The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(26)

“Shhh,” Schaffa soothes. He’s been doing this all the while, though now he rubs her back and thumbs away her occasional tears. “Shhh. Poor thing. How unfair of me. When only this morning —” He sighs. “Shhh, my little one. Just rest.”

Nassun is wrung out and empty of everything but the grief and fury that run in her like fast lahars, grinding everything else away in a churning hot slurry. Grief and fury and one last precious, whole feeling.

“You’re the only one I love, Schaffa.” Her voice is raw and weary. “You’re the only reason I w-wouldn’t. But… but I…”

He kisses her forehead. “Make the end you need, my Nassun.”

“I don’t want.” She has to swallow. “I want you to – to be alive!”

He laughs softly. “Still a child, despite all you’ve been through.” This stings, but his meaning is clear. She cannot have both Schaffa alive and the world’s hatred dead. She must choose one ending or the other.

But then, firmly, Schaffa says again: “Make the end you need.”

Nassun pulls back so she can look at him. He’s smiling again, clear-eyed. “What?”

He squeezes her, very gently. “You’re my redemption, Nassun. You are all the children I should have loved and protected, even from myself. And if it will bring you peace…” He kisses her forehead. “Then I shall be your Guardian till the world burns, my little one.”

It is a benediction, and a balm. The nausea finally releases its hold on Nassun. In Schaffa’s arms, safe and accepted, she sleeps at last, amid dreams of a world glowing and molten and in its own way, at peace.

***

“Steel,” she calls, the next morning.

Steel blurs into presence before them, standing in the middle of the road with his arms folded and an expression of faint amusement on his face.

“The nearest way to Corepoint is not far, relatively speaking,” he says when she has asked him for the knowledge that Schaffa lacks. “A month’s travel or so. Of course…” He lets this trail off, conspicuously. He has offered to take Nassun and Schaffa to the other side of the world himself, which is apparently a thing that stone eaters can do. It would save them a great deal of hardship and danger, but they would have to entrust themselves to Steel’s care as he transports them in the strange, terrifying manner of his kind, through the earth.

“No, thank you,” Nassun says again. She doesn’t ask Schaffa for his opinion on this, though he leans against a boulder nearby. She doesn’t need to ask him. That Steel’s interest is wholly in Nassun is obvious. It would be nothing to him to simply forget to bring Schaffa – or lose him along the way to Corepoint. “But could you tell us about this place we have to go? Schaffa doesn’t remember.”

Steel’s gray gaze shifts to Schaffa. Schaffa smiles back, deceptively serene. Even the silver inside him goes still, just for this moment. Maybe Father Earth doesn’t like Steel, either.

“It’s called a station,” Steel explains, after a moment. “It’s old. You would call it a deadciv ruin, although this one is still intact, nestled within another set of ruins that aren’t. A long time ago, people used stations, or rather the vehicles kept within them, to travel long distances far more efficiently than walking. These days, however, only we stone eaters and the Guardians remember that the stations exist.” His smile, which hasn’t changed since he appeared, is still and wry. It seems meant for Schaffa somehow.

“We all pay a price for power,” Schaffa says. His voice is cool and smooth in that way he gets when he’s thinking about doing bad things.

“Yes.” Steel pauses for just a beat too long. “A price must be paid to use this method of transportation, as well.”

“We don’t have any money or anything good to barter,” Nassun says, troubled.

“Fortunately, there are other ways to pay.” Steel abruptly stands at a different angle, his face tilted upward. Nassun follows this, turning, and sees – oh. The sapphire, which has gotten a little closer overnight. Now it’s halfway between them and Jekity.

“The station,” Steel continues, “is from a time before the Seasons. The time when the obelisks were built. All the lingering artifacts of that civilization recognize the same power source.”

“You mean…” Nassun inhales. “The silver.”

“Is that what you call it? How poetic.”

Nassun shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know what else to call it.”

“Oh, how the world has changed.” Nassun frowns, but Steel does not explain this cryptic statement. “Stay on this road until you reach the Old Man’s Pucker. Do you know where that is?”

Nassun remembers seeing it on maps of the Antarctics a lifetime ago, and giggling at the name. She glances at Schaffa, who nods and says, “We can find it.”

“Then I’ll meet you there. The ruin is at the exact center of the grass forest, within the inner ring. Enter the Pucker just after dawn. Don’t dawdle reaching the center; you won’t want to still be in the forest after dusk.” Then Steel pauses, shifting into a new position – one that is distinctly thoughtful. His face is turned off to the side, fingers touching his chin. “I thought it would be your mother.”

Schaffa goes still. Nassun is surprised by the flash of heat, then cold, that moves through her. Slowly, while sifting through this strange complexity of emotion, she says, “What do you mean?”