for the study of geomestry and stonelore,
currently Imperially funded and located in the Equatorial city of Dibars. Prior
versions of the University have been privately or collectively maintained;
notably, the Third University at Am-Elat (approximately 3000 Before
Imperial) was recognized at the time as a sovereign nation. Smaller regional
or quartent colleges pay tribute to the University and receive expertise and
resources in exchange.
Sesuna: Awareness of the movements of the earth. The sensory organs that
perform this function are the sessapinae, located in the brain stem. Verb
form: to sess.
Shake: A seismic movement of the earth.
Shatterland: Ground that has been disturbed by severe and/or very recent
seismic activity.
Stillheads: A derogatory term used by orogenes for people lacking orogeny,
usually shortened to “stills.”
Stone Eaters: A rarely seen sentient humanoid species whose flesh, hair, etc.,
resembles stone. Little is known about them.
Strongback: One of the seven common use-castes. Strongbacks are individuals
selected for their physical prowess, responsible for heavy labor and security
in the event of a Season.
Use Name: The second name borne by most citizens, indicating the use-caste to
which that person belongs. There are twenty recognized use-castes, although
only seven in common use throughout the current and former Old Sanze
Empire. A person inherits the use name of their same-sex parent, on the
theory that useful traits are more readily passed this way.
extras
 meet the author

Photo Credit: Laura Hanifin

N. K. JEMISIN is a Brooklyn author who won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for
The Fifth Season, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2015. She
previously won the Locus Award for her first novel, The Hundred Thousand
Kingdoms, and her short fiction and novels have been nominated multiple times
for Hugo, World Fantasy, Nebula, and RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, and
shortlisted for the Crawford and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards. She is a science
fiction and fantasy reviewer for the New York Times, and you can find her online
at nkjemisin.com.
 if you enjoyed
THE STONE SKY
look out for

THE HUNDRED THOUSAND

KINGDOMS

The Inheritance Trilogy

by

N. K. Jemisin

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies
under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky.
There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the
Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a
vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for
her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her
family’s bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous
it can be when love and hate—and gods and mortals—are bound inseparably
together.
 1
Grandfather

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out
my heart. I do not know who I am anymore.
I must try to remember.

My people tell stories of the night I was born. They say my mother crossed her
legs in the middle of labor and fought with all her strength not to release me into
the world. I was born anyhow, of course; nature cannot be denied. Yet it does
not surprise me that she tried.

My mother was an heiress of the Arameri. There was a ball for the lesser nobility
—the sort of thing that happens once a decade as a backhanded sop to their self-
esteem. My father dared ask my mother to dance; she deigned to consent. I have
often wondered what he said and did that night to make her fall in love with him
so powerfully, for she eventually abdicated her position to be with him. It is the
stuff of great tales, yes? Very romantic. In the tales, such a couple lives happily
ever after. The tales do not say what happens when the most powerful family in
the world is offended in the process.

But I forget myself. Who was I, again? Ah, yes.

My name is Yeine. In my people’s way I am Yeine dau she Kinneth tai wer
Somem kanna Darre, which means that I am the daughter of Kinneth, and that
my tribe within the Darre people is called Somem. Tribes mean little to us these
days, though before the Gods’ War they were more important.
I am nineteen years old. I also am, or was, the chieftain of my people, called
ennu. In the Arameri way, which is the way of the Amn race from whom they
originated, I am the Baroness Yeine Darr.
One month after my mother died, I received a message from my grandfather
Dekarta Arameri, inviting me to visit the family seat. Because one does not
refuse an invitation from the Arameri, I set forth. It took the better part of three
months to travel from the High North continent to Senm, across the Repentance
Sea. Despite Darr’s relative poverty, I traveled in style the whole way, first by
palanquin and ocean vessel, and finally by chauffeured horse-coach. This was
not my choice. The Darre Warriors’ Council, which rather desperately hoped
that I might restore us to the Arameri’s good graces, thought that this
extravagance would help. It is well known that Amn respect displays of wealth.
Thus arrayed, I arrived at my destination on the cusp of the winter solstice.
And as the driver stopped the coach on a hill outside the city, ostensibly to water
the horses but more likely because he was a local and liked to watch foreigners
gawk, I got my first glimpse of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms’ heart.
There is a rose that is famous in High North. (This is not a digression.) It is
called the altarskirt rose. Not only do its petals unfold in a radiance of pearled
white, but frequently it grows an incomplete secondary flower about the base of
its stem. In its most prized form, the altarskirt grows a layer of overlarge petals
that drape the ground. The two bloom in tandem, seedbearing head and skirt,
glory above and below.
This was the city called Sky. On the ground, sprawling over a small mountain
or an oversize hill: a circle of high walls, mounting tiers of buildings, all
resplendent in white, per Arameri decree. Above the city, smaller but brighter,
the pearl of its tiers occasionally obscured by scuds of cloud, was the palace—
also called Sky, and perhaps more deserving of the name. I knew the column
was there, the impossibly thin column that supported such a massive structure,
but from that distance I couldn’t see it. Palace floated above city, linked in spirit,
both so unearthly in their beauty that I held my breath at the sight.
The altarskirt rose is priceless because of the difficulty of producing it. The
most famous lines are heavily inbred; it originated as a deformity that some
savvy breeder deemed useful. The primary flower’s scent, sweet to us, is
apparently repugnant to insects; these roses must be pollinated by hand. The
secondary flower saps nutrients crucial for the plant’s fertility. Seeds are rare,
and for every one that grows into a perfect altarskirt, ten others become plants
that must be destroyed for their hideousness.
At the gates of Sky (the palace) I was turned away, though not for the reasons
I’d expected. My grandfather was not present, it seemed. He had left instructions
in the event of my arrival.
Sky is the Arameri’s home; business is never done there. This is because,
officially, they do not rule the world. The Nobles’ Consortium does, with the
benevolent assistance of the Order of Itempas. The Consortium meets in the
Salon, a huge, stately building—white-walled, of course—that sits among a
cluster of official buildings at the foot of the palace. It is very impressive, and
would be more so if it did not sit squarely in Sky’s elegant shadow.
I went inside and announced myself to the Consortium staff, whereupon they
all looked very surprised, though politely so. One of them—a very junior aide, I
gathered—was dispatched to escort me to the central chamber, where the day’s
session was well under way.
As a lesser noble, I had always been welcome to attend a Consortium
gathering, but there had never seemed any point. Besides the expense and
months of travel time required to attend, Darr was simply too small, poor, and
ill-favored to have any clout, even without my mother’s abdication adding to our
collective stain. Most of High North is regarded as a backwater, and only the
largest nations there have enough prestige or money to make their voices heard
among our noble peers. So I was not surprised to find that the seat reserved for
me on the Consortium floor—in a shadowed area, behind a pillar—was currently
occupied by an excess delegate from one of the Senm-continent nations. It
would be terribly rude, the aide stammered anxiously, to dislodge this man, who
was elderly and had bad knees. Perhaps I would not mind standing? Since I had
just spent many long hours cramped in a carriage, I was happy to agree.
So the aide positioned me at the side of the Consortium floor, where I
actually had a good view of the goings-on. The Consortium chamber was
magnificently apportioned, with white marble and rich, dark wood that had
probably come from Darr’s forests in better days. The nobles—three hundred or
so in total—sat in comfortable chairs on the chamber’s floor or along elevated
tiers above. Aides, pages, and scribes occupied the periphery with me, ready to
fetch documents or run errands as needed. At the head of the chamber, the
Consortium Overseer stood atop an elaborate podium, pointing to members as
they indicated a desire to speak. Apparently there was a dispute over water rights
in a desert somewhere; five countries were involved. None of the conversation’s
participants spoke out of turn; no tempers were lost; there were no snide
comments or veiled insults. It was all very orderly and polite, despite the size of
the gathering and the fact that most of those present were accustomed to
speaking however they pleased among their own people.
One reason for this extraordinary good behavior stood on a plinth behind the
Overseer’s podium: a life-size statue of the Skyfather in one of His most famous
poses, the Appeal to Mortal Reason. Hard to speak out of turn under that stern
gaze. But more repressive, I suspected, was the stern gaze of the man who sat
behind the Overseer in an elevated box. I could not see him well from where I
stood, but he was elderly, richly dressed, and flanked by a younger blond man
and a dark-haired woman, as well as a handful of retainers.
It did not take much to guess this man’s identity, though he wore no crown,
had no visible guards, and neither he nor anyone in his entourage spoke
throughout the meeting.
“Hello, Grandfather,” I murmured to myself, and smiled at him across the
chamber, though I knew he could not see me. The pages and scribes gave me the
oddest looks for the rest of the afternoon.

I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed, hearing titters of laughter.

No, wait.

There were three gods once.

Only three, I mean. Now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds. They breed like
rabbits. But once there were only three, most powerful and glorious of all: the
god of day, the god of night, and the goddess of twilight and dawn. Or light and
darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance. None of that is
important because one of them died, the other might as well have, and the last is
the only one who matters anymore.
The Arameri get their power from this remaining god. He is called the
Skyfather, Bright Itempas, and the ancestors of the Arameri were His most
devoted priests. He rewarded them by giving them a weapon so mighty that no
army could stand against it. They used this weapon—weapons, really—to make
themselves rulers of the world.
That’s better. Now.
I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed and my knife laid on the
floor.
We were in Sky, having transferred there following the Consortium session,
via the magic of the Vertical Gate. Immediately upon arrival I had been
summoned to my grandfather’s audience chamber, which felt much like a throne
room. The chamber was roughly circular because circles are sacred to Itempas.
The vaulted ceiling made the members of the court look taller—unnecessarily,
since Amn are a tall people compared to my own. Tall and pale and endlessly
poised, like statues of human beings rather than real flesh and blood.
“Most high Lord Arameri,” I said. “I am honored to be in your presence.”
I had heard titters of laughter when I entered the room. Now they sounded
again, muffled by hands and kerchiefs and fans. I was reminded of bird flocks
roosting in a forest canopy.
Before me sat Dekarta Arameri, uncrowned king of the world. He was old;
perhaps the oldest man I have ever seen, though Amn usually live longer than
my people, so this was not surprising. His thin hair had gone completely white,
and he was so gaunt and stooped that the elevated stone chair on which he sat—
it was never called a throne—seemed to swallow him whole.
“Granddaughter,” he said, and the titters stopped. The silence was heavy
enough to hold in my hand. He was head of the Arameri family, and his word
was law. No one had expected him to acknowledge me as kin, least of all myself.
“Stand,” he said. “Let me have a look at you.”
I did, reclaiming my knife since no one had taken it. There was more silence.
I am not very interesting to look at. It might have been different if I had gotten
the traits of my two peoples in a better combination—Amn height with Darre
curves, perhaps, or thick straight Darre hair colored Amn-pale. I have Amn eyes:
faded green in color, more unnerving than pretty. Otherwise, I am short and flat
and brown as forestwood, and my hair is a curled mess. Because I find it
unmanageable otherwise, I wear it short. I am sometimes mistaken for a boy.
As the silence wore on, I saw Dekarta frown. There was an odd sort of
marking on his forehead, I noticed: a perfect circle of black, as if someone had
dipped a coin in ink and pressed it to his flesh. On either side of this was a thick
chevron, bracketing the circle.
“You look nothing like her,” he said at last. “But I suppose that is just as
well. Viraine?”
This last was directed at a man who stood among the courtiers closest to the
throne. For an instant I thought he was another elder, then I realized my error:
though his hair was stark white, he was only somewhere in his fourth decade.
He, too, bore a forehead mark, though his was less elaborate than Dekarta’s: just
the black circle.
“She’s not hopeless,” he said, folding his arms. “Nothing to be done about
her looks; I doubt even makeup will help. But put her in civilized attire and she
can convey … nobility, at least.” His eyes narrowed, taking me apart by degrees.
My best Darren clothing, a long vest of white civvetfur and calf-length leggings,
earned me a sigh. (I had gotten the odd look for this outfit at the Salon, but I
hadn’t realized it was that bad.) He examined my face so long that I wondered if
I should show my teeth.
Instead he smiled, showing his. “Her mother has trained her. Look how she
shows no fear or resentment, even now.”
“She will do, then,” said Dekarta.
“Do for what, Grandfather?” I asked. The weight in the room grew heavier,
expectant, though he had already named me granddaughter. There was a certain
risk involved in my daring to address him the same familiar way, of course—
powerful men are touchy over odd things. But my mother had indeed trained me
well, and I knew it was worth the risk to establish myself in the court’s eyes.
Dekarta Arameri’s face did not change; I could not read it. “For my heir,
Granddaughter. I intend to name you to that position today.”
The silence turned to stone as hard as my grandfather’s chair.
I thought he might be joking, but no one laughed. That was what made me
believe him at last: the utter shock and horror on the faces of the courtiers as
they stared at their lord. Except the one called Viraine. He watched me.
It came to me that some response was expected.
“You already have heirs,” I said.
“Not as diplomatic as she could be,” Viraine said in a dry tone.
Dekarta ignored this. “It is true, there are two other candidates,” he said to
me. “My niece and nephew, Scimina and Relad. Your cousins, once removed.”
I had heard of them, of course; everyone had. Rumor constantly made one or
the other heir, though no one knew for certain which. Both was something that
had not occurred to me.
“If I may suggest, Grandfather,” I said carefully, though it was impossible to
be careful in this conversation, “I would make two heirs too many.”
It was the eyes that made Dekarta seem so old, I would realize much later. I
had no idea what color they had originally been; age had bleached and filmed
them to near-white. There were lifetimes in those eyes, none of them happy.
 “Indeed,” he said. “But just enough for an interesting competition, I think.”
“I don’t understand, Grandfather.”
He lifted his hand in a gesture that would have been graceful, once. Now his
hand shook badly. “It is very simple. I have named three heirs. One of you will
actually manage to succeed me. The other two will doubtless kill each other or
be killed by the victor. As for which lives, and which die—” He shrugged. “That
is for you to decide.”
My mother had taught me never to show fear, but emotions will not be stilled
so easily. I began to sweat. I have been the target of an assassination attempt
only once in my life—the benefit of being heir to such a tiny, impoverished
nation. No one wanted my job. But now there would be two others who did.
Lord Relad and Lady Scimina were wealthy and powerful beyond my wildest
dreams. They had spent their whole lives striving against each other toward the
goal of ruling the world. And here came I, unknown, with no resources and few
friends, into the fray.
“There will be no decision,” I said. To my credit, my voice did not shake.
“And no contest. They will kill me at once and turn their attention back to each
other.”
“That is possible,” said my grandfather.
I could think of nothing to say that would save me. He was insane; that was
obvious. Why else turn rulership of the world into a contest prize? If he died
tomorrow, Relad and Scimina would rip the earth asunder between them. The
killing might not end for decades. And for all he knew, I was an idiot. If by some
impossible chance I managed to gain the throne, I could plunge the Hundred
Thousand Kingdoms into a spiral of mismanagement and suffering. He had to
know that.
One cannot argue with madness. But sometimes, with luck and the
Skyfather’s blessing, one can understand it. “Why?”
He nodded as if he had expected my question. “Your mother deprived me of
an heir when she left our family. You will pay her debt.”
“She is four months in the grave,” I snapped. “Do you honestly want revenge
against a dead woman?”
“This has nothing to do with revenge, Granddaughter. It is a matter of duty.”
He made a gesture with his left hand, and another courtier detached himself from
the throng. Unlike the first man—indeed, unlike most of the courtiers whose
faces I could see—the mark on this man’s forehead was a downturned half-
moon, like an exaggerated frown. He knelt before the dais that held Dekarta’s
chair, his waist-length red braid falling over one shoulder to curl on the floor.
“I cannot hope that your mother has taught you duty,” Dekarta said to me
over this man’s back. “She abandoned hers to dally with her sweet-tongued
savage. I allowed this—an indulgence I have often regretted. So I will assuage
that regret by bringing you back into the fold, Granddaughter. Whether you live
or die is irrelevant. You are Arameri, and like all of us, you will serve.”
Then he waved to the red-haired man. “Prepare her as best you can.”
There was nothing more. The red-haired man rose and came to me,
murmuring that I should follow him. I did. Thus ended my first meeting with my
grandfather, and thus began my first day as an Arameri. It was not the worst of
the days to come.
 if you enjoyed
THE STONE SKY
look out for

WAKE OF VULTURES

The Shadow
by

Lila Bowen

Nettie Lonesome dreams of a greater life than toiling as a slave in the sandy
desert. But when a stranger attacks her, Nettie wins more than the fight.

Now she’s got friends, a good horse, and a better gun. But if she can’t kill the
thing haunting her nightmares and stealing children across the prairie, she’ll
lose it all—and never find out what happened to her real family.

Wake of Vultures is the first novel of the Shadow series featuring the fearless
Nettie Lonesome.
 Chapter 1

Nettie Lonesome had two things in the world that were worth a sweet goddamn:
her old boots and her one-eyed mule, Blue. Neither item actually belonged to
her. But then again, nothing did. Not even the whisper-thin blanket she lay
under, pretending to be asleep and wishing the black mare would get out of the
water trough before things went south.
The last fourteen years of Nettie’s life had passed in a shriveled corner of
Durango territory under the leaking roof of this wind-chapped lean-to with Pap
and Mam, not quite a slave and nowhere close to something like a daughter.
Their faces, white and wobbling as new butter under a smear of prairie dirt, held
no kindness. The boots and the mule had belonged to Pap, right up until the day
he’d exhausted their use, a sentiment he threatened to apply to her every time
she was just a little too slow with the porridge.
“Nettie! Girl, you take care of that wild filly, or I’ll put one in her goddamn
skull!”
Pap got in a lather when he’d been drinking, which was pretty much always.
At least this time his anger was aimed at a critter instead of Nettie. When the
witch-hearted black filly had first shown up on the farm, Pap had laid claim and
pronounced her a fine chunk of flesh and a sign of the Creator’s good graces. If
Nettie broke her and sold her for a decent price, she’d be closer to paying back
Pap for taking her in as a baby when nobody else had wanted her but the hungry,
circling vultures. The value Pap placed on feeding and housing a half-Injun,
half-black orphan girl always seemed to go up instead of down, no matter that
Nettie did most of the work around the homestead these days. Maybe that was
why she’d not been taught her sums: Then she’d know her own damn worth, to
the penny.
But the dainty black mare outside wouldn’t be roped, much less saddled and
gentled, and Nettie had failed to sell her to the cowpokes at the Double TK
Ranch next door. Her idol, Monty, was a top hand and always had a kind word.
But even he had put a boot on Pap’s poorly kept fence, laughed through his
mustache, and hollered that a horse that couldn’t be caught couldn’t be sold. No
matter how many times Pap drove the filly away with poorly thrown bottles,
stones, and bullets, the critter crept back under cover of night to ruin the water
by dancing a jig in the trough, which meant another blistering trip to the creek
with a leaky bucket for Nettie.
Splash, splash. Whinny.
Could a horse laugh? Nettie figured this one could.
Pap, however, was a humorless bastard who didn’t get a joke that didn’t
involve bruises.
“Unless you wanna go live in the flats, eatin’ bugs, you’d best get on, girl.”
Nettie rolled off her worn-out straw tick, hoping there weren’t any scorpions
or centipedes on the dusty dirt floor. By the moon’s scant light she shook out
Pap’s old boots and shoved her bare feet into into the cracked leather.
Splash, splash.
The shotgun cocked loud enough to be heard across the border, and Nettie
dove into Mam’s old wool cloak and ran toward the stockyard with her long,
thick braids slapping against her back. Mam said nothing, just rocked in her
chair by the window, a bottle cradled in her arm like a baby’s corpse. Grabbing
the rawhide whip from its nail by the warped door, Nettie hurried past Pap on the
porch and stumbled across the yard, around two mostly roofless barns, and
toward the wet black shape taunting her in the moonlight against a backdrop of
stars.
“Get on, mare. Go!”
A monster in a flapping jacket with a waving whip would send any horse
with sense wheeling in the opposite direction, but this horse had apparently been
dancing in the creek on the day sense was handed out. The mare stood in the
water trough and stared at Nettie like she was a damn strange bird, her dark eyes
blinking with moonlight and her lips pulled back over long, white teeth.
Nettie slowed. She wasn’t one to quirt a horse, but if the mare kept causing a
ruckus, Pap would shoot her without a second or even a first thought—and he
wasn’t so deep in his bottle that he was sure to miss. Getting smacked with
rawhide had to be better than getting shot in the head, so Nettie doubled up her
shouting and prepared herself for the heartache that would accompany the smack
of a whip on unmarred hide. She didn’t even own the horse, much less the right
to beat it. Nettie had grown up trying to be the opposite of Pap, and hurting
something that didn’t come with claws and a stinger went against her grain.
“Shoo, fool, or I’ll have to whip you,” she said, creeping closer. The horse
didn’t budge, and for the millionth time, Nettie swung the whip around the
horse’s neck like a rope, all gentle-like. But, as ever, the mare tossed her head at
exactly the right moment, and the braided leather snickered against the wooden
water trough instead.
“Godamighty, why won’t you move on? Ain’t nobody wants you, if you
won’t be rode or bred. Dumb mare.”
At that, the horse reared up with a wild scream, spraying water as she pawed
the air. Before Nettie could leap back to avoid the splatter, the mare had wheeled
and galloped into the night. The starlight showed her streaking across the prairie
with a speed Nettie herself would’ve enjoyed, especially if it meant she could
turn her back on Pap’s dirt-poor farm and no-good cattle company forever.
Doubling over to stare at her scuffed boots while she caught her breath, Nettie
felt her hope disappear with hoofbeats in the night.
A low and painfully unfamiliar laugh trembled out of the barn’s shadow, and
Nettie cocked the whip back so that it was ready to strike.
“Who’s that? Jed?”
But it wasn’t Jed, the mule-kicked, sometimes stable boy, and she already
knew it.
“Looks like that black mare’s giving you a spot of trouble, darlin’. If you
were smart, you’d set fire to her tail.”
A figure peeled away from the barn, jerky-thin and slithery in a too-short coat
with buttons that glinted like extra stars. The man’s hat was pulled low, his
brown hair overshaggy and his lily-white hand on his gun in a manner both
unfriendly and relaxed that Nettie found insulting.
“You best run off, mister. Pap don’t like strangers on his land, especially
when he’s only a bottle in. If it’s horses you want, we ain’t got none worth
selling. If you want work and you’re dumb and blind, best come back in the
morning when he’s slept off the mezcal.”
“I wouldn’t work for that good-for-nothing piss-pot even if I needed work.”
The stranger switched sides with his toothpick and looked Nettie up and
down like a horse he was thinking about stealing. Her fist tightened on the whip
handle, her fingers going cold. She wouldn’t defend Pap or his land or his sorry
excuses for cattle, but she’d defend the only thing other than Blue that mostly
belonged to her. Men had been pawing at her for two years now, and nobody’d
yet come close to reaching her soft parts, not even Pap.
“Then you’d best move on, mister.”
The feller spit his toothpick out on the ground and took a step forward, all
quiet-like because he wore no spurs. And that was Nettie’s first clue that he
wasn’t what he seemed.
“Naw, I’ll stay. Pretty little thing like you to keep me company.”
That was Nettie’s second clue. Nobody called her pretty unless they wanted
something. She looked around the yard, but all she saw were sand, chaparral,
bone-dry cow patties, and the remains of a fence that Pap hadn’t seen fit to fix.
Mam was surely asleep, and Pap had gone inside, or maybe around back to piss.
It was just the stranger and her. And the whip.
“Bullshit,” she spit.
“Put down that whip before you hurt yourself, girl.”
“Don’t reckon I will.”
The stranger stroked his pistol and started to circle her. Nettie shook the whip
out behind her as she spun in place to face him and hunched over in a crouch. He
stopped circling when the barn yawned behind her, barely a shell of a thing but
darker than sin in the corners. And then he took a step forward, his silver pistol
out and flashing starlight. Against her will, she took a step back. Inch by inch he
drove her into the barn with slow, easy steps. Her feet rattled in the big boots,
her fingers numb around the whip she had forgotten how to use.
“What is it you think you’re gonna do to me, mister?”
It came out breathless, god damn her tongue.
His mouth turned up like a cat in the sun. “Something nice. Something
somebody probably done to you already. Your master or pappy, maybe.”
She pushed air out through her nose like a bull. “Ain’t got a pappy. Or a
master.”
“Then I guess nobody’ll mind, will they?”
That was pretty much it for Nettie Lonesome. She spun on her heel and ran
into the barn, right where he’d been pushing her to go. But she didn’t flop down
on the hay or toss down the mangy blanket that had dried into folds in the broke-
down, three-wheeled rig. No, she snatched the sickle from the wall and spun to
face him under the hole in the roof. Starlight fell down on her ink-black braids
and glinted off the parts of the curved blade that weren’t rusted up.
“I reckon I’d mind,” she said.
Nettie wasn’t a little thing, at least not height-wise, and she’d figured that
seeing a pissed-off woman with a weapon in each hand would be enough to
drive off the curious feller and send him back to the whores at the Leaping
Lizard, where he apparently belonged. But the stranger just laughed and cracked
his knuckles like he was glad for a fight and would take his pleasure with his
fists instead of his twig.
 “You wanna play first? Go on, girl. Have your fun. You think you’re facin’
down a coydog, but you found a timber wolf.”
As he stepped into the barn, the stranger went into shadow for just a second,
and that was when Nettie struck. Her whip whistled for his feet and managed to
catch one ankle, yanking hard enough to pluck him off his feet and onto the back
of his fancy jacket. A puff of dust went up as he thumped on the ground, but he
just crossed his ankles and stared at her and laughed. Which pissed her off more.
Dropping the whip handle, Nettie took the sickle in both hands and went for the
stranger’s legs, hoping that a good slash would keep him from chasing her but
not get her sent to the hangman’s noose. But her blade whistled over a patch of
nothing. The man was gone, her whip with him.
Nettie stepped into the doorway to watch him run away, her heart thumping
underneath the tight muslin binding she always wore over her chest. She
squinted into the long, flat night, one hand on the hinge of what used to be a barn
door, back before the church was willing to pay cash money for Pap’s old
lumber. But the stranger wasn’t hightailing it across the prairie. Which meant …
“Looking for someone, darlin’?”
She spun, sickle in hand, and sliced into something that felt like a ham with
the round part of the blade. Hot blood spattered over her, burning like lye.
“Goddammit, girl! What’d you do that for?”
She ripped the sickle out with a sick splash, but the man wasn’t standing in
the barn, much less falling to the floor. He was hanging upside-down from a
cross-beam, cradling his arm. It made no goddamn sense, and Nettie couldn’t
stand a thing that made no sense, so she struck again while he was poking
around his wound.
This time, she caught him in the neck. This time, he fell.
The stranger landed in the dirt and popped right back up into a crouch. The
slice in his neck looked like the first carving in an undercooked roast, but the
blood was slurry and smelled like rotten meat. And the stranger was sneering at
her.
“Girl, you just made the biggest mistake of your short, useless life.”
Then he sprang at her.
There was no way he should’ve been able to jump at her like that with those
wounds, and she brought her hands straight up without thinking. Luckily, her fist
still held the sickle, and the stranger took it right in the face, the point of the
blade jerking into his eyeball with a moist squish. Nettie turned away and lost
most of last night’s meager dinner in a noisy splatter against the wall of the barn.
When she spun back around, she was surprised to find that the fool hadn’t fallen
or died or done anything helpful to her cause. Without a word, he calmly pulled
the blade out of his eye and wiped a dribble of black glop off his cheek.
His smile was a cold, dark thing that sent Nettie’s feet toward Pap and the
crooked house and anything but the stranger who wouldn’t die, wouldn’t scream,
and wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d never felt safe a day in her life, but now she
recognized the chill hand of death, reaching for her. Her feet trembled in the too-
big boots as she stumbled backward across the bumpy yard, tripping on stones
and bits of trash. Turning her back on the demon man seemed intolerably stupid.
She just had to get past the round pen, and then she’d be halfway to the house.
Pap wouldn’t be worth much by now, but he had a gun by his side. Maybe the
stranger would give up if he saw a man instead of just a half-breed girl nobody
cared about.
Nettie turned to run and tripped on a fallen chunk of fence, going down hard
on hands and skinned knees. When she looked up, she saw butternut-brown
pants stippled with blood and no-spur boots tapping.
“Pap!” she shouted. “Pap, help!”
She was gulping in a big breath to holler again when the stranger’s boot
caught her right under the ribs and knocked it all back out. The force of the kick
flipped her over onto her back, and she scrabbled away from the stranger and
toward the ramshackle round pen of old, gray branches and junk roped together,
just barely enough fence to trick a colt into staying put. They’d slaughtered a pig
in here, once, and now Nettie knew how he felt.
As soon as her back fetched up against the pen, the stranger crouched in front
of her, one eye closed and weeping black and the other brim-full with evil over
the bloody slice in his neck. He looked like a dead man, a corpse groom, and
Nettie was pretty sure she was in the hell Mam kept threatening her with.
“Ain’t nobody coming. Ain’t nobody cares about a girl like you. Ain’t
nobody gonna need to, not after what you done to me.”
The stranger leaned down and made like he was going to kiss her with his
mouth wide open, and Nettie did the only thing that came to mind. She grabbed
up a stout twig from the wall of the pen and stabbed him in the chest as hard as
she damn could.
She expected the stick to break against his shirt like the time she’d seen a
buggy bash apart against the general store during a twister. But the twig sunk
right in like a hot knife in butter. The stranger shuddered and fell on her, his
mouth working as gloppy red-black liquid bubbled out. She didn’t trust blood
anymore, not after the first splat had burned her, and she wasn’t much for being
found under a corpse, so Nettie shoved him off hard and shot to her feet,
blowing air as hard as a galloping horse.
The stranger was rolling around on the ground, plucking at his chest. Thick
clouds blotted out the meager starlight, and she had nothing like the view she’d
have tomorrow under the white-hot, unrelenting sun. But even a girl who’d
never killed a man before knew when something was wrong. She kicked him
over with the toe of her boot, tit for tat, and he was light as a tumbleweed when
he landed on his back.
The twig jutted up out of a black splotch in his shirt, and the slice in his neck
had curled over like gone meat. His bad eye was a swamp of black, but then,
everything was black at midnight. His mouth was open, the lips drawing back
over too-white teeth, several of which looked like they’d come out of a panther.
He wasn’t breathing, and Pap wasn’t coming, and Nettie’s finger reached out as
if it had a mind of its own and flicked one big, shiny, curved tooth.
The goddamn thing fell back into the dead man’s gaping throat. Nettie
jumped away, skitty as the black filly, and her boot toe brushed the dead man’s
shoulder, and his entire body collapsed in on itself like a puffball, thousands of
sparkly motes piling up in the place he’d occupied and spilling out through his
empty clothes. Utterly bewildered, she knelt and brushed the pile with trembling
fingers. It was sand. Nothing but sand. A soft wind came up just then and blew
some of the stranger away, revealing one of those big, curved teeth where his
head had been. It didn’t make a goddamn lick of sense, but it could’ve gone far
worse.
Still wary, she stood and shook out his clothes, noting that everything was in
better than fine condition, except for his white shirt, which had a twig-sized hole
in the breast, surrounded by a smear of black. She knew enough of laundering
and sewing to make it nice enough, and the black blood on his pants looked, to
her eye, manly and tough. Even the stranger’s boots were of better quality than
any that had ever set foot on Pap’s land, snakeskin with fancy chasing. With her
own, too-big boots, she smeared the sand back into the hard, dry ground as if the
stranger had never existed. All that was left was the four big panther teeth, and
she put those in her pocket and tried to forget about them.
After checking the yard for anything livelier than a scorpion, she rolled up
the clothes around the boots and hid them in the old rig in the barn. Knowing
Pap would pester her if she left signs of a scuffle, she wiped the black glop off
the sickle and hung it up, along with the whip, out of Pap’s drunken reach. She
didn’t need any more whip scars on her back than she already had.
Out by the round pen, the sand that had once been a devil of a stranger had all
blown away. There was no sign of what had almost happened, just a few more
deadwood twigs pulled from the lopsided fence. On good days, Nettie spent a
fair bit of time doing the dangerous work of breaking colts or doctoring cattle in
here for Pap, then picking up the twigs that got knocked off and roping them
back in with whatever twine she could scavenge from the town. Wood wasn’t
cheap, and there wasn’t much of it. But Nettie’s hands were twitchy still, and so
she picked up the black-splattered stick and wove it back into the fence, wishing
she lived in a world where her life was worth more than a mule, more than boots,
more than a stranger’s cold smile in the barn. She’d had her first victory, but no
one would ever believe her, and if they did, she wouldn’t be cheered. She’d be
hanged.
That stranger—he had been all kinds of wrong. And the way that he’d wanted
to touch her—that felt wrong, too. Nettie couldn’t recall being touched in
kindness, not in all her years with Pap and Mam. Maybe that was why she
understood horses. Mustangs were wild things captured by thoughtless men,
roped and branded and beaten until their heads hung low, until it took spurs and
whips to move them in rage and fear. But Nettie could feel the wildness inside
their hearts, beating under skin that quivered under the flat of her palm. She
didn’t break a horse, she gentled it. And until someone touched her with that
same kindness, she would continue to shy away, to bare her teeth and lower her
head.
Someone, surely, had been kind to her once, long ago. She could feel it in her
bones. But Pap said she’d been tossed out like trash, left on the prairie to die.
Which she almost had, tonight. Again.
Pap and Mam were asleep on the porch, snoring loud as thunder. When
Nettie crept past them and into the house, she had four shiny teeth in one fist, a
wad of cash from the stranger’s pocket, and more questions than there were
stars.
 By N. K. Jemisin

THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
The Broken Kingdoms
The Kingdom of Gods
The Awakened Kingdom (novella)

The Inheritance Trilogy (omnibus)

DREAMBLOOD
The Killing Moon
The Shadowed Sun

THE BROKEN EARTH

The Fifth Season
The Obelisk Gate
The Stone Sky
 Praise for
THE OBELISK GATE

“Jemisin’s follow-up to The Fifth Season is exceptional. Those who anxiously

awaited this sequel will find the only problem is that the wait must begin again
once the last page is turned.”
—Library Journal (starred review) “Stunning, again.”

—Kirkus (starred review) “Compelling, challenging, and utterly gripping.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Beyond the meticulous pacing, the

thorough character work, and the staggering ambition and revelations of the
narration, Jemisin is telling a story of our present, our failures, our actions in the
face of repeated trauma, our responses to the heat and pressure of our times. Her
accomplishment in this series is tremendous. It pole-vaults over the expectations
I had for what epic fantasy should be and stands in magnificent testimony to
what it could be.”

—NPR Books

“How can something as large and complex exist in [Jemisin’s] head, and how
does she manage to tell it to me so beautifully? I can’t stand how much I love the
Broken Earth trilogy so far.”
—B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
 Praise for
THE FIFTH SEASON

“Intricate and extraordinary.”

—New York Times

“Astounding … Jemisin maintains a gripping voice and an emotional core that

not only carries the story through its complicated setting, but sets things up for
even more staggering revelations to come.”
—NPR Books

“Jemisin’s graceful prose and gritty setting provide the perfect backdrop for this
fascinating tale of determined characters fighting to save a doomed world.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A must-buy … breaks uncharted ground.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“Jemisin might just be the best world-builder out there right now. … [She] is a
master at what she does.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

“A powerful, epic novel of discovery, pain, and heartbreak.”

—SFFWorld.com

“Brilliant … gorgeous writing and unexpected plot twists.”

—Washington Post

“An ambitious book … Jemisin’s work itself is part of a slow but definite change
in sci-fi and fantasy.”
—Guardian

“Angrily, beautifully apocalyptic.”

—B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
 Praise for
THE INHERITANCE TRILOGY

“A complex, edge-of-your-seat story with plenty of funny, scary, and bittersweet

twists.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An offbeat, engaging tale by a talented and original newcomer.”

—Kirkus

“An astounding debut novel … the world-building is solid, the characterization

superb, the plot complicated but clear.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

“A delight for the fantasy reader.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

“The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms … is an impressive debut, which revitalizes

the trope of empires whose rulers have gods at their fingertips.”
—io9

“N. K. Jemisin has written a fascinating epic fantasy where the stakes are not
just the fate of kingdoms but of the world and the universe.”
—SFRevu

“Many books are good, some are great, but few are truly important. Add to this
last category The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin’s debut novel …
In this reviewer’s opinion, this is the must-read fantasy of the year.”
—BookPage

“A similar blend of inventiveness, irreverence, and sophistication—along with

sensuality—brings vivid life to the setting and other characters: human and
otherwise … The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms definitely leaves me wanting
more of this delightful new writer.”
—Locus

“A compelling page-turner.”
—The A.V. Club

“An absorbing story, an intriguing setting and world mythology, and a likable
narrator with a compelling voice. The next book cannot come out soon enough.”
—fantasybookcafe.com

“The Broken Kingdoms …expands the universe of the series geographically,

historically, magically and in the range of characters, while keeping the same
superb prose and gripping narrative that made the first one such a memorable
debut.”
—Fantasy Book Critic

“The Kingdom of Gods once again proves Jemisin’s skill and consistency as a
storyteller, but what sets her apart from the crowd is her ability to imagine and
describe the mysteries of the universe in language that is at once elegant and
profane, and thus, true.”
—Shelf Awareness
 Praise for
THE DREAMBLOOD DUOLOGY

“Ah, N. K. Jemisin, you can do no wrong.”

—Felicia Day

“The Killing Moon is a powerhouse and, in general, one hell of a story to read.
Jemisin has arrived.”
—Bookworm Blues

“The author’s exceptional ability to tell a compelling story and her talent for
world-building have assured her place at the forefront of fantasy.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“Jemisin excels at world-building and the inclusion of a diverse mix of

characters makes her settings feel even more real and vivid.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)

“The novel also showcases some skillful, original world-building. Like a lucid
dreamer, Jemisin takes real-world influences as diverse as ancient Egyptian
culture and Freudian/Jungian dream theory and unites them to craft a new world
that feels both familiar and entirely new. It’s all refreshingly unique.”
—Slant Magazine

“Read this or miss out on one of the best fantasy books of the year so far.”
—San Francisco Book Review

“N. K. Jemisin is playing with the gods again—and it’s just as good as the first
time.”
—io9
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