Steel, who vanished while Schaffa was putting away the other Guardians’ bodies, might also be listening from within the stone somewhere nearby. Does it mean something that he hasn’t popped up to tell them what to do yet? Maybe they don’t need him. “And what about the Antarctic Fulcrum? Don’t they have records and things?” She remembers seeing the Fulcrum’s library before she and Schaffa and Umber sat down with its leaders, had a cup of safe, then killed them all. The library was a strange high room filled floor to ceiling with shelves of books. Nassun likes books – her mother used to splurge and buy one every few months, and sometimes Nassun got the hand-me-downs if Jija deemed them appropriate for children – and she remembers boggling in awe, for she’d never seen so many books in her life. Surely some of those contained information about… very old cities no one has ever heard of, that only Guardians know how to get to. Um. Hmm.
“Unlikely,” Schaffa says, confirming Nassun’s misgivings. “And by now, that Fulcrum has probably been annexed by another comm, or perhaps even taken over by commless rabble. Its fields were full of edible crops, after all, and its houses were livable. Returning there would be a mistake.”
Nassun bites her lower lip. “Maybe… a boat?” She doesn’t know anything about boats.
“No, little one. A boat won’t do for such a long journey.”
He pauses significantly, and with this as warning Nassun tries to brace herself. Here is where he will abandon her, she feels painfully, fearfully certain. Here is where he will want to know what she’s up to – and then want no part of it. Why would he? Even she knows that what she wants is a terrible thing.
“I take it, then,” Schaffa says, “that you mean to assume control of the Obelisk Gate.”
Nassun gasps. Schaffa knows what the Obelisk Gate is? When Nassun herself only learned the term that morning from Steel? But then, the lore of the world, all its strange mechanisms and workings and aeons of secrets, is mostly still intact within Schaffa. It’s only things connected to his old self that are permanently lost… which means that the route to Corepoint is something that Old Schaffa needed to know, particularly. What does that mean? “Uh, yes. That’s why I want to go to Corepoint.”
His mouth quirks at her surprise. “Finding an orogene who could activate the Gate was our original purpose, Nassun, in creating Found Moon.”
“What? Why?”
Schaffa glances up at the sky. The sun’s beginning to set. They could get maybe another hour of walking in before it gets too dark to continue. What he’s looking at is the sapphire, though, which hasn’t noticeably moved from its position over Jekity. Rubbing absently at the back of his head, Schaffa gazes at its faint outline through the thickening clouds and nods, as if to himself.
“I and Nida and Umber,” he says. “Perhaps ten years ago, we were all… instructed… to travel southward, and to find one another. We were bidden to seek and train any orogenes who had the potential to connect to obelisks. This is not a thing Guardians normally do, understand, because there can be only one reason to encourage an orogene along the obelisk path. But it’s what the Earth wanted. Why, I don’t know. During that time, I was… less questioning.” His mouth curves in a brief, rueful smile. “Now I have guesses.”
Nassun frowns. “What guesses?”
“That the Earth has its own plans for human —”
Abruptly Schaffa tenses all over, and he sways in his crouch. Quickly Nassun grabs him so he won’t fall over, and reflexively he puts an arm around her shoulders. The arm is very tight, but she does not protest. That he needs the comfort of her presence is obvious. That the Earth is angrier than ever with him, perhaps because he’s giving away its secrets, is as palpable as the raw, flensing pulse of the silver along every nerve and between every cell of his body.
“Don’t talk,” Nassun says, her throat tight. “Don’t say anything else. If it’s going to hurt you like this —”
“It does not rule me.” Schaffa has to say this in quick blurts, between pants. “It did not take the core of me. I may have… nnh… put myself into its kennel, but it cannot leash me.”
“I know.” Nassun bites her lip. He’s leaning on her heavily, and that’s made her knee, where it braces against the ground, ache something awful. She doesn’t care, though. “But you don’t have to say everything now. I’m figuring it out on my own.”
She has all the clues, she thinks. Nida once said, of Nassun’s ability to connect to obelisks, This is a thing that we culled for in the Fulcrum. Nassun hadn’t understood at the time, but after perceiving something of the Obelisk Gate’s immensity, now she can guess why Father Earth wants her dead if she is no longer under Schaffa’s – and through him, the Earth’s – control.
Nassun chews her lip. Will Schaffa understand? She isn’t sure she can take it if he decides to leave – or worse, if he turns on her. So she takes a deep breath. “Steel says the Moon is coming back.”
For an instant there is silence from Schaffa’s direction. It has the weight of surprise. “The Moon.”
“It’s real,” she blurts. She has no idea if this is true, though, does she? There’s only Steel’s word to go on. She’s not even sure what a moon is, beyond being Father Earth’s long-lost child, like the tales say. And yet somehow she knows that this much of what Steel says is true. She doesn’t quite sess it, and there are no telltale threads of silver forming in the sky, but she believes it the way she believes that there is another side of the world even though she’s never seen it, and the way she knows how mountains form, and the way she’s certain Father Earth is real and alive and an enemy. Some truths are simply too great to deny.
To her surprise, however, Schaffa says, “Oh, I know the Moon is real.” Perhaps his pain has faded somewhat; now his expression has hardened as he gazes at the hazy, intermittent disc of the sun where it’s managed to not quite pierce the clouds near the horizon. “That, I remember.”
“You – really? Then you believe Steel?”
“I believe you, little one, because orogenes know the pull of the Moon when it draws near. Awareness of it is as natural to you as sessing shakes. But also, I have seen it.” Then his gaze narrows sharply to focus on Nassun. “Why, then, did the stone eater tell you about the Moon?”
Nassun takes a deep breath and lets out a heavy sigh.
“I really just wanted to live somewhere nice,” she says. “Live somewhere with… with you. I wouldn’t have minded working and doing things to be a good comm member. I could have been a lorist, maybe.” She feels her jaw tighten. “But I can’t do that, not anywhere. Not without having to hide what I am. I like orogeny, Schaffa, when I don’t have to hide it. I don’t think having it, being a – a r-rogga —” She has to stop, and blush, and shake off the urge to feel ashamed for saying such a bad word, but the bad word is the right word for now. “I don’t think being one makes me bad or strange or evil —”
She cuts herself off again, yanks her thoughts out of that track, because it leads right back to But you have done such evil things.
Unconsciously, Nassun bares her teeth and clenches her fists. “It isn’t right, Schaffa. It isn’t right that people want me to be bad or strange or evil, that they make me be bad…” She shakes her head, fumbling for words. “I just want to be ordinary! But I’m not and – and everybody, a lot of people, all hate me because I’m not ordinary. You’re the only person who doesn’t hate me for… for being what I am. And that’s not right.”
“No, it isn’t.” Schaffa shifts to sit back against his pack, looking weary. “But you speak as though it’s an easy thing to ask people to overcome their fears, little one.”
And he does not say it, but suddenly Nassun thinks: Jija couldn’t.
Nassun’s gorge rises suddenly, sharply enough that she must clap a fist to her mouth for a moment and think hard of ash and how cold her ears are. There’s nothing in her stomach except the handful of dates she just ate, but the feeling is awful anyway.