The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(42)

Think, she says without words. She watches me in particular. Her thinker.

I glance around at the others. As I do, I notice Kelenli’s guards again. They’ve taken up positions on either end of the balcony, so that they can see the corridor we came down as well as the display room. They both look bored. Kelenli brought us here. Got the conductors to agree to bringing us here. Means for us to see something in this ancient engine that her guards do not. What?

I step forward, putting my hands on the dead railing, and peer intently at the thing as if that will help. What to conclude? It has the same fundamental structure as other plutonic engines. Only its purpose is different – no, no. That’s too simple an assessment. What’s different here is… philosophical. Attitudinal. The Plutonic Engine is a tool. This thing? Is… art.

And then I understand. No one of Syl Anagist built this.

I look at Kelenli. I must use words, but the conductors who hear the guards’ report should not be able to guess anything from it. “Who?”

She smiles, and my whole body tingles all over with the rush of something I cannot name. I am her thinker, and she is pleased with me, and I have never been happier.

“You,” she replies, to my utter confusion. Then she pushes away from the railing. “I have much more to show you. Come.”

***

All things change during a Season.

— Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse two

7
you’re planning ahead

Ykka is more inclined to adopt Maxixe and his people than you were expecting. She’s not happy that Maxixe has an advanced case of ash lung – as Lerna confirms after they’ve all had sponge baths and he’s given them a preliminary examination. Nor does she like that four of his people have other serious medical issues, ranging from fistulas to the complete lack of teeth, or that Lerna says they’re all going to be touch and go on surviving refeeding. But, as she informs those of you on her impromptu council, loudly so that anyone listening will hear, she can put up with a lot from people who bring in extra supplies, knowledge of the area, and precision orogeny that can help safeguard the group against attack. And, she adds, Maxixe doesn’t have to live forever. Long enough to help the comm will be enough for her.

She doesn’t add, Not like Alabaster, which is kind – or at least conspicuously not-cruel – of her. It’s surprising that she respects your grief, and maybe it’s also a sign that she is beginning to forgive you. It’ll be good to have a friend again. Friends. Again.

That’s not enough, of course. Nassun is alive and you’ve more or less recovered from your post-Gate coma, so now it becomes a struggle, daily, to remember why you’re staying with Castrima. It helps, sometimes, to go through the reasons for staying. For Nassun’s future, that’s one, so that you can have somewhere to shelter her once you’ve found her again. Because you can’t do it alone is the second reason – and you can’t rightly let Tonkee come with you anymore, however willing she might be. Not with your orogeny compromised; the long journey back south would be a death sentence for both of you. Hoa isn’t going to be able to help you get dressed, or cook food, or do any of the other things one needs two good hands for. And Reason Number Three, the most important of the set: You don’t know where to go anymore. Hoa has confirmed that Nassun is on the move, and has been traveling away from the site of the sapphire since you opened the Obelisk Gate. It was too late to find her before you ever woke up.

But there is hope. In the small hours of one morning after Hoa has taken the stone burden of your left breast from you, he says quietly, “I think I know where she’s going. If I’m right, she’ll stop soon.” He sounds uncertain. No, not uncertain. Troubled.

You sit on a rocky outcrop some ways from the encampment, recovering from the… excision. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it would be. You pulled off your clothing layers to bare the stoned breast. He put a hand on it and it came away from your body, cleanly, into his palm. You asked why he didn’t do that for your arm and he said, “I do what’s most comfortable for you.” Then he lifted your breast to his lips and you decided to become fascinated by the flat, slightly roughened cautery of stone over the space where your breast was. It aches a little, but you’re not sure whether this is the pain of amputation or something more existential.

(Three bites, it takes him, to eat the breast that Nassun liked best. You’re perversely proud to feed someone else with it.)

As you awkwardly pull undershirts and shirts back on with one arm – stuffing one side of your bra with the lightest undershirt so it won’t slip off – you probe after that hint of unease that you heard in Hoa’s voice earlier. “You know something.”

Hoa doesn’t answer at first. You think you’re going to have to remind him that this is a partnership, that you’re committed to catching the Moon and ending this endless Season, that you care about him but he can’t keep hiding things from you like this – and then he finally says, “I believe Nassun seeks to open the Obelisk Gate herself.”

Your reaction is visceral and immediate. Pure fear. It probably isn’t what you should feel. Logic would dictate disbelief that a ten-year-old girl can manage a feat that you barely accomplished. But somehow, maybe because you remember the feel of your little girl thrumming with angry blue power, and you knew in that instant that she understood the obelisks better than you ever will, you have no trouble believing Hoa’s core premise – that your little girl is bigger than you thought.