The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,119

Biomagestric division. “You’re to hold the onyx, today, Houwha.”

From another building of Zero Site, I feel Gaewha’s small twitch of surprise. We’re very attuned to one another today. I say, “Kelenli holds the onyx.”

“Not anymore.” Gallat keeps his head down as he speaks, unnecessarily reaching over to check my straps, and I remember him reaching the same way to pull Kelenli back to him, in the garden. Ah, I understand, now. All this while he has been afraid to lose her … to us. Afraid to make her just another tool in the eyes of his superiors. Will they let him keep her, after Geoarcanity? Or does he fear that she, too, will be thrown into the briar patch? He must. Why else make such a significant change to our configuration on the most important day in human history?

As if to confirm my guess, he says, “Biomagestry says you now show more than sufficient compatibility to hold the connection for the required length of time.”

He’s watching me, hoping I won’t protest. I realize suddenly that I can do so. With so much scrutiny on Gallat’s every decision today, important people will notice if I insist that the new configuration is a bad idea. I can, simply by raising my voice, take Kelenli from Gallat. I can destroy him, as he destroyed Tetlewha.

But that’s a foolish, pointless thought, because how can I exercise my power over him without hurting her? I’m going to hurt her enough as it is, when we turn the Plutonic Engine back on itself. She should survive the initial convulsion of magic; even if she’s in contact with any of the devices that flux, she has more than enough skill to shunt the feedback away. Then in the aftermath, she’ll be just another survivor, made equal in suffering. No one will know what she really is—or her child, if it ends up like her. Like us. We will have set her free … to struggle for survival along with everyone else. But that is better than the illusion of safety in a gilded cage, is it not?

Better than you could ever have given her, I think at Gallat.

“All right,” I say. He relaxes minutely.

Gallat leaves my chamber and goes back into the observation room with the other conductors. I am alone. I am never alone; the others are with me. The signal comes that we should begin, as the moment seems to hold its breath. We are ready.

First the network.

Attuned as we are, it is easy, pleasurable, to modulate our silverflows and cancel out resistance. Remwha plays yoke, but he hardly needs to goad any of us to resonate higher or lower or to pull at the same pace; we are aligned. We all want this.

Above us, yet easily within our range, the Earth seems to hum, too. Almost like a thing alive. We have been to Corepoint and back, in our early training; we have traveled through the mantle and seen the massive flows of magic that churn naturally up from the iron-nickel core of the planet. To tap that bottomless font will be the greatest feat of human accomplishment, ever. Once, that thought would have made me proud. Now I share this with the others and a shiverstone micaflake glimmer of bitter amusement ripples through all of us. They have never believed us human, but we will prove by our actions today that we are more than tools. Even if we aren’t human, we are people. They will never be able to deny us this again.

Enough frivolity.

First the network, then the fragments of the Engine must be assembled. We reach for the amethyst because it is nearest on the globe. Though we are a world away from it, we know that it utters a low held note, its storage matrix glowing and brimful with energy as we dive, up, into its torrential flow. Already it has stopped suckling the last dregs from the briar patch at its roots, becoming a closed system in itself; now it feels almost alive. As we coax it from quiescence into resonant activity, it begins to pulse, and then finally to shimmer in patterns that emulate life, like the firing of neurotransmitters or the contractions of peristalsis. Is it alive? I wonder this for the first time, a question triggered by Kelenli’s lessons. It is a thing of high-state matter, but it coexists simultaneously with a thing of high-state magic made in its image—and taken from the bodies of people