The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(83)
Asked Tinimony to take me into the hole today and she said no. What’s in the hole, huh? What’s in the hole.
***
Near sunset, another stone eater appears. Here amid the elegantly gowned, colorful variety of his people, he stands out even more with his gray coloring and bare chest: Steel. He stands over Nassun for several minutes, perhaps expecting her to lift her gaze and notice him, but she does not. Presently, he says, “The ocean winds can be cold at night.”
Silence. Her hands clench and unclench on Schaffa’s clothes, not quite spasmodically. She’s just tired. She’s been holding him since the center of the Earth.
After a while longer, as the sun inches toward the horizon, Steel says, “There’s a livable apartment in a building two blocks from here. The food stored in it should still be edible.”
Nassun says, “Where?” Her voice is hoarse. She needs water. There’s some in her canteen, and in Schaffa’s canteen, but she hasn’t opened either.
Steel shifts posture, pointing. Nassun lifts her head to follow this and sees a street, unnaturally straight, seemingly paved straight toward the horizon. Wearily she gets up, takes a better grip on Schaffa’s clothes, and begins dragging him again.
***
Who’s in the hole, what’s in the whole, where goes the hole, how holed am I!
SEs brought better food today because I don’t eat enough. So special, delivery fressssh from the other sigh of the world. Going to dry the seeds, plant them. Remember to scrrrape up tomato I threw at A.
Book language looks almost like Sanze-mat. Characters similar? Precursor? Some words I almost recognize. Some old Eturpic, some Hladdac, a little early-dynasty Regwo. Wish Shinash was here. He would scream to see me putting my feet up on books older than forever. Always so easy to tease. Miss him.
Miss everyone, even people at the rusting Fulcrum (!) Miss voices that come out of rusting mouths. SYENITE could make me eat, you talking rock. SYENITE gave a shit about me and not just whether I could fix this world I don’t give a shit about. SYENITE should be here with me, I would give anything to have her here with me
No. She should forget me and In Meov. Find some boring fool she actually wants to sleep with. Have a boring life. She deserves that.
***
Night falls in the time it takes Nassun to reach the building. Steel repositions, appearing in front of a strange asymmetrical building, wedge-shaped, whose high end faces the wind. The sloping roof of the building, in the lee of the wind, is scraggly with overgrown, twisted vegetation. There’s plenty of soil on the roof, more than is likely to have accumulated from the wind over centuries. It looks planned, though overgrown. Yet amid the mess, Nassun can see that someone has hacked out a garden. Recently; the plants are overgrown, too, new growth springing up from dropped fruit and split, untended vines, but given the relative dearth of weeds and the still-neat rows, this garden can’t be more than a year or two neglected. The Season is now almost two years old.
Later. The building’s door moves on its own, sliding aside as Nassun approaches. It closes on its own, too, once she’s gotten Schaffa far enough within. Steel moves inside, pointing upstairs. She drags Schaffa to the foot of the stairs and then drops beside him, shaking, too tired to think or go any farther.
Schaffa’s heart is still strong, she thinks, as she uses his chest for a pillow. With her eyes shut, she can almost imagine that he’s holding her, rather than the other way around. It is paltry comfort, but enough to let her sleep without dreams.
***
***
In the morning, Nassun gets Schaffa up the steps. The apartment is thankfully on only the second floor; the stairwell door opens right into it. Everything inside is strange, to her eye, yet familiar in purpose. There’s a couch, though its back is at one end of the long seat, rather than behind it. There are chairs, one fused to some kind of big slanted table. For drawing, maybe. The bed, in the attached room, is the strangest thing: a big wide hemisphere of brightly colored cushion without sheets or pillows. When Nassun tentatively lies down on it, though, she finds that it flattens and conforms to her body in ways that are stunningly comfortable. It’s warm, too – actively heating up beneath her until the aches of sleeping in a cold stairwell go away. Fascinated despite herself, Nassun examines the bed and is shocked to realize that it is full of magic, and has covered her in same. Threads of silver roam over her body, determining her discomfort by touching her nerves and then repairing her bruises and scrapes; other threads whip the particles of the bed until friction warms them; yet more threads search her skin for infinitesimal dry flakes and flecks of dust, and scrub them away. It’s like what she does when she uses the silver to heal or cut things, but automatic, somehow. She can’t imagine who would make a bed that could do magic. She can’t imagine why. She can’t fathom how anyone could have convinced all this silver to do such nice things, but that’s what’s happening. No wonder the people who built the obelisks needed so much silver, if they used it in lieu of wearing blankets, or taking baths, or letting themselves heal over time.
Schaffa has soiled himself, Nassun finds. It makes her feel ashamed to have to pull his clothes off and clean him, using stretchy cloths she finds in the bathroom, but it would be worse to leave him in his own filth. His eyes are open again, though he does not move while she works. They’ve opened during the day, and they close at night, but though Nassun talks to Schaffa (pleads for him to wake up, asks him to help her, tells him that she needs him), he does not respond.