If Lerna hears you, he does not respond.
Eventually you find your apartment. Tonkee’s awake and in the living room, eating a big bowl of something that didn’t come from your packs. It looks like some kind of porridge, and it’s got little yellowish things in it that make you recoil at first—until she tilts the bowl and you realize it’s sprouted grains. Standard storecache food.
(She looks at you warily as you come in, but her revelations were so minor compared to everything else you’ve had to face today that you just wave a greeting and settle down opposite her as usual. She relaxes.)
Lerna’s polite but guarded with Tonkee, and she’s the same with him—until he mentions that he’s been running blood and urine tests on the people of Castrima to watch for vitamin deficiencies. You almost smile when she leans forward and says, “With what kind of equipment?” with a familiar greedy look on her face.
Then Hoa comes into the apartment. You’re surprised, since you hadn’t realized he’d gone out. His icewhite gaze flicks immediately to Lerna and examines him ruthlessly. Then he relaxes, so visibly that you only now realize Hoa’s been tense all this time. Since you came into this crazy comm.
But you file this away as just another oddity to explore later, because Hoa says, “Essun. There’s someone here you should meet.”
“Who?”
“A man. From Yumenes.”
All three of you stare at him. “Why,” you say slowly, in case you’ve misunderstood something, “would I want to meet someone from Yumenes?”
“He asked for you.”
You decide to try for patience. “Hoa, I don’t know anyone from Yumenes.” Not anymore, anyway.
“He says he knows you. He tracked you here, got here ahead of you when he realized it was where you were headed.” Hoa scowls, just a little, as if this bothers him. “He says he wants to see you, see if you can do it yet.”
“Do what?”
“He just said ‘it.’” Hoa’s eyes slide first to Tonkee, then to Lerna, before returning to you. Something he doesn’t want them to hear, maybe. “He’s like you.”
“What—” Okay. You rub your eyes, take a deep breath, and say it so he’ll know there’s no need to hide it. “A rogga, then.”
“Yes. No. Like you. His—” Hoa waggles his fingers in lieu of words. Tonkee opens her mouth; you gesture sharply at her. She glares back. After a moment, Hoa sighs. “He said, if you wouldn’t come, to tell you that you owe him. For Corundum.”
You freeze.
“Alabaster,” you whisper.
“Yes,” says Hoa, brightening. “That’s his name.” And then he frowns more, thoughtfully this time. “He’s dying.”
* * *
MADNESS SEASON: 3 Before Imperial–7 Imperial. The eruption of the Kiash Traps, multiple vents of an ancient supervolcano (the same one responsible for the Twin Season believed to have occurred approximately 10,000 years previous), launched large deposits of olivine and other dark-colored pyroclasts into the air. The resulting ten years of darkness were not only devastating in the usual Seasonal way, but resulted in a much higher than usual incidence of mental illness. The Sanzed warlord Verishe conquered multiple ailing comms through the use of psychological warfare designed to convince her foes that gates and walls offered no reliable protection, and that phantasms lurked nearby. She was named emperor on the day the first sunlight reappeared.
—The Seasons of Sanze
22
Syenite, fractured
IT’S THE MORNING AFTER A raucous party that the Meovites threw to celebrate the Clalsu’s safe return and acquisition of some especially prized goods—high-quality stone for decorative carving, aromatic woods for furniture building, fancy brocade cloth that’s worth twice its weight in diamonds, and a goodly amount of tradable currency including high-denomination paper and whole fingers of mother-of-pearl. No food, but with that kind of money they can send traders to buy canoesful of anything they need on the mainland. Harlas broke out a cask of fearsomely strong Antarctic mead to celebrate, and half the comm’s still sleeping it off.
It’s five days after Syenite shut down a volcano that she started, which killed a whole city, and eight days after she killed two ships full of people to keep her family’s existence secret. It feels like everyone is celebrating the multiple mass murders she’s committed.
She’s still in bed, having retired to it as soon as the ship was unloaded. Innon hasn’t come to the house yet; she told him to go and tell the stories of the trip, because the people expect it of him and she does not want him suffering for her melancholy. He’s got Coru with him, because Coru loves celebrations—everyone feeds him, everyone cuddles him. He even tries to help Innon tell the stories, yelling nonsense at the top of his lungs. The child is more like Innon than he has any physical right to be.
Alabaster is the one who’s stayed with Syen, talking to her through her silence, forcing her to respond when she would rather just stop thinking. He says he knows what it’s like to feel like this, though he won’t tell her how or what happened. She believes him regardless.
“You should go,” she says at last. “Join the storytelling. Remind Coru he’s got at least two parents who are worth something.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s got three.”
“Innon thinks I’m a terrible mother.”
Alabaster sighed. “No. You’re just not the kind of mother Innon wants you to be. You’re the kind of mother our son needs, though.” She turns her head to frown at him. He shrugs. “Corundum will be strong, someday. He needs strong parents. I’m…” He falters abruptly. You practically feel him decide to change the subject. “Here. I brought you something.”
Syen sighs and pushes herself up as he crouches beside the bed, unfolding a little cloth parcel. In it, when she gets curious despite herself and leans closer, are two polished stone rings, just right for her fingers. One’s made of jade, the other mother-of-pearl.
She glares at him, and he shrugs. “Shutting down an active volcano isn’t something a mere four-ringer could do.”
“We’re free.” She says it doggedly, even though she doesn’t feel free. She fixed Allia, after all, completing the mission the Fulcrum sent her there for, however belatedly and perversely. It’s the sort of thing that makes her laugh uncontrollably when she thinks about it, so she pushes on before she can. “We don’t need to wear any rings anymore. Or black uniforms. I haven’t put my hair in a bun in months. You don’t have to service every woman they send you, like some kind of stud animal. Let the Fulcrum go.”
’Baster smiles a little, sadly. “We can’t, Syen. One of us is going to have to train Coru—”
“We don’t have to train him to do anything.” Syen lies down again. She wishes he would go away. “Let him learn the basics from Innon and Harlas. That’s been enough to let these people get by for centuries.”
“Innon couldn’t have stilled that blow, Syen. If he’d tried, he might have blown the hot spot underneath it wide, and set off a Season. You saved the world from that.”
“Then give me a medal, not rings.” She’s glaring at the ceiling. “Except I’m the reason that blow even existed, so maybe not.”
Alabaster reaches up to stroke her hair away from her face. He does that a lot, now that she wears it loose. She’s always been a little ashamed of her hair—it’s curly, but with no stiffness to it at all, whether the straight-stiffness of Sanzed hair or the kinky-stiffness of Coaster hair. She’s such a midlatter mutt that she doesn’t even know which of her ancestors to blame for the hair. At least it doesn’t get in her way.
“We are what we are,” he says, with such gentleness that she wants to cry. “We are Misalem, not Shemshena. You’ve heard that story?”
Syenite’s fingers twitch in remembered pain. “Yes.”
“From your Guardian, right? They like to tell that one to kids.” ’Baster shifts to lean against the bedpost with his back to her, relaxing. Syenite thinks about telling him to leave, but never say
s it aloud. She’s not looking at him, so she has no idea what he does with the bundle of rings that she didn’t take. He can eat them for all she cares.
“My Guardian gave me that nonsense, too, Syen. The monstrous Misalem, who decided to declare war against a whole nation and off the Sanzed Emperor for no particular reason.”
In spite of herself, Syenite frowns. “He had a reason?”
“Oh Evil Earth, of course. Use your rusting head.”
It’s annoying to be scolded, and annoyance pushes back her apathy a little more. Good old Alabaster, cheering her up by pissing her off. She turns her head to glare at the back of his. “Well, what was the reason?”
“The simplest and most powerful reason of all: revenge. That emperor was Anafumeth, and the whole thing happened just after the end of the Season of Teeth. That’s the Season they don’t talk about much in any creche. There was mass starvation in the northern-hemisphere comms. They got hit harder, since the shake that started the whole thing was near the northern pole. The Season took a year longer to take hold in the Equatorials and the south—”
“How do you know all this?” It’s nothing Syen’s ever heard, in the grit crucibles or elsewhere.
Alabaster shrugs, shaking the whole bed. “I wasn’t allowed to train with the other grits in my year-group; I had rings before most of them had pubic hair. The instructors let me loose in the seniors’ library to make up for it. They didn’t pay a lot of attention to what I read.” He sighs. “Also, on my first mission, I… There was an archeomest who… He… well. We talked, in addition to… other things.”
She doesn’t know why Alabaster bothers being shy about his affairs. She’s watched Innon fuck him into incoherence on more than one occasion. Then again, maybe it’s not the sex that he’s shy about.
“Anyway. It’s all there if you put the facts together and think beyond what we’re taught. Sanze was a new empire then, still growing, at the height of its power. But it was mostly in the northern half of the Equatorials at that time—Yumenes wasn’t actually the capital then—and some of the bigger Sanzed comms weren’t as good at preparing for Seasons as they are now. They lost their food storecaches somehow. Fire, fungus, Earth knows what. To survive, all the Sanzed comms decided to work together, attacking the comms of any lesser races.” His lip curls. “That’s when they started calling us ‘lesser races,’ actually.”
“So they took those other comms’ storecaches.” Syen can guess that much. She’s getting bored.
“No. No one had any stores left by the end of that Season. The Sanzeds took people.”
“People? For wh—” Then she understands.
There’s no need for slaves during a Season. Every comm has its Strongbacks, and if they need more, there are always commless people desperate enough to work in exchange for food. Human flesh becomes valuable for other reasons, though, when things get bad enough.
“So,” says Alabaster, oblivious while Syen lies there fighting nausea, “that Season is when the Sanzeds developed a taste for certain rarefied delicacies. And even after the Season ended and green things grew and the livestock turned herbivorous or stopped hibernating, they kept at it. They would send out parties to raid smaller settlements and newcomms held by races without Sanzed allies. All the accounts differ on the details, but they agree on one thing: Misalem was the only survivor when his family was taken in a raid. Supposedly his children were slaughtered for Anafumeth’s own table, though I suspect that’s a bit of dramatic embellishment.” Alabaster sighs. “Regardless, they died, and it was Anafumeth’s fault, and he wanted Anafumeth dead for it. Like any man would.”
But a rogga is not any man. Roggas have no right to get angry, to want justice, to protect what they love. For his presumption, Shemshena had killed him—and became a hero for doing it.
Syenite considers this in silence. Then Alabaster shifts a little, and she feels his hand press the bundle, the one with the rings in it, into her unresisting palm.
“Orogenes built the Fulcrum,” he says. She’s almost never heard him say orogene. “We did it under threat of genocide, and we used it to buckle a collar around our own necks, but we did it. We are the reason Old Sanze grew so powerful and lasted so long, and why it still half-rules the world, even if no one will admit it. We’re the ones who’ve figured out just how amazing our kind can be, if we learn how to refine the gift we’re born with.”
“It’s a curse, not a gift.” Syenite closes her eyes. But she doesn’t push away the bundle.
“It’s a gift if it makes us better. It’s a curse if we let it destroy us. You decide that—not the instructors, or the Guardians, or anyone else.” There’s another shift, and the bed moves a little as Alabaster leans on it. A moment later she feels his lips on her brow, dry and approving. Then he settles back down on the floor beside the bed, and says nothing more.
“I thought I saw a Guardian,” she says after a while. Very softly. “At Allia.”
Alabaster doesn’t reply for a moment. She’s decided that he won’t, when he says, “I will tear the whole world apart if they ever hurt us again.”
But we would still be hurt, she thinks.
It’s reassuring, though, somehow. The kind of lie she needs to hear. Syenite keeps her eyes closed and doesn’t move for a long while. She’s not sleeping; she’s thinking. Alabaster stays while she does it, and for that she is unutterably glad.
* * *
When the world ends three weeks later, it happens on the most beautiful day Syenite has ever seen. The sky is clear for miles, save for the occasional drift of cloud. The sea is calm, and even the omnipresent wind is warm and humid for once, instead of cool and scouring.
It’s so beautiful that the entire comm decides to head up to the heights. The able-bodied carry the ones who can’t make the steps, while the children get underfoot and nearly kill everyone. The people on cook duty put fish cakes and pieces of cut fruit and balls of seasoned grain into little pots that can be carried easily, and everyone brings blankets. Innon has a musical instrument Syenite has never seen before, something like a drum with guitar strings, which would probably be all the rage in Yumenes if it ever caught on there. Alabaster has Corundum. Syenite brings a truly awful novel someone found on the looted freighter, the sort of thing whose first page made her wince and burst into giggles. Then, of course, she kept reading. She loves books that are just for fun.
The Meovites spread themselves over the slope behind a ridge that blocks most of the wind but where the sun is full and bright. Syenite puts her blanket a ways from everyone else, but they quickly encroach on her, spreading out their blankets right alongside, and grinning at her when she glares.
She has come to realize over the past three years that most Meovites regard her and Alabaster as something like wild animals that have decided to scavenge off human habitations—impossible to civilize, kind of cute, and at least an amusing nuisance. So when they see that she obviously needs help with something and won’t admit it, they help her anyway. And they constantly pet Alabaster, and hug him and grab his hands and swing him into dancing, which Syen is at least grateful no one tries with her. Then again, everyone can see that Alabaster likes being touched, no matter how much he pretends standoffishness. It probably isn’t something he got a lot of in the Fulcrum, where everyone was afraid of his power. Perhaps likewise they think Syen enjoys being reminded that she is part of a group now, contributing and contributed to, and that she no longer needs to guard herself against everyone and everything.
They’re right. That doesn’t mean she’s going to tell them so.
Then it’s all Innon tossing Coru up in the air while Alabaster tries to pretend he’s not terrified even as his orogeny sends microshakes through the island’s underwater strata with every toss; and Hemoo starting some kind of chanted-poetry game set to music that all the Meovites seem to know; and Ough’s toddler Owel trying to run across the spread-out blankets and stepping on at least ten people before someone grabs her and tickles he
r down; and a basket being passed around that contains little clay bottles of something that burns Syen’s nose when she sniffs it; and.
And.
She could love these people, she thinks sometimes.
Perhaps she does already. She isn’t sure. But after Innon flops down for a nap with Coru already asleep on his chest, and after the poetry chant has turned into a vulgar-joke contest, and once she’s drunk enough of the bottle stuff that the world is actually beginning to move on its own… Syenite lifts her eyes and catches Alabaster’s. He’s propped himself on one elbow to browse the terrible book she’s finally abandoned. He’s making horrible and hilarious faces as he skims it. Meanwhile his free hand toys with one of Innon’s braids, and he looks nothing at all like the half-mad monster Feldspar sent her off with, at the beginning of this journey.
His eyes flick up to meet hers, and for just a moment there is wariness there. Syen blinks in surprise at this. But then, she is the only person here who knows what his life was like before. Does he resent her for being here, a constant reminder of what he’d rather forget?
He smiles, and she frowns in automatic reaction. His smile widens more. “You still don’t like me, do you?”
Syenite snorts. “What do you care?”
He shakes his head, amused—and then he reaches out and strokes a hand over Coru’s hair. The child stirs and murmurs in his sleep, and Alabaster’s face softens. “Would you like to have another child?”
Syenite starts, her mouth falling open. “Of course not. I didn’t want this one.”
“But he’s here now. And he’s beautiful. Isn’t he? You make such beautiful children.” Which is probably the most inane thing he could ever say, but then, he’s Alabaster. “You could have the next one with Innon.”
“Maybe Innon should have a say in that, before we settle his breeding future.”
“He loves Coru, and he’s a good father. He’s got two other kids already, and they’re fine. Stills, though.” He considers. “You and Innon might have a child who’s still. That wouldn’t be a terrible thing, here.”