The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,186

“Yours is not the only rising star.” He lifted his voice, speaking for the crowd, his magic letting his poisoned words find a home in some of the hearts that would otherwise reject them. “The girl, Yaz, must return to the surface as the regulator has stipulated and answer for her crimes there. I don’t need to remind you that without the goodwill of the priests we would have no fish, no salt, and no skins. You are all too young to know but Eular remembers a time without salt. It’s a slow, ugly death. It takes about ten days before it starts to hurt, and quite a few more days to die, but after the first twelve days you’ll wish you were dead.” He nodded to one of his gerants. “Go bind her hands.”

Some of the Broken had looked angry at the threat to a child’s life, but now that anger wavered, torn by self-interest, swayed by Pome’s influence. They couldn’t live on fungi alone, and rats were too scarce. The priests might be miles above but they could reach down and wrap their hands about the throats of the Broken just as Bexen was doing to Zeen.

Each moment the cage edged its way higher. The bottom of the cage had cleared the Broken now, above the reach of those of regular height. The gerant coming to tie Yaz’s hands outside the cage was nearly close enough to do it. Yaz would have to drop down on the inside and push her wrists through the bars to comply.

“I should leave.” Thurin began to climb out, his face grim but forcing a smile. “Pome should let you take Quell back. The priest sent your friend to get you after all.”

Erris, already near the top of the cage, swung himself back out and began to climb down. “I’ll find you again, Yaz.”

Thurin snorted and pointed at the hole above them. “Good climber, are you?”

Erris smiled. “I have a knack for getting out of places I don’t want to be in.”

Kao hung where he was, halfway up the inside. He watched her, blue-eyed beneath his mass of dirty blond hair. He exhaled a long sigh. “The Golin wouldn’t have me back anyway,” he said, his voice thick with a boy’s heartache, and with one more sigh he began to haul his man’s body back out of the cage, every limb sporting cuts and bites he had taken saving her from the Tainted.

Yaz couldn’t let them go but she saw it was no good to argue with any of them. Instead she addressed the Broken, hoping to turn them against Pome.

“The priests need you as much as you need them,” Yaz called as she clambered into the cage. To her own ears she sounded like a nervous girl trying to argue with an elder, but she pressed on as she began to climb down to where Quell lay curled around his knife wound. “They need the iron you scavenge. It’s how they influence the tribes and gain their favour. They need the trade. It’s not done out of kindness. They trapped you here for their use.”

Pome laughed. “Do you think they will run out of iron before we run out of salt? Which need is more urgent?” The humour dropped from his face, leaving something ugly behind it.

For a moment despair swamped Yaz, darkening her mind. But the darkness took on a shape as it swam across her thoughts. “Wait!” she shouted. “There’s a whale! We found a whale locked in the ice. One of the great whales, enough to feed all of you for years. It’s in the furthest cavern of the black ice, but I cleared the demons from it. You don’t need the priests.”

She felt the change in the crowd. Rumbles of “she cleansed the Tainted,” “they should be allowed to go,” “we don’t owe the priests anything.” Rebellious faces turned Pome’s way. Some of Arka’s faction started toward him and for the moment nobody seemed inclined to stop them.

Thurin paused at the top of the cage, clinging to the outside, ready to go down.

“Uh, Yaz?” Kao, white-faced, now dangled beneath the cage, his toes almost scraping stone. “What should I do?” The distance he had to fall