Ykka is more inclined to adopt Maxixe and his people than you were expecting. She’s not happy that Maxixe has an advanced case of ash lung – as Lerna confirms after they’ve all had sponge baths and he’s given them a preliminary examination. Nor does she like that four of his people have other serious medical issues, ranging from fistulas to the complete lack of teeth, or that Lerna says they’re all going to be touch and go on surviving refeeding. But, as she informs those of you on her impromptu council, loudly so that anyone listening will hear, she can put up with a lot from people who bring in extra supplies, knowledge of the area, and precision orogeny that can help safeguard the group against attack. And, she adds, Maxixe doesn’t have to live forever. Long enough to help the comm will be enough for her.

She doesn’t add, Not like Alabaster, which is kind – or at least conspicuously not-cruel – of her. It’s surprising that she respects your grief, and maybe it’s also a sign that she is beginning to forgive you. It’ll be good to have a friend again. Friends. Again.

That’s not enough, of course. Nassun is alive and you’ve more or less recovered from your post-Gate coma, so now it becomes a struggle, daily, to remember why you’re staying with Castrima. It helps, sometimes, to go through the reasons for staying. For Nassun’s future, that’s one, so that you can have somewhere to shelter her once you’ve found her again. Because you can’t do it alone is the second reason – and you can’t rightly let Tonkee come with you anymore, however willing she might be. Not with your orogeny compromised; the long journey back south would be a death sentence for both of you. Hoa isn’t going to be able to help you get dressed, or cook food, or do any of the other things one needs two good hands for. And Reason Number Three, the most important of the set: You don’t know where to go anymore. Hoa has confirmed that Nassun is on the move, and has been traveling away from the site of the sapphire since you opened the Obelisk Gate. It was too late to find her before you ever woke up.

But there is hope. In the small hours of one morning after Hoa has taken the stone burden of your left breast from you, he says quietly, “I think I know where she’s going. If I’m right, she’ll stop soon.” He sounds uncertain. No, not uncertain. Troubled.

You sit on a rocky outcrop some ways from the encampment, recovering from the… excision. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it would be. You pulled off your clothing layers to bare the stoned breast. He put a hand on it and it came away from your body, cleanly, into his palm. You asked why he didn’t do that for your arm and he said, “I do what’s most comfortable for you.” Then he lifted your breast to his lips and you decided to become fascinated by the flat, slightly roughened cautery of stone over the space where your breast was. It aches a little, but you’re not sure whether this is the pain of amputation or something more existential.

(Three bites, it takes him, to eat the breast that Nassun liked best. You’re perversely proud to feed someone else with it.)

As you awkwardly pull undershirts and shirts back on with one arm – stuffing one side of your bra with the lightest undershirt so it won’t slip off – you probe after that hint of unease that you heard in Hoa’s voice earlier. “You know something.”

Hoa doesn’t answer at first. You think you’re going to have to remind him that this is a partnership, that you’re committed to catching the Moon and ending this endless Season, that you care about him but he can’t keep hiding things from you like this – and then he finally says, “I believe Nassun seeks to open the Obelisk Gate herself.”

Your reaction is visceral and immediate. Pure fear. It probably isn’t what you should feel. Logic would dictate disbelief that a ten-year-old girl can manage a feat that you barely accomplished. But somehow, maybe because you remember the feel of your little girl thrumming with angry blue power, and you knew in that instant that she understood the obelisks better than you ever will, you have no trouble believing Hoa’s core premise – that your little girl is bigger than you thought.

“It will kill her,” you blurt.

“Very likely, yes.”

Oh, Earth. “But you can track her again? You lost her after Castrima.”

“Yes, now that she is attuned to an obelisk.”

Again, though, that odd hesitation is in his voice. Why? Why would it bother him that – Oh. Oh, rusty burning Earth. Your voice shakes as you understand. “Which means that any stone eater can ‘perceive’ her now. Is that what you’re saying?” Castrima all over again. Ruby Hair and Butter Marble and Ugly Dress, may you never see those parasites again. Fortunately, Hoa killed most of them. “Your kind get interested in us then, right? When we start using obelisks, or when we’re close to being able to.”

“Yes.” Inflectionless, that one soft word, but you know him by now.

“Earthfires. One of you is after her.”

You didn’t think stone eaters were capable of sighing, but sure enough the sound emerges from Hoa’s chest. “The one you call Gray Man.”

Cold runs through you. But yes. You’d guessed already, really. There have been, what, three orogenes in the world lately who mastered connecting to the obelisks? Alabaster and you and now Nassun. Uche, maybe, briefly – and maybe there was even a stone eater lurking about Tirimo back then. Rusting bastard must be terribly disappointed that Uche died by filicide rather than stoning.

Your jaw tightens as your mouth tastes of bile. “He’s manipulating her.” To activate the Gate and transform herself into stone, so that she can be eaten. “That’s what he tried to do at Castrima, force Alabaster, or me, or – rust it, or Ykka, any of us, to try to do something beyond our ability so we might turn ourselves into —” You put a hand on the stone marker of your breast.

“There have always been those who use despair and desperation as weapons.” This is delivered softly, as if in shame.

Suddenly you’re furious with yourself, and your impotence. Knowing that you’re the real target of your own anger doesn’t stop you from taking it out on him. “Seems to me all of you do that!”

Hoa has positioned himself to gaze out at the dull red horizon, a statue paying homage to nostalgia in pensive shadowed lines. He does not turn, but you hear hurt in his voice. “I haven’t lied to you.”

“No, you’ve just withheld the truth so much it’s the same fucking thing!” You rub your eyes. Had to take the goggles off to put your shirt back on, and now you’ve got ash in them. “You know what, just – I don’t want to hear anything else right now. I need to rest.” You get to your feet. “Take me back.”

His hand is abruptly extended in your direction. “One more thing, Essun.”

“I told you —”

“Please. You need to know this.” He waits until you settle into a fuming silence. Then he says, “Jija is dead.”

You freeze.

***

In this moment I remind myself of why I continue to tell this story through your eyes rather than my own: because, outwardly, you’re too good at hiding yourself. Your face has gone blank, your gaze hooded. But I know you. I know you. Here is what’s inside you.

***

You surprise yourself by being surprised. Surprised, that is, and not angry, or thwarted, or sad. Just… surprised. But that is because your first thought, after relief that Nassun’s safe now, is…

Isn’t she?

And then you surprise yourself by being afraid. You aren’t sure of what, but it’s a stark, sour thing in your mouth. “How?” you ask.

Hoa says, “Nassun.”

The fear increases. “She couldn’t have lost control of her orogeny, she hasn’t done that since she was five —”

“It was not orogeny. And it was intentional.”

There, at last: the foreshock of a Rifting-level shake, inside you. It takes you a moment to say aloud, “She killed him? On purpose?”

“Yes.”

You fall silent then, dazed, troubled. Hoa’s hand is still extended toward you. An offer of answers. You aren’t sure you want to know, but… but you take his hand anyway. Perhaps it’s for comfort. You don’t imagine that his hand folds about your own and squeezes, just a little, in a way that makes you feel better. Still he waits. You’re very, very glad for his consideration.

“Is he… Where is,” you begin, when you feel ready. You’re not ready. “Is there a way I can go there?”

“There?”

You’re pretty sure he knows where you mean. He’s just making sure you know what you’re asking for.

You swallow hard and try to reason it out. “They were in the Antarctics. Jija didn’t keep her on the road forever. She had somewhere safe, time to get stronger.” A lot stronger. “I can hold my breath underground, if you… Take me to where she w —” But no. That’s not really where you want to go. Stop dancing around it. “Take me to where Jija is. To… to where he died.”

Hoa doesn’t move for perhaps half a minute. You’ve noticed this about him. He takes varying amounts of time to respond to conversational cues. Sometimes his words nearly overlap yours when he replies, and sometimes you think he hasn’t heard you before he finally gets around to replying. You don’t think he’s thinking during that time, or anything. You think it just doesn’t mean anything to him – one second or ten, now or later. He heard you. He’ll get around to it eventually.

In token of which, at last, he blurs a bit, though you see the slowness of the end of the gesture as he puts his other hand over yours as well, sandwiching you between his hard palms. The pressure of both hands increases until the grip is quite firm. Not uncomfortable, but still. “Close your eyes.”

He’s never suggested this before. “Why?”

He takes you down. It’s further down than you’ve ever been before, and it isn’t instantaneous this time. You gasp inadvertently – somehow – and thus discover that you don’t need to hold your breath after all. As the dark gets darker, it brightens with flashes of red, and then for just a moment you blur through molten reds and oranges and catch the most fleeting glimpse of a wavering open space where something in the distance is bursting apart in a shower of semiliquid glowing chunks – and then there is black around you again, and then you stand on open ground beneath a thinly clouded sky.

“That’s why,” Hoa says.

“Rusty flaking fuck!” You try to yank your hand free and fail. “Shit, Hoa!”

Hoa’s hands stop pressing so hard on yours, so that you can slip free. You stagger a few feet away and then clap hands over yourself, checking for injury. You’re fine – not burned to death, not crushed by the pressure as you should have been, not suffocated, not even shaken up. Much.

You straighten and rub your face. “Okay. I’m really going to have to remember that stone eaters don’t say anything without reason. Never wanted to actually see the Fire-Under-Earth.”

But you’re here now, standing atop a hill that is itself on some kind of plateau. The sky is your place-marker. It’s later in the morning here than it was where you were – a little after dawn, instead of predawn. The sun is actually visible, though thin through the scrim of ash clouds overhead. (You surprise yourself by feeling an ache of longing at the sight.) But the fact that you can see it means that you’re much farther from the Rifting than you were a few moments ago. You glance to the west, and the faint shimmer of a dark blue obelisk in the distance confirms your guess. This is where, a month or so ago when you opened the Obelisk Gate, you felt Nassun.

(That way. She’s gone that way. But that way lies thousands of square miles of the Stillness.)

You turn to find that you’re standing amid a small cluster of wooden buildings positioned at the top of the hill, including one storeshack on stilts, a few lean-tos, and what look like dormitories or classroom buildings. All of it is surrounded, however, by a neat, precisely level fence of columnar basalt. That an orogene has made this, harnessing the slow explosion of the great volcano beneath your feet, is as plain to you as the sun in the sky. But equally obvious is the fact that the compound is empty. There’s no one in sight, and the reverberations of footprints on the ground are farther away, beyond the fence.

Curious, you walk to a break in the basalt fence, where a pathway that is half dirt and half cobbles wends down. At the foot of the hill is a village, occupying the rest of the plateau. The village could be any comm anywhere. You make out houses in varying shapes, most with still-growing housegreens, several standing storecaches, what looks like a bathhouse, a kiln shed. The people moving among the buildings don’t glance up to notice you, and why would they? It’s a lovely day, here where the sun still mostly shines. They’ve got fields to tend and – are those little rowboats tied to one of the watchtowers? – trips to the nearby sea to organize. This compound, whatever it is, is unimportant to them.

You turn away from the village, and that’s when you spot the crucible.

It’s near the edge of the compound, elevated a little above the rest of it, though visible from where you are. When you climb the path to look into the crucible bowl, which is marked out in cobbles and brick, it’s old habit to thrust your senses into the ground to find the nearest marked stone. Not far, only maybe five or six feet down. You search its surface and find the faint pressure indentations of a chisel, maybe a hammer. FOUR. It’s too easy; in your day the stones were marked with paint and numbers, which made them less distinctive. Still, the stone is small enough that, yes, anyone below a four-ringer would have trouble finding and identifying it. They’ve got the details of the training wrong, but the basics are spot-on.

“This can’t be the Antarctic Fulcrum,” you say, crouching to finger one of the stones of the ring. Just pebbles instead of the beautiful tile mosaic you remember, but again, they’ve got the idea.

Hoa’s still standing where you emerged from the ground, hands still positioned to press down on yours, perhaps for the return trip. He doesn’t answer, but then you’re mostly talking to yourself.

“I always heard that Antarctic was small,” you continue, “but this is nothing. This is a camp.” There’s no Ring Garden. No Main building. Also, you’ve heard that the Arctic and Antarctic Fulcrums were lovely, despite their size and remote location. That makes sense; the Fulcrum’s beauty was all that official, state-sanctioned orogene-kind ever had to show for itself. This sorry collection of shacks doesn’t fit the ideology. Also – “It’s on a volcano. And too close to those stills down the hill.” That village isn’t Yumenes, surrounded on all sides by node maintainers and with the added protection of the most powerful senior orogenes. One overwrought grit’s tantrum could turn this whole region into a crater.

“It isn’t the Antarctic Fulcrum,” Hoa says. His voice is usually soft, but he’s turned away now, and that makes him softer. “That’s farther to the west, and it has been purged. No orogenes live there anymore.”

Of course it’s been purged. You set your jaw against sorrow. “So this is somebody’s idea of homage. A survivor?” Inadvertently you find another marker underground – a small round pebble, maybe fifty feet down. NINE is written on it, in ink. You have no trouble reading it. Shaking your head, you rise and turn to explore the compound further.

Then you stop, tensing, as a man limps out of one of the dormitory-looking buildings. He stops, too, staring at you in surprise. “Who the rust are you?” he asks, in a noticeable Antarctic drawl.

Your awareness plummets into the earth – and then you wrench it back up. Stupid, because remember? Orogeny will kill you? Also, the man isn’t even armed. He’s fairly young, probably only in his twenties despite an already-receding hairline. The limp is an easy thing, and one of his shoes is built higher than the other – ah. The village handyman, probably, come to do some basic caretaking on buildings that might again be needed someday.

“Uh, hi,” you stammer. Then you fall silent, not sure what to say from there.

“Hi.” The man sees Hoa and flinches, then stares with the open shock of someone who’s only heard of stone eaters in lorist tales, and maybe didn’t quite believe them. Only belatedly does he seem to remember you, frowning a little at the ash on your hair and clothing, but it’s clear you’re not as impressive a sight. “Tell me that’s a statue,” he says to you. Then he laughs a little, nervously. “Except it wasn’t here when I came up the hill. Uh, hi, I guess?”

Hoa doesn’t bother replying, though you see his eyes have shifted to watch the man instead of you. You steel yourself and step forward. “Sorry to alarm you,” you say. “You from this comm?”

The man finally focuses on you. “Uh, yeah. And you’re not.” Instead of showing unease, however, he blinks. “You another Guardian?”

Your skin prickles all over. For an instant you want to shout no, and then sense reasserts itself. You smile. They always smile. “Another?”

The young man’s looking you up and down now, maybe suspicious. You don’t care, as long as he answers your questions and doesn’t attack you. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “We found the two dead ones after the children left on that training trip.” His lip curls, just a little. You’re not sure whether he doesn’t believe the children have gone off training, whether he’s really upset about “the two dead ones,” or whether that’s just the usual lip-curl that people wear when they talk about roggas, since it’s obvious that’s what the children in question must be. If Guardians were here. “Headwoman did say there might be other Guardians along someday. The three we had all popped up out of nowhere, after all, at different times down the years. You’re just a late one, I guess.”

“Ah.” It is surprisingly easy to pretend to be a Guardian. Just keep smiling, and never offer information. “And when did the others leave on their… training trip?”

“About a month ago.” The young man shifts, getting comfortable, and turns to gaze after the sapphire obelisk in the distance. “Schaffa said they were going far enough away that we wouldn’t feel any aftershakes of what the kids did. Guess that’s pretty far.”

Schaffa. The smile freezes on your face. You can’t help hissing it. “Schaffa.”

The young man frowns at you. Definitely suspicious now. “Yeah. Schaffa.”

It can’t be. He’s dead. “Tall, black hair, icewhite eyes, strange accent?”

The young man relaxes somewhat. “Oh. You know him, then?”

“Yes, very well.” So easy to smile. Harder to wrestle down the urge to scream, to grab Hoa, to demand that he plunge you both into the earth now, now, now, so you can go and rescue your daughter. Hardest of all not to fall to the ground and curl into a ball, trying to clench the hand you no longer have but that hurts; Evil Earth, it aches like it’s broken all over again, phantom pain so real your eyes prickle with pain tears.

Imperial Orogenes do not lose control. You haven’t been a blackjacket for going on twenty years, and you lose control all the rusting time – but nevertheless the old discipline helps you pull yourself together. Nassun, your baby, is in the hands of a monster. You need to understand how this happened.

“Very well,” you repeat. No one will think repetition strange, from a Guardian. “Can you tell me about one of his charges? Midlatter girl, brown and willowy, curly hair, gray eyes —”

“Nassun, right. Jija’s girl.” The young man relaxes completely now, not noticing that you’ve tensed that much more. “Evil Earth, I hope Schaffa kills her while they’re on that trip.”

The threat is not to you, but your awareness dips again anyway, before you drag it back. Ykka’s right: You really do need to stop defaulting to kill everything. At least your smile hasn’t faltered. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I think she’s the one who did it… Rust, could’ve been any of ’em, though. That girl’s just the one who gave me the shivers the most.” His jaw tightens as he finally notices the sharp edges of your smile. But that, too, isn’t something that anyone familiar with Guardians would question. He just looks away.

“‘Did it’?” you ask.

“Oh. Guess you wouldn’t know. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He turns and limps toward the northern end of the compound. You follow, after a moment’s exchanged glance with Hoa. There’s another slight rise here, culminating in a flat area that’s clearly been used before for stargazing or just staring at the horizon; you can see much of the surrounding countryside, which still shows shocking amounts of green beneath a relatively recent and still-thin layer of whitening ash.

But here, though, is something strange: a pile of rubble. You think at first it’s a glass recycling pile; Jija used to keep one of those near the house back in Tirimo, and neighbors would dump their broken glasses and such there for him to use in glassknife hilts. Some of this looks like higher-quality stuff than just glass; maybe someone’s tossed in some unworked semiprecious stone. All jumbled colors, tan and gray and a bit of blue, but rather a lot of red. But there’s a pattern to it, something that makes you pause and tilt your head and try to take in the whole of what you’re seeing. When you do, you notice that the colors and arrangement of stones at the nearer edge of the pile vaguely resemble a mosaic. Boots, if someone had sculpted boots out of pebbles and then knocked them over. Then those would be pants, except there’s the off-white of bone among them and —

No.

Fire. Under. Earth.

No. Your Nassun didn’t do this, she couldn’t have, she —

She did.

The young man sighs, reading your face. You’ve forgotten to smile, but even a Guardian would be sobered by this. “Took us a while to realize what we were seeing, too,” he says. “Maybe this is something you understand.” He glances at you hopefully.

You just shake your head, and the man sighs.

“Well. It was just before they all left. One morning we hear something like thunder. Go outside and the obelisk – big blue one that had been lurking around for a few weeks, you know how they are – is gone. Then later that day there’s the same loud ch-kow —” He claps his hands as he imitates the sound. You manage not to jump. “And it’s back. And then Schaffa suddenly tells the headwoman he’s got to take the kids away. No explanation for the obelisk stuff. No mention that Nida and Umber – those are the other two, the Guardians who used to run this place with Schaffa – are dead. Umber’s head is staved in. Nid…” He shakes his head. The look on his face is pure revulsion. “The back of her head is… But Schaffa doesn’t say anything. Just takes the kids away. Lot of us are starting to hope he never brings them back.”

Schaffa. That’s the part you should focus on. That’s what matters, not what was but what is… but you can’t take your eyes off Jija. Burning rust, Jija. Jija.

***

I wish I were still flesh, for you. I wish that I were still a tuner, so that I could speak to you through temperatures and pressures and reverberations of the earth. Words are too much, too indelicate, for this conversation. You were fond of Jija, after all, to the degree that your secrets allowed. You thought he loved you – and he did, to the degree that your secrets allowed. It’s just that love and hate aren’t mutually exclusive, as I first learned so very long ago.

I’m sorry.

***

You make yourself say, “Schaffa won’t be coming back.” Because you need to find him and kill him – but even through your fear and horror, reason asserts itself. This strange imitation Fulcrum, which is not the true Fulcrum that he should have brought Nassun to. These children, gathered and not slaughtered. Nassun, openly controlling an obelisk well enough to do this… and yet Schaffa has not killed her. Something’s going on here that you’re not getting.

“Tell me more about this man,” you say, lifting your chin toward the pile of jumbled jewels. Your ex-husband.

The young man shrugs in an audible stirring of cloth. “Oh, right, uh. So, his name was Jija Resistant Jekity.” Because the young man is sighing down at the pile of rubble, you don’t think he sees you twitch at the wrongness of the comm name. “New to the comm, a knapper. We got too many men, but we needed a knapper bad, so when he turned up, we basically would’ve taken him in as long as he wasn’t old or sick or obviously crazy. You know?” He shrugs. “The girl seemed all right when they first got here. Wouldn’t know her for one of them, she was so proper and polite. Somebody raised her right.” You smile again. Perfect tight-jawed Guardian smile. “We only knew what she was because Jija had come here, see. Heard the rumors about how roggas could become… un-roggas, I guess. We get a lot of visitors who ask about that.”

You frown and nearly look away from Jija. Un-roggas?

“Not that it ever happened.” The young man sighs and adjusts his cane for comfort. “And not that we’d have taken in a kid who used to be one of them, right? What if that kid grew up and had kids who were wrong, too? Got to breed the taint out somehow. Anyway, the girl minded her father well enough until a few weeks ago. Neighbors said they heard him shouting at her one night, and then she moved up here to the compound with the others. You could see how the change sort of… untied Jija. He started talking to himself about how she wasn’t his daughter anymore. Cursing out loud, now and again. Hitting things – walls and such – when he thought you weren’t looking.

“And the girl, she pulled away. Can’t say I blame her; everybody was on eggshells around him for that while. Always the quiet ones, right? So I saw her hanging around Schaffa more. Like a duckling, always right there in his shadow. Whenever he’d hold still, she’d take his hand. And he —” The young man eyes you warily. “Don’t usually see you lot being affectionate. But he seemed to think the world of her. I hear he nearly killed Jija when the man came at her, actually.”

The hand that you don’t have twinges again, but it is more tentative this time and not the throb of before. Because… he wouldn’t have had to break Nassun’s hand, would he? No, no, no. You did that to her yourself. And Uche was another broken hand, inflicted by Jija. Schaffa protected her from Jija. Schaffa was affectionate with her, as you struggled to be. And now everything inside you shudders at the thought that follows, and it takes the willpower that has destroyed cities to keep this shudder internal, but…

But…

How much more welcome would a Guardian’s conditional, predictable love have been to Nassun, after her parents’ unconditional love had betrayed her again and again?

You close your eyes for a moment, because you don’t think Guardians cry.

With an effort, you say, “What is this place?”

He looks at you in surprise, then glances at Hoa, a ways behind you. “This is the comm of Jekity, Guardian. Though Schaffa and the others —” He gestures around you, at the compound. “They called this part of the comm ‘Found Moon.’”

Of course they did. And of course Schaffa already knew the secrets of the world that you’ve paid in flesh and blood to learn.

In your silence, the young man regards you thoughtfully. “I can introduce you to the headwoman. I know she’ll be glad to have Guardians around again. Good help against raiders.”

You’re looking at Jija again. You see one piece of jewel in the perfect likeness of a pinky finger. You know that pinky finger. You kissed that pinky finger —

It’s too much, you can’t do this, you’ve got to get a grip, get out of here before you break down any further. “I – I n-need —” Deep breath for calm. “I need some time to consider the situation. Would you go and let your headwoman know I’ll come pay my respects shortly?”

The young man side-gazes you for a moment, but you know now that it’s not a bad thing if you seem a little off. He’s used to Guardian-style offness. Perhaps because of this, he nods and shuffles back awkwardly. “Can I ask you a question?”

No. “Yes?”

He bites his lip. “What’s going on? It feels like… Nothing that’s happening is normal lately. I mean, it’s a Season, but even that feels wrong. Guardians not taking roggas to the Fulcrum. Roggas doing things nobody’s ever heard of them doing.” He chin-points toward the pile of Jija. “Whatever the rust went on up north. Even those things in the sky, the obelisks… It’s all… People are talking. Saying maybe the world’s not going to go back to normal. Ever.”

You’re staring at Jija, but you’re thinking of Alabaster. Don’t know why.

“One person’s normal is another person’s Shattering.” Your face aches from smiling. There is an art to smiling in a way that others will believe, and you’re terrible at it. “Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.”

He stares at you for a long, vaguely horrified moment. Then he mumbles something and finally goes away, skirting wide around Hoa. Good riddance.

You crouch beside Jija. He is beautiful like this, all jewels and colors. He is monstrous like this. Beneath the colors you perceive the crazed every-which-wayness of the magic threads in him. It’s wholly different from what happened to your arm and your breast. He has been smashed apart and rearranged at random, on an infinitesimal level.

“What have I done?” you ask. “What have I made her?”

Hoa’s toes have appeared in your peripheral vision. “Strong,” he suggests.

You shake your head. Nassun was that on her own.

“Alive.”

You close your eyes again. It’s the only thing that should matter, that you’ve brought three babies into the world and this one, this precious last one, is still breathing. And yet.

I made her me. Earth eat us both, I made her intome.

And maybe that’s why Nassun is still alive. But it’s also, you realize as you stare at what she’s done to Jija, and as you realize you can’t even get revenge on him for Uche because your daughter has done that for you… why you are terrified of her.

And there it is – the thing you haven’t faced in all this time, the kirkhusa with ash and blood on its muzzle. Jija owed you a debt of pain for your son, but you owe Nassun, in turn. You didn’t save her from Jija. You haven’t been there when she’s needed you, here at the literal end of the world. How dare you presume to protect her? Gray Man and Schaffa; she has found her own, better, protectors. She has found the strength to protect herself.

You are so very proud of her. And you don’t dare go anywhere near her, ever again.

Hoa’s heavy, hard hand presses down on your good shoulder. “It isn’t wise for us to stay here.”

You shake your head. Let the people of this comm come. Let them realize you aren’t a Guardian. Let one of them finally notice how alike you and Nassun look. Let them bring their crossbows and slingshots and —

Hoa’s hand curves to grip your shoulder, vise-tight. You know it’s coming and still you don’t bother to brace yourself as he drags you into the earth, back north. You keep your eyes open on purpose this time, and the sight doesn’t bother you. The fires within the earth are nothing to what you’re feeling right now, failed mother that you are.

The two of you emerge from the ground in a quiet part of the encampment, though it’s near a small stand of trees that a lot of people, by the stink, have apparently been using for a pisser. When Hoa lets you go, you start to walk away and then stop again. Your thoughts have gone blank. “I don’t know what to do.”

Silence from Hoa. Stone eaters don’t bother with unnecessary movement or words, and Hoa has already made his intentions clear. You imagine Nassun talking with Gray Man, and you laugh softly, because he seems more animate and talkative than most of his kind. Good. He’s a good stone eater, for her.

“I don’t know where to go,” you say. You’ve been sleeping in Lerna’s tent lately, but that isn’t what you mean. Inside you, there’s a clump of emptiness. A raw hole. “I don’t have anything left now.”

Hoa says, “You have comm and kin. You’ll have a home, once you reach Rennanis. You have your life.”

Do you really have these things? The dead have no wishes, says stonelore. You think of Tirimo, where you didn’t want to wait for death to come for you, and so you killed the comm. Death is always with you. Death is you.

Hoa says to your slumped back, “I can’t die.”

You frown, jarred out of melancholy by this apparent non sequitur. Then you understand: He’s saying you won’t ever lose him. He will not crumble away like Alabaster. You can’t ever be surprised by the pain of Hoa’s loss the way you were with Corundum or Innon or Alabaster or Uche, or now Jija. You can’t hurt Hoa in any way that matters.

“It’s safe to love you,” you murmur, in startled realization.

“Yes.”

Surprisingly, this eases the knot of silence in your chest. Not much, but… but it helps.

“How do you do it?” you ask. It’s hard to imagine. Not being able to die even when you want to, even as everything you know and care about falters and fails. Having to go on, no matter what. No matter how tired you are.

“Move forward,” Hoa says.

“What?”

“Move. Forward.”

And then he is gone, into the earth. Nearby, somewhere, if you need him. Right now, though, he’s right: you don’t.

Can’t think. You’re thirsty, and hungry and tired besides. It stinks in this part of camp. The stump of your arm hurts. Your heart hurts more.

You take a step, though, toward the camp. And then another. And another.

Forward.

***