The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,62

of emptiness. A raw hole. “I don’t have anything left now.”

Hoa says, “You have comm and kin. You’ll have a home, once you reach Rennanis. You have your life.”

Do you really have these things? The dead have no wishes, says stonelore. You think of Tirimo, where you didn’t want to wait for death to come for you, and so you killed the comm. Death is always with you. Death is you.

Hoa says to your slumped back, “I can’t die.”

You frown, jarred out of melancholy by this apparent non sequitur. Then you understand: He’s saying you won’t ever lose him. He will not crumble away like Alabaster. You can’t ever be surprised by the pain of Hoa’s loss the way you were with Corundum or Innon or Alabaster or Uche, or now Jija. You can’t hurt Hoa in any way that matters.

“It’s safe to love you,” you murmur, in startled realization.

“Yes.”

Surprisingly, this eases the knot of silence in your chest. Not much, but … but it helps.

“How do you do it?” you ask. It’s hard to imagine. Not being able to die even when you want to, even as everything you know and care about falters and fails. Having to go on, no matter what. No matter how tired you are.

“Move forward,” Hoa says.

“What?”

“Move. Forward.”

And then he is gone, into the earth. Nearby, somewhere, if you need him. Right now, though, he’s right: you don’t.

Can’t think. You’re thirsty, and hungry and tired besides. It stinks in this part of camp. The stump of your arm hurts. Your heart hurts more.

You take a step, though, toward the camp. And then another. And another.

Forward.

2490: Antarctics near eastern coast; unnamed farming comm twenty miles from Jekity City. Initially unknown event caused everyone in the comm to turn to glass. (?? Is this right? Glass, not ice? Find tertiary sources.) Later, headman’s second husband found alive in Jekity City; discovered to be rogga. Under intensive questioning by comm militia, he admitted to somehow doing the deed. Claimed that it was the only way to stop the Jekity volcano from erupting, though no eruption signs were observed. Reports indicate the man’s hands were also stone. Questioning interrupted by a stone eater, who killed seventeen militia members and took rogga into earth; both vanished.

—Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars

8

Nassun underground

THE WHITE STAIR WINDS DOWNWARD for quite some while. The tunnel walls are close and claustrophobic, but the air somehow isn’t stale. Just being free of the ashfall is novelty enough, but Nassun notices that there’s not much dust, either. That’s weird, isn’t it? All of this is weird.

“Why isn’t there dust?” Nassun asks as they walk. She speaks in hushed tones at first, but gradually she relaxes—a little. It’s still a deadciv ruin, after all, and she’s heard lots of lorist tales about how dangerous such places can be. “Why do the lights still work? That door we came through back there, why did it still work?”

“I haven’t a clue, little one.” Schaffa now precedes her down the steps, on the theory that anything dangerous should encounter him first. Nassun can’t see his face, and must gauge his mood by his broad shoulders. (It bothers her that she does this, watching him constantly for shifts of mood or warnings of tension. It is another thing she learned from Jija. She cannot seem to shed it with Schaffa, or anyone else.) He’s tired, she can see, but otherwise well. Satisfied, perhaps, that they have made it here. Wary, of what they might find—but that makes two of them. “With deadciv ruins, sometimes the answer is simply ‘because.’”

“Do you … remember anything, Schaffa?”

A shrug, not as nonchalant as it should be. “Some. Flashes. The why, rather than the what.”

“Then, why? Why do Guardians come here, during a Season? Why don’t they just stay wherever they are, and help the comms they join the way you helped Jekity?”

The stairs are ever so slightly too wide for Nassun’s stride, even when she keeps to the more narrow inner bend. Periodically she has to stop and put both feet on one step in order to rest, then trot to catch up. He is drumbeat-steady, proceeding without her—but abruptly, just as she asks these questions, they reach a landing within the stairwell. To Nassun’s great relief, Schaffa stops at last, signaling that they can sit down and rest. She’s still soaked with sweat from the frantic scrabble through the grass forest, though it has begun to dry now that she’s moving slower. The