The Girl and the Stars

Erris pulled himself back onto the gently swinging cage and Kao, with Yaz’s help, lifted Quell toward him. Erris took hold of Quell from behind, reaching one arm under his armpit and across his chest, then began to climb, as if Quell were a small child and his considerable weight was nothing. Quell panted through his teeth, clearly in great pain, but made no cry, just a groan as Erris lifted him over the top of the cage, avoiding the lifting cables.

Yaz turned to make a quick study of Kao. “I thought they’d killed you.” She found her voice thick, tears in her eyes, surprised at how glad she was to be wrong. “Come on. Quickly. We need to find Maya and Zeen and—” She wanted to say Kaylal, she wanted to say Arka, and even Jerra, she wanted to say all of them. But the cage was leaving too fast, and even if they had time it wouldn’t hold many.

“I’ll find them,” Kao said and immediately rushed off, shoving through the growing crowd of onlookers. They looked unusually similar, all of them grey with the dust that clung to their wet hides, their hair, and their skin. Kao swung his head this way and that, his height offering him a better view. He called for Zeen, at first in a tentative almost-hiss as if afraid someone might hear him.

Yaz set off in the opposite direction, pushing her way through the dazed survivors as gently as time allowed, which wasn’t very. They almost seemed to be ghosts, haunting the ruins, but those who had been tainted had more in common with ruins than with ghosts. They had been haunted but now stood empty. She hoped they could rebuild their lives.

“Zeen!” She shouted her brother’s name. The first loud sound since the howling fight and the falling of stars. The greetings and reunions within the grey and milling crowd had been muted, muffled by wonder, as though everyone worried that this was a dream from which too much excitement might wake them. “Zeen!” Yaz had no such worries.

She glanced back to the cage. Erris was gone from it, Quell lying at the bottom coming into view above the heads of the crowd. Thurin stood beside Quell, looking worried. He cast about then found her. “Hurry!” he yelled. “We’ll be out of reach soon!”

Yaz started back reflexively, but someone caught her arm. For a moment she tried to tear herself free, thinking it an attack.

“It’s me. Arka.” Her scars were just visible beneath the layer of damp, grimy dust. “You’re going back.” Not a question.

“Yes.” Yaz relaxed a fraction, glad to have told the truth. “Have you seen Zeen or Maya?”

Arka shook her head as if the question were a distraction. “Pome must have arranged this collection with the priests. Gods know how he speaks to them but it seems that he can.” She furrowed her brow. “But I can’t see Pome anywhere, and those you’ve returned will stand with us. It’s going to be alright here. You don’t have to go back to the priests. Not anymore.”

“I’m not going back to the regulator. I’m going back to the ice, and I’m taking anyone who wants to come with me.”

Arka stepped back, eyes widening. “To die in the wind? That’s madness. The priests will be waiting for you, and even if you could escape them there’s nothing up there for our kind. We’re broken.”

“We’re going to try. Quina—”

“Ha!” Arka barked the laugh, turning the heads of those nearby. “You’ve been sold that old tale of the green belt around a white world. Next you’ll be telling me the one about the moon that keeps it warm!”

Yaz didn’t know what a moon was but she didn’t have time to ask. Glancing back she saw that the cage was rising above the heads of those around it. Even as she watched, Erris swung onto it, seemingly unburdened by yet another load tied to his back. He turned and called to her with real urgency. “Hurry!”

“Zeen!” She bellowed his name and more faces turned her way.

A fear was growing in Yaz. The fear that her brother lay dead or dying among the ruins, perhaps broken-backed, wrapped around a girder by the power of the flood, or swept down some drain to the undercity and drowned in the dark. Even if he lived this chance wouldn’t come again. Whatever precautions were taken up there on the ice they would be doubled and doubled again after Erris and Quell and Thurin arrived there equipped for a journey.

“They say set a gerant to find a needle,” Arka said beside her. “You need height to find someone lost in a crowd.”

“He should have heard me . . .” But Yaz took the point. She turned her back on Arka and started returning to the cage. As she pushed her way through she saw Erris leaning over the top to pass his load to Thurin. Kao beat her back and the cage swung with the addition of his weight as he began to climb it. She hoped he had Zeen with him but he seemed to be alone.

By the time Yaz laid her hands on the bars and saw Quell, deathly pale, staring at the great hole above them, she had to reach up to snag the cage. Shockingly, she barely had the strength to haul herself up so her foot could find a hold on the underside. The effort nearly broke her. Touching the river twice had left her in ruins, though by rights she should be dead.

She would look for Zeen from the top. If he was lying hurt or unconscious she would see him and send Erris to recover him. If she couldn’t see him she would jump back down. Whatever the cost she was not leaving without her brother.

She reached the top of the rising cage and hung exhausted for a few deep breaths as Erris and Kao began climbing down inside. The noise of the crowd surrounded her, still ringing with the joy of reunions, the hurt of wounds being cleaned, the weeping of the bereaved, the groans of the dying. But something had changed. A muting of conversation rippled out and Yaz turned her head in the direction it came from.

The Broken parted before Bexen, Pome’s enforcer, the largest gerant on the field of battle, the starlight reflecting dully on his iron breastplate. His good eye and the milky one both stared in Yaz’s direction, bright with malice. As the people hurried to get out of Bexen’s way Yaz saw Pome beside him. He still held the red star that had given him control over his hunter. He clutched it in his bare hand now. The left side of his face had been scraped raw and torn, as though he had been dragged some distance across the rock, perhaps refusing to let go of his star when it moved to obey Yaz’s will along with all the others.

The last few people cleared from their path, revealing Zeen, helpless in Bexen’s grasp, one huge hand wrapped about his neck, the other holding a notched black iron blade close by. Two other gerants came behind them, glaring at the crowd as if challenging them to make a move.

“Yaz of the Ictha.” Pome wore a tight, victorious smile. “Your companions will exit that cage and you will put your hands through the bars for your wrists to be bound. If this is not done Bexen will kill the boy and your friends will be dispatched with spear thrusts.”

“Let him go!” Yaz shouted. But Pome’s smile only widened.