The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,80

looks sharply at you. “I know when I see new stories being written, though.”

“I … I don’t know anything about that.”

She shrugs. “The hero of the story never does.”

Hero? You laugh a little, and it’s got an edge. Can’t help thinking of Allia, and Tirimo, and Meov, and Rennanis, and Castrima. Heroes don’t summon swarms of nightmare bugs to eat their enemies. Heroes aren’t monsters to their daughters.

“I won’t forget what I am,” Danel continues. She’s braced one hand on her knee and is leaning forward, insistent. Somewhere in the last few days, she’s gotten her hands on a knife, and used it to shave the sides of her scalp. It gives her a naturally lean, hungry look. “If I’m possibly the last Equatorial lorist left, then it’s my duty to go with you. To write the tale of what happens—and if I survive, to make sure the world hears it.”

This is ridiculous. You stare at her. “You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Figured we’d settle the issue of whether I’m going first, but we can skip to the details if you want.”

“I don’t trust you,” you say, mostly in exasperation.

“I don’t trust you, either. But we don’t have to like each other to work together.” Her own plate is empty; she picks it up and waves to one of the kids on cleanup duty to come take it. “It’s not like I have a reason to kill you, anyway. This time.”

And it’s worse that Danel has said this—that she remembers siccing a shirtless Guardian on you and is unapologetic about it. Yes, it was war and, yes, you later slaughtered her army, but … “People like you don’t need a reason!”

“I don’t think you have any real idea who or what ‘people like me’ are.” She’s not angry; her statement was matter-of-fact. “But if you need more reasons, here’s another: Rennanis is shit. Sure, there’s food, water, and shelter; your headwoman’s right to lead you there if it’s true that the city is empty now. Better than commlessness, or rebuilding somewhere with no storecaches. But shit otherwise. I’d rather stay on the move.”

“Bullshit,” you say, frowning. “No comm is that bad.”

Danel just lets out a single bitter snort. It makes you uneasy.

“Just think about it,” she says finally, and gets up to leave.

“I agree that Danel should come with us,” Lerna says, later that night when you tell him about the conversation. “She’s a good fighter. Knows the road. And she’s right: she has no reason to betray us.”

You’re half-asleep, because of the sex. It’s an anticlimactic thing now that it’s finally happened. What you feel for Lerna will never be intense, or guilt-free. You’ll always feel too old for him. But, well. He asked you to show him the truncated breast and you did, thinking that would mark the end of his interest in you. The sandy patch is crusty and rough amid the smoother brown of your torso—like a scab, though the wrong color and texture. His hands were gentle as he examined the spot and pronounced it sound enough to need no further bandaging. You told him that it didn’t hurt. You didn’t say that you were afraid you couldn’t feel anything anymore. That you were changing, hardening in more ways than one, becoming nothing but the weapon everyone keeps trying to make of you. You didn’t say, Maybe you’re better off with unrequited love.

But even though you didn’t say any of these things, after the examination he looked at you and replied, “You’re still beautiful.” You apparently needed to hear that a lot more than you realized. And now here you are.

So you process his words slowly because he’s made you feel relaxed and boneless and human again, and it’s a good ten seconds before you blurt, “‘Us’?”

He just looks at you.

“Shit,” you say, and drape an arm over your eyes.

The next day, Castrima enters the desert.

There comes a time of greater hardship for you.

All Seasons are hardship, Death is the fifth, and master of all, but this time is different. This is personal. This is a thousand people trying to cross a desert that is deadly even when acid rain isn’t sheeting from the sky. This is a group force-march along a highroad that is shaky and full of holes big enough to drop a house through. Highroads are built to withstand shakes, but there’s a limit, and the Rifting definitely surpassed it. Ykka decided to take the risk because even a damaged highroad