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—”