But she learns, and when she is done she feels grateful to the raider woman, who lies groaning and in a stupor in the pit. Nassun knows better than to let the woman go; if she lives, she will only either die slowly and cruelly, or return and perhaps next time threaten someone Nassun loves. So Nassun casts her threads one last time, and this time slices neatly through the top of her spine. It is painless, and kinder than the fate the woman intended for Nassun.
Now she runs up the hill toward Found Moon, elated for the first time since she killed Eitz, so eager to see Schaffa that she barely notices the other children of the compound as they stop whatever they’re doing and favor her with cool stares. Schaffa has explained to them that what she did to Eitz was an accident, and he has assured her they will eventually come around. She hopes he is right because she misses their friendship. But none of that is important now.
“Schaffa!” She first pokes her head into the Guardians’ cabin. Only Nida is there, standing in the corner as she so often does, staring into the middle distance as if lost in thought. She focuses as soon as Nassun comes in, however, and smiles in her empty way.
“Hello, Schaffa’s little one,” she says. “You seem cheerful today.”
“Hello, Guardian.” She is always polite to Nida and Umber. Just because they want to kill her is no reason to forget her manners. “Do you know where Schaffa is?”
“He is in the crucible with Wudeh.”
“Okay, thanks!” Nassun hurries off, undeterred. She knows that Wudeh, as the next most skilled with Eitz gone, is the only other child in Found Moon who has some hope of connecting to an obelisk. Nassun thinks it is hopeless because no one can train him in the way he needs to be trained, given that he is so small and frail. Wudeh would never have survived Mama’s crucibles.
Still, she is polite to him, too, running up to the edge of the outermost practice circle and bouncing only a little, keeping her orogeny still so as not to distract him while he raises a big basalt column from the ground and then tries to push it back in. He’s already breathing hard, though the column isn’t moving very fast. Schaffa is watching him intently, his smile not as big as usual. Schaffa sees it, too.
Finally Wudeh gets the column back into the ground. Schaffa takes his shoulder and helps him over to a bench, which is plainly necessary because Wudeh can barely walk at this point. Schaffa glances at Nassun, and Nassun nods at once and turns to run back into the mess hall to fetch a glass from the pitcher of fruit-water there. When she brings it to Wudeh, he blinks at her once, then looks ashamed of hesitating, and finally takes it with a shy nod of thanks. Schaffa is always right.
“Do you need help back to the dormitory?” Schaffa asks him.
“I can make it back myself, sir,” Wudeh says. His eyes dart to Nassun, by which Nassun understands that Wudeh probably would like help back, but knows better than to get in between Schaffa and his favorite student.
Nassun looks at Schaffa. She’s excited, but she can wait. He lifts an eyebrow, then inclines his head and extends a hand to help Wudeh up.
Once Wudeh is safely abed, Schaffa comes back over to where Nassun now sits on the bench. She’s calmer for the delay, which is good, because she knows she’s going to need to seem calm and cool and professional in order to convince him to let some half-grown, half-trained girl experiment on him with magic.
Schaffa sits down beside her, looking amused. “All right, then.”
She takes a deep breath before beginning. “I know how to take the thing out of you.”
They both know exactly what she’s talking about. She has sat beside Schaffa, quietly offering herself, as he has huddled on this very bench clutching his head and whispering replies to a voice she cannot hear and shuddering as it punishes him with lashes of silver pain. Even now it is a low, angry throb inside him, pushing him to obey. To kill her. She makes herself available because her presence eases the pain for him, and because she does not believe he will actually kill her. This is folly, she knows. Love is no inoculation against murder. But she needs to believe it of him.
Schaffa frowns at her, and it is part of why she loves him that he shows no sign of disbelief. “Yes. I have sensed you growing… sharper lately, by increments. This happened to the orogenes at the Fulcrum, too, when they were allowed to progress to this point. They become their own teachers. The power guides them along particular paths, by lines of natural aptitude.” His brow furrows slightly. “Generally we steered them away from this path, though.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s dangerous. To everyone, not just the orogene in question.” He leans against her, shoulder warm and supportive. “You’ve survived the point that kills most: connecting with an obelisk. I… remember how others died, making the attempt.” For a moment he looks troubled, lost, confused, as he probes gingerly at the raw edges of his torn memories. “I remember something of it. I’m glad…” He winces again, looks troubled again. This time it isn’t the silver that’s hurting him. Nassun guesses he’s either remembered something he dislikes, or can’t remember something he thinks he should.
She won’t be able to take the pain of loss away from him, no matter how good she gets. It’s sobering. She can remove the rest of his pain, though, and that’s the part that matters. She touches his hand, her fingers covering the thin scars that she has seen him inflict with his own nails when the pain grows too great even for his smiles to ease. There are more of them today than there were a few days ago, some still raw. “I didn’t die,” she reminds him.
He blinks, and this alone is enough to snap him back into the here and now of himself. “No. You didn’t. But Nassun.” He adjusts their hands; now he is holding hers. His hand is huge and she can’t even see a glimpse of her own within it. She has always liked this, being enveloped so completely by him. “My compassionate one. I do not want my corestone removed.”
Corestone. Now she knows the name of her nemesis. The word makes no sense because it is metal, not stone, and it is not at the core of him, just in his head, but that doesn’t matter. She clenches her jaw against hate. “It hurts you.”
“As it should. I have betrayed it.” His jaw tightens briefly. “But I accepted the consequences of doing so, Nassun. I can bear them.”
This makes no sense. “It hurts you. I could stop the hurt. I can even make it stop hurting without taking it out, but only for a little while. I’d have to stay with you.” She learned this from that conversation with Steel, and watching what the stone eater did. Stone eaters are full of magic, so much more than people, but Nassun can approximate. “But if I take it out—”
“If you take it out,” Schaffa says, “I will no longer be a Guardian. Do you know what that means, Nassun?”
It means that then Schaffa can be her father. He is in every way that matters already. Nassun does not think this in so many words because there are things she is not yet prepared to confront about herself or her life. (This will change very soon.) But it is in her mind.
“It means that I will lose much of my strength and health,” he says in reply to her silent wishing. “I will no longer be able to protect you, my little one.” His eyes flick toward the Guardians’ cabin, and she understands then. Umber and Nida will kill her.
They will try, she thinks.
His head tilts; of course he is instantly aware of her defiant intent. “You couldn’t defeat them both, Nassun. Even you aren’t that powerful. They have tricks you haven’t yet seen. Skills that…” He looks troubled again. “I don’t want to remember what they’re capable of doing to you.”