Perhaps it is this new sense of connection to Castrima that causes Tonkee to begin trying to prove her worth to Ykka. (Or maybe it’s just pride; Tonkee bristles so when Ykka once says that Tonkee isn’t as useful to the comm as its hardest-working Strongback.) Whatever the reason, Tonkee brings the council a new predictive model that she’s worked out: Unless Castrima finds a stable source of animal protein, some comm members will start showing deprivation symptoms within a year. “It’ll start with the meat stupids,” she tells all of you. “Forgetfulness, tiredness, little things like that. But it’s a kind of anemia. If it goes on, the result is dementia and nerve damage. You can figure out the rest.”
There are too many lorist tales of what can happen to a comm without meat. It will make people weak and paranoid, the community becoming vulnerable to attack. The only choice that will prevent this outcome, Tonkee explains, is cannibalism. Planting more beans just isn’t enough.
The report is useful information, but nobody really wanted to hear it, and Ykka doesn’t like Tonkee any better for sharing it. You thank Tonkee after the meeting, since no one else did. Her lower jaw juts out a bit as she replies, “Well, I won’t be able to continue my studies if we all start killing and eating each other, so.”
You shunt the orogene children’s lessons to Temell, another adult orogene in the comm. The children complain that he’s not very good—none of your finesse, and while he goes easier on them, they’re not learning as much. (It’s nice to be appreciated, if after the fact.) You do start training Cutter as an alternative, after he asks you to show him how you cut off Tonkee’s arm. You doubt he’ll ever perceive magic or move obelisks, but he’s at least first-ring level, and you want to see if you can make him a two- or three-ringer. Just because. Apparently higher-level teaching doesn’t interfere with what you’re learning from Alabaster—or at least, ’Baster doesn’t complain about it. You’ll take it. You’ve missed teaching.
(You offer an exchange of techniques to Ykka, since she shows no interest in lessons. You want to know how she does the things she does. “Nope,” she says, winking at you in a way that’s not really teasing. “Gotta keep some tricks up my sleeve so you won’t ice me someday.”)
An all-volunteer trading party goes north to try to reach the comm of Tettehee. They do not return. Ykka nixes all future attempts, and you do not protest this. One of your former orogeny students was with the missing party.
Aside from the food supply issue, however, Castrima thrives in those six months. One woman gets pregnant without permission, which is a big problem. Babies contribute nothing useful to a comm for years, and no comm can tolerate many useless people during a Season. Ykka decides that the woman’s household of two married couples will not receive an increased share until someone elderly or infirm dies to clear the way for the unauthorized baby. You get into another fight with Ykka about that, because you know full well she meant Alabaster when she offhandedly added, “Shouldn’t be long,” to the woman. Ykka’s unapologetic: She did mean Alabaster and she hopes he dies soon, because at least a baby has future value.
Two good outcomes result from that fracas: Everyone trusts you more after seeing you shout at the top of your lungs in the middle of Flat Top without causing so much as a tremor, and the Breeders decide to speak up for the new baby in order to settle the dispute. Based on the favorable recent genealogy, they contribute one of their child-allocations to the family, though with the stipulation that it will have to join their use-caste if it is born perfect. That’s not so terrible a price to pay, they say, spending one’s reproductive years cranking out children for comm and caste, in exchange for the right to be born. The mother agrees.
Ykka hasn’t shared the protein situation with the comm, of course, or the Breeders wouldn’t be speaking up for anyone. (Tonkee figured it out on her own, naturally.) Ykka doesn’t want to tell anyone, either, until it’s clear there’s no hope of an alternate solution to the problem. You and the other council members agree reluctantly. There’s still a year left. But because of Ykka’s silence, a male Breeder visits you a few days after you bring Tonkee home to finish recuperating. The Breeder is an ashblow-haired, strong-shouldered, sloe-eyed thing, and he’s very interested to know that you’ve borne three healthy children, all powerful orogenes. He flatters you by talking about how tall and strong you are, how well you weathered months on the road with only travel rations to eat, and hinting that you’re “only” forty-three. This actually makes you laugh. You feel as old as the world, and this pretty fool thinks you’re ready to crank out another baby.
You turn down his tacit offer with a smile, but it’s… strange, having that conversation with him. Unpleasantly familiar. When the Breeder is gone, you think of Corundum and wake Tonkee by throwing a cup at the wall and screaming at the top of your lungs. Then you go to see Alabaster for another lesson, which is utterly useless because you spend it standing before him and trembling in utter, rage-filled silence. After five minutes of this, he wearily says, “Whatever the rust is wrong with you, you’re going to have to deal with it yourself. I can’t stop you anymore.”
You hate him for no longer being invincible. And for not hating you.
Alabaster suffers another bad infection during these six months. He survives it only by deliberately stoning what’s left of his legs. This self-induced surgery so stresses his body that his few bouts of lucid time shrink to a half hour apiece, interspersed with long stretches of stupor or fitful sleeping. He’s so weak when he’s awake that you have to strain to hear him, though thankfully this improves over the course of a few weeks. You’re making progress, connecting easily now to the newly arrived topaz and beginning to understand what he did to transform the spinel into the knifelike weapon he keeps nearby. (The obelisks are conduits. You flow through them, flow with them, as the magic flows. Resist and die, but resonate finely enough and many things become possible.)
That’s a far cry from chaining together multiple obelisks, though, and you know you’re not learning fast enough. Alabaster doesn’t have the strength to curse you for your cloddish pace, but he doesn’t have to. Watching him shrivel daily is what drives you to push at the obelisk again and again, plunging yourself into its watery light even when your head hurts and your stomach lurches and you want nothing more than to go curl up somewhere and cry. It hurts too much to look at him, so you mop yourself up and try that much harder to become him.
One good thing about all this: You’ve got a purpose now. Congratulations.
You cry on Lerna’s shoulder once. He rubs your back and suggests delicately that you don’t have to be alone in your grief. It’s a proposition, but one made in kindness rather than passion, so you don’t feel guilty about ignoring it. For now.
Thus do things reach a kind of equilibrium. It’s neither a time of rest, nor of struggle. You survive. In a Season, in this Season, that is itself a triumph.
And then Hoa returns.
It happens on a day of sorrows and lace. The sorrow is because more Hunters have died. In the middle of bringing back a rare hunting kill—a bear that was visibly too thin to safely hibernate, easy to shoot in its desperate aggression—the party was attacked in turn. Three Hunters died in a barrage of arrows and crossbow bolts. The two surviving Hunters did not see their assailants; the projectiles seemed to come from all directions. They wisely ran, though they circled back an hour later in hopes of recovering their fallen comrades’ bodies and the precious carcass. Amazingly, everything had been left unmolested by either assailants or scavengers—but left behind with the fallen was an object: a planted stick, around which someone tied a strip of ragged, dirty cloth. It was secured with a thick knot, something caught in its fraying loops.