The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,110

scintillating pillars of magic driven into the volcano’s foundations, pinning it in place. It’s still active, but it will never erupt because of those pillars. It is as stable as bedrock despite the hole at its core burrowing down to the Earth’s heart.

She shakes this off as irrelevant, and finally voices the thought that has been gathering in her mind over all the days she has dwelled in this city of stone people. “If … if I turn him into a stone eater, he’ll live. And he won’t have any pain. Right?” Steel does not reply. In the lengthening silence, Nassun bites her lip. “So you have to tell me how to—to make him like you. I bet I can do it if I use the Gate. I can do anything with that. Except …”

Except. The Obelisk Gate doesn’t do small things. Just as Nassun feels, sesses, knows that the Gate makes her temporarily omnipotent, she knows, too, that she cannot use it to transform just one man. If she makes Schaffa into a stone eater … every human being on the planet will change in the same manner. Every comm, every commless band, every starving wanderer: Ten thousand still-life cities, instead of just one. All the world will become like Corepoint.

But is that really so terrible a thing? If everyone is a stone eater, there will be no more orogenes and stills. No more children to die, no more fathers to murder them. The Seasons could come and go, and they wouldn’t matter. No one would starve to death ever again. To make the whole world as peaceful as Corepoint … would that not be a kindness?

Steel’s face, which has been tilted up toward the Moon even as his eyes watch her, now slowly pivots to face her. It’s always unnerving to see him move slowly. “Do you know what it feels like to live forever?”

Nassun blinks, thrown. She’s been expecting a fight. “What?”

The moonlight has transformed Steel into a thing of starkest shadows, white and ink against the dimness of the garden. “I asked,” he says, and his voice is almost pleasant, “if you know what it feels like to live forever. Like me. Like your Schaffa. Do you have any inkling as to how old he is? Do you care?”

“I—” About to say that she does, Nassun falters. No. This is not a thing she has ever considered. “I—I don’t—”

“I would estimate,” Steel continues, “that Guardians typically last three or four thousand years. Can you imagine that length of time? Think of the past two years. Your life since the beginning of the Season. Imagine another year. You can do that, can’t you? Every day feels like a year here in Corepoint, or so your kind tell me. Now put all three years together, and imagine them times one thousand.” The emphasis he puts on this is sharp, precisely enunciated. In spite of herself, Nassun jumps.

But also in spite of herself … she thinks. She feels old, Nassun, at the world-weary age of not-quite-eleven. So much has happened since the day she came home to find her little brother dead on the floor. She is a different person now, hardly Nassun at all; sometimes she is surprised to realize Nassun is still her name. How much more different will she be in three years? Ten? Twenty?

Steel pauses until he sees some change in her expression—some evidence, perhaps, that she is listening to him. Then he says, “I have reason to believe, however, that your Schaffa is much, much older than most Guardians. He isn’t quite first-generation; those have all long since died. Couldn’t take it. He’s one of the very early ones, though, still. The languages, you see; that’s how you can always tell. They never quite lose those, even after they’ve forgotten the names they were born with.”

Nassun remembers how Schaffa knew the language of the earth-traversing vehicle. It is strange to think of Schaffa having been born back when that tongue was still spoken. It would make him … she can’t even imagine. Old Sanze is supposed to be seven Seasons old, eight if one counts the present Season. Almost three thousand years. The Moon’s cycle of return and retreat is much older than that, and Schaffa remembers it, so … yes. He’s very, very old. She frowns.

“It’s rare to find one of them who can really go the distance,” Steel continues. His tone is casual, conversational; he could be talking about Nassun’s old neighbors