The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,125

and wishing for things that cannot be. Finally she gets up and very carefully feeds him the last of the vegetable broth she has made. She gives him a lot of water, too. Even after she has dragged the Moon into a collision course, it will take a few days for the Earth to be smashed apart. She doesn’t want Schaffa to suffer too much in that time, since she will no longer be around to help him.

(She is such a good child, at her core. Don’t be angry with her. She can only make choices within the limited set of her experiences, and it isn’t her fault that so many of those experiences have been terrible. Marvel, instead, at how easily she loves, how thoroughly. Love enough to change the world! She learned how to love like this from somewhere.)

As she uses a cloth to dab spilled broth from his lips, she reaches up and begins activation of her network. Here at Corepoint, she can do it without even the onyx, but start-up will take time.

“‘A commandment is set in stone,’” she tells Schaffa solemnly. His eyes are open again. He blinks, perhaps in reaction to the sound, though she knows this is meaningless.

The words are a thing she read in the strange handwritten book—the one that told her how to use a smaller network of obelisks as a “spare key” to subvert the onyx’s power over the Gate. The man who wrote the book was probably crazy, as evidenced by the fact that he apparently loved Nassun’s mother long ago. That is strange and wrong and yet somehow unsurprising. As big as the world is, Nassun is beginning to realize it’s also really small. The same stories, cycling around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes eternally repeated.

“Some things are too broken to be fixed, Schaffa.” Inexplicably, she thinks of Jija. The ache of this silences her for a moment. “I … I can’t make anything better. But I can at least make sure the bad things stop.” With that, she gets up to leave.

She does not see Schaffa’s face turn, like the Moon sliding into shadow, to watch her go.

It’s dawn when you decide to change the world. You’re still asleep in the bedroll that Lerna has brought up to the roof of the yellow-X building. You and he spent the night under the water tower, listening to the ever-present rumble of the Rifting and the snap of occasional lightning strikes. Probably should’ve had sex there one more time, but you didn’t think about it and he didn’t suggest, so oh well. That’s gotten you into enough trouble, anyway. Had no business relying solely on middle age and starvation for birth control.

He watches as you stand and stretch, and it’s a thing you’ll never fully understand or be comfortable with—the admiration in his gaze. He makes you feel like a better person than you are. And this is what makes you regret, again, endlessly, that you cannot stay to see his child born. Lerna’s steady, relentless goodness is a thing that should be preserved in the world, somehow. Alas.

You haven’t earned his admiration. But you intend to.

You head downstairs and stop. Last night, in addition to Lerna, you let Tonkee and Hjarka and Ykka know that it was time—that you would leave after breakfast in the morning. You left the question of whether they could come with you or not open and unstated. If they volunteer, it’s one thing, but you’re not going to ask. What kind of person would you be to pressure them into that kind of danger? They’ll be in enough, just like the rest of humanity, as it is.

You weren’t counting on finding all of them in the lobby of the yellow-X building as you come downstairs. All of them busy tucking away bedrolls and yawning and frying sausages and complaining loudly about somebody drinking up all the rusting tea. Hoa is there, perfectly positioned to see you come downstairs. There’s a rather smug smile on his stone lips, but that doesn’t surprise you. Danel and Maxixe do, the former up and doing some kind of martial exercises in a corner while the latter dices another potato for the pan—and yes, he’s built a campfire in the building lobby, because that’s what commless people do sometimes. Some of the windows are broken; the smoke’s going out through them. Hjarka and Tonkee are a surprise, too; they’re still asleep, curled