The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(45)

“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.