The Girl and the Stars

Thurin reached out to the water, putting his hand into it, flat against the rock at the bottom, long fingers splayed.

“Ah . . .” Something twisted inside Yaz, a curious sensation, as if she were a pool into which a ball of ice had fallen, sending out ripples. Only she was the ice and the ripples as well as being the pool.

Thurin let out a small gasp, pain perhaps, and raised his hand. Somehow the water rose with his hand, a slowly undulating glove, inches thick on every side, beautiful where the light came through to project moving lines of light and shadow across Yaz’s stomach and thighs.

“You’re a witch-child!”

Thurin laughed and the water fell away in sparkling drops. “I’m not a child. And it’s an old blood that runs through us. Older than the Ictha or any other tribe. Marjal blood.”

“Us?” Yaz wasn’t sure she wanted this strange young man as her kin.

“Well, you’re too small for a gerant, unless you’re twelve . . . and you don’t look twelve.” For a moment Thurin’s gaze ran the length of her.

Yaz let anger burn away any sense of shame at her state of undress. “I’ve seen the long night sixteen times. None but the Ictha can endure it.”

“Ah, but that’s why the regulator threw you down, is it not?” An eyebrow arched. “You wouldn’t have lasted many more. You don’t strike me as a hunska even though you have the black hair but your eyes are too pale. Are you quick?”

“Quick enough.” Yaz thought of Zeen. Her brother made her seem slow. In the hand-slap game there was no beating him, and although his eyes weren’t the night black of some southerners like Quina, they were the darkest she knew among the Ictha.

“Not gerant huge or hunska fast, and yet thrown down here with the rest of us. You’re a marjal, Yaz.”

She hadn’t been sure Thurin had even registered her name. It sounded strange in his mouth, the southern tribes blunted the edges of their words.

“Will I be able to do . . . that . . . then?” She nodded at the rippling puddle.

Thurin pursed his lips. “We marjals have many tricks; the gods reach into their bag of marvels and scatter us with this gift or that, but never too many. The most common are skills to work with shadow or air. My talent is the most prized of the basic skills down here. We can influence the ice, even in its molten form.” He waved a hand at the puddle and the ripples vanished. “I can also work with fire. That’s a rarer skill than ice-work but useless. There’s nothing to burn here.” He shook his head, smiling ruefully at the gods’ joke. “The rarest elemental skill is rock-work. But there’s no rock on the ice and no fire beneath it.”

“How do you even know you can work flame if there’s no fire down here?” Yaz asked.

Thurin smiled. “At the forge they melt iron down. I can understand the heat, move it around. It feels the same as when I manipulate the ice. I think my flame-work might actually be stronger than my ice-work.” He shook his head again at the irony.

“Are there other magics?” Yaz asked. None of this sounded like the river that runs through all things, the source of her strangeness.

“Some. Oddities that crop up now and then. Welaz could make things float in the air. Anything. Even people. But he’s dead now. Old Gella can make a wound heal faster than it should. Dekkan can find things that are lost.” He shrugged and pulled his coat around him. “How can you not be cold?” he asked.

“Why did you come out here?” Yaz tried to turn the conversation in a new direction.

“Maybe I wanted to spy on someone.” Thurin met her eyes with a frank smile and Yaz turned away. “Or maybe I needed to check I still had value.”

“Do the marjals lose their powers then?” Yaz asked. “I know the Tainted had you. Is that why they let you go? Your power got weak?”

“We don’t lose our skills, no. If anything they get stronger. Once ice-sworn, always ice-sworn. But I’m exhausted and underfed.” He looked down at his own thinness. “And the Tainted don’t let anyone go. Ever. Arka led a raid to get me back. A woman died. Another man lost his eye. They should have left me.” He stared out into the darkness, bleak and silent for a moment. “Tarko wouldn’t have let them risk it if I weren’t valuable to the Broken.”

“But why? The trick with the water is pretty but—”

“They need me to dig through ice. I can dig faster than three gerants put together. For a tenth of the food ration.” Thurin forced a smile and patted his narrow stomach. “I like the digging too. If I don’t use my ice-work regularly then the energy builds up inside me and when I do eventually use it . . . well, it can be dramatic.”

Yaz looked around at the echoingly large space about them. “These caverns are huge. Why is it so important to dig new ones?”

“For these.” Thurin turned back toward the wall, thrusting his hand out. High up the ice shattered and the brilliant star fell within a cloud of glowing fragments to strike the rock beneath.

“Should you have done that?” Yaz glanced back toward the settlement, alarmed. For all that she wanted to find Zeen she knew she needed help from the Broken. Getting banished on her first night would cap off, with one stupid move, a day’s journey that had started with another very stupid move.

“Relax. It’s us ice-workers who put the things up there in the first place and they’re always being resunk. All of the stars generate a very small amount of heat even without sigils around them. They sink through the ice very slowly. The tiny ones, little more than dust really, sink so slowly that the current of the ice can lift them. The big ones all end up on the bedrock given time.” He advanced on the star as he spoke until he was reduced to a silhouette with the light streaming all around him.

Thurin’s steps grew slower and closer together as he approached the star, almost as though he were fighting to make progress against a great wind. Yaz could hear the strain in his voice when he spoke. “This is the largest of the stars we use as lights. People don’t like to get near them, especially the bigger ones, so we use smaller ones in town.”

“You . . . you’re not worried someone will steal it?” Yaz wondered if that might be exactly what he was doing right now.

“The Tainted? No, the taints can’t abide them. Won’t go near one if they have a choice.” There was real pain in Thurin’s voice now, and still he had a yard to go if he were to pick the stone up.

“What are you doing?” Yaz called, squinting into the light. “Why are you doing it?”

“Proving . . . something . . . to . . . myself.” Thurin took another step then fell back with a cry.

“Thurin!” Yaz ran to help him as he crawled away, the light flaring behind him.