So you’re halfway across the infirmary, your steps brisk and your hands fisted at your sides, when he snaps, “Walk out that door and you will starve to death. Stay and you have a chance.”
You keep walking, yelling over your shoulder, “You figured it out!”
“It took me ten years! And—fucking, flaking rust, you hardheaded, steel-hearted—”
The geode jolts. Not just the infirmary building but the whole damned thing. You hear cries of alarm outside, and that does it. You stop and clench your fists and slam a counter-torus against the fulcrum that he’s positioned just underneath Castrima. It doesn’t dislodge his; you’re still not precise enough for that, and anyway you’re too angry to try very hard. The movement stops, however—whether because you stopped it or because you’ve surprised him so much that he stopped it, you don’t care.
Then you turn back, storming at him in such a fury that Antimony vanishes and is suddenly standing beside him, a silent sentinel warning. You don’t care about her, and you don’t care that Alabaster is bent again, making a low strained wheezing sound, or any of it.
“Listen to me, you selfish ass,” you snarl, bending down so the stone eater will be the only one to hear. ’Baster’s shaking, in visible pain, and a day ago that would’ve been enough to stop you. Now you’re too angry for pity. “I have to live here even if you’re just waiting to die, and if you make these people hate us because you can’t rein it in—”
Wait. You trail off, distracted. This time you can see the change as it happens to his arm—the left one, which had been longer. The stone of him creeps along slowly, steadily, making a minute hissing sound as it transmutes flesh into something else. And nearly against your will you shift your sight as he has taught you, searching between the gelid bubbles of him for those elusive tendrils of connection. You see, suddenly, that they are brighter, almost like silver metal, tightening into a lattice and aligning in new ways that you’ve never seen before.
“You’re such an arrogant ruster,” he snarls through his teeth. This breaks through your astonishment about his arm, replacing it with affront that he of all people has called you arrogant. “Essun. You act like you’re the only one who’s made mistakes, the only one who ever died inside and had to keep going. You don’t know shit, won’t listen to shit—”
“Because you won’t tell me anything! You expect me to listen to you, but you don’t share, you just demand and proclaim and, and—and I’m not a child! Evil Earth, I wouldn’t even speak to a child this way!”
(There is a traitor part of you that whispers, Except you did. You spoke to Nassun like this. And the loyal part of you snarls back, Because she wouldn’t have understood. She wouldn’t have been safe if you’d been gentler, slower. It was for her own good, and—)
“It’s for your own rusting good,” Alabaster grates. The progression of the stone down his arm has stopped, only an inch or so this time. Lucky. “I’m trying to protect you, for Earth’s sake!”
You stop, glaring at him, and he glares back, and silence falls.
There is the clink of something heavy and metallic being put down behind you. This makes you glance back at Lerna, who is looking at you and has folded his arms. Most of the people in Castrima, even the orogenes, won’t know what the jolt was all about, but he does because he saw the body language, and now you’ve got to explain things to him—hopefully before he doses Alabaster’s next bowl of mush with something toxic.
It’s a reminder that these are not the old days and you cannot react in the old ways. If Alabaster has not changed, then it’s up to you. Because you have.
So you straighten and take a deep breath. “You’ve never taught anyone anything, have you?”
He blinks, frowning in apparent suspicion at your change of tone. “I taught you.”
“No, Alabaster. Back then you did impossible things and I just watched you and tried not to die when I imitated you. But you’ve never tried to intentionally disseminate information to another adult, have you?” You know the answer even without him saying it, but it’s important that he say it. This is something he needs to learn.
A muscle in his jaw flexes. “I’ve tried.”
You laugh. The defensive note in his voice tells you everything. After another moment’s consideration—and a deep breath to marshal your self-control—you sit down again. This leaves Antimony looming over you both, but you try to ignore her. “Listen,” you say. “You need to give me a reason to trust you.”
His eyes narrow. “You don’t trust me by now?”
“You’ve destroyed the world, Alabaster. You’ve told me you want me to make it worse. I’m not hearing a whole lot here that screams, ‘Obey me without question.’”
His nostrils flare. The pain of the stoning seems to have faded, though he’s drenched with sweat and still breathing hard. But then something in his expression shifts, too, and a moment later he slumps, to the degree that he is able.
“I let him die,” he murmurs, looking away. “Of course you don’t trust me.”
“No, Alabaster. The Guardians killed Innon.”
He half smiles. “Him, too.”
Then you know. Ten years and it’s like no time has passed at all. “No,” you say again. But this is softer. Strengthless. He’s said he wouldn’t forgive you for Corundum… but perhaps you’re not the only one he doesn’t forgive.
A long silence passes.
“All right,” he says at last. His voice is very soft. “I’ll tell you.”
“What?”
“Where I’ve been for the past ten years.” He glances up at Antimony, who still looms over both of you. “What this is all about.”
“She isn’t ready,” the stone eater says. You jump at her voice.
Alabaster tries to shrug, winces as something twinges somewhere on his body, sighs. “Neither was I.”
Antimony stares down at both of you. It’s not really that different from the way she’s been staring at you since you came back, but it feels more pent. Maybe that’s just projection. But then, suddenly, she vanishes. You see it happen this time. Her form blurs, becoming insubstantial, translucent. Then she drops into the ground as if a hole has opened beneath her feet. Gone.
Alabaster sighs. “Come sit beside me,” he says.
You frown immediately. “Why?”
“So we can have sex again. Why the rust do you think?”
You loved him once. You probably still do. With a sigh you get up and move to the wall. Gingerly, though his back is unburned, you prop yourself for comfort, then rest a hand against his back to hold him up, the way Antimony so often does.
Alabaster’s silent for a moment, and then he says, “Thank you.”
Then… he tells you everything.
Breathe not the fine ashfall. Drink not the red water. Walk not long upon warm soil.
—Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse seven
9
Nassun, needed
BECAUSE YOU ARE ESSUN, I should not need to remind you that all Nassun knew before Found Moon was Tirimo, and the ash-darkening world of the road during a Fifth Season. You know your daughter, don’t you? So it should be obvious therefore that Found Moon becomes something she never believed she had before: a true home.
It is not a newcomm. At its core is the village of Jekity, which was a city before the Choking Season some hundred years before. During that Season, Mount Akok blanketed the Antarctics with ash—but that is not what nearly killed Jekity, since the city had vast stores and sturdy wood-and-slate walls at the time. Jekity the city died because of human errors, compounded: A child lighting a lantern spilled oil, which set off a fire that swept the western end of the comm and burned a third of it before people managed to get it under control. The comm’s headman died in the fire, and when three qualified candidates stepped forward to take his place, factionalism and infighting meant that the burned section of the wall didn’t get rebuilt quickly enough. A tibbit-run—small, furred animals that swarm like ants when
food is scarce enough—swept into the comm and took care of anyone too slow to get off the ground… and the comm’s ground-level storecaches. The survivors lasted for a time on what was left, then starved. By the time the sky cleared five years later, less than five thousand souls remained of the hundred thousand who’d begun the Season.
The Jekity of now is even smaller. The poor, unskilled repairs made to the wall during Choking are still in place, and while the stores have been elevated and replenished sufficiently to meet Imperial standards, this is only on paper: The comm has done a bad job of rotating old, spoiled stores out and laying in new. Strangers have rarely asked to join Jekity over the years. Even by Antarctic standards, the comm is seen as ill-fated. Its young people usually leave to talk or marry their way into other, growing communities where jobs are more plentiful and the memory of suffering does not linger. When Schaffa found this sleepy terrace-farming comm ten years before, and convinced the then-headwoman Maite to allow him to set up a special Guardian facility within the comm’s walls, she hoped that it was the beginning of a turnaround for her home. Guardians are a healthy addition to any community, aren’t they? And indeed, there are now three Guardians in Jekity including Schaffa, along with nine children of varying ages. There were ten, but when one of the children caused a brief but powerful earthshake amid a temper tantrum one evening, the child vanished. Maite did not ask questions. It’s good to know the Guardians are doing their jobs.
Nassun and her father do not know this as they move into the comm, though others will eventually tell them. The healers—an elderly doctor and a forest herbalist—spend seven days getting Jija out of danger, because he develops a fever not long after the surgery on his wound. Nassun tends him the whole while. When it becomes clear that he’ll survive, however, Schaffa introduces them to Maite, who’s delighted to learn that Jija is a stoneknapper. The comm has not had one for several decades, so they’ve been sending orders to knappers in the comm of Deveteris, twenty miles away. There’s an old, empty house in the comm with an attached kiln, and while a forge would’ve been more useful, Jija tells her he can make it work. Maite gives it a month to be sure, and listens when her people tell her that Jija is polite and friendly and sensible. He’s physically hearty, too, since he’s recovering from that wound like a proper Resistant, and since he managed to survive the road with no companion but a little girl. Everyone notices how well behaved and devoted his daughter is, too—not at all what anyone would expect of a rogga. Thus, at the end of the month, Jija receives the name Jija Resistant Jekity. They induct him with a ceremony that most of the comm has never seen before, so long has it been since anyone new joined the comm. Maite herself had to look up the details of the ceremony in an old lore-book. Then they throw a party, which is very nice. Jija tells them he’s honored.
Nassun remains just Nassun. No one calls her Nassun Resistant Tirimo, though she still introduces herself that way upon meeting new people. Schaffa’s interest in her is simply too obvious. But she causes no trouble, so the people of Jekity are as friendly toward her as they are toward Jija, if in a slightly more guarded fashion.
It is the other orogene children who unashamedly embrace Nassun for everything she is.
The oldest of them is a Coaster boy named Eitz, who speaks with a strange choppy accent that Nassun thinks of as exotic. He’s eighteen, tall, long-faced, and if there is a perpetual shadow in his expression, it does nothing to mar his beauty in Nassun’s eyes. He’s the one who welcomes Nassun on the first day after it becomes clear that Jija will live. “Found Moon is our community,” he says in a deep voice that makes Nassun’s heart race, leading her to the small compound that Schaffa’s people have built over near Jekity’s weakest wall. It’s up a hill. He leads her toward a pair of gates that swing open as they approach. “Yumenes had the Fulcrum, and Jekity has this: A place where you can be yourself, and always be safe. Schaffa and the other Guardians are here for us, too, remember. This is ours.”
Found Moon has walls of its own, shaped from the shafts of columnar rock that dominate this area—but these are uniformly sized and perfectly even in conformation. Nassun doesn’t even have to sess them to realize they have been raised by orogeny. Within the compound are a handful of small buildings, a few new but most parts of old Jekity left abandoned as the comm’s population dwindled. Whatever those used to be, they have since been refurbished into a house for the Guardians, a mess hall, a wide tiled practice area, several ground-level storesheds, and a dormitory for the children.
The other children fascinate Nassun. Two are Westcoasters, small and brown and black-haired and angle-eyed. Sisters, and they look it, named Oegin and Ynegen. Nassun has never seen Westcoasters before, and she stares until she realizes they are staring at her in turn. They ask to touch her hair and she asks to touch theirs back. This makes them all realize how strange and silly a request that is, and they giggle and become instant friends without a head petted between them. Then there is Paido, another Somidlatter, who looks like he’s got more than a little Antarctic in him because his hair is bright yellow and his skin is so white that it nearly glows. The others tease him about it, but Nassun tells him that sometimes she burns in the sun, too—though she carefully doesn’t mention that this takes the better part of a day rather than minutes—and his face alights.
The other children are all from lower Somidlats comms, and all have visible Sanzed in them. Deshati was in training to become a stoneknapper before the Guardians found her, and she asks Nassun all sorts of questions about her father. (Nassun warns her off talking to Jija directly. Deshati understands at once, though she is sad about it.) Wudeh gets sick when he eats certain kinds of grain and is very small and frail because he doesn’t get enough good food, though his orogeny is the strongest of the bunch. Lashar looks at Nassun coldly and sneers at her accent, though Nassun can’t tell the difference between how she speaks and how Lashar does. The others tell her it’s because Lashar’s grandfather was an Equatorial and her mother is a local comm Leader. Alas, Lashar is an orogene, so none of that matters anymore… but her upbringing tells.
Shirk is not Shirk’s name, but she won’t tell anyone what that really is, so they started calling her that after she tried to duck out of chores one afternoon. (She doesn’t anymore, but the name stuck.) Peek is similarly nicknamed, because she is tremendously shy and spends most of her time hiding behind someone else. She has only one eye, and a terrible scar down the side of her face—where her grandmother tried to stab her, the others whisper when Peek is not around. Her real name is Xif.
Nassun makes ten, and they want to know everything about her: where she came from, what kinds of foods she likes to eat, what life was like in Tirimo, has she ever held a baby kirkhusa because they are so soft. And in whispers they ask about other things, once it becomes clear that Schaffa favors her. What did she do on the day of the Rifting? How did she learn such skill with orogeny? This is how Nassun discovers that it is rare for their kind to be born to orogene parents. Wudeh comes the closest, because his aunt realized what he was and taught him what she could in secret, but this amounted to little more than how not to ice people by accident. Some of the others only learned that lesson the hard way—and Oegin grows very quiet during this conversation. Deshati actually didn’t know she was an orogene until the Rifting, which Nassun finds incomprehensible. She is the one who asks the most questions, but quietly, when the others are not around, and in a tone of shame.
Another thing Nassun discovers is that she is much, much, much better than any of them. It is not simply a matter of training. Eitz has had years more training than her, and yet his orogeny is as thin and frail as Wudeh’s body. Eitz is in control of it, enough to do no harm, but he can’t do much good with it, either, like find diamonds or make a cool spot to stand in on a hot day or slice a harpoon in half. The others stare when Nassun tries to explain the lattermost, and then Schaffa comes away from the wall of a nearby building (one of the Guardians is always watching while they gather
and train and play) to take her for a walk.
“What you do not understand,” Schaffa says, resting a hand on her shoulder as they walk, “is that an orogene’s skill is not just a matter of practice, but of innate ability. So much has been done to breed the gift out of the world.” He sighs a little, sounding almost disappointed. “There are few left who are born with a high level of ability.”
“My father killed my brother because of it,” Nassun says. “Uche had more orogeny than me. All he ever did was listen with it, though, and say weird things sometimes. He made me laugh.”
She keeps the words soft because they still hurt to say, and because she’s said them so rarely. Jija never wanted to hear it, so she has had no one with whom she could discuss her grief until now. They’re over by the southern terraces of Jekity, successive platforms high above the floor of a lava-plain valley. The terraces are still heavily planted with grains, greens, and beans. Some of the plants are beginning to look sickly from the thinning sunlight. This will probably be the last harvest before the ash clouds get too thick.
“Yes. And that is a tragedy, little one; I’m sorry.” Schaffa sighs. “My brethren have done their job too well, I think, in warning the populace about the dangers of untrained orogenes. Not that any of those warnings were false. Just… exaggerated, perhaps.” He shrugs. She feels a flash of anger that this exaggeration is why her father looks at her with such hate sometimes. But the anger is nebulous, directionless; she hates the world, not anyone in particular. That’s a lot to hate.
“He thinks I’m evil,” she finds herself saying.
Schaffa looks at her for a long moment. There is something confused in his gaze for a moment, a wondering sort of frown that he gets from time to time. Not quite intentionally, Nassun sesses him in a fleeting pass, and yes—those strange silvery threads are flaring within him again, lacing through his flesh and tugging on his mind from somewhere near the back of his head. She stops as soon as his expression clears, because he is fiendishly sensitive to her uses of orogeny, and he does not like her doing anything without his permission. But when he is being tugged by the bright threads, he notices less.
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