The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(21)

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 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!”