You think Hoa is probably somewhere below your feet at this very moment, listening. But Lerna is being oddly squeamish about this. Why? You take a guess. “I don’t mind if Hoa eats it,” you say. You aren’t saying it just for Hoa. You really mean it. “If it will do him good, and get the thing off me in the process, why not?”
Something flickers in Lerna’s expression. His emotionless mask slips, and you see all of a sudden that he’s revolted by the idea of Hoa chewing the arm off your body. Well, put like that, the concept is inherently revolting. It’s too utilitarian a way of thinking about it, though. Too atavistic. You know intimately, from hours spent delving between the cells and particles of Alabaster’s transforming body, what’s happening in your arm. Looking at it, you can all but see the silvery lines of magic realigning infinitesimal particles and energies of your substance, moving this bit so that it’s oriented along the same path as that bit, carefully tightening into a lattice that binds the whole together. Whatever this process is, it’s simply too precise, too powerful, to be chance – or for Hoa’s ingestion of it to be the grotesquerie that Lerna plainly sees. But you don’t know how to explain that to him, and you wouldn’t have the energy to try even if you did.
“Help me up,” you say.
Tonkee gingerly takes hold of the stone arm, helping to support it so it doesn’t shift or flop and wrench your shoulder. She throws a glare at Lerna until he finally gets over himself and slides an arm under you again. Between the two of them, you manage to gain your feet, but it’s hard going. You’re panting by the end, and your knees are distinctly wobbly. The blood in your body is less committed to the cause, and momentarily you sway, dizzy and light-headed. Lerna immediately says, “All right, let’s get her back down.” Abruptly you’re sitting down again, out of breath this time, the arm awkwardly jacking up your shoulder until Tonkee adjusts it. The thing really is heavy.
(Your arm. Not “the thing.” It’s your right arm. You’ve lost your right arm. You’re aware of that, and soon you’ll mourn it, but for now it’s easier to think of it as a thing separate from yourself. An especially useless prosthesis. A benign tumor that needs to be removed. These things are all true. It’s also your rusting arm.)
You’re sitting there, panting and willing the world to stop spinning, when you hear someone else approach. This one’s speaking loudly, calling for everyone to pack up, break’s over, they need to do another five miles before dark. Ykka. You lift your head as she gets close enough, and it’s in this moment that you realize you think of her as a friend. You realize it because it feels good to hear her voice, and to see her resolve out of the swirling ash. Last time you saw her, she was in serious danger of being murdered by hostile stone eaters attacking Castrima-under. That’s one of the reasons you fought back, using the crystals of Castrima-under to ensnare the attackers; you wanted her, and all the other orogenes of Castrima, and by extension all the people of Castrima who depended on those orogenes, to live.
So you smile. It’s weak. You’re weak. Which is why it actually hurts when Ykka turns to you and her lips tighten in what is unmistakably disgust.
She’s pulled the cloth wrapping off the lower half of her face. Beyond her gray-and-kohl eye makeup, which not even the end of the world will stop her from wearing, you can’t make out her eyes behind her makeshift goggles – a pair of spectacles that she’s wrapped rags around to keep ash out. “Shit,” she says to Hjarka. “You’re never going to let me hear the end of it, are you?”
Hjarka shrugs. “Not till you pay up, no.”
You’re staring at Ykka, the tentative little smile freezing off your face.
“She’ll probably make a full recovery,” Lerna says. His voice is neutral in a way that you immediately sense is careful. Walking-over-a-lava-tube careful. “It’ll be a few days before she can keep up on foot, though.”
Ykka sighs, putting a hand on her hip and very obviously rifling through a series of things to say. What she finally settles on is neutral, too. “Fine. I’ll extend the rotation of people carrying the stretcher. Get her walking as soon as possible, though. Everyone carries their own weight in this comm, or gets left behind.” She turns and heads off.
“Yeah, so,” Tonkee says in a low voice, once Ykka’s out of earshot. “She’s a little pissed about you destroying the geode.”
You flinch. “Destroying —” Oh, but. Locking all those stone eaters into the crystals. You meant to save everyone, but Castrima was a machine – a very old, very delicate machine that you didn’t understand. And now you’re topside, traipsing through the ashfall… “Oh, rusting Earth, I did.”
“What, you didn’t realize?” Hjarka laughs a little. It’s got a bitter edge. “You actually thought we were all up here topside, the whole rusting comm traveling north in the ash and cold, for fun?” She strides away, shaking her head. Ykka’s not the only one pissed about it.
“I didn’t…” You start to say, I didn’t mean to, and stop. Because you never mean it, and it never matters in the end.
Watching your face, Lerna lets out a small sigh. “Rennanis destroyed the comm, Essun. Not you.” He’s helping you shift back down into a prone position, but not meeting your eyes. “We lost it the minute we infested Castrima-over with boilbugs to save ourselves. It’s not like they would’ve just gone away, or left anything in the territory to eat. If we’d stayed in the geode, we’d have been doomed, one way or another.”
It’s true, and perfectly rational. Ykka’s reaction, though, proves that some things aren’t about rationality. You can’t take away people’s homes and sense of security in such an immediate, dramatic way, and expect them to consider extended chains of culpability before they get angry about it.
“They’ll get over it.” You blink to find Lerna looking at you now, his gaze clear and expression frank. “If I could, they can. It’ll just take a while.”
You hadn’t realized he had gotten over Tirimo.
He ignores your staring, then gestures to the four people who have gathered nearby. You’re lying down already, so he tucks your stone arm in beside you, making sure the blankets cover it. The stretcher-bearers take up their task again, and you have to clamp down on your orogeny, which – now that you’re awake – insists upon reacting to every lurch as if it’s a shake. Tonkee’s head pokes into view as they start to carry you along. “Hey, it’ll be all right. Lots of people hate me.”
That is entirely unreassuring. It’s also frustrating that you care, and that others can tell you care. You used to be such a steelheart.
But you know why you aren’t, all of a sudden.
“Nassun,” you say to Tonkee.
“What?”
“Nassun. I know where she is, Tonkee.” You try to raise your right hand to catch hers, and there is a sensation that thrums through your shoulder like aching and floating. You hear a ringing sound. It doesn’t hurt, but you privately curse yourself for forgetting. “I have to go find her.”
Tonkee darts a look at your stretcher-bearers, and then in the direction Ykka went. “Speak softer.”
“What?” Ykka knows full well you’re going to want to go find your daughter. That was practically the first thing you ever said to her.
“If you want to be dumped on the side of the rusting road, keep talking.”
That shuts you up, along with the continued effort of restraining your orogeny. Oh. So Ykka’s that pissed.
The ash keeps falling, eventually obscuring your goggles because you don’t have the energy to brush it away. In the gray dimness that results, your body’s need to recover takes precedence; you fall asleep again. The next time you wake and brush the ash off your face, it’s because you’ve been put down again, and there’s a rock or branch or something poking you in the small of the back. You struggle to sit up on one elbow and it’s easier, though you still can’t manage much else.
Night has fallen. Several dozen people are settling onto some kind of rock outcropping amid a scraggly not-quite forest. The outcropping sesses familiar from your orogenic explorations of Castrima’s surroundings, and it helps you place yourself: a bit of fresh tectonic uplift that’s about a hundred and sixty miles north of the Castrima geode. That tells you that the journey from Castrima must have only just begun a few days before, since a large group can only walk so fast; and that there’s only one place you could be going, if you’re headed north. Rennanis. Somehow everyone must know that it’s empty and habitable. Or maybe they’re just hoping that it is, and they’ve got nothing else to hope for. Well, at least on that point, you can reassure them… if they’ll listen to you.