The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(60)

“I – That question doesn’t make sense.” But now I’m just being stubborn. I understand her point. I’m not what they made me; I’m something different. I am powerful in ways they did not expect. They made me but they do not control me, not fully. This is why I have emotions though they tried to take them away. This is why we have earthtalk… and perhaps other gifts that our conductors don’t know about.

She pats my shoulder, pleased that I seem to be working through what she’s told me. A spot on the floor of her house calls to me; I will sleep so well tonight. But I fight my exhaustion, and remain focused on her, because I need her more than sleep, for now.

“You see yourself as one of these… truth-tellers?” I ask.

“Lorist. The last Niess lorist, if I have the right to claim such a thing.” Her smile abruptly fades, and for the first time I realize what a wealth of weariness and hard lines and sorrow her smiles cover. “Lorists were warriors, storytellers, nobility. They told their truths in books and song and through their art engines. I just… talk. But I feel like I’ve earned the right to claim some part of their mantle.” Not all fighters use knives, after all.

In earthtalk there can be nothing but truth – and sometimes more truth than one wants to convey. I sense… something, in her sorrow. Grim endurance. A flutter of fear like the lick of salt acid. Determination to protect… something. It’s gone, a fading vibration, before I can identify more.

She takes a deep breath and smiles again. So few of them are real, her smiles.

“To master the onyx,” she continues, “you need to understand the Niess. What the conductors don’t realize is that it responds best to a certain emotional resonance. Everything I’m telling you should help.”

Then, finally, she pushes me gently aside so that she can go. The question must be asked now. “So what happened,” I say slowly, “to the Niess?”

She stops, and chuckles, and for once it is genuine. “You’ll find out tomorrow,” she says. “We’re going to see them.”

I’m confused. “To their graves?”

“Life is sacred in Syl Anagist,” she says over her shoulder. She’s passed through the door; now she keeps going without stopping or turning back. “Don’t you know that?” And then she is gone.

It is an answer that I feel I should understand – but in my own way, I am still innocent. Kelenli is kind. She lets me keep that innocence for the rest of the night.

***

To: Alma Innovator Dibars

From: Yaetr Innovator Dibars

Alma, the committee can’t pull my funding. Look, this is just the dates of the incidents I’ve gathered. Just look at the last ten!

2729
2714–2719: Choking

2699

2613

2583

2562

2530

2501

2490

2470

2400
2322–2329: Acid

Is Seventh even interested in the fact that our popular conception of the frequency of Season-level events is completely wrong? These things aren’t happening every two hundred or three hundred years. It’s more like every thirty or forty! If not for roggas, we’d be a thousand times dead. And with these dates and the others I’ve compiled, I’m trying to put together a predictive model for the more intensive Seasons. There’s a cycle here, a rhythm. Don’t we need to know in advance if the next Season is going to be longer or worse somehow? How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?

9
the desert, briefly, and you

Deserts are worse than most places, during Seasons. Tonkee lets Ykka know that water will be easy; Castrima’s Innovators have already assembled a number of contraptions they’re calling dew-catchers. The sun won’t be an issue either, thanks to the ash clouds that you never thought you’d have cause to thank. It will be chilly, in fact, though less so by day. You might even get a bit of snow.

No, the danger of deserts during a Season is simply that nearly all animals and insects there hibernate, deep under the sand where it’s still warm. There are those who claim to have figured out a surefire method of digging up sleeping lizards and such, but those are usually scams; the few comms that edge the desert guard such secrets jealously. The surface plants will have already shriveled away or been eaten by creatures preparing for hibernation, leaving nothing aboveground but sand and ash. Stonelore’s advice on entering deserts during Seasons is simply: don’t. Unless you mean to starve.

The comm spends two days camped at the edge of the Merz, preparing, though the truth is – as Ykka has confided in you, while you sat with her sharing your last mellow – there’s really no amount of preparation that will make the journey any easier. People are going to die. You won’t be one of them; it’s a curious feeling knowing that Hoa can whisk you away to Corepoint if there’s any real danger. It’s cheating, maybe. Except it’s not. Except you’re going to help as much as you can – and because you won’t die, you’re going to watch a lot of other people suffer. That’s the least you can do, now that you’ve committed to the cause of Castrima. Bear witness, and fight like earthfires to keep death from claiming more than its share.

In the meantime, the folks on cookfire duty pull double shifts roasting insects, drying tubers, baking the last of the grain stores into cakes, salting meat. After they were fed enough to have some strength, Maxixe’s surviving people turned out to be especially helpful with foraging, since several are locals and remember where there might be abandoned farms or debris from the Rifting shake that hasn’t been too picked over. Speed will be of the essence; survival means winning the race between the Merz’s width and Castrima’s supplies. Because of this, Tonkee – who is increasingly becoming a spokesperson for the Innovators, much to her own disgruntlement – oversees a quick and dirty breakdown and rebuilding of the storage wagons to a new lighter, more shock-resistant design that should pull more easily over desert sand. The Resistants and Breeders redistribute the remaining supplies to make sure the loss of any one wagon, if it must be abandoned, won’t cause some kind of critical shortage.