The Girl and the Stars

by Mark Lawrence

  “I don’t know. It’s not supposed to be here.”

  “City?” Yaz looked up, suddenly realising that Thurin had mentioned a city. “What city?” Men had had cities before the ice swept them aside. The legends said so.

  “A city of the Missing,” Thurin said. He leaned back and shook his head. “You really don’t know what goes on down here at all, do you?”

  “No!” Suddenly she was angry. “And neither did you before you were pushed down the pit, so don’t play so high and mighty with us!”

  “I wasn’t pushed.” Thurin said it so softly she wondered if she had misheard him above the hunter’s clawing. He’d thrown himself down, like her?

  Kao snorted, recovering some of his composure. “Of course you were, you lying sack of—”

  “I was born here.”

  8

  HOW LONG DO we have to stay here?” Kao had been pacing for what seemed like hours. One pace, two pace, turn. One pace, two pace, turn.

  “I don’t know.” Thurin had given the same reply the last several times and it didn’t seem to stick.

  “Try sitting,” Yaz suggested from where she sat.

  Kao made no reply. He seemed more scared of the narrowness of the space confining him than of the hunter outside. And he had been pretty scared of that. Yaz didn’t blame him there. No amount of muscle is going to make a difference against a creature of iron with knives for claws. But fear of enclosed spaces was not something the Ictha knew. Anyone who couldn’t spend three months inside a tent would not last long among her people.

  Outside the grinding continued as it had continued the whole time.

  “Will it dig its way to us?” Maya asked, eyes wide in the darkness.

  Yaz would have said no, nothing could, but the sounds did seem to have grown louder as if the beast were actually making progress. Certainly when it reached in every so often its claws seemed to scrape the rock much closer to their hiding place each time. Either it was burrowing through ice at a remarkable rate or its limbs were growing longer!

  “The others will come,” Yaz said. “Quina will have told them.”

  “Unless that thing got her,” Kao said.

  Yaz shook her head. “Then Arka would have sent someone to check on us already. Arka said we should hurry.”

  “They’ll all know by now,” Thurin agreed. “One way or the other.”

  “So they come and find us and . . .” Yaz still marvelled that they were being attacked by a mass of iron that would outweigh all the metal owned by even the largest of clans. Her life could soon be ended by a sharp-edged heap of treasure of incalculable value. “How do you beat these things?”

  “We don’t. We hide and eventually they go away.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then someone draws them off. But they always go away in the end, and if you can make it to the long slope they hardly ever follow you past the gateposts.”

  “So . . . why hasn’t someone drawn it off?” Maya asked. Now that they were in real trouble she sounded perfectly calm, no sign of the wide-eyed nervous girl from before.

  Thurin didn’t speak for a moment, and then as if deciding on honesty: “I guess they’ve tried to draw it off but it just wants us more than it wants them. Sometimes that happens. It’s one of the reasons you won’t see many grey hairs among the Broken.”

  Kao stopped pacing. “I’ve got to get out.” Muttered to himself as if it were a sudden realisation. “Got to get out.” He fell to his hands and knees and began to crawl to the gap.

  “Don’t be stupid.” Thurin grabbed the boy’s shoulder and tried to haul him back. He made almost no difference against Kao’s strength but the boy lashed out anyway, sending Thurin flying back into the wall of the chamber.

  Yaz stepped between Kao and the gap just before he could enter it. “That thing out there will tear you apart!”

  Kao showed no signs of having heard her. Somehow his fear of being trapped in such close confines had overwhelmed his fear of the hunter. He jumped to his feet with a strangled cry and reached to grab Yaz as though intending to toss her aside too. Bracing herself against the wall she caught both his wrists. The boy growled and tried to fasten his hands on her shoulders. He stood well over six foot, his arms heaped with muscle and his strength frightening.

  “What?” Kao grunted with effort and pressed down even more forcefully.

  Yaz ground her teeth, breathing heavily, and held him where he was, hands just inches from closing on her. In the main chamber a great crash rang out.

  “How . . . are . . . you . . . doing . . . this?” He eased the pressure, amazed.

  A pained laugh rang out behind them, Thurin back on his feet, clutching his side. “She’s of the Ictha. The northmen are a different breed.”

  “Listen!” Yaz let go of Kao’s wrists. A second great crash sounded outside along with an unearthly howl more chilling than any the wind ever made. The light dimmed; nothing but the faint glow of the surrounding ice reached them.

  “It’s not normally like this.” Thurin’s voice sounded beside her, closer than she had thought he was. “Even when hunters do leave the city they stick to the fringes. I’ve never heard of one this far in. We’re practically at the settlement.”

  Yaz shrugged, trying to offset his worry. “This sort of thing has been pretty normal for me lately.” The hunter scared her less than Hetta had, though it looked even harder to overcome. Somehow it was Hetta’s hunger that terrified her more than iron claws and spikes.

  “Ha.” Thurin snorted. They faced each other, just two handwidths between them but still not close enough to make out each other’s expression.

  “It’s stopped.” Maya crouched low and peered through the gap. “It’s gone!”

  Kao bent to join the girl but Yaz turned from Thurin and shoved him back with a grunt. “It could be a trick. We wait!”

  Kao straightened but thought better of testing his strength against hers again. Yaz was glad of that. Her arms hurt. She had always been told the Ictha were stronger than the southern tribes but had thought it meant only that they could endure the cold better. However strong the Ictha might be, though, Yaz knew that a couple years more growing would see Kao able to brush her aside without effort.

  “What’s going on out there?” She directed the question at Maya, still on her belly looking out.

  “I can only see ice. The way out’s blocked. But I hear digging.”

  “The monster?”

  “I don’t think so . . .”

  The four of them waited, crouched and ready, listening to the crunch of ice, quieter and less violent than it had been before.

  “Halloo-oo?” A woman’s voice from outside.

  This time nobody stood in Kao’s way as he threw himself at the gap and began to wriggle out beneath the ice.

  The rest of them followed, Thurin bringing up the rear. Many hands reached to help them from the mass of crushed ice mounded around the base of the wall. Yaz rose to find herself surrounded by the Broken, scores of them, hulking gerants making their neighbours look like children. Arka led her from the debris as others helped Thurin out. Quina was among them and had taken charge of Maya, brushing fragments from her long brown hair. Pome was there with his star-on-a-stick, others also bearing lights, some holding smaller stars in glass bowls on the end of long poles. Their leader, Tarko, stood among them in hurried conference with a series of his people, who took off running once they had their orders.

  “This!” Pome stepped forward as Thurin stood dusting sparkling fragments from his skins. “This is what comes of toying with the taints! Theus will come for us all. His numbers are growing and we sit back and let him plan our destruction! We leave him to choose when to lead the Tainted against us.” Pome singled Thurin out, pointing in accusation. “Instead of a war to eradicate their kind and take back the drop pools, we capture
one of their number and try to cleanse him. Wasting months’ worth of stones and losing a good warrior in the process.”

  “That good warrior was my mother!” Thurin roared, and about him the crushed ice writhed as though some great serpent were moving just beneath its surface. “I don’t need some surface walker one drop from his fall to tell me—”

  “Peace!” Tarko boomed. His voice rolled out deep as glaciers groaning. “The Tainted did not bring a hunter to our caves. Tainted do not go to the city.”

  “And hunters don’t come this far into our territory!” Pome shouted, to mutters of agreement from behind him. “But still we have a hunter on our doorstep hard on the heels of Thurin’s restoration. We have challenged the order of things, against the will of many here, and now we see the price. The Tainted are lost to us and a quick death is all the mercy we can afford them.”

  Tarko rubbed both hands across the back of his neck as if seeking to ease some tension. He looked tired, close to exhaustion, but when he answered it was with a measured tone. “And what would you have me do, Pome? Return Thurin to the Tainted? Leave him to the hunter? I thought you were eager to fight. Today we have driven off a hunter. When have the Broken known such a victory?”

  This time the mutters were for Tarko and they were louder. He continued, “I’ve set a watch on the long slope so we will know if a hunter comes our way again. But we’ve shown that here at least we have some defence against them.” He nodded to himself and looked out across his people, waving them on. “Now, each to their task. The ice does not mine itself.”

  The gathering appeared to be over. Slowly the crowd began to break up, moving off in threes and fours, some deep in their silence, others talking animatedly among themselves to the accompaniment of the drip drip drip from above and the distant groan of moving ice.

  “What happened?” Thurin asked Arka, amazed. “How did you drive off a hunter?”

  “Tarko worked the ice,” Arka said.

  “Tarko has marjal blood, like Thurin?” Maya asked.

  “Someone’s been paying attention. Tarko is the strongest ice-worker among us.” Arka gave the girl an approving look and Maya beamed up at her. “He broke a block from the ceiling bigger than Hetta and let it drop on the hunter. That got its attention. The second one seemed to hurt it. Anyway, it retreated after that.” She pointed to the far end of the cavern where more caves opened out. “Let’s go.”

  Yaz ignored the woman and kept her gaze on Thurin. His mother had died in the effort to rescue him, perhaps on the same day Yaz fell. It explained the sadness in him. And he was tainted but was rescued from that too. She needed his help if she were to rescue Zeen. Guilt rose, the old Ictha guilt that always reached up to run its claws through her whenever she thought about herself rather than others. She’d been looking at Thurin as someone who might be a friend. Or even more than that. Those were the sort of dreams that saw you die on the ice, the sort that hurt the clan. Thurin was her means to recover Zeen. That was her focus. Nobody would know the Tainted better than someone who lived among them. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  Thurin frowned, uncomfortable. “Nobody lasts long down here. But I will miss her. Very much.” He paused and added, “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  There seemed nothing else to say. Sometimes all your words are the wrong shape and none of them will fit into the silence left when the conversation pauses. Yaz looked away from Thurin, her stomach a cold knot. Zeen would be poisoned and insane when she found him. She would need to do whatever had been done for Thurin. The knowledge ate at her. Each new thing she learned only bound her tighter to the Broken. She needed them, and while every instinct told her to go out now and get her brother to safety, her head told her to stay, to listen, and to learn.

  “How—” But already Arka was leading the others back toward the settlement. Yaz hurried to catch up with her. “How do you make someone who’s tainted better again? And what’s this city? And why can’t you just bring ice down on them there too?”

  “Because in the undercity the ceiling is made of stone,” Arka said. “And the rest will have to wait until I’ve eaten. Maybe the Ictha don’t need food but I’m starving.”

  “Food!” Kao said it as though remembering a lost love. “Hells yes.”

  * * *

  ARKA LED THEM to the settlement, past the barracks and further in amid a confusion of huts and larger buildings, all different both in design and orientation. They looked almost to have been made from discarded pieces of larger, more complex objects, like the child’s doll Yaz’s father had fashioned for her when she was little. The thought stung her and she wondered what her parents were doing now, what Quell was doing, and how far away they were from her now, up in the freshness of the wind.

  She looked around and sniffed in distaste. The settlement lacked the order of an Ictha camp, it was dirty, and it smelled . . . it smelled delicious! Yaz sniffed again. Arka had led them to one of the largest halls and as she opened the door a wave of warmth rolled out along with the most wonderful aroma. All five of the drop-group suddenly found themselves as hungry as Kao had declared himself to be. They wasted no time installing themselves around a platform that Arka named a table on objects she named chairs, designed to allow them to sit while at the same time being raised to be on a level with the table. Yaz wondered what was wrong with the floor but she made no complaint.

  An older woman with dark hair that fell in a strange curling way came in hefting a huge bowl that seemed to be made of iron, blackened with fire on the outside and steaming from within, the source of the wonderful aroma. Yaz was as amazed by the woman’s curls as she was by the fact that metal was so plentiful here that it could be used to make bowls to keep food in.

  Arka held up her hand. “Two things. One: don’t touch the pot, it will burn you. We serve food hot here. Madeen will bring bowls. Two: this is Madeen. She cooks the meals. Never upset her or you might get something nasty in yours.”

  Madeen gave the lie to these words with a motherly smile as she hefted the pot onto the table, then swung round suddenly to aim a narrow-eyed scowl at Maya, who jumped and nearly fell from her chair. Laughing, Madeen went to fetch the bowls.

  “Oh, and three: these are spoons.” Arka showed off a metal scoop.

  The pot contained what Arka described as stew. Yaz stared at the steaming and complicated pile of . . . pieces . . . in the strange bowl before her. “But what is it?”

  “Stew. Eat it. It’s good.” To prove her point Arka scooped up a lump and put it, still steaming, into her mouth.

  “But . . . won’t it burn me?” Yaz could feel the heat rising off the stuff.

  “No.” Kao spoke the word oddly, trying to fit it around a large mouthful while rapidly sucking and blowing air into and out of his lips. “Is good.”

  Yaz, Maya, and Quina joined Thurin, Kao, and Arka and started to eat. Yaz had only ever eaten fish before, hot from the sea or cold on the journey from a closing sea to an opening one. The Ictha ate their travel rations frozen. As far as she knew all the other tribes did too.

  The warmth was delicious on its own. Whether it made the slices of fungi taste so wonderful or whether they tasted that good cold Yaz couldn’t say, but she knew for a fact that a burned mouth was a small price to pay. She ate with a dedication that nearly matched Kao’s. She’d never tasted anything so full of flavour, so complicated, savoury with a slight saltiness to it.

  Toward the bottom of the bowl, as Yaz mustered the strength of will to slow down, she discovered small chunks that seemed familiar, though far more tasty hot and soaked in the stew’s dark juice. “This is fish!”

  “It is.” Arka nodded. “You can’t live on the fungi alone, not for too long. Without fish and salt you fall sick and die. Fish livers hold most of what you need to live.”

  “And where do you get fish? Where do you get salt down here?”

  Arka m
et her gaze with serious eyes. “Where do you get iron up there?”

  “I . . . the priests trade it with us.”

  “And we trade it with the priests.” Arka had all their attention now, though Kao still pushed in another mouthful as he stared at her. “Some say it’s the only reason they put us down here.”

  “But . . .” Yaz ran out of words.

  “Broken children die if they stay on the ice. A slow, cruel death,” Quina said. “That’s what the pit is for, to keep the bloodlines pure.”

  Arka shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Have any of you ever seen a gerant, hunska, or marjal child given the chance to try?”

  Nobody answered.

  “They throw us down here,” Yaz said slowly, “and we search for metal from this city, and in return they give us some salt and fish? We work for the priests. Slaves in a hole?”

  “Stars too,” Arka said.

  “What?”

  “We mine the ice for stars too, and trade them for the food we need, and sometimes skins. Though mostly we use rats for that.”

  “Rats?”

  “Like tiny bears . . . only different.” Arka waved the question off. “But yes, you’re right. We’re slaves working for the priests of the Black Rock.” She pursed her lips. “I’m impressed. It normally takes several days for wets to figure it out, and you’ve just dug most of the answer out with a spoon from a bowl of stew!”

  They finished eating without further talk, each held by their own thoughts.

  “Is there more?” Kao was the first to speak again.

  Arka snorted. “Gerants! Three times as strong, five times as hungry.” She shook her head. “You got the largest bowl. There’s more later. We eat when we rise and again just before we sleep.”

  “How do we know when that is?” Maya asked. “The light never changes here.”

  Thurin frowned. “You just know.”