The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,56

about the Tainted?” Yaz asked.

“The priests have not communicated with us for generations,” Eular said. “Not since the hunters woke in the city.”

“Woke?”

“Maybe our scavengers dug too deep. We don’t really know what returned them to life. All we know is that one day they were there, roaming the city, hunting any that ventured in the abandoned chambers. And today I hear that another one has passed the gateposts and attacked us in our own caverns.”

Yaz frowned. “What is it that you want though? Freedom? To climb out into the open?”

“Gods no!” Eular laughed. “It has been a very long time since my fall. Longer than most here have lived. But I remember that the surface is a cruel place, that the air is never still and is full of teeth, that the only food is to be found in bottomless depths of water. I will never return there. But some here might. They should at least have the choice, no? What we need is change.” He turned to face her and smiled. “Your eyes are fresh. Your mind unchained by our struggles. What do you think we need?”

Yaz frowned and thought. “For the priesthood to speak with us, aid us against the Tainted and the hunters, let our families know we still live and to tell them of the service we render to the tribes. To be treated as human, not some waste thrown into a hole, gone and forgotten.”

“Well and good.” Eular nodded.

“So . . .” Yaz stopped herself from saying, what should I do?

“Go back to Arka. Do what you feel you must. Maybe nothing will come of it. Maybe the regulator will claw you back to the surface and nothing will change here, we will continue to die. But”—and he smiled—“the star-stones sing louder when you are near, and that is a thing so rare that it is not in the memory of the Broken. So . . . we shall see. Sometimes even the blind must wait and see.”

“Thank you.” There seemed little else to say.

“Before you go: tell me about the others in the drop-group.”

“They’re all outside with Pome and Petrick,” Yaz said. “You can speak with them yourself . . .”

“Humour me.”

“Well, you know Thurin.”

“I’m not sure I do. That’s why he is here. It has been a very long time since anyone was reclaimed from the taint. Many of the Broken do not believe it to be something that can be truly cleansed. They worry that the evil is still inside him, deep in his bones, waiting for its moment to return. They think him vulnerable to the demons in others and will not place their trust in him.”

“I trust him.”

Eular nodded. “But then again you need to. You need to believe that Thurin has been saved so that you can believe that your brother can also be saved.”

Yaz clenched her teeth against a hot reply and before the tension in her jaw eased she found herself wondering if Eular were not simply using her description of others to shine a light on herself. “Maya is the youngest, perhaps thirteen. She seems kind and timid. A gentle soul. But sometimes I find her watching me and I wonder if there’s more to her . . .” Yaz remembered that Maya hadn’t seemed scared of Hetta, not until the end. “I think she must be marjal. She can pull the shadows around her and hide.”

“She would make an excellent spy, would she not?”

“I . . .” Yaz hadn’t thought of Maya in those terms. “I guess so.”

“And the others?”

“Quina is hunska. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She’s clever too. And hard. I like her though.” Yaz hadn’t realised it until she said it but she did. There was something in the girl that reminded her of her brothers. “Her clan come from very far south. They have different stars!”

“I have heard that if you go far enough to the south you will find that Abeth still wears a green girdle, a belt around the world where the ice has yet to reach.”