The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  She trails off, and for a moment you see her detach from the here and now. You know Alebid is—was—a mid-sized city comm, known for its art scene. Then she snaps back, because of course she is a good Sanzed girl, and Sanzeds hold little truck with daydreamers.

  She continues: “We saw something sort of—tear, off to the north. Along the horizon, I mean. We could see this… red light flare up at one point, then it spread off to the east and west. I couldn’t tell how far away, but we could see it reflected on the underside of the clouds.” She’s drifting again, but remembering something terrible this time, and so her face is hard and grim and angry. That’s more socially acceptable than nostalgia. “It spread fast. We were just standing in the street, watching it grow and trying to figure out what we were seeing, and sessing, when the ground started to shake. Then something—a cloud—obscured the red, and we realized it was coming toward us.”

  It had not been a pyroclastic cloud, you know, or she wouldn’t be here talking to you. Just an ash storm, then. Alebid is well south of Yumenes; all they got was the dregs of whatever more northerly comms did. And that’s good, because those dregs alone almost broke the much-further-south Tirimo. By rights Alebid should have been pebbles.

  An orogene saved this girl, you suspect. Yes, there’s a node station near Alebid, or there was.

  “Everything was still standing,” she says, confirming your guess. “But the ash that followed—no one could breathe. The ash was getting in people’s mouths, into their lungs, turning into cement. I tied my blouse around my face; it was made of the same stuff as a mask. That’s the only thing that saved me. Us.” She glances at her young man, and you realize the scrap around his wrist is part of what used to be a woman’s garment, by the color. “It was evening, after a beautiful day. It’s not like anybody had their runny-sacks with them.”

  Silence falls. This time everyone in the group lets it go on, and drifts with her for a moment. The memory’s just that bad. You remember, too, that not many Equatorials even have runny-sacks. The nodes have been more than enough to keep the biggest cities safe for centuries.

  “So we ran,” the woman concludes abruptly, with a sigh. “And we haven’t stopped.”

  You thank them for the information, and leave before they can ask questions in return.

  As the days pass, you hear other, similar, stories. And you notice that none of the Equatorials you meet are from Yumenes, or any comms from the same approximate latitude. Alebid is as far north as the survivors run.

  Doesn’t matter, though. You’re not going north. And no matter how much it bothers you—what’s happened, what it means—you know better than to dwell too much on it. Your head’s crowded enough with ugly memories.

  So you and your companions keep going through the gray days and ruddy nights, and all that really concerns you is keeping your canteen filled and your food stores topped up, and replacing your shoes when they start to wear thin. Doing all this is easy, for now, because people are still hoping this will be just a brief Season—a year without a summer, or two, or three. That’s how most Seasons go, and comms that remain willing to trade during such times, profiting off others’ poor planning, generally come out of it wealthy. You know better—this Season will be much, much longer than anyone could have planned for—but that won’t stop you from taking advantage of their misconception.

  Now and again you stop at comms you pass on the road, some of them huge and sprawling with granite walls that loom overhead, some of them protected merely by fencewire, sharpened sticks, and poorly armed Strongbacks. The prices are beginning to go strange. One comm will take currency, and you use up nearly all of yours buying Hoa his own bedroll. The next won’t take currency at all, but they will take useful tools, and you’ve got one of Jija’s old knapping hammers at the bottom of your bag. That buys you a couple weeks’ worth of cachebread and three jars of sweet nut paste.

  You share the food out among the three of you, because that’s important. Stonelore’s full of admonitions against hoarding within a group—and you are a group by now, whether you want to admit it or not. Hoa does his part, staying up most of the night to keep watch; he doesn’t sleep much. (Or eat anything. But after a while you try not to notice that, the same way you try not to think about him turning a kirkhusa into stone.) Tonkee doesn’t like approaching comms, even though with fresh clothing and no-worse-than-usual body odor she can pass for just another displaced person rather than a commless. So that part’s on you. Still, Tonkee helps where she can. When your boots wear out and the comm you’ve approached won’t take anything you offer, Tonkee surprises you by holding out a compass. Compasses are priceless, with the sky clouded over and no visibility through the ashfall. You ought to be able to get ten pairs of boots for it. But the woman doing the comm’s trading has you over a barrel and she knows it, so you get only two pairs of boots, one for you and another for Hoa, since his are already starting to look worn. Tonkee, who has her own spare boots dangling from her pack, dismisses the price when you complain about it later. “There are other ways to find our way,” she says, and then she stares at you in a way that makes you uneasy.

  You don’t think she knows you’re a rogga. But who can really say, with her?

  The miles roll on. The road forks often because there are a lot of big comms in this part of the midlats, and also because the Imperial Road intersects comm roads and cowpaths, rivers and old metal tracks that were used for transportation in some way or another by some ancient deadciv or another. These intersections are why they put Imperial Roads where they do; roads have always been the lifeblood of Old Sanze. Unfortunately that means it’s easy to get lost if you don’t know where you’re going—or if you don’t have a compass, or a map, or a sign saying filicidal fathers this way.

  The boy is your savior. You’re willing to believe that he can somehow sense Nassun because for a while he’s better than a compass, pointing unerringly in the direction that you should go whenever you reach a crossroads. For the most part you follow the Imperial Road—this one is Yumenes-Ketteker, though Ketteker’s all the way in the Antarctics and you pray you won’t have to go that far. At one point Hoa takes you down a comm road that cuts between Imperial segments and probably saves you a lot of time, especially if Jija just stayed on the main roads the whole way. (The shortcut is a problem because the comm that built it is bristling with well-armed Strongbacks who shout and fire crossbow warning shots when they see you. They do not open their gates to trade. You feel their sights on you long after you’ve passed by.) When the road meanders away from due south, though, Hoa’s less certain. When you ask, he says that he knows the direction in which Nassun is traveling, but he cannot sense the specific route she and Jija took. He can only point out the path that’s most likely to get you there.

  As the weeks pass, he begins to have trouble with even that. You stand with Hoa at one crossroads for a full five minutes while he chews his lip, until finally you ask him what’s wrong.

  “There are a lot of you in one place now,” he says uneasily, and you change the subject quickly because if Tonkee doesn’t know what you are, then she will after a conversation like that.

  A lot of you, though. People? No, that doesn’t make sense. Roggas? Gathering together? That makes even less sense. The Fulcrum died with Yumenes. There are satellite Fulcrums in Arctic—far north, past the now-impassible central latitude of the continent—and Antarctic, but you’re months away fom the latter. Any orogenes left on the roads now are people like her, hiding what they are and trying to survive same as the rest. It wouldn’t make sense for them to gather into a group; that would increase the chance of discovery.

  At the crossroads Hoa picks a path, and you follow, but you can tell by the frown on his face that it’s a guess.

  “It’s nearby,” Hoa finally tells you, one night while you’re eating cachebread and nut paste and trying not to wish it was something better. You’re starting to crave fresh vegetables, but those are going to be in short sup
ply very soon if they aren’t already, so you try to ignore the craving. Tonkee is off somewhere, probably shaving. She’s run out of something in the past few days, some biomest potion she keeps in her pack and tries not to let you see her drinking even though you don’t care, and she’s been sprouting beard stubble every few days because of the lack. It’s made her irritable.

  “The place with all the orogenes,” Hoa continues. “I can’t find anything past them. They’re like… little lights. It’s easy to see just one by itself, Nassun, but together they make one very bright light, and she passed close to it or through it. Now I can’t—” He seems to grope for the words. There are no words for some things. “I can’t, uh—”

  “Sess?” you suggest.

  He frowns. “No. That isn’t what I do.”

  You decide not to ask what he does.

  “I can’t… I can’t know anything else. The bright light keeps me from focusing on any little light.”

  “How many”—you leave out the word, in case Tonkee’s coming back—“are there?”

  “I can’t tell. More than one. Less than a town. But more are heading there.”

  This worries you. They can’t all be chasing stolen daughters and murderous husbands. “Why? How do they know to go there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Well, that’s helpful.

  All you know for sure is that Jija headed south. But “south” covers a lot of territory—more than a third of the continent. Thousands of comms. Tens of thousands of square miles. Where’s he going? You don’t know. What if he turns east, or west? What if he stops?

  There’s a notion. “Could they have stopped there? Jija and Nassun, in that place?”

  “I don’t know. They went that way, though. I didn’t lose them until here.”

  So you wait till Tonkee comes back, and you tell her where you’re going. You don’t tell her why, and she doesn’t ask. You don’t tell her what you’re going into, either—because, really, you don’t know. Maybe someone’s trying to build a new Fulcrum. Maybe there was a memo. Regardless, it’s good to have a clear destination again.

  You ignore the feeling of unease as you start down the road that—hopefully—Nassun traveled.

  * * *

  Judge all by their usefulness: the leaders and the hearty, the fecund and the crafty, the wise and the deadly, and a few strong backs to guard them all.

  —Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse nine

  14

  Syenite breaks her toys

  REMAIN AT LOCATION. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS, reads the telegram from Yumenes.

  Syenite offers this to Alabaster wordlessly, and he glances at it and laughs. “Well, well. I’m beginning to think you’ve just earned yourself another ring, Syenite Orogene. Or a death sentence. I suppose we’ll see when we get back.”

  They’re in their room at the Season’s End Inn, naked after their usual evening fuck. Syenite gets up, naked and restless and annoyed, to pace around the room’s confines. It’s a smaller room than the one they had a week ago, since their contract with Allia is now fulfilled and the comm will no longer pay for their boarding.

  “When we get back?” She glares at him as she paces. He is completely relaxed, a long-boned positive space against the bed’s negative whiteness, in the dim evening light. She cannot help thinking of the garnet obelisk when she looks at him: He is just as should-not-be, just as not-quite-real, just as frustrating. She cannot understand why he’s not upset. “What is this ‘remain at location’ bullshit? Why won’t they let us come back?”

  He “tsks” at her. “Language! You were such a proper thing back at the Fulcrum. What happened?”

  “I met you. Answer the question!”

  “Maybe they want to give us a vacation.” Alabaster yawns and leans over to take a piece of fruit from the bag on the nightstand. They’ve been buying their own food for the past week. At least he’s eating without being reminded, now. Boredom is good for him. “What does it matter whether we waste our time here, or on the road back to Yumenes, Syen? At least here we can be comfortable. Come back to bed.”

  She bares her teeth at him. “No.”

  He sighs. “To rest. We’ve done our duty for the night. Earthfires, do you want me to leave for a while so you can masturbate? Will that put you in a better mood?”

  It would, actually, but she won’t admit that to him. She does come back to the bed, finally, for lack of anything better to do. He hands her an orange slice, which she accepts because they’re her favorite fruit and they’re cheap here. There’s a lot to be said for living in a Coaster comm, she’s thought more than once since coming here. Mild weather, good food, low cost of living, meeting people from every land and region as they flow through the port for travel and trade. And the ocean is a beautiful, entrancing thing; she has stood at the window and stared out at it for hours. If not for the tendency of Coaster comms to be wiped off the map every few years by tsunami… well.

  “I just don’t understand,” she says, for what feels like the ten thousandth time. ’Baster’s probably getting tired of her complaining, but she’s got nothing else to do, so he’ll have to endure it. “Is this some kind of punishment? Was I not supposed to find a giant floating whatevertherust hidden at the bottom of a harbor during a routine coral-clearing job?” She throws up her hands. “As if anyone could’ve anticipated that.”

  “Most likely,” Alabaster says, “they want you on hand for whenever the geomests arrive, in case there’s more potential business for the Fulcrum in it.”

  He’s said this before, and she knows it’s probably true. Geomests have already been converging on the city, in fact—and archaeomests, and lorists, and biomests, and even a few doctors who are concerned about the effect that an obelisk so close will have on Allia’s populace. And the charlatans and cranks have come, too, of course: metallorists and astronomests and other junk science practitioners. Anyone with a bit of training or a hobby, from every comm in the quartent and neighboring ones. The only reason Syenite and Alabaster have even gotten a room is that they’re the ones who discovered the thing, and because they got in early; otherwise, every inn and lodging-house in the quartent is full to brimming.

  No one’s really cared about the damn obelisks before now. Then again, no one’s ever seen one hovering so close, clearly visible and stuffed with a dead stone eater, above a major population center.

  But beyond interviewing Syenite for her perspective on the raising of the obelisk—she’s already starting to wince every time a stranger is introduced to her as Somefool Innovator Wherever—the ’mests haven’t wanted anything from her. Which is good, since she’s not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Fulcrum. Alabaster might be, but she doesn’t want him bargaining with anyone for her services. She doesn’t think he’d intentionally sign her up for anything she doesn’t want; he’s not a complete ass. It’s just the principle of the thing.

  And worse, she doesn’t quite believe Alabaster. The politics of being left here don’t make sense. The Fulcrum should want her back in the Equatorials, where she can be interviewed at Seventh by Imperial Scholars, and where the seniors can control how much the ’mests have to pay for access to her. They should want to interview her themselves, and better understand that strange power she’s now felt three times, and which she finally understands is somehow coming from obelisks.

  (And the Guardians should want to talk to her. They always have their own secrets to keep. It disturbs her most of all that they’ve shown no interest.)

  Alabaster has warned her not to talk about this part of it. No one needs to know that you can connect to the obelisks, he said, the day after the incident. He was still weak then, barely able to get out of bed after his poisoning; turns out he’d been too orogenically exhausted to do anything when she raised the obelisk, despite her boasting to Asael about his long-distance skill. Yet weak as he was, he’d grabbed her hand and gripped it hard to make sure she listened. Tell them you just tried to shift the strata an
d the thing popped up on its own, like a cork underwater; even our own people will believe that. It’s just another deadciv artifact that doesn’t make any sense; nobody will question you about it if you don’t give them a reason to. So don’t talk about it. Not even to me.

  Which of course makes her want to talk about it even more. But the one time she tried after ’Baster recovered, he glared at her and said nothing, until she finally took the hint and went to go do something else.

  And that pisses her off more than anything else.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she says finally, and gets to her feet.

  “Okay,” says Alabaster, stretching and getting up; she hears his joints pop. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I didn’t ask for company.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He’s smiling at her again, but in that hard-edged way she’s beginning to hate. “But if you’re going out alone, at night, in a strange comm where someone’s already tried to kill one of us, then you’re rusting well going to have company.”

  At this, Syenite flinches. “Oh.” But that’s the other subject they can’t talk about, not because Alabaster’s forbidden it but because neither of them knows enough to do more than speculate. Syenite wants to believe that the simplest explanation is the most likely: Someone in the kitchen was incompetent. Alabaster has pointed out the flaw in this, however: No one else at the inn, or in the city, has gotten sick. Syenite thinks there might be a simple explanation for this, too—Asael told the kitchen workers to contaminate only Alabaster’s food. That’s the kind of thing angry Leaders tend to do, at least in all the stories about them, which abound with poisonings and convoluted, indirect viciousness. Syen prefers stories about Resistants overcoming impossible odds, or Breeders saving lives through clever political marriages and strategic reproduction, or Strongbacks tackling their problems with good honest violence.