Hoa is silent in answer to your question, which is an answer in itself. And then you finally remember. Antimony, in the moments after you closed the Obelisk Gate, but before you teetered into magic-traumatized slumber. Beside her, another stone eater, strange in his whiteness, disturbing in his familiarity. Oh, Evil Earth, you don’t want to know, but—“Antimony used that …” Too-small lump of brown stone. “Used Alabaster. As raw material to—to, oh rust, to make another stone eater. And she made it look like him.” You hate Antimony all over again.
“He chose his own shape. We all do.”
This slaps your rage out of its spiral. Your stomach clenches, this time in something other than revulsion. “That—then—” You have to take a deep breath. “Then it’s him? Alabaster. He’s … he’s …” You can’t make yourself say the word.
Flick and Hoa faces you, expression compassionate, but somehow also warning. “The lattice doesn’t always form perfectly, Essun,” he says. The tone is gentle. “Even when it does, there is always … loss of data.”
You have no idea what this means and yet you’re shaking. Why? You know why. Your voice rises. “Hoa, if that’s Alabaster, if I can talk to him—”
“No.”
“Why the rust not?”
“Because it must be his choice, first.” Harder voice here. A reprimand. You flinch. “More importantly, because we are fragile at the beginning, like all new creatures. It takes centuries for us, the who of us, to … cool. Even the slightest of pressures—like you, demanding that he fit himself to your needs rather than his own—can damage the final shape of his personality.”
You take a step back, which surprises you because you hadn’t realized you were getting in his face. And then you sag. Alabaster is alive, but not. Is Stone Eater Alabaster even remotely the same as the flesh-and-blood man you knew? Does that even matter anymore, now that he has transformed so completely? “I’ve lost him again, then,” you murmur.
Hoa doesn’t seem to move at first, but there’s a brief flit of wind against your side, and abruptly a hard hand nudges the back of your soft one. “He will live for an eternity,” Hoa says, as softly as his hollow voice can manage. “For as long as the Earth exists, something of who he was will, too. You’re the one still in danger of being lost.” He pauses. “But if you choose not to finish what we have begun, I will understand.”
You look up and then, for only maybe the second or third time, you think you understand him. He knows you’re pregnant. Maybe he knew it before you did, though what that means to him, you cannot guess. He knows what underlies your thoughts about Alabaster, too, and he’s saying … that you aren’t alone. That you don’t have nothing. You have Hoa, and Ykka and Tonkee and maybe Hjarka, friends, who know you in all your rogga monstrosity and accept you despite it. And you have Lerna—quietly demanding, relentless Lerna, who does not give up and does not tolerate your excuses and does not pretend that love precludes pain. He is the father of another child that will probably be beautiful. All of your children so far have been. Beautiful, and powerful. You close your eyes against regret.
But that brings the sounds of the city to your ears, and you are startled to catch laughter on the wind, loud enough to carry up from the ground level, probably over by one of the communal fires. Which reminds you that you have Castrima, too, if you want it. This ridiculous comm of unpleasant people who are impossibly still together, which you have fought for and which has, however grudgingly, fought for you in return. It pulls your mouth into a smile.
“No,” you say. “I’ll do what needs doing.”
Hoa considers you. “You’re certain.”
Of course you are. Nothing has changed. The world is broken and you can fix it; that’s what Alabaster and Lerna both charged you to do. Castrima is more reason for you to do it, not less. And it’s time you stopped being a coward, too, and went to find Nassun. Even if she hates you. Even if you left her to face a terrible world alone. Even if you are the worst mother in the world … you did your best.
And maybe it means you’re choosing one of your children—the one who has the best chance of survival—over the other. But that’s no different from what mothers have had to do since the dawn of time: sacrifice the present, in hopes of a better future. If the sacrifice this time has been harder than most … Fine. So be it. This is a mother’s job, too, after all, and you’re a rusting ten-ringer. You’ll see to it.
“So what are we waiting for?” you ask.
“Only you,” Hoa replies.
“Right. How much time do we have?”
“Perigee is in two days. I can get you to Corepoint in one.”
“Okay.” You take a deep breath. “I need to say some goodbyes.”
With perfect bland casualness, Hoa says, “I can carry others with us.”
Oh.
You want it, don’t you? To not be alone at the end. To have Lerna’s quiet implacable presence at your back. Tonkee will be furious at not getting a chance to see Corepoint, if you leave her behind. Hjarka will be furious if you take Tonkee without her. Danel wants to chronicle the world’s transformation, for obscure Equatorial lorist reasons.
Ykka, though—
“No.” You sober and sigh. “I’m being selfish again. Castrima needs Ykka. And they’ve all suffered enough.”
Hoa just looks at you. How the rust does he manage to convey such emotion with a stone face? Even if that emotion is dry skepticism of your self-abnegating bullshit. You laugh—once, and it’s rusty. Been a while.
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
So many layers in the strata of that statement.
Okay, though. Right. This isn’t just about you, and it never has been. All things change in a Season—and some part of you is tired, finally, of the lonely, vengeful woman narrative. Maybe Nassun isn’t the only one you needed a home for. And maybe not even you should try to change the world alone.
“Let’s go ask them, then,” you say. “And then let’s go get my little girl.”
To: Yaetr Innovator Dibars
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
I’ve been asked to inform you that your funding has been cut. You are to return to the University forthwith by the least expensive means possible.
And since I know you, old friend, let me add this. You believe in logic. You think even our esteemed colleagues are immune to prejudice, or politics, in the face of hard facts. This is why you’ll never be allowed within a mile of the Funding and Allocations committee, no matter how many masterships you earn.
Our funding comes from Old Sanze. From families so ancient that they have books in their collections older than all the Universities—and they won’t let us touch them. How do you think those families got to be so old, Yaetr? Why has Sanze lasted this long? It’s not because of stonelore.
You cannot go to people like that and ask them to fund a research project that makes heroes of roggas! You just can’t. They’ll faint, and when they wake up, they’ll have you killed. They’ll destroy you as surely as they would any threat to their livelihoods and legacy. Yes, I know that’s not what you think you’re doing, but it is.
And if that isn’t enough, here is a fact that might be logical enough even for you: The Guardians are starting to ask questions. I don’t know why. No one knows what drives those monsters. But that’s why I voted with the committee majority, even if it means you hate me from here on. I want you alive, old friend, not dead in an alley with a glass poniard through your heart. I’m sorry.
Safe travels homeward.
12
Nassun, not alone
COREPOINT IS SILENT.
Nassun notices this when the vehimal in which she’s traversed the planet emerges in its corresponding station, on the other side of the world. This is located in one of the strange, slanting buildings that encircle the massive hole at Corepoint’s center. She cries for help, cries for someone, cries, as the vehimal’s door o
pens and she drags Schaffa’s limp, unresponsive body through the silent corridors and then the silent streets. He’s big and heavy, so although she tries in various ways to use magic to assist with dragging his weight—badly; magic is not meant to be used for something so gross and localized, and her concentration is poor in the moment—she makes it only a block or so away from the compound before she, too, collapses, in exhaustion.
Somerusting day, somerusting year.
Found these books, blank. The stuff they’re made of isn’t paper. Thicker. Doesn’t bend easily. Good thing, maybe, or would be dust by now. Preserve my words for eternity! Ha! Longer than my rusting sanity.
Don’t know what to write. Innon would laugh and tell me to write about sex. Right, so: I jerked off today, for the first time since A dragged me to this place. Thought about him in the middle of it and couldn’t come. Maybe I’m too old? That’s what Syen would say. She’s just mad I could still knock her up.
Forgetting how Innon used to smell. Everything smells like the sea here, but it’s not like the sea near Meov. Different water? Innon used to smell like the water there. Every time the wind blows I lose a little more of him.
Corepoint. How I hate this place.
Corepoint isn’t a ruin, quite. That is, it isn’t ruined, and it isn’t uninhabited.
On the surface of the open, endless ocean, the city is an anomaly of buildings—not very tall compared to either the recently lost Yumenes or the longer-lost Syl Anagist. Corepoint is unique, however, among both past and present cultures. The structures of Corepoint are sturdily built, of rustless metal and strange polymers and other materials that can withstand the often hurricane-force salt winds that dominate this side of the world. The few plants that grow here, in the parks that were constructed so long ago, are no longer the lovely, designer, hothouse things favored by Corepoint’s builders. Corepoint trees—hybridized and feral descendants of the original landscaping—are huge, woody things, twisted into artful shapes by the wind. They have long since broken free of their orderly beds and containers and now gnarl over the pressed-fiber sidewalks. Unlike the architecture of Syl Anagist, here there are many more sharp angles, meant to minimize the buildings’ resistance to the wind.
But there is more to the city than what can be seen.
Corepoint sits at the peak of an enormous underwater shield volcano, and the first few miles of the hole drilled at its center are actually lined with a hollowed-out complex of living quarters, laboratories, and manufactories. These underground facilities, originally meant to house Corepoint’s geomagests and genegineers, have long since been turned to a wholly different purpose—because this flip side of Corepoint is Warrant, where Guardians are made and dwell between Seasons.
We will speak more of this later.
Above the surface in Corepoint, though, it’s late afternoon, beneath a sky whose clouds are sparse amid a shockingly bright blue sky. (Seasons that start in the Stillness rarely have a severe impact on the weather in this hemisphere, or at least not for several months or years after.) As befits the bright day, there are people in the streets around Nassun as she struggles and weeps, but they do not move to help. They do not move at all, mostly—for they are stone eaters, with rose-marble lips and shining mica eyes and braids woven in pyrite gold or clear quartz. They stand on the steps of buildings that have not known human feet for tens of thousands of years. They sit along window ledges of stone or metal that have begun to deform under the pressure of incredible weight applied over decades. One sits with knees upraised and arms propped across them, leaning against a tree whose roots have grown around her; mosses line the upper surfaces of her arms and hair. She watches Nassun, only her eyes moving, in what might be interest.
They all watch, doing nothing, as this quick-moving, noisy human child sobs into the salt-laden wind until she is exhausted, and then just sits there in a huddle with her fingers still tangled in the cloth of Schaffa’s shirt.
Another day, same (?) year
No writing about Innon or Coru. Off-limits from now on.
Syen. I can still feel her—not sess, feel. There’s an obelisk here, I think it’s a spinel. When I canneck connect to it, it’s like I can feel anything they’re connected to. The amethyst is following Syen. Wonder if she knows.
Antimony says Syen made it to the mainland and is wannr wandering. That’s why I feel like I’m wandering, I guess? She’s all that’s left but she ki—fuck.
This place is ridiculous. Anniemony was right that it’s a way to trigger the Obelisk Gate without control cab? (Onyx. Too powerful, can’t risk it, would trigger alignment too quickly and then who’s to make the second traj change?) But the rusters that buildt it put everything into tht stupid hole. A told me some of it. Great project, my ass. It’s worse to see, though. This whole rusting city is a crime scene. Tooted around and found great big pipes running along the bottom of the ocean. hu HUGE, ready to pump something from the hole all the way to the continent. Magic, Animony says, did they really need so much????? More than the Gate!
Asked Tinimony to take me into the hole today and she said no. What’s in the hole, huh? What’s in the hole.
Near sunset, another stone eater appears. Here amid the elegantly gowned, colorful variety of his people, he stands out even more with his gray coloring and bare chest: Steel. He stands over Nassun for several minutes, perhaps expecting her to lift her gaze and notice him, but she does not. Presently, he says, “The ocean winds can be cold at night.”
Silence. Her hands clench and unclench on Schaffa’s clothes, not quite spasmodically. She’s just tired. She’s been holding him since the center of the Earth.
After a while longer, as the sun inches toward the horizon, Steel says, “There’s a livable apartment in a building two blocks from here. The food stored in it should still be edible.”
Nassun says, “Where?” Her voice is hoarse. She needs water. There’s some in her canteen, and in Schaffa’s canteen, but she hasn’t opened either.
Steel shifts posture, pointing. Nassun lifts her head to follow this and sees a street, unnaturally straight, seemingly paved straight toward the horizon. Wearily she gets up, takes a better grip on Schaffa’s clothes, and begins dragging him again.
Who’s in the hole, what’s in the whole, where goes the hole, how holed am I!
SEs brought better food today because I don’t eat enough. So special, delivery fressssh from the other sigh of the world. Going to dry the seeds, plant them. Remember to scrrrape up tomato I threw at A.
Book language looks almost like Sanze-mat. Characters similar? Precursor? Some words I almost recognize. Some old Eturpic, some Hladdac, a little early-dynasty Regwo. Wish Shinash was here. He would scream to see me putting my feet up on books older than forever. Always so easy to tease. Miss him.
Miss everyone, even people at the rusting Fulcrum (!) Miss voices that come out of rusting mouths. SYENITE could make me eat, you talking rock. SYENITE gave a shit about me and not just whether I could fix this world I don’t give a shit about. SYENITE should be here with me, I would give anything to have her here with me
No. She should forget me and In Meov. Find some boring fool she actually wants to sleep with. Have a boring life. She deserves that.
Night falls in the time it takes Nassun to reach the building. Steel repositions, appearing in front of a strange asymmetrical building, wedge-shaped, whose high end faces the wind. The sloping roof of the building, in the lee of the wind, is scraggly with overgrown, twisted vegetation. There’s plenty of soil on the roof, more than is likely to have accumulated from the wind over centuries. It looks planned, though overgrown. Yet amid the mess, Nassun can see that someone has hacked out a garden. Recently; the plants are overgrown, too, new growth springing up from dropped fruit and split, untended vines, but given the relative dearth of weeds and the still-neat rows, this garden can’t be more than a year or two neglected. The Season is now almost two years old.
Later. The building’s door moves on i
ts own, sliding aside as Nassun approaches. It closes on its own, too, once she’s gotten Schaffa far enough within. Steel moves inside, pointing upstairs. She drags Schaffa to the foot of the stairs and then drops beside him, shaking, too tired to think or go any farther.
Schaffa’s heart is still strong, she thinks, as she uses his chest for a pillow. With her eyes shut, she can almost imagine that he’s holding her, rather than the other way around. It is paltry comfort, but enough to let her sleep without dreams.
In the morning, Nassun gets Schaffa up the steps. The apartment is thankfully on only the second floor; the stairwell door opens right into it. Everything inside is strange, to her eye, yet familiar in purpose. There’s a couch, though its back is at one end of the long seat, rather than behind it. There are chairs, one fused to some kind of big slanted table. For drawing, maybe. The bed, in the attached room, is the strangest thing: a big wide hemisphere of brightly colored cushion without sheets or pillows. When Nassun tentatively lies down on it, though, she finds that it flattens and conforms to her body in ways that are stunningly comfortable. It’s warm, too—actively heating up beneath her until the aches of sleeping in a cold stairwell go away. Fascinated despite herself, Nassun examines the bed and is shocked to realize that it is full of magic, and has covered her in same. Threads of silver roam over her body, determining her discomfort by touching her nerves and then repairing her bruises and scrapes; other threads whip the particles of the bed until friction warms them; yet more threads search her skin for infinitesimal dry flakes and flecks of dust, and scrub them away. It’s like what she does when she uses the silver to heal or cut things, but automatic, somehow. She can’t imagine who would make a bed that could do magic. She can’t imagine why. She can’t fathom how anyone could have convinced all this silver to do such nice things, but that’s what’s happening. No wonder the people who built the obelisks needed so much silver, if they used it in lieu of wearing blankets, or taking baths, or letting themselves heal over time.