Читать книгу The Girl and the Stars - Mark Lawrence - Страница 12

Arka led them from the ravine back into the ice caverns. Their footsteps echoed through the endless twilight, each breath steaming up before them. To her amazement Yaz saw that what she had first thought to be fallen lumps of ice scattering the floor of these long halls were in fact something very different. Roundish objects, in shades from white through grey and brown, lay here and there, varying in size from an eyeball to a head, all of them smooth-skinned, some beaded with water drops.

‘What are they?’ she asked as they drew closer to a place where scores of them clustered.

‘Are they dangerous?’ asked Maya, moving closer to Yaz.

‘Rocks,’ Kao declared.

Quina reserved her judgement.

‘Fungi. They grow where the stones … the stars … give enough warmth.’ Arka bent to pick up a small one from the shadow of a larger one. It made a faint tearing sound as if it were attached to the rock.

‘It’s an animal?’ Yaz wondered why it didn’t run away.

‘A plant. You can eat them.’ Arka took a bite from it and winced. ‘These sort taste better cooked.’

‘Plant?’ Maya asked. Yaz thanked her silently, not wanting to always be the one showing her ignorance.

‘Plants …’ Arka waved her hands at the things helplessly. ‘They don’t move and they don’t bleed but they live …’

‘Like a tree,’ Quina said quietly, rolling something small between her fingers.

Arka frowned. ‘I don’t know about those. But Eular says plants grow anywhere that there is warmth and water and light. He says everything living depends on them for food.’

‘I bloody don’t,’ Kao growled. ‘I eat meat like everyone else.’

‘Yes, but the fish you take from the sea eat plants or eat other fish that eat plants and—’

‘There are plants in the sea now?’ Yaz asked.

‘Yes and—’

‘But there’s no light under the sea,’ Quina said.

‘Well …’ Arka grew flustered. ‘There must be … Eular knows these things. Ask him!’ She thrust the rest of the fungus ball into Quina’s hand and strode away. ‘Come on!’ As she walked she offered more advice on the mysterious world of plants. ‘The brown ones aren’t bad raw. Brown ones with reddish spots will have you vomiting blood for a week. Purple ones will kill you. We weed out the bad ones from the groves but out in the more distant caves you’ll find them, sometimes mixed in with the good ones.’

The settlement sat in an enormous cavern whose entire roof glowed faintly with innumerable stars. Instead of tents, angled to resist the wind, the Broken lived within strange, blocky dwellings fashioned from a variety of materials each more foreign than the next. Glass was the only building material Yaz recognized, gleaming in ill-advised openings in walls. Many of the walls were made from what might be rock but of a lighter colour than that underfoot. The rock had been shaped into blocks much like those the Eskin clan made from snow to construct shelters.

‘Do we have to sleep in one of these?’ Maya’s voice echoed Yaz’s own mistrust of those hard flat roofs and sharp angles.

‘Is there nothing you’re not afraid of, girl?’ Kao snorted. ‘No wonder Clan Axit wanted to drop you down the pit!’

Maya put her head down and said nothing. Clan Axit were the largest of all the clans and many said they all thought themselves kings of the ice. Although life in the wastes left no room for war the Axit had a reputation for fierceness. Blood and more blood had been spilled in the long ago and some said they trained in secret for a war still to come. Yaz gave Kao a hard look until he coloured and turned away.

Yaz couldn’t tell how large the settlement was, only that it seemed to cover a bigger area than the Ictha used when pitching their tents. Perhaps there were more of the Broken than she had first thought. Or maybe there had been more of them in the past.

As they drew closer to the buildings Yaz sniffed at the familiar smell of humanity, stronger here than in camp where the wind scoured the ice between the tents. She saw figures moving in the gloom, making their way along the clear pathways between the various structures. Closer still and she heard the drip, drip, drip of water on rooftops. Every surface close to horizontal glimmered with a light so subtle that the eye almost missed it, stardust falling with the meltwater.

Arka directed them to a low building, one of the first they reached. ‘You’ll all be sleeping in this barracks tonight. And I will be in that hut over there.’ She pointed to a smaller structure whose door faced the barracks door. ‘To keep an eye on you.’

Arka followed them into the barracks. Unlike some of the other buildings this one had none of those glass-covered openings, a fact for which Yaz was grateful. A single small star-stone hung from the roof support in a wire cage, providing a weak light. A dozen bedrolls had been laid out on pallets of the same stuff the walls were made of. The rolls themselves were patchworks of worn skins, sewn and resewn to the point that Yaz wondered if she would wake to find hers in a hundred pieces. She didn’t recognize the fur, not hoola or harp whale.

Maya yawned and Yaz found herself suddenly exhausted. She had no idea how long had passed in the first ice chamber she’d dropped into. Would the gathering far above be in full swing or breaking up as the sun rose? For a moment the weight of all that ice seemed to crush her. She bore it though, along with the weight of sorrow for her mother and her father and Quell and maybe for some of the others she would never see again. Would they be grieving amid the celebrations, even though they were not supposed to? The music and the ferment were meant to help in the forgetting but she hoped they would each at least shed one tear for the girl they had lost.

‘You stay here until I come for you.’ Arka opened the door, pointing. ‘That hut way over there by the entrance to that side chamber. That’s where you go in the night. Nothing freezes down here so we don’t take care of our business near where we sleep. And nothing is wasted. What we have no use for helps grow the plants we eat.’

‘The fungi eats dung?’ Kao pushed up the blond mop of his hair in disgust. ‘And you eat the fungi?’

Arka shrugged. ‘You will too if you don’t want to starve. It’s the circle of life. The dead go into the pits too. It’s how life is. Eular says that on the ice that circle is broken because Abeth is dying. What you take from the sea does not return. But down here the cycle still turns life into death and death into life, and will do so as long as the stars shine.’ With that she left them. Yaz sat, watching Arka walk away and wondering who this Eular was who seemed to know everything.

‘Well, I’m not eating that … muck.’ Kao slammed the door behind Arka.

A low chuckle brought their attention to the gloom at the far end of the barracks where what had seemed to be a heap of bedding now raised its head.

‘So this is where you ran off to.’ Kao snorted at Thurin and shook his head. On the ice nobody stormed off in a temper. The wind would cool you down quicker than you liked, and if your anger took you out of view then you might never find your way back.

Thurin shrugged. ‘I have things to prove before they let me back.’

‘Back?’ Quina went to take a sleeping place not far from Thurin’s.

Thurin said nothing, only lay down and turned away. Maya went to take a place near the door.

‘Not that one,’ Kao said, looming over her.

Maya moved to another, and Kao scowled at her retreat. Yaz watched, wondering that someone so large would feel the need to push a small girl around. Kao could have made an issue of Thurin laughing at him, if he wanted a fight, but there was something haunting that one’s eyes that might give a mad dog pause.

Taking a pallet a good distance from Kao’s Yaz settled herself down. ‘I’m going to find my brother and rescue him from the Tainted.’ She said it with more confidence than she felt and looked through the gloom at the shapeless heap that was Thurin.

‘If you see him you should run,’ the heap replied.

‘Arka told me that the rest are not as bad as Hetta,’ Yaz said. ‘They don’t eat people.’

‘Let them catch you and you’ll wish they had eaten you.’ A long silence. ‘Theus is worse than Hetta. Much worse.’

It was as if Thurin were daring her to ask. She held her tongue. She wasn’t sure if it was pride that kept her lips sealed. Or maybe it was just knowing that since she had to go after Zeen it was better she didn’t hear anything which might make it harder to leave.

Thurin told her anyway. ‘Theus has a plan. He leads them. All of them. Even Hetta is scared of Theus. He’s looking for something in the black ice. Been looking for it a long time. A very long time.’

‘Who is he? What tribe? How old is he?’ The man had taken her brother. Yaz found herself needing to know, however bad it might be.

Thurin didn’t speak for a while and the barracks seemed to hold its breath, as if the others were listening too and feared to betray themselves.

‘Theus is as old as the body he wears. When I first saw him he was wearing Gossix, a boy I used to know.’

‘Wearing?’ Yaz shuddered. She could only think of a flayed skin, just as the Ictha wore the skin of mole-fish, the hides of tuark, and seal furs traded from the Triple Seas far to the south. ‘None of the tribes would—’

‘Theus is not of the tribes.’ Thurin’s voice fell to a whisper, haunted with memory. ‘He comes from the ice itself.’ He seemed about to say more but the door burst open and light flooded in, chasing shadows to the corners.

‘On your feet, drop-group!’ Pome stood, revealed in the light of his own star.

He watched, hard-faced, as they stood, Thurin last of all, favouring him with a dark look.

‘Inspection time.’ Pome strode in between them. ‘Let’s see what sorry excuses we’ve been given this time.’

Maya shrank away from the star as Pome waved it past her on the end of its iron rod. Pome swung back to Kao by the doorway. ‘Big fellow, eh? Golin?’

Kao nodded.

‘I should have been leader of this drop-group,’ Pome said. ‘But Tarko has his politics to play. In the end though, drop-groups aren’t here or there. You come sit with us sometime, down at the Green Shack, and I’ll tell you how things are under the ice. The Broken are listening to me these days and they like what I’m saying. Tarko has me marked for great things.’

Kao nodded and Yaz found herself starting to nod too. She stopped. There was nothing she liked about this young man: not his attitude, the things he said, or the way his gaze slid over her, and yet somehow his words had been carrying her along with them.

‘Get out, Pome.’ Thurin spat. ‘Take your pretty lies with you.’

Pome curled his lip in annoyance and strode towards Thurin, thrusting his star before him. ‘Was that you talking, Taint? Or did you let a demon take your tongue again?’

Thurin backed from the starlight, shielding his face as if it were a fierce heat.

‘See?’ Pome looked back at the rest of them. ‘The Tainted can’t stand the stars. The light is what keeps us safe.’ He glanced at Kao. ‘Never go where it’s dark, boy. Not down here. They’ll have you in a moment.’

‘Yessir.’ Kao gulped and nodded.

Pome turned and jabbed his star at Thurin, who was pressed to the back wall now. The light made him gasp as if in pain, forcing him to slide into the corner on his rear.

‘Stop that!’ Yaz found herself moving forward. However convincing Pome’s words felt, she didn’t like what he was doing one bit.

‘Or you’ll stop me?’ Pome swung round, thrusting his star at her chest.

Yaz squinted down to where the star blazed against her mole-fish skins, brighter even than before. It was just light though, no heat, no pain. The star gave off a faint sound, like the strains of a distant song, with a rapid beat beneath it. ‘You should leave.’

Pome frowned and jabbed the star against her. He looked puzzled.

‘Pome!’ It was Arka at the doorway. ‘Get out here.’

Pome’s face tightened. He forced a smile over gritted teeth and left without saying anything more.

‘Are you all right?’ Yaz tilted her head, not sure if she should offer Thurin her hand to help him rise. Outside, Arka and Pome’s raised voices diminished into the distance.

‘Fine.’ Thurin got to his feet, not looking at Yaz or her half-offered hand. He brushed himself down and went to his bed.

Thurin didn’t speak again until they were all settling to sleep. ‘People think Pome’s special because he can withstand the stars, but that’s not why he’s dangerous. He’s dangerous because his words get under your skin. Listen to him too long and you start believing what he says. And if he doesn’t manage to hook you that way then watch out for the ones he does hook.’

Sleep took an age to find Yaz. Imagination chased her through her exhaustion. Strangers’ eyes watched her from tainted faces, laden with malice. At last she turned her thoughts from Thurin’s words only to rediscover the unsettling warmth, the dampness in the air – something she knew only from the Hot Sea – the irregular splat of meltwater drops falling upon the roof, the distant groaning of the ice always on the move. All of it conspired to keep her dreams away and instead her mind replayed the events of the pit and the screaming rush of her fall, over and over.

Yaz lay in the gloom staring at the roof above her. In her whole life this was the first time she had tried to sleep anywhere but within her family tent. She needed the constant complaint of the wind against the hides. She needed her father’s growling snore building to the familiar snort then temporary silence. She needed the cold and the knowledge that Zeen and her mother pressed her, hide-wrapped, to either side. Yaz thought of her mother then and a tear ran from the corner of her eye. What must it be like in the tent now with just the two of them in all that space? Father, grim-faced, hands in fists upon his lap, knuckles white. Mother, proud, her face carved by the endless wind, iron in her long dark hair, eyes as pale as the wastes. Four years ago she had two sons and a daughter. Now they were gone. Would her pride still carry her over the ruin of her family? A second tear rolled after the first.

Finally Yaz dozed, woken periodically by a gnawing hunger, not helped by regular gurgles from Kao’s stomach. Hunger reminded her that however suicidal her mind might have been in throwing her down the Pit of the Missing, her body intended to live and was demanding that she look after its needs or things would go hard on her.

When a dark shape crept past her Yaz imagined that whoever it was was heading for the distant hut Arka had pointed out. But the figure, too slim to be Kao and too tall for Maya, left the door ajar and turned the wrong way. Curious, Yaz slipped from her covers and moved to follow.

She saw now as she left the barracks that it could only be Thurin ahead of her. On the ice he wouldn’t last long, too thin to resist the wind’s assault. Yaz herself lacked the full solidity of the Ictha but Thurin looked as though he might be blown away before the wind froze him.

The gritty rock felt curious underfoot, sticking to her damp feet. To leave a shelter without boots and liners was to lose toes to the frost, but here a lifetime’s learning could be undone in one drop. Yaz stumbled as she followed Thurin away from the settlement, stubbing her big toe on a fold in the rock. She cursed as quietly as she could, hobbling along a good thirty yards behind her quarry.

Thurin crossed the length of the cavern, jumping two small streams, and came to an archway that led to some new chamber, darker than the one they occupied. Near the entrance a single light burned, a star-stone larger than any of those Yaz had yet seen, bedded in the ice at a level she might reach if she were to stand on Thurin’s shoulders and stretch.

Thurin came to a halt near the arch. ‘You’re not doing a very good job of spying on me, you know.’ He didn’t turn towards her.

Yaz froze and said nothing.

‘Stealth isn’t really a skill you need on the ice. I’m told the wind hides every other noise and that there’s nothing to hunt.’

Still Yaz remained motionless, the air trapped in her lungs.

‘You should have told me that you weren’t trying to be quiet.’ Thurin at last turned to face Yaz and she released her breath. ‘But I have heard that the Ictha can’t lie.’ He cocked his head. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ Yaz lied, and they both smiled.

‘You can’t sleep. Most can’t on the first night. Maybe the others are just faking it. The big lad, Wayo?’

‘Kao.’

‘Kao, then. He can’t really snore like that? I’m sure it must be some kind of a joke …’

Yaz found herself chuckling and made herself stop, suddenly stern. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Answering questions.’

Yaz didn’t smile this time. ‘I have more. I want to know—’

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Thurin asked.

‘I—’ Yaz looked down, mortified at the reminder she had nothing on but the mole-fish skins she’d been sewn into. She should have stolen Kao’s cape but it was so warm she hadn’t noticed her state of undress. Now beneath the brightness of the nearby star she felt next to naked. ‘No!’ She had hoped the word would come out defiantly but it ended up as more of a squeak. ‘Too hot if anything.’ Not a lie. Under Thurin’s amused gaze every inch of exposed skin felt as if it were burning.

‘It’s a breath away from freezing.’ Thurin shook his head. ‘The stories about the Ictha appear to be true. Are you all as strong as bears too?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen a bear, let alone wrestled one.’

Thurin smiled, though there was a sadness in it, the same sorrow that had been haunting him when they first met and ran beneath his laughter. He turned back towards the ice again.

‘I have more questions.’ Yaz moved closer.

‘I didn’t come here to answer your questions,’ he said.

‘But you said—’

‘I have questions of my own.’ He crossed to where the rock held a puddle and crouched before it.

Yaz bit back on her impatience and went to stand behind him. Shouting at Thurin was unlikely to get her the answers she needed. Though she was prepared to knock his head against the rock as a last resort if that was what it took. ‘Well?’

Thurin reached out to the water, putting his hand into it, flat against the rock at the bottom, long fingers splayed.

‘Ah …’ Something twisted inside Yaz, a curious sensation, as if she were a pool into which a ball of ice had fallen, sending out ripples. Only she was the ice and the ripples as well as being the pool.

Thurin let out a small gasp, pain perhaps, and raised his hand. Somehow the water rose with his hand, a slowly undulating glove, inches thick on every side, beautiful where the light came through to project moving lines of light and shadow across Yaz’s stomach and thighs.

‘You’re a witch-child!’

Thurin laughed and the water fell away in sparkling drops. ‘I’m not a child. And it’s an old blood that runs through us. Older than the Ictha or any other tribe. Marjal blood.’

‘Us?’ Yaz wasn’t sure she wanted this strange young man as her kin.

‘Well, you’re too small for a gerant, unless you’re twelve … and you don’t look twelve.’ For a moment Thurin’s gaze ran the length of her.

Yaz let anger burn away any sense of shame at her state of undress. ‘I’ve seen the long night sixteen times. None but the Ictha can endure it.’

‘Ah, but that’s why the regulator threw you down, is it not?’ An eyebrow arched. ‘You wouldn’t have lasted many more. You don’t strike me as a hunska even though you have the black hair. Your eyes are too pale. Are you quick?’

‘Quick enough.’ Yaz thought of Zeen. Her brother made her seem slow. In the hand-slap game there was no beating him, and although his eyes weren’t the night black of some southerners like Quina, they were the darkest she knew among the Ictha.

‘Not gerant huge or hunska fast, and yet thrown down here with the rest of us. You’re a marjal, Yaz.’

She hadn’t been sure Thurin had even registered her name. It sounded strange in his mouth, the southern tribes blunted the edges of their words.

‘Will I be able to do … that … then?’ She nodded at the rippling puddle.

Thurin pursed his lips. ‘We marjals have many tricks; the gods reach into their bag of marvels and scatter us with this gift or that, but never too many. The most common are skills to work with shadow or air. My talent is the most prized of the basic skills down here. We can influence the ice, even in its molten form.’ He waved a hand at the puddle and the ripples vanished. ‘I can also work with fire, that’s a rarer skill than ice-work but useless. There’s nothing to burn here.’ He shook his head, smiling ruefully at the gods’ joke. ‘The rarest elemental skill is rock-work. But there’s no rock on the ice and no fire beneath it.’

‘How do you even know you can work flame if there’s no fire down here?’ Yaz asked.

Thurin smiled. ‘At the forge they melt iron down. I can understand the heat, move it around. It feels the same as when I manipulate the ice. I think my flame-work might actually be stronger than my ice-work.’ He shook his head again at the irony.

‘Are there other magics?’ Yaz asked. None of this sounded like the river that runs through all things, the source of her strangeness.

‘Some. Oddities that crop up now and then. Welaz could make things float in the air. Anything. Even people. But he’s dead now. Old Gella can make a wound heal faster than it should. Dekkan can find things that are lost.’ He shrugged and pulled his coat around him. ‘How can you not be cold?’ he asked.

‘Why did you come out here?’ Yaz tried to turn the conversation in a new direction.

‘Maybe I wanted to spy on someone.’ Thurin met her eyes with a frank smile and Yaz turned away. ‘Or maybe I needed to check I still had value.’

‘Do the marjals lose their powers then?’ Yaz asked. ‘I know the Tainted had you. Is that why they let you go? Your power got weak?’

‘We don’t lose our skills, no. If anything they get stronger. Once ice-sworn, always ice-sworn. But I’m exhausted and underfed.’ He looked down at his own thinness. ‘And the Tainted don’t let anyone go. Ever. Arka led a raid to get me back. A woman died. Another man lost his eye. They should have left me.’ He stared out into the darkness, bleak and silent for a moment. ‘Tarko wouldn’t have let them risk it if I weren’t valuable to the Broken.’

‘But why? The trick with the water is pretty but—’

‘They need me to dig through ice. I can dig faster than three gerants put together. For a tenth of the food ration.’ Thurin forced a smile and patted his narrow stomach. ‘I like the digging too. If I don’t use my ice-work regularly then the energy builds up inside me and when I do eventually use it … well, it can be dramatic.’

Yaz looked around at the echoingly large space about them. ‘These caverns are huge. Why is it so important to dig new ones?’

‘For these.’ Thurin turned back towards the wall, thrusting his hand out. High up the ice shattered and the brilliant star fell within a cloud of glowing fragments to strike the rock beneath.

‘Should you have done that?’ Yaz glanced back towards the settlement, alarmed. For all that she wanted to find Zeen she knew she needed help from the Broken. Getting banished on her first night would cap off, with one stupid move, a day’s journey that had started with another very stupid move.

‘Relax. It’s us ice-workers who put the things up there in the first place and they’re always being re-sunk. All of the stars generate a very small amount of heat even without sigils around them. They sink through the ice very slowly. The tiny ones, little more than dust really, sink so slowly that the current of the ice can lift them. The big ones all end up on the bedrock given time.’ He advanced on the star as he spoke until he was reduced to a silhouette with the light streaming all around him.

Thurin’s steps grew slower and closer together as he approached the star, almost as though he were fighting to make progress against a great wind. Yaz could hear the strain in his voice when he spoke. ‘This is the largest of the stars we use as lights. People don’t like to get near them, especially the bigger ones, so we use smaller ones in town.’

‘You … you’re not worried someone will steal it?’ Yaz wondered if that might be exactly what he was doing right now.

‘The Tainted? No, the Taints can’t abide them. Won’t go near one if they have a choice.’ There was real pain in Thurin’s voice now, and still he had a yard to go if he were to pick the stone up.

‘What are you doing?’ Yaz called, squinting into the light. ‘Why are you doing it?’

‘Proving … something … to … myself.’ Thurin took another step then fell back with a cry.

‘Thurin!’ Yaz ran to help him as he crawled away, the light flaring behind him.

‘I’m all right.’ Thurin pushed her hand from his arm and staggered up.

‘You don’t look all right.’ He looked like a rag that’s too worn to be used as anything but stuffing. She glanced towards the star, still blazing on the rock. ‘How can you put it back if you can’t even touch it?’

Thurin waved a tired hand at the star and the water rushed from the puddle to set it rolling back against the ice wall. He made a fist and twisted it. Somehow the ice drew the star half into it and began to lift it. Fascinated, Yaz edged closer while Thurin continued the slow upward flow of the ice, raising the star above her head towards its former position. Creaks, groans, and small splintering noises accompanied the star’s gradual ascent, the ice protesting just as it did on a larger scale as the great sheets moved across the rock.

Glancing back Yaz could see the effort it was costing Thurin. In the twilight she could almost see the threads of magic connecting Thurin to the wall. Suddenly he faltered, the gossamer network of his magic fell apart, and with a sharp retort something high above Yaz snapped.

The star fell, hit the rock, and rolled, coming to a halt by the side of Yaz’s foot. She heard Thurin cry out in shock then find his words ‘Get away! Quick!’

The star blazed so bright Yaz could see nothing but its brilliance. The power and nearness of it sang in her bones, a wordless roaring, beautiful but wild enough to drown in. Despite its smallness and outpouring of light the star seemed a wider and deeper hole than that into which she had thrown herself only hours before. Unable to stop herself Yaz crouched and reached to pick the thing from the floor. The light made black lines of her finger bones and a rosy haze of the flesh around them. Her whole hand tingled, then burned, then closed around the star, so small that she could almost hide it within her grasp.

‘Be still,’ she told it for it seemed to her that the star was a racing heart, beating beyond its limits. And suddenly the blaze vanished, replaced by a molten reddish glow like that of the setting sun. There was a silence too. She had barely heard the star’s song before, but now that it was gone the air seemed to ache for its return. Yaz looked for Thurin and saw nothing but blackness swimming with after-images.

‘What have you done?’ Thurin, aghast, speaking from her blindness.

‘I asked it to be quiet.’ Yaz blinked and was relieved to see Thurin as a dark shape moving against a less dark background.

‘You shouldn’t be able to do that!’ He sounded scared. Amazed, but scared. ‘Make it work again.’

Yaz went right up to the wall and held the star above her at arm’s length, stretching. She pressed it to the ice. ‘Make it go in.’

Thurin’s magic fluttered around her and the ice swallowed the star as easily as if she were pressing it into fresh snow. ‘It’s still not working!’ he hissed.

Yaz stepped back. The star’s red glow gave the ice around it a bloody hue. ‘Sing,’ she told it. And in an instant the light returned, bright as it had ever been.

‘Come on!’ Thurin grabbed her shoulder, nails biting into bare skin. ‘We need to go back.’ He pulled her with him. ‘Pray nobody saw that!’

Both of them stumbled into the settlement, exhausted. Yaz found herself unable to stop yawning and Thurin seemed barely able to stand. ‘Working the ice … takes something out of me.’ He straightened with effort.

Yaz just nodded and followed as he led off again. Her sight had yet to recover entirely and the cavern’s twilight pulsed around her. Amid it all a mysterious clot of shadow moved across her vision like a person wrapped in night.

‘I’m not normally so weak,’ Thurin muttered. ‘But when I was …’

‘With the Tainted,’ Yaz supplied.

He nodded. ‘My ice-work got used, but it wasn’t me using it. I was a passenger in my own body. I’m out of practice at being me … if that makes any sense.’

Yaz said nothing. Part of her was thinking of Zeen, demon-haunted, wandering out there somewhere in the black ice. The other part ran Thurin’s words through her mind. Out of practice at being me. She felt adrift. She had, for her entire life, been a small but vital part in a single organism dedicated to survival against the odds. Just like every other member of the Ictha she’d carried out her duties in the certain knowledge that should she fail they would all suffer. On the edge of extinction every mistake carried a fatal edge, every waking moment had a purpose, every hour was occupied. It seemed strange that after what should have been a fall to her death she had for perhaps the first time in her life a chance to practise being her.

On the outskirts of the settlement Thurin turned and looked out across the great cavern sleeping in its own starlit twilight. A dozen openings led from it into other caverns or tunnels. ‘It’s pretty, but seriously though, don’t wander off.’

‘I might get lost?’ asked Yaz, trying not to bristle at the suggestion she couldn’t look after herself.

‘You might get taken.’ Thurin made a flat line of his mouth. ‘Hetta will only eat you. Theus haunts the dark, and those they can’t fill with demons …’

‘What happens to them?’

Thurin turned away. ‘Sometimes we hear them screaming, even here. It can last for days. They do it to tempt us out there.’

Yaz hung her head. The shadows and starlight seemed suddenly less beautiful and she shivered despite the warmth.

Thurin led off wearily without saying more.

They reached the barracks and almost fell through the door. Yaz found the energy to close it behind them, noticing as she did so that the door to Arka’s hut stood ajar. She wondered for a moment if the woman had watched them return together. She decided that she was too tired to care, about anything, and crawled beneath her thin blanket with a sigh. She thought of this Theus, this nightmare creature waiting for them in the darkness, and was sure she would lie awake until the next day. But she was asleep before she drew her next breath.