The Girl and the Stars

Quell raised a brow at that, refusing to smile, and gestured to a hollow nearby where the corner of a board could be seen. “Maya has been busy too. That’s her stash. She even got us a hot pot . . . is that what you call it? One of those sigil things.”

A thick blanket of exhaustion settled on Yaz and she staggered off to slump down before she fell. She sat with her back to a twisted metal beam and watched the others protectively from beneath heavy eyelids, Zeen most of all. He was the only reason she was here and she had succeeded in freeing him, if not from this place yet then at least from the nightmare he had been suffering. It seemed unreal to have her brother back, a dream she might wake from. Though now that he was back she almost feared for him more than when the Tainted had him. Now he was her direct responsibility, and no part of her plans felt safe. In fact, once her mind inserted Zeen into those plans they seemed suicidal. Crazed at best. All that drove her on was that the alternative seemed just as dangerous and yet lacked any hope of anything better at the end. She had seen the green world in Erris’s dreaming. She had felt the grass beneath her hands and the rich, soft soil in which it bedded. She had seen the trees towering, swaying in a warm breeze that gave rather than took. A butterfly had kissed her skin. These were true things. Quina’s wooden bead said that somewhere in this world of endless white, trees still grew, and just knowing that had sunk a hook in Yaz’s heart. For the longest time now she’d been afraid to dream, knowing that all her paths led to the pit and thinking that somehow she deserved it, for the weakness in her blood. She’d borne a heavy load, uncomplaining, stoic in the way that only the Ictha are, accepting her fate because she refused to become a burden on her people. But the green dream that Erris and Quina had given her would not hurt the Ictha. It was a dream worth hunting. A dream worth dying for.

Yaz’s gaze drifted across Quell, Thurin, and Erris, momentarily close together and in discussion, though she couldn’t make out the words. Quell was binding together two of the boards from Maya’s stash, his powerful, blunt fingers twisting the wire with a delicacy that always surprised her even when gloved. Thurin had been trying to show him a better way. The Broken had been working with this material for generations after all. He seemed to sense her watching him and turned to look her way. For a moment his black eyes held her gaze with what seemed a dark and starless passion. Erris made some observation that brought Thurin’s attention back to the matter in Quell’s hand, an observation that had both of them looking to him with a grudging admiration of the kind usually reserved for a leader. She wondered what they would think if she told them Erris was over a thousand years old and that his body wasn’t flesh and bone but something Missing-made, like the boards before them.

She watched the three of them, her mind half dreaming. One from the world above, part of her life from her earliest memories. Solid, strong, dependable. One from this strange world below, owner of curious magics, dark, conflicted by tragedy, broken by experience. And one from the world before, a time when there had been no above or below, a mystery who had kept the company of the Missing’s works for so long that even he didn’t know how changed he might be.

Once she had thought she would share her tent with Quell and her life would be a slight variation on the song that sang out her mother’s life and her mother’s mother’s and hundreds more joining her in a long chain to a time of gods when only Zin and Mokka walked the ice. Now she didn’t even know how the old stories fitted with the ones that Erris told her, or with the green world they had walked together in the dreams that the city made real for him.

 

* * *

“YAZ?”

Yaz blinked and realised that she had been asleep. Maya stood before her, a shy half smile on her lips, every inch the young girl rather than the shadow-weaving Axit assassin.

“Good to see you, little sister. You’ve done well here.” Yaz forced away a yawn. She stood stretching. “How long have I been dreaming?”

“A long time.” Maya turned away, pointing. “Others are coming.”

That woke Yaz up quickly, a cold wind blowing away her mind-fog. “Who is it?” Following Maya’s line she could see figures in skins coming down the long slope with spears on their shoulders. “Didn’t we have anyone on guard?” Had it been her responsibility, she wondered, to organise things like a perimeter?

“Thurin went up there to watch not long after you fell asleep,” Maya said.

Yaz tried to spot him in the group coming down. There were more than ten of them in view now, and none of the figures looked like Thurin.

“Arka!” Kaylal hauled himself from the depression where he’d been working on Maya’s haul of stolen boards and other material. “Arka!”

Yaz relaxed. With Thurin absent none of their company was better placed to recognise Arka and her company than Kaylal.

Arka raised a hand in greeting and came to the fore of her group, leading them cautiously across the scraped ruin of the city. The dozen or so Broken with her all kept low, moving between the holes that would offer them an escape into the chambers below if a hunter were to surface.

Yaz searched desperately for Quina among the shuffling, exhausted group but saw no sign of the girl.

“Yaz!” Arka looked tired. A bloody wound on her forehead would add to the collection of scars that Hetta had given her, if it ever had the time to heal. Grey streaks stood out in her dark hair where none had been before. “Kaylal.” She reached down for his hand. “Exxar?” She looked around at the others approaching from the stashes as her own followers came up behind her.

“Gone.” Kaylal’s voice fractured around the word and he let her hand go.

“I’m so sorry, Kaylal.” Arka lowered her head. After a long silence she turned to check her people. One was the girl, Jerra, who had been with her when they rescued Yaz from Hetta. Yaz had still been wet from her drop. It seemed a lifetime ago but couldn’t have been much more than a week. Jerra had graduated from her rock-and-bone hammer to an iron spear, lighter and shorter than Arka’s though.

“Have you seen Quina?” Yaz asked.

Arka nodded though she looked grim.

“Tell me!” Doubt clutched at Yaz’s heart. “She’s not with Pome, is she?”

Arka set her hand to Yaz’s arm the way the Ictha do when telling bad news. “A hunter took her. A hunter from the city.”

“She’s dead?” Yaz’s voice broke.

Arka made a pained shrug. “Taken. The hunters take us. We’ve never found the bones of any they catch. Maybe they eat those too . . .” She drew a breath. “They’ve been busy while we fought. It might be we’ve lost more to their claws than to Pome’s forces.”

Yaz shook her head, not trusting herself to speak yet. Quina was too quick for a hunter to catch. She didn’t believe it.