“She would make an excellent spy, would she not?”

“I . . .” Yaz hadn’t thought of Maya in those terms. “I guess so.”

“And the others?”

“Quina is hunska. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She’s clever too. And hard. I like her though.” Yaz hadn’t realised it until she said it but she did. There was something in the girl that reminded her of her brothers. “Her clan come from very far south. They have different stars!”

“I have heard that if you go far enough to the south you will find that Abeth still wears a green girdle, a belt around the world where the ice has yet to reach.” Eular smiled. “But I don’t know what green is. Still, I should like to touch it.”

Yaz hid a smirk before realising she didn’t have to hide it. For one so old to believe cradle tales amused her. “We can touch the rocks here. I’m not sure what would be gained to touch them and see the sky at the same time . . . or why they would be green.” Green was a colour she had seen only on the bellies of rainbow fish and the fins of emeraldine. It never lasted long after the fish were taken from the sea but it was pretty enough.

“And the last of them, the boy?”

“Kao,” Yaz said. “He’s bigger than any man among the Ictha but there’s no strength inside him.”

Eular pursed his lips. “Give him time. I’m told he has seen only twelve winters.”

“He’s twelve?” Yaz found her mouth still open and closed it. “That would explain a lot. I thought . . .”

“Eyes are all well and good.” Eular nodded. “But it never pays to put too much faith in what they tell us. Listen too. Form slower judgments.” He nodded again, perhaps to her, perhaps to himself. “I will speak with Thurin next.”

“Wait! I need to know how to save Zeen. Arka says the cleansing hardly ever works.”

Eular nodded. “That is true, it often fails, and the tainted one is killed. Burned inside by the star-stones.”

“So—”

“I don’t know. But I do know that a quick, strong exposure leaving nowhere for the devils to hide works best. The process is most successful when the largest stones are used. The dust never works. For Thurin his mother managed to get five stones the size of the one Pome dropped just now. Those are rare. As is the influence to get the Broken to agree on their possible destruction in such a ceremony.”

“And where could I find the biggest stars?”

“The city or the ice. Though a month hunting the deep places of the city will sometimes yield as much as ten years mining the ice. And of course . . . each hunter has a star-stone at its heart, some so big you could hardly get both hands to meet around them.”

Yaz stood slowly, trying to assemble the many pieces of information into some coherent structure in her mind. She had questions, most half-formed, and no idea if she would be allowed to return to ask them. Instead she asked an entirely new one. “You said the quantals see the . . . Path . . . was it?”

“I did.”

“But I see a river . . .”

“You’ve lived your whole life in a place without rivers or paths. The mind imposes its own will on such things. But if it is a river, then my advice is not to let it carry you away. The quantal magics are not gentle and many with such power are consumed by it before they learn their own limits.”

Yaz nodded then realised the gesture would go unseen. “Yes.” She bent to pick up Pome’s fallen star and the rod that had held it, seeing now the thin strands that had held the star in place. Metal wires rather than the sinew that the Ictha would use. “Thank you.”

Yaz left the chamber, ducking beneath the icicles and entering the tunnel. The star blazed in her hand, too bright, glaring from the curving surfaces of the ice. She felt its rapid pulsing in her fingers, beating behind the star’s wordless, ethereal song. Blinking, Yaz raised the star to her mouth and whispered to it so that the light retreated, leaving a blue glow. The stone became a ball in which bright shades of sky marbled shades of sea, all in slow and rolling motion. Still blinking away afterimages she emerged into the chamber where the others waited.

Pome stood closest at hand, watching Quina with predatory eyes. His look made Yaz remember what Arka thought of the disappearances of those that opposed the man. Yaz could believe it. She could see him trailing someone into the less walked caverns, knifing them in the back, pitching the corpse into a ravine, or leaving it for Hetta.

Pome turned as Yaz came into view. “What have you done?” He stared in horror at the muted blue glow in Yaz’s right hand and the rod in her other. “You’ve broken it. You stupid child.”

“I’m not a child. I passed the regulator’s inspection. Twice.”

Pome looked up from the star, startled and sneering. “Everyone who drops is a child. And you’re still wet from the fall.”

Behind him Petrick and Thurin looked worried, Petrick spreading his hands and guesturing down in a motion that told her to leave it, that this was a dangerous man she did not want to make an enemy of. She was a day old in a new world and Pome held sway among gerants who would twist off her head at his order.

Yaz drew in a deep, slow breath. “I wasn’t dropped. I jumped. I am Yaz of the Ictha and you will treat me with some measure of respect or there will be a reckoning between us.” Before the astonishment of her drop-group Yaz strode across to stand before Pome, just feet between them, his face not so far above hers. “Your star.” She held it out to him, making it blaze.

Pome ground his teeth together, cheek twitching at the star’s proximity. “It must have broken when it fell. It’s no use to me now.” He turned away. “I have duties to attend. Petrick, you can escort the other children back to Arka when Eular is done with them.”

They watched Pome stalk away and nobody spoke until he was gone, then all of them tried to speak together.

“Why would you do that?” Thurin asked.

“Not clever.” Petrick shook his head. “Pome deserved it but a lot of the Broken listen to him, especially the warriors. He speaks of times when they will be more important than the other castes. So watch him. He holds grudges, that one.”

Yaz studied the star in her hand, returning it to its sleeping state. The blue glow bled around her fingers. “He wants to kill the taints, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.” Thurin nodded.

“That makes him my enemy.”

* * *

WHILE THURIN WENT in to speak with Eular Yaz crouched and examined the star that Pome had abandoned into her keeping. It felt cold in her hand and yet they sank through the ice. But slowly. The heat given out must be a very small amount. She rolled it idly across the rock then brought it back. It seemed that trails were left in the air where it had passed, lines thinner than the finest hair, perhaps invisible to someone without the talent to see them, but there even so.