The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(47)

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. Nid…” 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.”