as Arka looked her way. “I can’t take it.”
Yaz retreated outside the shed and Arka followed to stand in the doorway.
“I’ve seen it all before, many times, but I never get tired of watching the molten metal being tipped out. It’s like liquid fire. Ixen makes ingots and also pours various shapes for the other smiths. Almost all of it goes to the priests.”
Yaz wiped the chilling sweat from her brow. “If you can make that much heat why do you need miners? Surely you can just melt the stars from the ice and make any tunnels you need just like the coal-worms do?”
“I thought Quina would be the first one to ask that question.” Arka rubbed at the scars running down her cheek. “It’s a question of profit and loss. When the stars are used to drive sigils they’re eaten away by it; the star you take out is smaller than the one you put in. It’s rapid for small stars. A pot will consume handfuls of dust just to make a little heat. And slow for bigger ones. But even with our largest stars we would find less of value in what ice we melted than the pot had consumed in order to melt it. It’s like life up top. Every decision is about what you gain and what it costs you.” She glanced back. “He’ll be pouring soon. Come and watch if you’re not going to faint.”
Yaz stayed outside after Arka returned to the furnace heat of the interior. She walked slowly to the shore of the lake, wondering. She knew what her decision to throw herself down the pit had cost her. She had less idea about any gains, but if she didn’t find Zeen then it was all loss. The Ictha had cast him aside but to her he was still clan, still valued, and she would find him irrespective of loss and gain. It seemed to Yaz that if she had allowed them to throw her brother away without protest, as if he were worthless, or indeed if she had stood by and watched any child be thrown into that hole and said nothing, then something of herself would have been thrown away too, something more valuable than what she had lost by acting.
Thurin had said that the stars could split away the worst parts of a person and give them new voice. Yaz knew that watching the regulator toss children into the pit split away something good within those who watched and confined it to a place every bit as dark and silent as the hole into which those children vanished. She couldn’t say how she knew this or how she held to it in the face of the harsh arithmetic that governed life upon the ice. But she did know it, blood to bone, however much she might long for the blissful ignorance that seemed to enfold the rest who watched that day.
With a start Yaz realised that she had reached the shore of the lake and wet her toes in the shallows. It grew rapidly more deep, lit from beneath by stardust drifting against ridges in the rock, but the constant rain of meltwater from above rippled the surface too much for a clear view of the depths. Even so, it held a beauty and a peace: black rock, ice in every shade of pearl between white and clarity, the marbled seams of stardust glowing in all the colours that can be broken from the light. Beneath the many-tongued voice of falling water lay a distant glacial groaning, as timeless in its way as that of the wind. Yaz let the wonder of the place enfold her. The serenity—
*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*
Yaz started forward in surprise and stepped further into the shallows, soaking one foot in near-freezing water.
*Bang* *Bang* *Bang*
The hammering came from one of the other sheds and Yaz, irritated at the intrusion, stalked over, every other step a squelch, to see what warranted such a din. With her hands at her ears she leaned in through an open doorway.
A young man stood surrounded by tools and pieces of metalwork hanging from the rafters. He held a small but heavy hammer in one hand and the other steadied the sword blade he was working on.