The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(71)

“Because she’s been right in every suggestion she’s made thus far,” he snaps, after the third such question. “Which is the very reason we developed the tuners, after all. The Plutonic Engine would need another seventy years of priming before even a test-firing could be attempted, without them. When a machine’s sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed.”

That seems to mollify them, so they leave him alone and resume talking – though to each other, not to him. I am sitting near Conductor Gallat. I notice how the other conductors’ disdain actually increases his tension, making anger radiate off his skin like the residual heat of sunlight from a rock, long after night has fallen. There have always been odd dynamics to the conductors’ relationships; we’ve puzzled them out as best we could, while not really understanding. Now, however, thanks to Kelenli’s explanation, I remember that Gallat has undesirable ancestry. We were made this way, but he was simply born with pale skin and icewhite eyes – traits common among the Niess. He isn’t Niess; the Niess are gone. There are other races, Sylanagistine races, with pale skin. The eyes suggest, however, that somewhere in his family’s history – distant, or he would not have been permitted schooling and medical care and his prestigious current position – someone made children with a Niesperson. Or not; the trait could be a random mutation or happenstance of pigment expression. Apparently no one thinks it is, though.

This is why, though Gallat works harder and spends more hours at the compound than anyone, and is in charge, the other conductors treat him as if he is less than what he is. If he did not pass on the favor in his dealings with us, I would pity him. As it is, I am afraid of him. I always have been afraid of him. But for Kelenli, I decide to be brave.

“Why are you angry with her?” I ask. My voice is soft, and hard to hear over the humming metabolic cycle of the vehimal. Few of the other conductors notice my comment. None of them care. I have timed the asking well.

Gallat starts, then stares at me as if he has never seen me before. “What?”

“Kelenli.” I turn my eyes to meet his, although we have learned over time that the conductors do not like this. They find eye contact challenging. But they also dismiss us more easily when we do not look at them, and I don’t want to be dismissed in this moment. I want him to feel this conversation, even if his weak, primitive sessapinae cannot tell him that my jealousy and resentment have raised the temperature of the city’s water table by two degrees.

He glares at me. I gaze impassively back. I sense tension in the network. The others, who of course have noticed what the conductors ignore, are suddenly afraid for me… but I am almost distracted from their concern by the difference I suddenly perceive in us. Gallat is right: We are changing, complexifying, our ambient influence strengthening, as a result of the things Kelenli has shown us. Is this an improvement? I’m not certain yet. For now, we are confused where before, we were mostly unified. Remwha and Gaewha are angry at me for taking this risk without seeking consensus first – and this recklessness, I suppose, is my own symptom of change. Bimniwha and Salewha are, irrationally, angry at Kelenli for the strange way she is affecting me. Dushwha is done with all of us and just wants to go home. Beneath her anger, Gaewha is afraid for me but she also pities me, because I think she understands that my recklessness is a symptom of something else. I have decided that I am in love, but love is a painful hotspot roil beneath the surface of me in a place where once there was stability, and I do not like it. Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity. I don’t know how to feel, except reckless.

None of them are angry at Gallat for being too dangerous to have a simple conversation with, though. There’s something very wrong with that.

Finally, Gallat says, “What makes you think I’m angry with Kelenli?” I open my mouth to point out the tension in his body, his vocal stress, the look on his face, and he makes an irritated sound. “Never mind. I know how you process information.” He sighs. “And I suppose you’re right.”

I am definitely right, but I know better than to remind him of what he doesn’t want to know. “You want her to live in your house.” I was unsure that it was Gallat’s house until the morning’s conversation. I should have guessed, though; it smelled like him. None of us is good at using senses other than sesuna.

“It’s her house,” he snaps. “She grew up there, same as me.”

Kelenli has told me this. Raised alongside Gallat, thinking she was normal, until someone finally told her why her parents did not love her. “She was part of the project.”

He nods once, tightly, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “So was I. A human child was a necessary control, and I had… useful characteristics for comparison. I thought of her as my sister until we both reached the age of fifteen. Then they told us.”

Such a long time. And yet Kelenli must have suspected that she was different. The silver glimmer of magic flows around us, through us, like water. Everyone can sess it, but we tuners, we live it. It lives in us. She cannot have ever thought herself normal.

Gallat, however, had been completely surprised. Perhaps his view of the world had been as thoroughly upended as mine has been now. Perhaps he floundered – flounders – in the same way, struggling to resolve his feelings with reality. I feel a sudden sympathy for him.