The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Yes. Yes. Is that what it’s called? Is it in that big building at the center of the Fulcrum complex? That’s where I thought it might be. Yes.”

  Damaya blinks and scowls. “Who. Are. You.” The girl’s right; that’s not really what she means to say. Still, it covers all the salient questions at once.

  Binof grimaces. She glances around, thinks a moment, sets her jaw, and finally says, “Binof Leadership Yumenes.”

  It almost means nothing to Damaya. In the Fulcrum, no one has use names or comm names. Anyone who was Leadership, before being taken by the Guardians, isn’t anymore. The grits who were born here or brought in young enough have a rogga name, and anyone else is required to take one when they earn their first ring. That’s all they get.

  But then intuition turns a key here and makes various clues click together there, and suddenly Damaya realizes Binof is not merely expressing misplaced loyalty to a social convention that no longer applies. It does apply to Binof, because Binof is not an orogene.

  And Binof’s not just any still: she’s a Leader, and she’s from Yumenes, which makes her a child of one of the most powerful families in the Stillness. And she has snuck into the Fulcrum, pretending to be an orogene.

  It’s so impossible, so insane, that Damaya’s mouth falls open. Binof sees that she understands, and edges closer, dropping her voice. “I told you, I’m not going to get you into trouble. I’ll go, now, and find that room, and all I ask is that you don’t tell anyone yet. But you wanted to know why I’m here. That’s why I’m here. That room is what I’m looking for.”

  Damaya closes her mouth. “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.” When Damaya glares, Binof holds up her hands. “That’s for your safety, and mine. There’s things only Leaders are supposed to know, and I’m not even supposed to know them yet. If anyone learns I told you, then—” She hesitates. “I don’t know what they would do to either of us, but I don’t want to find out.”

  Crack. Damaya nods, absently. “They’ll catch you.”

  “Probably. But when they do, I’ll just tell them who I am.” The girl shrugs, with the ease of someone who has never known true fear in her life. “They won’t know why I’m here. Someone will call my parents and I’ll be in trouble, but I get in trouble all the time anyway. If I can find out the answers to some questions first, though, it’ll be worth it. Now, where’s that room without doors?”

  Damaya shakes her head, seeing the trap at once. “I could get in trouble for helping you.” She isn’t a Leader, or a person; no one will save her. “You should leave, however you got here. Now. I won’t tell anyone, if you do.”

  “No.” Binof looks smug. “I went to a lot of trouble to get in here. And anyway, you’re already in trouble, because you didn’t shout for an instructor the minute you realized I wasn’t a grit. Now you’re my accomplice. Right?”

  Damaya starts, her stomach constricting as she realizes the girl is right. She’s also furious, because Binof is trying to manipulate her, and she hates that. “It’s better if I shout now than let you blunder off and get caught later.” And she gets up and heads for the dormitory door.

  Binof gasps and trots after her quickly, catching her arm and speaking in a harsh whisper. “Don’t! Please—look, I have money. Three red diamond chips and a whole alexandrite! Do you want money?”

  Damaya’s growing angrier by the minute. “What the rust would I need with money?”

  “Privileges, then. The next time you leave the Fulcrum—”

  “We don’t leave.” Damaya scowls and yanks her arm out of Binof’s grip. How did this fool of a still even get in here? There are guards, members of the city militia, at all the doors that lead out of the Fulcrum. But those guards are there to keep orogenes in, not stills out—and perhaps this Leader girl with her money and her privileges and her fearlessness would have found a way in even if the guards had tried to stop her. “We’re here because it’s the only place we can be safe from people like you. Get out.”

  Suddenly Damaya has to turn away, clenching her fists and concentrating hard and taking quick deep breaths, because she’s so angry that the part of herself that knows how to shift fault lines is starting to wander down into the earth. It’s a shameful breach of control, and she prays none of the instructors sense it, because then she will no longer be thought of as almost ready for the first ring test. Not to mention that she might end up icing this girl.

  Infuriatingly, Binof leans around her and says, “Oh! Are you angry? Are you doing orogeny? What does it feel like?”

  The questions are so ridiculous, her lack of fear so nonsensical, that Damaya’s orogeny fizzles. She’s suddenly not angry anymore, just astonished. Is this what all Leaders are like as children? Palela was so small that it didn’t have any; people of the Leader use-caste generally prefer to live in places that are worth leading. Maybe this is just what Yumenescene Leaders are like. Or maybe this girl is just ridiculous.

  As if Damaya’s silence is an answer in itself, Binof grins and dances around in front of her. “I’ve never had a chance to meet an orogene before. The grown-ups, I mean, the ones with rings who wear the black uniforms, but not a kid like me. You’re not as scary as the lorists said you would be. But then, lorists lie a lot.”

  Damaya shakes her head. “I don’t understand anything about you.”

  To her surprise, Binof sobers. “You sound like my mom.” She looks away for a moment, then presses her lips together and glowers at Damaya in apparent determination. “Will you help me find this room, or not? If you won’t help, at least don’t say anything.”

  In spite of everything, Damaya is intrigued—by the girl, by the possibility of finding a way into the room without doors, by the novelty of her own intrigue. She has never gone exploring with someone, before. It is… exciting. She shifts and looks around uncomfortably, but a part of her has already decided, hasn’t it? “Okay. But I’ve never found a way in, and I’ve been exploring Main for months.”

  “Main, is that what the big building is called? And yes, I’m not surprised; there probably isn’t an easy way in. Or maybe there was once, but it’s closed off now.” Oblivious as Damaya stares again, Binof rubs her chin. “I have an idea of where to look, though. I’ve seen some old structural drawings… Well, anyway, it would be on the southern side of the building. Ground level.”

  That is not in the unused wing, inconveniently. Still, she says, “I know the way,” and it’s heartening to see Binof brighten at these words.

  She leads Binof the way she usually goes, walking the way she usually walks. Strangely, perhaps because she is nervous this time, she notices more people noticing her. There are more double takes than usual, and when she spies Instructor Galena by chance on her way past a fountain—Galena, who once caught her drunk and saved her life by not reporting it—he actually smiles before turning his attention back to his chatty companion. That’s when Damaya finally realizes why people are looking: because they know about the strange quiet grit who goes wandering all the time. They’ve probably heard about Damaya via rumors or something, and they like that she’s finally brought someone else with her. They think she’s made a friend. Damaya would laugh, if the truth weren’t so unfunny.

  “Strange,” says Binof as they walk one of the obsidian paths through one of the lesser gardens.

  “What?”

  “Well, I keep thinking everyone’s going to notice me. But instead, almost no one’s paying attention. Even though we’re the only kids out here.”

  Damaya shrugs, and keeps walking.

  “You’d think someone would stop us and ask questions, or something. We could be doing something unsafe.”

  Damaya shakes her head. “If one of us gets hurt and someone finds us before we bleed out, they’ll take us to the hospital.” And then Damaya will have a mark on her record that might prevent her from taking the ring test. Everything she does right now could interfere with that. She sighs.

  “That’s nice,” says Binof,
“but maybe it’s a better idea to stop kids before they do things that might get them hurt.”

  Damaya stops in the middle of the lawn path and turns to Binof. “We aren’t kids,” she says, annoyed. Binof blinks. “We’re grits—Imperial Orogenes in training. That’s what you look like, so that’s what everyone assumes you are. Nobody gives a damn whether a couple of orogenes get hurt.”

  Binof is staring at her. “Oh.”

  “And you’re talking too much. Grits don’t. We only relax in the dorms, and only when there are no instructors around. If you’re going to pretend to be one of us, get it right.”

  “All right, all right!” Binof holds up both hands as if to appease her. “I’m sorry, I just…” She grimaces as Damaya glares at her. “Right. No more talking.”

  She shuts up, so Damaya resumes walking.

  They reach Main and head inside the way Damaya always does. Only this time she turns right instead of left, and heads downstairs instead of up. The ceilings are lower in this corridor, and the walls are decorated in a way she has never seen before, with little frescoes painted at intervals that depict pleasant, innocuous scenes. After a while she begins to worry, because they’re getting closer and closer to a wing that she has never explored and doesn’t want to: the Guardians’. “Where on the south side of the building?”

  “What?” Preoccupied with looking around—which makes her stand out even more than the endless talking did—Binof blinks at Damaya in surprise. “Oh. Just… somewhere on the south side.” She grimaces at Damaya’s glare. “I don’t know where! I just know there was a door, even if there isn’t one anymore. Can’t you—” She waggles her fingers. “Orogenes are supposed to be able to do things like that.”

  “What, find doors? Not unless they’re in the ground.” But even as Damaya says this, she frowns, because… well. She can sort of sess where doors are, by inference. Load-bearing walls feel much like bedrock, and door frames feel like gaps in strata—places where the pressure of the building against the ground is lesser. If a door somewhere on this level has been covered over, would its frame have been removed, too? Maybe. But would that place not feel different from the walls around it?

  She’s already turning, splaying her fingers the way she tends to do when she’s trying to stretch her zone of control farther. In the Applied crucibles there are markers underground—small blocks of marble with words etched into one surface. It takes a very fine degree of control to not only find the blocks but determine the word; it’s like tasting a page of a book and noticing the minute differences between the ink and the bare page and using that to read. But because she has been doing this over and over and over under the instructors’ watchful eye, she realizes that the same exercise works for this purpose.

  “Are you doing orogeny?” Binof asks eagerly.

  “Yes, so shut up before I ice you by accident.” Thankfully Binof actually obeys, even though sessing isn’t orogeny and there’s no danger of icing anyone. Damaya’s just grateful for the silence.

  She gropes along the walls of the building. They are like shadows of force compared to the stolid comfort of rock, but if she’s delicate, she can trace them. And there and there and there along the building’s inner walls, the ones that enclose that hidden chamber, she can feel where the walls are… interrupted. Inhaling, Damaya opens her eyes.

  “Well?” Binof’s practically salivating.

  Damaya turns, walking along the wall a ways. When she gets to the right place and stops, there’s a door there. It’s risky opening doors in occupied wings; this is probably someone’s office. The corridor is quiet, empty, but Damaya can see lights underneath some of the doors, which means that at least a few people are working late. She knocks first. When there is no answer, she takes a deep breath and tries the latch. Locked.

  “Hang on,” Binof says, rummaging in her pockets. After a moment she holds up something that looks like a tool Damaya once used to pick bits of shell out of the kurge nuts that grew on her family’s farm. “I read about how to do this. Hopefully it’s a simple lock.” She begins fiddling with the tool in the lock, her face set in a look of concentration.

  Damaya waits awhile, leaning casually against the wall and listening with both ears and sessapinae for any vibration of feet or approaching voices—or worse, the buzz of an approaching Guardian. It’s after midnight by now, though, and even the most dedicated workers are either planning to sleep in their offices or have left for the night, so no one troubles them during the agonizingly long time it takes for Binof to figure out how to use the thing.

  “That’s enough,” Damaya says after an eternity. If anyone comes along and catches them here, Damaya won’t be able to play it off. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll try this again—”

  “I can’t,” says Binof. She’s sweating and her hands are shaking, which isn’t helping matters. “I gave my nurses the slip for one night, but that won’t work again. I almost got it last time. Just give me another minute.”

  So Damaya waits, growing more and more anxious, until finally there is a click and Binof gasps in surprise. “Was that it? I think that was it!” She tries the door, and it swings open. “Earth’s flaming farts, it worked!”

  The room beyond is indeed someone’s office: There’s a desk and two high-backed chairs, and bookcases line the walls. The desk is bigger than most, the chairs more elaborate; whoever works here is someone important. It is jarring for Damaya to see an office that’s still in use after so many months of seeing the disused offices of the old wings. There’s no dust, and the lanterns are already lit, though low-wick. So strange.

  Binoff looks around, frowning; no sign of a door within the office. Damaya brushes past her, going over to what looks like a closet. She opens it: brooms and mops, and a spare black uniform hanging on the rod.

  “That’s it?” Binof curses aloud.

  “No.” Because Damaya can sess that this office is too short, from door to far wall, to match the width of the building. This closet isn’t deep enough to account for the difference.

  Tentatively she reaches past the broom and pushes on the wall. Nothing; it’s solid brick. Well, that was an idea.

  “Oh, right.” Binof shoulders in with her, feeling the walls all over the closet and shoving the spare uniform out of the way. “These old buildings always have hidden doors, leading down into the storecaches or—”

  “There aren’t any storecaches in the Fulcrum.” Even as she says it, she blinks, because she’s never thought about this before. What are they supposed to do if there’s a Season? Somehow she doesn’t think the people of Yumenes will be willing to share their food with a bunch of orogenes.

  “Oh. Right.” Binof grimaces. “Well, still, this is Yumenes, even if it is the Fulcrum. There’s always—”

  And she freezes, her eyes widening as her fingers trip over a brick that’s loose. She grins, pushes at one end until the other end pops out; using this, she pulls it loose. There’s a latch underneath, made of what looks like cast iron.

  “—There’s always something going on beneath the surface,” Binof breathes.

  Damaya draws near, wondering. “Pull it.”

  “Now you’re interested?” But Binof indeed wraps her hand around the latch, and pulls.

  That whole wall of the closet swings loose, revealing an opening beyond lined with the same brick. The narrow tunnel there curves out of sight almost immediately, into darkness.

  Damaya and Binof both stare into it, neither taking that first step.

  “What’s in there?” Damaya whispers.

  Binof licks her lips, staring into the shadowed tunnel. “I’m not sure.”

  “Bullshit.” It’s a shameful thrill to talk like this, like one of the ringed grown-ups. “You came here hoping to find something.”

  “Let’s go see first—” Binof tries to push past her, and Damaya catches her arm. Binof jumps, arm tightening beneath Damaya’s hand; she glares down at it as if in affront. Damaya doesn’t care.

&n
bsp; “No. Tell me what you’re looking for, or I’ll shut this door after you and start a shake to bring the wall down and trap you in there. Then I’ll go tell the Guardians.” This is a bluff. It would be the stupidest thing on Father Earth to use unauthorized orogeny right under the noses of the Guardians, and then to go tell them she’s done it. But Binof doesn’t know that.

  “I told you, only Leaders can know this!” Binof tries to shake her off.

  “You’re a Leader; change the rule. Isn’t that also what you’re supposed to do?”

  Binof blinks and stares at her. For a long moment she is silent. Then she sighs, rubs her eyes, and the tension goes out of her thin arm. “Fine. Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “There’s something, an artifact, at the heart of the Fulcrum.”

  “What kind of artifact?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m really not!” Binof raises her hands quickly, shaking off Damaya in the process, but Damaya’s not trying to hold her anymore. “All I know is that… something’s missing from the history. There’s a hole, a gap.”

  “What?”

  “In history.” Binof glares at Damaya as if this is supposed to mean something. “You know, the stuff the tutors teach you? About how Yumenes was founded?”

  Damaya shakes her head. Beyond a line she barely remembers in creche about Yumenes being the first city of the Old Sanze Empire, she cannot remember ever hearing about its founding. Perhaps Leaders get a better education.

  Binof rolls her eyes, but explains. “There was a Season. The one right before the Empire was founded was Wandering, when north suddenly shifted and crops failed because birds and bugs couldn’t find them. After that warlords took over in most areas—which is what always used to happen, after a Season. There was nothing but stonelore to guide people then, and rumors, and superstition. And it was because of rumors that no one settled in this region for a really long time.” She points down, at their feet. “Yumenes was the perfect place for a city: good weather, in the middle of a plate, water but nowhere near the ocean, all that. But people were afraid of this place and had been for ages, because there was something here.”