The Fifth Season

16 Syen in the hidden land

SYENITE WAKES UP COLD ON one side of her body. It’s her left side — hip and shoulder and most of her back. The source of the cold, a sharp wind, blows almost painfully through the hair all along the back of her skull, which means her hair must have come loose from its Fulcrum-regulation bun. Also, there’s a taste like dirt in her mouth, though her tongue is dry.

She tries to move and hurts all over, dully. It’s a strange kind of pain, not localized, not throbbing or sharp or anything that specific. More like her whole body is one big bruise. She groans inadvertently as she wills a hand to move and finds hard ground beneath it. She pushes against it enough to feel like she’s in control of herself again, though she doesn’t actually manage to get up. All she does successfully is open her eyes.

Crumbling silvery stone beneath her hand and in front of her face: monzonite, maybe, or one of the lesser schists. She can never remember the subvolcanic rocks because the grit instructor for geomestry back at the Fulcrum was unbelievably boring. A few feet away, the whatever-it-is stone is broken by clovers and a scraggle of grass and some kind of bushy-leafed weed. (She paid even less attention in biomestry.) The plants stir restlessly in the wind, though not much, because her body shields them from the worst of it.

Blow that, she thinks, and is pushed awake by mild shock at her own mental crudeness.

She sits up. It hurts and it’s hard to do, but she does it, and this allows her to see that she’s lying on a gentle slope of rock, surrounded by more weeds. Beyond that is the unbroken expanse of the lightly clouded sky. There’s an ocean smell, but it’s different from what she’s gotten used to in the past few weeks: less briny, more rarefied. The air is drier. The sun’s position makes it late morning, and the cold feels like late winter.

But it should be late afternoon. And Allia is Equatorial; the temperature should be balmy. And the cold, hard ground she’s lying on should be warm, sandy ground. So where the burning rusty fuck is she?

Okay. She can figure this out. The rock she’s lying on sesses high above sea level, relatively close to a familiar boundary: That’s the edge of the Maximal, one of the two main tectonic plates that make up the Stillness. The Minimal’s way up north. And she’s sessed this plate edge before: They’re not far from Allia.

But they’re not in Allia. In fact, they’re not on the continent at all.

Reflexively Syenite tries to do more than just sess, reaching toward the plate edge as she’s done a few times before—

— and nothing happens.

She sits there for a moment, more chilled than the wind can account for.

But she is not alone. Alabaster lies curled nearby, his long limbs folded fetal, either unconscious or dead. No; his side rises and falls, slowly. Okay, that’s good.

Beyond him, at the top of the slope, stands a tall, slender figure clad in a white flowing robe.

Startled, Syen freezes for a moment. “Hello?” Her voice is a croak.

The figure — a woman, Syen guesses — does not turn. She’s looking away, at something over the rise that Syenite cannot see. “Hello.”

Well, that’s a start. Syen forces herself to relax, although this is difficult when she cannot reach toward the earth for the reassurance of power. There’s no reason to be alarmed, she chides herself; whoever this woman is, if she’d wanted to harm them, she could have easily done so by now. “Where are we?”

“An island, perhaps a hundred miles off the eastern coast.”

“An island?” That’s terrifying. Islands are death traps. The only worse places to live are atop fault lines and in dormant-but-not-extinct volcano calderas. But yes, now Syenite hears the distant sough of waves rolling against rocks, somewhere below the slope on which they lie. If they’re only a hundred miles from the Maximal’s edge, then that puts them entirely too close to an underwater fault line. Basically on top of it. This is why people don’t live on islands, for Earth’s sake; they could die in a tsunami any minute.

She gets to her feet, suddenly desperate to see how bad the situation is. Her legs are stiff from lying on stone, but she stumbles around Alabaster anyway until she’s standing on the slope beside the woman. There she sees:

Ocean, as far as the eye can see, open and unbroken. The rock slope drops off sharply a few feet from where she’s standing, becoming a sheer jagged cliff that stands some few hundred feet above the sea. When she eases up to that edge and looks down, froth swirls about knifelike rocks far below; falling means death. Quickly she steps back.

“How did we get here?” she whispers, horrified.

“I brought you.”

“You—” Syenite rounds on the woman, anger already spiking through shock. Then the anger dies, leaving the shock to reign uncontested.

Make a statue of a woman: not tall, hair in a simple bun, elegant features, a graceful pose. Leave its skin and clothing the color of old warm ivory, but dab in deeper shading at irises and hair — black in both cases — and at the fingertips. The color here is a faded and rusty gradient, ground in like dirt. Or blood.

A stone eater.

“Evil Earth,” Syenite whispers. The woman does not respond.

There is a groan behind them that forestalls anything else Syenite might have said. (But what can she say? What?) She tears her eyes from the stone eater and focuses on Alabaster, who’s stirring and clearly feeling no better than Syenite about it. But she ignores him for the moment as she finally thinks of something to say.

“Why?” she asks. “Why did you bring us here?”

“To keep him safe.”

It’s just like the lorists say. The stone eater’s mouth doesn’t open when she speaks. Her eyes don’t move. She might as well be the statue she appears to be. Then sense reasserts itself, and Syenite notices what the creature has said. “To keep… him safe?” Again, the stone eater does not reply.

Alabaster groans again, so Syenite finally goes to him, helping him sit up as he begins to stir. His shirt pulls at the shoulder and he hisses, and belatedly she remembers the Guardian’s throwing knife. It’s gone now, but the shallow wound is stuck to the cloth of his shirt with dried blood. He swears as he opens his eyes. “Decaye, shisex unrelabbemet.” It’s the strange language she’s heard him use before.

“Speak Sanze-mat,” she snaps, though she’s not really irritated with him. She keeps her eyes on the stone eater, but the stone eater continues not to move.

“… Flaking, fucking rust,” he says, grabbing at the injured area. “Hurts.”

Syenite swats his hand away. “Don’t bother it. You might reopen the wound.” And they are hundreds of miles from civilization, separated from it by water as far as the eye can see in most directions. At the mercy of a creature whose race is the very definition of enigmatic, and also deadly. “We’ve got company.”

Alabaster comes fully awake, blinking at Syenite and then looking beyond her; his eyes widen a little at the sight of the stone eater. Then he groans. “Shit. Shit. What have you done this time?”

Somehow, Syenite is not entirely surprised to realize Alabaster knows a stone eater.

“I’ve saved your life,” the stone eater says.

“What?”

The stone eater’s arm rises, so steadily that the motion surpasses graceful and edges into unnatural. No other part of her moves. She’s pointing. Syenite turns to follow the gesture and sees the western horizon. But this horizon is broken, unlike the rest: There’s a flat line of sea and sky to the left and right, but at the midpoint of this line is a pimple, fat and red-glowing and smoky.

“Allia,” says the stone eater.

* * *

There’s a village on the island, it turns out. The island is nothing but rolling hills and grass and solid rock — no trees, no topsoil. An utterly useless place to live. And yet as they reach the other side of the island, where the cliffs are a bit less jagged, they see another semicircular cove not unlike the one at Allia. (Not unlike the one that was at Allia.) The similarity stops there, however — because this harbor is much smaller, and this village is carved directly into the sheer cliff face.

It’s hard to tell at first. Initially Syen thinks that what she’s seeing are the mouths of caverns, irregularly dotting the jagged rock face. Then she realizes the cave mouths are all uniformly shaped, even if they vary in size: straight lines across the bottom of the opening and up its sides, arching to a graceful point across the top. And around each opening, someone has carved out the facade of a building: elegant pillars, a beveled rectangle of a doorway, elaborate corbels of curled flowers and cavorting animals. She’s seen stranger. Not much, granted — but living in Yumenes, in the shadow of the Black Star and the Imperial Palace that crowns it, and in the Fulcrum with its walls of molded obsidian, makes one inured to oddities of art and architecture.

“She doesn’t have a name,” Alabaster tells her as they walk down a set of railed stone steps they’ve found, which seem to wend toward the village. He’s talking about the stone eater, who left them at the top of the steps. (Syen looked away for a moment and when she glanced back the stone eater was gone. Alabaster has assured her that she is still nearby. How he knows this, Syen isn’t sure she wants to know.)

“I call her Antimony. You know, because she’s mostly white? It’s a metal instead of stone, because she’s not a rogga, and anyway ‘Alabaster’ was taken.”

Cute. “And she — it — answers to that.”

“She does.” He glances back at Syenite, which is a precarious sort of thing to do considering the steps here are very, very sheer. Even though there’s a railing, anyone who takes a header down these stairs is likely to just flip over the railing and fall to a messy death down the rock face. “She doesn’t mind it, anyway, and I figure she’d object if she did.”

“Why did she bring us here?” To save them. All right, they can see Allia smoking, over the water. But Antimony’s kind usually ignores and avoids humankind, unless humans piss them off.

Alabaster shakes his head, focusing on his footing again. “There’s no ‘why’ to anything they do. Or if there is, they never bother telling us. I’ve stopped asking, frankly; waste of breath. Antimony has been coming to me for the past, hmm, five years? Usually when no one else is around.” He makes a soft, rueful sound. “I used to think I was hallucinating her.”

Yes, well. “And she doesn’t tell you anything?”

“She just says she’s here for me. I can’t decide whether it’s a supportive statement — you know, ‘I’m here for you, ’Baster, I’ll always love you, never mind that I’m a living statue that only looks like a pretty woman, I’ve got your back’—or something more sinister. Does it matter, though? If she saved our lives?”

Syen supposes not. “And where is she now?”

“Gone.”

Syen resists the urge to kick him down the steps. “Into, ah—” She knows what she’s read, but it does seem sort of absurd to say it aloud. “Into the earth?”

“I suppose so. They move through rock like it’s air; I’ve seen them do it.” He pauses on one of the stairs’ frequent landings, which almost makes Syenite run into the back of him. “You do know that’s probably how she got us here, right?”

It’s something Syen’s been trying not to think about. Even the idea of being touched by the stone eater is unnerving. To think further of being carried by the creature, dragged down beneath miles of solid rock and ocean: She cannot help shuddering. A stone eater is a thing that defies reason — like orogeny, or deadciv artifacts, or anything else that cannot be measured and predicted in a way that makes sense. But where orogeny can be understood (somewhat) and controlled (with effort), and where deadciv artifacts can at least be avoided until they rise from the rusting ocean right in front of you, stone eaters do as they please, go where they will. Lorists’ tales are generous with warnings regarding these creatures; no one tries to stop them.

This thought makes Syen herself stop, and Alabaster continues for another flight before he realizes she’s not following. “The stone eater,” she says, when he turns back to her with an annoyed look. “The one in the obelisk.”

“Not the same one,” he says, with the sort of patience one reserves for people who are being particularly stupid but don’t deserve to be told that to their faces because they’ve had a hard day. “I told you, I’ve known this one awhile.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” You idiot. “The stone eater that was in the obelisk looked at me, before… before. It moved. It wasn’t dead.”

Alabaster stares at her. “When did you see this?”

“I…” She gestures, helplessly. There aren’t words for it. “There was… it was when I… I think I saw it.” Or maybe she hallucinated it. Some kind of life-flashing-before-her-eyes vision, triggered by the Guardian’s knife? It felt so real.

Alabaster regards her for a long moment, his mobile face still in that way she is beginning to associate with his disapproval. “You did something that should’ve killed you. It didn’t, but only because of sheer dumb luck. If you… saw things… I’m not surprised.”

Syenite nods, not protesting his assessment. She felt the obelisk’s power in those moments. It would have killed her, had it been whole. As it is, she feels… burned, sort of numb, in its wake. Is that why she can’t work orogeny anymore? Or is that the lingering effect of whatever the Guardian did?

“What happened back there?” she asks him, frustrated. There’s so much that makes no sense in all of this. Why did someone try to kill Alabaster? Why did a Guardian come to finish the job? What did any of that have to do with the obelisk? Why are they here, on a death-trap island in the middle of the rusting sea? “What’s happening now? ’Baster, Earth eat us, you know more than you’re saying.”

His expression grows pained, but he finally sighs and folds his arms. “I don’t, you know. Whatever you might think, I really don’t have all the answers. I have no idea why you think I do.”

Because he knows so much else that she doesn’t. And because he’s a ten-ringer: He can do things she can’t imagine, can’t even describe, and some part of her thinks he can probably understand things she can’t, too. “You knew about that Guardian.”

“Yes.” Now he looks angry, though not at her. “I’ve run into that kind before. But I don’t know why he was there. I can only guess.”

“That’s better than nothing!”

He looks exasperated. “Okay, then. A guess: Someone, or many someones, knew about that broken obelisk in Allia’s harbor. Whoever that was, they also knew that a ten-ringer would likely notice the thing the instant he started sessing around down there. And since all it took to reactivate it was a four-ringer sessing around, it stands to reason that these mysterious Someones had no idea just how sensitive, or how dangerous, the obelisk really was. Or neither you nor I would ever have made it to Allia alive.”

Syenite frowns, putting a hand on the railing to steady herself when an especially harsh gust of wind soughs up the cliff walls. “Someones.”

“Groups. Factions, in some conflict we know nothing about and have only blundered into through sheer dumb luck.”

“Factions of Guardians?”

He snorts derisively. “You say that like it’s impossible. Do all roggas have the same goals, Syen? Do all stills? Even the stone eaters probably have their spats with one another.”

And Earth only knows what that’s like. “So one of these, ah, factions, dispatched that — Guardian — to kill us.” No. Not once Syenite had told the Guardian that she’d been the one to activate the obelisk. “To kill me.”

Alabaster nods, somber. “I imagine he’s the one who poisoned me, too, thinking I’d be the one to trigger the obelisk. Guardians don’t like to discipline us where the stills can see, if they can avoid it; might earn us inappropriate public sympathy. That broad-daylight attack was a last resort.” He shrugs, frowning as he considers it. “I guess we’re lucky he didn’t try to poison you instead. Even for me, it should’ve worked. Paralysis of any kind tends to affect the sessapinae, too; I would’ve been completely helpless. If.”

If he hadn’t been able to summon power from the amethyst obelisk, harnessing Syenite’s sessapinae to do what his could not. Now that Syen better understands what he did that night, it’s somehow worse. She cocks her head at him. “No one really knows what you’re capable of, do they?”

Alabaster sighs a little, looking away. “I don’t even know what I’m capable of, Syen. The things the Fulcrum taught me… I had to leave them behind, past a certain point. I had to make my own training. And sometimes, it seems, if I can just think differently, if I can shed enough of what they taught me and try something new, I might…” He trails off, frowning in thought. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But I guess it’s just as well that I don’t, or the Guardians would’ve killed me a long time ago.”

It’s half-babble, but Syenite sighs in understanding. “So who has the ability to send killer Guardians out to, to…” Hunt down ten-ringers. Scare the piss out of four-ringers.

“All Guardians are killers,” he snaps, bitterly. “As for who has the power to command a Guardian forth, I have no idea.” Alabaster shrugs. “Rumor has it the Guardians answer to the Emperor — supposedly the Guardians are the last bit of power he possesses. Or maybe that’s a lie, and the Yumenes Leadership families control them like they do everything else. Or are they controlled by the Fulcrum itself? No idea.”

“I heard they controlled themselves,” Syen says. It’s probably just grit gossip.

“Maybe. The Guardians are certainly as quick to kill stills as roggas when it comes to maintaining their secrets, or if a still just gets in their way. If they have a hierarchy, only the Guardians themselves recognize it. As for how they do what they do…” He takes a deep breath. “It’s some sort of surgical procedure. They’re all the children of roggas, but not roggas themselves, because there’s something about their sessapinae that makes this procedure work better on them. There’s an implant involved. Into the brain. Earth knows how they learned that, or when they started doing it, but it gives them the ability to negate orogeny. And other abilities. Worse ones.”

Syenite flinches, remembering the sound of ripping tendons. The palm of her hand stings sharply.

“He didn’t try to kill you, though,” she says. She’s looking at his shoulder, which is still visibly darker colored than the cloth around it, though the walk has probably loosened the dried blood so it no longer sticks to the wound. There’s a bit of fresh dampness there; it’s bleeding again, but thankfully not much. “That knife—”

Alabaster nods grimly. “A Guardian specialty. Their knives look like ordinary blow glass, but they aren’t. They’re like the Guardians themselves, somehow disrupting whatever it is in an orogene that makes us what we are.” He shudders. “Never knew how it felt before; it hurt like Earthfire. And no,” he says quickly, forestalling Syen’s open mouth, “I don’t know why he hit me with it. He’d already stilled us both; I was just as helpless as you.”

And that. Syenite licks her lips. “Can you… are you still…”

“Yes. It goes away after a few days.” He smiles at her look of relief. “I told you, I’ve run into Guardians like that before.”

“Why did you tell me not to let him touch me? With his skin?”

Alabaster goes silent. Syenite thinks at first he’s just being stubborn again, then she really looks at his expression and sees the shadows in it. After a moment, he blinks. “I knew another ten-ringer, when I was younger. When I was… He was a mentor, sort of. Like Feldspar is, for you.”

“Feldspar isn’t — never mind.”

He ignores her anyway, lost in memory. “I don’t know why it happened. But one day we were walking the Ring, just out enjoying a nice evening…” He falters abruptly, then looks at her with a wry, if pained, expression. “We were looking for someplace to be alone.”

Oh. Maybe that explains a few things. “I see,” she says unnecessarily.

He nods, unnecessarily. “Anyway, this Guardian shows up. Shirtless, like the one you saw. He didn’t say anything about why he’d come, either. He just… attacked. I didn’t see — it happened fast. Like in Allia.” ’Baster rubs a hand over his face. “He put Hessionite in a choke hold, but not hard enough to actually choke him. The Guardian needed skin-to-skin contact. Then he just held Hess, and, and grinned while it happened. Like it was the most beautiful thing in the world, the sick fuck.”

“What?” She almost doesn’t want to know, and yet she does. “What does the Guardian’s skin do?”

Alabaster’s jaw flexes, the muscles knotting. “It turns your orogeny inward. I guess. I don’t know a better way to explain it. But everything inside us that can move apart plates and seal faults and so on, all that power we’re born with… Those Guardians turn it back on us.”

“I, I don’t…” But orogeny doesn’t work on flesh, not directly. If it did—

… Oh.

He falls silent. Syenite does not prompt him to go on, this time.

“Yeah. So.” Alabaster shakes his head, then glances toward the stone-cut cliff village. “Shall we go on?”

It’s hard to talk, after that story. “ ’Baster.” She gestures at herself, at her uniform, which is dusty but still plainly an Imperial Orogene’s blackjacket. “Neither of us can so much as shake a pebble right now. We don’t know these people.”

“I know. But my shoulder hurts, and I’m thirsty. You see any free-flowing water around here?”

No. And no food. And there’s no way to swim back to the mainland, not across such a long expanse. That’s if Syenite knew how to swim, which she doesn’t, and if the ocean wasn’t teeming with monsters like the tales say, which it probably is.

“Fine, then,” she says, and pushes past him to lead the way. “Let me talk to them first, so you don’t get us killed.” Crazy ruster.

Alabaster chuckles a little as if he’s heard her unvoiced thought, but he does not protest, resuming the descent in her wake.

The stairs level out, eventually, into a smooth-carved walkway that curves along the cliff wall some hundred feet above the highest waterline. Syen figures that means the comm is safe from tsunami because of its elevation. (She can’t be sure, of course. All this water is still strange to her.) It also almost makes up for the lack of a protective wall — although, all things considered, the ocean makes for a pretty effective barrier between these people and anyone from outside their… comm, if it can be called that. There are a dozen or so boats docked below, bobbing at jetties that look as though they’re made of piled stone overlaid haphazardly with boards — ugly and primitive in comparison with Allia’s neat piers and pylons, but effective. And the boats are strange-looking too, at least compared to the boats she’s seen: Some are simple, elegant things that look as if they might have been carved whole from tree trunks, braced on each side by some sort of strut. Some are larger and have sails, but even these are of a completely foreign design to what she’s used to seeing.

There are people at and around the boats, some of them carting baskets to and fro, others working on an elaborate rigging of sails on one of them. They don’t look up; Syenite resists the urge to call down to them. She and Alabaster have already been seen, anyhow. At the first of the cavern mouths up ahead — each of which is huge, now that they’re on the “ground” level and can get a good look — a knot of people has begun to gather.

Syenite licks her lips and takes a deep breath as they draw near. They don’t look hostile. “Hello,” she ventures, and then waits. No one tries to kill her immediately. So far, so good.

The twenty or so people waiting for them mostly look bemused at the sight of her and Alabaster. The group is mostly children of varying ages, a few younger adults, a handful of elders, and a leashed kirkhusa that seems friendly, to judge by the wag of its stubby tail. The people are definitely Eastcoasters, mostly tall and dark like Alabaster though with a sprinkling of paler citizens, and she spots at least one pouf of ashblow hair lifting in the constant breeze. They also don’t look alarmed, which is good, though Syen gets the distinct impression they’re not used to surprise visitors.

Then an older man with an air of Leadership, or maybe just leadership, steps forward. And says something completely incomprehensible.

Syen stares at him. She can’t even tell what language that is, although it’s familiar somehow. Then — oh, of rusting course—Alabaster sort of jerks and says something back in the same tongue, and all at once everyone chuckles and murmurs and relaxes. Except Syenite.

She glares at him. “Translation?”

“I told them you were afraid I’d get us killed if I spoke first,” he says, and she considers killing him right then and there.

So it goes. They start talking, the people of this strange village and Alabaster, while Syen can’t do anything but stand there trying not to look frustrated. Alabaster pauses to translate when he can, though he stumbles over some of what the strangers are saying; they’re all talking really fast. She gets the impression that he’s summarizing. A lot. But it turns out that the comm is called Meov, and the man who has stepped forward is Harlas, their headman.

Also, they’re pirates.

* * *

“There’s no way to grow food here,” Alabaster explains. “They do what they have to do, to get by.”

This is later, after the people of Meov have invited them into the vaulted halls which make up their comm. It’s all inside the cliff — unsurprising since the island consists of little more than a straight column of undifferentiated rock — with some of the caverns natural and others carved by unknown means. All of it is surprisingly beautiful, too, with artfully vaulted ceilings, aqueduct arches running along many walls, and enough torch and lantern light that none of it feels claustrophobic. Syen doesn’t like the feel of all that rock hovering overhead and waiting to crush them next time there’s a shake, but if she must be stuck inside a death trap, at least this one is cozy.

The Meovites have put them up in a guesthouse — or rather, a house that’s been abandoned for a while and isn’t in too much disrepair. She and Alabaster have been given food from the communal fires, access to the communal baths, and a couple of changes of clothing in the local style. They’ve even been allotted a modicum of privacy — though this is difficult, as curious children keep peeking through their carved, curtainless windows to giggle at them and then run away. It’s almost cute.

Syen sits now on a pile of folded blankets, which seem to have been made for the purpose of sitting, watching as Alabaster winds a length of clean rag around his injured shoulder, holding the other end in his teeth for a moment to tighten it into a bandage. He could ask her for help, of course, but he doesn’t, so she doesn’t offer.

“They don’t trade much with the mainland,” he continues as he works. “All they’ve really got to offer is fish, and the mainland Coaster comms have plenty of that. So Meov raids. They attack vessels along the main trading routes, or extort comms for protection from attacks — yes, their attacks. Don’t ask me how it works; that’s just what the headman told me.”

It sounds… precarious. “What are they even doing here?” Syen looks around at the rough-carved walls and ceiling. “It’s an island. I mean, these caverns are nice, sort of, until the next shake or tsunami wipes the whole thing off the map. And like you said, there’s no way to grow food. Do they even have storecaches? What happens if there’s a Season?”

“Then they’ll die, I guess.” ’Baster shrugs, mostly to settle his newly tied bandage. “I asked them that, too, and they just sort of laughed the question off. You notice this island sits on top of a hot spot?”

Syen blinks. She hadn’t noticed, but then her orogeny is as numb as a hammered finger. His is, too, but the numbness is relative, apparently. “How deep?”

“Very. It’s unlikely to blow anytime soon, or ever — but if it ever does, there will be a crater here instead of islands.” He grimaces. “ ’Course, that’s if a tsunami doesn’t get the island first, close as we are to the plate boundary here. There’re so many ways to die in this place. But they know about all of them — seriously — and as far as I can tell, they don’t care. At least they’ll die free, they say.”

“Free of what? Living?”

“Sanze.” Alabaster grins when Syen’s mouth falls open. “According to Harlas, this comm’s part of a string of small island comms all along the archipelago — that’s the word for a group of islands, if you didn’t know — that extends from here down almost to the Antarctic, created by that hot spot. Some of the comms in that chain, this one included, have been around ten Seasons or longer—”

“Bullshit!”

“—and they don’t even remember when Meov was founded and, uh, carved, so maybe it’s older than that. They’ve been around since before Sanze. And as far as they know, Sanze either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that they’re here. They were never annexed.” He shakes his head. “The Coaster comms are always accusing each other of hosting the pirates, and no one with sense sails this far out; maybe nobody knows these island comms are out here. I mean, they probably know the islands exist, but they must not think anyone would be stupid enough to live on them.”

No one should be. Syen shakes her head, amazed at these people’s audacity. When another comm child pokes her head above the windowsill, blatantly staring at them, Syen can’t help smiling, and the girl’s eyes grow round as saucers before she bursts out laughing, babbles something in their choppy language, and then gets pulled away by her comrades. Brave, crazy little thing.

Alabaster chuckles. “She said, ‘The mean one actually smiles!’”

Rusting brat.

“I can’t believe they are crazy enough to live here,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this island hasn’t shaken apart, or been blown to slag, or been swamped a hundred times over.”

Alabaster shifts a little, looking cagey, and by this Syen knows to brace herself. “Well, they survive in large part because they live on fish and seaweed, see. The oceans don’t die during a Season the way the land or a smaller body of water does. If you can fish, there’s always food. I don’t think they even have storecaches.” He looks around, thoughtful. “If they can keep the place stable against shakes and blows, then I guess it would be a good place to live.”

“But how could they—”

“Roggas.” He looks at her and grins, and she realizes he’s been waiting to tell her this. “That’s how they’ve survived all this time. They don’t kill their roggas, here. They put them in charge. And they’re really, really, glad to see us.”

* * *

The stone eater is folly made flesh. Learn the lesson of its creation, and beware its gifts.

— Tablet Two, “The Incomplete Truth,” verse seven