The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,94

she had hoped it would. If Pome found them with the body he might well have them killed whether they were armed or not. “Besides. We should let him lie.”

Quell shook his head. “Dead is dead. The ice will take him to the sea, and the gods will take care of him.” He hauled on the spear, using it as a lever to turn the corpse. The point emerged a handspan beneath Jerrig’s ribs. “He’s smaller than a tonnerfin. Shouldn’t be . . .” A grunt of effort as he drove the spear through the gerant’s body.

“Quell!” Yaz winced and put a hand to her eyes. She had seen butchery before, enough blood to turn the sea red, but Jerrig . . . he wasn’t meat from the sea.

“Done.” Quell hauled the bloody length of iron from the corpse and held it in crimson hands. His lack of concern surprised her, but perhaps to him this was a nest of dangers and Jerrig’s remains were no more a cause for sentiment than those of the hunter were.

“When they see that in your hands there will be no end of questions . . .” Yaz frowned. “At least wash it.”

“I will.” Quell nodded. “But now I’ll have an answer if whoever did this comes after us.”

* * *

THE PAIR OF them moved on with greater caution, every shadowed tunnel and dim-lit chamber seeming full of threat now. A spear could come winging out of the darkness at any moment. Yaz tried not to imagine Quell transfixed as Jerrig had been but the image kept returning.

Chamber after silent chamber wore at Yaz’s alertness. When the ice groaned and creaked she would start and turn, nerves jangling. They picked paths through more groves of fungi, including some where Yaz remembered harvesters had been at work.

In two places they smelled smoke, which was odd as Yaz had seen no fire at all since coming beneath the ice.

“Where is everyone?” The whisper escaped her. It must have been one of the Tainted who killed Jerrig. Had they mounted an attack and driven the Broken back to some defensive line?

Quell opened his mouth to reply but a distant scream preempted him. He exchanged glances with Yaz and led off in the direction of the cry. Sound carried strangely in the chambers and tunnels beneath the ice and the scream was not repeated. Soon Yaz found herself lost, or more lost than she had been before.

“Did you see the black ice?” she asked. “When you were searching for me.” On the return from the city Yaz had found a route that avoided the taint Arka had led them through, but she wondered now if the blackness might be spreading elsewhere, fingering into the Broken’s territory like frost reaching across still water, drawing the Tainted with it, perhaps Hetta with them, the heads of Yaz’s friends swinging from her belt, their blood on her sharpened teeth.

“I saw black ice, grey ice, red, green, all the shades of the icebow. But I couldn’t go in. There is no light in those places.”

Yaz blinked but didn’t question the truth of the statement. The taint didn’t spread where there were stars, so beyond the fringes there would be no light to see it by. “We should go back. I can find the way to the settlement from where we found Jerrig.”

Quell shook his head. “I know how to reach your friends from here. I spent a lot of days scouting this place, looking for you.” He led on.

Yaz followed, her brow furrowed. Days? It was easy to lose track of time so far from the sun . . . but days? Unconsciously her fingers returned to the needle at her collar, physical proof of what she would otherwise consider a fever dream. Had Elias and Seus stolen days from her while they fought their secret battle?

* * *

“WHAT HAPPENED HERE?” The chamber before them lay strewn with broken ice, much of it glowing with stardust.

Yaz looked up at the ceiling, no longer smooth but pitted and cratered, crisscrossed with ridges hanging like shattered teeth. “Ice-work.”

Quell led the way around the edge of the cavern, the dimness and