“My daughter didn’t come home last night,” Jija says as Schaffa stops him in his tracks. Jija is alarmed by the children’s screams, but not by much. Whatever madness is happening within the dorm, he expects nothing better of the den of iniquity that Found Moon surely must be. As he confronts Schaffa, he has a set to his jaw that you will recognize from other occasions on which he has felt himself righteous. He will therefore be unwilling to back down.
“She will be remaining here,” Schaffa says, smiling politely. “We’ve found that returning to your home in the evenings is interfering with her training. Since your leg has clearly healed enough to allow you to make the climb, could you be so kind as to bring her things, later today?”
“She—” The screams get louder for a moment as Umber opens the door to go inside, but he closes it behind him and they stop. Jija frowns at this, but shakes his head in order to focus on what is important. “She will not be rusting staying here! I don’t want her spending any more time than she has to with these—” He stops short of vulgarity. “She isn’t one of them.”
Schaffa tilts his head for an instant, as if he is listening to something only he can hear. “Isn’t she?” His tone is contemplative.
Jija stares at him, momentarily confused into silence. Then he curses and tries to move past Schaffa. His leg has indeed mostly healed since his arrival at Jekity, but he still limps heavily, the harpoon having torn nerves and tendons that will be slow to heal, if they ever fully do. Even had Jija been able to move easily, however, he could not have evaded the hand that comes out of nowhere to cover his face.
It is Schaffa’s big hand that splays over his face, moving so fast that it blurs before it seats itself. Jija doesn’t see it till it’s over his eyes and nose and mouth, picking him up bodily and slamming him to the ground on his back. As Jija lies there, blinking, he is too dazed to wonder what just happened, too stunned for pain. Then the hand pulls away, and from Jija’s perspective the Guardian’s face is just there, nose nearly touching Jija’s own.
“Nassun does not have a father,” Schaffa says softly. (Jija will remember later that Schaffa smiles the whole time that he says this.) “She needs no father, nor mother. She does not know this yet, though someday she will learn. Shall I teach her early how to do without you?” And he positions two fingertips just under Jija’s jaw, pressing the tender skin there with enough force that Jija instantly understands his life depends on his answer.
Jija goes still for a long, pent breath. There’s nothing in his head worth relating, even speculatively. He says nothing, though he makes a sound. When the children speak later of this tableau, they leave out this detaiclass="underline" the small, strangled whine uttered by a man who is trying not to loose his bladder and bowels, and who can think of nothing beyond imminent death. It is mostly nasal, back-of-the-throat sound. It makes him want to cough.
Schaffa seems to take Jija’s whine for an answer in itself. His smile widens for a moment—a real, heartening smile, the kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes his gums show. He is delighted that he does not have to kill Nassun’s father with his bare hands. And then he very deliberately lifts the hand that had been positioned under Jija’s jaw, waggling the fingers before Jija’s eyes until Jija blinks.
“There,” Schaffa says. “Now we may behave again like civilized people.” He straightens, head turning toward the dormitory; it is clear he has forgotten Jija already, but for an afterthought. “Don’t forget to bring her things, please.” Then he rises, steps over Jija, and heads into the dormitory.
No one really cares what Jija does after that. A boy has been turned to stone, and a girl has manifested power that is strange and horrifying even for a rogga. These are the things everyone will remember about this day.
Everyone, I suspect, except Jija, who quietly limps home in the aftermath.
In the dormitory, Nassun has finally managed to withdraw her awareness from the watery column of blue light that nearly consumed it. This is an amazing feat, though she does not realize it. All she knows, as she finally comes out of the fit and finds Schaffa leaning over her, is that a scary thing happened, and Schaffa is there to take care of her in the aftermath.
(She is your daughter, at her core. It is not for me to judge her, but… ah, she is so very much yours.)
“Tell me,” Schaffa says. He has sat on the edge of her cot, very close, deliberately blocking her view of Eitz. Umber is ushering the other children out. Peek is weeping and hysterical; the others are silent in shock. Nassun does not notice, having her own trauma to deal with in the moment.
“There was,” she begins. She’s hyperventilating. Schaffa cups a big hand over her nose and mouth, and after a few moments her breathing slows. Once she is closer to normal, he removes his hand and nods for her to continue. “There was. A blue thing. Light and… I fell up. Schaffa, I fell up.” She frowns, confused by her own panic. “I had to get out of it. It hurt. It was too fast. It burned. I was so scared.”
He nods as if this makes sense. “You survived, though. That’s very good.” She glows with this praise, even though she has no idea what he means. He considers for a moment. “Did you sess anything else, while you were connected?”
(She will not wonder at this word, connected, until much later.)
“There was a place, up north. Lines, in the ground. All over.” She means all over the Stillness. Schaffa cocks his head with interest, which encourages her to keep babbling. “I could hear people talking. Where they touched the lines. There were people in the knots. Where the lines crossed. I couldn’t figure out what anybody was saying, though.”
Schaffa goes very still. “People in the knots. Orogenes?”
“Yes?” It’s actually hard to answer that question. The grip of those distant strangers’ orogeny was strong—some stronger than Nassun herself. Yet there was a strange, almost uniform smoothness to each of these strongest ones. Like running fingers over polished stone: There is no texture to catch on. Those were also the ones spread across the greatest distance, some of them even farther to the north than Tirimo—all the way up near where the world has gone red and hot.
“The node network,” Schaffa says thoughtfully. “Hmm. Someone is keeping some of the node maintainers alive, up north? How interesting.”
There’s more, so Nassun has to keep babbling it out. “Closer by, there were a lot of them. Us.” These felt like her fellows of Found Moon, their orogeny bright and darting like fish, many words schooling and reverberating along the silver lines connecting them. Conversations, whispers, laughter. A comm, her mind suggests. A community of some sort. A community of orogenes.
(She does not sess Castrima. I know you’re wondering.)
“How many?” Schaffa’s voice is very quiet.
She cannot gauge such things. “I just hear a lot of people talking. Like, houses full.”
Schaffa turns away. In profile, she sees that his lips have drawn back from his teeth. It isn’t a smile, for once. “The Antarctic Fulcrum.”
Nida, who has quietly come into the room in the meantime, says from over near the door: “They weren’t purged?”
“Apparently not.” There is no inflection to Schaffa’s voice. “Only a matter of time until they discover us.”
“Yes.” Then Nida laughs softly. Nassun sesses the flex of silver threads within Schaffa. Smiling eases the pain, he has said. The more a Guardian is smiling, laughing, the more something is hurting them. “Unless…” Nida laughs again. This time Schaffa smiles, too.