The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,84

about the rhythm of the sentences, their order, fits the expectations of Nassun’s ear. She suspects that part of the first sentence is a greeting. She thinks a word that keeps being repeated, amid a passage that has the air of a command, might be a softening word, like please. The rest, however, is wholly foreign.

The voice speaks only briefly, and then falls silent. Nassun glances at Schaffa and is surprised to see him frowning, eyes narrowed in concentration—though some of that is also tension in his jaw, and a hint of extra pallor around his lips. The silver is hurting him more, and it must be bad this time. Still, he looks up at her in something like wonder. “I remember this language,” he says.

“Those weird words? What did she say?”

“That this …” He grimaces. “Thing. It’s called a vehimal. The announcement says it will depart from this city and begin the transit to Corepoint in two minutes, to arrive in six hours. There was something about other vehicles, other routes, return trips to various … nodes? I don’t remember what that means. And she hopes we will enjoy the ride.” He smiles thinly.

“Oh.” Pleased, Nassun kicks a little in her chair. Six hours to travel all the way to the other side of the planet? But she shouldn’t be amazed by that, maybe, since these are the people who built the obelisks.

There seems to be nothing to do but get comfortable. Cautiously, Nassun unslings her runny-sack and lets it hang from the back of her chair. This causes her to notice that something like lichen grows all over the floor, though it cannot be natural or accidental; the blooms of it spread out in pretty, regular patterns. She stretches down a foot and finds that it is soft, like carpet.

Schaffa is more restless, pacing around the comfortable confines of the … vehimal … and touching its golden veins now and again. It’s slow, methodical pacing, but even that is unusual for him, so Nassun is restless, too. “I have been here,” he murmurs.

“What?” She heard him. She’s just confused.

“In this vehimal. Perhaps in that very seat. I have been here, I feel it. And that language—I don’t remember ever having heard it, and yet.” He bares his teeth suddenly, and thrusts his fingers into his hair. “Familiarity, but no, no … context! No meaning! Something about this journey is wrong. Something is wrong and I don’t remember what.”

Schaffa has been damaged for as long as Nassun has known him, but this is the first time he has seemed damaged to her. He’s speaking faster, words tumbling over one another. There is an oddness to the way his eyes dart around the vehimal interior that makes Nassun suspect he’s seeing things that aren’t there.

Trying to conceal her anxiety, she reaches out and pats the shell-chair beside her. “These are soft enough to sleep in, Schaffa.”

It’s too obvious a suggestion, but he turns to gaze at her, and for a moment the haunted tension of his expression softens. “Always so concerned for me, my little one.” But it stops the restlessness as she’d hoped, and he comes over to sit.

Just as he does—Nassun starts—the woman’s voice speaks again. It’s asking a question. Schaffa frowns and then translates, slowly, “She—I think this is the vehimal’s voice. It speaks to us now, specifically. Not just an announcement.”

Nassun shifts, suddenly less comfortable inside the thing. “It talks. It’s alive?”

“I’m not certain the distinction between living creature and lifeless object matters to the people who built this place. Yet—” He hesitates, then raises his voice to haltingly speak strange words to the air. The voice answers again, repeating something Nassun heard before. She’s not sure where some of the words begin or end, but the syllables are the same. “It says that we are approaching the … transition point. And it asks if we would like to … experience?” He shakes his head, irritable. “To see something. Finding the words in our own tongue is more difficult than understanding what’s being said.”

Nassun twitches with nerves. She draws her feet up into her chair, irrationally afraid of hurting the creature-thing’s insides. She isn’t sure what she means to ask. “Will it hurt, to see?” Hurt the vehimal, she means, but she cannot help also thinking, Hurt us.

The voice speaks again before Schaffa has time to translate Nassun’s question. “No,” it says.

Nassun jumps in pure shock, her orogeny twitching in a way that would have earned