The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,12

the air, shredding the net around her. She lunges for Nassun again, but Nassun—after boggling at the speed and efficacy of the Guardian’s retaliation—snatches stone up from within the earth to spear Nida’s feet. This impedes Nida only a little. She bulls forward, breaking the rock shards off and charging with them still jutting through her boots. One of her hands is held like a claw, the other a flat, finger-stiffened blade. Whichever of them reaches Nassun first will dictate how she begins tearing Nassun apart with her bare hands.

Here Nassun panics. Just a little, because she would lose control of the sapphire otherwise—but some. She can sense a raw, hungry, chaotic reverberation to the silver threads thrumming through Nida, like nothing she’s ever perceived before, and it is somehow, suddenly, terrifying. She doesn’t know what that strange reverberation will do to her, if any part of Nida should touch Nassun’s bare skin. (Her mother knows, though.) She takes a step back, willing the sapphire longknife to move between her and Nida in a defensive position. Her good hand is still on the sapphire’s hilt, so it looks as if she’s brandishing a weapon with a shaking and far-too-slow hand. Nida laughs again, high and delighted, because they can both see that not even the sapphire will be enough to stop her. Nida’s claw-hand flails out, fingers splaying and reaching for Nassun’s cheek even as she weaves like a snake around Nassun’s wild slash—

Nassun drops the sapphire and screams, her dulled sessapinae flexing desperately, helplessly—

But all of the Guardians have forgotten Nassun’s other guardian.

Steel does not appear to move. In one instant he stands as he has for the past few minutes, with his back to the tumbled pile of Jija, expression serene, posture languid as he faces the northern horizon. In the next he is closer, right beside Nassun, having transported himself so quickly that Nassun hears a sharp clap of displaced air. And Nida’s forward momentum abruptly stops as her throat is caught tight within the circle of Steel’s upraised hand.

She shrieks. Nassun has heard Nida ramble for hours in her fluttery voice, and perhaps that’s made her think of Nida as a songbird, chattery and chirruping and harmless. This shriek is the cry of a raptor, savagery turning to fury as she is thwarted from stooping on her prey. She tries to wrench herself back, risking skin and tendon to get loose, but Steel’s grip is as firm as stone. She’s caught.

A sound behind Nassun makes her jerk around. Ten feet from where she stands, Umber and Schaffa have blurred together in hand-to-hand combat. She can’t see what’s happening. They’re both moving too fast, their strikes swift and vicious. By the time her ears process the sounds of a blow, they’ve already shifted to a different position. She can’t even tell what they’re doing—but she is afraid, so afraid, for Schaffa. The silver in Umber flows like rivers, power being steadily fed to him through that glimmering taproot. The thinner streams in Schaffa, however, are a wild chain of rapids and clogs, yanking at his nerves and muscles and flaring unpredictably in an attempt to distract him. Nassun can see by the concentration in Schaffa’s face that he is still in control, and that this is what has saved him; his movements are unpredictable, strategic, considered. Still. That he can fight at all is astonishing.

How he ends the fight, by driving his hand up to the wrist through the underside of Umber’s jaw, is horrifying.

Umber makes an awful sound, jerking to a halt—but an instant later, his hand lunges for Schaffa’s throat again, blurring in its speed. Schaffa gasps—so quickly that it might be just a breath, but Nassun hears the alarm in it—and shunts away the strike, but Umber’s still moving, even though his eyes have rolled back in his head and the movements are twitchy, clumsy. Nassun understands then: Umber’s not home anymore. Something else is, working his limbs and reflexes for as long as crucial connections remain in place. And yes: In the next breath, Schaffa flings Umber to the ground, wrenches his hand free, and stomps on his opponent’s head.

Nassun can’t look. She hears the crunch; that’s enough. She hears Umber actually continue twitching, his movements more feeble but persistent, and she hears the faint rustle of Schaffa’s clothes as he bends. Then she hears something that her mother last heard in a little room in the Guardians’ wing of the Fulcrum, some