The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  There is something there, but it’s not like anything she’s ever felt before: a heaviness. A weight, too deep and solid and huge to be possible—not in such a small space, not so compact. It feels like there’s a mountain there, dragging Alabaster down with all its weight. He’s fighting it; that’s the only reason he’s still here at all. But he’s weak, and he’s losing the fight, and she hasn’t the first clue of how to help him. The stone eater is just too… something. Too much, too big, too powerful, and she cannot help flinching back into herself with a sense that she’s just had a near miss.

  “Promise,” he pants, while she hauls again on his shoulders and tries pushing against the stone with all her power, pulling back against that terrible weight, anything, everything. “You know what they’ll do to him, Syen. A child that strong, my child, raised outside the Fulcrum? You know.”

  A wire-frame chair in a darkened node station… She can’t think about that. Nothing’s working, and he’s mostly gone into the stone now; only his face and shoulders are above it, and that’s only because he’s straining to keep those above the stoneline. She babbles at him, sobbing, desperate for words that can somehow fix this. “I know. I promise. Oh, rust, ’Baster, please, I can’t… not alone, I can’t…”

  The stone eater’s hand rises from the stone, white and solid and rust-tipped. Surprised, Syenite screams and flinches, thinking the creature is attacking her—but no. This hand wraps around the back of Alabaster’s head with remarkable gentleness. No one expects mountains to be gentle. But they are inexorable, and when the hand pulls, Alabaster goes. His shoulders slip out of Syen’s hands. His chin, then his mouth, then his nose, then his terrified eyes—

  He is gone.

  Syenite kneels on the hard, cold stone, alone. She is screaming. She is weeping. Her tears fall onto the stone where Alabaster’s head was a moment before, and the rock does not soak the tears up. They just splatter.

  And then she feels it: the drop. The drag. Startled out of grief, she scrabbles to her feet and stumbles over to the edge of the cliff, where she can see the remaining ship. Ships, the one ’Baster’s hit with rocks seems to have righted itself somehow. No, not somehow. Ice spreads across the water’s surface around both ships. There’s a rogga on one of the ships, working for the Guardians. A four-ringer, at least; there’s too much fine control in what she’s feeling. And with that much ice—She sees a group of porpoises leap out of the water, racing away from the spreading ice, and then she sees it catch them, crawling over their bodies and solidifying them half in and half out of the water.

  What the hell is this rogga doing with that much power?

  Then she sees a portion of the rock wall that ’Baster raised shiver.

  “No—” Syenite turns and runs again, breathless, sessing rather than seeing as the Guardians’ rogga attacks the wall’s base. It’s weak where the wall curves to meet the natural curve of Meov’s harbor. The rogga’s going to bring it down.

  It takes an eternity to reach the comm level, and then the docks. She’s terrified Innon will set sail without her. He has to be able to sess what’s happening, too. But thank stone, the Clalsu is still there, and when she staggers up onto its deck, several members of the crew grab her and guide her to sit down before she collapses. They draw up the plank behind her, and she can see that they’re striking sails.

  “Innon,” she gasps as she catches her breath. “Please.”

  They half-carry her to him. He’s on the upper deck, one hand on the pilot’s wheel and the other holding Coru against his hip. He doesn’t look at her, all his attention focused on the wall; there’s already a hole in it, near the top, and as Syenite reaches him there is a final surge. The wall breaks apart and falls in chunks, rocking the ship something fierce, but Innon’s completely steady.

  “We’re sailing out to face them,” he says grimly, as she sags onto the bench nearby, and as the ship pulls away from the dock. Everyone’s ready for a fight. The catapults are loaded, the javelins in hand. “We’ll lead them away from the comm first. That way, everyone else can evacuate in the fishing boats.”

  There aren’t enough fishing boats for everyone, Syenite wants to say, and doesn’t. Innon knows it, anyway.

  Then the ship is sailing through the narrow gap that the Guardians’ orogene has made, and the Guardians’ ship is on them almost at once. There’s a puff of smoke on their deck and a hollow whoosh right as the Clalsu emerges; the cannon again. A near miss. Innon shouts and one of the catapult crews returns the favor with a basket of heavy chain, which shreds their foresail and midmast. Another volley and this time it’s a barrel of burning pitch; Syen sees people on fire running across the deck of the Guardians’ ship after that one hits. The Clalsu whips past while the Guardians’ ship founders toward the wall that is Meov rock, its deck now a blazing conflagration.

  But before they can get far there is another puff of smoke, another boom, and this time the Clalsu judders with the hit. Rust and underfires, how many of those things do they have? Syenite gets up and runs to the railing, trying to see this cannon, though she doesn’t know what she can do about it. There’s a hole in the Clalsu’s side and she can hear people screaming belowdecks, but thus far the ship is still moving.

  It’s the ship that Alabaster dropped rocks on. Some of the boulders are gone from its aft deck and it’s sitting normally in the water again. She doesn’t see the cannon, but she does see three figures standing near the ship’s bow. Two in burgundy, a third in black. As she watches, another burgundy-clad figure comes to join them.

  She can feel their eyes on her.

  The Guardians’ ship turns slightly, falling farther behind. Syenite begins to hope, but she sees it when the cannons fire this time. Three of them, big black things near the starboard railing; they jerk and roll back a little when they fire, in near unison. And a moment later, there is a mighty crack and a groan and the Clalsu shudders as if it just got hit by a fiver tsunami. Syenite looks up in time to see the mast shatter into kindling, and then everything goes wrong.

  The mast creaks and goes over like a felled tree, and it hits the deck with the same force. People scream. The ship groans and begins to list starboard, pulled by the collapsed, dragging sails. She sees two men fall into the water with the sails, crushed or smothered by the weight of cloth and rope and wood, and Earth help her, she cannot think of them. The mast is between her and the pilot deck. She’s cut off from Innon and Coru.

  And the Guardians’ ship is now closing in.

  No! Syenite reaches for the water, trying to pull something, anything, into her abused sessapinae. But there’s nothing. Her mind is as still as glass. The Guardians are too close.

  She can’t think. She scrabbles over the mast parts, gets tangled in a thicket of ropes and must fight for endless hours, it feels like, to get free. Then finally she is free but everyone’s running back the way she came, glassknives and javelins in hand, shouting and screaming, because the Guardians’ ship is right there and they are boarding.

  No.

  She can hear people dying all around her. The Guardians have brought troops of some sort with them, some comm’s militia that they’ve paid or appropriated, and the battle isn’t even close. Innon’s people are good, experienced, but their usual targets are poorly defended merchant and passenger vessels. As Syenite reaches the pilot deck—Innon isn’t there, he must have gone below—she sees Innon’s cousin Ecella slash a militiaman across the face with her glassknife. He staggers beneath the blow but then comes back up and shoves his own knife into her belly. When she falls, he pushes her away, and she falls onto the body of another Meovite, who is already dead. More of the troops are climbing aboard by the minute.

  It’s the same everywhere. They’re losing.

  She has to get to Innon and Coru.

  Belowdecks there’s almost no one there. Everyone has come up to defend the ship. But she can feel the tremor that is Coru’s fear, and she follows it to Innon’s cabin. The door opens as she reaches
it, and Innon comes out with a knife in his hand, nearly stabbing her. He stops, startled, and she looks beyond him to see that Coru has been bundled into a basket beneath the forward bulkhead—the safest place in the ship, ostensibly. But as she stands there, stupidly, Innon grabs her and shoves her into the cabin.

  “What—”

  “Stay here,” Innon says. “I have to go fight. Do whatever you have—”

  He gets no further. Someone moves behind him, too quick for Syenite to cry a warning. A man, naked to the waist. He claps hands onto either side of Innon’s head, fingers splayed across his cheeks like spiders, and grins at Syenite as Innon’s eyes widen.

  And then it is—

  Oh Earth, it is—

  She feels it, when it happens. Not just in her sessapinae. It is a grind like stone abrading her skin; it is a crush along her bones; it is, it is, it is everything that is in Innon, all the power and vibrancy and beauty and fierceness of him, made evil. Amplified and concentrated and turned back on him in the most vicious way. Innon does not have time to feel fear. Syenite does not have time to scream as Innon comes apart.

  It’s like watching a shake up close. Seeing the ground split, watching the fragments grind and splinter together, then separate. Except all in flesh.

  ’Baster, you never told me, you didn’t tell me it was like

  Now Innon is on the floor, in a pile. The Guardian who has killed him stands there, splattered in blood and grinning through it.

  “Ah, little one,” says a voice, and her blood turns to stone. “Here you are.”

  “No,” she whispers. She shakes her head in denial, steps backward. Coru is crying. She steps back again and stumbles against Innon’s bed, fumbles for the basket, pulls Coru into her arms. He clings to her, shaking and hitching fitfully. “No.”

  The shirtless Guardian glances to one side, then he moves aside to make room for another to enter. No.

  “There’s no need for these histrionics, Damaya,” Schaffa Guardian Warrant says, softly. Then he pauses, looks apologetic. “Syenite.”

  She has not seen him in years, but his voice is the same. His face is the same. He never changes. He’s even smiling, though it fades a little in distaste as he notices the mess that was Innon. He glances at the shirtless Guardian; the man’s still grinning. Schaffa sighs, but smiles in return. Then they both turn those horrible, horrible smiles on Syenite.

  She cannot go back. She will not go back.

  “And what is this?” Schaffa smiles, his gaze fixing on Coru in her arms. “How lovely. Alabaster’s? Does he live, too? We would all like to see Alabaster, Syenite. Where is he?”

  The habit of answering is too deep. “A stone eater took him.” Her voice shakes. She steps back again, and her head presses against the bulkhead. There’s nowhere left to run.

  For the first time since she’s ever known him, Schaffa blinks and looks surprised. “A stone—hmm.” He sobers. “I see. We should have killed him, then, before they got to him. As a kindness, of course; you cannot imagine what they will do to him, Syenite. Alas.”

  Then Schaffa smiles again, and she remembers everything she’s tried to forget. She feels alone again, and helpless as she was that day near Palela, lost in the hateful world with no one to rely on except a man whose love comes wrapped in pain.

  “But his child will be a more than worthwhile replacement,” Schaffa says.

  * * *

  There are moments when everything changes, you understand.

  * * *

  Coru’s wailing, terrified, and perhaps he even understands, somehow, what has happened to his fathers. Syenite cannot console him.

  “No,” she says again. “No. No. No.”

  Schaffa’s smile fades. “Syenite. I told you. Never say no to me.”

  * * *

  Even the hardest stone can fracture. It just takes the right force, applied at the right juncture of angles. A fulcrum of pressure and weakness.

  * * *

  Promise, Alabaster had said.

  Do whatever you have to, Innon had tried to say.

  And Syenite says: “No, you fucker.”

  Coru is crying. She puts her hand over his mouth and nose, to silence him, to comfort him. She will keep him safe. She will not let them take him, enslave him, turn his body into a tool and his mind into a weapon and his life into a travesty of freedom.

  * * *

  You understand these moments, I think, instinctively. It is our nature. We are born of such pressures, and sometimes, when things are unbearable—

  * * *

  Schaffa stops. “Syenite—”

  “That’s not my rusting name! I’ll say no to you all I want, you bastard!” She’s screaming the words. Spittle froths her lips. There’s a dark heavy space inside her that is heavier than the stone eater, much heavier than a mountain, and it’s eating everything else like a sinkhole.

  Everyone she loves is dead. Everyone except Coru. And if they take him—

  * * *

  —sometimes, even we… crack.

  * * *

  Better that a child never have lived at all than live as a slave.

  Better that he die.

  Better that she die. Alabaster will hate her for this, for leaving him alone, but Alabaster is not here, and survival is not the same thing as living.

  So she reaches up. Out. The amethyst is there, above, waiting with the patience of the dead, as if it somehow knew this moment would come.

  She reaches for it now and prays that Alabaster was right about the thing being too much for her to handle.

  And as her awareness dissolves amid jewel-toned light and faceted ripples, as Schaffa gasps in realization and lunges for her, as Coru’s eyes flutter shut over her pressing, smothering hand—

  She opens herself to all the power of the ancient unknown, and tears the world apart.

  * * *

  Here is the Stillness. Here is a place off its eastern coast, a bit south of the equator.

  There’s an island here—one of a chain of precarious little land slabs that rarely last longer than a few hundred years. This one’s been around for several thousand, in testament to the wisdom of its inhabitants. This is the moment when that island dies, but at least a few of those inhabitants should survive to go elsewhere. Perhaps that will make you feel better.

  The purple obelisk that hovers above it pulses, once, with a great throb of power that would be familiar to anyone who’d been in the late comm called Allia on the day of its death. As this pulse fades, the ocean below heaves as its rocky floor convulses. Spikes, wet and knifelike, burst up from the waves and utterly shatter the ships that float near the island’s shores. A number of the people aboard each—some pirates, some their enemies—are speared through, so great is the thicket of death around them.

  This convulsion spreads away from the island in a long, wending ripple, forming a chain of jagged, terrible spears from Meov’s harbor all the way to what is left of Allia. A land bridge. Not the sort anyone would much want to cross, but nevertheless.

  When all the death is done and the obelisk is calm, only a handful of people are still alive, in the ocean below. One of them, a woman, floats unconscious amid the debris of her shattered ship. Not far from her, a smaller figure—a child—floats, too, but facedown.

  Her fellow survivors will find her and take her to the mainland. There she will wander, lost and losing herself, for two long years.

  But not alone—for that is when I found her, you see. The moment of the obelisk’s pulse was the moment in which her presence sang across the world: a promise, a demand, an invitation too enticing to resist. Many of us converged on her then, but I am the one who found her first. I fought off the others and trailed her, watched her, guarded her. I was glad when she found the little town called Tirimo, and comfort if not happiness, for a time.

  I introduced myself to her eventually, finally, ten years later, as she left Tirimo. It’s not the way we usually do these things, of course; it is not the rela
tionship with her kind that we normally seek. But she is—was—special. You were, are, special.

  I told her that I was called Hoa. It is as good a name as any.

  This is how it began. Listen. Learn. This is how the world changed.

  23

  you’re all you need

  THERE’S A STRUCTURE IN CASTRIMA that glitters. It’s on the lowermost level of the great geode, and you think it must have been built rather than grown: Its walls aren’t carved solid crystal, but slabs of quarried white mica, flecked delicately with infinitesimal crystal flakes that are no less beautiful than their larger cousins, if not as dramatic. Why someone would carry these slabs here and make a house out of them amid all these ready-made, uninhabited apartments, you have no idea. You don’t ask. You don’t care.

  Lerna comes with you, because this is the comm’s official infirmary and the man you’re coming to see is his patient. But you stop him at the door, and there’s something in your face that must warn him of the danger. He does not protest when you go in without him.

  You walk through its open doorway slowly, and stop when you spy the stone eater across the infirmary’s large main room. Antimony, yes; you’d almost forgotten the name Alabaster gave her. She looks back at you impassively, hardly distinguishable from the white wall save for the rust of her fingertips and the stark black of her “hair” and eyes. She hasn’t changed since the last time you saw her: twelve years ago, at the end of Meov. But then, for her kind, twelve years is nothing.

  You nod to her, anyway. It’s the polite thing to do, and there’s still a little left of you that’s the woman the Fulcrum raised. You can be polite to anybody, no matter how much you hate them.

  She says, “No closer.”

  She’s not talking to you. You turn, unsurprised, to see that Hoa is behind you. Where’d he come from? He’s just as still as Antimony—unnaturally still, which makes you finally notice that he doesn’t breathe. He never has, in all the time you’ve known him. How the rust did you miss that? Hoa watches her with the same steady glower of threat that he offered to Ykka’s stone eater. Perhaps none of them like each other. Must make reunions awkward.