The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Why did she bring us here?” To save them. All right, they can see Allia smoking, over the water. But Antimony’s kind usually ignores and avoids humankind, unless humans piss them off.

  Alabaster shakes his head, focusing on his footing again. “There’s no ‘why’ to anything they do. Or if there is, they never bother telling us. I’ve stopped asking, frankly; waste of breath. Antimony has been coming to me for the past, hmm, five years? Usually when no one else is around.” He makes a soft, rueful sound. “I used to think I was hallucinating her.”

  Yes, well. “And she doesn’t tell you anything?”

  “She just says she’s here for me. I can’t decide whether it’s a supportive statement—you know, ‘I’m here for you, ’Baster, I’ll always love you, never mind that I’m a living statue that only looks like a pretty woman, I’ve got your back’—or something more sinister. Does it matter, though? If she saved our lives?”

  Syen supposes not. “And where is she now?”

  “Gone.”

  Syen resists the urge to kick him down the steps. “Into, ah—” She knows what she’s read, but it does seem sort of absurd to say it aloud. “Into the earth?”

  “I suppose so. They move through rock like it’s air; I’ve seen them do it.” He pauses on one of the stairs’ frequent landings, which almost makes Syenite run into the back of him. “You do know that’s probably how she got us here, right?”

  It’s something Syen’s been trying not to think about. Even the idea of being touched by the stone eater is unnerving. To think further of being carried by the creature, dragged down beneath miles of solid rock and ocean: She cannot help shuddering. A stone eater is a thing that defies reason—like orogeny, or deadciv artifacts, or anything else that cannot be measured and predicted in a way that makes sense. But where orogeny can be understood (somewhat) and controlled (with effort), and where deadciv artifacts can at least be avoided until they rise from the rusting ocean right in front of you, stone eaters do as they please, go where they will. Lorists’ tales are generous with warnings regarding these creatures; no one tries to stop them.

  This thought makes Syen herself stop, and Alabaster continues for another flight before he realizes she’s not following. “The stone eater,” she says, when he turns back to her with an annoyed look. “The one in the obelisk.”

  “Not the same one,” he says, with the sort of patience one reserves for people who are being particularly stupid but don’t deserve to be told that to their faces because they’ve had a hard day. “I told you, I’ve known this one awhile.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.” You idiot. “The stone eater that was in the obelisk looked at me, before… before. It moved. It wasn’t dead.”

  Alabaster stares at her. “When did you see this?”

  “I…” She gestures, helplessly. There aren’t words for it. “There was… it was when I… I think I saw it.” Or maybe she hallucinated it. Some kind of life-flashing-before-her-eyes vision, triggered by the Guardian’s knife? It felt so real.

  Alabaster regards her for a long moment, his mobile face still in that way she is beginning to associate with his disapproval. “You did something that should’ve killed you. It didn’t, but only because of sheer dumb luck. If you… saw things… I’m not surprised.”

  Syenite nods, not protesting his assessment. She felt the obelisk’s power in those moments. It would have killed her, had it been whole. As it is, she feels… burned, sort of numb, in its wake. Is that why she can’t work orogeny anymore? Or is that the lingering effect of whatever the Guardian did?

  “What happened back there?” she asks him, frustrated. There’s so much that makes no sense in all of this. Why did someone try to kill Alabaster? Why did a Guardian come to finish the job? What did any of that have to do with the obelisk? Why are they here, on a death-trap island in the middle of the rusting sea? “What’s happening now? ’Baster, Earth eat us, you know more than you’re saying.”

  His expression grows pained, but he finally sighs and folds his arms. “I don’t, you know. Whatever you might think, I really don’t have all the answers. I have no idea why you think I do.”

  Because he knows so much else that she doesn’t. And because he’s a ten-ringer: He can do things she can’t imagine, can’t even describe, and some part of her thinks he can probably understand things she can’t, too. “You knew about that Guardian.”

  “Yes.” Now he looks angry, though not at her. “I’ve run into that kind before. But I don’t know why he was there. I can only guess.”

  “That’s better than nothing!”

  He looks exasperated. “Okay, then. A guess: Someone, or many someones, knew about that broken obelisk in Allia’s harbor. Whoever that was, they also knew that a ten-ringer would likely notice the thing the instant he started sessing around down there. And since all it took to reactivate it was a four-ringer sessing around, it stands to reason that these mysterious Someones had no idea just how sensitive, or how dangerous, the obelisk really was. Or neither you nor I would ever have made it to Allia alive.”

  Syenite frowns, putting a hand on the railing to steady herself when an especially harsh gust of wind soughs up the cliff walls. “Someones.”

  “Groups. Factions, in some conflict we know nothing about and have only blundered into through sheer dumb luck.”

  “Factions of Guardians?”

  He snorts derisively. “You say that like it’s impossible. Do all roggas have the same goals, Syen? Do all stills? Even the stone eaters probably have their spats with one another.”

  And Earth only knows what that’s like. “So one of these, ah, factions, dispatched that—Guardian—to kill us.” No. Not once Syenite had told the Guardian that she’d been the one to activate the obelisk. “To kill me.”

  Alabaster nods, somber. “I imagine he’s the one who poisoned me, too, thinking I’d be the one to trigger the obelisk. Guardians don’t like to discipline us where the stills can see, if they can avoid it; might earn us inappropriate public sympathy. That broad-daylight attack was a last resort.” He shrugs, frowning as he considers it. “I guess we’re lucky he didn’t try to poison you instead. Even for me, it should’ve worked. Paralysis of any kind tends to affect the sessapinae, too; I would’ve been completely helpless. If.”

  If he hadn’t been able to summon power from the amethyst obelisk, harnessing Syenite’s sessapinae to do what his could not. Now that Syen better understands what he did that night, it’s somehow worse. She cocks her head at him. “No one really knows what you’re capable of, do they?”

  Alabaster sighs a little, looking away. “I don’t even know what I’m capable of, Syen. The things the Fulcrum taught me… I had to leave them behind, past a certain point. I had to make my own training. And sometimes, it seems, if I can just think differently, if I can shed enough of what they taught me and try something new, I might…” He trails off, frowning in thought. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But I guess it’s just as well that I don’t, or the Guardians would’ve killed me a long time ago.”

  It’s half-babble, but Syenite sighs in understanding. “So who has the ability to send killer Guardians out to, to…” Hunt down ten-ringers. Scare the piss out of four-ringers.

  “All Guardians are killers,” he snaps, bitterly. “As for who has the power to command a Guardian forth, I have no idea.” Alabaster shrugs. “Rumor has it the Guardians answer to the Emperor—supposedly the Guardians are the last bit of power he possesses. Or maybe that’s a lie, and the Yumenes Leadership families control them like they do everything else. Or are they controlled by the Fulcrum itself? No idea.”

  “I heard they controlled themselves,” Syen says. It’s probably just grit gossip.

  “Maybe. The Guardians are certainly as quick to kill stills as roggas when it comes to maintaining their secrets, or if a still just gets in their way. If they have a hierarchy, only the Guardians themselves recognize it. As for how they do what they do…” He takes a deep
breath. “It’s some sort of surgical procedure. They’re all the children of roggas, but not roggas themselves, because there’s something about their sessapinae that makes this procedure work better on them. There’s an implant involved. Into the brain. Earth knows how they learned that, or when they started doing it, but it gives them the ability to negate orogeny. And other abilities. Worse ones.”

  Syenite flinches, remembering the sound of ripping tendons. The palm of her hand stings sharply.

  “He didn’t try to kill you, though,” she says. She’s looking at his shoulder, which is still visibly darker colored than the cloth around it, though the walk has probably loosened the dried blood so it no longer sticks to the wound. There’s a bit of fresh dampness there; it’s bleeding again, but thankfully not much. “That knife—”

  Alabaster nods grimly. “A Guardian specialty. Their knives look like ordinary blow glass, but they aren’t. They’re like the Guardians themselves, somehow disrupting whatever it is in an orogene that makes us what we are.” He shudders. “Never knew how it felt before; it hurt like Earthfire. And no,” he says quickly, forestalling Syen’s open mouth, “I don’t know why he hit me with it. He’d already stilled us both; I was just as helpless as you.”

  And that. Syenite licks her lips. “Can you… are you still…”

  “Yes. It goes away after a few days.” He smiles at her look of relief. “I told you, I’ve run into Guardians like that before.”

  “Why did you tell me not to let him touch me? With his skin?”

  Alabaster goes silent. Syenite thinks at first he’s just being stubborn again, then she really looks at his expression and sees the shadows in it. After a moment, he blinks. “I knew another ten-ringer, when I was younger. When I was… He was a mentor, sort of. Like Feldspar is, for you.”

  “Feldspar isn’t—never mind.”

  He ignores her anyway, lost in memory. “I don’t know why it happened. But one day we were walking the Ring, just out enjoying a nice evening…” He falters abruptly, then looks at her with a wry, if pained, expression. “We were looking for someplace to be alone.”

  Oh. Maybe that explains a few things. “I see,” she says unnecessarily.

  He nods, unnecessarily. “Anyway, this Guardian shows up. Shirtless, like the one you saw. He didn’t say anything about why he’d come, either. He just… attacked. I didn’t see—it happened fast. Like in Allia.” ’Baster rubs a hand over his face. “He put Hessionite in a choke hold, but not hard enough to actually choke him. The Guardian needed skin-to-skin contact. Then he just held Hess, and, and grinned while it happened. Like it was the most beautiful thing in the world, the sick fuck.”

  “What?” She almost doesn’t want to know, and yet she does. “What does the Guardian’s skin do?”

  Alabaster’s jaw flexes, the muscles knotting. “It turns your orogeny inward. I guess. I don’t know a better way to explain it. But everything inside us that can move apart plates and seal faults and so on, all that power we’re born with… Those Guardians turn it back on us.”

  “I, I don’t…” But orogeny doesn’t work on flesh, not directly. If it did—

  … Oh.

  He falls silent. Syenite does not prompt him to go on, this time.

  “Yeah. So.” Alabaster shakes his head, then glances toward the stone-cut cliff village. “Shall we go on?”

  It’s hard to talk, after that story. “ ’Baster.” She gestures at herself, at her uniform, which is dusty but still plainly an Imperial Orogene’s blackjacket. “Neither of us can so much as shake a pebble right now. We don’t know these people.”

  “I know. But my shoulder hurts, and I’m thirsty. You see any free-flowing water around here?”

  No. And no food. And there’s no way to swim back to the mainland, not across such a long expanse. That’s if Syenite knew how to swim, which she doesn’t, and if the ocean wasn’t teeming with monsters like the tales say, which it probably is.

  “Fine, then,” she says, and pushes past him to lead the way. “Let me talk to them first, so you don’t get us killed.” Crazy ruster.

  Alabaster chuckles a little as if he’s heard her unvoiced thought, but he does not protest, resuming the descent in her wake.

  The stairs level out, eventually, into a smooth-carved walkway that curves along the cliff wall some hundred feet above the highest waterline. Syen figures that means the comm is safe from tsunami because of its elevation. (She can’t be sure, of course. All this water is still strange to her.) It also almost makes up for the lack of a protective wall—although, all things considered, the ocean makes for a pretty effective barrier between these people and anyone from outside their… comm, if it can be called that. There are a dozen or so boats docked below, bobbing at jetties that look as though they’re made of piled stone overlaid haphazardly with boards—ugly and primitive in comparison with Allia’s neat piers and pylons, but effective. And the boats are strange-looking too, at least compared to the boats she’s seen: Some are simple, elegant things that look as if they might have been carved whole from tree trunks, braced on each side by some sort of strut. Some are larger and have sails, but even these are of a completely foreign design to what she’s used to seeing.

  There are people at and around the boats, some of them carting baskets to and fro, others working on an elaborate rigging of sails on one of them. They don’t look up; Syenite resists the urge to call down to them. She and Alabaster have already been seen, anyhow. At the first of the cavern mouths up ahead—each of which is huge, now that they’re on the “ground” level and can get a good look—a knot of people has begun to gather.

  Syenite licks her lips and takes a deep breath as they draw near. They don’t look hostile. “Hello,” she ventures, and then waits. No one tries to kill her immediately. So far, so good.

  The twenty or so people waiting for them mostly look bemused at the sight of her and Alabaster. The group is mostly children of varying ages, a few younger adults, a handful of elders, and a leashed kirkhusa that seems friendly, to judge by the wag of its stubby tail. The people are definitely Eastcoasters, mostly tall and dark like Alabaster though with a sprinkling of paler citizens, and she spots at least one pouf of ashblow hair lifting in the constant breeze. They also don’t look alarmed, which is good, though Syen gets the distinct impression they’re not used to surprise visitors.

  Then an older man with an air of Leadership, or maybe just leadership, steps forward. And says something completely incomprehensible.

  Syen stares at him. She can’t even tell what language that is, although it’s familiar somehow. Then—oh, of rusting course—Alabaster sort of jerks and says something back in the same tongue, and all at once everyone chuckles and murmurs and relaxes. Except Syenite.

  She glares at him. “Translation?”

  “I told them you were afraid I’d get us killed if I spoke first,” he says, and she considers killing him right then and there.

  So it goes. They start talking, the people of this strange village and Alabaster, while Syen can’t do anything but stand there trying not to look frustrated. Alabaster pauses to translate when he can, though he stumbles over some of what the strangers are saying; they’re all talking really fast. She gets the impression that he’s summarizing. A lot. But it turns out that the comm is called Meov, and the man who has stepped forward is Harlas, their headman.

  Also, they’re pirates.

  * * *

  “There’s no way to grow food here,” Alabaster explains. “They do what they have to do, to get by.”

  This is later, after the people of Meov have invited them into the vaulted halls which make up their comm. It’s all inside the cliff—unsurprising since the island consists of little more than a straight column of undifferentiated rock—with some of the caverns natural and others carved by unknown means. All of it is surprisingly beautiful, too, with artfully vaulted ceilings, aqueduct arches running along many walls, and enough torch and lantern light that none of it feel
s claustrophobic. Syen doesn’t like the feel of all that rock hovering overhead and waiting to crush them next time there’s a shake, but if she must be stuck inside a death trap, at least this one is cozy.

  The Meovites have put them up in a guesthouse—or rather, a house that’s been abandoned for a while and isn’t in too much disrepair. She and Alabaster have been given food from the communal fires, access to the communal baths, and a couple of changes of clothing in the local style. They’ve even been allotted a modicum of privacy—though this is difficult, as curious children keep peeking through their carved, curtainless windows to giggle at them and then run away. It’s almost cute.

  Syen sits now on a pile of folded blankets, which seem to have been made for the purpose of sitting, watching as Alabaster winds a length of clean rag around his injured shoulder, holding the other end in his teeth for a moment to tighten it into a bandage. He could ask her for help, of course, but he doesn’t, so she doesn’t offer.

  “They don’t trade much with the mainland,” he continues as he works. “All they’ve really got to offer is fish, and the mainland Coaster comms have plenty of that. So Meov raids. They attack vessels along the main trading routes, or extort comms for protection from attacks—yes, their attacks. Don’t ask me how it works; that’s just what the headman told me.”

  It sounds… precarious. “What are they even doing here?” Syen looks around at the rough-carved walls and ceiling. “It’s an island. I mean, these caverns are nice, sort of, until the next shake or tsunami wipes the whole thing off the map. And like you said, there’s no way to grow food. Do they even have storecaches? What happens if there’s a Season?”

  “Then they’ll die, I guess.” ’Baster shrugs, mostly to settle his newly tied bandage. “I asked them that, too, and they just sort of laughed the question off. You notice this island sits on top of a hot spot?”

  Syen blinks. She hadn’t noticed, but then her orogeny is as numb as a hammered finger. His is, too, but the numbness is relative, apparently. “How deep?”