The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(95)

My skin is tight, my heart a-thud. Somewhere, in another existence, I have clenched my fists. We have done so, across the paltry separation of six different bodies and two hundred and fifty-six arms and legs and one great black pulsing heart. My mouth opens (our mouths open) as the onyx aligns itself perfectly to tap the ceaseless churn of earth-magic where the core lies exposed far, far below. Here is the moment that we were made for.

Now, we are meant to say. This, here, connect, and we will lock the raw magical flows of the planet into an endless cycle of service to humankind.

Because this is what the Sylanagistines truly made us for: to affirm a philosophy. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist – as it should be, for the city burns life as the fuel for its glory. The Niess were not the first people chewed up in its maw, just the latest and cruelest extermination of many. But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There’s not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.

Better the earth, Syl Anagist reasons. Better to enslave a great inanimate object that cannot feel pain and will not object. Better Geoarcanity. But this reasoning is still flawed, because Syl Anagist is ultimately unsustainable. It is parasitic; its hunger for magic grows with every drop it devours. The Earth’s core is not limitless. Eventually, if it takes fifty thousand years, that resource will be exhausted, too. Then everything dies.

What we are doing is pointless and Geoarcanity is a lie. And if we help Syl Anagist further down this path, we will have said, What was done to us was right and natural and unavoidable.

No.

So. Now, we say instead. This, here, connect: pale fragments to dark, all fragments to the onyx, and the onyx… back to Syl Anagist. We detach the moonstone from the circuit entirely. Now all the power stored in the fragments will blast through the city, and when the Plutonic Engine dies, so will Syl Anagist.

It begins and ends long before the conductors’ instruments even register a problem. With the others joined to me, our tune gone silent as we settle and wait for the feedback loop to hit us, I find myself content. It will be good not to die alone.

***

But.

But.

Remember. We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day.

This is a thing I will realize only later, when I visit the ruins of Syl Anagist and look into empty sockets to see iron needles protruding from their walls. This is an enemy I will understand only after I have been humbled and remade at its feet… but I will explain it now, so that you may learn from my suffering.

I spoke to you, not long ago, of a war between the Earth and the life upon its surface. Here is some enemy psychology: The Earth sees no difference between any of us. Orogene, still, Sylanagistine, Niess, future, past – to it, humanity is humanity. And even if others had commanded my birth and development; even if Geoarcanity has been a dream of Syl Anagist since long before even my conductors were born; even if I was just following orders; even if the six of us meant to fight back… the Earth did not care. We were all guilty. All complicit in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself.

Now, though, having pronounced us all guilty, the Earth handed out sentences. Here, at least, it was somewhat willing to offer credit for intent and good behavior.

This is what I remember, and what I pieced together later, and what I believe. But remember – never forget – that this was only the beginning of the war.

***

We perceive the disruption first as a ghost in the machine.

A presence alongside us, inside us, intense and intrusive and immense. It slaps the onyx from my grasp before I know what’s happening, and silences our startled signals of What? and Something is wrong and How did that happen? with a shockwave of earthtalk as stunning to us as the Rifting will one day be to you.

Hello, little enemies.

In the conductors’ observation chamber, alarms finally blare. We are frozen in our wire chairs, shouting without words and being answered by something beyond our comprehension, so Biomagestry only notices a problem when suddenly nine percent of the Plutonic Engine – twenty-seven fragments – goes offline. I do not see Conductor Gallat gasp and exchange a horrified look with the other conductors and their esteemed guests; this is speculation, knowing what I know of him. I imagine that at some point he turns to a console to abort the launch. I also do not see, behind them, the iron sphere pulse and swell and shatter, destroying its stasis field and peppering everyone in the chamber with hot, needle-sharp iron shards. I do hear the screaming that follows while the iron shards burn their way up veins and arteries, and the ominous silence afterward, but I have my own problems to deal with in this particular moment.

Remwha, he of the quickest wit, slaps us from our shock with the realization that something else is controlling the Engine. No time to wonder who or why. Gaewha perceives how and signals frantically: The twenty-seven “offline” fragments are still active. In fact, they have formed a kind of subnetwork – a spare key. This is how the other presence has managed to dislodge the onyx’s control. Now all of the fragments, which generate and contain the bulk of the Plutonic Engine’s power, are under hostile foreign control.

I am a proud creature at my core; this is intolerable. The onyx was given to me to hold – and so I seize it again and shove it back into the connections that comprise the Engine, dislodging the false control at once. Salewha slams down the shockwaves of magic that this violent disruption causes, lest they ricochet throughout the Engine and touch off a resonance that will – well, we don’t actually know what such resonance would do, but it would be bad. I hold on throughout the reverberations of this, my teeth bared back in the real world, listening while my siblings cry out or snarl with me or gasp amid the aftershakes of the initial upheaval. Everything is confusion. In the realm of flesh and blood, the lights of our chambers have gone out, leaving only emergency panels to glow around the edges of the room. The warning klaxons are incessant, and elsewhere in Zero Site I can hear equipment snapping and rattling with the overload that we have put into the system. The conductors, screaming in the observation chamber, cannot help us – not that they ever could. I don’t know what’s happening, not really. I know only that this is a battle, full of moment-to-moment confusion as all battles are, and from here forth nothing is quite clear —