At the mansion gates they hand off their horses to a stablehand and kneel in the forecourt to have their hands soaped and washed by a household Resistant servant, which is a local tradition to reduce the chance of spreading disease to the comm’s Leadership. After that, a very tall woman, almost as black-skinned as Alabaster and dressed in a white variation on the militia’s uniform, comes to the court and gestures curtly for them to follow. She leads them through the mansion and into a small parlor, where she closes the door and moves to sit at the room’s desk.
“It took you both long enough to get here,” she says by way of greeting, looking at something on her desk as she gestures peremptorily for them to sit. They take the chairs on the other side of the desk, Alabaster crossing his legs and steepling his fingers with an unreadable expression on his face. “We expected you a week ago. Do you want to proceed to the harbor right way, or can you do it from here?”
Syenite opens her mouth to reply that she’d rather go to the harbor, since she’s never shaken a coral ridge before and being closer will help her understand it better. Before she can speak, however, Alabaster says, “I’m sorry; who are you?”
Syenite’s mouth snaps shut and she stares at him. He’s smiling politely, but there’s an edged quality to the smile that immediately puts Syenite on alert. The woman stares at him, too, practically radiating affront.
“My name is Asael Leadership Allia,” she says, slowly, as if speaking to a child.
“Alabaster,” he replies, touching his own chest and nodding. “My colleague is Syenite. But forgive me; I didn’t want just your name. We were told the quartent governor was a man.”
That’s when Syenite understands, and decides to play along. She doesn’t understand why he’s decided to do this, but then there’s no real way to understand anything he does. The woman doesn’t get it; her jaw flexes visibly. “I am deputy governor.”
Most quartents have a governor, a lieutenant governor, and a seneschal. Maybe a comm that’s trying so hard to outdo the Equatorials needs extra layers of bureaucracy. “How many deputy governors are there?” Syenite asks, and Alabaster makes a “tut” sound.
“We must be polite, Syen,” he says. He’s still smiling, but he’s furious; she can tell because he’s flashing too many teeth. “We’re only orogenes, after all. And this is a member of the Stillness’s most esteemed use-caste. We are merely here to wield powers greater than she can comprehend in order to save her region’s economy, while she—” He waggles a finger at the woman, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. “She is a pedantic minor bureaucrat. But I’m sure she’s a very important pedantic minor bureaucrat.”
The woman isn’t pale enough for her skin to betray her, but that’s all right: Her rock-stiff posture and flared nostrils are clue enough. She looks from Alabaster to Syenite, but then her gaze swings back to him, which Syen completely understands. Nobody’s more irritating than her mentor. She feels a sudden perverse pride.
“There are six deputy governors,” she says at last, answering Syenite’s question even as she glares shards at Alabaster’s smiling face. “And the fact that I am a deputy governor should be irrelevant. The governor is a very busy man, and this is a minor matter. Therefore a minor bureaucrat should be more than sufficient to deal with it. Yes?”
“It is not a minor matter.” Alabaster’s not smiling anymore, although he’s still relaxed, fingers tapping each other. He looks like he’s considering getting angry, though Syen knows he’s already there. “I can sess the coral obstruction from here. Your harbor’s almost unusable; you’ve probably been losing heavier-hauling merchant vessels to other Coaster comms for a decade, if not longer. You’ve agreed to pay the Fulcrum such a vast sum—I know it’s vast because you’re getting me—that you’d better hope the cleared harbor restores all that lost trade, or you’ll never pay off the debt before the next tsunami wipes you out. So we? The two of us?” He gestures briefly at Syen, then re-steeples his fingers. “We’re your whole rusting future.”
The woman is utterly still. Syenite cannot read her expression, but her body is stiff, and she’s drawn back ever so slightly. In fear? Maybe. More likely in reaction to Alabaster’s verbal darts, which have surely stricken tender flesh.
And he continues. “So the least you could do is first offer us some hospitality, and then introduce us to the man who made us travel several hundred miles to solve your little problem. That’s courtesy, yes? That’s how officials of note are generally treated. Wouldn’t you agree?”
In spite of herself, Syen wants to cheer.
“Very well,” the woman manages at last, with palpable brittleness. “I will convey your… request… to the governor.” Then she smiles, her teeth a white flash of threat. “I’ll be sure to convey your disappointment with our usual protocol regarding guests.”
“If this is how you usually treat guests,” Alabaster says, glancing around with that perfect arrogance only a lifelong Yumenescene can display to its fullest, “then I think you should convey our disappointment. Really, right to business like this? Not even a cup of safe to refresh us after our long journey?”
“I was told that you had stopped in the outlying districts for the night.”
“Yes, and that took the edge off. The accommodations were also… less than optimal.” Which is unfair, Syen thinks, since the lodging-house had been warm and its beds comfortable; the proprietor had been scrupulously courteous once she had money in hand. But there’s no stopping him. “When was the last time you traveled fifteen hundred miles, Deputy Governor? I assure you, you’ll need more than a day’s rest to recover.”
The woman’s nostrils all but flare. Still, she’s Leadership; her family must have trained her carefully in how to bend with blows. “My apologies. I did not think.”
“No. You didn’t.” All at once Alabaster rises, and although he keeps the movement smooth and unthreatening, Asael flinches back as if he’s about to come at her. Syen gets up, too—belatedly, since Alabaster caught her by surprise—but Asael doesn’t even look at her. “We’ll stay the night in that inn we passed on the way here,” Alabaster says, ignoring the woman’s obvious unease. “About two streets over. The one with the stone kirkhusa in front? Can’t recall the name.”
“Season’s End.” The woman says it almost softly.
“Yes, that sounds right. Shall I have the bill sent here?”
Asael is breathing hard now, her hands clenched into fists atop the desk. Syen’s surprised, because the inn’s a perfectly reasonable request, if a bit pricey—ah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? This deputy governor has no authorization to pay for their accommodations. If her superiors are annoyed enough about this, they’ll take the cost out of her pay.
But Asael Leadership Allia does not drop her polite act and just start shouting at them, as Syen half-expects. “Of course,” she says—even managing a smile, for which Syen almost admires her. “Please return tomorrow at this time, and I will further instruct you then.”
So they leave, and head down the street to the very fancy inn that Alabaster has secured for them.
As they stand at the window of their room—sharing again, and they’re taking care not to order particularly expensive food, so that no one can call their request for accommodation exhorbitant—Syenite examines Alabaster’s profile, trying to understand why he still radiates fury like a furnace.
“Bravo,” she says. “But was that necessary? I’d rather get the job done and start back as soon as possible.”
Alabaster smiles, though the muscles of his jaw flex repeatedly. “I would’ve thought you’d like being treated like a human being for a change.”
“I do. But what difference does it make? Even if you pull rank now, it won’t change how they feel about us—”
“No, it won’t. And I don’t care how they feel. They don’t have to rusting like us. What matters is what they do.”
That’s all well and good for him. Syenite sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose bet
ween thumb and forefinger, trying for patience. “They’ll complain.” And Syenite, since this is technically her assignment, will be the one censured for it.
“Let them.” He turns away from the window then and heads toward the bathroom. “Call me when the food comes. I’m going to soak until I turn pruney.”
Syenite wonders if there is any point in hating a crazy man. It’s not like he’ll notice, anyway.
Room service arrives, bringing a tray of modest but filling local food. Fish is cheap in most Coaster comms, so Syen has treated herself by ordering a temtyr fillet, which is an expensive delicacy back in Yumenes. They only serve it every once in a while in the Fulcrum eateries. Alabaster comes out of the bathroom in a towel, indeed looking pruney—which is when Syen finally notices how whipcord thin he has become in the past few weeks of traveling. He’s muscle and bone, and all he’s ordered to eat is a bowl of soup. Granted, it’s a big bowl of hearty seafood stew, which someone has garnished with cream and a dollop of some kind of beet chutney, but he clearly needs more.
Syenite has a side dish of garlic yams and carmelized silvabees, in addition to her own meal, on a separate smaller plate. She deposits this on his tray.
Alabaster stares at it, then at her. After a moment his expression softens. “So that’s it. You prefer a man with more meat on his bones.”
He’s joking; they both know she wouldn’t enjoy sex with him even if she found him attractive. “Anyone would, yes.”
He sighs, then obediently begins eating the yams. In between bites—he doesn’t seem hungry, just grimly determined—he says, “I don’t feel it anymore.”
“What?”
He shrugs, which she thinks is less confusion and more his inability to articulate what he means. “Much of anything, really. Hunger. Pain. When I’m in the earth—” He grimaces. That’s the real problem: not his inability to say it, but the fact that words are inadequate to the task. She nods to show that she’s understood. Maybe someday someone will create a language for orogenes to use. Maybe such a language has existed, and been forgotten, in the past. “When I’m in the earth, the earth is all I can sess. I don’t feel—this.” He gestures around the room, at his body, at her. “And I spend so much time in the earth. Can’t help it. When I come back, though, it’s like… it’s like some of the earth comes with me, and…” He trails off. But she thinks she understands. “Apparently this is just something that happens past the seventh or eighth ring. The Fulcrum has me on a strict dietary regimen, but I haven’t been following it much.”
Syen nods, because that’s obvious. She puts her sweetweed bun on his plate, too, and he sighs again. Then he eats everything on his plate.
They go to bed. And later, in the middle of the night, Syenite dreams that she is falling upward through a shaft of wavering light that ripples and refracts around her like dirty water. At the top of the shaft, something shimmers there and away and back again, like it is not quite real, not quite there.
She starts awake, unsure of why she suddenly feels like something is wrong, but certain that she needs to do something about it. She sits up, rubbing her face blearily, and only as the remnants of the dream fade does she become aware of the hovering, looming sense of doom that fills the air around her.
In confusion she looks down at Alabaster—and finds him awake beside her, oddly stiff, his eyes wide and staring and his mouth open. He sounds like he’s gargling, or trying to snore and failing pathetically. What the rust? He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t move, just keeps making that ridiculous noise.
And meanwhile his orogeny gathers, and gathers, and gathers, until the entire inside of her skull aches. She touches his arm, finds it clammy and stiff, and only belately understands that he can’t move.
“’Baster?” She leans over him, looking into his eyes. They don’t look back at her. Yet she can clearly sess something there, awake and reacting within him. His power flexes as his muscles seem to be unable, and with every gargling breath she feels it spiral higher, curl tighter, ready to snap at any moment. Burning, flaking rust. He can’t move, and he’s panicking.
“Alabaster!” Orogenes should never, ever panic. Ten-ringer orogenes especially. He can’t answer her, of course; she says it mostly to let him know she’s here, and she’s helping, so hopefully he’ll calm down. It’s some kind of seizure, maybe. Syenite throws off the covers and rolls onto her knees and puts her fingers into his mouth, trying to pull his tongue down. She finds his mouth full of spit; he’s drowning in his own damn drool. This prompts her to turn him roughly onto his side, tilting his head so the spit will run out, and they are both rewarded by the sound of his first clear breath. But it’s shallow, that breath, and it takes him far too long to inhale it. He’s struggling. Whatever it is that’s got him, it’s paralyzing his lungs along with everything else.
The room rocks, just a little, and throughout the inn Syenite hears voices rise in alarm. The cries end quickly, however, because nobody’s really worried. There’s no sess of impending shake. They’re probably chalking it up to a strong wind gust against the building’s side… for now.
“Shit shit shit—” Syenite crouches to get into his line of sight. “’Baster, you stupid cannibalson ruster—rein it in. I’m going to help you, but I can’t do that if you kill us all!”
His face doesn’t react, his breathing doesn’t change, but that looming sense of doom diminishes almost at once. Better. Good. Now—“I have to go and find a doctor—”
The jolt that shakes the building is sharper this time; she hears dishes rattle and clink on their discarded food cart. So that’s a no. “I can’t help you! I don’t know what this is! You’re going to die if—”
His whole body jerks. She isn’t sure whether that’s something deliberate or some kind of convulsion. But she realizes it was a warning a moment later, when that thing happens again: his power, clamping on to hers like a vise. She grits her teeth and waits for him to use her to do whatever he needs to do… but nothing happens. He has her, and she can feel him doing something. Flailing, sort of. Searching, and finding nothing.
“What?” Syenite peers into his slack face. “What are you looking for?”
No response. But it’s obviously something he can’t find without moving on his own.
Which makes no sense. Orogenes don’t need eyes to do what they do. Infants in the crib can do what they do. But, but—she tries to think. Before, when this happened on the highroad, he had first turned toward the source of distress. She pictures the scene in her mind, trying to understand what he did and how he did it. No, that’s not right; the node station had been slightly to the northwest, and he’d stared dead west, at the horizon. Shaking her head at her own foolishness even as she does it, Syenite jumps up and hurries to the window, opening it and peering out. Nothing to see but the sloping streets and stuccoed buildings of the city, quiet at this late hour. The only activity is down the road, where she can glimpse the dock and the ocean beyond: People are loading a ship. The sky is patchy with clouds, nowhere near dawn. She feels like an idiot. And then—
Something clenches in her mind. From the bed behind her she hears Alabaster make a harsh sound, feels the tremor of his power. Something caught his attention. When? When she looked at the sky. Puzzled, she does it again.
There. There. She can almost feel his elation. And then his power folds around her, and she stops seeing with anything like eyes.
It’s like the dream she had. She’s falling, up, and this somehow makes sense. All around her, the place she’s falling through, is color and faceted flickering, like water—except it’s purple-pale instead of blue or clear, low-quality amethyst with a dollop of smoky quartz. She flails within it, sure for an instant that she’s drowning, but this is something she perceives with sessapinae and not skin or lungs; she can’t be flailing because it’s not water and she’s not really here. And she can’t drown because, somehow, Alabaster has her.
Where she flails, he is purposeful. He drags her up, falling
faster, searching for something, and she can almost hear the howl of it, feel the drag of forces like pressure and temperature gradually chilling and prickling her skin.
Something engages. Something else shunts open. It’s beyond her, too complex to perceive in full. Something pours through somewhere, warms with friction. Someplace inside her smooths out, intensifies. Burns.
And then she is elsewhere, floating amid immense gelid things, and there is something on them, among them
a contaminant
That is not her thought.
And then it’s all gone. She snaps back into herself, into the real world of sight and sound and hearing and taste and smell and sess—real sess, sess the way it’s supposed to work, not whatever-the-rust Alabaster just did—and Alabaster is vomiting on the bed.
Revolted, Syen jerks away, then remembers that he’s paralyzed; he shouldn’t be able to move at all, let alone vomit. Nevertheless, he’s doing it, having half-pushed himself up off the bed so that he can heave effectively. Obviously the paralysis has eased.
He doesn’t throw up much, just a teaspoon or two of greasy-looking white-clear stuff. They ate hours ago; there shouldn’t be anything in his upper digestive tract at all. But she remembers
a contaminant
and realizes belatedly what’s come out of him. And further, she realizes how he’s done it.
When he finally gets it all up, and spits a few times for emphasis or good measure, he flops back onto the bed on his back, breathing hard, or maybe just enjoying the sensation of being able to breathe at will.
The Fifth Season Page 14