The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,183

suggest your new friend helps you move Quell to the cage.” He softened his voice and added, “Quickly.”

Erris hurried back to the business of loading food and equipment. He and Thurin pushed through the wandering crowd, made rough by fear of the cage leaving them behind, seemingly the only ones there with any purpose. The rest of the Broken were too overwhelmed to notice what Yaz’s friends were about. They were busy tending to their wounded, weeping over their dead, and discovering those who they thought lost forever months or years before.

Members of Arka’s and Pome’s factions were scattered and intermingled but their fight seemed forgotten, washed away by a flood of water and the falling of stars. The Tainted, returned to their senses when Yaz’s last effort burned the devils out of them, were now the glue that joined the two pieces of the Broken together, the joy of their reunion stronger than recent disputes of which they knew nothing. Yaz had no idea how long it would last. Long enough, she hoped.

Yaz, with help from Jerra and the woman, bent to carry Quell by his arms and legs but as she began to pull Yaz saw the pain it would cause. She set the woman to watch while she and Jerra got boards onto which they could roll Quell and then drag him to the cage. She wanted to stay with him, to talk, to tell him he was going to survive, but there wasn’t any time, the cage was leaving. Before long it would be shoulder high from the ground and for all Yaz knew the priests might soon start to haul it up at speed.

“Let’s do this.” Yaz had found the boards. With the woman’s help she’d slid them under Quell.

The strain required to move the solid Ictha proved too much for Yaz, burned out by her miracle with the stars, and for the woman, starved and weakened during her time in service to Theus. Jerra was stronger than both but too small to make the difference. Yaz’s fingers slipped from the board beneath Quell’s shoulders and she fell back cursing, weeping with effort.

As she sat up Yaz found a hulking shape coming toward her, unrecognisable in the dimmed glow from the ice ceiling high above them.

“I’ll do it.” Kao bent to take hold. His thick arms bore a dozen bleeding bite marks and cruel nail furrows. His hair stood at odd angles, some having been torn out in clumps, and his hides were ripped in several places. But he still had his strength and soon had Quell scraping across the rocks, gasping at the jolts.

At the cage Thurin was already inside, receiving fungi, boards, and other equipment as Erris brought it. A dozen or so former Tainted stood watching in confusion, their minds perhaps unsure of reality after the sudden departure of the devils that had ruled them for so long. An emaciated fair-haired young woman approached the cage as Kao reached it dragging Quell.

“Thurin?”

Thurin positioned the hot pot Erris had given him, setting it on a stack of boards. He turned to the woman. “Klendra?” A smile of astonishment cracked his bloody face. Seeing Yaz he pointed to the blond girl. “She’s cave-born. We grew up together.” He rubbed his eyes as if to clear his vision and looked at Klendra again. “Is it really you? They took you so long ago! You were six? Everyone thought you must be dead ages ago.”

Yaz wanted to shout that there wasn’t time for reunions. Part of her wanted to shove the girl aside. And other voices within her skull cried out to shame that first voice. Exhaustion was showing her what the stars did. She understood that she wasn’t the selfish voice, or the kind one—she was the sum of a multitude, normally joined so close that the seams didn’t show, but liable to fall apart under stress. Everyone was. A mix, a recipe, the sum of their parts and more.

Erris had swarmed up the outside of the cage and now motioned that he was going to drop the load of boards he’d brought across. “Sorry to be insensitive but we’re on a clock here.”

Thurin looked up. “A what?”

“In a hurry.” He dropped the