The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,175

we hit the ground. Or we could accept the inevitable, ask the city to take us back, and if it does, stay here, abandoning our bodies. But we do need to decide. If we are destroyed up there without making the proper transfer then we will face the final death. And there is barely enough time to make that crossing from the flesh to the void star.”

“I thought the city wouldn’t have you back.”

“Never heard of the prodigal son?”

Yaz met Erris’s gaze. “I can’t leave them.”

“Would any one of them wish you to die alongside them if they knew you could escape?”

“You could bring them—”

“I can only bring you because of the days the void star had to store your data.”

“I don’t know what that means.” But she knew it meant no.

Yaz sat, her heart still pounding, limbs trembling, but calming beneath the sun’s warmth and the soft touches of the breeze. Soon she would be dead, or worse. If Erris told her that this was free time, passing in a moment as she fell, then why not enjoy it? She slipped the skins from her feet and curled her toes in the grass. She had imagined doing so since her first visit, but the reality, if she could call it that, was beyond her imagining.

“Stay here. With me.” Erris’s smile was already sad, as if he knew her answer.

Yaz looked at the grass beneath her hand, a daisy nodding its head between her outstretched fingers, a tiny black . . . something . . . an ant, the word came to her, crawling between stalks that were as big to it as trees were to her.

“The Missing lost something of themselves when they cut away their evils. Something they didn’t think they needed and that Theus thinks they did.” She drew a deep breath, marvelling at the quality of the air. “If I leave my friends to die, even if I can’t help them, even if they would tell me to go . . . I would leave something of myself with them that I know I need. And even this place wouldn’t be able to make me feel right. Not even you. And in time I would be a poison to you, to this place, to all of it.”

“But—”

“And even this place has its darkness, hiding behind what we can see.” Yaz knew that it was Vesta who had made this green memory for Erris. But she also knew that Seus haunted the city’s veins. “You said yourself that Taproot is seeking to draw me into his plans. That makes me Seus’s prey, part of whatever game they’re playing between them.” She patted her hides, finding them dry, just as the city remembered her, as if the recent flood had never happened. Her fingers sought something above her collarbone, then pulled Elias Taproot’s needle free from her jacket. She held it out. “This followed me here where the water couldn’t follow.” The needle might be small but its significance was not. Its sharp truths could pop the sweet dream that Erris wanted to keep them in, just as easily as it could pop any other bubble. “There’s nowhere for me to hide, Erris. Trouble’s coming for me one way or another, so I had best face it head-on.”

“Stay.” Erris pressed his lips into a tight line. “Whatever happens here it would still be better than having your brains dashed on the rocks. Or being eaten alive by those creatures. Or used to house old evils in service to Theus’s search. You saw what he did, what your life would be. Mining the ice in the dark until your body grows old and fails.”

“There’s still a chance though. It doesn’t matter how slight. I can’t leave them while there’s still a chance.” Yaz knew she couldn’t leave them even when the last chance had long gone, but it seemed easier to speak as if she would.

“What chance?” Erris asked.

“I’m a . . . what did you call it? A quantal? Like the priests. I can reach for my power.”

“That would be like setting off a bomb.”

Yaz frowned in confusion.

“You