“The boot, what else?” Ykka shrugs. “We can’t just ash them out, though; have to kill them to maintain secrecy. But there’s a process: one warning, then a hearing. Morat—that’s the Innovator caste spokeswoman—hasn’t made a formal complaint. I asked her to, but she waffled. Said your friend gave her a portable water-testing device that may save some of our Hunters’ lives out in the field.”
Hjarka utters a rusty laugh. You shake your head, amused. “That’s a nice bribe. She’s a survivor, if nothing else.”
Ykka rolls her eyes. “Maybe. But it sends a bad message, one person not joining any work crews and going unpunished for it, even if she does invent useful things outside of work time. Others start to skive off, what do I do then?”
“Ash out the ones who haven’t invented anything,” you suggest. Then you stop, because Ykka has paused. You think it’s because she’s annoyed by what you just said, but she’s looking around, taking in the expanse of the comm. So you stop, too. This far up, you’re well above the main inhabited level of the comm. The geode echoes with calls and someone hammering something and one of the work crews singing a rhythm song. You risk a look over the nearest railing and see that someone’s made a simple rope-and-wooden-pallet cargo lift for the mid-level, but without a counterweight, the only way to get a heavy load up is to basically play tug-of-war with it. Twenty people are at it now. It looks surprisingly like fun.
“You were right about the assimilations,” Hjarka says. Her voice is soft as she, too, contemplates the bustle and life of Castrima. “We couldn’t have made this place work without more people. Thought you were full of shit, but you weren’t.”
Ykka sighs. “So far it’s working.” She eyes Hjarka. “You never said you didn’t like the idea before.”
Hjarka shrugs. “I left my home comm because I didn’t want the burden of Leadership. Didn’t want it here, either.”
“You don’t have to knife-fight me for the headwomanship to give an opinion, for Earth’s sake.”
“When a Season’s coming on and I’m the only Leader in the comm, I’d better be careful even about opinions.” She shrugs, then smiles at Ykka with an air of something like affection. “Keep figuring you’ll have me killed any minute now.”
Ykka laughs once. “Is that what you would’ve done in my place?” You hear the edge in this.
“It’s the playbook I was taught to follow, yeah—but it’d be stupid to try that here. There’s never been anything like this Season… or this comm.” Hjarka eyes you, pointedly, as the latest example of Castrima’s peculiarity. “Tradition’s just going to rust everything up, in a situation like this. Better to have a headwoman who doesn’t know how things should be, only how she wants them to be. A headwoman who’ll kick all the asses necessary to make her vision happen.”
Ykka absorbs this in silence for a few moments. Obviously whatever Tonkee’s done isn’t so urgent or terrible. Then she turns and begins climbing again, apparently deciding that the rest break is over. You and Hjarka sigh and follow.
“I think the people who originally built this place didn’t think it through,” Ykka says as the climb resumes. “Too inefficient. Too dependent on machinery that can break down or rust out. And orogeny as a power source, which is basically the least-reliable thing ever. But then sometimes I wonder if maybe they didn’t intend to build it this way. Maybe something drove them underground fast, and they found a giant geode and just made the best of what they had.” She runs a hand along a railing as you walk. This is one of the original metal structures that have been built throughout the geode. Above the inhabited levels, it’s all old metalwork. “Always makes me think they really must have been the ancestors of Castrima. They respected hard work and adapting under pressure, like us.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Except Tonkee.
“Some.” She doesn’t take the obvious bait. “I outed myself to everyone when I was fifteen. There was a forest fire somewhere to the south; drought season. The smoke alone was killing the older people and babies in the comm. We thought we’d have to leave. Finally I went to the edge of the fire, where a bunch of the other townsfolk were trying to create a firebreak. Six of them died doing that.” She shakes her head. “Wouldn’t have worked. The fire was too big. But that’s my people, for you.”
You nod. It does sound like the Castrimans you’ve gotten to know. It also sounds like the Tirimo-folk you’ve gotten to know, and the Meovites, and the Allians, and the Yumenescenes. No people in the Stillness would have survived to this point if they weren’t fearsomely tenacious. But Ykka needs to think of Castrima as special—and it is special, in its own strange ways. So you wisely keep your mouth shut.
She says, “I stopped the fire. Iced the burning part of the forest and used that to make a ridge farther south as a windbreak in case anything set off a new blaze. Everyone saw me do it. They knew exactly what I was then.”
You stop walking and stare at her. She turns back, half smiling. “I told them I’d go, if they wanted to call the Guardians and have me shipped off to the Fulcrum. Or if they wanted to just string me up, I promised not to ice anyone. Instead, they argued about the whole mess for three days. I thought they were trying to decide how to kill me.” She shrugs. “So I went home, had dinner with my parents—they both knew, and they were terrified for me, but I talked them down from smuggling me out of town in a horse cart. Went to creche the next day, same as always. At the end of it, I found out the townsfolk had been arguing about how to get me trained. Without letting the Fulcrum on, see.”
Your mouth falls open. You’ve seen Ykka’s parents, who are still hale and strong and with an air of Sanzed stubbornness about them. You can believe it of them. But everyone else, too? All right. Maybe Castrima is special.
Hjarka says, “Huh. How did you get trained, then?”
“Eh, you know what these little Midlatter comms are like. They were still arguing about it when the Rifting happened. I trained my damn self.” She laughs, and Hjarka sighs. “That’s my people, too. Complete rust-heads, but good people.”
You think, against your will, If only I had brought Uche and Nassun here as soon as they were born.
“Not all of your people like having us here,” you blurt, almost as a rebuttal to your own thought.
“Yeah, I’ve heard the chatter. Which is why I’m glad you’re training the kids, and that everyone saw you get the boilbugs off Terteis.” She sobers. “Poor Terteis. But you proved again that it’s better to have people like us around than to kill us or drive us out. Castrimans are practical people, Essie.” You hate this nickname immediately. “Too practical to just do something because everybody else says do it.”
With that, she resumes the climb. After a moment, you and Hjarka do, too.
You’ve gotten used to the unrelenting whiteness of Castrima; only a few of the building-crystals have touches of amethyst or smoky quartz about them. Here, though, the ceiling of the geode has been sealed off with a smooth, glasslike substance that is deep emeraldine green in color. The color is a bit of a shock. The final stairway that leads up into this is wide enough for five people to climb abreast, so you’re unsurprised to find two of Castrima’s Strongbacks flanking what looks like a sliding attic door made of the same green substance. One of the Strongbacks has a small wireglass utility knife in her hand; the other just has his big folded arms.
“Still nothing,” says the male Strongback as the three of you arrive. “We keep hearing sounds from inside—clicking, buzzing, and sometimes she yells things. But the door’s still jammed.”