Read Online The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin - Free Book Online Page A

save the comm, however, or at least most of it. The first is that most of the buildings don’t collapse. Tirimo might be too poor to build with stone, but most of its builders are ethical and well paid enough to use only techniques that stonelore recommends: the hanging frame, the center beam. Second, the fault line of the valley—which you’re currently peeling apart with a thought—is actually a few miles to the west. Because of these things, most of Tirimo will survive this, at least until the wells die.
    Because of these things. And because of the terrified, bouncing scream of a little boy as his father runs out of a madly swaying building.
    You pivot toward the sound instantly, habitually, orienting on the source with a mother’s ears. The man clutches the boy with both arms. He doesn’t even have a runny-sack; the first and only thing he took the time to grab was his son. The boy looks nothing like Uche. But you stare as the child bounces and reaches back toward the house for something the man has left behind (favorite toy? the boy’s mother?), and suddenly, finally, you think .
    And then you stop.
    Because, oh uncaring Earth. Look what you’ve done.
    The shake stops. The air hisses again, this time as warmer, moister air rushes into the space around you. The ground andyour skin grow instantly damp with condensation. The rumble of the valley fades, leaving only screams and the creak of falling wood and the shake-siren that has only belatedly, forlornly, begun to wail.
    You close you eyes, aching and shaking and thinking, No. I killed Uche. By being his mother . There are tears on your face. And here you thought you couldn’t cry.
    But there’s no one between you and the gate now. The gate-minders who could, have fled; besides Rask and Karra, several more were too slow to get away. You shoulder the runny-sack and head for the gate opening, scrubbing at your face with one hand. You’re smiling, too, though, and it is a bitter, aching thing. You just can’t help acknowledging the irony of the whole thing. Didn’t want to wait for death to come for you. Right.
    Stupid, stupid woman. Death was always here. Death is you.
    * * *
Never forget what you are.
—Tablet One, “On Survival,” verse ten

4
    Syenite, cut and polished
    T HIS IS SHIT, S YENITE THINKS , behind the shield of her pleasant smile.
    She doesn’t let the affront show on her face, however. Nor does she shift even minutely in the chair. Her hands—four fingers ringed respectively in plain bands of carnelian, white opal, gold, and onyx—rest on her knees. They’re out of sight below the edge of the desk, from Feldspar’s perspective. She could clench them with Feldspar none the wiser. She doesn’t.
    “Coral reefs are challenging, you realize.” Feldspar, her own hands occupied with the big wooden cup of safe, smiles over its rim. She knows full well what’s behind Syenite’s smile. “Not like ordinary rock. Coral is porous, flexible. The fine control required to shatter it without triggering a tsunami is difficult to achieve.”
    And Syen could do it in her sleep. A two-ringer could do this. A grit could do it—though, admittedly, not without substantial collateral damage. She reaches for her own cup of safe, turning the wooden hemisphere in her fingers so that they will notshake, then taking a sip. “I appreciate that you have assigned me a mentor, senior.”
    “No, you don’t.” Feldspar smiles, too, and sips from her cup of safe, ringed pinky in the air while she does so. It’s as if they’re having a private contest, etiquette versus etiquette, best shit-eating grin take all. “If it’s any consolation, no one will think less of you.”
    Because everyone knows what this is really about. That doesn’t erase the insult, but it does give Syen a degree of comfort. At least her new “mentor” is a ten-ringer. That, too, is comforting, that they thought so much of her. She’ll scrape whatever morsels of self-esteem she can out