The Girl and the Stars

“Yes, Pome. Mean little man with an uncanny ability to get gerants to do what he wants them to.”

“All except Jerrig.” Yaz shook the image of the fallen harvester from her mind. What would he have made of trees and grass and all that tangle of living things? “Why? Why is Pome coming?” She knew what Pome wanted: power, all of it. He was more than ready to kill for it. But those around her lacked the urgency that an attack would bring.

The cave was emptying quickly. Maya and Quina were there too now, standing beside Thurin.

“They’re saying he’s come to talk. Arka is meeting him in the Icicle Cavern.”

Yaz got to her feet. She still felt tired, bruised from the floor, and cold. “Where’s Quell?” It should have been her first question. He had come by himself to save her.

“He’s in Arka’s council of war,” Thurin said.

“War? I thought you said Pome had come to talk.”

“No, I said that’s what he said he’s come to do.”

“And why aren’t you at this council?”

Thurin gave a wry smile. “They don’t trust me yet.”

Yaz frowned. “Come to think of it if Quell is there why aren’t all of the drop-group? He came here after we did!”

Thurin shook his head. “He’s an adult. You’re all children. And besides, he knocked one of our handful of grown gerants on his arse, and that counts for something . . . apparently.”

Thurin made to leave but Yaz reached for his arm, holding him back.

“This is madness, this fighting. Arka said the Broken were already losing ground to the Tainted and now you’re killing each other.” She hunted his eyes. “You can’t not see that?”

“So we should let Pome have his way? Let him rule us like a king from the stories? That will be his reward for killing a good man? And make no mistake, Tarko was a good man.”

“Yes,” Yaz said simply. “If that’s what it takes, then yes. What else is there? Do you think Pome has come to talk so Arka can convince him of the error of his ways? He’s here to negotiate your surrender.”

Maya and Quina looked to Thurin for his answer. He had known these people all his life.

“Gods damn it!” Thurin pulled free of her grasp, fists balled. “That can’t be the only choice.”

“It’s the only sane one,” Yaz said. “Unless . . .” She waited until all three of them had their eyes on her. “Unless you come with me and Quell to rescue my brother.”

“How will that help?” Thurin let out a frustrated breath.

“Because once we’ve got the taint out of him we’re escaping. Going back to the ice.”

A snort then a sigh. “Even if that were possible. Which it isn’t. And even if you stood a chance against the Tainted. Which you don’t. And even if you could get the taint out of your brother. Which you can’t. It would still be an insane plan because THE ICE WILL KILL YOU.”

Yaz opened her mouth but found no reply on her tongue. Before she had worked her will to destroy the hunter a part of her could still believe that she might survive up there. Could believe that the claim that saw the regulator throw her brother into the Pit of the Missing was a lie. Though even before her change it was only a small part of her that had believed all this to be a lie. The idea that so many people would do such harm on the basis of an easily disproved untruth was a stretch. But she had needed very much to believe that she and Zeen could return.

Now, however, with the cold nipping at her heels even here far from the wind’s teeth, she knew it for a cruel truth. None of them could live their old lives again.

“I . . .” She felt the weight of their gaze upon her. Quina, Maya, and now Kao lurking at the doorway, they wanted her to have an answer. It came to her in a sudden vision, trees reaching for a warm sky. “We go south, always south, and find the gods’ belt.”

“You said that was a myth,” Kao rumbled from the exit.

“You’ll want us to search for Zin and Mokka next.” Maya squeaked a pained laugh. Even the youngest of them, a child, was no more able to believe in Yaz than in tales of the first man and first woman.

“My clan journeyed north for a month to reach the pit,” Quina said. “The ice goes on forever and it is scarcely less cold where the Kac-Kantor roam.”

Yaz grasped the offered straw. “But it is less cold! And a month further south, warmer still.”

“But—”

“Eular believes it.” Let them trust in Eular’s wisdom if not hers. “Eular told me there is a green place far to the south. He had heard stories. Stories! Not myth . . .” She looked around at the others, their faces held tight, closed against hope.

Quina met her eyes. The girl held out her clenched hand between them, reluctant, a tremble in it. Slowly fingers unfolded to reveal a small brownish bead, polished by touch, swirled with lines of darker and lighter brown, beautiful in its way.

“Our clan mother has a necklace of such beads,” Yaz said. Mother Mazai’s polished stones were an heirloom, as prized as iron. A reminder that there were things other than ice in the world. A reminder that under the ice there is sea or stone.

“It isn’t stone.” With great reluctance Quina placed the bead in Yaz’s palm. “I stole it from our clan father. When I knew I wasn’t coming back from this journey to the pit. I wanted it so I took it.” Her cheek twitched, guilt warring with defiance.

“It hardly weighs anything.” Yaz took her star and made more light, studying the swirls. “What kind of stone is it?”

“Wood,” Quina said. “It floats on water.”

“Wood?” Thurin frowned.

“Is it a . . . gem?” Kao said the word as if dragging it from memory.

“Wood. From a tree.” Yaz gave the bead back and folded Quina’s hand about it.

“Once, very long ago, there was a winter that lasted a year and the Kac-Kantor fled further south than they had ever been. A traveller came to our tents, bitten by the frost and dying. He said he had been travelling northward in search of a witch known in his people’s legends. His food had run out. He had eaten his dogs. And still he travelled north. In all that time we were the first people he had seen. The bead was his gift for the witch. He hoped for wisdom in return. He said that in his southern rangings he had looked down upon the trees from the heights of the ice.

“My clan father’s grandfather’s grandfather offered the traveller ten iron stakes for the bead but the stranger would not part with it. When the man died three days later the bead passed into the clan father’s line.” Quina looked down, voice trembling. “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought . . . Maybe that if I took something valuable enough then my people would come and get it back . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head.