The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,22

the grey among them had never seen. The elders thought that it might be the end of the world. Some wept. Some tore at their hair. And then the wind blew again and it was as if that moment of stillness had never been.

Yaz shed her sodden outer furs. Her best sealskins were still stored on her sled. The Ictha would make good use of them. She peered back at Arka around a hanging coat. “I need a knife.” She said the words through gritted teeth.

“Hey! We’re not that dangerous!” A girl’s voice from among the drying clothes, Maya perhaps.

“I am!” A boy. Laughter followed that one.

“She thinks we can’t resist her without her furs.” Another girl.

More laughter. A slightly hysterical edge to it. Yaz reminded herself that they were children and she an adult. And that the pit had taken them all from their lives. If they didn’t laugh they would cry. She shook her head, trying to press a smile from her lips. It was funny, she guessed, to find herself next to naked in the Pit of the Missing and to still be sweating.

“That’s all I can get off without a knife.” Yaz walked back out wearing only the black mole-fish skins that her mother had sewn her into at the onset of the long night. “At least they got a good wash today.” More laughter.

Arka sighed and shook her head. “Ictha!”

Yaz moved closer to the burning heat of the pot until the skins began to steam. The mole-fish hides had been softened with nagga venom, giving them a velvety feel, but they resisted water and wouldn’t stay wet for long. Yaz stretched. She had never felt so warm and lacked any inclination to ever step away. Then, remembering herself, and feeling the black-haired boy, Thurin, trying not to look at her, she hunched again, to present as small a target as she could for others’ stares.

Arka called to the three now naked among the hanging skins. “There are capes at the back, to wear when you’ve hung your clothes to dry. Then come out here and join us.”

* * *

MAYA AND YAZ sat with the iron pot between them; the huge boy and a black-haired girl completed the circle, the heat making their faces glow. Arka and Thurin sat further back, knees drawn up before them. The boy, Kao, had shrugged his cape from his shoulders and gathered it around his waist. His arms were so thick with muscle that it had to fight for space along his bones, heaping itself up. He watched them all with disdain from blue eyes that sheltered beneath a yellow fringe.

“The old man made a mistake.” Kao’s voice rumbled deeper than Yaz’s father’s. “I don’t belong down here. I’m as strong as any man in the Golin clan. Stronger than most. I’m not some broken thing. I don’t belong here with you . . .”

“Us what?” The dark girl was called Quina. Her face reminded Yaz of a hawk, eyes like black stones.

“Rejects.” Kao spat the word. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m going to climb out and throw that scrawny priest down his own hole then—”

“If you can climb out of the pit it shows that Kazik was right about you,” Arka said. “If you can’t then maybe he was wrong, but nobody will ever know. It’s the perfect system.” She raised a hand to forestall Kao’s hot reply. “But I would enjoy watching you do it.”

“Me too.” Yaz hadn’t intended to speak but the words left her mouth. She dropped her gaze as the others glanced her way. In the heat of the moment she had forgotten that not only was she bare-handed before strangers but she was showing more of her skin than an Ictha sees on their wedding night.

“In any event,” Arka said. “We are all here, rightly or wrongly, and there is no returning to the surface. My task is to educate you in the ways of the Broken so that you can become useful and earn your keep. Our lives are . . . hard. You will have noticed that fewer of us grow old than even the Ictha.”

Yaz bowed her head as