The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,134

I don’t know. Years rather than months. My cells store a lot of energy, but they last longer in the warm. I would live longer in these chambers than in the ice caves above, and much longer in those caves than up on the surface, out in the wind.”

Yaz’s face fell as a sudden guilt overtook her.

Erris shook his head. “Take it from me though, centuries are overrated. It’s what you do with time that makes it matter. I’d rather spend a year making new memories than a thousand wandering around in the same old ones.”

Yaz got to her feet again, still tired but driven more by her thirst than the desire to rest. “Ready to go?”

“You still haven’t told me why you came back.” Erris rose smoothly from his haunches.

“I came to find you. I need your help to get my brother—”

“Zeen.”

“Yes, Zeen. To get him back from the Tainted. And to rescue my friends too.”

“Friends now? You do like to raise the stakes. And what do they need rescuing from?” He resumed climbing the long stairway they had been resting on.

“From the Tainted. There’s this . . . man . . . Theus—”

Erris looked back sharply at that. “Theus? Not Prometheus?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve only ever heard him called Theus.” Yaz let her red star rise above them. “Who’s Prometheus?”

“Someone the city dreams of.” Erris frowned. “Someone it’s scared of.” He shook his head and carried on up the stairs. “Greatness and torment and fire.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure . . . Just words that float through me when the city dreams of Prometheus.” Erris shrugged. “Tell me about this Theus of yours.”

So Yaz did. She told Erris about the Tainted and about her ill-fated raid to rescue Zeen, and about what Theus had said he was doing there in the black ice.

“So what do you think?” It had taken an hour or more to tell it all, and although there were no obvious signs to indicate it Yaz felt that they were close to the surface now. “Is he lying? Or is this Theus really some cast-off piece of one of the Missing? Is that truly what the black ice is? Purged sins?”

“I really don’t know.”

“But you’re my expert here!” Yaz exclaimed.

“I don’t get out much, you may have noticed.” He reached up and pulled himself into a narrow vent that Yaz hadn’t seen. His voice came back muffled as his feet disappeared into the dark hole. “Whatever else this black ice is, on the scale of the city’s lifetime it’s a new development.”

Yaz sighed and jumped to catch the edge of the vent. Cursing and panting with effort she managed to drag herself up and in. She advanced on her chest, letting the star roam ahead of her. An irregular dark stain running down the middle of the narrow shaft hinted that water had trickled down here in the not so distant past. Touching her fingertips to the stain Yaz could even imagine that it was damp. She unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth and hauled herself forward on sore elbows.

* * *

ERRIS FOUND WATER seeping from a narrow crack in a chamber not long after they escaped the crawl-way and Yaz slaked her thirst impatiently, a quarter mouthful at a time, marvelling at how good gritty, mineral-heavy water can taste when you’ve been dried out for too long.

“You said the city dreams of Prometheus. Does it dream of Seus too?” Yaz asked. “Or of Elias Taproot?”

Erris’s brows lifted in surprise. “Is this some quantal power of yours? Are no secrets safe from you?”

“You know them then? It was when we were going through the walls. You said I got intercepted and—”

“And I was too busy escaping to ask you more. And then too busy being torn into small pieces.”

“So you know them then? The city dreams of them?”

“It’s always a nightmare when Seus is in the dream. Vesta is terrified of him. Sometimes I think