And when you manage to relax your sessapinae and adjust your perception back to the macro scale and you find yourself covered, absolutely covered in blood, you’re surprised. You don’t quite understand why Tonkee is on the floor, gasping, her body surrounded by a spreading pool as Hjarka shouts at one of the Strongbacks to hand her his belt, now, now. You feel the jerk of the iron shard nearby and twitch in alarm, because you know now what those things are trying to do, and that they are evil. But when you turn to look at the iron shard, you’re confused, because all you see is smooth bronze skin streaked with blood and a scrap of familiar cloth. Then there is a sort of twitchy movement, weight making itself known in your hand, and. And. Well. You’re holding Tonkee’s severed arm.
You drop it. Fling it, more like, violent in your shock. It bounces just beyond Ykka and the two Strongbacks who are clustering around Tonkee and doing something, maybe trying to save her life, you can’t even wrap your head around that, because now you see that the cut end of Tonkee’s arm is a perfect, slightly slanted cross-section, still bleeding and twitching because you just cut it off, but wait no that is not the only reason.
From a small hole near the bone you see something wriggle forth. The hole is the cross-section of an artery. The something is the iron shard, which drops to the smooth green floor and then lies amid the splattered blood as if it is nothing more than a harmless bit of metal.
Hello, little enemy.
INTERLUDE
There is a thing you will not see happening, yet that is going to impact the rest of your life. Imagine it. Imagine me. You know what I am, you think, both with your thinking mind and the animal, instinctive part of you. You see a stone body clothed in flesh, and even though you never really believed I was human, you did think of me as a child. You still think it, though Alabaster has told you the truth—that I haven’t been a child since before your language existed. Perhaps I was never a child. Hearing this and believing it are two different things, however.
You should imagine me as what I truly am among my kind, then: old, and powerful, and greatly feared. A legend. A monster.
You should imagine—
Castrima as an egg. Motes surround this egg, lurking in the stone. Eggs are a rich prize for scavengers, and easy to devour if left unguarded. This one is being devoured, though the people of Castrima are barely aware of the act. (Ykka alone, I think, and even she only suspects.) Such a leisurely repast isn’t a thing most of your kind would notice. We are a very slow people. It will be deadly nevertheless, once the devouring is done.
Yet something has made the scavengers pause, teeth bared but not sinking in. There is another old and powerful one here: the one you call Antimony. She isn’t interested in guarding the egg, but she could, if she chose. She will, if they attempt to poach her Alabaster. The others are aware of this, and wary of her. They shouldn’t be.
I’m the one they should fear.
I destroy three of them on the first day after I leave you. As you stand sharing a mellow with Ykka, I tear apart Ykka’s stone eater, the red-haired creature that she’s been calling Luster and you’ve been calling Ruby Hair. Filthy parasite, lurking only to take and give nothing back! I despise her. We are meant for better. Then I take the two who have been stalking Alabaster, hoping to dart in should Antimony become distracted—this is not because Antimony needs the help, mind, but simply because our race cannot bear that level of stupidity. I cull them for the good of us all.
(They’re not really dead, if that troubles you. We cannot die. In ten thousand years or ten million, they will reconstitute themselves from the component atoms into which I’ve scattered them. A long time in which to contemplate their folly, and do better next time.)
This initial slaughter makes many of the others flee; scavengers are cowards at heart. They don’t go far, though. Of those who remain near, a few attempt parley. Plenty for us all, they say. If even one has the potential… but I catch some of these watching you and not Alabaster.
They confess to me, as I circle them and pretend that I might be merciful. They speak of another old one—one who is known to me from conflicts long ago. He, too, has a vision for our kind, in opposition to mine. He knows of you, my Essun, and he would kill you if he could, because you mean to finish what Alabaster began. He can’t get to you with me in the way… but he can push you to destroy yourself. He’s even found some greedy human allies up north to help him do so.
Ah, this ridiculous war of ours. We use your kind so easily. Even you, my Essun, my treasure, my pawn. One day, I hope, you will forgive me.
14
you’re invited!
SIX MONTHS PASS IN THE undifferentiated white light of an ancient magic-fueled survival shelter. After the first few days you start wrapping cloth around your eyes when you’re tired, to create your own day and night. It works passably.
Tonkee’s arm survives the reattachment, though she gets a bad infection at one point, which Lerna’s basic antibiotics seem powerless to stop. She lives, though by the time the fever and livid infection lines have faded, her fingers have lost some of their fine movement and she gets phantom tinglings and numbness throughout the limb. Lerna thinks this will be permanent. Tonkee mutters imprecations about it sometimes, whenever you track her down in the middle of core sampling or whatever she’s doing and force her to go meet with the Innovator caste head. Whenever she gets too free with the “arm-chopper” insults, you remind her first that unleashing a piece of the Evil Earth to crawl through her flesh was her own damned fault, and second that you’re the only reason Ykka hasn’t had her killed yet, so maybe she should consider shutting up. She does, but she’s still an ass about it. Nothing ever really changes in the Stillness.
And yet… sometimes things do.
Lerna forgives you for being a monster. That’s not exactly it. You and he still can’t talk about Tirimo easily. Still, he heard your raging fight with Ykka all through the surgery that he performed on Tonkee’s arm, and that means something to him. Ykka wanted Tonkee left to die on the table. You argued for her life, and won. Lerna knows now that there’s more to you than death. You’re not sure you agree with that assessment, but it’s a relief to have something of your old friendship back.
Hjarka starts courting Tonkee. Tonkee doesn’t react well at first. She’s mostly just confused when gifts of dead animals and books start appearing in the apartment, brought by with a too-casual, “In case that big brain of hers needs something to chew on,” and a wink. You’re the one who has to explain to Tonkee that Hjarka’s decided, through whatever convoluted set of values the big woman holds dear, that an ex-commless geomest with the social skills of a rock represents the pinnacle of desirability. Then Tonkee is mostly annoyed, complaining about “distractions” and “the vagaries of the ephemeral” and the need to “decenter the flesh.” You mostly ignore all of it.
It’s the books that settle the issue. Hjarka seems to pick them by the number of many-syllabled words on their spines, but you come home a few times to find Tonkee engrossed in them. Eventually you come home to find Tonkee’s room curtain drawn and Tonkee engrossed in Hjarka, or so the sounds from beyond would suggest. You didn’t think they could do that much with her bum arm. Huh.