But there is hope. In the small hours of one morning after Hoa has taken the stone burden of your left breast from you, he says quietly, “I think I know where she’s going. If I’m right, she’ll stop soon.” He sounds uncertain. No, not uncertain. Troubled.
You sit on a rocky outcrop some ways from the encampment, recovering from the … excision. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it would be. You pulled off your clothing layers to bare the stoned breast. He put a hand on it and it came away from your body, cleanly, into his palm. You asked why he didn’t do that for your arm and he said, “I do what’s most comfortable for you.” Then he lifted your breast to his lips and you decided to become fascinated by the flat, slightly roughened cautery of stone over the space where your breast was. It aches a little, but you’re not sure whether this is the pain of amputation or something more existential.
(Three bites, it takes him, to eat the breast that Nassun liked best. You’re perversely proud to feed someone else with it.)
As you awkwardly pull undershirts and shirts back on with one arm—stuffing one side of your bra with the lightest undershirt so it won’t slip off—you probe after that hint of unease that you heard in Hoa’s voice earlier. “You know something.”
Hoa doesn’t answer at first. You think you’re going to have to remind him that this is a partnership, that you’re committed to catching the Moon and ending this endless Season, that you care about him but he can’t keep hiding things from you like this—and then he finally says, “I believe Nassun seeks to open the Obelisk Gate herself.”
Your reaction is visceral and immediate. Pure fear. It probably isn’t what you should feel. Logic would dictate disbelief that a ten-year-old girl can manage a feat that you barely accomplished. But somehow, maybe because you remember the feel of your little girl thrumming with angry blue power, and you knew in that instant that she understood the obelisks better than you ever will, you have no trouble believing Hoa’s core premise—that your little girl is bigger than you thought.
“It will kill her,” you blurt.
“Very likely, yes.”
Oh, Earth. “But you can track her again? You lost her after Castrima.”
“Yes, now that she is attuned to an obelisk.”
Again, though, that odd hesitation is in his voice. Why? Why would it bother him that—Oh. Oh, rusty burning Earth. Your voice shakes as you understand. “Which means that any stone eater can ‘perceive’ her now. Is that what you’re saying?” Castrima all over again. Ruby Hair and Butter Marble and Ugly Dress, may you never see those parasites again. Fortunately, Hoa killed most of them. “Your kind get interested in us then, right? When we start using obelisks, or when we’re close to being able to.”
“Yes.” Inflectionless, that one soft word, but you know him by now.
“Earthfires. One of you is after her.”
You didn’t think stone eaters were capable of sighing, but sure enough the sound emerges from Hoa’s chest. “The one you call Gray Man.”
Cold runs through you. But yes. You’d guessed already, really. There have been, what, three orogenes in the world lately who mastered connecting to the obelisks? Alabaster and you and now Nassun. Uche, maybe, briefly—and maybe there was even a stone eater lurking about Tirimo back then. Rusting bastard must be terribly disappointed that Uche died by filicide rather than stoning.
Your jaw tightens as your mouth tastes of bile. “He’s manipulating her.” To activate the Gate and transform herself into stone, so that she can be eaten. “That’s what he tried to do at Castrima, force Alabaster, or me, or—rust it, or Ykka, any of us, to try to do something beyond our ability so we might turn ourselves into—” You put a hand on the stone marker of your breast.
“There have always been those who use despair and desperation as weapons.” This is delivered softly, as if in shame.
Suddenly you’re furious with yourself, and your impotence. Knowing that you’re the real target of your own anger doesn’t stop you from taking it out on him. “Seems to me all of you do that!”
Hoa has positioned himself to gaze out at the dull red horizon, a statue paying homage to nostalgia in pensive shadowed lines. He does not turn, but you hear hurt in his voice. “I haven’t lied to you.”
“No, you’ve just withheld the truth so much it’s the same fucking thing!” You rub your eyes. Had to take the goggles off to put your shirt back on, and now you’ve got ash in them. “You know what, just—I don’t want to hear anything else right now. I need to rest.” You get to your feet. “Take me back.”
His hand is abruptly extended in your direction. “One more thing, Essun.”
“I told you—”
“Please. You need to know this.” He waits until you settle into a fuming silence. Then he says, “Jija is dead.”
You freeze.
In this moment I remind myself of why I continue to tell this story through your eyes rather than my own: because, outwardly, you’re too good at hiding yourself. Your face has gone blank, your gaze hooded. But I know you. I know you. Here is what’s inside you.
You surprise yourself by being surprised. Surprised, that is, and not angry, or thwarted, or sad. Just … surprised. But that is because your first thought, after relief that Nassun’s safe now, is …
Isn’t she?
And then you surprise yourself by being afraid. You aren’t sure of what, but it’s a stark, sour thing in your mouth. “How?” you ask.
Hoa says, “Nassun.”
The fear increases. “She couldn’t have lost control of her orogeny, she hasn’t done that since she was five—”
“It was not orogeny. And it was intentional.”
There, at last: the foreshock of a Rifting-level shake, inside you. It takes you a moment to say aloud, “She killed him? On purpose?”
“Yes.”
You fall silent then, dazed, troubled. Hoa’s hand is still extended toward you. An offer of answers. You aren’t sure you want to know, but … but you take his hand anyway. Perhaps it’s for comfort. You don’t imagine that his hand folds about your own and squeezes, just a little, in a way that makes you feel better. Still he waits. You’re very, very glad for his consideration.
“Is he … Where is,” you begin, when you feel ready. You’re not ready. “Is there a way I can go there?”
“There?”
You’re pretty sure he knows where you mean. He’s just making sure you know what you’re asking for.
You swallow hard and try to reason it out. “They were in the Antarctics. Jija didn’t keep her on the road forever. She had somewhere safe, time to get stronger.” A lot stronger. “I can hold my breath underground, if you … Take me to where she w—” But no. That’s not really where you want to go. Stop dancing around it. “Take me to where Jija is. To … to where he died.”
Hoa doesn’t move for perhaps half a minute. You’ve noticed this about him. He takes varying amounts of time to respond to conversational cues. Sometimes his words nearly overlap yours when he replies, and sometimes you think he hasn’t heard you before he finally gets around to replying. You don’t think he’s thinking during that time, or anything. You think it just doesn’t mean anything to him—one second or ten, now or later. He heard you. He’ll get around to it eventually.
In token of which, at last, he blurs a bit, though you see the slowness of the end of the gesture as he puts his other hand over yours as well, sandwiching you between his hard palms. The pressure of both hands increases until the grip is quite firm. Not uncomfortable, but still. “Close your eyes.”
He’s never suggested this before. “Why?”
He takes you down. It’s further down than you’ve ever been before, and it isn’t instantaneous this time. You gasp inadvertently—somehow—and thus discover that you don’t need to hold your breath after all. As the dark gets darker, it brightens with flashes of red, and then for just a moment you blur through molten reds and oranges and catch the most fleeting glimpse of a waveri
ng open space where something in the distance is bursting apart in a shower of semiliquid glowing chunks—and then there is black around you again, and then you stand on open ground beneath a thinly clouded sky.
“That’s why,” Hoa says.
“Rusty flaking fuck!” You try to yank your hand free and fail. “Shit, Hoa!”
Hoa’s hands stop pressing so hard on yours, so that you can slip free. You stagger a few feet away and then clap hands over yourself, checking for injury. You’re fine—not burned to death, not crushed by the pressure as you should have been, not suffocated, not even shaken up. Much.
You straighten and rub your face. “Okay. I’m really going to have to remember that stone eaters don’t say anything without reason. Never wanted to actually see the Fire-Under-Earth.”
But you’re here now, standing atop a hill that is itself on some kind of plateau. The sky is your place-marker. It’s later in the morning here than it was where you were—a little after dawn, instead of predawn. The sun is actually visible, though thin through the scrim of ash clouds overhead. (You surprise yourself by feeling an ache of longing at the sight.) But the fact that you can see it means that you’re much farther from the Rifting than you were a few moments ago. You glance to the west, and the faint shimmer of a dark blue obelisk in the distance confirms your guess. This is where, a month or so ago when you opened the Obelisk Gate, you felt Nassun.
(That way. She’s gone that way. But that way lies thousands of square miles of the Stillness.)
You turn to find that you’re standing amid a small cluster of wooden buildings positioned at the top of the hill, including one storeshack on stilts, a few lean-tos, and what look like dormitories or classroom buildings. All of it is surrounded, however, by a neat, precisely level fence of columnar basalt. That an orogene has made this, harnessing the slow explosion of the great volcano beneath your feet, is as plain to you as the sun in the sky. But equally obvious is the fact that the compound is empty. There’s no one in sight, and the reverberations of footprints on the ground are farther away, beyond the fence.
Curious, you walk to a break in the basalt fence, where a pathway that is half dirt and half cobbles wends down. At the foot of the hill is a village, occupying the rest of the plateau. The village could be any comm anywhere. You make out houses in varying shapes, most with still-growing housegreens, several standing storecaches, what looks like a bathhouse, a kiln shed. The people moving among the buildings don’t glance up to notice you, and why would they? It’s a lovely day, here where the sun still mostly shines. They’ve got fields to tend and—are those little rowboats tied to one of the watchtowers?—trips to the nearby sea to organize. This compound, whatever it is, is unimportant to them.
You turn away from the village, and that’s when you spot the crucible.
It’s near the edge of the compound, elevated a little above the rest of it, though visible from where you are. When you climb the path to look into the crucible bowl, which is marked out in cobbles and brick, it’s old habit to thrust your senses into the ground to find the nearest marked stone. Not far, only maybe five or six feet down. You search its surface and find the faint pressure indentations of a chisel, maybe a hammer. FOUR. It’s too easy; in your day the stones were marked with paint and numbers, which made them less distinctive. Still, the stone is small enough that, yes, anyone below a four-ringer would have trouble finding and identifying it. They’ve got the details of the training wrong, but the basics are spot-on.
“This can’t be the Antarctic Fulcrum,” you say, crouching to finger one of the stones of the ring. Just pebbles instead of the beautiful tile mosaic you remember, but again, they’ve got the idea.
Hoa’s still standing where you emerged from the ground, hands still positioned to press down on yours, perhaps for the return trip. He doesn’t answer, but then you’re mostly talking to yourself.
“I always heard that Antarctic was small,” you continue, “but this is nothing. This is a camp.” There’s no Ring Garden. No Main building. Also, you’ve heard that the Arctic and Antarctic Fulcrums were lovely, despite their size and remote location. That makes sense; the Fulcrum’s beauty was all that official, state-sanctioned orogene-kind ever had to show for itself. This sorry collection of shacks doesn’t fit the ideology. Also—“It’s on a volcano. And too close to those stills down the hill.” That village isn’t Yumenes, surrounded on all sides by node maintainers and with the added protection of the most powerful senior orogenes. One overwrought grit’s tantrum could turn this whole region into a crater.
“It isn’t the Antarctic Fulcrum,” Hoa says. His voice is usually soft, but he’s turned away now, and that makes him softer. “That’s farther to the west, and it has been purged. No orogenes live there anymore.”
Of course it’s been purged. You set your jaw against sorrow. “So this is somebody’s idea of homage. A survivor?” Inadvertently you find another marker underground—a small round pebble, maybe fifty feet down. NINE is written on it, in ink. You have no trouble reading it. Shaking your head, you rise and turn to explore the compound further.
Then you stop, tensing, as a man limps out of one of the dormitory-looking buildings. He stops, too, staring at you in surprise. “Who the rust are you?” he asks, in a noticeable Antarctic drawl.
Your awareness plummets into the earth—and then you wrench it back up. Stupid, because remember? Orogeny will kill you? Also, the man isn’t even armed. He’s fairly young, probably only in his twenties despite an already-receding hairline. The limp is an easy thing, and one of his shoes is built higher than the other—ah. The village handyman, probably, come to do some basic caretaking on buildings that might again be needed someday.
“Uh, hi,” you stammer. Then you fall silent, not sure what to say from there.
“Hi.” The man sees Hoa and flinches, then stares with the open shock of someone who’s only heard of stone eaters in lorist tales, and maybe didn’t quite believe them. Only belatedly does he seem to remember you, frowning a little at the ash on your hair and clothing, but it’s clear you’re not as impressive a sight. “Tell me that’s a statue,” he says to you. Then he laughs a little, nervously. “Except it wasn’t here when I came up the hill. Uh, hi, I guess?”
Hoa doesn’t bother replying, though you see his eyes have shifted to watch the man instead of you. You steel yourself and step forward. “Sorry to alarm you,” you say. “You from this comm?”
The man finally focuses on you. “Uh, yeah. And you’re not.” Instead of showing unease, however, he blinks. “You another Guardian?”
Your skin prickles all over. For an instant you want to shout no, and then sense reasserts itself. You smile. They always smile. “Another?”
The young man’s looking you up and down now, maybe suspicious. You don’t care, as long as he answers your questions and doesn’t attack you. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “We found the two dead ones after the children left on that training trip.” His lip curls, just a little. You’re not sure whether he doesn’t believe the children have gone off training, whether he’s really upset about “the two dead ones,” or whether that’s just the usual lip-curl that people wear when they talk about roggas, since it’s obvious that’s what the children in question must be. If Guardians were here. “Headwoman did say there might be other Guardians along someday. The three we had all popped up out of nowhere, after all, at different times down the years. You’re just a late one, I guess.”
“Ah.” It is surprisingly easy to pretend to be a Guardian. Just keep smiling, and never offer information. “And when did the others leave on their … training trip?”
“About a month ago.” The young man shifts, getting comfortable, and turns to gaze after the sapphire obelisk in the distance. “Schaffa said they were going far enough away that we wouldn’t feel any aftershakes of what the kids did. Guess that’s pretty far.”
Schaffa. The smile freezes on your face. You can’t help hissing it. “Schaffa.”
>
The young man frowns at you. Definitely suspicious now. “Yeah. Schaffa.”
It can’t be. He’s dead. “Tall, black hair, icewhite eyes, strange accent?”
The young man relaxes somewhat. “Oh. You know him, then?”
“Yes, very well.” So easy to smile. Harder to wrestle down the urge to scream, to grab Hoa, to demand that he plunge you both into the earth now, now, now, so you can go and rescue your daughter. Hardest of all not to fall to the ground and curl into a ball, trying to clench the hand you no longer have but that hurts; Evil Earth, it aches like it’s broken all over again, phantom pain so real your eyes prickle with pain tears.
Imperial Orogenes do not lose control. You haven’t been a blackjacket for going on twenty years, and you lose control all the rusting time—but nevertheless the old discipline helps you pull yourself together. Nassun, your baby, is in the hands of a monster. You need to understand how this happened.
“Very well,” you repeat. No one will think repetition strange, from a Guardian. “Can you tell me about one of his charges? Midlatter girl, brown and willowy, curly hair, gray eyes—”
“Nassun, right. Jija’s girl.” The young man relaxes completely now, not noticing that you’ve tensed that much more. “Evil Earth, I hope Schaffa kills her while they’re on that trip.”
The threat is not to you, but your awareness dips again anyway, before you drag it back. Ykka’s right: You really do need to stop defaulting to kill everything. At least your smile hasn’t faltered. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I think she’s the one who did it … Rust, could’ve been any of ’em, though. That girl’s just the one who gave me the shivers the most.” His jaw tightens as he finally notices the sharp edges of your smile. But that, too, isn’t something that anyone familiar with Guardians would question. He just looks away.
“‘Did it’?” you ask.
“Oh. Guess you wouldn’t know. Come on, I’ll show you.”