The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,137

Another distant cry rang out. Fainter than the first. Fear, pain, anger, or just someone shouting for someone else? She couldn’t tell. She dimmed the light of the hunter’s star still further. “Come on.” She beckoned.

“Did you know that the star-stone fragments glow more brightly when you’re near them?”

Yaz turned to glare at him. “Quietly!” She led on. “And yes. And call them stars.”

Two caverns on and they came into a starlit grove of fungi, some of them types that Yaz hadn’t yet seen, tall, slim, and elegantly spotted with vibrant red and lustrous blue spots. Some of these reached to her elbows and where they grew together thickly they reminded her of Erris’s forest. She turned to find him on hands and knees, examining examples of the capped fungi that tasted so good in stew.

“These are marvellous. I’m amazed to find them growing here, but I guess life finds a way . . .”

“We should go,” Yaz muttered. “It’s not safe here.” As she said the words a rattle of falling or thrown ice snapped her attention to the darker of the two exits. “Erris!” she hissed, turning back to beckon him to her.

Instead of Erris she found herself looking at the point of an iron spear.

“Arka?” The face of the woman behind the spear had been smeared with mud, leaving her almost unrecognisable, but her rangy build and something around her eyes made Yaz think of Arka.

“Yaz!” And as the hunter’s star slowly rotated into view from behind her: “Gods in the Ice! That’s the biggest fucking star I’ve ever seen!” Arka fell back, wincing as the star’s aura brushed over her.

Yaz looked past Arka to where the grey-haired gerant who had been among the council at headquarters in the drying cave now had both arms wrapped around Erris from behind. A second of the Broken watched him, clutching a spear. Erris was smiling, seeming both amused and very interested by the development. Yaz found herself wondering about the world he had come from before falling into the city. Did they not have violence or was he simply less protective of his body because it wasn’t the one he was born into? He should be. From his own account he had spent far longer making it than his mother and he had spent on the original.

Arka continued to edge back from the hunter’s star, still holding her spear toward Yaz. “Who’s this?” She nodded toward Erris.

“That’s Erris.” Yaz pushed the star behind her. “He’s new to all . . . this.” She waved at their spears. “So please don’t hurt him if he does the wrong thing. He’s from the city.”

Arka frowned. “You’ve come from the city?”

“We have. But Erris is from the city.”

“Nobody is from the city,” the gerant growled.

“I am.” Erris raised both arms in a slow yawning stretch and in the process broke the old gerant’s bear hug with no apparent effort despite the man’s scarred arms being thick with slabbed muscle.

The other Broken, a bony older woman, one of the ironworkers, Yaz thought, retreated two steps, the point of her spear trembling.

“This is . . .” Arka gaped, her gaze darting back and forth between Yaz and Erris. “Astonishing.”

“I’ve been astonished every day since I came down the pit.” Yaz shrugged.

Arka fixed her stare on Erris. “Are you one of the—”

“He’s not one of the Missing, no,” Yaz said. “But Theus is part of one. Several parts of one. And that’s where we’re going.”

Arka shook her head. “No. We’re going to secure the city. We’re making it our new base. If we deny Pome access to the iron then his power won’t last long.”

“You’re not worried about the hunters?” Erris asked.

“Always. But I’ve been worried about them for twenty years. And besides, we have Yaz now and something about that star behind her tells me she knows how to handle hunters.”

Yaz shook her head. “I’m going to get Thurin and Kao and my brother back from the Tainted.”

Arka blinked. “That’s insanity. Two of you? You need to come to