The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(36)

Chuckles all around, jaded and thin and tired. A few more rattly coughs in addition to Maxixe’s. These people are starved nearly to death, and half of them are sick. This is pointless. Still. To Maxixe, you say, “If you don’t come with us, you’ll die here.”

“Olemshyn’s people had most of the supplies. We’ll go take ’em.” That sentence ends on a pause: the opening bid in a bargain. “And it’s all of us, or none of us.”

“Up to the headwoman,” you say, refusing to commit. But you know haggling when you hear it. His Fulcrum-trained orogeny in exchange for comm membership for him and his handful, with the deal sweetened by the raiders’ supplies. And he’s fully prepared to walk away if Ykka can’t meet his opening price. It bothers you. “I’ll also put in a good word for your character, or at least your character thirty years ago.”

He smiles a little. Hard not to see that smile as patronizing. Look at you, trying to make this something more than it is. You’re probably projecting. “I also know a little about the area. Might be useful, since you’re obviously going somewhere.” He jerks his chin toward firelight reflecting off the crags closer to the road. “You are going somewhere?”

“Rennanis.”

“Assholes.”

Which means the Rennanis army must have come through the area on its way south. You let yourself smile. “Dead assholes.”

“Huh.” He squints his good eye. “They’ve been smashing comms all over the area. That’s why we’ve had such a hard time; no trade caravans to raid once the Rennies were done. I did sess something weird in the direction they went, though.”

He falls silent, watching you, because of course he knows. Any rogga with rings should have sessed the activity of the Obelisk Gate when you ended the Rennanis-Castrima war so decisively. They might not have known what they were sessing, and unless they knew magic, they wouldn’t have perceived the totality of it even if they’d known, but they would have at least picked up the backwash.

“That… was me,” you say. It’s surprisingly hard to admit.

“Rusting Earth, Da – Essun. How?”

You take a deep breath. Extend a hand to him. So much of your past keeps coming back to haunt you. You can never forget where you came from, because it won’t rusting let you. But maybe Ykka’s got the right of it. You can reject these dregs of your old self and pretend that nothing and no one else matters… or you can embrace them. Reclaim them for what they’re worth, and grow stronger as a whole.

“Let’s go talk to Ykka,” you say. “If she adopts you – and your people, I know – I’ll tell you everything.” And if he’s not careful, you’ll end up teaching him how to do it, too. He’s a six-ringer, after all. If you fail, someone else will have to take up the mantle.

To your surprise, he regards your hand with something akin to wariness. “Not sure I want to know everything.”

It makes you smile. “You really don’t.”

He smiles lopsidedly. “You don’t want to know everything that’s happened to me, either.”

You incline your head. “Deal, then. Only the good parts.”

He grins. One of his teeth is missing. “That’s too short to even make a good pop lorist tale. Nobody would buy a story like that.”

But. Then he shifts his weight and lifts his right hand. The skin is thick as horn, beyond callused, and filthy. You wipe your hand on your pants without thinking, after. His people chuckle at this.

Then you lead him back toward Castrima, into the light.

***

2470: Antarctics. Massive sinkhole began to open beneath city of Bendine (comm died shortly after). Karst soils, not seismic, but the sinking of the city generated waves that Antarctic Fulcrum orogenes detected. From the Fulcrum, somehow shifted whole city to more stable position, saving most of population. Fulcrum records note that doing this killed three senior orogenes.

— Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars

6
Nassun makes her fate

The monthlong journey to Steel’s deadciv ruin is uneventful by the standards of mid-Season travel. Nassun and Schaffa have or forage sufficient food to sustain themselves, though both of them begin to lose weight. Nassun’s shoulder heals without trouble, though she is feverish and weak for a couple of days at one point, and on those days Schaffa calls a halt for rest sooner than she thinks he normally would have. On the third day the fever is gone, the wound is beginning to scab, and they resume.

They encounter almost no one else on the road, though that is unsurprising a year and a half into the Season. Anyone still commless at this point has joined a raider band, and there won’t be many of those left – just the most vicious, or the ones with some kind of edge beyond savagery and cannibalism. Most of those will have gone north, into the Somidlats where there are more comms to prey upon. Not even raiders like the Antarctics.

In many ways the near-solitude suits Nassun fine. No other Guardians to tiptoe around. No commfolk whose irrational fears must always be planned for. Not even other orogene children; Nassun misses the others, misses their chatter and the comradeship that she enjoyed with them for so brief a time, but at the end of the day, she resented how much time and attention Schaffa had to give them. She’s old enough to know that it’s childish for her to be jealous of such a thing. (Her parents doted on Uche, too, but it is horrifyingly obvious now that getting more attention isn’t necessarily favoritism.) Doesn’t mean she isn’t glad, and greedy, for the chance to have Schaffa all to herself.