And she can see by the icy placidity of Umber’s face, and the brittle-edged friendliness of Schaffa’s smile, that the Guardians don’t like it, either. “Understandable indeed,” Schaffa says. He turns the cup of safe in his hands. The cloudy solution has remained white as it should, but he hasn’t taken a single sip. “I imagine the local comms are grateful to you for housing and feeding their surplus population. And it is only sensible that you would put those people to work, too. Guarding your walls. Tending your fields—” He pauses, smiles more widely. “Gardens, I mean.”
Serpentine smiles back, and her companions shift uncomfortably. It is something Nassun doesn’t understand. The Season hasn’t yet taken full hold here in the Antarctic region, so it does seem wise that a comm would plant its greenland and put Strongbacks on its walls and start preparing for the worst. Somehow it is bad that the Antarctic Fulcrum has done this, however. Bad that this Fulcrum is functional at all. Nassun has stopped drinking the cup of safe the seniors gave her, even though she’s only had safe a couple of times before and sort of likes being treated like a grown-up—but Schaffa isn’t drinking, and that warns her the situation is not really safe.
One of the seniors is a Somidlats woman who could pass for a relative of Nassun’s: tall, middling brown, curling thick hair, a body that is thick-waisted and broad-hipped and heavy-thighed. They introduced her, but Nassun can’t remember her name. Her orogeny feels the sharpest of the three, though she is the youngest; there are six rings on her long fingers. And she is the one who finally stops smiling and folds her hands and lifts her chin, just a little. It is another thing that reminds Nassun of her mother. Mama often held herself the same way, feeling of soft dignity layered over a core of diamond obstinacy. The obstinacy is what comes to the fore now as the woman says, “I take it you are unhappy, Guardian.”
Serpentine winces. The other Fulcrum orogene, a man who introduced himself as Lamprophyre, sighs. Schaffa and Umber’s heads tilt in near-unison, Schaffa’s smile widening with interest. “Not unhappy,” he says. Nassun can tell that he is pleased to be done with the pleasantry. “Merely surprised. It is, after all, standard protocol for any Fulcrum facility to be shut down in the event of a declared Season.”
“Declared by whom?” the six-ringed woman asks. “Until your arrival today, there have been no Guardians here to declare anything of the sort. The local comm Leaderships have varied: Some declared Seasonal Law, some are only in lockdown, some are business as usual.”
“And had they all declared Seasonal Law,” Schaffa says, in that very quiet voice he uses when he knows the answer to a question already and only wants to hear you say it yourself, “would you truly have all killed yourselves? Since, as you note, there are no Guardians here to take care of the matter for you.”
Nassun catches herself before she would have started in surprise. Kill themselves? But she is not quite good enough at controlling her orogeny to keep it from twitching where she does not. All three of the Fulcrum people glance at her, and Serpentine smiles thinly. “Careful, Guardian,” she says, looking at Nassun but speaking to Schaffa. “Your pet seems uncomfortable with the idea of mass extermination for no reason.”
Schaffa says, “I hide nothing from her,” and Nassun’s surprise is swallowed up by love and pride. He glances at Nassun. “Historically, the Fulcrum has survived on the sufferance of its neighbors, depending on the walls and resources of comms nearby. And as with all who have no viable use during a Season, there is most certainly an expectation that Imperial Orogenes will remove themselves from the competition for resources—so that normal, healthy people have a better chance to survive.” He pauses. “And since orogenes are not permitted to exist outside the supervision of a Guardian or the Fulcrum…” He spreads his hands.
“We are the Fulcrum, Guardian,” says the third senior, whose name Nassun has forgotten. This is a man from some Western Coastal people; he is slender and straight-haired and has a high-cheekboned, nearly concave face. His skin is white, too, but his eyes are dark and cool. His orogeny feels light and many-layered, like mica. “And we are self-sufficient. Quite apart from being a drain on resources, we provide needed services to the nearby communities. We have even—unasked and uncompensated—worked to mitigate the aftershakes of the Rifting on the occasions when they reach this far south. It is because of us that few Antarctic comms have suffered serious harm since the start of this Season.”
“Admirable,” says Umber. “And clever, making yourselves invaluable. Not a thing your Guardians would have permitted, though. I imagine.”
All three of the seniors grow still for a moment. “This is Antarctic, Guardian,” says Serpentine. She smiles, though the expression does not reach her eyes. “We are a fraction of the size of the Fulcrum at Yumenes—barely twenty-five ringed orogenes, a handful of mostly grown grits. There were never many Guardians permanently stationed here. Most of what we got were visiting Guardians on circuit, or delivering us new grits. None at all since the Rifting.”
“Never many Guardians stationed here,” agrees Schaffa, “but there were three, as I recall. I knew one.” He pauses, and for a fleeting instant his expression goes distant and lost and a little confused. “I remember knowing one.” He blinks. Smiles again. “Yet now there are none.”
Serpentine is tense. They are all tense, these seniors, in a way that makes the itch at the back of Nassun’s mind grow. “We endured several raids by commless bands before we finally put up a wall,” Serpentine says. “They died bravely, protecting us.”
It’s so blatant a lie that Nassun stares at her, mouth open.
“Well,” Schaffa says, setting down his cup of safe and letting out a little sigh. “I suppose this went about as well as could be expected.”
And even though Nassun has guessed by now what is coming, even though she has seen Schaffa move with a speed that is not humanly possible before, even though the silver within him and Umber ignites like matchflame and blazes through them in the instant just before, she is still caught off guard when Schaffa lunges forward and puts his fist through Serpentine’s face.
Serpentine’s orogeny dies as she does. But the other two seniors are up and moving in the next instant, Lamprophyre falling backward over his chair to escape Umber’s blurring reach for him and the six-ringed woman drawing a blowgun from one sleeve. Schaffa’s eyes widen, but his hand is still stuck in Serpentine; he tries to lunge at her, but the corpse is deadweight on his arm. She lifts the gun to her lips.
Before she can get off a puff, Nassun is up and in the earth and beginning to spin a torus that will ice the woman in an instant. The woman jerks in surprise and flexes something that shatters Nassun’s torus before it can form completely; it is a thing her mother used to do during their practices, if Nassun did something she wasn’t supposed to. The shock of this realization causes Nassun to stagger and stumble back.
Her mother learned that trick here, in the Fulcrum, this is how people from the Fulcrum train young orogenes, everything Nassun has known of her mother is tainted by this place and has always been—
But the fleeting distraction is enough. Schaffa rips his hand free of the corpse at last and is across the room in another breath, grabbing the blowgun and snatching it away and stabbing it into the woman’s throat before she can recover. She falls to her knees, choking, reaching instinctively for the earth, but then something sweeps the room in a wave and Nassun gasps when suddenly she cannot sess a single thing. The woman gasps, too, then wheezes, scrabbling at her throat. Schaffa grabs her head and breaks her neck with a swift jerk.