Steel now gazes down at Jija with her. “It never ends,” he says. “It never gets better.”
Nassun says nothing. Steel’s words fall into her like a stone into water, and she does not ripple in their wake.
“You’ll kill everything you love, eventually. Your mother. Schaffa. All your friends here in Found Moon. No way around it.”
She closes her eyes.
“No way… except one.” A careful, considered pause. “Shall I tell you that way?”
Schaffa is coming. She can sess him, the buzz of him, the constant torment of the thing in his brain that he will not let her remove. Schaffa, who loves her.
You’ll kill everything you love, eventually.
“Yes,” she makes herself say. “Tell me how not to…” She trails off. She can’t say hurt them, because she has already hurt so many. She’s a monster. But there must be a way for her monstrousness to be contained. For the threat of an orogene’s existence to be ended.
“The Moon’s coming back, Nassun. It was lost so long ago, flung away like a ball on a paddle-string—but the string has drawn it back. Left to itself, it will pass by and fly off again; it’s done that before, several times now.”
She can see one of her father’s eyes, set into a chunk of his face, gazing up at her from amid the pile. His eyes were green, and now they have become a beautiful shade of clouded peridot.
“But with the Gate, you can… nudge it. Just a little. Adjust its tra—” A soft, amused sound. “The path that the Moon naturally follows. Instead of letting it pass again, lost and wandering, bring it home. Father Earth’s been missing it. Bring it straight here and let them have a reunion.”
Oh. Oh. She understands, suddenly, why Father Earth wants her dead.
“It will be a terrible thing,” Steel says softly, nearly in her ear because he’s moved closer to her. “It will end the Seasons. It will end every season. And yet… what you’re feeling right now, you need never feel again. No one will ever suffer again.”
Nassun turns to stare at Steel. He’s bent toward her, a look of almost comical slyness chiseled on his face.
Then Schaffa trots to a stop before them. He’s staring at the ruin of Jija, and she sees the moment when the realization of what he’s seeing flickers across his face, a mobile shockwave. His icewhite gaze lifts to her, and she searches his expression with her belly clenched against imminent pain.
There is only anguish in his face. Fear for her, sorrow on her behalf, alarm at her bloodied shoulder. Wariness and protective anger, as he focuses on Steel. He is still her Schaffa. The ache of Jija fades within the ease of his regard. Schaffa will love her no matter what she becomes.
So Nassun turns then, to Steel, and says, “Tell me how to bring the Moon home.”
APPENDIX 1
A catalog of Fifth Seasons that have been recorded prior to and since the founding of the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation, from most recent to oldest
Choking Season: 2714–2719 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption. Location: the Antarctics near Deveteris. The eruption of Mount Akok blanketed a five-hundred-mile radius with fine ash clouds that solidified in lungs and mucous membranes. Five years without sunlight, although the northern hemisphere was not affected as much (only two years).
Acid Season: 2322–2329 Imperial. Proximate cause: plus-ten-level shake. Location: unknown; far ocean. A sudden plate shift birthed a chain of volcanoes in the path of a major jet stream. This jet stream became acidified, flowing toward the western coast and eventually around most of the Stillness. Most coastal comms perished in the initial tsunami; the rest failed or were forced to relocate when their fleets and port facilities corroded and the fishing dried up. Atmospheric occlusion by clouds lasted seven years; coastal pH levels remained untenable for many years more.
Boiling Season: 1842–1845 Imperial. Proximate cause: hot spot eruption beneath a great lake. Location: Somidlats, Lake Tekkaris quartent. The eruption launched millions of gallons of steam and particulates into the air, which triggered acidic rain and atmospheric occlusion over the southern half of the continent for three years. The northern half suffered no negative impacts, however, so archeomests dispute whether this qualifies as a “true” Season.
Breathless Season: 1689–1798 Imperial. Proximate cause: mining accident. Location: Nomidlats, Sathd quartent. An entirely human-caused Season triggered when miners at the edge of the northeastern Nomidlats coalfields set off underground fires. A relatively mild Season featuring occasional sunlight and no ashfall or acidification except in the region; few comms declared Seasonal Law. Approximately fourteen million people in the city of Heldine died in the initial natural-gas eruption and rapidly spreading fire sinkhole before Imperial Orogenes successfully quelled and sealed the edges of the fires to prevent further spread. The remaining mass could only be isolated, where it continued to burn for one hundred and twenty years. The smoke of this, spread via prevailing winds, caused respiratory problems and occasional mass suffocations in the region for several decades. A secondary effect of the loss of the Nomidlats coalfields was a catastrophic rise in heating fuel costs and the wider adaption of geothermal and hydroelectric heating, leading to the establishment of the Geneer Licensure.
The Season of Teeth: 1553–1566 Imperial. Proximate cause: oceanic shake triggering a supervolcanic explosion. Location: Arctic Cracks. An aftershock of the oceanic shake breached a previously unknown hot spot near the north pole. This triggered a supervolcanic explosion; witnesses report hearing the sound of the explosion as far as the Antarctics. Ash went upper-atmospheric and spread around the globe rapidly, although the Arctics were most heavily affected. The harm of this Season was exacerbated by poor preparation on the part of many comms, because some nine hundred years had passed since the last Season; popular belief at the time was that the Seasons were merely legend. Reports of cannibalism spread from the north all the way to the Equatorials. At the end of this Season, the Fulcrum was founded in Yumenes, with satellite facilities in the Arctics and Antarctics.
Fungus Season: 602 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption. Location: western Equatorials. A series of eruptions during monsoon season increased humidity and obscured sunlight over approximately 20 percent of the continent for six months. While this was a mild Season as such things go, its timing created perfect conditions for a fungal bloom that spread across the Equatorials into the northern and southern Midlats, wiping out then-staple-crop miroq (now extinct). The resulting famine lasted four years (two for the fungus blight to run its course, two more for agriculture and food distribution systems to recover). Nearly all affected comms were able to subsist on their own stores, thus proving the efficacy of Imperial reforms and Season planning, and the Empire was generous in sharing stored seed with those regions that had been miroq-dependent. In its aftermath, many comms of the middle latitudes and coastal regions voluntarily joined the Empire, doubling its range and beginning its Golden Age.
Madness Season: 3 Before Imperial–7 Imperial. Proximate cause: volcanic eruption. Location: Kiash Traps. The eruption of multiple vents of an ancient supervolcano (the same one responsible for the Twin Season of approximately 10,000 years previous) launched large deposits of the dark-colored mineral augite into the air. The resulting ten years of darkness was not only devastating in the usual Seasonal way, but resulted in a higher than usual incidence of mental illness. The Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation (commonly called the Sanze Empire) was born in this Season as Warlord Verishe of Yumenes conquered multiple ailing comms using psychological warfare techniques. (See The Art of Madness, various authors, Sixth University Press.) Verishe named herself Emperor on the day the first sunlight returned.