The Obelisk Gate

15 Nassun, in rejection

WHAT I REMEMBER OF MY youth is color. Greenness everywhere. White iridescence. Deep and vital reds. These particular colors linger in my memory, when so much of the rest is thin and pale and nearly gone. There is a reason for that.

Nassun sits in an office within the Antarctic Fulcrum, suddenly understanding her mother better than ever before.

Schaffa and Umber sit on either side of her. All three of them are holding cups of safe that the Fulcrum people have offered them. Nida is back at Found Moon, because someone must remain to watch over the children there and because she has the hardest time emulating normal human behavior. Umber is so quiet that no one knows what he’s thinking. Schaffa’s doing all the talking. They’ve been invited inside to speak with three people who are called “seniors,” whatever that means. These seniors wear uniforms that are all black, with neatly buttoned jackets and pleated slacks—ah, so that is why they call Imperial Orogenes blackjackets. They feel all over of power and fear.

One of them is obviously Antarctic-bred, with graying red hair and skin so white that green veins show starkly just underneath. She has horsey teeth and beautiful lips, and Nassun cannot stop staring at both as she talks. Her name is Serpentine, which does not seem to fit her at all.

“Of course we have no new grits coming in,” Serpentine says. For some reason she looks at Nassun as she speaks and spreads her hands. The fingers shake slightly. That’s been happening since this meeting began. “It’s a difficulty we hadn’t quite anticipated. If nothing else, it means we have grit dormitories going unused in a time when safe shelter is quite valuable. That would be why we extended an offer to nearby comms to take in their unparented children, those too young to have earned acceptance into a comm. Only sensible, yes? And we took in a few refugees, which would be why we had no choice but to open trade negotiations with the locals for supplies and such. With no resupply coming from Yumenes…” Her expression falters. “Well. It’s understandable, isn’t it?”

She’s whining. Doing it with a gracious smile and impeccable manners, doing it with two other people nodding sagely along with her, but doing it. Nassun isn’t sure why these people bother her so much. It has something to do with the whining, and with the falseness of them: They are clearly uncomfortable with the arrival of Guardians, clearly afraid and angry, and yet they pretend courtesy. It makes her think of her mother, who pretended to be kind and loving when Father or anyone else was around, and who was cold and fierce in private. Thinking of the Antarctic Fulcrum as a place populated by endless variants of her mother makes Nassun’s teeth and palms and sessapinae itch.

And she can see by the icy placidity of Umber’s face, and the brittle-edged friendliness of Schaffa’s smile, that the Guardians don’t like it, either. “Understandable indeed,” Schaffa says. He turns the cup of safe in his hands. The cloudy solution has remained white as it should, but he hasn’t taken a single sip. “I imagine the local comms are grateful to you for housing and feeding their surplus population. And it is only sensible that you would put those people to work, too. Guarding your walls. Tending your fields—” He pauses, smiles more widely. “Gardens, I mean.”

Serpentine smiles back, and her companions shift uncomfortably. It is something Nassun doesn’t understand. The Season hasn’t yet taken full hold here in the Antarctic region, so it does seem wise that a comm would plant its greenland and put Strongbacks on its walls and start preparing for the worst. Somehow it is bad that the Antarctic Fulcrum has done this, however. Bad that this Fulcrum is functional at all. Nassun has stopped drinking the cup of safe the seniors gave her, even though she’s only had safe a couple of times before and sort of likes being treated like a grown-up—but Schaffa isn’t drinking, and that warns her the situation is not really safe.

One of the seniors is a Somidlats woman who could pass for a relative of Nassun’s: tall, middling brown, curling thick hair, a body that is thick-waisted and broad-hipped and heavy-thighed. They introduced her, but Nassun can’t remember her name. Her orogeny feels the sharpest of the three, though she is the youngest; there are six rings on her long fingers. And she is the one who finally stops smiling and folds her hands and lifts her chin, just a little. It is another thing that reminds Nassun of her mother. Mama often held herself the same way, feeling of soft dignity layered over a core of diamond obstinacy. The obstinacy is what comes to the fore now as the woman says, “I take it you are unhappy, Guardian.”

Serpentine winces. The other Fulcrum orogene, a man who introduced himself as Lamprophyre, sighs. Schaffa and Umber’s heads tilt in near-unison, Schaffa’s smile widening with interest. “Not unhappy,” he says. Nassun can tell that he is pleased to be done with the pleasantry. “Merely surprised. It is, after all, standard protocol for any Fulcrum facility to be shut down in the event of a declared Season.”

“Declared by whom?” the six-ringed woman asks. “Until your arrival today, there have been no Guardians here to declare anything of the sort. The local comm Leaderships have varied: Some declared Seasonal Law, some are only in lockdown, some are business as usual.”

“And had they all declared Seasonal Law,” Schaffa says, in that very quiet voice he uses when he knows the answer to a question already and only wants to hear you say it yourself, “would you truly have all killed yourselves? Since, as you note, there are no Guardians here to take care of the matter for you.”

Nassun catches herself before she would have started in surprise. Kill themselves? But she is not quite good enough at controlling her orogeny to keep it from twitching where she does not. All three of the Fulcrum people glance at her, and Serpentine smiles thinly. “Careful, Guardian,” she says, looking at Nassun but speaking to Schaffa. “Your pet seems uncomfortable with the idea of mass extermination for no reason.”

Schaffa says, “I hide nothing from her,” and Nassun’s surprise is swallowed up by love and pride. He glances at Nassun. “Historically, the Fulcrum has survived on the sufferance of its neighbors, depending on the walls and resources of comms nearby. And as with all who have no viable use during a Season, there is most certainly an expectation that Imperial Orogenes will remove themselves from the competition for resources—so that normal, healthy people have a better chance to survive.” He pauses. “And since orogenes are not permitted to exist outside the supervision of a Guardian or the Fulcrum…” He spreads his hands.

“We are the Fulcrum, Guardian,” says the third senior, whose name Nassun has forgotten. This is a man from some Western Coastal people; he is slender and straight-haired and has a high-cheekboned, nearly concave face. His skin is white, too, but his eyes are dark and cool. His orogeny feels light and many-layered, like mica. “And we are self-sufficient. Quite apart from being a drain on resources, we provide needed services to the nearby communities. We have even—unasked and uncompensated—worked to mitigate the aftershakes of the Rifting on the occasions when they reach this far south. It is because of us that few Antarctic comms have suffered serious harm since the start of this Season.”

“Admirable,” says Umber. “And clever, making yourselves invaluable. Not a thing your Guardians would have permitted, though. I imagine.”

All three of the seniors grow still for a moment. “This is Antarctic, Guardian,” says Serpentine. She smiles, though the expression does not reach her eyes. “We are a fraction of the size of the Fulcrum at Yumenes—barely twenty-five ringed orogenes, a handful of mostly grown grits. There were never many Guardians permanently stationed here. Most of what we got were visiting Guardians on circuit, or delivering us new grits. None at all since the Rifting.”

“Never many Guardians stationed here,” agrees Schaffa, “but there were three, as I recall. I knew one.” He pauses, and for a fleeting instant his expression goes distant and lost and a little confused. “I remember knowing one.” He blinks. Smiles again. “Yet now there are none.”

Serpentine is tense. They are all tense, these seniors, in a way that makes the itch at the back of Nassun’s mind grow. “We endured several raids by commless bands before we finally put up a wall,” Serpentine says. “They died bravely, protecting us.”

It’s so blatant a lie that Nassun stares at her, mouth open.

“Well,” Schaffa says, setting down his cup of safe and letting out a little sigh. “I suppose this went about as well as could be expected.”

And even though Nassun has guessed by now what is coming, even though she has seen Schaffa move with a speed that is not humanly possible before, even though the silver within him and Umber ignites like matchflame and blazes through them in the instant just before, she is still caught off guard when Schaffa lunges forward and puts his fist through Serpentine’s face.

Serpentine’s orogeny dies as she does. But the other two seniors are up and moving in the next instant, Lamprophyre falling backward over his chair to escape Umber’s blurring reach for him and the six-ringed woman drawing a blowgun from one sleeve. Schaffa’s eyes widen, but his hand is still stuck in Serpentine; he tries to lunge at her, but the corpse is deadweight on his arm. She lifts the gun to her lips.

Before she can get off a puff, Nassun is up and in the earth and beginning to spin a torus that will ice the woman in an instant. The woman jerks in surprise and flexes something that shatters Nassun’s torus before it can form completely; it is a thing her mother used to do during their practices, if Nassun did something she wasn’t supposed to. The shock of this realization causes Nassun to stagger and stumble back.

Her mother learned that trick here, in the Fulcrum, this is how people from the Fulcrum train young orogenes, everything Nassun has known of her mother is tainted by this place and has always been—

But the fleeting distraction is enough. Schaffa rips his hand free of the corpse at last and is across the room in another breath, grabbing the blowgun and snatching it away and stabbing it into the woman’s throat before she can recover. She falls to her knees, choking, reaching instinctively for the earth, but then something sweeps the room in a wave and Nassun gasps when suddenly she cannot sess a single thing. The woman gasps, too, then wheezes, scrabbling at her throat. Schaffa grabs her head and breaks her neck with a swift jerk.

Lamprophyre is scrambling backward as Umber stalks him, fumbling at his clothing where some kind of small, heavy object has gotten lodged in cloth. “Evil Earth,” he blurts, jerking at the buttons of his jacket. “You’re contaminated! Both of you!”

He gets no further, though, because Umber blurs and Nassun flinches as something splatters her cheek. Umber has stomped the man’s head in.

“Nassun,” Schaffa says, releasing the six-ringed woman’s body and staring down at it, “go to the terrace and wait for us there.”

“Y-yes, Schaffa,” Nassun says. She swallows. She’s shaking. She makes herself turn despite this, and walk out of the room. There are approximately twenty-two other ringed orogenes around somewhere, after all, Serpentine said.

The Antarctic Fulcrum isn’t much bigger than the town of Jekity. Nassun is leaving the big two-story house that serves as the administrative building. There’s also a cluster of tiny cottages that apparently the older orogenes live in, and several long barracks near the big glass-walled greenhouse. Lots of people are around, moving in and out of the barracks and cottages. Few of them wear black, even though some of the civilian-dressed ones feel like orogenes. Beyond the greenhouse is a sloping terrace that hosts a number of small garden plots—too many, altogether, to really qualify as gardens. This is a farm. Most of the plots are planted heavily with grains and vegetables, and there are a number of people out working on them, since it’s a nice day and no one knows the Guardians are busily killing everyone in the admin building.

Nassun walks the cobbled path above the terrace briskly, with her head down so that she can concentrate on not stumbling, since she can’t sess anything after whatever Schaffa did to the six-ringed woman. She’s always known that Guardians can shut down orogeny, but never felt it before. It’s hard to walk when she can only perceive the ground with her eyes and feet, and also when she’s shaking so hard. Carefully she puts one foot in front of the other and suddenly someone else’s feet are just there and Nassun pulls up short, her whole body going rigid with shock.

“Watch where you’re going,” the girl says reflexively. She’s thin and white, though with a shock of slate-gray ashblow hair, and she’s maybe Nassun’s age. She stops, though, when she gets a good look at Nassun. “Hey, there’s something on your face. It looks like a dead bug or something. Gross.” She reaches up and flicks it off with one finger.

Nassun jerks a little in surprise, then remembers her manners. “Thanks. Uh, sorry for getting in your way.”

“It’s all right.” The girl blinks. “They said some Guardians had come and brought a new grit. Are you the new one?”

Nassun stares in confusion. “G-grit?”

The other girl’s eyebrows rise. “Yeah. Trainee? Imperial-Orogene-to-be?” She’s carrying a bucket of gardening supplies, which doesn’t fit the conversation at all. “The Guardians used to bring kids here before the Season started. That’s how I got here.”

Technically that’s how Nassun got here, too. “The Guardians brought me,” she echoes. She is hollow inside.

“Me, too.” The girl sobers, then looks away. “Did they break your hand yet?”

Nassun’s breath stops in her throat.

At her silence, the girl’s expression turns bitter. “Yeah. They do it to every grit at some point. Hand bones or fingers.” She shakes her head, then takes a quick, gulping breath. “We’re not supposed to talk about it. But it’s not you, whatever they say. It’s not your fault.” Another quick breath. “I’ll see you around. I’m Ajae. I don’t have an orogene name yet. What’s your name?”

Nassun can’t think. The sound of Schaffa’s fist crushing bone echoes in her head. “Nassun.”

“Nice to meet you, Nassun.” Ajae nods politely, then moves on, walking down the steps toward a terrace. She hums, swinging her bucket. Nassun stares after her, trying to understand.

Orogene name?

Trying not to understand.

Did they break your hand yet?

This place. This… Fulcrum. Is why her mother broke her hand.

Nassun’s hand twitches in phantom pain. She sees again the rock in her mother’s hand, rising. Holding a moment. Falling.

Are you sure you can control yourself?

The Fulcrum is why her mother never loved her.

Is why her father does not love her anymore.

Is why her brother is dead.

Nassun watches Ajae wave to a thin older boy, who is busy hoeing. This place. These people, who have no right to exist.

The sapphire isn’t far off—hovering over Jekity, where it has been for the two weeks since she and Schaffa and Umber left to travel to the Antarctic Fulcrum. She can sess it in the distance, though it’s too far off to see. It seems to flicker as she reaches for it, and for an instant she marvels that she knows this somehow. Instinctively she has turned to face it. Line of sight. She doesn’t need eyes, or orogeny, to use it.

(This is an orogene’s nature, the old Schaffa might have told her, if he still existed. Nassun’s kind innately react to all threats the same way: with utterly devastating counterforce. He would have told her this, before breaking her hand to drive home the lesson of control.)

There are so many silver threads in this place. The orogenes are all connected through practice together, shared experience.

DID THEY BREAK YOUR HAND

It is over in the span of three breaths. Then Nassun lets herself fall out of the watery blue, and stands there shaking in its wake. Some while later, Nassun turns and sees Schaffa standing in front of her, with Umber.

“They weren’t supposed to be here,” she blurts. “You said.”

Schaffa isn’t smiling, and he is still in a way that Nassun knows well. “Did you do this to help us, then?”

Nassun can’t think enough to lie. She shakes her head. “This place was wrong,” she said. “The Fulcrum is wrong.”

“Is it?” It is a test, but Nassun has no idea how to pass it. “Why do you say that?”

“Mama was wrong. The Fulcrum made her that way. She should have been a, a, an, an ally to you,” like me, she thinks, reminds. “This place made her something else.” She cannot articulate it. “This place made her wrong.”

Schaffa looks at Umber. Umber tilts his head, and for an instant there is a flicker in the silver, a flicker between them. The things lodged in their sessapinae resonate in a strange way. But then Schaffa frowns, and she sees him push back against the silver. It hurts him to do this, but he does it anyway, turning to gaze at her with eyes bright and jaw tight and fresh sweat dotting his brow.

“I think you may be right, little one,” is all he says. “It follows: Put people in a cage and they will devote themselves to escaping it, not cooperating with those who caged them. What happened here was inevitable, I suppose.” He glances at Umber. “Still. Their Guardians must have been very lax, to let a group of orogenes get the drop on them. That one with the blowgun… born feral, most likely, and taught things she shouldn’t have been before being brought here. She was the impetus.”

“Lax Guardians,” says Umber, watching Schaffa. “Yes.”

Schaffa smiles at him. Nassun frowns in confusion. “We’ve destroyed the threat,” Schaffa says.

“Most of it,” Umber agrees.

Schaffa acknowledges this with an incline of his head and a faintly ironic air before turning to Nassun. He says, “You were right to do what you did, little one. Thank you for helping us.”

Umber is gazing steadily at Schaffa. At the back of Schaffa’s neck, specifically. Schaffa suddenly turns to glare back at him, smile gone fixed and body deadly still. After a moment, Umber looks away. Nassun understands then. The silver has gone quiet in Umber, or as quiet as it ever gets in any of the Guardians, but the glimmering lines within Schaffa are still alive, active, tearing at him. He fights them, though, and is prepared to fight Umber, too, if necessary.

For her? Nassun wonders, exults. For her.

Then Schaffa crouches and cups her face in his hands. “Are you well?” he asks. His eyes flick toward the sky to the east. The sapphire.

“Fine,” Nassun says, because she is. Connecting with the obelisk was much easier this time, partly because it was not a surprise, and partly because she is growing used to the sudden advent of strangeness in her life. The trick is to let yourself fall into it, and fall at the same speed, and think like a big column of light.

“Fascinating,” he says, and then gets to his feet. “Let’s go.”

So they leave the Antarctic Fulcrum behind, with new crops greening in its fields and cooling corpses in its administrative building and a collection of shining, multi-colored human statues scattered about its gardens and barracks and walls.

But in the days that follow, as they walk the road and forest trails between the Fulcrum and Jekity, sleeping each night in strangers’ barns or around their own fires… Nassun thinks.

She has nothing to do but think, after all. Umber and Schaffa do not speak to one another, and there is a new tension between them. She understands it enough to take care never to be alone in Umber’s presence, which is easy because Schaffa takes care never to let her be. This is not strictly necessary; Nassun thinks that what she did to Eitz and the people in the Antarctic Fulcrum, she can probably do to Umber. Using an obelisk is not sessing, the silver is not orogeny, and thus not even a Guardian is safe from what she can do. She sort of likes that Schaffa goes with her to the bathhouse, though, and forgoes sleep—Guardians can do that, apparently—to keep watch over her at night. It feels nice to have someone, anyone, protecting her again.

But. She thinks.

It troubles Nassun that Schaffa has damaged himself in the eyes of his fellow Guardians by choosing not to kill her. It troubles her more that he suffers, gritting his teeth and pretending that this is another smile, even as she sees the silver flex and burn within him. It never stops doing so now, and he will not let her ease his pain because this makes her slow and tired the next day. She watches him endure it, and hates the little thing in his head that hurts him so. It gives him power, but what good is power if it comes on a spiked leash?

“Why?” she asks him one night as they camp on a flat, elevated white slab of something that is neither metal nor stone and which is all that remains of some deadciv ruin. There have been some signs of raiders or commless in the area, and the tiny comm they stayed at the night before warned them to be wary, so the elevation of the slab will at least afford them plenty of advance warning of an attack. Umber is gone, off setting snares for their breakfast. Schaffa has used the opportunity to lie down on his bedroll while Nassun keeps watch, and she does not want to keep him awake. But she needs to know. “Why is that thing in your head?”

“It was put there when I was very young,” he says. He sounds weary. Fighting the silver for days on end without sleep is taking its toll. “There was no ‘why’ for me; it was simply the way things had to be.”

“But…” Nassun does not want to be annoying by asking why again. “Did it have to be? What is it for?”

He smiles, though his eyes are shut. “We are made to keep the world safe from the dangers of your kind.”

“I know that, but…” She shakes her head. “Who made you?”

“Me, specifically?” Schaffa opens one eye, then frowns a little. “I… don’t remember. But in general, Guardians are made by other Guardians. We are found, or bred, and given over to Warrant for training and… alteration.”

“And who made the Guardian before you, and the one before that? Who did it first?”

He is silent for a time: trying to remember, she guesses from his expression. That something is very wrong with Schaffa, chiseling holes in his memories and putting fault-line-heavy pressure on his thoughts, is something Nassun simply accepts. He is what he is. But she needs to know why he is the way he is… and more importantly, she wants to know how to make him better.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and she knows he is done with the conversation by the way he exhales and shuts his eyes again. “In the end, the why does not matter, little one. Why are you an orogene? Sometimes we must simply accept our lot in life.”

Nassun decides to shut up then, and a few moments later Schaffa’s body relaxes into sleep for the first time in days. She keeps watch diligently, extending her newly recovered sense of the earth to catch the reverberations of small animals and other moving things in the immediate vicinity. She can sess Umber, too, still moving methodically at the edge of her range as he sets up his snares, and because of him she weaves a thread of the silver into her web of awareness. He can evade her sessing, but not that. It will catch any commless, too, should they sneak into arrow or harpoon range. She will not let Schaffa be injured as her father was injured.

Aside from something heavy and warm that treads along on all fours not far from Umber, probably foraging, there is nothing of concern nearby. Nothing—

—except. Something very strange. Something… immense? No, its boundaries are small, no bigger than those of a mid-sized rock, or a person. But it is directly underneath the white not-stone slab. Under her feet, practically, barely more than ten feet down.

As if noticing her attention, it moves. This feels like the movement of the world. Involuntarily Nassun gasps and leans away, even though nothing changes but the gravity around her, and that only a little. The immensity whips away suddenly, as if it senses her scrutiny. It doesn’t go far, however, and a moment later, the immensity moves again: up. Nassun blinks and opens her eyes to see a statue standing at the edge of the slab, which was not there before.

Nassun is not confused. Once, after all, she wanted to be a lorist; she has spent hours listening to tales of stone eaters and the mysteries that surround their existence. This one does not look as she thought it would. In the lorist tales, stone eaters have marble skin and jewel hair. This one is entirely gray, even to the “whites” of his eyes. He is bare-chested and muscular, and he is smiling, lips drawn back from teeth that are clear and sharp-faceted.

“You’re the one who stoned the Fulcrum, a few days ago,” says his chest.

Nassun swallows and glances at Schaffa. He’s a heavy sleeper, and the stone eater didn’t speak loudly. If she yells, Schaffa will probably wake—but what can a Guardian do against such a creature? She isn’t even sure she can do anything with the silver; the stone eater is a blazing morass of it, swirls and whirls of thread all tangled up inside him.

The lore, however, is clear on one thing about stone eaters: They do not attack without provocation. So: “Y-yes,” she says, keeping her voice low. “Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. I wanted only to express my admiration for your work.” His mouth does not move. Why is he smiling so much? Nassun is more certain with every passing breath that the expression is not just a smile. “What is your name, little one?”

She bristles at the little one. “Why?”

The stone eater steps forward, moving slowly. This sounds like the grind of a millstone, and looks as wrong as a moving statue should look. Nassun flinches in revulsion, and he stills. “Why did you stone them?”

“They were wrong.”

The stone eater steps forward again, onto the slab. Nassun half expects the slab to crack or tilt beneath the creature’s terrible weight, which she knows is immense. He is a mountain, compacted into the size and shape of a human being. The slab of deadciv material does not crack, however, and now the creature is close enough for her to see the fine detailing of his individual hair strands.

“You were wrong,” he says, in his strange echoing voice. “The people of the Fulcrum, and the Guardians, are not to blame for the things they do. You wanted to know why your Guardian must suffer as he does. The answer is: He doesn’t have to.”

Nassun stiffens. Before she can demand to know more, the stone eater’s head turns toward him. There is a flicker of… something. An adjustment too infinitely fine to see or sess, and… and suddenly, the alive, vicious throb of silver within Schaffa dies into silence. Only that dark, needle-like blot in his sessapinae remains active, and immediately Nassun sesses its effort to re-assert control. For the moment, though, Schaffa exhales softly and relaxes further into sleep. The pain that has been grinding at him for days is gone, for now.

Nassun gasps—softly. If Schaffa has the chance to truly rest at last, she will not destroy it. Instead she says to the stone eater, “How did you do that?”

“I can teach you. I can teach you how to fight his tormentor, his master, too. If you wish.”

Nassun swallows hard. “Y-yeah. I wish.” She isn’t stupid, though. “In exchange for what?”

“Nothing. If you fight his master, then you fight my enemy, too. It will make us… allies.”

She knows now that the stone eater has been lurking nearby, listening in on her, but she doesn’t care anymore. To save Schaffa… She licks her lips, which taste faintly of sulfur. The ash haze has been getting thicker in recent weeks. “Okay,” she says.

“What is your name?” If it’s been listening, it knows who she is. This is a gesture toward alliance.

“Nassun. And you?”

“I have no name, or many. Call me what you wish.”

He needs a name. Alliances don’t work without names, do they? “S-Steel.” It’s the first thing that pops into her mind. Because he’s so gray. “Steel?”

The sense that he does not care lingers. “I will come to you later,” Steel says. “When we can speak uninterrupted.”

An instant later he is gone, into the earth, and the mountain vanishes from her awareness in seconds. A moment later, Umber emerges from the forest around the deadciv slab and begins walking up the hill toward her. She’s actually glad to see him, even though his gaze sharpens as he draws nearer and sees that Schaffa is asleep. He stops three paces away, more than close enough for a Guardian’s speed.

“I’ll kill you if you try anything,” Nassun says, nodding solemnly. “You know that, right? Or if you wake him up.”

Umber smiles. “I know you’ll try.”

“I’ll try and I’ll actually do it.”

He sighs, and there is great compassion in his voice. “You don’t even know how dangerous you are. To far, far more than me.”

She doesn’t, and that bothers her a lot. Umber does not act out of cruelty. If he sees her as a threat, there must be some reason for it. But it doesn’t matter.

“Schaffa wants me alive,” she says. “So I live. Even if I have to kill you.”

Umber appears to consider this. She glimpses the quick flicker of the silver within him and knows, suddenly and instinctively, that she’s no longer talking to Umber, exactly.

His master.

Umber says, “And if Schaffa decides you should die?”

“Then I die.” That’s what the Fulcrum got wrong, she feels certain. They treated the Guardians as enemies, and maybe they once were, like Schaffa said. But allies must trust in one another, be vulnerable to one another. Schaffa is the only person in the world who loves Nassun, and Nassun will die, or kill, or remake the world, for his sake.

Slowly, Umber inclines his head. “Then I will trust in your love for him,” he says. For an instant there is an echo in his voice, in his body, through the ground, reverberating away, so deep. “For now.” With that, he moves past her and sits down near Schaffa, assuming a guard stance himself.

Nassun does not understand Guardian reasoning, but she’s learned one thing about them over the months: They do not bother to lie. If Umber says he will trust Schaffa—no. Trust Nassun’s love for Schaffa, because there is a difference. But if Umber says this has meaning to him, then she can rely on that.

So she lies down on her own bedroll and relaxes in spite of everything. She doesn’t sleep for some while, though. Nerves, maybe.

Night falls. The evening is clear, apart from the faint haze of ash blowing from the north, and a few broken, pearled clouds that periodically drift southward along the breeze. The stars come out, winking through the haze, and Nassun stares at them for a long while. She’s begun to drift, her mind finally relaxing toward sleep, when belatedly she notices that one of the tiny white lights up there is moving in a different direction from the rest—downward, sort of, while the other stars march west to east across the sky. Slow. Hard to unsee it now that she’s made it out. It’s a little bigger and brighter than the rest, too. Strange.

Nassun rolls over to turn her back to Umber, and sleeps.