Lamprophyre is scrambling backward as Umber stalks him, fumbling at his clothing where some kind of small, heavy object has gotten lodged in cloth. “Evil Earth,” he blurts, jerking at the buttons of his jacket. “You’re contaminated! Both of you!”
He gets no further, though, because Umber blurs and Nassun flinches as something splatters her cheek. Umber has stomped the man’s head in.
“Nassun,” Schaffa says, releasing the six-ringed woman’s body and staring down at it, “go to the terrace and wait for us there.”
“Y-yes, Schaffa,” Nassun says. She swallows. She’s shaking. She makes herself turn despite this, and walk out of the room. There are approximately twenty-two other ringed orogenes around somewhere, after all, Serpentine said.
The Antarctic Fulcrum isn’t much bigger than the town of Jekity. Nassun is leaving the big two-story house that serves as the administrative building. There’s also a cluster of tiny cottages that apparently the older orogenes live in, and several long barracks near the big glass-walled greenhouse. Lots of people are around, moving in and out of the barracks and cottages. Few of them wear black, even though some of the civilian-dressed ones feel like orogenes. Beyond the greenhouse is a sloping terrace that hosts a number of small garden plots—too many, altogether, to really qualify as gardens. This is a farm. Most of the plots are planted heavily with grains and vegetables, and there are a number of people out working on them, since it’s a nice day and no one knows the Guardians are busily killing everyone in the admin building.
Nassun walks the cobbled path above the terrace briskly, with her head down so that she can concentrate on not stumbling, since she can’t sess anything after whatever Schaffa did to the six-ringed woman. She’s always known that Guardians can shut down orogeny, but never felt it before. It’s hard to walk when she can only perceive the ground with her eyes and feet, and also when she’s shaking so hard. Carefully she puts one foot in front of the other and suddenly someone else’s feet are just there and Nassun pulls up short, her whole body going rigid with shock.
“Watch where you’re going,” the girl says reflexively. She’s thin and white, though with a shock of slate-gray ashblow hair, and she’s maybe Nassun’s age. She stops, though, when she gets a good look at Nassun. “Hey, there’s something on your face. It looks like a dead bug or something. Gross.” She reaches up and flicks it off with one finger.
Nassun jerks a little in surprise, then remembers her manners. “Thanks. Uh, sorry for getting in your way.”
“It’s all right.” The girl blinks. “They said some Guardians had come and brought a new grit. Are you the new one?”
Nassun stares in confusion. “G-grit?”
The other girl’s eyebrows rise. “Yeah. Trainee? Imperial-Orogene-to-be?” She’s carrying a bucket of gardening supplies, which doesn’t fit the conversation at all. “The Guardians used to bring kids here before the Season started. That’s how I got here.”
Technically that’s how Nassun got here, too. “The Guardians brought me,” she echoes. She is hollow inside.
“Me, too.” The girl sobers, then looks away. “Did they break your hand yet?”
Nassun’s breath stops in her throat.
At her silence, the girl’s expression turns bitter. “Yeah. They do it to every grit at some point. Hand bones or fingers.” She shakes her head, then takes a quick, gulping breath. “We’re not supposed to talk about it. But it’s not you, whatever they say. It’s not your fault.” Another quick breath. “I’ll see you around. I’m Ajae. I don’t have an orogene name yet. What’s your name?”
Nassun can’t think. The sound of Schaffa’s fist crushing bone echoes in her head. “Nassun.”
“Nice to meet you, Nassun.” Ajae nods politely, then moves on, walking down the steps toward a terrace. She hums, swinging her bucket. Nassun stares after her, trying to understand.
Orogene name?
Trying not to understand.
Did they break your hand yet?
This place. This… Fulcrum. Is why her mother broke her hand.
Nassun’s hand twitches in phantom pain. She sees again the rock in her mother’s hand, rising. Holding a moment. Falling.
Are you sure you can control yourself?
The Fulcrum is why her mother never loved her.
Is why her father does not love her anymore.
Is why her brother is dead.
Nassun watches Ajae wave to a thin older boy, who is busy hoeing. This place. These people, who have no right to exist.
The sapphire isn’t far off—hovering over Jekity, where it has been for the two weeks since she and Schaffa and Umber left to travel to the Antarctic Fulcrum. She can sess it in the distance, though it’s too far off to see. It seems to flicker as she reaches for it, and for an instant she marvels that she knows this somehow. Instinctively she has turned to face it. Line of sight. She doesn’t need eyes, or orogeny, to use it.
(This is an orogene’s nature, the old Schaffa might have told her, if he still existed. Nassun’s kind innately react to all threats the same way: with utterly devastating counterforce. He would have told her this, before breaking her hand to drive home the lesson of control.)
There are so many silver threads in this place. The orogenes are all connected through practice together, shared experience.
DID THEY BREAK YOUR HAND
It is over in the span of three breaths. Then Nassun lets herself fall out of the watery blue, and stands there shaking in its wake. Some while later, Nassun turns and sees Schaffa standing in front of her, with Umber.
“They weren’t supposed to be here,” she blurts. “You said.”
Schaffa isn’t smiling, and he is still in a way that Nassun knows well. “Did you do this to help us, then?”
Nassun can’t think enough to lie. She shakes her head. “This place was wrong,” she said. “The Fulcrum is wrong.”
“Is it?” It is a test, but Nassun has no idea how to pass it. “Why do you say that?”
“Mama was wrong. The Fulcrum made her that way. She should have been a, a, an, an ally to you,” like me, she thinks, reminds. “This place made her something else.” She cannot articulate it. “This place made her wrong.”
Schaffa looks at Umber. Umber tilts his head, and for an instant there is a flicker in the silver, a flicker between them. The things lodged in their sessapinae resonate in a strange way. But then Schaffa frowns, and she sees him push back against the silver. It hurts him to do this, but he does it anyway, turning to gaze at her with eyes bright and jaw tight and fresh sweat dotting his brow.
“I think you may be right, little one,” is all he says. “It follows: Put people in a cage and they will devote themselves to escaping it, not cooperating with those who caged them. What happened here was inevitable, I suppose.” He glances at Umber. “Still. Their Guardians must have been very lax, to let a group of orogenes get the drop on them. That one with the blowgun… born feral, most likely, and taught things she shouldn’t have been before being brought here. She was the impetus.”
“Lax Guardians,” says Umber, watching Schaffa. “Yes.”
Schaffa smiles at him. Nassun frowns in confusion. “We’ve destroyed the threat,” Schaffa says.
“Most of it,” Umber agrees.
Schaffa acknowledges this with an incline of his head and a faintly ironic air before turning to Nassun. He says, “You were right to do what you did, little one. Thank you for helping us.”