The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(39)

“The s-silver, then —”

“No.” He stops for only a moment and turns to fix a hard gaze on her. He’s not breathing harder, she notes with great chagrin, although a faint sheen of sweat does glisten on his forehead. His iron shard punishes him, but still grudgingly grants him greater strength. “Other Guardians may be near, Nassun. It’s unlikely at this point, but still a possibility.”

All Nassun can do is grope for another question, because this momentary pause is giving her time to catch her breath. “Other Guardians?” Ah, but then he has said that they all go somewhere during a Season, and that this station that Steel told them about is the means by which they do it. “Do you remember something?”

“Nothing more, sadly.” He smiles a little, knowingly, as if he can tell what she’s doing. “Only that this is how we get there.”

“Get where?”

His smile fades, expression settling into that familiar, disturbing blankness for the briefest of instants. “Warrant.”

She remembers, belatedly, that his full name is Schaffa Guardian Warrant. It has never occurred to her to wonder where the comm of Warrant is. But what does it mean that the way to Warrant is through a buried dead city? “Wh-why —”

He shakes his head then, expression hardening. “Stop stalling. In this low light, not every nocturnal hunter will wait for night.” He glances up at the sky with a look that is only mildly annoyed, as if it does not threaten their lives.

It’s pointless to complain that she is ready to drop. It’s a Season. If she drops, she dies. So she forces herself through the gap he has broken, and starts questing again for the best route.

In the end they make it, which is good because otherwise this would become the rather straightforward tale of you learning that your daughter is dead, and letting the world wither in your grief.

It isn’t even a near thing. Abruptly the last patch of thick grass-trees thins out, revealing a smooth-cut pass through the inner caldera ring. The walls of the pass loom high overhead, though they did not look so tall from far away, and the pass itself is wide enough for two horse-drawn carriages to travel side by side without crowding. The walls of these passages are covered in tenacious mosses and some sort of woody vine, the latter of which is fortunately dead because otherwise it might entangle them and slow their progress more. Instead they hurry forward, cracking the dead branches aside, and then abruptly Nassun and Schaffa stumble out of the pass onto a wide, round slab of perfectly white material that is neither metal nor stone. Nassun’s seen something like it before, near other deadciv ruins; sometimes the stuff glows faintly at night. This particular slab fills the entirety of the space within the inner caldera.

Steel has told them that the deadciv ruin is here, at the center – but all Nassun sees ahead of them is a dainty, rising curl of metal, seemingly set directly into the white material. She tenses, as wary of something new as any Seasoned survivor. Schaffa, however, walks over to it without hesitation. He stops beside it, and for an instant there is an odd expression on his face that Nassun suspects is caused by the momentary conflict between what his body has done out of habit and what his mind cannot remember – but then he puts a hand on the curlicue at the tip of the metal.

Flat shapes and lines of light suddenly appear out of nothingness on the stone around him. Nassun gasps, but they do nothing other than march and ignite others in turn, spreading and glowing until a roughly rectangular shape has been etched out on the stone at Schaffa’s feet. There is a faint, barely audible hum that makes Nassun twitch and look around wildly, but a moment later the white material in front of Schaffa vanishes. It doesn’t slide aside, or open like a door; it’s just gone. But it is a doorway, Nassun abruptly realizes. “And here we are,” Schaffa murmurs. He sounds a little surprised himself.

Beyond this doorway is a tunnel that curves gradually down into the ground and out of sight. Narrow rectangular panels of light edge the steps on either side, illuminating the way. The curling bit of metal is a railing, she sees now, her perception reorienting as she moves to stand beside Schaffa. Something to hold on to, as one walks down into the depths.

In a distant part of the grass forest that they just traversed, there is a high-pitched grating noise that Nassun immediately identifies as animal. Chitinous, maybe. A closer, louder version of the screeches they heard the night before. Nassun flinches and looks at Schaffa.

“Some sort of grasshopper, I believe,” he says. His jaw is tight as he gazes back at the pass they just traversed, though nothing moves there – yet. “Or cicadas, perhaps. Inside now. I’ve seen something like this mechanism before; it should close after we pass through.”

He gestures for her to go first so that he can guard the rear. Nassun takes a deep breath and reminds herself that this is what is necessary to make a world that will hurt no one else. Then she trots down the stairs.

The light panels ignite five or six steps ahead as she progresses, and fade three steps behind. Once they’re a few feet down, just as Schaffa predicted, the white material that covered the stairwell reappears, cutting off further screeches from the forest.

Then there is nothing but the light, and the stairs, and the long-forgotten city somewhere below.

***

2699: Two Fulcrum blackjackets summoned to Deejna comm (Uher Quartent, Western Coastals, near Kiash Traps) when Mount Imher showed eruption signs. Blackjackets informed comm officials that eruption was imminent, and that it would likely touch off the whole Kiash cluster, including Madness (local name for the supervolcano that triggered the Madness Season; Imher sits on the same hot spot). Upon determining that Imher was beyond their ability to quell, the blackjackets – one three-ringer, the other supposedly seven although did not wear rings for some reason – made the attempt anyway, due to insufficient time to send for higher-ringed Imperial Orogenes. They successfully stilled the eruption long enough for a nine-ring senior Imperial Orogene to arrive and push it back into dormancy. (Three-ringer and seven-ringer found holding hands, charred, frozen.)