Broken Earth 1 - The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Author:N. K. Jemisin [Jemisin, N. K.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

15

you’re among friends

YOU REACH “THE PLACE WITH all the orogenes,” and it’s not at all what you were expecting. It’s abandoned, for one thing. It’s not a comm, for another.

Not in any real sense of the word. The road gets wider as you approach, flattening into the land until it vanishes completely near the middle of town. A lot of comms do this, get rid of the road to encourage travelers to stop and trade, but those comms usually have some place to trade in, and you can’t see anything here that looks like a storefront or marketplace or even an inn. Worse, it doesn’t have a wall. Not a stone pile, not a wire fence, not even a few sharpened sticks jabbed into the ground around the town perimeter. There’s nothing to separate this community from the land around it, which is forested and covered in scraggly underbrush that makes perfect cover for an attacking force.

But in addition to the town’s apparent abandonment, and lack of a wall, there are other oddities. Lots of them, you notice as you and the others look around. There aren’t enough fields, for one. A comm that can hold a few hundred people, as this one seems to be able to do, should have more than the single (stripped bare) hectare of scraggly choya stalks that you noticed on the way in. It should have a bigger pasture than the small plot of dried-out green you see near the town’s center. You don’t see a storehouse, either, elevated or otherwise. Okay, maybe that’s hidden; lots of comms do that. But then you notice that all the buildings are in wildly varied styles: this one tall and city-narrow, that one wide and flat to the ground like something from a warmer climate, yet another that looks to be a sod-covered dome half set into the earth like your old house in Tirimo. There’s a reason most comms pick a style and stick to it: Uniformity sends a visual message. It warns potential attackers that the comm’s members are equally unified in purpose and the willingness to defend themselves. This comm’s visual message is… confused. Uncaring, maybe. Something you can’t interpret. Something that makes you more nervous than if the comm had been teeming with hostile people instead.

You and the others proceed warily, slowly, through the empty streets of the town. Tonkee’s not even pretending to be at ease. She’s got twin glassknives in her hands, stark and black-bladed; you don’t know where she’s been hiding them although that skirt of hers could conceal an army. Hoa seems calm, but who can really tell what Hoa feels? He seemed calm when he turned a kirkhusa into a statue, too.

You don’t pull your knife. If there really are lots of roggas here, there’s only one weapon that will save you if they take exception to your presence.

“You sure this is the right place?” you say to Hoa.

Hoa nods emphatically. Which means that there are lots of people here; they’re just hiding.

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