The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,86

that thrashing struggle two realisations managed to find space amid the panic crowding her mind. Firstly that not all the yelling was coming from her, and secondly that whatever she was fighting was not made of metal.

“Yaz?” A male voice.

“W-who . . .” Yaz stopped thumping the fur-laden shape. “Thurin?” It felt too solid for Thurin, not huge enough for Kao. She groped for her star only to see that it had rolled to the wall and lay there glimmering, its light breaking out softly here and there like foam on the ocean.

“It’s me, Yaz.” As if that would be enough.

Yaz stretched her arm toward the star and her mind reached further. It started to roll toward her open hand and as it rolled the light broke from it, bright enough now to show her attacker’s face. Black hair, straight and thick, reddish skin across broad cheekbones. Strong, even features, eyes as pale as her own, the irises like sea ice.

“Quell . . .” Pome’s star rolled into her open hand and she closed her fingers around it.

Quell grinned, a white smile, and wiped the blood from his nose where her fist must have caught him. “I came to save you.”

“How . . . Why . . . You attacked me!”

Quell got off her and offered his hand to help her up, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. “There’s something down here with us. I wanted to pull you aside and stop you shouting. Keep you quiet until you understood.” He kept hold of her hand as she found her feet. “But we seem to have ended up with the exact opposite.” He winced. “You pack quite a punch!”

“But how are you here?” Quell didn’t fit in the world of the Missing or the Broken any more than a shark belonged on the ice. Everything was wrong, and everything was right at the same time. He smelled of home. Of the Ictha. Of the life she had fallen from. Of seas and ice and sled oil and noisy tents. A world away from dry and ruined cities with broken minds.

“Come!” Quell pulled her back toward the doorway he’d lunged out of and she let him take her. Quell took his spear from its place leaning against the wall on the other side of the doorway. The length of hide-bound whalebone looked fragile compared to the iron spears of the Broken, but she knew Quell could skewer a submerged lungfish at fifty yards and haul it back to his boat on the attached line. Even so, against the beasts that haunted these passages neither kind of spear offered much protection. “We should get out of here.” He seemed nervous but not so nervous that he didn’t notice how weak she looked. He stopped suddenly and took her shoulders in his hands, studying her face. “Are you . . . You’re too dry.” He shrugged off his pack and dug into it, cursing. “Everything melts in this damned heat.” He pulled out an empty-looking water skin and a small lump of ice that Yaz guessed had been a lot bigger recently. “Here.” He handed her both.

“Thank you.” From its weight the skin might still have a mouthful left inside. Yaz held it in trembling hands, terrified she might spill some. She set the bone spout between parched lips and drank. The water tasted wondrous, like life pouring into her. She took it in three small swallows then bit off a piece of ice to suck. The Ictha knew about thirst. The wind killed those lost on the ice, but they died thirsty. Without whale oil and a tent there was no way to melt enough to drink. “Gods, I needed that.”

Quell grinned. “Good to go?”

Yaz nodded. She had questions. A thousand of them. But getting to the surface beat them all. Even so she couldn’t take her eyes from him. Although he was alone Quell brought the Ictha with him. The world that saw her and Zeen as broken, the world she had fallen from, now stood before her, hale, hearty. Had he come to lead her back to her life? A life that Quell had stood at the midst of like the centre pole of a tent from which all