The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

  Syenite shakes her head, but she’s thinking about the little pessary the island women have shown her how to use. Thinking maybe she will stop using it. But she says: “Freedom means we get to control what we do now. No one else.”

  “Yes. But now that I can think about what I want…” He shrugs as if nonchalant, but there’s an intensity in his gaze as he looks at Innon and Coru. “I’ve never wanted much from life. Just to be able to live it, really. I’m not like you, Syen. I don’t need to prove myself. I don’t want to change the world, or help people, or be anything great. I just want… this.”

  She gets that. So she lies down on her side of Innon, and Alabaster lies down on his side, and they relax and enjoy the sensation of wholeness, of contentment, for a while. Because they can.

  Of course it cannot last.

  Syenite wakes when Innon sits up and shadows her. She hadn’t intended to nap, but she’s had a good long one, and now the sun is slanting toward the ocean. Coru’s fussing and she sits up automatically, rubbing her face with one hand and reaching with the other to see if his cloth diaper is full. It’s fine, but the sounds he’s making are anxious, and when she comes more awake she sees why. Innon is sitting up with Coru held absently in one arm, but he is frowning as he looks at Alabaster. Alabaster is on his feet, his whole body tense.

  “Something…” he murmurs. He’s facing the direction of the mainland, but he can’t possibly see anything; the ridge is in the way. Then again, he’s not using his eyes.

  So Syen frowns and sends forth her own awareness, worrying that there’s a tsunami or worse on its way. But there’s nothing.

  A conspicuous nothingness. There should be something. There’s a plate boundary between the island that is Meov and the mainland; plate boundaries are never still. They jump and twitch and vibrate against one another in a million infinitesimal ways that only a rogga can sess, like the electricity that geneers can make come out of water turbines and vats of chemicals. But suddenly—impossibly—the plate edge sesses as still.

  Confused, Syenite starts to look at Alabaster. But her attention is caught by Corundum, who’s bouncing and struggling in Innon’s hands, whining and snotting and having a full-on tantrum, though he’s usually not the kind of baby who does that sort of thing. Alabaster’s looking at the baby, too. His expression changes to something twisted and terrible.

  “No,” he says. He’s shaking his head. “No. No, I won’t let them, not again.”

  “What?” Syenite’s staring at him, trying not to notice the dread that’s rising in her, feeling rather than seeing as others rise around them, murmuring and reacting to their alarm. A couple of people trot up the ridge to see what they can. “ ’Baster, what? For Earth’s sake—”

  He makes a sound that is not a word, just negation, and suddenly he takes off running up the slope, toward the ridge. Syenite stares after him, then at Innon, who looks even more confused than she is; Innon shakes his head. But the people who preceded ’Baster up the ridge are shouting now, and signaling everyone else. Something is wrong.

  Syenite and Innon hurry up the slope along with others. They all reach the top together, and there they stand looking at the span of ocean on the mainlandward side of the island.

  Where there are four ships, tiny but visibly coming closer, on the horizon.

  Innon says a bad word and shoves Coru at Syenite, who almost fumbles him but then holds him close while Innon rummages amid his pockets and packs and comes up with his smaller spyglass. He extends it and looks hard for a moment, then frowns, while Syenite tries ineffectually to console Coru. Coru is inconsolable. When Innon lowers it, Syenite grabs his arm and pushes Coru at him, taking the device from his hand when he does.

  The four ships are bigger now. Their sails are white, ordinary; she can’t figure out what’s got Alabaster so upset. And then she notices the figures standing at one boat’s prow.

  Wearing burgundy.

  The shock of it steals the breath from her chest. She steps back, mouths the word that Innon needs to hear, but it comes out strengthless, inaudible. Innon takes the spyglass from her because she looks like she’s about to drop it. Then because they have to do something, she’s got to do something, she concentrates and focuses and says, louder, “Guardians.”

  Innon frowns. “How—” She watches as he, too, realizes what this means. He looks away for a moment, wondering, and then he shakes his head. How they found Meov does not matter. They cannot be allowed to land. They cannot be allowed to live.

  “Give Coru to someone,” he says, backing away from the ridge; his expression has hardened. “We are going to need you, Syen.”

  Syenite nods and turns, looking around. Deelashet, one of the handful of Sanzeds in the comm, is hurrying past with her own little one, who’s maybe six months older than Coru. She’s kept Coru on occasion, nursed him when Syenite was busy; Syenite flags her down and runs to her. “Please,” she says, pushing Coru into her arms. Deelashet nods.

  Coru, however, does not agree with the plan. He clings to Syenite, screaming and kicking and—Evil Earth, the whole island rocks all of a sudden. Deelashet staggers and then stares at Syenite in horror.

  “Shit,” she murmurs, and takes Coru back. Then with him on her hip—he calms immediately—she runs to catch up with Innon, who is already running toward the metal stairs, shouting to his crew to board the Clalsu and ready it for launch.

  It’s madness. It’s all madness, she thinks as she runs. It doesn’t make sense that the Guardians have discovered this place. It doesn’t make sense that they’re coming—why here? Why now? Meov has been around, pirating the coast, for generations. The only thing that’s different is Syenite and Alabaster.

  She ignores the little voice in the back of her mind that whispers, They followed you somehow, you know they did, you should never have gone back to Allia, it was a trap, you should never have come here, everything you touch is death.

  She does not look down at her hands, where—just to let Alabaster know she appreciated the gesture—she’s put on the four rings that the Fulcrum gave her, plus his two. The last two aren’t real, after all. She hasn’t passed any sort of ring test for them. But who would know whether she merits these rings better than a man who’s earned ten? And for shit’s sake, she stilled a rusting volcano made by a broken obelisk with a stone eater inside.

  So Syenite decides, suddenly and fiercely, that she’s going to show these rusting Guardians just what a six-ringer can do.

  She reaches the comm level, where it’s chaos: people pulling out glassknives and rolling out catapults and balls of chain from wherever-the-rust they’ve been keeping them, gathering belongings, loading boats with fishing spears. Then Syen’s running up the plank onto the Clalsu, where Innon is shouting for the anchor to be pulled up, and all at once it occurs to her to wonder where Alabaster has gone.

  She stumbles to a halt on the ship’s deck. And as she does, she feels a flare of orogeny so deep and powerful that for a moment she thinks the whole world shakes. All the water in the harbor dances with tiny pointillations for a moment. Syen suspects the clouds felt that one.

  And suddenly there is a wall rising from the sea, not five hundred yards off the harbor. It is a massive block of solid stone, as perfectly rectangular as if it were chiseled, huge enough to—oh flaking rust, no—seal off the damned harbor.

  “ ’Baster! Earth damn it—” It’s impossible to be heard over the roar of water and the grind of the stone—as big as the island of Meov itself—Alabaster is raising. How can he do this with no shake or hot spot nearby? Half the island should be iced. But then something flickers at the corner of Syenite’s vision and she turns to see the amethyst obelisk off in the distance. It’s closer than before. It’s coming to meet them. That’s how.

  Innon is cursing, furious; he understands full well that Alabaster is being an overprotective fool, however he’s doing it. His fury becomes effort. Fog rises from the water around the ship, and the deck planks nearby creak an
d frost over as he tries to smash apart the nearest part of the wall, so that they can get out there and fight. The wall splinters—and then there is a low boom behind it. When the part of the wall that Innon has shattered crumbles away, there’s just another block of stone behind it.

  Syenite’s got her hands full trying to modulate the waves in the water. It is possible to use orogeny on water, just difficult. She’s getting the hang of it at last, after this long living near such a great expanse of water; it’s one of the few things Innon’s been able to teach her and Alabaster. There’s enough warmth and mineral content in the sea that she can feel it, and water moves enough like stone—just faster—that she can manipulate it a little. Delicately. Still, she does this now, holding Coru close so he’s within the safe zone of her torus, and concentrating hard to send shock waves against the coming waves at just enough velocity to break them. It mostly works; the Clalsu rocks wildly and tears loose from its moorings, and one of the piers collapses, but nothing capsizes and no one dies. Syenite counts this as a win.

  “What the rust is he doing?” Innon says, panting, and she follows his gaze to see Alabaster, at last.

  He stands on the highest point of the island, up on the slopes. Even from here Syen can see the blistering cold of his torus; the warmer air around it wavers as the temperature changes, and all the moisture in the wind blowing past him precipitates out as snow. If he’s using the obelisk then he shouldn’t need the ambient, should he? Unless he’s doing so much that even the obelisk can’t fuel it.

  “Earthfires,” Syen says. “I have to go up there.”

  Innon grabs her arm. When she looks up at him, his eyes are wide and a little afraid. “We’d only be a liability to him.”

  “We can’t just sit here and wait! He’s not… reliable.” Even as she says this, her belly clenches. Innon has never seen Alabaster lose it. She doesn’t want Innon to see that. Alabaster’s been so good here at Meov; he’s almost not crazy anymore. But Syen thinks

  what broke once will break again, more easily

  and she shakes her head and tries to hand him Coru. “I have to. Maybe I can help. Coru won’t let me give him to anyone else—please—”

  Innon curses but takes the child, who clutches at Innon’s shirt and and puts his thumb in his mouth. Then Syen is off, running along the comm ledge and up the steps.

  As she gets above the rock barrier, she can finally see what’s happening beyond it, and for a moment she stumbles to a halt in shock. The ships are much closer, right beyond the wall that ’Baster has raised to protect the harbor. There are only three of them, though, because one ship has floundered off course and is listing badly—no, it’s sinking. She has no idea how he managed that. Another is riding strangely in the water, mast broken and bow raised and keel visible, and that’s when Syenite realizes there are boulders piled on its rear deck. Alabaster’s been dropping rocks on the bastards. She has no idea how, but the sight of it makes her want to cheer.

  But the other two ships have split up: one coming straight for the island, the other peeling off, perhaps to circle around or maybe get out of Alabaster’s rock-dropping range. No you don’t, Syen thinks, and she tries to do what she did to the attack ship during their last raid, dragging a splinter of bedrock up from the seafloor to spear the thing. She frosts a ten-foot space around her to do it, and makes chunks of ice spread over the water between her and the ship, but she gets the splinter shaped and loose, and starts to pull it up—

  And it stops. And the gathering strength of her orogeny just… disippates. She gasps as the heat and force spill away, and then she understands: This ship has a Guardian on it, too. Maybe they all do, which explains why ’Baster hasn’t destroyed them already. He can’t attack a Guardian directly; all he can do is hurl boulders from outside the Guardians’ negation radius. She can’t even imagine how much power that must take. He could never have managed it without the obelisk, and if he weren’t the crazy, ornery ten-ringer that he is.

  Well, just because she can’t hit the thing directly doesn’t mean she can’t find some other way to do it. She runs along the ridge as the ship she tried to destroy passes behind the island, keeping it in sight. Do they think there’s another way up? If so, they’ll be sorely disappointed; Meov’s harbor is the only part of the island that’s remotely approachable. The rest of the island is a single jagged, sheer column.

  Which gives her an idea. Syenite grins and stops, then drops to her hands and knees so she can concentrate.

  She doesn’t have Alabaster’s strength. She doesn’t even know how to reach the amethyst without his guidance—and after what happened at Allia, she’s afraid to try. The plate boundary is too far for her to reach, and there are no nearby vents or hot spots. But she has Meov itself. All that lovely, heavy, flaky schist.

  So she throws herself down. Deep. Deeper. She feels her way along the ridges and the layers of the rock that is Meov, seeking the best point of fracture—the fulcrum; she laughs to herself. At last she finds it, good. And there, coming around the island’s curve, is the ship. Yes.

  Syenite drags all the heat and infinitesimal life out of the rock in one concentrated spot. The moisture’s still there, though, and that’s what freezes, and expands, as Syenite forces it colder and colder, taking more and more from it, spinning her torus fine and oblong so that it slices along the grain of the rock like a knife through meat. A ring of frost forms around her, but it’s nothing compared to the long, searing plank of ice that’s growing down the inside of the rock, levering it apart.

  And then, right when the ship approaches the point, she unleashes all the strength the island has given her, shoving it right back where it came from.

  A massive, narrow finger of stone splits away from the cliff face. Inertia holds it where it is, just for a moment—and then with a low, hollow groan, it peels away from the island, splintering at its base near the waterline. Syenite opens her eyes and gets up and runs, slipping once on her own ice ring, to that end of the island. She’s tired, and after a few steps she has to slow to a walk, gasping for breath around a stitch in her side. But she gets there in time to see:

  The finger of rock has landed squarely on the ship. She grins fiercely at the sight of the deck splintered apart as she hears screams, as she sees people already in the water. Most wear a variety of clothing; hirelings, then. But she thinks she sees one flash of burgundy cloth under the water’s surface, being dragged deeper by one of the sinking ship halves.

  “Guard that, you cannibalson ruster.” Grinning, Syenite gets up and heads in Alabaster’s direction again.

  As she comes down from the heights she can see him, a tiny figure still making his own cold front, and for a moment she actually admires him. He’s amazing, in spite of everything. But then, all of a sudden, there is a strange hollow boom from the sea, and something explodes around Alabaster in a spray of rocks and smoke and concussive force.

  A cannon. A rusting cannon. Innon’s told her about these; they’re an invention that the Equatorial comms have been experimenting with in the past few years. Of course Guardians would have one. Syen breaks into a run, raggedly and clumsily, fueled by fear. She can’t see ’Baster well through the smoke of the cannon blast, but she can see that he’s down.

  By the time she gets there, she knows he’s hurt. The icy wind has stopped blowing; she can see Alabaster on his hands and knees, surrounded by a circle of blistered ice that is yards wide. Syenite stops at the outermost ring of ice; if he’s out of it, he might not notice that she’s within the range of his power. “Alabaster!”

  He moves a little, and she can hear him groaning, murmuring. How bad is he hurt? Syenite dances at the edge of the ice for a moment, then finally decides to risk it, trotting to the clear zone immediately around him. He’s still upright, though barely; his head’s hanging, and her belly clenches when she sees flecks of blood on the stone beneath him.

  “I took out the other ship,” she says as she reaches him, hoping to reassure. “I
can get this one, too, if you haven’t.”

  It’s bravado. She’s not sure how much she’s got left in her. Hopefully he’s taken care of it. But she looks up and curses inwardly, because the remaining ship is still out there, apparently undamaged. It seems to be sitting at anchor. Waiting. For what, she can’t guess.

  “Syen,” he says. His voice is strained. With fear, or something else? “Promise me you won’t let them take Coru. No matter what.”

  “What? Of course I won’t.” She steps closer and crouches beside him. “ ’Baster—” He looks up at her, dazed, perhaps from the cannon blast. Something’s cut his forehead, and like all head wounds it’s bleeding copiously. She checks him over, touching his chest, hoping he’s not more hurt. He’s still alive, so the cannon blast must have been a near miss, but all it takes is a bit of rock shrapnel at the right speed, in the wrong place—

  And that’s when she finally notices. His arms at the wrists. His knees, and the rest of his legs between thighs and ankles—they’re gone. They haven’t been cut off or blown off; each limb ends smoothly, perfectly, right where the ground begins. And he’s moving them about as if it’s water and not solid stone that he’s trapped in. Struggling, she realizes belatedly. He’s not on his hands and knees because he can’t stand; he’s being dragged into the ground, against his will.

  The stone eater. Oh rusting Earth.

  Syenite grabs his shoulders and tries to haul him back, but it’s like trying to haul a rock. He’s heavier, somehow. His flesh doesn’t feel quite like flesh. The stone eater has made his body pass through solid stone by making him more stonelike, somehow, and Syenite can’t get him out. He sinks deeper into the stone with each breath; he’s up to his shoulders and hips now, and she can’t see his feet at all.

  “Let him go, Earth take you!” The irony of the curse will occur to her only later. What does occur to her, in the moment, is to stab her awareness into the stone. She tries to feel for the stone eater—