The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(9)

There, by the dormitory, are the two reasons: Umber and Nida, the other two Guardians of Found Moon. They’re watching her, and when her gaze lands on them, there is a flicker in the lacing tendrils of silver that drift between the pair. No exchanged words or looks, just that silent communion which would have been imperceptible, if Nassun were anyone but who she was. Beneath each Guardian, delicate silvery tethers wend up from the ground into their feet, connected by the nerve-and-vein glimmer of their bodies to tiny shards of iron embedded in their brains. These taproot-like tethers have always been there, but maybe it’s the tension of the moment that makes Nassun finally notice how thick those lines of light are for each Guardian – much thicker than the one linking the ground to Schaffa. And at last she understands what that means: Umber and Nida are just puppets of a greater will. Nassun has tried to believe better of them, that they are their own people, but here, now, with the sapphire in her hands and her father dead at her feet… some maturations cannot wait for a more convenient season.

So Nassun roots a torus deep within the earth, because she knows that Umber and Nida will sense this. It’s a feint; she doesn’t need the power of the earth, and she suspects they know it. Still, they react, Umber unfolding his arms and Nida straightening from where she’d been leaning on the porch railing. Schaffa reacts, too, his eyes shifting sideways to meet hers. It’s an unavoidable tell that Umber and Nida will notice, but it cannot be helped; Nassun has no piece of the Evil Earth lodged in her brain to facilitate communication. Where matter fails, care makes do. He says, “Nida,” and that is all she needs.

Umber and Nida move. It’s fast – so fast – because the silver lattice within each has strengthened their bones and tightened the cords of their muscles so that they can do what ordinary human flesh cannot. A pulse of negation moves before them with storm-surge inexorability, immediately striking the major lobes of Nassun’s sessapinae numb, but Nassun is already on the offensive. Not physically; she cannot contest them in that sphere of battle, and besides she can barely stand. Will and the silver are all she’s got left.

So Nassun – her body still, her mind violent – snatches at the silver threads of the air around her, weaving them into a crude but efficient net. (She’s never done this before, but no one has ever told her that it can’t be done.) She wraps part of this around Nida, ignoring Umber because Schaffa told her to. And indeed, she understands in the next instant why he told her to concentrate on only one of the enemy Guardians. The silver she’s woven around Nida should catch the woman up fast, like an insect slamming into a spiderweb. Instead, Nida stumbles to a halt, then laughs while threads of something else curl forth from within her and lash the air, shredding the net around her. She lunges for Nassun again, but Nassun – after boggling at the speed and efficacy of the Guardian’s retaliation – snatches stone up from within the earth to spear Nida’s feet. This impedes Nida only a little. She bulls forward, breaking the rock shards off and charging with them still jutting through her boots. One of her hands is held like a claw, the other a flat, finger-stiffened blade. Whichever of them reaches Nassun first will dictate how she begins tearing Nassun apart with her bare hands.

Here Nassun panics. Just a little, because she would lose control of the sapphire otherwise – but some. She can sense a raw, hungry, chaotic reverberation to the silver threads thrumming through Nida, like nothing she’s ever perceived before, and it is somehow, suddenly, terrifying. She doesn’t know what that strange reverberation will do to her, if any part of Nida should touch Nassun’s bare skin. (Her mother knows, though.) She takes a step back, willing the sapphire longknife to move between her and Nida in a defensive position. Her good hand is still on the sapphire’s hilt, so it looks as if she’s brandishing a weapon with a shaking and far-too-slow hand. Nida laughs again, high and delighted, because they can both see that not even the sapphire will be enough to stop her. Nida’s claw-hand flails out, fingers splaying and reaching for Nassun’s cheek even as she weaves like a snake around Nassun’s wild slash —

Nassun drops the sapphire and screams, her dulled sessapinae flexing desperately, helplessly —

But all of the Guardians have forgotten Nassun’s other guardian.

Steel does not appear to move. In one instant he stands as he has for the past few minutes, with his back to the tumbled pile of Jija, expression serene, posture languid as he faces the northern horizon. In the next he is closer, right beside Nassun, having transported himself so quickly that Nassun hears a sharp clap of displaced air. And Nida’s forward momentum abruptly stops as her throat is caught tight within the circle of Steel’s upraised hand.

She shrieks. Nassun has heard Nida ramble for hours in her fluttery voice, and perhaps that’s made her think of Nida as a songbird, chattery and chirruping and harmless. This shriek is the cry of a raptor, savagery turning to fury as she is thwarted from stooping on her prey. She tries to wrench herself back, risking skin and tendon to get loose, but Steel’s grip is as firm as stone. She’s caught.

A sound behind Nassun makes her jerk around. Ten feet from where she stands, Umber and Schaffa have blurred together in hand-to-hand combat. She can’t see what’s happening. They’re both moving too fast, their strikes swift and vicious. By the time her ears process the sounds of a blow, they’ve already shifted to a different position. She can’t even tell what they’re doing – but she is afraid, so afraid, for Schaffa. The silver in Umber flows like rivers, power being steadily fed to him through that glimmering taproot. The thinner streams in Schaffa, however, are a wild chain of rapids and clogs, yanking at his nerves and muscles and flaring unpredictably in an attempt to distract him. Nassun can see by the concentration in Schaffa’s face that he is still in control, and that this is what has saved him; his movements are unpredictable, strategic, considered. Still. That he can fight at all is astonishing.