The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,162

view from behind Kao, a stumble in his legs.

“Zeen!” Quell was at his side, catching him as he collapsed.

“Zeen!” Yaz pushed her way toward her brother, but Quell was already carrying him in both arms.

“He weighs nothing. I expect he’s starved is all.” Quell started walking back down the slope, argument forgotten, genuinely pleased to see the boy again. “Come on. I’ll show you the mountain of food I’ve collected. Zeen needs to eat at least half of it.”

Yaz followed. This was the Quell she remembered from the ice. Strong, caring, in control of himself and the situation.

They crossed the city ruins, alert for hunters. Yaz offered a prayer to the Gods in the Sea that none would come. More than anything she wanted sleep. Deep and peaceful sleep. She felt like a raw wound.

Quell’s collection of fungi proved to be more of a hill than a mountain but he had done a good job in the time available. Yaz didn’t point out the number of inedible or poisonous caps in the mix; they could be discarded later. How long the pile would last the nine of them up on the ice was a matter for speculation. Not long enough, she suspected, but then she had no true idea of how long would be enough.

Kao began tucking into the fungi, chewing his way methodically through one thick grey-shield after another. Thurin picked up a handful of the less tough brown-scales and brought them to Zeen. “They’re better stewed in their own juice with some salt. But these are the most digestible raw.” He turned to Kao. “Eat too many uncooked grey-shields and you won’t need a cable to get to the surface. You’ll be able to blast there on your own wind.”

Quell raised a brow at that, refusing to smile, and gestured to a hollow nearby where the corner of a board could be seen. “Maya has been busy too. That’s her stash. She even got us a hot pot . . . is that what you call it? One of those sigil things.”

A thick blanket of exhaustion settled on Yaz and she staggered off to slump down before she fell. She sat with her back to a twisted metal beam and watched the others protectively from beneath heavy eyelids, Zeen most of all. He was the only reason she was here and she had succeeded in freeing him, if not from this place yet then at least from the nightmare he had been suffering. It seemed unreal to have her brother back, a dream she might wake from. Though now that he was back she almost feared for him more than when the Tainted had him. Now he was her direct responsibility, and no part of her plans felt safe. In fact, once her mind inserted Zeen into those plans they seemed suicidal. Crazed at best. All that drove her on was that the alternative seemed just as dangerous and yet lacked any hope of anything better at the end. She had seen the green world in Erris’s dreaming. She had felt the grass beneath her hands and the rich, soft soil in which it bedded. She had seen the trees towering, swaying in a warm breeze that gave rather than took. A butterfly had kissed her skin. These were true things. Quina’s wooden bead said that somewhere in this world of endless white, trees still grew, and just knowing that had sunk a hook in Yaz’s heart. For the longest time now she’d been afraid to dream, knowing that all her paths led to the pit and thinking that somehow she deserved it, for the weakness in her blood. She’d borne a heavy load, uncomplaining, stoic in the way that only the Ictha are, accepting her fate because she refused to become a burden on her people. But the green dream that Erris and Quina had given her would not hurt the Ictha. It was a dream worth hunting. A dream worth dying for.

Yaz’s gaze drifted across Quell, Thurin, and Erris, momentarily close together and in discussion, though she couldn’t make out the words. Quell was binding together two of the boards from Maya’s stash, his powerful, blunt fingers twisting the wire with a delicacy that always surprised her even when gloved. Thurin had been trying to show