The Girl and the Stars

The hunter fell with the slow inevitability of ice cliffs calving into the sea, its heart stunned, limbs slack as the beat sought to reemerge from a confusion of irregular fluttering. Yaz came back to herself with the claws tearing gouges into the rock on either side of her while the beast fell away. She was falling too. Her hands caught the craggy edge as she jolted over it. A shake and a twist of her leg and the slack metal coils around her shin released their grip. Her own hold proved firmer and with a scream of effort she hauled herself back onto level ground.

The second, much smaller hunter stood over Quell’s inert form, one jagged pincer reaching down for his neck.

“No.”

Yaz reached out for the hunter’s star, smaller and less fierce than the other one’s, its heartbeat that of a child. She reached out and twisted, ignoring the broken pain that flooded through her. Between one moment and the next the hunter fell apart, lurching back as it did. All that remained were its constituents, a pile of ill-matched junk, more than a scavenger might show for a year’s work. The star-stone rested amid the pieces, a dull red with darker patches drifting over it—clouds across the face of a dying sun.

Slowly, spitting blood, Yaz crawled to Quell’s side. Pieces of the hunter lay scattered around him, toothed wheels, iron plates, black wires, all of it sharp with an unnatural stink that clawed at her throat.

Too weak to move him she lay down at his side.

Once when she had fallen ill Quell had stolen cubes of harpfish from Mother Mazai’s tent. They had eaten them together in his boat, rocking amid the mists of the Hot Sea with the water steaming all around them.

Yaz closed her eyes. There had been a time, before she was old enough to go out and fish, that she had thought of water only as molten ice. But the vastness of the sea changed all that. The largest of them, the Hot Sea, stood ten miles and more across in some seasons. Her father had once told her the waters of the sea ran beneath more ice than the rock did. How he knew that she didn’t know, but her father spoke very seldom and when he did it was never to give voice to a lie.

Her weakness felt like a sea now, and she sank into it, even her thirst not enough to keep her afloat. But when she heard the groan beside her Yaz opened her eyes again and rolled her head to the side. “Quell?”

“D-did . . . did I get him?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t help smiling.

“Good.” Quell levered himself up, his face bloody. “Don’t think I could take more than two or three others though.” He moved with caution as though every part of him hurt. He should be dead but the toughness of the Ictha was a thing of legend.

“Just need to . . . rest a while yet.” He lowered himself back to the rock with a gasp and a wince. “Are you okay?”

Yaz considered the question. Something inside her had broken and she didn’t know what. She did know that she had begun to shiver though. For the first time since she had jumped into the pit and escaped the wind the Broken’s caverns felt cold.

17

   HERE!” QUELL REACHED a hand down to pull Yaz from the undercity.

Yaz grabbed hold and in a moment stood beside him in the great starlit cavern. Quell immediately recoiled, a confused horror etched across his face. He ended up sprawled on his backside, yards away, trying not to retch.

“Sorry. I’m so sorry.” In her other hand Yaz held the smouldering star-stone that she had taken from the destroyed hunter. “I forgot. I—”

“It’s fine.” Quell shuddered. “Just give me a moment.”

She moved away from the hole and crouched, shivering in her torn furs. Even a star the size of the one she’d taken from Pome made most people uneasy close up. This star had driven the hunter, supplied its energy, bound the pieces of it into some semblance of life. It weighed twenty times what Pome’s did. Calmed by her will the hunter’s star glowed a sullen red with patches of darkness moving slowly across its surface.

“I don’t understand how you can touch that thing . . .” Quell winced and returned to the side of the hole. “I get the horrors if I go anywhere near it. Like my thoughts are breaking.”

“I don’t know.” She did know. It was in her blood. If she cupped the star in both hands she could almost completely surround it. Its song filled her then, clearer than ever before, as if there might be words to it, as though if she only took the time they might reveal their meaning. She felt its fire burning at the edge of her mind, giving whispering voice to parts of her that normally held their tongue. But even touching this star was nothing like as bad as being however many tens of yards she’d been from the void star. “I don’t know how I can stand it. I just can.”

Yaz huddled, clutching the star to her in both hands. It had a warmth to it and she was colder now than she had ever been save in the long night.

“It seems a shame to leave all that.” Quell was peering down at the scattered ruins of the hunter. To the Broken it was a scavenger’s dream but to the Ictha it was a greater wealth in metal than the entire clan owned. More than they could trade for over three generations.

“You’ll find they value things down here differently. A lot of things. Not just iron.” Yaz set the hunter’s star down in a hollow in the rock and came to stand beside Quell where he crouched at the edge. “Mother Mazai says we’re never free until we can walk away from what we want carrying only what we need.”

“That old woman is too wise for her own good.” Quell looked up with a forced grin. “Perhaps we could just take a—”

“Quell! What are you even doing here? I mean how did—”

“I told you.” He got to his feet, half a head taller than her, wider. He smelled good. Like home. “I came to save you.”

“You didn’t jump into the Pit of the Missing? Not for me. That’s madness.”

“Of course not. Jumping in would be crazy!” He offered her a wry smile. “I stole just about every rope the Ictha have. And a dozen sets of dog harnesses from the Quinx and the Axit.”

“Quell!” The Ictha never stole.

“Well, I borrowed them. Quietly. While everyone was sleeping after the final night of the gathering, drunk on ferment. They can have them back. Well . . . most of them can, I expect.” Quell pursed his lips. “I tied them all into one long rope. You should have seen it, Yaz. It would have reached from the top of the ice cliffs to the bottom of the sea!”

“You climbed down the pit?”

“It started that way, yes.” A frown. “I tied the rope to an iron stake and let it down, then started climbing. And climbing. And climbing. That is one deep hole! So, about three days later I’m hanging there in total darkness, my arms are half-dead, everything is soaking wet . . . And suddenly one of my knots gives way and I’m falling.”