The Stone Sky

by N. K. Jemisin

  Ah, Remwha wields his annoying nature like a diamond chisel as usual. Excellent work, I pulse. He returns me a polite thank-you waveform.

  We are to leave that very day. Clothing suitable for travel outdoors is brought to my quarters by junior conductors. I pull on the thicker cloth and shoes carefully, fascinated by the different textures, and then sit quietly while the junior conductor plaits my hair into a single white braid. “Is this necessary for outside?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious, since the conductors wear their hair in many styles. Some of them I can’t emulate, because my hair is poufy and coarse and will not hold a curl or bear straightening. Only we have hair like this. Theirs comes in many textures.

  “It might help,” says the junior. “You lot are going to stand out no matter what, but the more normal we can make you seem, the better.”

  “People will know we’re part of the Engine,” I say, straightening just a little in pride.

  His fingers slow for a moment. I don’t think he notices. “That’s not exactly … They’re more likely to think you’re something else. Don’t worry, though; we’ll send guards along to make sure there’s no trouble. They’ll be unobtrusive, but there. Kelenli insists that you can’t be made to feel sheltered, even if you are.”

  “They’re more likely to think we’re something else,” I repeat slowly, thoughtfully.

  His fingers twitch, pulling a few strands harder than necessary. I don’t wince or pull away. They’re more comfortable thinking of us as statues, and statues aren’t supposed to feel pain. “Well, it’s a distant possibility, but they have to know you aren’t—I mean, it’s …” He sighs. “Oh, Evil Death. It’s complicated. Don’t worry about it.”

  Conductors say this when they’ve made a mistake. I don’t ping the others with it right away, because we minimize communication outside of sanctioned meetings. People who are not tuners can perceive magic only in rudimentary ways; they use machines and instruments to do what is natural for us. Still, they’re always monitoring us in some measure, so we cannot allow them to learn the extent to which we speak to each other, and hear them, when they think we cannot.

  Soon I’m ready. After conferring with other conductors over the vine, mine decides to brush my face with paint and powder. It’s supposed to make me look like them. It actually makes me like someone whose white skin has been painted brown. I must look skeptical when he shows me the mirror; my conductor sighs and complains that he’s not an artist.

  Then he brings me to a place that I’ve seen only a few times before, within the building that houses me: the downstairs foyer. Here the walls aren’t white; the natural green and brown of self-repairing cellulose has been allowed to flourish unbleached. Someone has seeded the space with vining strawberries that are half in white flower, half in ripening red fruit; it’s quite lovely. The six of us stand near the floor pool waiting for Kelenli, trying not to notice the other personnel of the building coming and going and staring at us: six smaller-than-average, stocky people with puffy white hair and painted faces, our lips arranged in defensively pleasant smiles. If there are guards, we do not know how to tell them from the gawkers.

  When Kelenli comes toward us, though, I finally notice guards. Hers move with her, not bothering to be unobtrusive—a tall brown woman and man who might have been siblings. I realize I have seen them before, trailing her on other occasions that she’s come to visit. They hang back as she reaches us.

  “Good, you’re ready,” she says. Then she grimaces, reaching out to touch Dushwha’s cheek. Her thumb comes away dusted with face powder. “Really?”

  Dushwha looks away, uncomfortable. They have never liked being pushed into any emulation of our creators—not in clothing, not in gender, definitely not in this. “It’s meant to help,” they mutter unhappily, perhaps trying to convince themselves.

  “It makes you more conspicuous. And they’ll know what you are, anyway.” She turns and looks at one of her guards, the woman. “I’m taking them to clean this dreck off. Want to help?” The woman just looks at her in silence. Kelenli laughs to herself. It sounds genuinely mirth filled.

  She herds us into a personal-needs alcove. The guards station themselves outside while she splashes water on our faces from the clean side of the latrine pool, and scrubs the paint away with an absorbent cloth. She hums while she does it. Does that mean she’s happy? When she takes my arm to wipe the gunk off my face, I search hers to try to understand. Her gaze sharpens when she notices.

  “You’re a thinker,” she says. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.

  “We all are,” I say. I allow a brief rumble of nuance. We have to be.

  “Exactly. You think more than you have to.” Apparently a bit of brown near my hairline is especially stubborn. She wipes it off, grimaces, wipes it again, sighs, rinses the cloth and wipes at it again.

  I continue searching her face. “Why do you laugh at their fear?”

  It’s a stupid question. Should’ve asked it through the earth, not out loud. She stops wiping my face. Remwha glances at me in bland reproach, then goes to the entrance of the alcove. I hear him asking the guard there to please ask a conductor whether we are in danger of sun damage without the protection of the paint. The guard laughs and calls over her companion to relay this question, as if it’s ridiculous. During the moment of distraction purchased for us by this exchange, Kelenli then resumes scrubbing me.

  “Why not laugh at it?” she says.

  “They would like you better if you didn’t laugh.” I signal nuance: alignment, harmonic enmeshment, compliance, conciliation, mitigation. If she wants to be liked.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be liked.” She shrugs, turning to rinse the cloth again.

  “You could be. You’re like them.”

  “Not enough.”

  “More than me.” This is obvious. She is their kind of beautiful, their kind of normal. “If you tried—”

  She laughs at me, too. It isn’t cruel, I know instinctively. It’s pitying. But underneath the laugh, her presence is suddenly as still and pent as pressurized stone in the instant before it becomes something else. Anger again. Not at me, but triggered by my words nevertheless. I always seem to make her angry.

  They’re afraid because we exist, she says. There’s nothing we did to provoke their fear, other than exist. There’s nothing we can do to earn their approval, except stop existing—so we can either die like they want, or laugh at their cowardice and go on with our lives.

  I think at first that I don’t understand everything she just told me. But I do, don’t I? There were sixteen of us once; now we are but six. The others questioned and were decommissioned for it. Obeyed without question, and were decommissioned for it. Bargained. Gave up. Helped. Despaired. We have tried everything, done all they asked and more, and yet now there are only six of us left.

  That means we’re better than the others were, I tell myself, scowling. Smarter, more adaptable, more skilled. This matters, does it not? We are components of the great machine, the pinnacle of Sylanagistine biomagestry. If some of us had to be removed from the machine because of flaws—

  Tetlewha was not flawed, Remwha snaps like a slipstrike fault.

  I blink and glance at him. He’s back in the alcove, waiting over near Bimniwha and Salewha; they’ve all used the fountain to strip off their own paint while Kelenli worked on me and Gaewha and Dushwha. The guards Remwha distracted are just outside, still chuckling to themselves over what he said to them. He’s glaring at me. When I frown, he repeats: Tetlewha was not flawed.

  I set my jaw. If Tetlewha was not flawed, then that means he was decommissioned for no reason at all.

  Yes. Remwha, who rarely looks pleased on a good day, has now curled his lip in disgust. At me. I’m so shocked by this that I forget to pretend indifference. That is precisely her point. It doesn’t matter what we do. The problem is them.

  It doesn’t matter what we do. The problem is them.

  When I am clean, Kelenli cups my
face in her hands. “Do you know the word ‘legacy’?”

  I’ve heard it and guessed its meaning from context. It’s difficult to pull my thoughts back on track after Remwha’s angry rejoinder. He and I have never much liked one another, but … I shake my head and focus on what Kelenli has asked me. “A legacy is something obsolete, but which you cannot get rid of entirely. Something no longer wanted, but still needed.”

  She grimace-smiles, first at me and then at Remwha. She’s heard everything he said to me. “That will do. Remember that word today.”

  Then she gets to her feet. The three of us stare at her. She’s not only taller and browner, but she moves more, breathes more. Is more. We worship what she is. We fear what she will make of us.

  “Come,” she says, and we follow her out into the world.

  2613: A massive underwater volcano erupted in the Tasr Straits between the Antarctic Polar Waste and the Stillness. Selis Leader Zenas, previously unknown to be an orogene, apparently quelled the volcano, although she was unable to escape the tsunami that it caused. Skies in the Antarctics darkened for five months, but cleared just before a Season could be officially declared. In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, Selis Leader’s husband—the comm head at the time of the eruption, deposed by emergency election—attempted to defend their one-year-old child from a mob of survivors and was killed. Cause disputed: Some witnesses say the mob stoned him, others say the former comm head was strangled by a Guardian. Guardian took the orphaned infant to Warrant.

  —Project notes of Yaetr Innovator Dibars

  5

  you are remembered

  THE ATTACK COMES, LIKE CLOCKWORK, near dawn.

  Everyone’s ready for it. The camp is about a third of the way into the stone forest, which is as far as Castrima was able to get before full darkness made further progress treacherous. The group should be able to get all the way through the forest before sunset the next day—assuming everyone lives through the night.

  Restlessly you prowl the camp, and you are not the only one to do so. The Hunters are supposed to all be sleeping, since during the day they act as scouts as well as ranging afield to forage and catch game. You see quite a few of them awake, too. The Strongbacks are supposed to be sleeping in shifts, but all of them are up, as are a good number of the other castes. You spot Hjarka sitting atop a pile of baggage, her head down and eyes shut, but otherwise her legs are braced for a quick lunge and there’s a glassknife in each hand. Her fingers haven’t loosened with sleep.

  It’s a stupid time to attack, given all this, but there isn’t a better one, so apparently your assailants decide to work with what they’ve got. You’re the first to sess it, and you’re pivoting on the ball of one foot and shouting a warning even as you narrow your perception and drop into that space of mind from which you can command volcanoes. A fulcrum, deep and strong, has been rooted in the earth nearby. You follow it to the midpoint of its potential torus, the center of the circle, like a hawk sighting prey. Right side of the road. Twenty feet into the stone forest, out of line of sight amid the wends and drooping greenery. “Ykka!”

  She appears at once from wherever she was sitting amid the tents. “Yeah, felt it.”

  “Not active yet.” By this you mean that the torus hasn’t begun to draw heat or movement from the ambient. But that fulcrum is deep as a taproot. There’s not much seismic potential gathered in this region—and indeed, much of the pressure on the lower-level strata has been absorbed by the creation of the stone forest. Still, there’s always heat if you go deep enough, and this is deep. Solid. Fulcrum-precise.

  “We don’t have to fight,” Ykka yells, suddenly, into the forest. You start, though you shouldn’t. You’re shocked that she was serious, though you really should know better by now. She stalks forward, body taut, knees bent as if she’s about to sprint into the forest, hands held out before her and fingertips wiggling.

  It’s easier now to reach for magic, though you still focus on the stump of your own arm to begin, out of habit. It will never feel natural for you to use this instead of orogeny, but at least your perception shifts quickly. Ykka’s way ahead of you. Wavelets and arcs of silver dance along the ground around her, mostly in front of her, spreading and flickering as she draws them up from the ground and makes them hers. What little vegetation you can sess in the stone forest makes it easier; the seedling vines and light-starved mosses act like wires, channeling and aligning the silver into patterns that make sense. Are predictable. Are searching … ah. You tense in the same moment that Ykka does. Yes. There.

  Above that deep-rooted fulcrum, at the center of a torus that has not yet begun to spin, crouches a body etched out in silver. For the first time, in comparison, you notice that an orogene’s silver is both brighter and less complex than that of the plants and insects around it. The same … er, amount, if that word applies, if not capacity or potential or aliveness, but not the same design. This orogene’s silver is concentrated into a relative few bright lines that all align in similar directions. They don’t flicker, and neither does his torus. He—you guess that, but it feels right—is listening.

  Ykka, another outline of precise, concentrated silver, nods in satisfaction. She climbs up on top of some of the wagon cargo so her voice will carry better.

  “I’m Ykka Rogga Castrima,” she calls. You guess that she points at you. “She’s a rogga, too. So’s he.” Temell. “So are those kids over there. We don’t kill roggas here.” She pauses. “You hungry? We’ve got a little to spare. You don’t need to try to take it.”

  That fulcrum doesn’t budge.

  Something else does, though—from the other side of the stone forest, as thin, attenuated agglomerations of silver suddenly blur into chaotic movement and come charging toward you. Other raiders; Evil Earth, you were all so focused on the rogga that you didn’t even notice the ones behind you. You hear them now, though, voices rising, cursing, feet pounding on ashy sand. The Strongbacks near the barrier of stakes on that side cry warning. “They’re attacking,” you call.

  “No shit,” Ykka snaps, drawing a glassknife.

  You retreat to within the tent circle, acutely aware of your vulnerability in a way that’s strange and deeply unpleasant. It’s worse because you can still sess, and because your instincts prompt you to respond when you see where you could help. A cluster of attackers comes at a part of the perimeter that’s light on stakes and defenders, and you open your eyes so you can actually see them trying to fight their way in. They’re typical commless raiders—filthy, emaciated, dressed in an ash-faded combination of rags and newer, pilfered clothing. You could take out all six in half a breath, with a single precision torus.

  But you can also feel how … what? How aligned you are. Ykka’s silver is concentrated like that of the other roggas you’ve observed, but hers is still layered, jagged, a little jittery. It flows every-which-way within her as she jumps down from the cargo wagon and shouts for people to help the sparse Strongbacks near that cluster of raiders, running to help herself. Your magic flows with smooth clarity, every line matching perfectly in direction and flow to every other line. You don’t know how to change it back to the way it was, if that’s even possible. And you know instinctively that using the silver when you’re like this will pack every particle of your body together as neatly as a mason lays a wall of bricks. You’ll be stone the same way.

  So you fight your instincts and hide, much as that rankles. There are others here, crouching amid the central circle of tents—the comm’s smaller children, its bare handful of elders, one woman so pregnant that she can’t move with any real flexibility even though she’s got a loaded crossbow in her hands, two knife-wielding Breeders who’ve obviously been charged with defending her and the children.

  When you poke your head up to observe the fighting, you catch a glimpse of something stunning. Danel, having appropriated one of the spear-whittled sticks that form the fence, is using it to carve a bloody swath through the raiders. She’s phenomenal,
spinning and stabbing and blocking and stabbing again, twirling the stick in between attacks as if she’s fought commless a million times. That’s not just being an experienced Strongback; that’s something else. She’s just too good. But it follows, doesn’t it? Not like Rennanis made her the general of their army for her charm.

  It isn’t much of a fight in the end. Twenty or thirty scrawny commless against trained, fed, prepared comm members? This is why comms survive Seasons, and why long-term commlessness is a death sentence. This lot was probably desperate; there can’t have been much traffic along the road in the past few months. What were they thinking?

  Their orogene, you realize. That’s who they expected to win this fight for them. But he’s still not moving, orogenically or physically.

  You get up, walking past the lingering knots of fighting. Self-consciously adjusting your mask, you step off the road and slip through the perimeter stakes, moving into the deeper darkness of the stone forest. The firelight of the camp leaves you night-blind, so you stop a moment to allow your eyes to adjust. No telling what kinds of traps the commless have left here; you shouldn’t be doing this alone. Again you’re surprised, though, because between one blink and the next, you suddenly begin to see in silver. Insects, leaf litter, a spiderweb, even the rocks—all of it now flickers in wild, veined patterns, their cells and particulates etched out by the lattice that connects them.

  And people. You stop as you make them out, well camouflaged against the silver bloom of the forest. The rogga is still where he’s been, a brighter etching against more delicate lines. But there are also two small shapes crouched in a cavelet, about twenty feet further into the forest. Two other bodies, somehow high overhead atop the jagged, curving rocks of the forest. Lookouts, maybe? None of them move much. Can’t tell if they’ve seen you, or if they’re watching the battle somehow. You’re frozen, startled by this sudden shift in your perception. Is this some by-product of learning to see silver in yourself and the obelisks? Maybe once you can do that, you see it everywhere. Or maybe you’re hallucinating all of it now, like an afterimage against your eyelids. After all, Alabaster never mentioned being able to see like this—but then, when did Alabaster ever try to be a good teacher?