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.
a fist that
you’ve seen the imprint of Jija’s fist, a bruise with four parallel marks, on Uche’s belly and face
a fist that
that
that
no
You’re in the topaz and between the woman’s cells in almost the same instant. There is no thought in this. Your mind falls, dives, into the upward wash of yellow light as if it belongs there. Your sessapinae flex around the silver threads and you draw them together, you are part of both obelisk and woman and you will not let this happen, not again, not again, you could not stop Jija but—
“Not one more child,” you whisper, and your companions all look at you in surprise and confusion. Then they stop looking at you, because the woman who was egging on the fight is suddenly screaming, and the kids are screaming louder. Even Penty is screaming now, because the woman on top of her has turned to glittering, multicolored stone.
“Not one more child!” You can sess the ones nearest you—the other council members, the screaming drunk, Penty and her girls, Hjarka and the rest, all of them. Everyone in Castrima. They trod upon the filaments of your nerves, tapping and jittering, and they are Jija. You focus on the drunk woman and it is almost instinctual, the urge to begin squeezing the movement and life out of her and replacing that with whatever the by-product of magical reactions really is, this stuff that looks like stone. This stuff that is killing Alabaster, the father of your other dead child, NOT ONE MORE RUSTING CHILD. For how many centuries has the world killed rogga children so that everyone else’s children can sleep easy? Everyone is Jija, the whole damned world is Schaffa, Castrima is Tirimo is the Fulcrum NOT ONE MORE and you turn with the obelisk torrenting its power through you to begin killing everyone within and beyond your sight.
Something jars your connection to the obelisk. Suddenly you have to fight for power that it so readily gave you before. You bare your teeth without thinking, growl without hearing yourself, clench your fists and shout in your mind NO I WON’T LET HIM DO IT AGAIN and you are seeing Schaffa, thinking of Jija.
But you are sessing Alabaster.
Feeling him, in blazing white tendrils that lash at your obelisk link. That is Alabaster’s strength contending against yours and… not winning. He does not shut you down the way you know he can. Or the way you thought he could. Is he weaker? No. You’re just a lot stronger than you used to be.
And suddenly the import of this slaps through the fugue of memory and horror that you’re trapped in, bringing you back to cold, shocking reality. You’ve killed a woman with magic. You’re about to wipe out Castrima with magic. You’re fighting Alabaster with magic—and Alabaster cannot bear more magic.
“Oh, uncaring Earth,” you whisper. You stop fighting at once. Alabaster dismantles your connection to the obelisk; he’s still got a more precise touch than you. But you feel his weakness when he does so. His fading strength.