The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(35)

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?”