N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

“Who the rust cares about another rogga monster—”

“Rusty son of a cannibal, I will beat you bloody if you—”

Someone shoves someone else. There are shoves back, more curses, vows of murder. It’s a catastrophe.

Then a man rushes forward from the crowd, crouching beside the iced corpse and trying his best to fling his arms around it. The resemblance between him and the body is obvious even through the ice: brothers, perhaps. His wail of anguish causes a sudden, flustered silence to ripple across the crowd. They shuffle uneasily as his wail subsides into deep, soul-tearing sobs.

Ykka takes a deep breath and steps forward, using the opportunity that grief has provided. To Cutter, she says tightly, “What did I say? What did I rusting say ?”

“He attacked me,” Cutter says. There’s not a scratch on him.

“Bullshit,” Ykka says. Several people in the crowd echo her, but she glares them down until they subside. She looks at the dead man, her jaw tight. “Betine wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t even kill a chicken that time it was his turn to look after the flock.”

Cutter glares. “All I know is, I wanted to take a bath. I sat down to wash and he moved away from me. I figured fine, that’s how it’s going to be, and I didn’t care. Then I went past him to get into the pool and he hit me. Hard, in the back of the neck.”

There is a low, angry murmur at this—but also a troubled shuffle. The back of the neck is rumored to be the best place to strike a rogga. It’s not true. Only works if you hit hard enough for a concussion or a cracked skull, and then that’s what takes them down, not any sort of damage to the sessapinae. It’s still a popular myth. And if it’s true, it might be reason enough for Cutter to fight back.

“ Rust that .” This is growled; the man who holds Betine’s faintly hissing corpse. “Bets wasn’t like that. Yeek, you know he wasn’t—”

Ykka nods, going over to touch the man’s shoulder. The crowd shuffles again, pent fury shifting with it. With her, tenuously, for the moment. “I know.” A muscle in her jaw flexes once, twice. She looks around. “Anybody else see the fight?”

Several people raise hands. “I saw Bets move away,” says one woman. She swallows, looking at Cutter; sweat dots her upper lip. “I think he just wanted to get closer to the soap, though.”

“He looked at me,” Cutter snaps. “I know what it rusting means when somebody looks at me like that!”

Ykka cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “I know, Cutter, but shut up. What else?” she asks the woman.

“That was it. I looked away and then when I looked back there was that—swirl. Wind and ice.” She grimaces, her jaw tightening. “You know how you people kill.”

Ykka glares back at her, but then flinches as there are more shouts, this time in agreement with the woman. Someone tries to shove through the crowd to get at Cutter; someone else holds the attacker back, but it’s a near thing. You see the realization come over Ykka that she’s losing them. She’s not going to make her people see. They’re working themselves into a mob, and there’s nothing she can do to stop them.

Well. You’re wrong about that. There’s one thing she can do.

She does it by turning and laying a hand on Cutter’s chest and sending something through him. You’re not actively sessing at the moment, so you only get the backwash of it, and it’s—what? It’s like… the way Alabaster once slammed a hot spot into submission, years ago and a fifth of a continent away. Just smaller. It’s like what that Guardian did to Innon, except localized, and not overtly horrific. And you didn’t realize roggas could do anything like it.

Whatever it is, Cutter doesn’t even have a chance to gasp. His eyes fly wide. He staggers back a step. Then he falls down, with a look of shock on his face to match that of Betine’s fear.

Everyone’s silent. Yours is not the only mouth that hangs open.

Ykka catches her breath. Whatever she did took a lot out of her; you see her sway a little, then get a hold of herself. “That’s enough,” she says, turning to look at everyone in the crowd. “More than enough. Justice has been done, see? Now all of you, go the rust home.”

You don’t expect that to work. You figure it’ll only whet the crowd’s bloodthirst… but shows how much you know. People mill a little, mutter a little more, but then begin to disperse. A grieving man’s quiet sobs follow them all away.

That’s midnight, the time-keeper calls. Eight hours till the vote in the morning.

“I had to do it,” Ykka murmurs. You’re in her apartment again, sort of, standing beside her. The curtain’s open so she can see her people, so they can see her, but she’s leaning against the doorsill and she’s trembling. It’s only a little. No one would see it from afar. “I had to.”

You offer her the respect of honesty. “Yes. You did.”

It’s two o’clock.

By five o’clock, you’re thinking about sleeping. It’s been quieter than you expected. Lerna and Hjarka have come to join you at Ykka’s. No one says you’re keeping vigil, commiserating in silence, mourning Cutter, waiting for the world to end (again), but that’s what you’re doing. Ykka’s sitting on a divan with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head propped against the wall, gaze weary and empty of thought.

When you hear shouts again, you close your eyes and think about ignoring them. It’s the high-pitched screams of children that drag you out of this complete failure of empathy. The others get up and you do, too, and all of you go out onto the balcony. People are running toward one of the wide platforms that surround a crystal shaft too small to hold any apartments. You and the others head that way, too. The comm uses such platforms for storage, so this one is stacked with barrels and crates and clay jars. One of the clay jars is rolling around but looks intact; you see this as you and the others reach the platform. Which does not at all explain what else you’re seeing.

It’s the rogga kids again. Penty’s gang. Two of them are doing all the screaming, tugging and hitting at a woman who has pinned Penty down and is shouting at her, gripping her throat. Another woman stands by, yelling at the kids, too, but no one’s paying any attention to her. Her slurred voice is just the goad.

You know the woman that’s got Penty down, sort of. She’s maybe ten years younger than you, with a heavier build and longer hair: Waineen, one of the Resistants. She’s been nice enough when you’ve done shifts in the fungus flats or latrines, but you’ve heard the others gossip behind her back. Waineen makes the mellows that Lerna periodically smokes, and the moonshine that a few people in the comm drink. Sometime back before the Season she had quite a lucrative sideline helping the native Castrimans perk up their lives of tedious mining and trading, and she stored the product down in Castrima-under to keep the quartent tax inspectors from ever finding it. Convenient, now that the world has ended. But she’s her own biggest customer, and it’s not unusual to find her stumbling about the comm, red-faced and too loud, emitting more fumes than a fresh blow.

Waineen’s not usually a mean drunk, and she shares freely, and she never misses a shift, which is why nobody really cares what she does with her stuff. Everybody handles the Season in their own way. Still, something’s set her off now. Penty is aggravating. Hjarka and some of the other Castrimans are striding forward to pull the woman off the girl, and you’re telling yourself it’s a good thing Penty has enough self-control to not ice the whole damned platform, when the woman lifts an arm and makes a fist.