The Obelisk Gate

2 you, continued

A WHAT?” YOU SAY.

“A moon.” Alabaster, beloved monster, sane madman, the most powerful orogene in all the Stillness, and in-progress stone eater snack, stares at you. This has all of its old intensity, and you feel the will of him, the stuff that makes him the force of nature that he is, as an almost physical rider on that stare. The Guardians were fools to ever consider him tame. “A satellite.”

“A what?”

He makes a little sound of frustration. He’s completely the same, aside from being partially turned to stone, as the days when you and he were less than lovers and more than friends. Ten years and another self ago. “Astronomestry isn’t foolishness,” he says. “I know you were taught that, everyone in the Stillness thinks it’s a waste of energy to study the sky when it’s the ground that’s trying to kill us, but Earthfires, Syen. I thought you would’ve learned to question the status quo a little better by now.”

“I had other things to do,” you snap, just like you always used to snap at him. But thinking of the old days makes you think of what you’ve been up to in the meantime. And that makes you think of your living daughter, and your dead son, and your soon-to-be-very-ex-husband, and you flinch physically. “And my name is Essun now, I told you.”

“Whatever.” With a groaning sigh, Alabaster carefully sits back against the wall. “They say you came here with a geomest. Have her explain it to you. I don’t have a lot of energy these days.” Because being eaten probably takes a toll. “You didn’t answer my first question. Can you do it yet?”

Can you call the obelisks to you? It is a question that made no sense when he first asked it, possibly because you were distracted by realizing he was a) alive, b) turning to stone, and c) the orogene responsible for ripping the continent in half and touching off a Season that may never end.

“The obelisks?” You shake your head, more confused than refusing. Your gaze drifts to the strange object near his bed, which looks like an excessively long pink glassknife and feels like an obelisk, even though it cannot possibly be. “What do—no. I don’t know. I haven’t tried since Meov.”

He groans softly, shutting his eyes. “You’re so rusting useless, Syen. Essun. Never had any respect for the craft.”

“I respect it fine, I just don’t—”

“Just enough to get by, enough to excel but only for gain. They told you how high and you jumped no further, all to get a nicer apartment and another ring—”

“For privacy, you ass, and some control over my life, and some rusting respect—”

“And you actually listened to that Guardian of yours, when you don’t listen to anybody else—”

“Hey.” Ten years as a schoolteacher have given your voice an obsidian edge. Alabaster actually stops ranting and blinks at you. Very quietly, you say, “You know full well why I listened to him.”

There is a moment of silence. Both of you take this time to regroup.

“You’re right,” he says, at length. “I’m sorry.” Because every Imperial Orogene listens—listened—to their assigned Guardian. Those who didn’t died or ended up in a node. Except, again, for Alabaster; you never did find out what he did to his Guardian.

You offer a stiff nod of truce. “Apology accepted.”

He takes a careful breath, looking weary. “Try, Essun. Try to reach an obelisk. Today. I need to know.”

“Why? What’s this about a still-light? What does—”

“Satellite. And all of it’s irrelevant if you can’t control the obelisks.” His eyes are actually drifting shut. This is probably a good thing. He’ll need his strength if he’s to survive whatever is happening to him. If it’s survivable. “Worse than irrelevant. You remember why I wouldn’t tell you about the obelisks in the first place, don’t you?”

Yes. Once, before you ever paid attention to those great floating half-real crystals in the sky, you asked Alabaster to explain how he accomplished some of his amazing feats of orogeny. He wouldn’t tell you, and you hated him for that, but now you know just how dangerous the knowledge was. If you hadn’t understood that the obelisks were amplifiers, orogeny amplifiers, you would never have reached for the garnet to save yourself from a Guardian’s attack. But if the garnet obelisk hadn’t been half-dead itself, cracked and stuffed with a frozen stone eater, it would have killed you. You didn’t have the strength, the self-control, to prevent the power from frying you from the brain on down.

And now Alabaster wants you to reach for one deliberately, to see what happens.

Alabaster knows your face. “Go and see,” he says. His eyes shut completely then. You hear a faint rattle in his breath, like gravel in his lungs. “The topaz is floating somewhere nearby. Call it tonight, then in the morning see…” Abruptly he seems to weaken, running out of strength. “See if it’s come. If it hasn’t, tell me, and I’ll find someone else. Or do what I can myself.”

Find who, to do what, you can’t even begin to guess. “Will you still tell me what all this is about?”

“No. Because in spite of everything, Essun, I don’t want you to die.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. The next words are softer than usual. “It’s good to see you.”

You have to tighten your jaw to reply. “Yeah.”

He says nothing more, and that’s enough of a goodbye for both of you.

You get up, glancing at the stone eater who stands nearby. Alabaster calls her Antimony. She stands statue-still in the way they do, her too-black eyes watching you too steadily, and though her pose is something classical, you think there’s a hint of irony in it. She stands with head elegantly tilted, one hand on her hip and the other upraised and poised with the fingers relaxed, waving in no particular direction. Maybe it’s a come-hither, maybe it’s a backhanded farewell, maybe it’s that thing people do when they’re keeping a secret and want you to know it, but they don’t want to tell you what it is.

“Take care of him,” you say to her.

“As I would any precious thing,” she replies, without moving her mouth.

You’re not even going to start trying to interpret that. You head back toward the infirmary entrance, where Hoa stands waiting for you. Hoa, who looks like an utterly strange human boy, who is actually a stone eater somehow, and who treats you as his precious thing.

He watches you, unhappily, as he has done since you realized what he was. You shake your head and move past him on your way out. He follows, at a pace.

It’s early night in the comm of Castrima. Hard to tell since the giant geode’s soft white light, emitted impossibly from the massive crystals that make up its substance, never changes. People are bustling about, carrying things, shouting to each other, going about their usual business without the necessary slowdown that would occur in other comms with the reduction of light. Sleeping will be difficult for a few days, you suspect, at least until you get used to this. That doesn’t matter. Obelisks don’t care about the time of day.

Lerna’s been politely waiting outside while you and Hoa met with Alabaster and Antimony. He falls in as you come out, his expression expectant. “I need to go to the surface,” you say.

Lerna makes a face. “The guards won’t let you, Essun. People new to the comm aren’t trusted. Castrima’s survival depends on it remaining secret.”

Seeing Alabaster again has brought back a lot of the old memories, and the old orneriness. “They can try to stop me.”

Lerna stops walking. “And then you’ll do what you did to Tirimo?”

Rusting hell. You stop, too, rocking a little from the force of that blow. Hoa stops as well, eying Lerna thoughtfully. Lerna’s not glaring. The look on his face is too flat to be a glare. Damn. Okay.

After a moment, Lerna sighs and comes over. “We’ll go to Ykka,” he says. “We’ll tell her what we need. We’ll ask to go topside—with guards if she wants. All right?”

It’s so reasonable that you don’t know why you didn’t even consider it. Well, you know why. Ykka might be an orogene like you, but you spent too many years being thwarted and betrayed by other orogenes at the Fulcrum; you know better than to trust her just because she’s Your People. You should give her a chance because she’s Your People, though.

“Fine,” you say, and follow him to Ykka’s.

Ykka’s place is no larger than yours, and not distinct in any way despite being the home of the comm headwoman. Just another apartment carved by means unknown into the side of a giant glowing white crystal. Two people wait outside of its door, however, one leaning against the crystal and another peering over the railing at the expanse of Castrima. Lerna takes up position behind them and directs you to do the same. Only fair to wait your turn, and the obelisks aren’t going anywhere.

The woman gazing out at the view glances over and looks you up and down. She’s a little older, Sanzed, though darker complected than most, and her bushel of hair is ashblow with a slight kink to it, making it a frizzy cloud instead of just a coarse one. Got some Eastcoaster in her. And Westcoaster, too: Her gaze is through epicanthic-folded eyes, and it is assessing, wary, and unimpressed. “You the new one,” she says. Not a question.

You nod back. “Essun.”

She grins lopsidedly, and you blink. Her teeth have been filed to points, even though Sanzeds supposedly stopped doing that centuries ago. Bad for their reputation, after the Season of Teeth. “Hjarka Leadership Castrima. Welcome to our little hole in the ground.” Her smile widens. You stifle a grimace at the pun, though you’re thinking, too, after hearing her name. It’s usually bad news when a comm has a Leadership caste that isn’t in charge. Dissatisfied Leaders have a nasty habit of fomenting coups during crises. But this is Ykka’s problem to deal with, not yours.

The other person waiting, the man leaning on the crystal, doesn’t seem to be watching you—but you notice how his eyes aren’t moving to track whatever he’s looking at, off in the distance. He’s thin, shorter than you, with hair and a beard that make you think of strawberries growing amid hay. You imagine the delicate pressure of his indirect attention. You do not imagine the ping of instinct that tells you he is another of your kind. Since he doesn’t acknowledge your presence, you say nothing to him.

“He came in a few months ago,” Lerna says, distracting you from your new neighbors. For a moment you wonder if he means the strawberry-hay-haired man, and then you realize he’s referring to Alabaster. “Just appeared in the middle of what passes for a town square within the geode—Flat Top.” He nods toward something beyond you, and you turn, trying to understand what he means. Ah: there, amid the many sharp-tipped crystals of Castrima, is one that looks as if it’s been sheared off halfway, leaving a wide hexagonal platform positioned and elevated near the center of the comm. Several stair-bridges connect to it, and there are chairs and a railing. Flat Top.

Lerna goes on. “There was no warning. Apparently the orogenes didn’t sess anything, and the stills on guard duty didn’t see anything. He and that stone eater of his were suddenly just… there.”

He doesn’t see you frown in surprise. You’ve never heard a still use the word still before.

“Maybe the stone eaters knew he was coming, but they rarely talk to anyone but their chosen people. And in this case, they didn’t even do that.” Lerna’s gaze drifts over to Hoa, who’s studiously ignoring him in that very moment. Lerna shakes his head. “Ykka tried to throw him out, of course, though she offered him a mercy killing if he wanted. His prognosis is obvious; gentle drugs and a bed would be a kindness. He did something when she called the Strongbacks, though. The light went out. The air and water stopped. Only for a minute, but it felt like a year. When he let everything come back on, everyone was upset. So Ykka said he could stay, and that we should treat his injuries.”

Sounds about right. “He’s a ten-ringer,” you say. “And an ass. Give him whatever he wants and be nice about it.”

“He’s from the Fulcrum?” Lerna inhales in what seems to be awe. “Earthfires. I had no idea any Imperial Orogenes had survived.”

You look at him, too surprised for amusement. But then, how would he know? Another thought sobers you. “He’s turning to stone,” you say softly.

“Yes.” Lerna says it ruefully. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s getting worse. The first day he was here it was just his fingers that had… that the stone eater had… taken. I haven’t seen how the condition progresses. He’s careful to do it only when I or my assistants aren’t around. I don’t know if she’s doing it to him somehow, or he’s doing it to himself, or…” He shakes his head. “When I ask about it, he just grins and says, ‘Just a bit longer, please. I’m waiting for someone.’” Lerna frowns at you, thoughtful.

And there’s that: Somehow, Alabaster knew you were coming. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was hoping for someone, anyone, with the necessary skill. Good chance of it here, with Ykka somehow summoning every rogga for miles. You’ll only be what he was waiting for if it turns out you can summon an obelisk.

After a few moments, Ykka pokes her head out of the apartment through the hanging. She nods to Hjarka, glares at Strawberry-Hay until he sighs and turns to face her, then spies you and Lerna and Hoa. “Oh. Hey. Good. All of you come in.”

You start to protest. “I need to talk to you in private.”

She stares back at you. You blink, confused, thrown, annoyed. She keeps staring. Lerna shifts from foot to foot beside you, a silent pressure. Hoa merely watches, following your lead. Finally you get the message: her comm, her rules, and if you want to live here… You sigh and file in behind the others.

Inside, the apartment is warmer than in most of the comm, and darker; the curtain makes a difference, even though the walls glow. Makes it feel like night, which it probably is, topside. A good idea to steal for your own place, you think—before checking yourself, because you shouldn’t be thinking long term. And then you check yourself again because you’ve lost Nassun and Jija’s trail, so you should think long term. And then—

“Right,” says Ykka, sounding bored as she moves to sit on a simple, low divan, cross-legged, with her chin propped on a fist. The others sit as well, but she’s looking at you. “I’d been thinking about some changes already. You two arrived at a convenient time.”

For a moment you think she’s including Lerna in that “you two,” but he sits down on the divan nearest hers, and there’s something, some ease of movement or comfort in his manner, that tells you he’s heard this before. She means Hoa, then. Hoa takes the floor, which makes him seem more like a child… though he isn’t. It’s strange how hard it is for you to remember that.

You sit down gingerly. “Convenient for what?”

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Strawberry-Hay says. He’s looking at you, though his face is tilted toward Ykka. “We don’t know anything about these people, Yeek.”

“We know they survived out there until yesterday,” says Hjarka, leaning to the side and propping her elbow on the divan’s arm. “That’s something.”

“That’s nothing.” Strawberry-Hay—you really want to know his name—sets his jaw. “Our Hunters can survive out there.”

Hunters. You blink. That’s one of the old use-castes—a deprecated one, per Imperial Law, so nobody gets born into it anymore. Civilized societies don’t need hunter-gatherers. That Castrima feels the need says more about the state of the comm than anything else Ykka has told you.

“Our Hunters know the terrain, and our Strongbacks, too, yeah,” Hjarka says. “Nearby. Newcomers know more about the conditions beyond our territory—the people, the hazards, everything else.”

“I’m not sure I know anything useful,” you begin. But even as you say this, you frown, because you’re remembering that thing you started noticing a few roadhouses ago. The sashes or rags of fine silk on too many of the Equatorials’ wrists. The closed looks they gave you, their focus while others sat shell-shocked. At every encampment you saw them look their fellow survivors over, picking out any Sanzeds who were better equipped or healthier or otherwise doing better than average. Speaking to those chosen people in quiet voices. Leaving the next morning in groups larger than those in which they had arrived.

Does that mean anything? Like keeping to like is the old way, but races and nations haven’t been important for a long time. Communities of purpose and diverse specialization are more efficient, as Old Sanze proved. Yet Yumenes is slag at the bottom of a fissure vent by now, and the laws and ways of the Empire no longer have any bite. Maybe this is the first sign of change, then. Maybe in a few years you’ll have to leave Castrima and find a comm full of Midlatters like you who are brown but not too brown, big but not too big, with hair that’s curly or kinky but never ashblow or straight. Nassun can come with you, in that case.

But how long would the both of you be able to hide what you are? No comm wants roggas. No comm except this one.

“You know more than we do,” Ykka says, interrupting your woolgathering. “And anyway, I don’t have the patience to argue about it. I’m telling you what I told him a few weeks back.” She jerks her head at Lerna. “I need advisors—people who know this Season ground to sky. You’re it until I replace you.”

You’re more than a little surprised. “I don’t know a rusting thing about this comm!”

“That’s my job—and his, and hers.” Ykka nods toward Strawberry-Hay and Hjarka. “Anyway, you’ll learn.”

Your mouth hangs open. Then it occurs to you that she did include Hoa in this gathering, didn’t she? “Earthfires and rustbuckets, you want a stone eater as an advisor?”

“Why not? They’re here, too. More of them than we think.” She focuses on Hoa, who watches her, his expression unreadable. “That’s what you told me.”

“It’s true,” he says quietly. Then: “I can’t speak for them, though. And we aren’t part of your comm.”

Ykka leans down to give him a hard look. Her expression is something between hostile and guarded. “You have an impact on our comm, if only as a potential threat,” she says. Her eyes flick toward you. “And the ones you’re, uh, attached to, are part of this comm. You care what happens to them, at least. Don’t you?”

You realize you haven’t seen Ykka’s stone eater, the woman with the ruby hair, for a few hours. That doesn’t mean she isn’t nearby, though. You learned better than to trust the appearance of absence with Antimony. Hoa says nothing in reply to Ykka. You’re suddenly, irrationally glad he’s bothered to stay visible for you.

“As for why you, and why the doctor,” Ykka says, straightening, and speaking to you even if she’s still eying Hoa, “it’s because I need a mix of perspectives. A Leader, even if she doesn’t want to lead.” She eyes Hjarka. “Another local rogga, who doesn’t bother to bite his tongue about how stupid he thinks I am.” She nods to Strawberry-Hay, who sighs. “A Resistant and a doctor, who knows the road. A stone eater. Me. And you, Essun, who could kill us all.” She smiles thinly. “Makes sense to give you a reason not to.”

You have no real idea what to say, to that. You think, fleetingly, that Ykka should invite Alabaster to her circle of advisors, then, if the ability to destroy Castrima is a qualification. But that could lead to awkward questions.

To Hjarka and Strawberry-Hay you say, “Are you both from here?”

“Nope,” says Hjarka.

“Yes,” says Ykka. Hjarka glares at her. “You’ve lived here since you were young, Hjar.”

Hjarka shrugs. “Nobody here remembers that except you, Yeek.”

Strawberry-Hay says, “I was born and raised here.”

Two orogenes, surviving to adulthood in a comm that didn’t kill them. “What’s your name?”

“Cutter Strongback.” You wait. He smiles with half his mouth and neither of his eyes.

“Cutter’s secret wasn’t out, so to speak, while we were growing up,” Ykka says. She’s leaning against the wall behind the divan now, rubbing her eyes as if she’s tired. “People guessed anyway. The rumors were enough to keep him from being adopted into the comm, under the previous headman. Of course, I’ve offered to give him the name a half-dozen times over now.”

“If I give up ‘Strongback,’” Cutter replies. He’s still smiling in that paper-thin way.

Ykka lowers her hand. Her jaw is tight. “Denying what you are didn’t keep people from knowing what you are.”

“And flaunting it isn’t what saved you.”

Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. “And that would be why I asked you to do this, Cutter. But let’s move on.”

So it goes on.

You sit there throughout the meeting, trying to understand the undercurrents you’re picking up on, still not believing you’re even here, while Ykka lays out all of the problems facing Castrima. It’s stuff you’ve never had to think about before: Complaints that the hot water in the communal pools isn’t hot enough. A serious shortage of potters but an overabundance of people who know how to sew. Fungus in one of the granary caverns; several months’ supply had to be burned lest it contaminate the rest. A meat shortage. You’ve gone from thinking obsessively about one person to having to be concerned with many. It’s a bit sudden.

“I just took a bath,” you blurt, trying to pull yourself out of a daze. “The water was nice.”

“Of course you thought it was nice. You’ve been living rough for months, bathing in cold streams if you even bothered. A lot of the people in Castrima have never lived without reliable geo and adjustable faucets.” Ykka rubs her eyes. The meeting’s only been an hour or so, but it feels longer. “Everybody copes with a Season in their own way.”

Complaining about nothing doesn’t seem like coping to you, but okay.

“Being low on meat is an actual problem,” Lerna says, frowning. “I noticed the last few comm shares didn’t have any, or eggs.”

Ykka’s expression grows grimmer. “Yes. That’s why.” For your sake, she adds, “We don’t have a greenland in this comm, if you haven’t noticed yet. The soil around here is poor, all right for gardening but not for grass or hay. Then for the last few years before the Season started, everyone was so busy arguing about whether we should rebuild the old pre-Choking wall that nobody thought to contract with an agricultural comm for a few dozen cartloads of good soil.” She sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Can’t bring most livestock down the mine shafts and stairs, anyway. I don’t know what we were thinking, trying to live down here. This is exactly why I need help.”

Her weariness isn’t a surprise, but her willingness to admit error is. It’s also troubling. You say: “A comm can only have one leader, during a Season.”

“Yeah, and that’s still me. Don’t you forget it.” It could be a warn-off, but it doesn’t sound like one. You suspect it’s just a matter-of-fact acceptance of her place in Castrima: The people chose her, and for the time being they trust her. They don’t know you, Lerna, or Hoa, and apparently they don’t trust Hjarka and Cutter. You need her more than she needs any of you. Abruptly, though, Ykka shakes her head. “I can’t talk about this shit anymore.”

Good, because the looming sense of disjunct—this morning you were thinking of the road, and survival, and Nassun—is beginning to feel overwhelming. “I need to go topside.”

It’s too abrupt a change of subject, apparently out of the blue, and for a moment they all stare at you. “The rust for?” Ykka asks.

“Alabaster.” Ykka looks blank. “The ten-ringer in your infirmary? He asked me to do something.”

Ykka grimaces. “Oh. Him.” You can’t help smiling at this reaction. “Interesting. He hasn’t talked to anyone since he got here. Just sits in there using up our antibiotics and eating our food.”

“I just made a batch of ’cillin, Ykka.” Lerna rolls his eyes.

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

You suspect Alabaster’s been quelling the local microshakes and any aftershakes from the north, which would more than earn his keep. But if Ykka can’t sess that for herself, explaining is pointless—and you’re not sure you can trust her enough to talk about Alabaster yet. “He’s an old friend.” There. That’s a good, if incomplete, summary.

“He didn’t seem the type to have friends. You, either.” She regards you for a long moment. “Are you a ten-ringer, too?”

Your fingers flex involuntarily. “I wore six rings, once.” Lerna’s head snaps around and he stares at you. Well. Cutter’s face twitches in a way you can’t interpret. You add: “Alabaster was my mentor, back when I was still with the Fulcrum.”

“I see. And what does he want you to do, topside?”

You open your mouth, then close it. You can’t help glancing at Hjarka, who snorts and gets to her feet, and Lerna, whose expression tightens as he realizes you don’t want to speak in front of him. He deserves better than that, but still… he’s a still. Finally you say, “Orogene business.”

It’s weak. Lerna’s face goes blank, but his eyes are hard. Hjarka waves and heads for the curtain. “Then I’m out. Come on, Cutter. Since you’re just a Strongback.” She barks out a laugh.

Cutter stiffens, but to your surprise, he rises and follows her out. You eye Lerna for a moment, but he folds his arms. Not going anywhere. All right. In the wake of this, Ykka looks skeptical. “What is this, a final lesson from your old mentor? He’s obviously not going to live much longer.”

Your jaw tightens before you can help it. “That remains to be seen.”

Ykka looks thoughtful for a moment longer, and then she nods decisively, getting to her feet. “All right, then. Just let me get some Strongbacks together and we’ll be on our way.”

“Wait, you’re coming? Why?”

“Curiosity. I want to see what a Fulcrum six-ringer can do.” She grins at you and picks up the long fur vest you first saw her wearing. “Maybe see if I can do it, too.”

You flinch violently at the idea of a self-taught feral attempting to connect to an obelisk. “No.”

Ykka’s expression flattens. Lerna stares at you, incredulous that you would achieve your goal and then scuttle it in the same breath. Quickly you amend yourself. “It’s dangerous even for me, and I’ve done it before.”

“‘It’?”

Well, that does it. It’s safer that she not know, but Lerna’s right; you have to win this woman over if you’re going to be living in her comm. “Promise me you won’t try, if I tell you.”

“I won’t promise a rusting thing. I don’t know you.” Ykka folds her arms. You’re a big woman, but she’s a little bigger, and the hair doesn’t help. Many Sanzeds like to grow their ashblow hair into big, poufy manes like hers. It’s an animal intimidation thing, and it works if they’ve got the confidence to back it up. Ykka’s got that and then some.

But you have knowledge. You push to your feet and meet her eyes. “You can’t do it,” you say, will her to believe. “You don’t have the training.”

“You don’t know what kind of training I have.”

And you blink, remembering that moment topside when the realization that you’d lost Nassun’s trail nearly unhinged you. That strange, sweeping waft of power Ykka sent through you, like a slap but kinder, and somehow orogenic. Then there’s her little trick of drawing orogenes from miles around toward Castrima. Ykka may not wear rings, but orogeny isn’t about rank.

No help for it, then. “An obelisk,” you say, relenting. You glance at Lerna; he blinks and frowns. “Alabaster wants me to call an obelisk. I’m going to see if I can.”

To your surprise, Ykka nods, her eyes alight. “Aha! Always thought there was something about those things. Let’s go, then. I definitely want to see this.”

Oh. Shit.

Ykka shrugs on the vest. “Give me a half hour, then meet me at Scenic Overlook.” That’s the entrance to Castrima, that little platform where newcomers invariably gawk at the strangeness of a comm inside a giant geode. With that she brushes past you and out of the apartment.

Shaking your head, you eye Lerna. He nods tightly; he wants to go, too. Hoa? He simply takes up his usual place behind you, gazing at you placidly as if to say, This was in doubt? So now it’s a party.

Ykka meets you at the overlook in half an hour. With her are four other Castrimans, who are armed and dressed in faded colors and grays for camouflage up on the surface. It’s a harder procession, going up, than it was coming down: lots of uphill walking, many sets of stairs. You’re not as out of breath as a few of Ykka’s crew by the time it’s done, but then you’ve been walking miles every day while they’ve been living safe and comfy in their underground town. (Ykka, you notice, only breathes a little harder. She’s keeping in shape.) Eventually, though, you reach a false basement in one of the decoy houses topside. It’s not the same basement that you entered through, which shouldn’t surprise you; of course their “gate” has multiple entrances and exits. The underground passages are more complicated than you initially thought, though—something important to keep in mind, should you ever need to leave in a hurry.

The decoy house has Strongback sentries like the other one, some guarding the basement entrance and some actually in the house upstairs, keeping watch on the road outside. When the upstairs sentries give you the all clear, you head out into the late-evening ashfall.

After, what, less than a day in Castrima’s geode? It’s amazing how strange the surface seems to you. For the first time in weeks you notice the sulfur stench of the air, the silvery haze, the incessant soft patter of fat ash flakes on the ground and dead leaves. The silence, which makes you realize just how noisy Castrima-under is, with people talking and pulleys squeaking and smithies clanking, and the omnipresent hum of the geode’s strange hidden machinery. Up here there’s nothing. The trees have dropped their leaves; nothing moves through the curl-edged, desiccated detritus. No birdsong can be heard through the branches; most birds stop marking territory and mating during a Season, and song only attracts predators. No other animal sounds. There are no travelers on the road, though you can tell that the ash is thinner there. People have been by recently. Aside from that, though, even the wind is still. The sun has set, though there’s still plenty of light in the sky. The clouds, even this far south, still reflect the Rifting.

“Traffic?” Ykka asks one of the sentries.

“Family-looking bunch about forty minutes ago,” he says. He keeps his voice appropriately low. “Well equipped. Maybe twenty people, all ages, all Sanzeds. Traveling north.”

That makes everyone look at him. Ykka repeats: “North?”

“North.” The sentry, who has the most beautiful long-lashed eyes, looks back at Ykka and shrugs. “Looked like they had a destination in mind.”

“Huh.” She folds her arms, shivering a little, though it’s not particularly cold outside; the cold of a Fifth Season takes months to set in fully. Castrima-under’s just so warm that to someone used to that, Castrima-over’s chilly. Or maybe Ykka’s just reacting to the starkness of the comm around her. So many silent houses, dead gardens, and ash-occluded pathways where people once walked. You’d been thinking of the surface level of the comm as bait—and it is, a honeypot meant to draw in the desirable and distract the hostile. Yet it was also a real comm once, alive and bright and anything but still.

“Well?” Ykka takes a deep breath and smiles, but you think her smile is strained. She nods toward the low-hanging ash clouds. “If you need to see this thing, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck anytime soon.”

She’s right; the air is a haze of ash, and past the beaded, red-tinted clouds you can’t see a damned thing. You step off the porch and look up at the sky anyway, unsure of how to begin. You also aren’t sure if you should begin. After all, the first and second times you tried to interact with an obelisk, you almost died. Then there’s the fact that Alabaster wants this, when he’s the man who destroyed the world. Maybe you shouldn’t do anything he asks.

He’s never hurt you, though. The world has, but not him. Maybe the world deserved to be destroyed. And maybe he’s earned a little of your trust, after all these years.

So you close your eyes and try to still your thoughts. There are sounds to be heard around you, you notice at last. Faint creaks and pops as the wooden parts of Castrima-over react to the weight of ash, or the changing warmth of the air. Several things scuttling among the dried-out stalks of a housegreen nearby: rodents or something else small, nothing to worry about. One of the Castrimans is breathing really loudly for some reason.

Warm jitter of the earth beneath your feet. No. Wrong direction.

There’s actually enough ash in the sky that you can sort of grasp the clouds with your awareness. Ash is powdered rock, after all. But it’s not the clouds you want. You grope along them as you would earth strata, not quite sure what you’re looking for—

“Will this take much longer?” sighs one of the Castrimans.

“Why, got a hot date?” Ykka drawls.

He is insignificant. He is—

He is—

Something pulls you sharply west. You jerk and turn to face it, inhaling as you remember a night long ago in a comm called Allia, and another obelisk. The amethyst. He didn’t need to see it, he needed to face it. Lines of sight, lines of force. Yes. And there, far along the line of your attention, you sess your awareness being drawn toward something heavy and… dark.

Dark, so dark. Alabaster said it would be the topaz, didn’t he? This isn’t that. It feels familiar, sort of, reminds you of the garnet. Not the amethyst. Why? The garnet was broken, mad (you’re not sure why this word occurs to you), but beyond that it was also more powerful, somehow, though power is too simple a word for what these things contain. Richness. Strangeness. Darker colors, deeper potential? But if that’s the case…

“Onyx,” you say aloud, opening your eyes.

Other obelisks buzz along the periphery of your line of sight, closer, possible, but they don’t respond to this near-instinctive call of yours. The dark obelisk is so far away, well past the Western Coastals, somewhere over the Unknown Sea. Even flying, it might take months to arrive. But.

But. The onyx hears you. You know this the way you once knew your children had heard you, even if they pretended to ignore you. Ponderously it turns, arcane processes awakening for the first time in an age of the earth, as it does uttering an assault of sound and vibration that shakes the sea for miles underneath. (How do you know this? You’re not sessing this. You just know.)

Then it begins to come. Evil, eating Earth.

You flinch back along the line that leads to yourself. Along the way something snags your attention, and almost as an afterthought you call it, too: the topaz. It is lighter, livelier, much closer, and somehow more responsive, perhaps because you perceive a hint of Alabaster in its interstices like a curl of citrus rind added to a savory dish. He’s prepped it for you.

Then you snap back into yourself and turn to Ykka, who’s frowning at you. “You follow that?”

She shakes her head slowly, but not in negation. She caught some of it, somehow. You can see that in the look on her face. “I… that was… something. I’m not sure what.”

“Don’t reach for either one, when they get here.” Because you’re sure they’re coming. “Don’t reach for any of them. Ever.” You’re reluctant to say obelisk. Too many stills around, and even if they haven’t killed you yet, stills never need to hear that something can make orogenes even more of a danger than they already are.

“What would happen if I did?” It’s a question of honest curiosity, not challenge, but some questions are dangerous.

You decide to be honest. “You would die. I’m not sure how.” Actually you’re pretty sure she would spontaneously ignite into a white-hot screaming column of fire and force, possibly taking all of Castrima with her. But you’re not a hundred percent sure, so you stick to what you know. “The—those things are like the batteries some Equatorial comms use.” Shit. “Used. You’ve heard of those? A battery stores energy so you can have electricity even if the hydro’s not flowing or the geo has—”

Ykka looks affronted. Well, she is Sanzed; they invented batteries. “I know what a rusting battery is! First hint of a shake and you’ve got acid burns on top of everything else, all for the sake of a bit of stored juice.” She shakes her head. “What you’re talking about isn’t a battery.”

“They were making sugar batteries when I left Yumenes,” you say. She’s not saying obelisk, either. Good; she gets it. “Safer than acid and metal. Batteries can be made more than one way. But if a battery is too powerful for the circuit you attach it to…” You figure that’s enough to get the idea across.

She shakes her head again, but you think she believes you. As she turns and starts to pace in thought, you notice Lerna. He’s been quiet all this time, listening to you and Ykka talk. Now he seems deep in thought, and that bothers you. You don’t like that a still is thinking so hard about this.

But then he surprises you. “Ykka. How old do you think this comm really is?”

She stops and frowns at him. The other Castrimans shift as if uncomfortable. Maybe it bothers them, being reminded that they live in a deadciv ruin. “No clue. Why?”

He shrugs. “I’m just thinking of similarities.”

You understand then. Crystals in Castrima-under that glow through some means you can’t fathom. Crystals that float in the sky by some means you can’t fathom. Both mechanisms meant to be used by orogenes and no one else.

Stone eaters showing an inordinate interest in orogenes who use either. You glance at Hoa.

But Hoa isn’t looking at the sky, or at you. He’s stepped off the porch and has crouched on the ashy ground just off the walkway, staring at something. You follow his gaze and see a small mound in what was once the front yard of the house next door. It looks like just another pile of ash, maybe three feet high, but then you notice a tiny desiccated animal foot poking out of one end. Cat, maybe, or rabbit. There are probably dozens of small carcasses around here, buried under the ash; the beginning of the Season likely caused a huge die-off. Odd that this carcass seems to have accumulated so much more ash than the ground around it, though.

“Too long gone to eat, kid,” says one of the men, who’s also noticed Hoa and clearly has no idea what the “kid” is. Hoa blinks at him and bites his lip with just the perfect degree of unease. He plays the child so well. Then he gets up and comes over to you, and you realize he’s not playacting. Something really has unnerved him.

“Other things will eat it,” he says to you, very softly. “We should go.”

What. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

His jaw tightens. Jaw full of diamond teeth. Muscles over diamond bones? No wonder he’s never let you try to lift him; he must be heavy as marble. But he says, “I’m afraid of things that will hurt you.”

And… you believe him. Because, you suddenly realize, that’s been the commonality of all his strange behavior so far. His willingness to face the kirkhusa, which might have been too fast even for your orogeny. His ferocity toward other stone eaters. He’s protecting you. So few have ever tried to protect you, in your life. It’s impulse that makes you lift a hand and stroke it over his weird white hair. He blinks. Something comes into his eyes that is anything but inhuman. You don’t know what to think. This, though, is why you listen to him.

“Let’s go,” you say to Ykka and the others. You’ve done what Alabaster asked. You suspect he won’t be displeased by the extra obelisk when you tell him—if he doesn’t already know. Now, maybe, finally, he’ll tell you what the rust is going on.