N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

He’s awake now as you settle beside him, though he doesn’t move much. Antimony has moved fully into the nest with him these days, and you rarely see her in any pose other than “living chair” for him—kneeling, legs spread, her hands braced on her thighs. Alabaster rests against her front, which is only possible now because, perversely, the few burns on his back healed even as his legs rotted. Fortunately she has no breasts to make the position less comfortable, and apparently her simulated clothing isn’t sharp or rough. Alabaster’s eyes shift to follow as you sit, like a stone eater’s. You hate that this comparison occurs to you.

“It’s happening again,” you say. You don’t bother to explain the “it.” He always knows. “How did you… at Meov. You tried . How?” Because you can’t find it in yourself anymore to bother fighting for this place, or building a life here. All your instincts say to grab your runny-sack, grab your people, and run before Castrima turns against you. That’s a probable death sentence, the Season having well and truly set in topside, but staying seems more certain.

He draws in a deep, slow breath, so you know he means to answer. It just takes him a while to muster the words. “Didn’t mean to. You were pregnant; I was… lonely. I thought it would do. For a while.”

You shake your head. Of course he knew you were pregnant before you did. That’s all irrelevant now. “You fought for them.” It takes effort to emphasize the last word, but you do. For you and Corundum and Innon, sure, but he fought for Meov, too. “They would’ve turned on us, too, one day. You know they would have.” When Corundum proved too powerful, or if they’d managed to drive off the Guardians only to have to leave Meov and move elsewhere. It was inevitable.

He makes an affirmative sound.

“Then why?”

He lets out a long, slow sigh. “There was a chance they wouldn’t.” You shake your head. The words are so impossible to believe that they sound like gibberish. But he adds, “Any chance was worth trying.”

He does not say for you , but you feel it. It is a subtext that is nearly sessable beneath the words’ surface. So your family could have a normal life among other people, as one of them. Normal opportunities. Normal struggles. You stare at him. On impulse you lift your hand to his face, drawing fingers over his scarred lips. He watches you do this and offers you that little quarter-smile, which is all he can muster these days. It’s more than you need.

Then you get up and head out to try to salvage Castrima’s thin, cracked nothing of a chance.

Ykka has called a vote for the next morning—twenty-four hours after Rennanis’s “offer.” Castrima needs to deliver some kind of response, but she doesn’t think it should be up to only her informal council. You can’t see what difference the vote will make, except to emphasize that if the comm gets through the night intact it will be a rusting miracle.

People look at you as you walk through the comm. You keep your gaze ahead and try not to let them visibly affect you.

In brief, private visits you pass Ykka’s orders on to Cutter and Temell, and tell them to spread the word. Temell usually takes the kids out for lessons anyway; he says he’ll visit his students at home and encourage them to form study groups of two and three, in the homes of trusted adults. You want to say, “No adults are trustworthy,” but he knows that. There’s no way around it, so it’s pointless to say aloud.

Cutter says he’ll pass on the word to the few other adult roggas. Not all of them have the skill to throw a torus or control themselves well; except for you and Alabaster, they’re all ferals. But Cutter will make sure the ones who can’t stick near those who can. His face is impassive as he adds, “And who’ll watch your back?”

Which means he’s offering. The revulsion that shivers through you at this idea is surprising. You’ve never really trusted him, though you don’t understand why. Something about the fact that he’s hidden all his life—which is hypocritical as hell after your ten years in Tirimo. But then, sweet flaking rust, do you trust anyone? As long as he does his job it doesn’t matter. You force yourself to nod. “Come find me after you’re done, then.” He agrees.

With that, you decide to get some rest, yourself. Your bedroom is wrecked thanks to Hoa’s transformation, and you’re not much interested in sleeping in Tonkee’s bed; it’s been months, but the memory of mildew dies hard. Also, you’ve realized belatedly that there’s no one to watch Ykka’s back. She believes in her comm, but you don’t. Hoa ate Ruby Hair, who at least had an assumable interest in keeping her alive. So you borrow another pack from Temell, and scrounge your apartment for a few basic supplies—not quite a runny-sack, there’s plausible deniability if Ykka protests—and then head to her apartment. (This will have the added purpose of making it hard for Cutter to find you.) She’s still asleep, from the sound of her breathing through the bedroom curtain. Her divans are pretty comfortable, especially compared to sleeping rough when you were on the road. You use your runny-sack for a pillow and curl up, trying to forget the world for a while.

And then you wake when Ykka curses and stumbles past you at full speed, half ripping down one of the apartment curtains in her haste. You struggle awake and sit up. “What—” But by then you, too, hear the rising shouts outside. Angry shouts. A crowd, gathering.

So it’s begun. You get up and follow, and it’s not an afterthought that you grab the packs.

The knot of people is gathered on the ground level, near the communal baths. Ykka scrambles to that level in ways you will not—sliding down metal ladders, hopping over the railing of one platform to swing down to the one she knows is below, running across bridges that sway alarmingly beneath her feet. You go down in the sensible, non-suicidal way, so by the time you get to the knot of people, Ykka is in full shout, trying to get everyone to shut up and listen and back the fuck off.

At the center of the knot is Cutter, clad in nothing but a towel, for once looking something other than indifferent. Now he’s tense, jaw set, defiant, braced to flee. And five feet away, the iced corpse of a man sits on the ground, frozen in mid-scrabble backward, a look of abject terror permanently on his face. You don’t recognize him. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that a rogga has killed a still. This is a match thrown right into the middle of a comm that is dried-out, oil-soaked kindling.

“—how this happened,” Ykka is shouting, as you reach the knot of people. You can barely see her; there are nearly fifty people here already. You could push to the front, but you decide to hang back instead. Now is not the time to call attention to yourself. You look around and see Lerna also lurking at the rear of the crowd. His eyes are wide and his jaw tight as he looks back at you. There’s also—oh, burning Earth—a cluster of three rogga kids here. One of them is Penty, who you know is the ringleader of some of the braver, stupider rogga children. She’s standing on tiptoe, craning her neck for a better look. When she tries to push forward through the crowd, you catch her eye and give her a Mother Look. She flinches and subsides at once.

“Who the rust cares how it happened?” That’s Sekkim, one of the Innovators. You only know him because Tonkee constantly complains that he’s too stupid to rightly be part of the caste and should instead be dumped into something nonessential, like Leadership. “This is why—”

Someone else shouts him down. “ Fucking rogga! ”

Someone else shouts her down. “Fucking listen! It’s Ykka!”