The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(73)

“Waste of time,” Gallat mutters, staring at the obelisk. I flinch, but he does not notice. “Well. Here it is. I’ve no idea why Kelenli wanted you to see it, but now you see it.”

We admire it as bidden. “Can we… go closer?” Gaewha asks. Several of us groan through the earth; our legs hurt and we are hungry. But she replies with frustration. While we’re here, we might as well get the most out of it.

As if in agreement, Gallat sighs and starts forward, walking down the sloping road toward the base of the amethyst, where it has been firmly lodged in its socket since the first growth-medium infusion. I have seen the top of the amethyst fragment, lost amid scuds of cloud and sometimes framed by the white light of the Moon, but this part of it is new to me. About its base are the transformer pylons, I know from what I have been taught, which siphon off some of the magic from the generative furnace at the amethyst’s core. This magic – a tiny fraction of the incredible amount that the Plutonic Engine is capable of producing – is redistributed via countless conduits to houses and buildings and machinery and vehimal feeding stations throughout the city-node. It is the same in every city-node of Syl Anagist, all over the world – two hundred and fifty-six fragments in total.

My attention is suddenly caught by an odd sensation – the strangest thing I have ever sessed. Something diffuse… something nearby generates a force that… I shake my head and stop walking. “What is that?” I ask, before I consider whether it is wise to speak again, with Gallat in this mood.

He stops, glowers at me, then apparently understands the confusion in my face. “Oh, I suppose you’re close enough to detect it here. That’s just sinkline feedback.”

“And what is a sinkline?” asks Remwha, now that I have broken the ice. This causes Gallat to glare at him in fractionally increased annoyance. We all tense.

“Evil Death,” Gallat sighs at last. “Fine, easier to show than to explain. Come on.”

He speeds up again, and this time none of us dares complain even though we are pushing our aching legs on low blood sugar and some dehydration. Following Gallat, we reach the bottommost tier, cross the vehimal track, and pass between two of the huge, humming pylons.

And there… we are destroyed.

Beyond the pylons, Conductor Gallat explains to us in a tone of unconcealed impatience, is the start-up and translation system for the fragment. He slips into a detailed technical explanation that we absorb but do not really hear. Our network, the nigh-constant system of connections through which we six communicate and assess each other’s health and rumble warnings or reassure with songs of comfort, has gone utterly silent and still. This is shock. This is horror.

The gist of Gallat’s explanation is this: The fragments could not have begun the generation of magic on their own, decades ago when they were first grown. Nonliving, inorganic things like crystal are inert to magic. Therefore, in order to help the fragments initiate the generative cycle, raw magic must be used as a catalyst. Every engine needs a starter. Enter the sinklines: They look like vines, thick and gnarled, twisting and curling to form a lifelike thicket around the fragment’s base. And ensnared in these vines —

We’re going to see them, Kelenli told me, when I asked her where the Niess were.

They are still alive, I know at once. Though they sprawl motionless amid the thicket of vines (lying atop the vines, twisted among them, wrapped up in them, speared by them where the vines grow through flesh), it is impossible not to sess the delicate threads of silver darting between the cells of this one’s hand, or dancing along the hairs of that one’s back. Some of them we can see breathing, though the motion is so very slow. Many wear tattered rags for clothes, dry-rotted with years; a few are naked. Their hair and nails have not grown, and their bodies have not produced waste that we can see. Nor can they feel pain, I sense instinctively; this, at least, is a kindness. That is because the sinklines take all the magic of life from them save the bare trickle needed to keep them alive. Keeping them alive keeps them generating more.

It is the briar patch. Back when we were newly decanted, still learning how to use the language that had been written into our brains during the growth phase, one of the conductors told us a story about where we would be sent if we became unable to work for some reason. That was when there were fourteen of us. We would be retired, she said, to a place where we could still serve the project indirectly. “It’s peaceful there,” the conductor said. I remember it clearly. She smiled as she said it. “You’ll see.”

The briar patch’s victims have been here for years. Decades. There are hundreds of them in view, and thousands more out of sight if the sinkline thicket extends all the way around the amethyst’s base. Millions, when multiplied by two hundred and fifty-six. We cannot see Tetlewha, or the others, but we know that they, too, are here somewhere. Still alive, and yet not.

Gallat finishes up as we stare in silence. “So after system priming, once the generative cycle is established, there’s only an occasional need to reprime.” He sighs, bored with his own voice. We stare in silence. “Sinklines store magic against any possible need. On Launch Day, each sink reservoir should have approximately thirty-seven lammotyrs stored, which is three times…”

He stops. Sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s no point to this. She’s playing you, fool.” It is as if he does not see what we’re seeing. As if these stored, componentized lives mean nothing to him. “Enough. It’s time we got all of you back to the compound.”