The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(77)

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.”