The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(10)

How he ends the fight, by driving his hand up to the wrist through the underside of Umber’s jaw, is horrifying.

Umber makes an awful sound, jerking to a halt – but an instant later, his hand lunges for Schaffa’s throat again, blurring in its speed. Schaffa gasps – so quickly that it might be just a breath, but Nassun hears the alarm in it – and shunts away the strike, but Umber’s still moving, even though his eyes have rolled back in his head and the movements are twitchy, clumsy. Nassun understands then: Umber’s not home anymore. Something else is, working his limbs and reflexes for as long as crucial connections remain in place. And yes: In the next breath, Schaffa flings Umber to the ground, wrenches his hand free, and stomps on his opponent’s head.

Nassun can’t look. She hears the crunch; that’s enough. She hears Umber actually continue twitching, his movements more feeble but persistent, and she hears the faint rustle of Schaffa’s clothes as he bends. Then she hears something that her mother last heard in a little room in the Guardians’ wing of the Fulcrum, some thirty years before: bone cracking and gristle tearing, as Schaffa works his fingers into the base of Umber’s broken skull.

Nassun can’t close her ears, so instead she focuses on Nida, who’s still fighting to get free from Steel’s unbreakable grip.

“I – I —” Nassun attempts. Her heart’s slowed only a little. The sapphire shakes harder in her hands. Nida still wants to kill her. Steel, who has established himself as merely a possible ally and not a definite one, need only loosen his grip, and Nassun will die. But. “I d-don’t want to kill you,” she manages. It’s even true.

Nida abruptly goes still and silent. The fury in her expression gradually fades to no expression at all. “It did what it had to do, last time,” she says.

Nassun’s skin prickles with the realization that something intangible has changed. She’s not sure what, but she doesn’t think this is quite Nida anymore. She swallows. “Did what? Who?”

Nida’s gaze falls on Steel. There is a faint grinding sound as Steel’s mouth curves into a wide, toothy smile. Then, before Nassun can think of another question to ask, Steel’s grip shifts. Not loosening; turning, with that unnaturally slow motion which perhaps is meant to imitate human movement. (Or mock it.) He draws in his arm and pivots his wrist to turn Nida around, her back to his front. The nape of her neck to his mouth.

“It’s angry,” Nida continues calmly, though now she faces away from both Steel and Nassun. “Yet even now it may be willing to compromise, to forgive. It demands justice, but —”

“It has had its justice a thousand times over,” says Steel. “I owe it no more.” Then he opens his mouth wide.

Nassun turns away, again. On a morning when she has rent her father to pieces, some things remain too obscene for her child’s eyes. At least Nida does not move again once Steel has dropped her body to the ground.

“We cannot remain here,” Schaffa says. When Nassun swallows hard and focuses on him, she sees that he stands over Umber’s corpse, holding something small and sharp in one gore-flecked hand. He gazes at this object with the same detached coldness that he turns upon those he means to kill. “Others will come.”

Through the clarity of near-death adrenaline, Nassun knows that he means other contaminated Guardians – and not half-contaminated ones like Schaffa himself, who have somehow managed to retain some measure of free will. Nassun swallows and nods, feeling calmer now that no one is actively trying to kill her anymore. “Wh-what about the other kids?”

Some of the children in question are standing on the porch of the dormitory, awakened by the concussion of the sapphire when Nassun summoned it into longknife form. They have witnessed everything, Nassun sees. A couple are weeping at the sight of their Guardians dead, but most just stare at her and Schaffa in silent shock. One of the smaller children is vomiting off the side of the steps.

Schaffa gazes at them for a long moment, and then glances sidelong at her. Some of the coldness is still there, saying what his voice does not. “They’ll need to leave Jekity, quickly. Without Guardians, the commfolk are unlikely to tolerate their presence.” Or Schaffa can kill them. That’s what he’s done with every other orogene they’ve met who isn’t under his control. They are either his, or they are a threat.

“No,” Nassun blurts. Speaking to that silent coldness, not to what he’s said. The coldness increases fractionally. Schaffa never likes it when she says no. She takes a deep breath, marshaling a little more calm, and corrects herself. “Please, Schaffa. I just… I can’t take any more.”

This is rank hypocrisy. The decision Nassun has recently made, a silent promise over her father’s corpse, belies it. Schaffa cannot know what she has chosen, but at the corner of her vision, she is painfully aware of Steel’s lingering, blood-painted smile.

She presses her lips together and means it anyway. It isn’t a lie. She can’t take the cruelty, the endless suffering; that’s the whole point. What she means to do will be, if nothing else, quick and merciful.

Schaffa regards her for a moment. Then he twitch-winces a little, as she has seen him do often in the past few weeks. When the spasm passes, he puts on a smile and comes over to her, though first he closes his hand firmly around the metal bit he’s taken from Umber. “How is your shoulder?”