“Why doesn’t it shine anymore?” Maya had come away from the others, who were still muttering together.

“I asked it not to,” Yaz said.

“Do they speak?”

“No . . . maybe . . . like the wind and the ice maybe. They speak but we’re not meant to understand it.” She rolled the star toward Maya but the girl shied away.

“I can’t.” Maya shook her head. “When I get too close to them I get voices in my head. It scares me.”

“So they do speak?” Yaz was intrigued.

“No . . . I don’t think so. It’s like the voices are parts of me. As if the star were . . . breaking me apart.”

Yaz bit her lip, thinking. She reached to retrieve the star, and finding it just out of reach she made to shift position. But, before she could move, the star somehow answered her desire and rolled to meet her fingers. No one but Maya saw and the girl looked at her wide-eyed. “What?” hissed Yaz. “You can pick up shadows and make a cloak out of them!”

A grin escaped Maya at that and she shrugged her acceptance. “Everyone has some trick they can do. My sister’s friend could balance three fish bones end to end in a tower on the tip of his finger. I would rather have had a trick like that, one that meant I could have stayed with my family.” The grin faded once more.

Yaz picked up the star again, the strange tingle of it buzzing beneath her skin. The whole thing no bigger than an eyeball.

“What else can you do?” Maya whispered.

Yaz wasn’t sure. Staring at the star she began to see hints of the river again. To her it had always seemed to be the reality behind the world. Eular had named it the source of the quantals’ power. She had never been able to see it again so soon after touching it. Always it hid from her, sometimes for days. But just around the margins of her hand she saw it, running into the star as if it were a hole. With an effort of concentration she pushed on the star without moving her hand. For a heartbeat it wobbled then slowly it rose. Just an inch or two before something in her mind slipped and the stone dropped back into her hand.

“Still playing with that thing?”

Yaz looked up and tried to refocus blurred eyes. She realised that it was Thurin speaking and that she had a splitting headache.

“What . . .”

“I said, still—”

“You went in to see Eular.”

“I know.” Thurin crouched beside her. “Maya’s in with him now. Are you alright?”

“I . . . think so.” Yaz frowned and rubbed her brow. “Wasn’t Maya just here . . . ?” Time seemed to slip by in chunks when she looked at the star. The Ictha made all their hides with plenty of small pockets. She slipped the star into one and stood, finding her legs full of protests. “I’m fine. Just some cramp.”

“Well, stamp it out!” Thurin stood with her. “Petrick thinks Arka might take us to the city today.”

Yaz didn’t try to hide her surprise. “So soon? Isn’t the city supposed to be dangerous?”

“I thought you would have realised by now.” Thurin shot her a dark-eyed look, half-sad, half-amused. “Everything is dangerous down here.”

12

   SPEAKING WITH EULAR left each of the drop-group quiet, their thoughts turned inwards. Even Kao seemed subdued and Quina without her usual quickness that turned every motion into a twitch. She knelt beside Yaz and muttered, “He told me that we are all victims of our childhood, even good ones, for they made us what we are, and it’s a rare person who isn’t disappointed with that. What gave that old man the right to speak to me as if he knows me?” She seemed angry but distracted, as if the words did hold some special meaning for her.

Yaz shrugged. “People get like that if they live long enough to turn grey. They think they’ve seen it all and have answers for everyone. But they’re so distant from living life that they forget that we all have different paths.” She met Quina’s eyes. “Maybe . . . or perhaps he does have a power after all, and we should listen.”

Quina nodded, and half turned to move away, still troubled. “I thought I was dead when the regulator gave me the push. I knew it was coming. I was too fast. Different. Feeling the cold every night no matter how many furs I scrounged. I thought I was going to die. Even after the drop for a while I thought I must be dead and this is what the hells are.”

“What changed your mind?” Yaz grinned. “Could you make a better hell?”

Quina echoed the smile. “I guess the Tainted are like a hell on our doorstep. But this . . .” She waved at the starlit cavern. “It’s interesting down here. I had expectations about my life with the clan but one thing I never expected to see was anything different. I expected to spend my whole life looking at the ice. The same thing, every day. A long white view to a white-on-white horizon. And that’s gone. The wind is gone. Predictability gone.”

“Safe gone,” Yaz said.

“True. But I’ve been given something I never knew I wanted. Not these caves, but the possibility of change. The idea that I have no idea what my life will be tomorrow, or next year.”

“You’d go back though?” Yaz asked, examining her own mind for any trace of doubt.

“Hells yes. In a heartbeat.” Quina snorted. “But it would be a different me who went back. Already, even after just a day.” She walked away, aiming herself at Petrick. The two were of an age and Yaz had already noticed them spending time in each other’s company.

Yaz returned to her own thoughts. The regulator wanted her back but his message didn’t tell her how to leave. Or perhaps it did and Hetta chose not to pass that part of the message on. Did she truly want to return? If she managed to recover Zeen, and if the regulator allowed him back too . . . wouldn’t the ice kill him? And life for her would be in service to the priesthood, part of their number, caged within the confines of the Black Rock, her clan forgotten. Was it better to be imprisoned in the priesthood, part of the system that discarded children into the Pit of the Missing? Or to have the freedom of the caves along with all the hardship and danger that came with them?

* * *

EVENTUALLY PETRICK LED them back to Forge Lake and, following his report of recent events, stayed at Arka’s request.

Yaz joined the others in the smiths’ shed to observe the beautiful Kaylal and his friend Exxar tease iron into chain links with their hammers. Later the drop-group provided an audience while silent Ixen and the bony woman sorted newly scavenged metal by type. And finally they watched a gerant smith and several apprentices beating steel plates into pieces of armour.