The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(7)

The people around you are setting up campfire circles, cooking spits, latrines. In a few spots throughout the camp, little piles of broken, lumpy Castrima crystals provide additional illumination; good to know there must be enough orogenes left to keep them working. Some of the activity is inefficient where people are unused to it, but for the most part it’s well-ordered. Castrima having more than its share of members who know how to live on the road is turning out to be a boon. Your stretcher-bearers have left you where they dumped you, though, and if anyone’s going to build you a fire or bring you food, they haven’t started yet. You spot Lerna crouching amid a small group of people who are also prone, but he’s busy. Ah, yes; there must have been a lot of wounded after Rennanis’s soldiers got into the geode.

Well, you don’t need a fire, and you’re not hungry, so the others’ indifference doesn’t trouble you for the moment, except emotionally. What does bother you is that your runny-sack is gone. You carried that thing halfway across the Stillness, stashed your old rank-rings in it, even saved it from getting scorched to powder when a stone eater transformed himself in your quarters. There wasn’t much in it that still mattered to you, but the bag itself holds a certain sentimental value, at this point.

Well. Everyone’s lost something.

A mountain suddenly weighs down your nearby perception. In spite of everything, you find yourself smiling. “I wondered when you would show up.”

Hoa stands over you. It’s still a shock to see him like this: a mid-sized adult rather than a small child, veined black marble instead of white flesh. Somehow, though, it’s easy to perceive him as the same person – same face shape, same haunting icewhite eyes, same ineffable strangeness, same whiff of lurking whimsy – as the Hoa you’ve known for the past year. What’s changed, that a stone eater no longer seems alien to you? Only superficial things about him. Everything about you.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Better.” The arm pulls when you shift to look up at him, a constant reminder of the unwritten contract between you. “Were you the one who told them about Rennanis?”

“Yes. And I’m guiding them there.”

“You?”

“To the degree that Ykka listens. I think she prefers her stone eaters as silent menaces rather than active allies.”

This pulls a weary laugh out of you. But. “Are you an ally, Hoa?”

“Not to them. Ykka understands that, too, though.”

Yes. This is probably why you’re still alive. As long as Ykka keeps you safe and fed, Hoa will help. You’re back on the road and everything’s a rusting transaction again. The comm that was Castrima lives, but it isn’t really a community anymore, just a group of like-minded travelers collaborating to survive. Maybe it can become a true comm again later, once it’s got another home to defend, but for now, you get why Ykka’s angry. Something beautiful and wholesome has been lost.

Well. You look down at yourself. You’re not wholesome anymore, but what’s left of you can be strengthened; you’ll be able to go after Nassun soon. First things first, though. “We going to do this?”

Hoa does not speak for a moment. “Are you certain?”

“The arm’s not doing me any good, as it is.”

There is the faintest of sounds. Stone grinding on stone, slow and inexorable. A very heavy hand comes to rest on your half-transformed shoulder. You have the sense that, despite the weight, it is a delicate touch by stone eater standards. Hoa’s being careful with you.

“Not here,” he says, and pulls you down into the earth.

It’s only for an instant. He always keeps these trips through the earth quick, probably because longer would make it hard to breathe… and stay sane. This time is little more than a blurring sensation of movement, a flicker of darkness, a whiff of loam richer than the acrid ash. Then you’re lying on another rocky outcropping – probably the same one that the rest of Castrima is settling on, just away from the encampment. There are no campfires here; the only light is the ruddy reflection of the Rifting off the thick clouds overhead. Your eyes adjust quickly, though there’s little to see but rocks and the shadows of nearby trees. And a human silhouette, which now crouches beside you.

Hoa holds your stone arm in his hands gently, almost reverently. In spite of yourself, you sense the solemnity of the moment. And why shouldn’t it be solemn? This is the sacrifice demanded by the obelisks. This is the pound of flesh you must pay for the blood-debt of your daughter.

“This isn’t what you think of it,” Hoa says, and for an instant you worry that he can read your mind. More likely it’s just the fact that he’s as old as the literal hills, and he can read your face. “You see what was lost in us, but we gained, too. This is not the ugly thing it seems.”

It seems like he’s going to eat your arm. You’re okay with it, but you want to understand. “What is it, then? Why…” You shake your head, unsure of even what question to ask. Maybe why doesn’t matter. Maybe you can’t understand. Maybe this isn’t meant for you.

“This is not sustenance. We need only life, to live.”

The latter half of that was nonsensical, so you latch onto the former half. “If it isn’t sustenance, then…?”

Hoa moves slowly again. They don’t do this often, stone eaters. Movement is the thing that emphasizes their uncanny nature, so like humanity and yet so wildly different. It would be easier if they were more alien. When they move like this, you can see what they once were, and the knowledge is a threat and warning to all that is human within you.