The Fifth Season

19 Syenite on the lookout

THEY’VE BEEN IN MEOV FOR three days when something changes. Syenite has spent those three days feeling very much out of place, in more ways than one. The first problem is that she can’t speak the language — which Alabaster tells her is called Eturpic. A number of Coaster comms still speak it as a native tongue, though most people also learn Sanze-mat for trading purposes. Alabaster’s theory is that the people of the islands are mostly descended from Coasters, which seems fairly obvious from their predominant coloring and common kinky hair — but since they raid rather than trade, they had no need to retain Sanze-mat. He tries to teach Eturpic to her, but she’s not really in a “learn something new” sort of mood. That’s because of the second problem, which Alabaster points out to her after they’ve had enough time to recover from their travails: They can’t leave. Or rather, they’ve got nowhere to go.

“If the Guardians tried to kill us once, they’ll try again,” he explains. This is as they stroll along one of the arid heights of the island; it’s the only way they can get any real privacy, since otherwise hordes of children follow them around and try to imitate the strange sounds of Sanze-mat. There’s plenty to do here — the children are in creche most of the evenings, after everyone’s done fishing and crabbing and whatnot for the day — but it’s clear that there’s not a lot of entertainment.

“Without knowing what it is we’ve done to provoke the Guardians’ ire,” Alabaster continues, “it would be folly itself to go back to the Fulcrum. We might not even make it past the gates before somebody throws another disruption knife.”

Which is obvious, now that Syenite thinks it through. Yet there’s something else that’s obvious, whenever she looks at the horizon and sees the smoking hump that is what’s left of Allia. “They think we’re dead.” She tears her eyes away from that lump, trying not to imagine what must have become of the beautiful little seaside comm she remembers. All of Allia’s alarms, all their preparations, were shaped around surviving tsunami, not the volcano that has obviously, impossibly occurred instead. Poor Heresmith. Not even Asael deserved the death she probably suffered.

She cannot think about this. Instead she focuses on Alabaster. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? Being dead in Allia allows us to be alive, and free, here.”

“Exactly!” Now Alabaster’s grinning, practically dancing in place. She’s never seen him so excited before. It’s like he’s not even aware of the price that’s been paid for their freedom… or maybe he just doesn’t care. “There’s hardly any contact with the continent, here, and when there is, it’s not exactly friendly. Our assigned Guardians can sense us if they’re near enough, but none of their kind ever come here. These islands aren’t even on many maps!” Then he sobers. “But on the continent there’d be no question of us escaping the Fulcrum. Every Guardian east of Yumenes will be sniffing about the remains of Allia for hints as to whether we’ve survived. They’re probably circulating posters bearing our likenesses to the Imperial Road Patrol and quartent militias in the region. I suppose I’ll be made out as Misalem reborn, and you my willing accomplice. Or maybe you’ll finally get some respect, and they’ll decide you’re the mastermind.”

Yes, well.

He’s right, though. With a comm destroyed in such a horrible way, the Fulcrum will need scapegoats to blame. Why not the two roggas on site, who should have been more than skilled enough to contain any seismic event between them? Allia’s destruction represents a betrayal of everything the Fulcrum promises the Stillness: tame and obedient orogenes, safety from the worst shakes and blows. Freedom from fear, at least till the next Fifth Season comes. Of course the Fulcrum will vilify them in every way possible, because otherwise people will break down its obsidian walls and slaughter everyone inside down to the littlest grit.

It does not help that Syen can sess, now that her sessapinae are no longer numb, just how bad things are in Allia. It’s at the edge of her awareness — which is itself a surprise; for some reason she can reach much farther now than she could before. Still, it’s clear: In the flat plane of the Maximal plate’s eastern edge, there is a shaft burned straight down and down and down, into the very mantle of the planet. Beyond that Syen cannot follow — and she does not need to, because she can tell what made this shaft. Its edges are hexagonal, and it has exactly the same circumference as the garnet obelisk.

And Alabster is giddy. She could hate him for that alone.

His smile fades as he sees her face. “Evil Earth, are you ever happy?”

“They’ll find us. Our Guardians can track us. ”

He shakes his head. “Mine can’t.” You remember the strange Guardian in Allia alluding to this. “As for yours, when your orogeny was negated, he lost you. It cuts off everything, you know, not just our abilities. He’ll need to touch you for the connection to work again.”

You had no idea. “He won’t stop looking, though.”

Alabaster pauses. “Did you like being in the Fulcrum so much?”

The question startles her, and angers her further. “I could at least be myself there. I didn’t have to hide what I am.”

He nods slowly, something in his expression telling her that he understands all too well what she’s feeling. “And what are you, when you’re there?”

“Fuck. You.” She’s too angry, all of a sudden, to know why she’s angry.

“I did.” His smirk makes her burn hot as Allia must be. “Remember? We’ve fucked Earth knows how many times, even though we can’t stand each other, on someone else’s orders. Or have you made yourself believe you wanted it? Did you need a dick — any dick, even my mediocre, boring one — that bad?”

She doesn’t reply in words. She’s not thinking or talking anymore. She’s in the earth and it’s reverberating with her rage, amplifying it; the torus that materializes around her is high and fine and leaves an inch-wide ring of cold so fierce that the air hisses and sears white for an instant. She’s going to ice him to the Arctics and back.

But Alabaster only sighs and flexes a little, and his torus blots out hers as easily as fingers snuffing a candle. It’s gentle compared to what he could do, but the profundity of having her fury so swiftly and powerfully stilled makes her stagger. He steps forward as if to help her, and she jerks away from him with a half-voiced snarl. He backs off at once, holding up his hands as if asking for a truce.

“Sorry,” he says. He genuinely sounds it, so she doesn’t storm off right then. “I was just trying to make a point.”

He’s made it. Not that she hadn’t known it before: that she is a slave, that all roggas are slaves, that the security and sense of self-worth the Fulcrum offers is wrapped in the chain of her right to live, and even the right to control her own body. It’s one thing to know this, to admit it to herself, but it’s the sort of truth that none of them use against each other — not even to make a point — because doing so is cruel and unnecessary. This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.

They glare at each other for a moment longer, then Alabaster shakes his head and turns to leave. Syenite follows, because there’s really nowhere else to go. They head back down to the cavern level. As they descend the stairs, Syenite has no choice but to face the third reason she feels so out of place in Meov.

Floating now in the comm’s harbor is a huge, graceful sailing vessel — maybe a frigate, maybe a galleon, she doesn’t know either of these words from boat—that dwarfs all the smaller vessels combined. Its hull is a wood so dark that it’s almost black, patched with paler wood here and there. Its sails are tawny canvas, also much-mended and sun-faded and water-marked… and yet, somehow despite the stains and patches, the whole of the ship is oddly beautiful. It is called the Clalsu, or at least that’s what the word sounds like to her ears, and it sailed in two days after Syenite and Alabaster arrived in Meov. Aboard it were a good number of the comm’s able-bodied adults, and a lot of ill-gotten gain from several weeks’ predation along the coastal shipping lanes.

The Clalsu has also brought to Meov its captain — the headman’s second, actually, who is only second by virtue of the fact that he spends more time away from the island than on it. Otherwise, Syen would have known the instant this man bounded down the gangplank to greet the cheering crowd that he was Meov’s true leader, because she can tell without understanding a word that everyone here loves him and looks up to him. Innon is his name: Innon Resistant Meov in the mainlander parlance. A big man, black-skinned like most of the Meovites, built more like a Strongback than a Resistant and with personality enough to outshine any Yumenescene Leader.

Except he’s not really a Resistant, or a Strongback, or a Leader, not that any of those use names really mean much in this comm that rejects so much of Sanzed custom. He’s an orogene. A feral, born free and raised openly by Harlas — who’s a rogga, too. All their leaders are roggas, here. It’s how the island has survived through more Seasons than they’ve bothered to count.

And beyond this fact… well. Syen’s not quite sure how to deal with Innon.

As a case in point, she hears him the instant they come into the main entry cavern of the comm. Everyone can hear him, since he talks as loudly within the caverns as he apparently does when on the deck of his ship. He doesn’t need to; the caverns echo even the slightest sound. He’s just not the sort of man to limit himself, even when he should.

Like now.

“Syenite, Alabaster!” The comm has gathered around its communal cookfires to share the evening meal. Everyone’s sitting on stone or wooden benches, relaxing and chatting, but there’s a big knot of people seated around Innon where he’s been regaling them with… something. He switches to Sanze-mat at once, however, since he’s one of the few people in the comm who can speak it, albeit with a heavy accent. “I have been waiting for you both. We saved good stories for you. Here!” He actually rises and beckons to them as if yelling at the top of his lungs wasn’t enough to get their attention, and as if a six-and-a-half-foot-tall man with a huge mane of braids and clothes from three different nations — all of it garish — would be hard to spot amid the crowd.

Yet Syenite finds herself smiling as she steps into the ring of benches where Innon has, apparently, kept one open just for them. Other members of the comm murmur greetings, which Syen is beginning to recognize; out of politeness, she attempts to stammer something similar back, and endures their chuckles when she gets it wrong. Innon grins at her and repeats the phrase, properly; she tries again and sees nods all around. “Excellent,” Innon says, so emphatically that she cannot help but believe him.

Then he grins at Alabaster, beside her. “You’re a good teacher, I think.”

Alabaster ducks his head a little. “Not really. I can’t seem to stop my pupils from hating me.”

“Mmm.” Innon’s voice is low and deep and reverberates like the deepest of shakes. When he smiles, it’s like the surface breach of a vesicle, something bright and hot and alarming, especially up close. “We must see if we can change that, hmm?” And he looks at Syen, unabashed in his interest, and plainly not caring when the other members of the comm chuckle.

That’s the problem, see. This ridiculous, loud, vulgar man has made no secret of the fact that he wants Syenite. And unfortunately — because otherwise this would be easy — there’s something about him that Syen actually finds herself attracted to. His ferality, perhaps. She’s never met anyone like him.

Thing is, he seems to want Alabaster, too. And Alabaster doesn’t seem disinterested, either.

It’s a little confusing.

Once he has successfully flustered both of them, Innon turns his infinite charm on his people. “Well! Here we are, with food aplenty and fine new things that other people have made and paid for.” He shifts into Eturpic then, repeating the words for everyone; they chuckle at the last part, largely because many of them have been wearing new clothes and jewelry and the like since the ship came in. Then Innon continues, and Syen doesn’t really need Alabaster to explain that Innon is telling everyone a story — because Innon does this with his whole body. He leans forward and speaks more softly, and everyone is riveted to whatever tense moment he is describing. Then he pantomimes someone falling off something, and makes the sound of a splat by cupping his hands and squeezing air from between his palms. The small children who are listening practically fall over laughing, while the older kids snicker and the adults smile.

Alabaster translates a little of it for her. Apparently Innon is telling everyone about their most recent raid, on a small Coaster comm some ten days’ sailing to the north. Syen’s only half-listening to ’Baster’s summation, mostly paying attention to the movements of Innon’s body and imagining him performing entirely different movements, when suddenly Alabaster stops translating. When she finally notices this, surprised, he’s looking at her intently.

“Do you want him?” he asks her.

Syen grimaces, mostly out of embarrassment. He’s spoken softly, but they’re right there next to Innon, and if he suddenly decides to pay attention… Well, what if he does? Maybe it would make things easier to get it all out into the open. She would really prefer to have a choice about that, though, and as usual Alabaster’s not giving her one. “You don’t have a subtle bone in your body, do you?”

“No, I don’t. Tell me.”

“What, then? Is this some kind of challenge?” Because she’s seen the way Alabaster looks at Innon. It’s almost cute, watching a forty-year-old man blush and stammer like a virgin. “Want me to back off?”

Alabaster flinches and looks almost hurt. Then he frowns as if confused by his own reaction — which makes two of them — and draws away a little. His mouth pulls to one side as he murmurs, “If I said yes, would you? Would you really?”

Syenite blinks. Well, she did suggest it. But would she? All of a sudden, she doesn’t know.

When she fails to respond, though, Alabaster’s expression twists in frustration. He mumbles something that might be “Never mind,” then gets up and steps out of the story circle, taking care not to disturb anyone else as he goes. It means Syenite loses the ability to follow the tale, but that’s all right. Innon is a joy to watch even without words, and since she doesn’t have to pay attention to the story, she can consider Alabaster’s question.

After a while the tale ends, and everyone claps; almost immediately there are calls for another story. In the general mill as people get up for second helpings from the massive pot of spiced shrimp, rice, and smoked sea-bubble that is tonight’s meal, Syenite decides to go find Alabaster. She not sure what she’s going to say, but… well. He deserves some kind of answer.

She finds him in their house, where he’s curled up in a corner of the big empty room, a few feet from the bed of dried seagrass and cured animal furs they’ve been sleeping on. He hasn’t bothered to light the lanterns; she makes him out as a darker blot against the shadows. “Go away,” he snaps when she steps into the room.

“I live here, too,” she snaps back. “Go somewhere else if you want to cry or whatever you’re doing.” Earth, she hopes he’s not crying.

He sighs. It doesn’t sound like he’s crying, although he’s got his legs drawn up and his elbows propped on his knees and his head’s half buried in his hands. He could be. “Syen, you’re such a steelheart.”

“So are you, when you want to be.”

“I don’t want to be. Not always. Rust, Syen, don’t you ever get tired of it all?” He stirs a little. Her eyes have adjusted, and she sees that he’s looking at her. “Don’t you ever just want to… to be human?”

She comes into the house and leans against the wall next to the door, crossing her arms and her ankles. “We aren’t human.”

“Yes. We. Are.” His voice turns fierce. “I don’t give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we’re not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don’t have to feel bad about how they treat us—”

This, too, is something all roggas know. Only Alabaster is vulgar enough to say it aloud. Syenite sighs and leans her head back against the wall. “If you want him, you idiot, just tell him so. You can have him.” And just like that, his question is answered.

Alabaster falls silent in mid-rant, staring at her. “You want him, too.”

“Yeah.” It costs her nothing to say this. “But I’m okay if…” She shrugs a little. “Yeah.”

Alabaster takes a deep breath, then another. Then a third. She has no idea what any of those breaths means.

“I should make the same offer you just did,” he says, at last. “Do the noble thing, or at least pretend to. But I…” In the shadows, he hunches more, tightening his arms around his knees. When he speaks again, his voice is barely audible. “It’s just been so long, Syen.”

Not since he’s had a lover, of course. Just since he’s had a lover he wanted.

There’s laughter from the center of the gathering-cavern, and now people are moving along the corridors, chattering and breaking up for the night. They can both hear Innon’s big voice rumbling not far off; even when he’s just having a normal conversation, practically everyone can hear him. She hopes he’s not a shouter, in bed.

Syen takes a deep breath. “Want me to go get him?” And just to be clear, she adds, “For you?”

Alabaster is silent for a long moment. She can feel him staring at her, and there’s a kind of emotional pressure in the room that she can’t quite interpret. Maybe he’s insulted. Maybe he’s touched. Rust if she’ll ever be able to figure him out… and rust if she knows why she’s doing this.

Then he nods, rubs a hand over his hair, and lowers his head. “Thank you.” The words are almost cold, but she knows that tone, because she’s used it herself. Any time she’s needed to hold on to her dignity with fingernails and pent breath.

So she leaves and follows that rumble, eventually finding Innon near the communal cookfire in deep conversation with Harlas. Everyone else has dissippated by now, and the cavern echoes in a steady overlapping drone of fussy toddlers fighting sleep, laughter, talking, and the hollow creaking of the boats in the harbor outside as they rock in their moorings. And over all of it, the hiss-purr of the sea. Syenite settles herself against a wall nearby, listening to all these exotic sounds, and waiting. After perhaps ten minutes, Innon finishes his conversation and rises. Harlas heads away, chuckling over something Innon’s said; ever the charmer. As Syen expected, Innon then comes over to lean against the wall beside her.

“My crew think I am a fool to pursue you,” he says casually, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling as if there’s something interesting up there. “They think you don’t like me.”

“Everyone thinks I don’t like them,” Syenite says. Most of the time, it’s true. “I do like you.”

He looks at her, thoughtful, which she likes. Flirting unnerves her. Much better to be straightforward like this. “I have met your kind before,” he says. “The ones taken to the Fulcrum.” His accent mangles this into fool crumb, which she finds especially fitting. “You are the happiest one I’ve seen.”

Syenite snorts at the joke — and then, seeing the wry twist to his lips, the heavy compassion in his gaze, she realizes he’s not joking at all. Oh. “Alabaster’s pretty happy.”

“No, he isn’t.”

No. He isn’t. But this is why Syenite doesn’t like jokes much, either. She sighs. “I’m… here for him, actually.”

“Oh? So you have decided to share?”

“He’s—” She blinks as the words register. “Uh?”

Innon shrugs, which is an impressive gesture given how big he is, and how it sets all his braids a-rustle. “You and he are already lovers. It was a thought.”

What a thought. “Er… no. I don’t — uh. No.” There are things she’s not ready to think about. “Maybe later.” A lot later.

He laughs, though not at her. “Yes, yes. You have come, then, what? To ask me to see to your friend?”

“He’s not—” But here she is procuring him a lover for the night. “Rust.”

Innon laughs — softly, for him — and shifts to lean sideways against the wall, perpendicular to Syenite so that she will not feel boxed in, even though he’s close enough that she can feel his body heat. Something big men do, if they want to be considerate rather than intimidating. She appreciates his thoughtfulness. And she hates herself for deciding in Alabaster’s favor, because, Earthfires, he even smells sexy as he says, “You are a very good friend, I think.”

“Yes, I rusting am.” She rubs her eyes.

“Now, now. Everyone sees that you are the stronger of the pair.” Syenite blinks at this, but he’s completely serious. He lifts a hand and draws a finger down the side of her face from temple to chin, a slow tease. “Many things have broken him. He holds himself together with spit and endless smiling, but all can see the cracks. You, though; you are dented, bruised, but intact. It is kind of you. Looking out for him like so.”

“No one ever looks out for me.” Then she shuts her mouth so hard that her teeth snap. She hadn’t meant to say that.

Innon smiles, but it is a gentle, kindly thing. “I will,” he says, and leans down to kiss her. It is a scratchy sort of kiss; his lips are dry, his chin beginning to hair over. Most Coaster men don’t seem to grow beards, but Innon might have some Sanze in him, especially with all that hair. In any case, his kiss is so soft despite the scratchiness that it feels more like a thank-you than an attempt to seduce. Probably because that’s what he intends. “Later, I promise I will.”

Then he leaves, heading for the house she shares with Alabaster, and Syenite gazes after him and thinks belatedly, Now where the rust am I supposed to sleep tonight?

It turns out to be a moot question, because she’s not sleepy. She goes to the ledge outside the cavern, where there are others lingering to take in the night air or talk where half the comm can’t hear them, and she is not the only one standing wistfully at the railing, looking out over the water at night. The waves roll in steadily, making the smaller boats and the Clalsu rock and groan, and the starlight casts thin, diffuse reflections upon the waves that seem to stretch away into forever.

It’s peaceful here, in Meov. It’s nice to be who she is in a place that accepts her. Nicer still to know that she has nothing to fear for it. A woman Syen met in the baths — one of the Clalsu crew, most of whom speak at least a little Sanze-mat — explained it to her as they sat soaking in water warmed by rocks the children heat in the fire as part of their daily chores. It’s simple, really. “With you, we live,” she’d said to Syen, shrugging and letting her head fall back against the edge of the bath, and apparently not caring about the strangeness in her own words. On the mainland, everyone is convinced that with roggas nearby, they will all die.

And then the woman said something that truly unnerved Syen. “Harlas is old. Innon sees much danger, on raids. You and the laughing one”—that is the locals’ term for Alabaster, since the ones who don’t speak Sanze-mat have trouble pronouncing his name—“you have babies, give us one, yes? Or we have to go steal, from the mainland.”

The very idea of these people, who stick out like stone eaters in a crowd, trying to infiltrate the Fulcrum to kidnap a grit, or grabbing some feral child just ahead of the Guardians, makes Syenite shiver. She’s not sure she likes the idea of them greedily hoping she catches pregnant, either. But they’re no different from the Fulcrum in that, are they? And here, any child that she and Alabaster have won’t end up in a node station.

She lingers out on the ledge for a few hours, losing herself in the sound of the waves and gradually letting herself lapse into a kind of not-thinking fugue. Then she finally notices that her back is aching and her feet hurt, and the wind off the water is getting chilly; she can’t just stand out here all night. So she heads back into the cavern, not really sure where she means to go, just letting her feet carry her where they will. Which is probably why she eventually ends up back outside “her” house, standing in front of the curtain that passes for privacy and listening to Alabaster weep through it.

It’s definitely him. She knows that voice, even though it’s choked now with sobs and half muffled. Barely audible, really, despite the lack of doors and windows… but she knows the why of that, doesn’t she? Everyone who grows up in the Fulcrum learns to cry very, very quietly.

It is this thought, and the sense of camaraderie that follows it, that makes her reach up, slowly, and tug the curtain aside.

They’re on the mattress, thankfully half covered in furs — not that it matters, since she can see clothing discarded about the room, and the air smells of sex, so it’s obvious what they’ve been up to. Alabaster is curled up on his side, his back to her, bony shoulders shaking. Innon’s sitting up on one elbow, stroking his hair. His eyes flick up when Syenite opens the curtain, but he doesn’t seem upset, or surprised. In fact — and in light of their previous conversation she really shouldn’t be surprised, but she is—he lifts a hand. Beckoning.

She’s not sure why she obeys. And she’s not sure why she undresses as she walks across the room, or why she lifts up the furs behind Alabaster and slides into the redolent warmth with him. Or why, once she’s done this, she curves herself against his back, and drapes an arm over his waist, and looks up to see Innon’s sad smile of welcome. But she does.

Syen falls asleep like this. As far as she can tell, Alabaster cries for the rest of the night, and Innon stays up to comfort him the whole time. So when she wakes the next morning and claws her way out of bed and stumbles over to the chamber pot to throw up noisily into it, they both sleep through it. There is no one to comfort her as she sits there shaking in the aftermath. But that is nothing new.

Well. At least the people of Meov won’t have to go steal a baby, now.

* * *

Put no price on flesh.

— Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse six