The Girl and the Stars

“Those messages will become more urgent and insistent if he discovers that you have a power over the star-stones.”

“But you said all the priests are quantals . . .” Yaz frowned. “Why would he be so eager for one more?”

“Many of the priests have some quantal blood in them, but for most of them it’s just a touch. Even Pome may have a small touch of it. One of the reasons he so resents his life down here. He feels he should be up there, living in the Black Rock, a lord of the ice!

“A few of the priesthood are half-blood quantals. I don’t know if any of them are full-bloods. And even among full-bloods any level of mastery with the star-stones is rare.”

“What are the stars?” Yaz asked, wondering what the priests did with them, why the tribes had never seen even their dust.

“Things of the Missing. The heart of their civilisation,” said Eular. “Our ancestors made similar stones. The largest of them sat deep within the ships that sailed between the stars and brought us to Abeth. Shiphearts they are known as. The Missing also used these star-stones, heart-stones, core-stones—call them what you will—to power their cities, before those cities were abandoned. And as the ice ground over what was left behind, it scattered the stones. Most were broken into many pieces, but a star-stone is always a sphere, break one in half and you have two spheres, grind it to dust and you have many tiny spheres. The flow of the ice has long since carried away anything from the city that was aboveground, but the stones’ heat means the ice can’t carry them far. They sink and are caught amid the bedrock’s folds. This is why we are here. This is why the priests give us what little they do to keep us from dying too swiftly. Iron and star-stones.” He sighed. “If you want to return to the ice then speak with Tarko. Tell him about the regulator’s message.”

“I’m not going back without my brother.” The words burst out without permission. Even with Zeen at her side Yaz wasn’t sure she could go back. Not now. Not after seeing all this. And how would Zeen live up there in the wind if what they said about being broken was true? “I mean it.”

Eular chuckled at the defiance in her voice. “Did I ask you to?”

“But the regulator wants—”

“What do I care for what the regulator wants?” Eular rapped his knuckles on the frozen pool again. “All of the Broken are like this water, child. Long overdue for change and yet unable to change. And now you have fallen among us and I think that the change will come swiftly and that nothing will ever be the same again. That includes you, Yaz. You have the potential for greatness, but first you need to change yourself. Not by degrees, but all at once, like the pool. Dangerous, maybe, but it’s something that couldn’t happen up there in the monotony of your old life.”

11

   WHAT IS IT you want me to do?” Yaz had lived her whole life taking direction. From Mother Mazai, who led the clan from one sea that was closing to the next that would open. From her parents. From the wind and ice themselves. To survive as part of a people all working together was hard. To survive alone, impossible. In the darkness of his cave the blind man seemed to offer direction and something within Yaz yearned to take it.

“I have advised Tarko and those that came before him. And here we are. The Tainted grow in number and the Broken diminish. Soon all who are dropped from above will fall into their hands.” Eular pursed his lips. “But as to what to do . . . it was my advice and the actions of our leaders that brought us here. What we need is an agent of change. Someone with new thinking that follows their own direction. Who told you to jump into the pit?”

“Nobody.”

“Keep listening to nobody.”

“And what do the priests tell you, about the Tainted?” Yaz asked.

“The priests have not communicated with us for generations,” Eular said. “Not since the hunters woke in the city.”

“Woke?”

“Maybe our scavengers dug too deep. We don’t really know what returned them to life. All we know is that one day they were there, roaming the city, hunting any that ventured in the abandoned chambers. And today I hear that another one has passed the gateposts and attacked us in our own caverns.”

Yaz frowned. “What is it that you want though? Freedom? To climb out into the open?”

“Gods no!” Eular laughed. “It has been a very long time since my fall. Longer than most here have lived. But I remember that the surface is a cruel place, that the air is never still and is full of teeth, that the only food is to be found in bottomless depths of water. I will never return there. But some here might. They should at least have the choice, no? What we need is change.” He turned to face her and smiled. “Your eyes are fresh. Your mind unchained by our struggles. What do you think we need?”

Yaz frowned and thought. “For the priesthood to speak with us, aid us against the Tainted and the hunters, let our families know we still live and to tell them of the service we render to the tribes. To be treated as human, not some waste thrown into a hole, gone and forgotten.”

“Well and good.” Eular nodded.

“So . . .” Yaz stopped herself from saying, what should I do?

“Go back to Arka. Do what you feel you must. Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe the regulator will claw you back to the surface and nothing will change here, we will continue to die. But”—and he smiled—“the star-stones sing louder when you are near, and that is a thing so rare that it is not in the memory of the Broken. So . . . we shall see. Sometimes even the blind must wait and see.”

“Thank you.” There seemed little else to say.

“Before you go: tell me about the others in the drop-group.”

“They’re all outside with Pome and Petrick,” Yaz said. “You can speak with them yourself . . .”

“Humour me.”

“Well, you know Thurin.”

“I’m not sure I do. That’s why he is here. It has been a very long time since anyone was reclaimed from the taint. Many of the Broken do not believe it to be something that can be truly cleansed. They worry that the evil is still inside him, deep in his bones, waiting for its moment to return. They think him vulnerable to the demons in others and will not place their trust in him.”

“I trust him.”

Eular nodded. “But then again you need to. You need to believe that Thurin has been saved so that you can believe that your brother can also be saved.”

Yaz clenched her teeth against a hot reply and before the tension in her jaw eased she found herself wondering if Eular were not simply using her description of others to shine a light on herself. “Maya is the youngest, perhaps thirteen. She seems kind and timid. A gentle soul. But sometimes I find her watching me and I wonder if there’s more to her . . .” Yaz remembered that Maya hadn’t seemed scared of Hetta, not until the end. “I think she must be marjal. She can pull the shadows around her and hide.”