The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(24)

His mouth quirks at her surprise. “Finding an orogene who could activate the Gate was our original purpose, Nassun, in creating Found Moon.”

“What? Why?”

Schaffa glances up at the sky. The sun’s beginning to set. They could get maybe another hour of walking in before it gets too dark to continue. What he’s looking at is the sapphire, though, which hasn’t noticeably moved from its position over Jekity. Rubbing absently at the back of his head, Schaffa gazes at its faint outline through the thickening clouds and nods, as if to himself.

“I and Nida and Umber,” he says. “Perhaps ten years ago, we were all… instructed… to travel southward, and to find one another. We were bidden to seek and train any orogenes who had the potential to connect to obelisks. This is not a thing Guardians normally do, understand, because there can be only one reason to encourage an orogene along the obelisk path. But it’s what the Earth wanted. Why, I don’t know. During that time, I was… less questioning.” His mouth curves in a brief, rueful smile. “Now I have guesses.”

Nassun frowns. “What guesses?”

“That the Earth has its own plans for human —”

Abruptly Schaffa tenses all over, and he sways in his crouch. Quickly Nassun grabs him so he won’t fall over, and reflexively he puts an arm around her shoulders. The arm is very tight, but she does not protest. That he needs the comfort of her presence is obvious. That the Earth is angrier than ever with him, perhaps because he’s giving away its secrets, is as palpable as the raw, flensing pulse of the silver along every nerve and between every cell of his body.

“Don’t talk,” Nassun says, her throat tight. “Don’t say anything else. If it’s going to hurt you like this —”

“It does not rule me.” Schaffa has to say this in quick blurts, between pants. “It did not take the core of me. I may have… nnh… put myself into its kennel, but it cannot leash me.”

“I know.” Nassun bites her lip. He’s leaning on her heavily, and that’s made her knee, where it braces against the ground, ache something awful. She doesn’t care, though. “But you don’t have to say everything now. I’m figuring it out on my own.”

She has all the clues, she thinks. Nida once said, of Nassun’s ability to connect to obelisks, This is a thing that we culled for in the Fulcrum. Nassun hadn’t understood at the time, but after perceiving something of the Obelisk Gate’s immensity, now she can guess why Father Earth wants her dead if she is no longer under Schaffa’s – and through him, the Earth’s – control.

Nassun chews her lip. Will Schaffa understand? She isn’t sure she can take it if he decides to leave – or worse, if he turns on her. So she takes a deep breath. “Steel says the Moon is coming back.”

For an instant there is silence from Schaffa’s direction. It has the weight of surprise. “The Moon.”

“It’s real,” she blurts. She has no idea if this is true, though, does she? There’s only Steel’s word to go on. She’s not even sure what a moon is, beyond being Father Earth’s long-lost child, like the tales say. And yet somehow she knows that this much of what Steel says is true. She doesn’t quite sess it, and there are no telltale threads of silver forming in the sky, but she believes it the way she believes that there is another side of the world even though she’s never seen it, and the way she knows how mountains form, and the way she’s certain Father Earth is real and alive and an enemy. Some truths are simply too great to deny.

To her surprise, however, Schaffa says, “Oh, I know the Moon is real.” Perhaps his pain has faded somewhat; now his expression has hardened as he gazes at the hazy, intermittent disc of the sun where it’s managed to not quite pierce the clouds near the horizon. “That, I remember.”

“You – really? Then you believe Steel?”

“I believe you, little one, because orogenes know the pull of the Moon when it draws near. Awareness of it is as natural to you as sessing shakes. But also, I have seen it.” Then his gaze narrows sharply to focus on Nassun. “Why, then, did the stone eater tell you about the Moon?”

Nassun takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh.

“I really just wanted to live somewhere nice,” she says. “Live somewhere with… with you. I wouldn’t have minded working and doing things to be a good comm member. I could have been a lorist, maybe.” She feels her jaw tighten. “But I can’t do that, not anywhere. Not without having to hide what I am. I like orogeny, Schaffa, when I don’t have to hide it. I don’t think having it, being a – a r-rogga —” She has to stop, and blush, and shake off the urge to feel ashamed for saying such a bad word, but the bad word is the right word for now. “I don’t think being one makes me bad or strange or evil —”

She cuts herself off again, yanks her thoughts out of that track, because it leads right back to But you have done such evil things.

Unconsciously, Nassun bares her teeth and clenches her fists. “It isn’t right, Schaffa. It isn’t right that people want me to be bad or strange or evil, that they make me be bad…” She shakes her head, fumbling for words. “I just want to be ordinary! But I’m not and – and everybody, a lot of people, all hate me because I’m not ordinary. You’re the only person who doesn’t hate me for… for being what I am. And that’s not right.”