The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,8

ice to keep them from warring upon each other.

“I’d rather just be left out of the tent,” Zeen said. “If I was broken I’d rather just be left out.”

Yaz shrugged. A quick death beat a slow death, and at least this way you gave honour to your tribe. Also there was the issue of metal. Clan Mother Mazai said that the priesthood was the only source of metal in a thousand miles, and not just pieces of it as might sometimes be traded between the tribes, but worked metal, fashioned to meet demand, be it knife or chain. The ceremony honoured the god of the Black Rock and that in turn earned the clan favour with the regulator. Dying here would help the clan.

A sudden cry jerked Yaz from her thoughts. The regulator was standing alone, the wind tugging at the tattered strips of his cloak. There was no sign of the child that had failed his inspection, just the faint and diminishing echoes of their screaming that still escaped the hole. A stillness pervaded the watching crowd, and they had already been still.

With a bored gesture the regulator beckoned the next in line.

“I’m scared.” Zeen’s hand found hers. He had been scared all along of course, but this was the first time he’d spoken the words.

* * *

THE WORLD TURNS whether we will it or not and everything, longed for or feared, comes to us in time. The queue leading to the regulator advanced slowly but it didn’t stop, and at last Yaz’s world narrowed to the point toward which it had spiralled for so long.

“Yaz of the tribe Ictha and the clan Ictha,” the regulator said. He never needed to be told name, clan, or tribe. The other tribes had several clans, but in the north they shrank to the same thing.

“Yes,” she said. To deny your own name was to cut a small piece from your soul, Mother Mazai said.

The regulator leaned in toward her. He had the familiar white-pale eyes of her own clan and seemed unconcerned by what the southerners called cold. The burns across his face, head, and hands looked as if he had been branded with some kind of writing, but with lines of symbols at differing angles and sizes, overwriting each other into confusion. He leaned toward her, showing his teeth in something that was not a smile.

“Yaz of the Ictha.” He took hold of her hand with hard, pinching fingers.

His scent was unfamiliar, sour and as different from the Ictha as the dogs had been. He was old, stringy, gaunt-faced, and looked displeased with the world in general.

The regulator had not touched Yaz on her first visit. Now he seemed unwilling to release her. The tattered strips of his cloak blew about them both and for a moment Yaz considered what would happen if she grabbed them when the time came that he threw her down. The image of his surprise at being hauled in with her struck through Yaz’s fear and she struggled to suppress the burst of hysterical laughter that was pushing to escape her.

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you, girl?” He looked up from his inspection of her hand and met her eyes.

“N-no.” Yaz shook her head.

“You should have asked ‘what?’ All the ice tribes are terrible at lying but the Ictha are the worst.” The regulator ran his tongue over the yellowing stumps of teeth worn down by years. Without warning he jerked Yaz’s hand to his face and began to sniff at her fingertips. She tried to pull away, disgusted, then realised that if he were to release her as she tugged she would fall back with only the slick gullet of the pit to receive her.

“Seen what?” she asked, too late to be convincing.

“The Path that runs through all things.” He let her go with a last sniff. “The line that joins and divides. Seen it and . . .” His gaze fell to the hand she now clasped to her chest. “And touched it.”

“I didn’t . . .” He was right though. She didn’t know how to lie.

“That makes you rare, child. Very rare.” Something ugly twisted on