The Girl and the Stars
Pome sheltered behind the hunter, betrayed by glimpses of the glowing star in his hand. Others of his band followed on, many of them the younger and the older members of the Broken who had been swept into Pome’s orbit and had found themselves unable to leave it without help.
Yaz’s heart was beating as fast as if she’d been sprinting alongside Zeen. They could fight them here or run into the city and be hunted there, but either way it would be bloody. She found herself as scared as at any point since her fall. There had been no time to think when she faced Hetta or the hunters, but now, watching the approach of people who were ready to kill her, a terror rose through her in place of the anger that had helped her before. A terror that not only would she die, slashed open by the swing of a well-forged sword, but that Zeen, barely twelve and huddled behind her, would die, run through with an iron spear. And Kao, white-faced, his bravado gone, would spill his blood on the rocks, and that Thurin, Quell, even Erris would fall beneath a flurry of blades. The horror of it paralysed her and set both hands trembling against the stone slope before her.
“This is not going to end well.” Thurin joined Yaz, leaning up against the side of the crater.
“I thought this Pome wanted Yaz returned to the surface?” Erris slid up on her other side.
“Well, he does . . .” Yaz admitted. The presence of Erris on one side and Thurin on the other released Yaz from her paralysis. She drove back her fear, trying to keep it from her voice. “But he wanted to send me up as a tribute to the regulator.”
“Pome wanted you delivered to the man who Quell has contacted to arrange this collection so that you might be brought to him?” Erris asked.
“Well . . . yes.” Yaz wanted to protest that it wasn’t the same. Pome was doing it because he wanted something from the regulator. But she knew that Quell was also doing it because he wanted something from the priest. Only in Quell’s case that something was her rather than a kingdom under the ice.
“So the only people here who might object to your going are those who have given their loyalty to Arka?” Erris pressed on with his relentless logic.
“Pome is a . . .” She stretched for an insult. The Ictha used them rarely and had few to choose from. “He is cruel and unworthy. I wouldn’t want him guiding the Broken even before he tainted himself.”
“But won’t Theus and the other Tainted overrun them all soon in any case?” Erris sounded sincere, as if he genuinely didn’t know that he was bringing out into the light all the issues she had been hating herself for.
“It’s not that easy—”
Thurin exclaimed, “He’s got more gerants at the back than at the front!”
Yaz looked away from Erris, grateful for the interruption. Pome’s whole force was on the slope now. At the back were ten gerants bearing the large square shields she remembered from the meeting in the Icicle Cavern. Rather than focusing their attention ahead of them, though, these ones kept glancing over their shoulders.
“I don’t think they’re chasing Arka at all,” Yaz said. “I think they’re being chased.”
35
POME’S FORCE TIGHTENED ranks as they approached the city. Yaz watched their advance, her eyes level with the edge of the crater. Though they were just children of the tribes, the Broken seemed very different from those who had cast them down from the ice, and not just the hulking gerants. The wind hadn’t sculpted their features, and they wore a pitiful mix of patchwork rat skins, the aging remains of whatever they had worn on their drop day, here and there a cloak of woven hair or a pelt sent down by the priesthood along with their payments in salt and fish. And yet despite their beggar’s garb they carried in iron the wealth of many clans, all of it shaped for war.
They halted some fifty yards shy of Yaz’s position, though Quell was hiding much closer, about halfway between them. Pome came out from behind his hunter and three of the hunskas moved to protect him, as if they might be fast enough to pluck any spear out of the air before it could hit home. He stood wrapped in the thickest hides the Broken had with an iron breastplate over the top. In his right hand he held a short iron rod with his star glowing crimson at the other end. Taller than most Ictha and of slighter build with his thin brown hair and narrow face he looked a man of little consequence but somehow, like parasitic worms, his words burrowed into the minds of those around him, swaying them to his cause.
“I am not here to make war!” he shouted. “I have come to see that the girl, Yaz, is returned to the surface in accordance with the regulator’s orders. Once she has been dispatched to the ice we can resolve our differences.”
“He’s scared of me,” Yaz hissed to Erris and Thurin. “He’s worried I’ll mess with his hunter again. He just wants me out of the way before he kills Arka.”
“Come out here, Yaz of the Ictha! I’m sending you home!” Pome tried to make it sound inviting but his voice was no more capable of holding warmth than the ice was. “I’ll give you a moment to say your goodbyes. Don’t make Bexen come in and get you.”
“We can’t beat them, can we?” Yaz asked.
“Even if we could, think how many would die.” Thurin frowned. “And the Tainted must be hard on their heels, judging by how they came in here.”
“I—” Motion between her crater and Pome caught Yaz’s eye. Quell had broken cover and was hurrying over to her, trusting in Pome’s period of grace that he wouldn’t end up with a spear between his shoulder blades.
Quell slid over the edge of the crater, his booted feet thudding down on the rock beside her. Thurin stumbled back, narrowly avoiding being flattened.
Quell reached for her shoulder. “Pome must have spoken with Regulator Kazik somehow, so he’ll know to let me and Zeen come up with you too. It’s got to be just the three of us though. I think it’s that or a bloodbath. You can do more for your friends up with the priests than in a war down here.”
“But—”
Quell raised a hand to her objections. “Think about it. This Pome is a madman pretending to be sane. And look how many he has with him.”
A clattering from behind saved her from answering. She turned in confusion to see black stones bouncing in the puddled meltwater from the two narrow shafts.
“It’s coal escaping,” Thurin said. “Tarko normally seals the end of the coal shaft with his ice-work.”
“Tarko’s dead. You’ll have to do it.” Yaz glanced up at the hole, wondering if Thurin could work his will over such a distance.
“I should save my energies if we’re going to fight.” Thurin looked doubtful.
“Try.” Yaz reached out to grasp his arm below the elbow. “We won’t get out of here at all if all the coal falls through.”