The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,191

above her, a lone point of light in all that dark. “Is that . . . the sky?”

Even as she said it she thought of Thurin who had never in all his life seen the light of day.

39

WE NEED A plan,” Yaz said.

The faint point of light had become a distant circle of sky. Yaz knew they didn’t have too long before they were hauled out into the daylight like fish drawn from the sea in the regulator’s iron net. They had perhaps another half or quarter mile to go.

“Didn’t we have one already?” Kao asked.

Yaz scowled. “I planned on not arriving with all my powers spent, or Quell with a knife in his side, or without Thurin and his ice-work. Now we need something new or the priests will catch me and throw the rest of you back down the Pit of the Missing.”

“What do you suggest?” Erris asked. “The last time I saw the sky the place we’re going to was above the clouds. So assume I have no idea what to expect.”

Yaz pondered. “The element of surprise is supposed to be important when making war. Isn’t that what the Axit say, Maya?” She glanced around. “Maya?”

Suddenly they were all looking for the girl. “Maya?”

“I would say,” Erris commented dryly, “that Maya agrees with you.”

“But where could she be?” Yaz continued searching, arms outstretched as if the girl might have made herself invisible. “It’s a cage!”

Erris pointed up. “She’s climbing the cable. The priests know when the cage should get there. They’ll be ready for us then. Maya is going to arrive ahead of schedule.”

“We should too!” Yaz exclaimed, though even as she said it she found herself daunted by the idea of hauling herself up hundreds of yards of icy cable.

“I think you should.” Erris nodded. “It’s you they’re expecting. You and Quell. Then if they spot you they’ll be in the middle of dealing with you when we arrive and they won’t be expecting us.”

“You’re coming up with me though, right?” Yaz suddenly had no idea what she might do when faced with the regulator once more. “What will I say?”

Erris shook his head. “I need to take this knife out of Quell and stitch him up. We’ll probably have to move him quickly and if we do that with the blade still inside him it will do all sorts of extra damage.”

Yaz blinked. “You couldn’t have done that during the first half of our journey up?”

“There’s going to be a lot of blood, Yaz. Once it’s done we’re going to need to get him lying down and warm as soon as we can if he’s to live.”

Yaz tried to imagine how that was even vaguely possible. She stamped down on the doubt and looked up at the cable instead, stretching away to the distant circle of light.

“I should come too,” Zeen said. Over the course of their long ascent his mood had changed from wild optimism fuelled by the excitement of their escape to a pensive acceptance that although they were going back to the ice and the sky and the wind they were not going back to their lives. At first he had even thought that their parents would take them back, that their mother would open her tent to her two surviving children despite the regulator’s judgment and the rulings of Mother Mazai. Yaz had tried to be gentle. The judgment had changed how their world saw them. The fall had taken them from their past and simply climbing back out could not change that. More than this though were the changes that had undeniably been wrought in them during their time below. With every challenge Yaz’s quantal blood had worked its magic, saving her but making something new of her. She had grown both stronger and weaker each time, as though the threats and fear and hurt had torn first one skin from her then another, revealing a different creature beneath. Zeen too had changed beyond recognition, his speed a part of him now, evident in every move in a way it had not been before the fall. Before the regulator’s shove Zeen had been