The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(93)
Others in the room have noticed this exchange. Not all of them are conductors, but all of them look at the woman and me in palpable unease and confusion. I hear Gallat holding his breath.
“Yes,” she says to me, finally. “We drilled a test bore at one of the Antarctic nodes. Then we sent in probes that took this from the innermost core. It’s a sample of the world’s own heart.” She smiles, proud. “The richness of magic at the core is precisely what will enable Geoarcanity. That test is why we built Corepoint, and the fragments, and you.”
I look at the iron sphere again and marvel that she stands so close to it. It is angry, I think again, without really knowing why these words come to me. It will do what it has to do.
Who? Will do what?
I shake my head, inexplicably annoyed, and turn to Gallat. “Shouldn’t we get started?”
The woman laughs, delighted. Gallat glowers at me, but he relaxes fractionally when it becomes obvious that the woman is amused. Still, he says, “Yes, Houwha. I think we should. If you don’t mind —”
(He addresses the woman by some title, and some name. I will forget both with the passage of time. In forty thousand years I will remember only the woman’s laugh, and the way she considers Gallat no different from us, and how carelessly she stands near an iron sphere that radiates pure malice – and enough magic to destroy every building in Zero Site.
And I will remember how I, too, dismissed every possible warning of what was to come.)
Gallat takes me back into the cradle room, where I am bidden to climb into my wire chair. My limbs are strapped down, which I’ve never understood because when I’m in the amethyst, I barely notice my body, let alone move it. The sef has made my lips tingle in a way that suggests a stimulant was added. I didn’t need it.
I reach for the others, and find them granite-steady with resolve. Yes.
Images appear on the viewing wall before me, displaying the blue sphere of the Earth, each of the other five tuners’ cradles, and a shot of Corepoint with the onyx hovering ready above it. The other tuners look back at me from their images. Gallat comes over and makes a show of checking the contact points of the wire chair, which are meant to send measurements to the Biomagestric division. “You’re to hold the onyx, today, Houwha.”
From another building of Zero Site, I feel Gaewha’s small twitch of surprise. We’re very attuned to one another today. I say, “Kelenli holds the onyx.”
“Not anymore.” Gallat keeps his head down as he speaks, unnecessarily reaching over to check my straps, and I remember him reaching the same way to pull Kelenli back to him, in the garden. Ah, I understand, now. All this while he has been afraid to lose her… to us. Afraid to make her just another tool in the eyes of his superiors. Will they let him keep her, after Geoarcanity? Or does he fear that she, too, will be thrown into the briar patch? He must. Why else make such a significant change to our configuration on the most important day in human history?
As if to confirm my guess, he says, “Biomagestry says you now show more than sufficient compatibility to hold the connection for the required length of time.”
He’s watching me, hoping I won’t protest. I realize suddenly that I can do so. With so much scrutiny on Gallat’s every decision today, important people will notice if I insist that the new configuration is a bad idea. I can, simply by raising my voice, take Kelenli from Gallat. I can destroy him, as he destroyed Tetlewha.
But that’s a foolish, pointless thought, because how can I exercise my power over him without hurting her? I’m going to hurt her enough as it is, when we turn the Plutonic Engine back on itself. She should survive the initial convulsion of magic; even if she’s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, she’ll be just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really is – or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free… to struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?
Better than you could ever have given her, I think at Gallat.
“All right,” I say. He relaxes minutely.
Gallat leaves my chamber and goes back into the observation room with the other conductors. I am alone. I am never alone; the others are with me. The signal comes that we should begin, as the moment seems to hold its breath. We are ready.
First the network.
Attuned as we are, it is easy, pleasurable, to modulate our silverflows and cancel out resistance. Remwha plays yoke, but he hardly needs to goad any of us to resonate higher or lower or to pull at the same pace; we are aligned. We all want this.
Above us, yet easily within our range, the Earth seems to hum, too. Almost like a thing alive. We have been to Corepoint and back, in our early training; we have traveled through the mantle and seen the massive flows of magic that churn naturally up from the iron-nickel core of the planet. To tap that bottomless font will be the greatest feat of human accomplishment, ever. Once, that thought would have made me proud. Now I share this with the others and a shiverstone micaflake glimmer of bitter amusement ripples through all of us. They have never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be able to deny us this again.