The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2)

by N.K. Jemisin

“There are those of my kind who believe this world can safely bear only one people.”

“So stone eaters used to be us, and now you want to kill us. Why should we trust you?”

anymore? Every use of orogeny kills him slowly. Flaking rust—you’re the only one left who even has the potential to open the Gate.

What about Nassyn?!

You shake your head. “You were useful. That worked for the Imperial Orogenes, too.” But being useful to others is not the same thing as being equal.

“Yes. It is.” She lifts her head. It wasn’t a sob or a laugh. She’s furious. Just not at you. “You’re saying these people—my parents, my creche teachers, my friends, my lovers—You’re saying just leave them to their fate. You’re saying they’re nothing. That they’re not people at all, just beasts whose nature it is to kill. You’re saying roggas are nothing but, but prey and that’s all we’ll ever be! No! I won’t accept that.”

You know you’re right. The belief that orogenes will never be anything but the world’s meat dances amid the cells of you, like magic. It isn’t fair. You just want your life to matter. But you say: “I hope I’m not right, too.”

Once Wudeh is safely abed, Schaffa comes back over to where Nassun now sits on the bench. She’s calmer for the delay, which is good, because she knows she’s going to need to seem calm and cool and professional in order to convince him to let some half-grown, half-trained girl experiment on him with magic.

This is a mistaje. She xalls ur silver.

This is folly, she knows. Love is no inoculation against murder.

“My compassionate one. I do not want my corestone removed.”

It means that then Schaffa can be her father. He is in every way that matters already. Nassun does not think this in so many words because there are things she is not yet prepared to confront about herself or her life. (This will change very soon.) But it is in her mind.

And she is tired. Tired and done. “I like being an orogene, Daddy,” she says. His eyes widen. This is a terrible thing that she is saying. It is a terrible thing that she loves herself. “I like making things move, and doing the silver, and falling into the obelisks. I don’t like—”

She knows it’s irrational. It is no one’s fault except Jija’s that Jija is too afraid of orogenes to love his own children. Once, however, Nassun could love her father without qualification. Now, she needs someone to blame for the loss of that perfect love. She knows her mother can bear it.

Racism killed uche

He lets out a long, slow sigh. “There was a chance they wouldn’t.” You shake your head. The words are so impossible to believe that they sound like gibberish. But he adds, “Any chance was worth trying.” He does not say for you, but you feel it. It is a subtext that is nearly sessable beneath the words’ surface.

“Who the rust cares how it happened?” That’s Sekkim, one of the Innovators. You only know him because Tonkee constantly complains that he’s too stupid to rightly be part of the caste and should instead be dumped into something nonessential, like Leadership.

Lolz

This stuff that is killing Alabaster, the father of your other dead child, NOT ONE MORE RUSTING CHILD. For how many centuries has the world killed rogga children so that everyone else’s children can sleep easy? Everyone is Jija, the whole damned world is Schaffa, Castrima is Tirimo is the Fulcrum NOT ONE MORE and you turn with the obelisk torrenting its power through you to begin killing everyone within and beyond your sight.

You are in the infirmary, looking down at an incongruously small, yet finely made, stone sculpture. No color to this one, no polish, just dull sandy brown all over. It is almost abstract, archetypal: Man in His Final Moment. Truncation of the Spirit. Neverperson, Unperson. Once Found but Now Lost. Or maybe you can just call it Alabaster.

Ugh!

Yes. It’s as the teachers told you back in the Fulcrum: Roggas are one and the same. The crimes of any are the crimes of all. “No one will kill her.” That’s Hoa. Of course he’s here now, guarding his investment.

You are nothing. No; you are death. And you’ve killed yet another person you loved.

Don’t rust it up, Essun. Innon and I didn’t love you for nothing.’”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Essun,” in your ear, maybe you can feel like that. Maybe you are human, just for a little while.

She stops because she doesn’t know what it is. But you do. It’s a fucking coup. Doesn’t matter who’s in charge, but on this one issue, you’re going to be the dictator. You will not allow Alabaster to have died saving these people from you for nothing.

Yikes