Because this is hard, she wants to say, but she realizes he does not want to hear it. He does not want to know that the only way to use orogeny and magic to transform a thing is to become an expert in the use of orogeny and magic. She doesn’t answer because there’s no point. She cannot say what he wants to hear. It isn’t fair that he calls orogenes liars and then demands that she lie.
He stops and rounds on her, instantly suspicious of her silence. “You aren’t trying to get better, are you? Tell the truth, Nassun!”
She is so rusting tired.
“I am trying to get better, Daddy,” Nassun replies at last. “I’m trying to become a better orogene.”
Jija steps back, as if she has hit him. “That isn’t why I let you live up there.”
He isn’t letting anything; Schaffa made him. He’s even lying to himself now. But it is the lies he’s telling her—as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life—that really break her heart. He’s said that he loved her, after all, but that obviously isn’t true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene’s father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is.
And she is tired. Tired and done.
“I like being an orogene, Daddy,” she says. His eyes widen. This is a terrible thing that she is saying. It is a terrible thing that she loves herself. “I like making things move, and doing the silver, and falling into the obelisks. I don’t like—”
She is about to say that she hates what she did to Eitz, and she especially hates the way that others treat her now that they know what she is capable of, but she doesn’t get the chance. Jija takes two swift steps forward and the back of his hand swings so fast that she doesn’t even see it before it has knocked her out of the chair.
It’s like that day on the Imperial Road, when she suddenly found herself at the bottom of a hill, in pain. It must have been like this for Uche, she realizes, in another swift epiphany. The world as it should be one moment and completely wrong, completely broken, an instant later.
At least Uche didn’t have time to hate, she thinks, in sorrow.
And then she ices the entire house.
It isn’t a reflex. She’s intentional about it, precise, shaping the torus to fit the dimensions of the house exactly. No one past the walls will be caught in it. She shapes twin cores out of the torus, too, and centers each on herself and her father. She feels cold along the hairs of her skin, the tug of lowered air pressure on her clothing and plaited hair. Jija feels the same thing and he screams, his eyes wide and wild and sightless. The memory of a boy’s cruel, icy death is in his face. By the time Nassun gets to her feet, staring at her father across a floor slick with plates of solid ice and around the fallen-over chair that is now too warped to ever use again, Jija has stumbled back, slipped on the ice, fallen, and slid partially across the floor to bump against the table legs.
There’s no danger. Nassun only manifested the torus for an instant, as a warning against further violence on his part. Jija keeps screaming, though, as Nassun gazes down at her huddled, panicking father. Perhaps she should feel pity, or regret. What she actually feels, however, is cold fury toward her mother. She knows it’s irrational. It is no one’s fault except Jija’s that Jija is too afraid of orogenes to love his own children. Once, however, Nassun could love her father without qualification. Now, she needs someone to blame for the loss of that perfect love. She knows her mother can bear it.
You should have had us with someone stronger, she thinks at Essun, wherever she is.
It takes care to walk across the slick floor without slipping, and Nassun has to jiggle the latch for a few seconds to scrape it open. By the time she does, Jija has stopped screaming behind her, though she can still hear him breathing hard and uttering a little moan with every exhalation. She doesn’t want to look back at him. She makes herself do it anyway, though, because she wants to be a good orogene, and good orogenes cannot afford self-deception.
Jija jerks as if her gaze has the power to burn.
“Bye, Daddy,” she says. He does not reply in words.
And the last tear she shed, as he burned her alive with ice, broke like the Shattering upon the ground. Stone your heart against roggas, for there is nothing but rust in their souls!
—From lorist tale, “Ice Kisses,” recorded in Bebbec Quartent, Msida Theater, by Whoz Lorist Bebbec. (Note: A letter signed by seven Equatorial itinerant lorists disavows Whoz as a “pop lorist hack.” Tale may be apocryphal.)
18
you, counting down
WHEN THE SANZED WOMAN IS GONE, I pull you aside. Figuratively speaking.
“The one you call Gray Man doesn’t want to prevent the opening of the Gate,” I say. “I lied.”
You’re so wary of me now. It troubles you, I can see; you want to trust me, even as your very eyes remind you of how I’ve deceived you. But you sigh and say, “Yeah. I thought there might be more to it.”
“He’ll kill you because you can’t be manipulated,” I say, ignoring the irony. “Because if you open the Gate, you would restore the Moon and end the Seasons. What he really wants is someone who will open the Gate for his purposes.”
You understand the players now, if not the totality of the game. You frown. “So which purpose would that be? Transformation? Status quo?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Suppose not.” You rub a hand over your locs, which you’ve retwisted recently. “I guess that’s why he’s trying to get Castrima to kick out all its roggas?”
“Yes. He’ll find a way to make you do what he wants, Essun, if he can. If he can’t… you’re no use to him. Worse. You’re the enemy.”
You sigh with the weariness of the Earth, and do not reply other than to nod and walk away. I am so afraid as I watch you leave.
As you have in other moments of despair, you go to Alabaster.
There’s not much left of him anymore. Since he gave up his legs he spends his days in a drugged stupor, tucked up against Antimony like a pup nursing its mother. Sometimes you don’t ask for lessons when you come to see him. That’s a waste, because you’re pretty sure the only reason he’s forced himself to keep living is so that he can pass on the art of global destruction to you. He’s caught you at it a few times: You’ve woken up curled next to his nest to find him gazing down at you. He doesn’t chide you for it. Probably doesn’t have the strength to chide. You’re grateful.
He’s awake now as you settle beside him, though he doesn’t move much. Antimony has moved fully into the nest with him these days, and you rarely see her in any pose other than “living chair” for him—kneeling, legs spread, her hands braced on her thighs. Alabaster rests against her front, which is only possible now because, perversely, the few burns on his back healed even as his legs rotted. Fortunately she has no breasts to make the position less comfortable, and apparently her simulated clothing isn’t sharp or rough. Alabaster’s eyes shift to follow as you sit, like a stone eater’s. You hate that this comparison occurs to you.
“It’s happening again,” you say. You don’t bother to explain the “it.” He always knows. “How did you… at Meov. You tried. How?” Because you can’t find it in yourself anymore to bother fighting for this place, or building a life here. All your instincts say to grab your runny-sack, grab your people, and run before Castrima turns against you. That’s a probable death sentence, the Season having well and truly set in topside, but staying seems more certain.
He draws in a deep, slow breath, so you know he means to answer. It just takes him a while to muster the words. “Didn’t mean to. You were pregnant; I was… lonely. I thought it would do. For a while.”
You shake your head. Of course he knew you were pregnant before you did. That’s all irrelevant now. “You fought for them.” It takes effort to emphasize the last word, but you do. For you and Corundum and Innon, sure, but he fought for Meov, too. “They would’ve turned on us, too, one day. You know t
hey would have.” When Corundum proved too powerful, or if they’d managed to drive off the Guardians only to have to leave Meov and move elsewhere. It was inevitable.
He makes an affirmative sound.
“Then why?”
He lets out a long, slow sigh. “There was a chance they wouldn’t.” You shake your head. The words are so impossible to believe that they sound like gibberish. But he adds, “Any chance was worth trying.”
He does not say for you, but you feel it. It is a subtext that is nearly sessable beneath the words’ surface. So your family could have a normal life among other people, as one of them. Normal opportunities. Normal struggles. You stare at him. On impulse you lift your hand to his face, drawing fingers over his scarred lips. He watches you do this and offers you that little quarter-smile, which is all he can muster these days. It’s more than you need.
Then you get up and head out to try to salvage Castrima’s thin, cracked nothing of a chance.
Ykka has called a vote for the next morning—twenty-four hours after Rennanis’s “offer.” Castrima needs to deliver some kind of response, but she doesn’t think it should be up to only her informal council. You can’t see what difference the vote will make, except to emphasize that if the comm gets through the night intact it will be a rusting miracle.
People look at you as you walk through the comm. You keep your gaze ahead and try not to let them visibly affect you.
In brief, private visits you pass Ykka’s orders on to Cutter and Temell, and tell them to spread the word. Temell usually takes the kids out for lessons anyway; he says he’ll visit his students at home and encourage them to form study groups of two and three, in the homes of trusted adults. You want to say, “No adults are trustworthy,” but he knows that. There’s no way around it, so it’s pointless to say aloud.
Cutter says he’ll pass on the word to the few other adult roggas. Not all of them have the skill to throw a torus or control themselves well; except for you and Alabaster, they’re all ferals. But Cutter will make sure the ones who can’t stick near those who can. His face is impassive as he adds, “And who’ll watch your back?”
Which means he’s offering. The revulsion that shivers through you at this idea is surprising. You’ve never really trusted him, though you don’t understand why. Something about the fact that he’s hidden all his life—which is hypocritical as hell after your ten years in Tirimo. But then, sweet flaking rust, do you trust anyone? As long as he does his job it doesn’t matter. You force yourself to nod. “Come find me after you’re done, then.” He agrees.
With that, you decide to get some rest, yourself. Your bedroom is wrecked thanks to Hoa’s transformation, and you’re not much interested in sleeping in Tonkee’s bed; it’s been months, but the memory of mildew dies hard. Also, you’ve realized belatedly that there’s no one to watch Ykka’s back. She believes in her comm, but you don’t. Hoa ate Ruby Hair, who at least had an assumable interest in keeping her alive. So you borrow another pack from Temell, and scrounge your apartment for a few basic supplies—not quite a runny-sack, there’s plausible deniability if Ykka protests—and then head to her apartment. (This will have the added purpose of making it hard for Cutter to find you.) She’s still asleep, from the sound of her breathing through the bedroom curtain. Her divans are pretty comfortable, especially compared to sleeping rough when you were on the road. You use your runny-sack for a pillow and curl up, trying to forget the world for a while.
And then you wake when Ykka curses and stumbles past you at full speed, half ripping down one of the apartment curtains in her haste. You struggle awake and sit up. “What—” But by then you, too, hear the rising shouts outside. Angry shouts. A crowd, gathering.
So it’s begun. You get up and follow, and it’s not an afterthought that you grab the packs.
The knot of people is gathered on the ground level, near the communal baths. Ykka scrambles to that level in ways you will not—sliding down metal ladders, hopping over the railing of one platform to swing down to the one she knows is below, running across bridges that sway alarmingly beneath her feet. You go down in the sensible, non-suicidal way, so by the time you get to the knot of people, Ykka is in full shout, trying to get everyone to shut up and listen and back the fuck off.
At the center of the knot is Cutter, clad in nothing but a towel, for once looking something other than indifferent. Now he’s tense, jaw set, defiant, braced to flee. And five feet away, the iced corpse of a man sits on the ground, frozen in mid-scrabble backward, a look of abject terror permanently on his face. You don’t recognize him. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that a rogga has killed a still. This is a match thrown right into the middle of a comm that is dried-out, oil-soaked kindling.
“—how this happened,” Ykka is shouting, as you reach the knot of people. You can barely see her; there are nearly fifty people here already. You could push to the front, but you decide to hang back instead. Now is not the time to call attention to yourself. You look around and see Lerna also lurking at the rear of the crowd. His eyes are wide and his jaw tight as he looks back at you. There’s also—oh, burning Earth—a cluster of three rogga kids here. One of them is Penty, who you know is the ringleader of some of the braver, stupider rogga children. She’s standing on tiptoe, craning her neck for a better look. When she tries to push forward through the crowd, you catch her eye and give her a Mother Look. She flinches and subsides at once.
“Who the rust cares how it happened?” That’s Sekkim, one of the Innovators. You only know him because Tonkee constantly complains that he’s too stupid to rightly be part of the caste and should instead be dumped into something nonessential, like Leadership. “This is why—”
Someone else shouts him down. “Fucking rogga!”
Someone else shouts her down. “Fucking listen! It’s Ykka!”
“Who the rust cares about another rogga monster—”
“Rusty son of a cannibal, I will beat you bloody if you—”
Someone shoves someone else. There are shoves back, more curses, vows of murder. It’s a catastrophe.
Then a man rushes forward from the crowd, crouching beside the iced corpse and trying his best to fling his arms around it. The resemblance between him and the body is obvious even through the ice: brothers, perhaps. His wail of anguish causes a sudden, flustered silence to ripple across the crowd. They shuffle uneasily as his wail subsides into deep, soul-tearing sobs.
Ykka takes a deep breath and steps forward, using the opportunity that grief has provided. To Cutter, she says tightly, “What did I say? What did I rusting say?”
“He attacked me,” Cutter says. There’s not a scratch on him.
“Bullshit,” Ykka says. Several people in the crowd echo her, but she glares them down until they subside. She looks at the dead man, her jaw tight. “Betine wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t even kill a chicken that time it was his turn to look after the flock.”
Cutter glares. “All I know is, I wanted to take a bath. I sat down to wash and he moved away from me. I figured fine, that’s how it’s going to be, and I didn’t care. Then I went past him to get into the pool and he hit me. Hard, in the back of the neck.”
There is a low, angry murmur at this—but also a troubled shuffle. The back of the neck is rumored to be the best place to strike a rogga. It’s not true. Only works if you hit hard enough for a concussion or a cracked skull, and then that’s what takes them down, not any sort of damage to the sessapinae. It’s still a popular myth. And if it’s true, it might be reason enough for Cutter to fight back.
“Rust that.” This is growled; the man who holds Betine’s faintly hissing corpse. “Bets wasn’t like that. Yeek, you know he wasn’t—”
Ykka nods, going over to touch the man’s shoulder. The crowd shuffles again, pent fury shifting with it. With her, tenuously, for the moment. “I know.” A muscle in her jaw flexes once, twice. She looks around. “Anybody else see the fight?”
Several people rai
se hands. “I saw Bets move away,” says one woman. She swallows, looking at Cutter; sweat dots her upper lip. “I think he just wanted to get closer to the soap, though.”
“He looked at me,” Cutter snaps. “I know what it rusting means when somebody looks at me like that!”
Ykka cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “I know, Cutter, but shut up. What else?” she asks the woman.
“That was it. I looked away and then when I looked back there was that—swirl. Wind and ice.” She grimaces, her jaw tightening. “You know how you people kill.”
Ykka glares back at her, but then flinches as there are more shouts, this time in agreement with the woman. Someone tries to shove through the crowd to get at Cutter; someone else holds the attacker back, but it’s a near thing. You see the realization come over Ykka that she’s losing them. She’s not going to make her people see. They’re working themselves into a mob, and there’s nothing she can do to stop them.
Well. You’re wrong about that. There’s one thing she can do.
She does it by turning and laying a hand on Cutter’s chest and sending something through him. You’re not actively sessing at the moment, so you only get the backwash of it, and it’s—what? It’s like… the way Alabaster once slammed a hot spot into submission, years ago and a fifth of a continent away. Just smaller. It’s like what that Guardian did to Innon, except localized, and not overtly horrific. And you didn’t realize roggas could do anything like it.
Whatever it is, Cutter doesn’t even have a chance to gasp. His eyes fly wide. He staggers back a step. Then he falls down, with a look of shock on his face to match that of Betine’s fear.
Everyone’s silent. Yours is not the only mouth that hangs open.
Ykka catches her breath. Whatever she did took a lot out of her; you see her sway a little, then get a hold of herself. “That’s enough,” she says, turning to look at everyone in the crowd. “More than enough. Justice has been done, see? Now all of you, go the rust home.”