The Girl and the Stars
“It’s wood. From a tree,” Yaz said with conviction. “A tree that stands in the green belt around the world.”
Thurin walked away. He paused by the door. “Even if a green belt was there it’s too far. A year of travel maybe. The cold would kill us in a night. We have no tents. Thirst would kill us in days. Our water would freeze. Hunger would kill us in a week. We don’t know where the seas are and we have no boats or nets.”
This time when Yaz opened her mouth the answers came quickly. “We can line our furs with stardust for added warmth. We can tow boards from the settlement and make shelters each night. We can warm them with heat pots from the drying cave and the forge. We can make a sled and pile it with fungi from the groves. We can do all this. Or die trying. Either way it’s better to die trying for a life we can take for ourselves than to die fighting each other in the dark for an existence we were condemned to.”
The others were filing out through the doorway now and Yaz followed. None of them spoke as they made their way up along the side of the ravine. Yaz had said her piece. Scattered her ideas on the water. Sometimes it took a while before something rose from the depths to bite. And sometimes such ideas just sank without trace.
* * *
MOST OF THE caverns had icicles and in most of them they were regularly knocked down by harvesters or by other Broken just passing to and fro. In the Icicle Cavern, however, some source of meltwater high above combined with the chamber’s coldness and lack of stars to generate them at such a rate that the Broken had long since abandoned the fight. The cavern was large enough to hold all the Broken even before bloodshed had reduced their numbers, and all but a central corridor was festooned with icicles, some hanging ceiling to floor, some scarcely longer than fingers, a myriad of them, some clear, some milky, curtains of them, veils, frozen torrents. They caught the light of the stars that Arka’s folk brought with them, glowing with it, casting strange shadows.
Yaz had never imagined such places might exist. She had spent a lifetime on the surface of things, tramping the ice, and beneath her feet, miles deep, how many wonders had she passed over, places no one had ever seen, places no one would ever see. Kaylal, who saw the amazement on her face as she passed him, offered a grin that said he understood the feeling.
Quell stood with her now, iron spear in hand, free at last of Jerrig’s blood. A single bruise covered much of the left side of his face, a memento from the hunter slamming him into the ground. For a moment he almost looked like one of the Tainted. Petrick stood to Quell’s right. Thurin stood on Yaz’s other side, Quina, Maya, and Kao to his left, the gerant boy showing nervous determination, eyes narrowed beneath the pale curls of his fringe. Eular had told Yaz that Kao was only twelve but those were just words standing in the shadow of his great size. Seeing him there among the gleaming icicles and alien shadows Yaz understood properly for the first time that Kao was the same age as Zeen, a child, lost, alone, and in a bad place. In fact, in the face of the events that had swept everyone up, all of them, young or old, might be considered lost children, helpless as any boat in a storm.
Arka stood with her inner circle. There was no sign of Eular.
Pome entered the Icicle Cavern from the other side, flanked by gerants bearing iron swords. Dozens of his followers came behind him, knocking aside the longer icicles to make room. Despite their numbers they looked nervous. A curious mix of nervous and excited.
In one hand Pome carried an iron rod shorter and thicker than the one he used to carry, and in it a star larger than the one he had ceded to Yaz. The new star burned a deep crimson, not unlike the hunters’ stars, and filled the chamber with bloody light, making red and dripping spears of the icicles about him.
A fault in the rock split the cavern floor, a gap of a yard or more yawning between the two factions, ice-clad on either side. It could be spanned easily enough but it stood as a barrier to keep them apart, a physical representation of the solemn oaths of truce sworn by Pome and Arka.
Pome came forward. To either side of him a gerant with a great square shield stood ready to deflect possible spears, and crouched before him a hunska with shaved head and ugly scar, as if he thought he might knock aside any missile from the air. Yaz paid more attention to the star Pome held. Its heartbeat was much louder and deeper than she had expected it to be.
“Does my word mean so little, Pome?” Arka approached the opposite edge of the chasm without any guards to hand.
“We’ll see what it’s worth.” The crimson light of his star pinked Pome’s teeth as though he might have bitten his tongue.
“You requested this meeting . . .” Arka spread her hands as if granting the man permission to speak.
“I demanded it.” Pome’s smile was a savage thing. “This farce is coming to an end, Arka. I have all the forge, the settlement, most of the groves. And you have . . . a huddle of caves. Tarko is gone. The Tainted are coming—they must know of our weakness. Who will lead us against them? You, Arka? If you were fit for such duty then you would be winning. You wouldn’t be hiding in the drying cave with a handful of children and dreamers.”
Yaz felt his voice pull at her even as the words themselves grated across her. If Pome had ever mastered wisdom or kindness, or even some semblance of the two, then he would have been unstoppable. Fortunately his unpleasant nature shone through sufficiently to weaken the glamour of his voice.
“What do you want, Pome?” Arka sounded weary. “If all it took to make you king were talking then you would have been on your throne long ago.”
“The Tainted will attack. You know this. Theus has waited years for this moment. Decades.”
“And you have given it to him, Pome. Should we praise you for that? Are you proud?
“Are you so proud, Arka, that rather than standing with me, united with the Broken, you would keep up this resistance against a thing that has already happened and let the Tainted claim us all?”
Arka shook her head, striding along her side of the divide. “How then would King Pome defend us? He has killed our best ice-worker, left some of our finest warriors dead or injured. All for what? So we can engage in open warfare with the Tainted when we stand at our weakest.”
Pome looked past Arka to those who stood behind her. “I’m told that the girl you thought you’d lost in the city has returned . . .” His eyes hunted Yaz in the gloom.
“Yaz?” Arka’s voice betrayed surprise. Pome had a spy in her camp. “What does this—”
“Give her to me. Give her to me and return to the fold. Those above have demanded her!”
Arka barked a laugh. “You don’t talk to the priests, Pome! And what would they want with Yaz?”
“The regulator demands her. And in exchange he has worked a miracle that will see the Tainted laid in ruin!” Pome’s grin was a huge and bloody thing now.