The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(9)

To one side of this tableau stands Schaffa, Nassun’s Guardian, who stares down at what is left of Jija Resistant Jekity in a combination of wonder and cold satisfaction. At Nassun’s other side is Steel, her stone eater. It is appropriate to call him that now, hers, because he has come in her hour of need – not to help, never that, but to provide her with something nevertheless. What he offers, and what she has finally realized she needs, is purpose. Not even Schaffa has given her this, but that’s because Schaffa loves her unconditionally. She needs that love, too, oh how she needs it, but in this moment when her heart has been most thoroughly broken, when her thoughts are at their least focused, she craves something more… solid.

She will have the solidity that she wants. She will fight for it and kill for it, because she’s had to do that again and again and it is habit now, and if she is successful she will die for it. After all, she is her mother’s daughter – and only people who think they have a future fear death.

In Nassun’s good hand thrums a three-foot-long, tapering shard of crystal, deep blue and finely faceted, though with some slight deformations near its base that have resulted in something like a hilt. Now and again this strange longknife flickers into a translucent, intangible, debatably real state. It’s very real; only Nassun’s attention keeps the thing in her hands from turning her to colored stone the way it did her father. She’s afraid of what might happen if she passes out from blood loss, so she would really like to send the sapphire back up into the sky to resume its default shape and immense size – but she can’t. Not yet.

There, by the dormitory, are the two reasons: Umber and Nida, the other two Guardians of Found Moon. They’re watching her, and when her gaze lands on them, there is a flicker in the lacing tendrils of silver that drift between the pair. No exchanged words or looks, just that silent communion which would have been imperceptible, if Nassun were anyone but who she was. Beneath each Guardian, delicate silvery tethers wend up from the ground into their feet, connected by the nerve-and-vein glimmer of their bodies to tiny shards of iron embedded in their brains. These taproot-like tethers have always been there, but maybe it’s the tension of the moment that makes Nassun finally notice how thick those lines of light are for each Guardian – much thicker than the one linking the ground to Schaffa. And at last she understands what that means: Umber and Nida are just puppets of a greater will. Nassun has tried to believe better of them, that they are their own people, but here, now, with the sapphire in her hands and her father dead at her feet… some maturations cannot wait for a more convenient season.

So Nassun roots a torus deep within the earth, because she knows that Umber and Nida will sense this. It’s a feint; she doesn’t need the power of the earth, and she suspects they know it. Still, they react, Umber unfolding his arms and Nida straightening from where she’d been leaning on the porch railing. Schaffa reacts, too, his eyes shifting sideways to meet hers. It’s an unavoidable tell that Umber and Nida will notice, but it cannot be helped; Nassun has no piece of the Evil Earth lodged in her brain to facilitate communication. Where matter fails, care makes do. He says, “Nida,” and that is all she needs.

Umber and Nida move. It’s fast – so fast – because the silver lattice within each has strengthened their bones and tightened the cords of their muscles so that they can do what ordinary human flesh cannot. A pulse of negation moves before them with storm-surge inexorability, immediately striking the major lobes of Nassun’s sessapinae numb, but Nassun is already on the offensive. Not physically; she cannot contest them in that sphere of battle, and besides she can barely stand. Will and the silver are all she’s got left.

So Nassun – her body still, her mind violent – snatches at the silver threads of the air around her, weaving them into a crude but efficient net. (She’s never done this before, but no one has ever told her that it can’t be done.) She wraps part of this around Nida, ignoring Umber because Schaffa told her to. And indeed, she understands in the next instant why he told her to concentrate on only one of the enemy Guardians. The silver she’s woven around Nida should catch the woman up fast, like an insect slamming into a spiderweb. Instead, Nida stumbles to a halt, then laughs while threads of something else curl forth from within her and lash the air, shredding the net around her. She lunges for Nassun again, but Nassun – after boggling at the speed and efficacy of the Guardian’s retaliation – snatches stone up from within the earth to spear Nida’s feet. This impedes Nida only a little. She bulls forward, breaking the rock shards off and charging with them still jutting through her boots. One of her hands is held like a claw, the other a flat, finger-stiffened blade. Whichever of them reaches Nassun first will dictate how she begins tearing Nassun apart with her bare hands.

Here Nassun panics. Just a little, because she would lose control of the sapphire otherwise – but some. She can sense a raw, hungry, chaotic reverberation to the silver threads thrumming through Nida, like nothing she’s ever perceived before, and it is somehow, suddenly, terrifying. She doesn’t know what that strange reverberation will do to her, if any part of Nida should touch Nassun’s bare skin. (Her mother knows, though.) She takes a step back, willing the sapphire longknife to move between her and Nida in a defensive position. Her good hand is still on the sapphire’s hilt, so it looks as if she’s brandishing a weapon with a shaking and far-too-slow hand. Nida laughs again, high and delighted, because they can both see that not even the sapphire will be enough to stop her. Nida’s claw-hand flails out, fingers splaying and reaching for Nassun’s cheek even as she weaves like a snake around Nassun’s wild slash —