You start to protest. “I need to talk to you in private.”
She stares back at you. You blink, confused, thrown, annoyed. She keeps staring. Lerna shifts from foot to foot beside you, a silent pressure. Hoa merely watches, following your lead. Finally you get the message: her comm, her rules, and if you want to live here… You sigh and file in behind the others.
Inside, the apartment is warmer than in most of the comm, and darker; the curtain makes a difference, even though the walls glow. Makes it feel like night, which it probably is, topside. A good idea to steal for your own place, you think—before checking yourself, because you shouldn’t be thinking long term. And then you check yourself again because you’ve lost Nassun and Jija’s trail, so you should think long term. And then—
“Right,” says Ykka, sounding bored as she moves to sit on a simple, low divan, cross-legged, with her chin propped on a fist. The others sit as well, but she’s looking at you. “I’d been thinking about some changes already. You two arrived at a convenient time.”
For a moment you think she’s including Lerna in that “you two,” but he sits down on the divan nearest hers, and there’s something, some ease of movement or comfort in his manner, that tells you he’s heard this before. She means Hoa, then. Hoa takes the floor, which makes him seem more like a child… though he isn’t. It’s strange how hard it is for you to remember that.
You sit down gingerly. “Convenient for what?”
“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Strawberry-Hay says. He’s looking at you, though his face is tilted toward Ykka. “We don’t know anything about these people, Yeek.”
“We know they survived out there until yesterday,” says Hjarka, leaning to the side and propping her elbow on the divan’s arm. “That’s something.”
“That’s nothing.” Strawberry-Hay—you really want to know his name—sets his jaw. “Our Hunters can survive out there.”
Hunters. You blink. That’s one of the old use-castes—a deprecated one, per Imperial Law, so nobody gets born into it anymore. Civilized societies don’t need hunter-gatherers. That Castrima feels the need says more about the state of the comm than anything else Ykka has told you.
“Our Hunters know the terrain, and our Strongbacks, too, yeah,” Hjarka says. “Nearby. Newcomers know more about the conditions beyond our territory—the people, the hazards, everything else.”
“I’m not sure I know anything useful,” you begin. But even as you say this, you frown, because you’re remembering that thing you started noticing a few roadhouses ago. The sashes or rags of fine silk on too many of the Equatorials’ wrists. The closed looks they gave you, their focus while others sat shell-shocked. At every encampment you saw them look their fellow survivors over, picking out any Sanzeds who were better equipped or healthier or otherwise doing better than average. Speaking to those chosen people in quiet voices. Leaving the next morning in groups larger than those in which they had arrived.
Does that mean anything? Like keeping to like is the old way, but races and nations haven’t been important for a long time. Communities of purpose and diverse specialization are more efficient, as Old Sanze proved. Yet Yumenes is slag at the bottom of a fissure vent by now, and the laws and ways of the Empire no longer have any bite. Maybe this is the first sign of change, then. Maybe in a few years you’ll have to leave Castrima and find a comm full of Midlatters like you who are brown but not too brown, big but not too big, with hair that’s curly or kinky but never ashblow or straight. Nassun can come with you, in that case.
But how long would the both of you be able to hide what you are? No comm wants roggas. No comm except this one.
“You know more than we do,” Ykka says, interrupting your woolgathering. “And anyway, I don’t have the patience to argue about it. I’m telling you what I told him a few weeks back.” She jerks her head at Lerna. “I need advisors—people who know this Season ground to sky. You’re it until I replace you.”
You’re more than a little surprised. “I don’t know a rusting thing about this comm!”
“That’s my job—and his, and hers.” Ykka nods toward Strawberry-Hay and Hjarka. “Anyway, you’ll learn.”
Your mouth hangs open. Then it occurs to you that she did include Hoa in this gathering, didn’t she? “Earthfires and rustbuckets, you want a stone eater as an advisor?”
“Why not? They’re here, too. More of them than we think.” She focuses on Hoa, who watches her, his expression unreadable. “That’s what you told me.”
“It’s true,” he says quietly. Then: “I can’t speak for them, though. And we aren’t part of your comm.”
Ykka leans down to give him a hard look. Her expression is something between hostile and guarded. “You have an impact on our comm, if only as a potential threat,” she says. Her eyes flick toward you. “And the ones you’re, uh, attached to, are part of this comm. You care what happens to them, at least. Don’t you?”
You realize you haven’t seen Ykka’s stone eater, the woman with the ruby hair, for a few hours. That doesn’t mean she isn’t nearby, though. You learned better than to trust the appearance of absence with Antimony. Hoa says nothing in reply to Ykka. You’re suddenly, irrationally glad he’s bothered to stay visible for you.
“As for why you, and why the doctor,” Ykka says, straightening, and speaking to you even if she’s still eying Hoa, “it’s because I need a mix of perspectives. A Leader, even if she doesn’t want to lead.” She eyes Hjarka. “Another local rogga, who doesn’t bother to bite his tongue about how stupid he thinks I am.” She nods to Strawberry-Hay, who sighs. “A Resistant and a doctor, who knows the road. A stone eater. Me. And you, Essun, who could kill us all.” She smiles thinly. “Makes sense to give you a reason not to.”
You have no real idea what to say, to that. You think, fleetingly, that Ykka should invite Alabaster to her circle of advisors, then, if the ability to destroy Castrima is a qualification. But that could lead to awkward questions.
To Hjarka and Strawberry-Hay you say, “Are you both from here?”
“Nope,” says Hjarka.
“Yes,” says Ykka. Hjarka glares at her. “You’ve lived here since you were young, Hjar.”
Hjarka shrugs. “Nobody here remembers that except you, Yeek.”
Strawberry-Hay says, “I was born and raised here.”
Two orogenes, surviving to adulthood in a comm that didn’t kill them. “What’s your name?”
“Cutter Strongback.” You wait. He smiles with half his mouth and neither of his eyes.
“Cutter’s secret wasn’t out, so to speak, while we were growing up,” Ykka says. She’s leaning against the wall behind the divan now, rubbing her eyes as if she’s tired. “People guessed anyway. The rumors were enough to keep him from being adopted into the comm, under the previous headman. Of course, I’ve offered to give him the name a half-dozen times over now.”
“If I give up ‘Strongback,’” Cutter replies. He’s still smiling in that paper-thin way.
Ykka lowers her hand. Her jaw is tight. “Denying what you are didn’t keep people from knowing what you are.”
“And flaunting it isn’t what saved you.”
Ykka takes a deep breath. The muscles in her jaw flex, relax. “And that would be why I asked you to do this, Cutter. But let’s move on.”
So it goes on.
You sit there throughout the meeting, trying to understand the undercurrents you’re picking up on, still not believing you’re even here, while Ykka lays out all of the problems facing Castrima. It’s stuff you’ve never had to think about before: Complaints that the hot water in the communal pools isn’t hot enough. A serious shortage of potters but an overabundance of people who know how to sew. Fungus in one of the granary caverns; several months’ supply had to be burned lest it contaminate the rest. A meat shortage. You’ve gone from thinking obsessively about one person to having to be concerned with many. It’s a bit sudden.