The Girl and the Stars

by Mark Lawrence

  Yaz turned to make a quick study of Kao. “I thought they’d killed you.” She found her voice thick, tears in her eyes, surprised at how glad she was to be wrong. “Come on. Quickly. We need to find Maya and Zeen and—” She wanted to say Kaylal, she wanted to say Arka, and even Jerra, she wanted to say all of them. But the cage was leaving too fast, and even if they had time it wouldn’t hold many.

  “I’ll find them,” Kao said and immediately rushed off, shoving through the growing crowd of onlookers. They looked unusually similar, all of them grey with the dust that clung to their wet hides, their hair, and their skin. Kao swung his head this way and that, his height offering him a better view. He called for Zeen, at first in a tentative almost-hiss as if afraid someone might hear him.

  Yaz set off in the opposite direction, pushing her way through the dazed survivors as gently as time allowed, which wasn’t very. They almost seemed to be ghosts, haunting the ruins, but those who had been tainted had more in common with ruins than with ghosts. They had been haunted but now stood empty. She hoped they could rebuild their lives.

  “Zeen!” She shouted her brother’s name. The first loud sound since the howling fight and the falling of stars. The greetings and reunions within the grey and milling crowd had been muted, muffled by wonder, as though everyone worried that this was a dream from which too much excitement might wake them. “Zeen!” Yaz had no such worries.

  She glanced back to the cage. Erris was gone from it, Quell lying at the bottom coming into view above the heads of the crowd. Thurin stood beside Quell, looking worried. He cast about then found her. “Hurry!” he yelled. “We’ll be out of reach soon!”

  Yaz started back reflexively, but someone caught her arm. For a moment she tried to tear herself free, thinking it an attack.

  “It’s me. Arka.” Her scars were just visible beneath the layer of damp, grimy dust. “You’re going back.” Not a question.

  “Yes.” Yaz relaxed a fraction, glad to have told the truth. “Have you seen Zeen or Maya?”

  Arka shook her head as if the question were a distraction. “Pome must have arranged this collection with the priests. Gods know how he speaks to them but it seems that he can.” She furrowed her brow. “But I can’t see Pome anywhere, and those you’ve returned will stand with us. It’s going to be alright here. You don’t have to go back to the priests. Not anymore.”

  “I’m not going back to the regulator. I’m going back to the ice, and I’m taking anyone who wants to come with me.”

  Arka stepped back, eyes widening. “To die in the wind? That’s madness. The priests will be waiting for you, and even if you could escape them there’s nothing up there for our kind. We’re broken.”

  “We’re going to try. Quina—”

  “Ha!” Arka barked the laugh, turning the heads of those nearby. “You’ve been sold that old tale of the green belt around a white world. Next you’ll be telling me the one about the moon that keeps it warm!”

  Yaz didn’t know what a moon was but she didn’t have time to ask. Glancing back she saw that the cage was rising above the heads of those around it. Even as she watched, Erris swung onto it, seemingly unburdened by yet another load tied to his back. He turned and called to her with real urgency. “Hurry!”

  “Zeen!” She bellowed his name and more faces turned her way.

  A fear was growing in Yaz. The fear that her brother lay dead or dying among the ruins, perhaps broken-backed, wrapped around a girder by the power of the flood, or swept down some drain to the undercity and drowned in the dark. Even if he lived this chance wouldn’t come again. Whatever precautions were taken up there on the ice they would be doubled and doubled again after Erris and Quell and Thurin arrived there equipped for a journey.

  “They say set a gerant to find a needle,” Arka said beside her. “You need height to find someone lost in a crowd.”

  “He should have heard me . . .” But Yaz took the point. She turned her back on Arka and started returning to the cage. As she pushed her way through she saw Erris leaning over the top to pass his load to Thurin. Kao beat her back and the cage swung with the addition of his weight as he began to climb it. She hoped he had Zeen with him but he seemed to be alone.

  By the time Yaz laid her hands on the bars and saw Quell, deathly pale, staring at the great hole above them, she had to reach up to snag the cage. Shockingly, she barely had the strength to haul herself up so her foot could find a hold on the underside. The effort nearly broke her. Touching the river twice had left her in ruins, though by rights she should be dead.

  She would look for Zeen from the top. If he was lying hurt or unconscious she would see him and send Erris to recover him. If she couldn’t see him she would jump back down. Whatever the cost she was not leaving without her brother.

  She reached the top of the rising cage and hung exhausted for a few deep breaths as Erris and Kao began climbing down inside. The noise of the crowd surrounded her, still ringing with the joy of reunions, the hurt of wounds being cleaned, the weeping of the bereaved, the groans of the dying. But something had changed. A muting of conversation rippled out and Yaz turned her head in the direction it came from.

  The Broken parted before Bexen, Pome’s enforcer, the largest gerant on the field of battle, the starlight reflecting dully on his iron breastplate. His good eye and the milky one both stared in Yaz’s direction, bright with malice. As the people hurried to get out of Bexen’s way Yaz saw Pome beside him. He still held the red star that had given him control over his hunter. He clutched it in his bare hand now. The left side of his face had been scraped raw and torn, as though he had been dragged some distance across the rock, perhaps refusing to let go of his star when it moved to obey Yaz’s will along with all the others.

  The last few people cleared from their path, revealing Zeen, helpless in Bexen’s grasp, one huge hand wrapped about his neck, the other holding a notched black iron blade close by. Two other gerants came behind them, glaring at the crowd as if challenging them to make a move.

  “Yaz of the Ictha.” Pome wore a tight, victorious smile. “Your companions will exit that cage and you will put your hands through the bars for your wrists to be bound. If this is not done Bexen will kill the boy and your friends will be dispatched with spear thrusts.”

  “Let him go!” Yaz shouted. But Pome’s smile only widened.

  He lifted his star, the scarlet glow leaking between his fingers. The light of it cast his face in shadows and blood.

  “Yours is not the only rising star.” He lifted his voice, speaking for the crowd, his magic letting his poisoned words find a home in some of the hearts that would otherwise reject them. “The girl, Yaz, must return to the surface as the regulator has stipulated and answer for her crimes there. I don’t need to remind you that without the goodwill of the priests we would have no fish, no salt, and no skins. You are all too young to know but Eular remembers a time without salt. It’s a slow, ugly death. It takes about ten days before it starts to hurt, and quite a few more days to die, but after the first twelve days you’ll wish you were dead.” He nodded to one of his gerants. “Go bind her hands.”

  Some of the Broken had looked angry at the threat to a child’s life, but now that anger wavered, torn by self-interest, swayed by Pome’s influence. They couldn’t live on fungi alone, and rats were too scarce. The priests might be miles above but they could reach down and wrap their hands about the throats of the Broken just as Bexen was doing to Zeen.

  Each moment the cage edged its way higher. The bottom of the cage had cleared the Broken now, above the reach of those of regular height. The gerant coming to tie Yaz’s hands outside the cage was nearly close enough to do it. Yaz would have to drop down on the inside and push her wrists through the bars to comply.

  “I should leave.” Thurin began to climb out, his face grim but forcing a smile. “Pome should let you take Quell back. The priest sent your f
riend to get you after all.”

  Erris, already near the top of the cage, swung himself back out and began to climb down. “I’ll find you again, Yaz.”

  Thurin snorted and pointed at the hole above them. “Good climber, are you?”

  Erris smiled. “I have a knack for getting out of places I don’t want to be in.”

  Kao hung where he was, halfway up the inside. He watched her, blue-eyed beneath his mass of dirty blond hair. He exhaled a long sigh. “The Golin wouldn’t have me back anyway,” he said, his voice thick with a boy’s heartache, and with one more sigh he began to haul his man’s body back out of the cage, every limb sporting cuts and bites he had taken saving her from the Tainted.

  Yaz couldn’t let them go but she saw it was no good to argue with any of them. Instead she addressed the Broken, hoping to turn them against Pome.

  “The priests need you as much as you need them,” Yaz called as she clambered into the cage. To her own ears she sounded like a nervous girl trying to argue with an elder, but she pressed on as she began to climb down to where Quell lay curled around his knife wound. “They need the iron you scavenge. It’s how they influence the tribes and gain their favour. They need the trade. It’s not done out of kindness. They trapped you here for their use.”

  Pome laughed. “Do you think they will run out of iron before we run out of salt? Which need is more urgent?” The humour dropped from his face, leaving something ugly behind it.

  For a moment despair swamped Yaz, darkening her mind. But the darkness took on a shape as it swam across her thoughts. “Wait!” she shouted. “There’s a whale! We found a whale locked in the ice. One of the great whales, enough to feed all of you for years. It’s in the furthest cavern of the black ice, but I cleared the demons from it. You don’t need the priests.”

  She felt the change in the crowd. Rumbles of “she cleansed the Tainted,” “they should be allowed to go,” “we don’t owe the priests anything.” Rebellious faces turned Pome’s way. Some of Arka’s faction started toward him and for the moment nobody seemed inclined to stop them.

  Thurin paused at the top of the cage, clinging to the outside, ready to go down.

  “Uh, Yaz?” Kao, white-faced, now dangled beneath the cage, his toes almost scraping stone. “What should I do?” The distance he had to fall wasn’t growing very fast but for someone of such heavy build a drop of even a few feet could hurt.

  Before Yaz could answer, Pome snarled and raised his crimson star above his head again. “This is not open for debate,” he roared.

  The star flared and with a clanking and a grating of metal on stone, hunters began to emerge from cracks and pits all across the ruins. Three, four . . . half a dozen iron behemoths. Some within the great halo formed by the drift of stars and stardust, some outside it.

  Pome shouted, all traces of persuasion gone from his voice. “You will obey the priesthood. All of you. As far as you lot are concerned I am a priest. I rule here now and my word is law.” The wrist that had emerged from his skins as he had raised his arm lay mottled with the stains of demons, not from the black ice, not pieces that the Missing had cut away, but devils of his own making, split from him by the too fierce light of the star that he lacked the skill to properly handle. These were parts of Pome’s madness now given their own voice, their influence all the stronger for it.

  The hunters had all emerged now, standing motionless, the red glare of their eyeholes sweeping the crowd for dissent.

  Pome focused back on Yaz. “I’ll count to ten. If the others aren’t out of the cage by then and your hands are not presented for Rakka to tie then Bexen will kill the boy.”

  He drew a breath. “One. Two.”

  Erris reached the bottom of the cage on the outside. Yaz dropped painfully beside Quell on the inside. The gerant, Rakka, more than a foot taller than the dangling Kao, stood below, raising the looped hide strips he would use to bind her hands.

  “Three. Four.”

  Yaz thrust her hands out through the square gaps in the cage. Rakka had to reach up at arms’ length. He set the loop about her wrists and drew the knot tight, trapping her hands outside.

  Erris hung from the bottom of the cage and dropped lightly to the ground.

  “Five. Six.”

  Thurin hung below the cage. He looked up, despair in his dark eyes even though he had never known the surface. “Yaz . . .” He dropped away, landing less well than Erris and falling to hands and knees at the older man’s feet. The cage jerked, starting to rise faster.

  “Seven. Eight.”

  Kao hung beneath the cage. His toes nearly a yard above the ground.

  “Let go.” Rakka punched him in the stomach.

  “Nine.”

  “Yaz?” Kao wheezed.

  Bexen tightened his grip on Zeen’s neck, a grin cracking his brutal face. Yaz opened her mouth to tell Kao to drop, but a spray of crimson across Bexen’s shoulder stopped her. Something long and thin emerged from just above his collarbone, clearing the top of his breastplate and grazing his chin, coming level with his left eye. That eye and the other one widened. The cruel mouth beneath them went slack. And with a clatter of metal he collapsed, dragging Zeen down with him.

  Maya stood revealed behind him, shedding shadows. She climbed over Bexen’s transfixed body before Pome could react and tugged the gerant’s fingers clear of Zeen’s neck.

  “Catch him!” Pome roared, but Zeen was away and weaving through the Broken with a hunska’s swiftness.

  The six hunters lurched into action as one, their metal feet gouging the stone to accelerate them forward.

  Yaz gritted her teeth against the pain that made her head feel like brittle ice waiting to shatter, and with the last effort remaining to her she reached out. The star in Pome’s hand jerked forward. He got both hands on it, braced against the pull . . . and held. Yaz cried out in despair, having no more to give, but a moment later a dark shape rolled from among the nearest onlookers to knock Pome’s feet out from beneath him. Kaylal! The legless smith tried to grapple Pome but Pome managed to keep one hand on the star and it dragged him clear. Devil-darkened fingers refused to release the star even as it hauled him across the roughness of the rock, trying to fly to Yaz’s outstretched hands.

  Yaz bowed her head in defeat but even as she did so Maya leapt forward, evading the gerants behind her. With one slash of a heavy knife she cut Pome’s hand from him. The star flew free, the severed hand tumbling in its wake. In a crimson streak it sped through the air on a rising curve to hammer into Yaz’s outstretched palms.

  Yaz’s vision dimmed as she strained to send a word of negation to the hunters through Pome’s star and the great mechanisms ground to a halt. She collapsed beside Quell. A trickle of his blood ran across the boards beneath her neck and she watched the drops fall from the cage. They had a frightening distance to fall. Past Kao, still hanging white knuckled beneath the cage and carrying on for another four yards beneath his kicking feet before splashing on the bedrock.

  Erris, Zeen, and Thurin stood beneath staring helplessly, watching Yaz being hauled away. Unchallenged by Pome’s remaining gerants Maya had hauled the iron rod from Bexen’s toppled corpse and trailing the bloody, nearly five-foot length of it she was racing to join the others.

  A warm tear rolled from Yaz’s cheek and fell like the blood. She had failed. If instead of following Zeen into the pit she had stayed and watched the regulator throw more children down how would things be worse? She would have been alone in his bony clutches and Quell would have stayed with the Ictha. And now? She was being delivered weak and alone into the priest’s hands, a package they had bartered for with salt and stars. And Quell would be given back to the Ictha, wounded, not fit for life on the ice.

  Beneath her Zeen was retreating at an increasing pace, Maya, a friend who had saved them so many times, also now abandoned in this hole. And Thurin, and Erris. Bo
th of them had infinitely complicated her life but she found that losing them was tearing her apart as if each owned a separate piece of her heart.

  Erris was doing something. One moment he had been talking urgently to Thurin and in the next he became a blur of motion. Somehow he climbed Thurin, and in a leap that sent the other man sprawling to the ground he launched himself skyward. The jump should have been impossible but Erris wasn’t made of flesh or bone. Somehow he got his fingertips to the toe of Kao’s boot and found enough purchase to hang there. Kao yelled in pain but didn’t surrender his grip on the bars.

  As Thurin got to his hands and knees little Maya used him as a step to execute her own leap. Even with Erris hanging below Kao the vertical distance was too great for her to jump but she thrust her bar out above her and with inhuman skill Erris caught the very end of it between his heels. Held by such a tenuous bond Maya swung at the far end of more than a yard of bloody iron and rose with the accelerating cage.

  Thurin got unsteadily to his feet, still bent over, and formed a cup with both hands. Zeen stepped into it. With a howl of effort and unsuspected strength Thurin threw the boy into the air.

  “No!” Yaz shouted. It was like the game where you stack ice blocks impossibly high, each person adding one in turn until the teetering structure eventually falls. The chain beneath her was already longer and more fragile than anything that could be expected to endure. To expect Zeen to join it . . .

  The boy caught his arms around Maya’s ankles. The impact made her grunt and sent her swinging more wildly. The slippery iron between Erris’s heels worked back and forth. For a heartbeat it looked like everything might impossibly hold together. And then with a shriek of anger Maya lost her grasp on the rod.