“As for why you, and why the doctor,” Ykka says, straightening, and speaking to you even if she’s still eying Hoa, “it’s because I need a mix of perspectives. A Leader, even if she doesn’t want to lead.” She eyes Hjarka. “Another local rogga, who doesn’t bother to bite his tongue about how stupid he thinks I am.” She nods to Strawberry-Hay, who sighs. “A Resistant and a doctor, who knows the road. A stone eater. Me. And you, Essun, who could kill us all.” She smiles thinly. “Makes sense to give you a reason not to.”
You have no real idea what to say, to that. You think, fleetingly, that Ykka should invite Alabaster to her circle of advisors, then, if the ability to destroy Castrima is a qualification. But that could lead to awkward questions.
To Hjarka and Strawberry-Hay you say, “Are you both from here?”
“Nope,” says Hjarka.
“Yes,” says Ykka. Hjarka glares at her. “You’ve lived here since you were young, Hjar.”
Hjarka shrugs. “Nobody here remembers that except you, Yeek.”
Strawberry-Hay says, “I was born and raised here.”
Two orogenes, surviving to adulthood in a comm that didn’t kill them. “What’s your name?”
“Cutter Strongback.” You wait. He smiles with half his mouth and neither of his eyes.
“Cutter’s secret wasn’t out, so to speak, while we were growing up,” Ykka says. She’s leaning against the wall behind the divan now, rubbing her eyes as if she’s tired. “People guessed anyway. The rumors were enough to keep him from being adopted into the comm, under the previous headman. Of course, I’ve offered to give him the name a half-dozen times over now.”
“If I give up ‘Strongback,’” Cutter replies. He’s still smiling in that paper-thin way.
Ykka lowers her hand. Her jaw is tight. “Denying what you are didn’t keep people from knowing what you are.”
“And flaunting it isn’t what saved you.”
Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. “And that would be why I asked you to do this, Cutter. But let’s move on.”
So it goes on.
You sit there throughout the meeting, trying to understand the undercurrents you’re picking up on, still not believing you’re even here, while Ykka lays out all of the problems facing Castrima. It’s stuff you’ve never had to think about before: Complaints that the hot water in the communal pools isn’t hot enough. A serious shortage of potters but an overabundance of people who know how to sew. Fungus in one of the granary caverns; several months’ supply had to be burned lest it contaminate the rest. A meat shortage. You’ve gone from thinking obsessively about one person to having to be concerned with many. It’s a bit sudden.
“I just took a bath,” you blurt, trying to pull yourself out of a daze. “The water was nice.”
“Of course you thought it was nice. You’ve been living rough for months, bathing in cold streams if you even bothered. A lot of the people in Castrima have never lived without reliable geo and adjustable faucets.” Ykka rubs her eyes. The meeting’s only been an hour or so, but it feels longer. “Everybody copes with a Season in their own way.”
Complaining about nothing doesn’t seem like coping to you, but okay.
“Being low on meat is an actual problem,” Lerna says, frowning. “I noticed the last few comm shares didn’t have any, or eggs.”
Ykka’s expression grows grimmer. “Yes. That’s why.” For your sake, she adds, “We don’t have a greenland in this comm, if you haven’t noticed yet. The soil around here is poor, all right for gardening but not for grass or hay. Then for the last few years before the Season started, everyone was so busy arguing about whether we should rebuild the old pre-Choking wall that nobody thought to contract with an agricultural comm for a few dozen cartloads of good soil.” She sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Can’t bring most livestock down the mine shafts and stairs, anyway. I don’t know what we were thinking, trying to live down here. This is exactly why I need help.”
Her weariness isn’t a surprise, but her willingness to admit error is. It’s also troubling. You say: “A comm can only have one leader, during a Season.”
“Yeah, and that’s still me. Don’t you forget it.” It could be a warn-off, but it doesn’t sound like one. You suspect it’s just a matter-of-fact acceptance of her place in Castrima: The people chose her, and for the time being they trust her. They don’t know you, Lerna, or Hoa, and apparently they don’t trust Hjarka and Cutter. You need her more than she needs any of you. Abruptly, though, Ykka shakes her head. “I can’t talk about this shit anymore.”
Good, because the looming sense of disjunct—this morning you were thinking of the road, and survival, and Nassun—is beginning to feel overwhelming. “I need to go topside.”
It’s too abrupt a change of subject, apparently out of the blue, and for a moment they all stare at you. “The rust for?” Ykka asks.
“Alabaster.” Ykka looks blank. “The ten-ringer in your infirmary? He asked me to do something.”
Ykka grimaces. “Oh. Him.” You can’t help smiling at this reaction. “Interesting. He hasn’t talked to anyone since he got here. Just sits in there using up our antibiotics and eating our food.”
“I just made a batch of ’cillin, Ykka.” Lerna rolls his eyes.
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
You suspect Alabaster’s been quelling the local microshakes and any aftershakes from the north, which would more than earn his keep. But if Ykka can’t sess that for herself, explaining is pointless—and you’re not sure you can trust her enough to talk about Alabaster yet. “He’s an old friend.” There. That’s a good, if incomplete, summary.
“He didn’t seem the type to have friends. You, either.” She regards you for a long moment. “Are you a ten-ringer, too?”
Your fingers flex involuntarily. “I wore six rings, once.” Lerna’s head snaps around and he stares at you. Well. Cutter’s face twitches in a way you can’t interpret. You add: “Alabaster was my mentor, back when I was still with the Fulcrum.”
“I see. And what does he want you to do, topside?”
You open your mouth, then close it. You can’t help glancing at Hjarka, who snorts and gets to her feet, and Lerna, whose expression tightens as he realizes you don’t want to speak in front of him. He deserves better than that, but still… he’s a still. Finally you say, “Orogene business.”
It’s weak. Lerna’s face goes blank, but his eyes are hard. Hjarka waves and heads for the curtain. “Then I’m out. Come on, Cutter. Since you’re just a Strongback.” She barks out a laugh.
Cutter stiffens, but to your surprise, he rises and follows her out. You eye Lerna for a moment, but he folds his arms. Not going anywhere. All right. In the wake of this, Ykka looks skeptical. “What is this, a final lesson from your old mentor? He’s obviously not going to live much longer.”
Your jaw tightens before you can help it. “That remains to be seen.”
Ykka looks thoughtful for a moment longer, and then she nods decisively, getting to her feet. “All right, then. Just let me get some Strongbacks together and we’ll be on our way.”
“Wait, you’re coming? Why?”
“Curiosity. I want to see what a Fulcrum six-ringer can do.” She grins at you and picks up the long fur vest you first saw her wearing. “Maybe see if I can do it, too.”
You flinch violently at the idea of a self-taught feral attempting to connect to an obelisk. “No.”
Ykka’s expression flattens. Lerna stares at you, incredulous that you would achieve your goal and then scuttle it in the same breath. Quickly you amend yourself. “It’s dangerous even for me, and I’ve done it before.”
“‘It’?”
Well, that does it. It’s safer that she not know, but Lerna’s right; you have to win this woman over if you’re going to be living in her comm. “Promise me you won’t try, if I tell you.”
“I won’t promise a rusting thing. I don’t know you.” Ykka
folds her arms. You’re a big woman, but she’s a little bigger, and the hair doesn’t help. Many Sanzeds like to grow their ashblow hair into big, poufy manes like hers. It’s an animal intimidation thing, and it works if they’ve got the confidence to back it up. Ykka’s got that and then some.
But you have knowledge. You push to your feet and meet her eyes. “You can’t do it,” you say, will her to believe. “You don’t have the training.”
“You don’t know what kind of training I have.”
And you blink, remembering that moment topside when the realization that you’d lost Nassun’s trail nearly unhinged you. That strange, sweeping waft of power Ykka sent through you, like a slap but kinder, and somehow orogenic. Then there’s her little trick of drawing orogenes from miles around toward Castrima. Ykka may not wear rings, but orogeny isn’t about rank.
No help for it, then. “An obelisk,” you say, relenting. You glance at Lerna; he blinks and frowns. “Alabaster wants me to call an obelisk. I’m going to see if I can.”
To your surprise, Ykka nods, her eyes alight. “Aha! Always thought there was something about those things. Let’s go, then. I definitely want to see this.”
Oh. Shit.
Ykka shrugs on the vest. “Give me a half hour, then meet me at Scenic Overlook.” That’s the entrance to Castrima, that little platform where newcomers invariably gawk at the strangeness of a comm inside a giant geode. With that she brushes past you and out of the apartment.
Shaking your head, you eye Lerna. He nods tightly; he wants to go, too. Hoa? He simply takes up his usual place behind you, gazing at you placidly as if to say, This was in doubt? So now it’s a party.
Ykka meets you at the overlook in half an hour. With her are four other Castrimans, who are armed and dressed in faded colors and grays for camouflage up on the surface. It’s a harder procession, going up, than it was coming down: lots of uphill walking, many sets of stairs. You’re not as out of breath as a few of Ykka’s crew by the time it’s done, but then you’ve been walking miles every day while they’ve been living safe and comfy in their underground town. (Ykka, you notice, only breathes a little harder. She’s keeping in shape.) Eventually, though, you reach a false basement in one of the decoy houses topside. It’s not the same basement that you entered through, which shouldn’t surprise you; of course their “gate” has multiple entrances and exits. The underground passages are more complicated than you initially thought, though—something important to keep in mind, should you ever need to leave in a hurry.
The decoy house has Strongback sentries like the other one, some guarding the basement entrance and some actually in the house upstairs, keeping watch on the road outside. When the upstairs sentries give you the all clear, you head out into the late-evening ashfall.
After, what, less than a day in Castrima’s geode? It’s amazing how strange the surface seems to you. For the first time in weeks you notice the sulfur stench of the air, the silvery haze, the incessant soft patter of fat ash flakes on the ground and dead leaves. The silence, which makes you realize just how noisy Castrima-under is, with people talking and pulleys squeaking and smithies clanking, and the omnipresent hum of the geode’s strange hidden machinery. Up here there’s nothing. The trees have dropped their leaves; nothing moves through the curl-edged, desiccated detritus. No birdsong can be heard through the branches; most birds stop marking territory and mating during a Season, and song only attracts predators. No other animal sounds. There are no travelers on the road, though you can tell that the ash is thinner there. People have been by recently. Aside from that, though, even the wind is still. The sun has set, though there’s still plenty of light in the sky. The clouds, even this far south, still reflect the Rifting.
“Traffic?” Ykka asks one of the sentries.
“Family-looking bunch about forty minutes ago,” he says. He keeps his voice appropriately low. “Well equipped. Maybe twenty people, all ages, all Sanzeds. Traveling north.”
That makes everyone look at him. Ykka repeats: “North?”
“North.” The sentry, who has the most beautiful long-lashed eyes, looks back at Ykka and shrugs. “Looked like they had a destination in mind.”
“Huh.” She folds her arms, shivering a little, though it’s not particularly cold outside; the cold of a Fifth Season takes months to set in fully. Castrima-under’s just so warm that to someone used to that, Castrima-over’s chilly. Or maybe Ykka’s just reacting to the starkness of the comm around her. So many silent houses, dead gardens, and ash-occluded pathways where people once walked. You’d been thinking of the surface level of the comm as bait—and it is, a honeypot meant to draw in the desirable and distract the hostile. Yet it was also a real comm once, alive and bright and anything but still.
“Well?” Ykka takes a deep breath and smiles, but you think her smile is strained. She nods toward the low-hanging ash clouds. “If you need to see this thing, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck anytime soon.”
She’s right; the air is a haze of ash, and past the beaded, red-tinted clouds you can’t see a damned thing. You step off the porch and look up at the sky anyway, unsure of how to begin. You also aren’t sure if you should begin. After all, the first and second times you tried to interact with an obelisk, you almost died. Then there’s the fact that Alabaster wants this, when he’s the man who destroyed the world. Maybe you shouldn’t do anything he asks.
He’s never hurt you, though. The world has, but not him. Maybe the world deserved to be destroyed. And maybe he’s earned a little of your trust, after all these years.
So you close your eyes and try to still your thoughts. There are sounds to be heard around you, you notice at last. Faint creaks and pops as the wooden parts of Castrima-over react to the weight of ash, or the changing warmth of the air. Several things scuttling among the dried-out stalks of a housegreen nearby: rodents or something else small, nothing to worry about. One of the Castrimans is breathing really loudly for some reason.
Warm jitter of the earth beneath your feet. No. Wrong direction.
There’s actually enough ash in the sky that you can sort of grasp the clouds with your awareness. Ash is powdered rock, after all. But it’s not the clouds you want. You grope along them as you would earth strata, not quite sure what you’re looking for—
“Will this take much longer?” sighs one of the Castrimans.
“Why, got a hot date?” Ykka drawls.
He is insignificant. He is—
He is—
Something pulls you sharply west. You jerk and turn to face it, inhaling as you remember a night long ago in a comm called Allia, and another obelisk. The amethyst. He didn’t need to see it, he needed to face it. Lines of sight, lines of force. Yes. And there, far along the line of your attention, you sess your awareness being drawn toward something heavy and… dark.
Dark, so dark. Alabaster said it would be the topaz, didn’t he? This isn’t that. It feels familiar, sort of, reminds you of the garnet. Not the amethyst. Why? The garnet was broken, mad (you’re not sure why this word occurs to you), but beyond that it was also more powerful, somehow, though power is too simple a word for what these things contain. Richness. Strangeness. Darker colors, deeper potential? But if that’s the case…
“Onyx,” you say aloud, opening your eyes.
Other obelisks buzz along the periphery of your line of sight, closer, possible, but they don’t respond to this near-instinctive call of yours. The dark obelisk is so far away, well past the Western Coastals, somewhere over the Unknown Sea. Even flying, it might take months to arrive. But.
But. The onyx hears you. You know this the way you once knew your children had heard you, even if they pretended to ignore you. Ponderously it turns, arcane processes awakening for the first time in an age of the earth, as it does uttering an assault of sound and vibration that shakes the sea for miles underneath. (How do you know this? You’re not sessing this. You just know.)
Then it begins to come. Evil, eating
Earth.
You flinch back along the line that leads to yourself. Along the way something snags your attention, and almost as an afterthought you call it, too: the topaz. It is lighter, livelier, much closer, and somehow more responsive, perhaps because you perceive a hint of Alabaster in its interstices like a curl of citrus rind added to a savory dish. He’s prepped it for you.
Then you snap back into yourself and turn to Ykka, who’s frowning at you. “You follow that?”
She shakes her head slowly, but not in negation. She caught some of it, somehow. You can see that in the look on her face. “I… that was… something. I’m not sure what.”
“Don’t reach for either one, when they get here.” Because you’re sure they’re coming. “Don’t reach for any of them. Ever.” You’re reluctant to say obelisk. Too many stills around, and even if they haven’t killed you yet, stills never need to hear that something can make orogenes even more of a danger than they already are.
“What would happen if I did?” It’s a question of honest curiosity, not challenge, but some questions are dangerous.
You decide to be honest. “You would die. I’m not sure how.” Actually you’re pretty sure she would spontaneously ignite into a white-hot screaming column of fire and force, possibly taking all of Castrima with her. But you’re not a hundred percent sure, so you stick to what you know. “The—those things are like the batteries some Equatorial comms use.” Shit. “Used. You’ve heard of those? A battery stores energy so you can have electricity even if the hydro’s not flowing or the geo has—”
Ykka looks affronted. Well, she is Sanzed; they invented batteries. “I know what a rusting battery is! First hint of a shake and you’ve got acid burns on top of everything else, all for the sake of a bit of stored juice.” She shakes her head. “What you’re talking about isn’t a battery.”