Free The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin Page A

the true reward for excellence: privacy. And choice. After closing her eyes for a moment in aching want, Syen heads down the hall until she reaches the only door with a mat in front of it.
    In that moment, though, she hesitates. She knows nothing about this man. He’s earned the highest rank that exists within their order, which means no one really cares what he does anymore so long as he keeps any embarrassing behaviors private. And he is a man who has been powerless most of his life, only lately granted autonomy and privilege over others. No one will demote him for anything so trivial as perversion or abuse. Not if his victim is just another orogene.
    There’s no point to this. She doesn’t have a choice. With a sigh, Syenite knocks.
    And because she isn’t expecting a person so much as a trial to be endured, she’s actually surprised when an annoyed voice snaps from within, “ What? ”
    She’s still wondering how to reply to that when footsteps slap against stone—briskly, annoyed even in their sound—and the door whisks open. The man who stands there glaring at her is wearing a rumpled robe, one side of his hair flattened, fabric lines painting a haphazard map over his cheek. He’s younger than she expected. Not young; almost twice her age, at least forty. But she’d thought… well. She’s met so many six-and seven-ringers in their sixth and seventh decades that she’dexpected a ten-ringer to be ancient. And calmer, dignified, more self-possessed. Something. He’s not even wearing his rings, though she can see a faint paler stripe on some of his fingers, in between his angry gesticulations.
    “ What , in the name of every two-minute earth jerk?” When Syen just stares at him, he lapses into another tongue—something she’s never heard before, though the sound of it is vaguely Coaster, and distinctly pissed. Then he rubs a hand over his hair, and Syen almost laughs. His hair is dense, tight-curled stuff, the kind of hair that needs to be shaped if it’s to look stylish, and what he’s doing just messes it up more.
    “I told Feldspar,” he says, returning to perfectly fluent Sanzed and plainly struggling for patience, “and those other cackling meddlers on the senior advisory board to leave me alone . I just got off circuit, I haven’t had two hours to myself in the last year that weren’t shared with a horse or a stranger, and if you’re here to give me more orders, I’m going to ice you where you stand.”
    She’s pretty sure this is hyperbole. It’s the kind of hyperbole he shouldn’t use; Fulcrum orogenes just don’t joke about certain things. It’s one of the unspoken rules… but maybe a ten-ringer is beyond such things. “Not orders, exactly,” she manages, and his face twists.
    “Then I don’t want to hear whatever you’re here to tell me. Go the rust away .” And he starts to close the door in her face.
    She can’t believe it at first. What kind of—Really? It is indignity on top of indignity; bad enough to have to do this in the first place, but to be disrespected in the process?
    She jams a foot in the door’s path before it can build up much momentum and leans in to say, “I’m Syenite.”
    It doesn’t mean anything to him, she can see by his now-furious glare. He inhales to start shouting, she has no idea what but she doesn’t want to hear it, and before he can she snaps, “I’m here to fuck you, Earth burn it. Is that worth disturbing your beauty rest?”
    Part of her is appalled at her own language, and her own anger. The rest of her is satisfied, because that shuts him right the rust up.
    He lets her in.
    Now it’s awkward. Syen sits at the small table in his suite—a suite, he’s got a whole suite of furnished rooms to himself —and watches while he fidgets. He’s sitting on one of the room’s couches, pretty much perched on its edge. The far edge, she notes, as if he fears to sit too close to her.
    “I didn’t think it would start again this soon,”