The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,45

moments of coughing. The other stick figures chuckle, too, but it’s Maxixe’s cough that worries you. It’s dry, hacking, pebbly; not a good sound. He’s been breathing too much ash without a mask. It’s loud, too. If the Hunters aren’t nearby, watching and perhaps ready to shoot him and his people, you’ll eat your runny-sack.

At the end of the coughing fit, he tilts his head up at you again, with an amused look in his eye. “I’m doing the same thing,” he drawls. With his chin, he points toward his gathered people. “These rusters stick with me because I’m not going to eat them. They don’t fuck with me because I’ll kill them. There: peaceful coexistence.”

You look around at them and frown. Hard to see their expressions. “They didn’t attack my people, though.” Or they’d be dead.

“Nah. That was Olemshyn.” Maxixe shrugs; it makes his whole body move. “Half-Sanzed bastard. Got kicked out of two comms for ‘anger management issues,’ he said. He would’ve gotten us all killed raiding, so I told anybody who wanted to live and could stand me to come follow me, and we did our own thing. This side of the forest is ours, that side was theirs.”

Two commless tribes, not one. Maxixe’s hardly qualifies, though; only a handful of people besides himself? But he said it: Those who could endure living with a rogga went with him. That just didn’t turn out to be a lot of people.

Maxixe turns and climbs halfway up to the blind again, so that he can sit down and also be on an eye level with you. He lets out another rattly cough from the effort of doing this. “I figure he was expecting me to hit you lot,” he continues, once the cough subsides. “That’s how we usually do it: I ice ’em, his group grabs what it can before I and mine can show up, we both get enough to go on a little longer. But I was all fucked up from what your headwoman said.” He looks away, shaking his head. “Olemshyn should’ve broken off once he saw I wasn’t going to ice you, but, well. I did say he was gonna get them killed.”

“Yeah.”

“Good riddance. What happened to your arm?” He’s looking at you now. He can’t see your left breast, even though you’re slouching a little to the left. It hurts, weighing on your flesh.

You counter, “What happened to your legs?”

He smiles, lopsidedly, and doesn’t answer. Neither do you.

“So, not killing each other.” Maxixe shakes his head. “And that’s actually working out?”

“So far. We’re trying, anyway.”

“Won’t work.” Maxixe shifts again and darts another look at you. “How much did it cost you, to join them?”

You don’t say nothing, because that’s not what he’s asking, anyway. You can see the bargain he’s made for survival here: his skills in exchange for the raiders’ limited food and dubious shelter. This stone forest, this death trap, is his doing. How many people did he kill for his raiders?

How many have you killed, for Castrima?

Not the same.

How many people were in Rennanis’s army? How many of them did you sentence to be steam-cooked alive by insects? How many ash-mounds dot Castrima-over now, each with a hand or booted foot poking out?

Not the rusting same. That was them or you.

Just like Maxixe, trying to survive. Him or them.

You set your jaw to silence this internal argument. There isn’t time for this.

“We can’t—” you attempt, then shift. “There are other ways besides killing. Other … We don’t just have to be … this.” Ykka’s words, awkward and oily with hypocrisy from your mouth. And are those words even true anymore? Castrima no longer has the geode to force cooperation between orogene and still. Maybe it’ll all fall apart tomorrow.

Maybe. But until then, you force yourself to finish. “We don’t have to be what they made us, Maxixe.”

He shakes his head, staring at the leaf litter. “You remember that name, too.”

You lick your lips. “Yeah. I’m Essun.”

He frowns a little at this, perhaps because it isn’t a stone-themed name. That’s why you picked it. He doesn’t question it, though. At last he sighs. “Rusting look at me, Essun. Listen to the rocks in my chest. Even if your headwoman will take half a rogga, I’m not going to last much longer. Also—” Because he’s sitting, he can use his hands; he gestures around at the other scarecrow figures.

“No comm will let us in,” says one of the smaller figures. You think that’s