The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(87)
“I —” About to say that she does, Nassun falters. No. This is not a thing she has ever considered. “I – I don’t —”
“I would estimate,” Steel continues, “that Guardians typically last three or four thousand years. Can you imagine that length of time? Think of the past two years. Your life since the beginning of the Season. Imagine another year. You can do that, can’t you? Every day feels like a year here in Corepoint, or so your kind tell me. Now put all three years together, and imagine them times one thousand.” The emphasis he puts on this is sharp, precisely enunciated. In spite of herself, Nassun jumps.
But also in spite of herself… she thinks. She feels old, Nassun, at the world-weary age of not-quite-eleven. So much has happened since the day she came home to find her little brother dead on the floor. She is a different person now, hardly Nassun at all; sometimes she is surprised to realize Nassun is still her name. How much more different will she be in three years? Ten? Twenty?
Steel pauses until he sees some change in her expression – some evidence, perhaps, that she is listening to him. Then he says, “I have reason to believe, however, that your Schaffa is much, much older than most Guardians. He isn’t quite first-generation; those have all long since died. Couldn’t take it. He’s one of the very early ones, though, still. The languages, you see; that’s how you can always tell. They never quite lose those, even after they’ve forgotten the names they were born with.”
Nassun remembers how Schaffa knew the language of the earth-traversing vehicle. It is strange to think of Schaffa having been born back when that tongue was still spoken. It would make him… she can’t even imagine. Old Sanze is supposed to be seven Seasons old, eight if one counts the present Season. Almost three thousand years. The Moon’s cycle of return and retreat is much older than that, and Schaffa remembers it, so… yes. He’s very, very old. She frowns.
“It’s rare to find one of them who can really go the distance,” Steel continues. His tone is casual, conversational; he could be talking about Nassun’s old neighbors back in Jekity. “The corestone hurts them so much, you see. They get tired, and then they get sloppy, and then the Earth begins to contaminate them, eating away at their will. They don’t usually last long once that starts. The Earth uses them, or their fellow Guardians use them, until they outlive their usefulness and one side or the other kills them. It’s a testament to your Schaffa’s strength that he lasted so much longer. Or a testament to something else, maybe. What kills the rest, you see, is losing the things that ordinary people need to be happy. Imagine what that’s like, Nassun. Watching everyone you know and care about die. Watching your home die, and having to find a new one – again, and again, and again. Imagine never daring to get close to another person. Never having friends, because you’ll outlive them. Are you lonely, little Nassun?”
She has forgotten her anger. “Yes,” she admits, before she can think not to.
“Imagine being lonely forever.” There’s a very slight smile on his lips, she sees. It’s been there the whole while. “Imagine living here in Corepoint forever, with no one to talk to but me – when I bother to respond. What do you think that will feel like, Nassun?”
“Terrible,” she says. Quietly now.
“Yes. So here is my theory: I believe your Schaffa survived by loving his charges. You, and others like you, soothed his loneliness. He truly does love you; never doubt that about him.” Nassun swallows back a dull ache. “But he also needs you. You keep him happy. You keep him human, where otherwise time would have long since transformed him into something else.”
Then Steel moves again. It’s inhuman because of its steadiness, Nassun finally realizes. People are quick to do big movements and then slower with fine adjustment. Steel does everything at the same pace. Watching him move is like watching a statue melt. But then he stands with arms outstretched as if to say, Take a look at me.
“I am forty thousand years old,” Steel says. “Give or take a few millennia.”
Nassun stares at him. The words are like the gibberish that the vehimal spoke – almost comprehensible, but not really. Not real.
What does that feel like, though?
“You’re going to die when you open the Gate,” Steel says, after giving Nassun a moment to absorb what he’s said. “Or if not then, sometime after. A few decades, a few minutes, it’s all the same. And whatever you do, Schaffa will lose you. He’ll lose the one thing that has kept him human throughout the Earth’s efforts to devour his will. He’ll find no one new to love, either – not here. And he won’t be able to return to the Stillness unless he’s willing to risk the Deep Earth route again. So whether he heals somehow, or you change him into one of my kind, he will have no choice but to go on, alone, endlessly yearning for what he will never again have.” Slowly, Steel’s arms lower to his sides. “You have no idea what that’s like.”
And then, suddenly, shockingly, he is right in front of Nassun. No blurring, no warning, just flick and he is there, bent at the waist to put his face right in front of hers, so close that she feels the wind of the air he’s displaced and smells the whiff of loam and she can even see that the irises of his eyes are striated in layers of gray.