The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,34

“Why dry clothes all the way out here anyway?” she asked.

“The stone keeps the heat in better than any shelter. And we don’t like to make too much heat under an ice roof. Sometimes they don’t just drip. A chunk can fall. And that tends to hurt.”

Yaz winced.

Quina stood, fully dressed in her clan furs. Their clothes identified their clans both by design and composition. Nothing but men survived on the ice in the far north so the Ictha had no furs save the few they traded. They wore hides and skins. Among the Broken, though, the differences were lost amid years of repairs. The coat and leggings that wrapped Thurin’s narrow musculature were a patchwork of furs and leathers in which Yaz saw no clues at all to his clan. Quina offered her a narrow smile, quick then gone. “More speed less haste. We’ll get your brother back from the Tainted. They got Thurin back after months. So you can take the time to match your ties up.”

Yaz looked down to realise she had mismatched one side of her outer coat to the other. “Dung on it!”

Quina’s grin returned. “Is that how they curse in the north?”

Yaz felt her cheeks colouring but she nodded. She found herself liking this narrow girl with her guarded ways and swift smiles.

“I thought the Ictha would be good at swearing, what with all those long nights to practice!” Quina went to the doorway. “I’ll teach you some better ones later.”

Maya’s struggling head emerged wide-eyed from the top of her parka. “You’re going to rescue your brother?”

“Yes.” Yaz frowned. The Ictha would call it throwing good spears after bad. The Ictha couldn’t afford grand gestures. Weakness had to be abandoned on the ice. Grow too old, get sick, become injured, become a burden and the harsh equations of wind and cold dictated that you be left. No one would come after her. She had committed the crime of weakness and the Pit of the Missing was her sentence, though somehow the regulator had commuted it. She set her jaw, defiantly. This was a new world. New rules applied. “Yes, I am. And soon. Coming with me?”

Maya paled at that and edged toward Thurin, waiting in the doorway. Thurin shot Yaz another glance, this one unreadable. Quina had already left the hut.

“Come on!” Thurin waved to go, even though Kao was still struggling to get his other overboot on and lace it.

“I feel better like this.” Yaz stamped her boots, the rock no longer grating against the soles of her feet. Back in the clothes she’d been wearing when she dropped, Yaz felt like an Ictha again. She looked like one too. The mix and colour of her skins declared it. She wondered how long it would take for her differences to fade into the patched oneness of the Broken. She wondered if the guilt would ever fade. If she would ever lose the feeling that it had been her fault that dragged her here. Her failure that deprived the Ictha of a pair of able hands and took her parents’ first and last child from their tent.

The others started up the path at a half run, laughing as Kao bellowed curses after them. Yaz followed, deep in her thoughts, Kao labouring behind her, still snatching at his boot. He began to catch them up in the second great chamber, puffing and blowing.

“Call that running? Arka told us to hurry!” Quina sped off, showing a remarkable turn of speed. “Come on!”

Thurin made to chase after her but paused when he saw that Yaz had come to a halt. “The Ictha girl needs to rest?”

“No . . .” Yaz wasn’t sure what it was but it was . . . something. The river that runs through all things remained hidden from her, she had used its power on the previous day to match the endurance of her tribe and it would be some time yet before she could find it again. But even when the river lay beyond her reach there were echoes of it everywhere, lines, infinitely many and infinitely fine, running from and to every part of every thing. She only had to defocus her