Kitabı oku: «The Girl and the Stars», sayfa 4

‘Hey! We’re not that dangerous!’ A girl’s voice from among the drying clothes, Maya perhaps.

‘I am!’ A boy. Laughter followed that one.

‘She thinks we can’t resist her without her furs.’ Another girl.

More laughter. A slightly hysterical edge to it. Yaz reminded herself that they were children and she an adult. And that the pit had taken them all from their lives. If they didn’t laugh they would cry. She shook her head, trying to press a smile from her lips. It was funny, she guessed, to find herself next to naked in the Pit of the Missing and to still be sweating.

‘That’s all I can get off without a knife.’ Yaz walked back out wearing only the black mole-fish skins that her mother had sewn her into at the onset of the long night. ‘At least they got a good wash today.’ More laughter.

Arka sighed and shook her head. ‘Ictha!’

Yaz moved closer to the burning heat of the pot until the skins began to steam. The mole-fish hides had been softened with nagga venom, giving them a velvety feel, but they resisted water and wouldn’t stay wet for long. Yaz stretched. She had never felt so warm and lacked any inclination to ever step away. Then, remembering herself, and feeling the black-haired boy, Thurin, trying not to look at her, she hunched again, to present as small a target as she could for others’ stares.

Arka called to the three now naked among the hanging skins. ‘There are capes at the back, to wear when you’ve hung your clothes to dry. Then come out here and join us.’

Maya and Yaz sat with the iron pot between them, the huge boy and a black-haired girl completed the circle, the heat making their faces glow. Arka and Thurin sat further back, knees drawn up before them. The boy, Kao, had shrugged his cape from his shoulders and gathered it around his waist. His arms were so thick with muscle that it had to fight for space along his bones, heaping itself up. He watched them all with disdain from blue eyes that sheltered beneath a yellow fringe.

‘The old man made a mistake.’ Kao’s voice rumbled deeper than Yaz’s father’s. ‘I don’t belong down here. I’m as strong as any man in the Golin clan. Stronger than most. I’m not some broken thing. I don’t belong here with you …’

‘Us what?’ The dark girl was called Quina. Her face reminded Yaz of a hawk, eyes like black stones.

‘Rejects.’ Kao spat the word. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m going to climb out and throw that scrawny priest down his own hole then—’

‘If you can climb out of the pit it shows that Kazik was right about you,’ Arka said. ‘If you can’t then maybe he was wrong, but nobody will ever know. It’s the perfect system.’ She raised a hand to forestall Kao’s hot reply. ‘But I would enjoy watching you do it.’

‘Me too.’ Yaz hadn’t intended to speak but the words left her mouth. She dropped her gaze as the others glanced her way. In the heat of the moment she had forgotten that not only was she bare-handed before strangers but she was showing more of her skin than an Ictha sees on their wedding night.

‘In any event,’ Arka said. ‘We are all here, rightly or wrongly, and there is no returning to the surface. My task is to educate you in the ways of the Broken so that you can become useful and earn your keep. Our lives are … hard. You will have noticed that fewer of us grow old than even the Ictha.’

Yaz bowed her head as the others looked her way again. She hadn’t spotted even a single greyhead among the Broken. At perhaps thirty Arka looked as old as any of those Yaz had seen.

‘There should be more of us,’ Quina said. ‘I saw a dozen pushed and there were many still behind me.’

‘Did the hetta eat them all?’ Maya asked, round-eyed. Yaz guessed her to be the youngest of them, around thirteen. Quina might be fifteen. Kao her own age or a year younger. Despite the size of him his was a boy’s face.

‘Where did you hear about Hetta?’ Arka frowned at Maya and glanced towards Yaz.

‘The boy said it.’ Maya looked nervous. Yaz suddenly wondered why the girl was the youngest of them. Most got the push at their first gathering. There should be plenty of smaller ones. ‘Petrick. He said a hetta got someone …’

‘Hetta is one of the Tainted. A wild one even for them. A rogue. She hunts alone,’ Arka said, and beside her Thurin, dry and fully clothed, shivered despite the heat. ‘And to understand the Tainted you have to understand that the stories told to scare little children are true. The black ice is real.’

Kao snorted with laughter, Maya paled, Yaz quietly made the sign invoking the protection of both the Gods in the Sky and the Gods in the Sea. Quina, however, just nodded.

‘The Ictha have never seen such a thing,’ Yaz said.

‘Nor have the Golin.’ Kao leaned into the heat. ‘Because there is no such thing.’

‘My people have seen it in the south. Far to the south. A grey scar in the ice, black at its heart.’ Quina narrowed her eyes at Kao, daring him to dispute her.

‘It is rare for black ice to reach the surface. But down here it exists.’ Arka turned towards Thurin as if checking on him. His gaze had fallen to his hands and he made a slow study of his fingers, a twitch in his cheek giving the lie to this show of disinterest.

‘They say if you walk on the black ice it fills you with terrors,’ Quina said.

‘And if a man touches it’ – Maya’s voice trembled – ‘it can make him murder his children.’

‘The Tainted are people who have touched the black ice?’ Yaz asked, and once more she saw Jaysin’s head dangling by the hair from Hetta’s belt.

‘Worse.’ Arka looked grim. ‘They swim in the pools that form where it melts.’

Maya gasped. Yaz, an adult grown, allowed herself no expression of horror but drew her knees up under her chin, feeling even now the touch of Hetta’s vast hand as it had closed around her lower leg and begun to pull her towards those teeth.

Thurin had grown still and very pale. And he was pale enough to start with. ‘It takes more than a touch of the black ice to taint most people. There are spirits in the ice, looking for a way inside you, looking for cracks. Anger will let them in, cruelty, greed, any weakness, even fear will invite them in eventually.’ He stood and turned to leave.

‘Thurin. Sit.’ Arka motioned for him to return.

‘And the Tainted do worse than swim in the black pools.’ Thurin had his back to the others now. ‘They drink from them.’ And he walked away, with Arka’s demands that he stay ringing in his wake.

‘What’s up with him?’ Kao snorted.

Arka made no reply and they joined her in silence, soaking up the heat until at last a distant clanging reached the cave. Arka cocked her head to listen then relaxed. ‘It’s the signal for night. We keep our own cycle down here. I’ll take you to the settlement. You can collect your clothes here tomorrow.’

‘What about Zeen?’ Yaz was no longer sure why she had thrown herself down the pit. In the moment she did it it had seemed that it was for her brother, though quite how it might have helped she couldn’t have said. But now, against all odds, she really did have a chance to help him and she was damned if she would just shut up about it and go to sleep.

‘The Tainted have him,’ Arka said.

Even though she had guessed the answer a cold fist still clenched around Yaz’s heart. ‘Then I need to find him before they eat him.’

‘They won’t eat him.’ Arka shook her head. ‘They are vile but none are quite as crazed as Hetta. They’ll taint him along with the rest of those they caught from today’s drop.’ Arka stood to go. ‘You don’t have to worry about finding your brother, Yaz. You have to worry about him finding you.’

Yaz got hurriedly to her feet and caught Arka’s shoulder. ‘There must be a way to save him.’

The woman turned, the scars on her face very white against heat-reddened skin. ‘Oh, there’s a way. It’s just very hard, is all. It’s a lot easier to taint someone than to untaint them. I’ve been here twenty years and only seen it work once.’

‘Then I need to meet that person,’ Yaz said. ‘The one who was saved.’

Arka pulled free and started towards the door. ‘You already have,’ she said. ‘He’s called Thurin.’

CHAPTER 6

Arka led them from the ravine back into the ice caverns. Their footsteps echoed through the endless twilight, each breath steaming up before them. To her amazement Yaz saw that what she had first thought to be fallen lumps of ice scattering the floor of these long halls were in fact something very different. Roundish objects, in shades from white through grey and brown, lay here and there, varying in size from an eyeball to a head, all of them smooth-skinned, some beaded with water drops.

‘What are they?’ she asked as they drew closer to a place where scores of them clustered.

‘Are they dangerous?’ asked Maya, moving closer to Yaz.

‘Rocks,’ Kao declared.

Quina reserved her judgement.

‘Fungi. They grow where the stones … the stars … give enough warmth.’ Arka bent to pick up a small one from the shadow of a larger one. It made a faint tearing sound as if it were attached to the rock.

‘It’s an animal?’ Yaz wondered why it didn’t run away.

‘A plant. You can eat them.’ Arka took a bite from it and winced. ‘These sort taste better cooked.’

‘Plant?’ Maya asked. Yaz thanked her silently, not wanting to always be the one showing her ignorance.

‘Plants …’ Arka waved her hands at the things helplessly. ‘They don’t move and they don’t bleed but they live …’

‘Like a tree,’ Quina said quietly, rolling something small between her fingers.

Arka frowned. ‘I don’t know about those. But Eular says plants grow anywhere that there is warmth and water and light. He says everything living depends on them for food.’

‘I bloody don’t,’ Kao growled. ‘I eat meat like everyone else.’

‘Yes, but the fish you take from the sea eat plants or eat other fish that eat plants and—’

‘There are plants in the sea now?’ Yaz asked.

‘Yes and—’

‘But there’s no light under the sea,’ Quina said.

‘Well …’ Arka grew flustered. ‘There must be … Eular knows these things. Ask him!’ She thrust the rest of the fungus ball into Quina’s hand and strode away. ‘Come on!’ As she walked she offered more advice on the mysterious world of plants. ‘The brown ones aren’t bad raw. Brown ones with reddish spots will have you vomiting blood for a week. Purple ones will kill you. We weed out the bad ones from the groves but out in the more distant caves you’ll find them, sometimes mixed in with the good ones.’

The settlement sat in an enormous cavern whose entire roof glowed faintly with innumerable stars. Instead of tents, angled to resist the wind, the Broken lived within strange, blocky dwellings fashioned from a variety of materials each more foreign than the next. Glass was the only building material Yaz recognized, gleaming in ill-advised openings in walls. Many of the walls were made from what might be rock but of a lighter colour than that underfoot. The rock had been shaped into blocks much like those the Eskin clan made from snow to construct shelters.

‘Do we have to sleep in one of these?’ Maya’s voice echoed Yaz’s own mistrust of those hard flat roofs and sharp angles.

‘Is there nothing you’re not afraid of, girl?’ Kao snorted. ‘No wonder Clan Axit wanted to drop you down the pit!’

Maya put her head down and said nothing. Clan Axit were the largest of all the clans and many said they all thought themselves kings of the ice. Although life in the wastes left no room for war the Axit had a reputation for fierceness. Blood and more blood had been spilled in the long ago and some said they trained in secret for a war still to come. Yaz gave Kao a hard look until he coloured and turned away.

Yaz couldn’t tell how large the settlement was, only that it seemed to cover a bigger area than the Ictha used when pitching their tents. Perhaps there were more of the Broken than she had first thought. Or maybe there had been more of them in the past.

As they drew closer to the buildings Yaz sniffed at the familiar smell of humanity, stronger here than in camp where the wind scoured the ice between the tents. She saw figures moving in the gloom, making their way along the clear pathways between the various structures. Closer still and she heard the drip, drip, drip of water on rooftops. Every surface close to horizontal glimmered with a light so subtle that the eye almost missed it, stardust falling with the meltwater.

Arka directed them to a low building, one of the first they reached. ‘You’ll all be sleeping in this barracks tonight. And I will be in that hut over there.’ She pointed to a smaller structure whose door faced the barracks door. ‘To keep an eye on you.’

Arka followed them into the barracks. Unlike some of the other buildings this one had none of those glass-covered openings, a fact for which Yaz was grateful. A single small star-stone hung from the roof support in a wire cage, providing a weak light. A dozen bedrolls had been laid out on pallets of the same stuff the walls were made of. The rolls themselves were patchworks of worn skins, sewn and resewn to the point that Yaz wondered if she would wake to find hers in a hundred pieces. She didn’t recognize the fur, not hoola or harp whale.

Maya yawned and Yaz found herself suddenly exhausted. She had no idea how long had passed in the first ice chamber she’d dropped into. Would the gathering far above be in full swing or breaking up as the sun rose? For a moment the weight of all that ice seemed to crush her. She bore it though, along with the weight of sorrow for her mother and her father and Quell and maybe for some of the others she would never see again. Would they be grieving amid the celebrations, even though they were not supposed to? The music and the ferment were meant to help in the forgetting but she hoped they would each at least shed one tear for the girl they had lost.

‘You stay here until I come for you.’ Arka opened the door, pointing. ‘That hut way over there by the entrance to that side chamber. That’s where you go in the night. Nothing freezes down here so we don’t take care of our business near where we sleep. And nothing is wasted. What we have no use for helps grow the plants we eat.’

‘The fungi eats dung?’ Kao pushed up the blond mop of his hair in disgust. ‘And you eat the fungi?’

Arka shrugged. ‘You will too if you don’t want to starve. It’s the circle of life. The dead go into the pits too. It’s how life is. Eular says that on the ice that circle is broken because Abeth is dying. What you take from the sea does not return. But down here the cycle still turns life into death and death into life, and will do so as long as the stars shine.’ With that she left them. Yaz sat, watching Arka walk away and wondering who this Eular was who seemed to know everything.

‘Well, I’m not eating that … muck.’ Kao slammed the door behind Arka.

A low chuckle brought their attention to the gloom at the far end of the barracks where what had seemed to be a heap of bedding now raised its head.

‘So this is where you ran off to.’ Kao snorted at Thurin and shook his head. On the ice nobody stormed off in a temper. The wind would cool you down quicker than you liked, and if your anger took you out of view then you might never find your way back.

Thurin shrugged. ‘I have things to prove before they let me back.’

‘Back?’ Quina went to take a sleeping place not far from Thurin’s.

Thurin said nothing, only lay down and turned away. Maya went to take a place near the door.

‘Not that one,’ Kao said, looming over her.

Maya moved to another, and Kao scowled at her retreat. Yaz watched, wondering that someone so large would feel the need to push a small girl around. Kao could have made an issue of Thurin laughing at him, if he wanted a fight, but there was something haunting that one’s eyes that might give a mad dog pause.

Taking a pallet a good distance from Kao’s Yaz settled herself down. ‘I’m going to find my brother and rescue him from the Tainted.’ She said it with more confidence than she felt and looked through the gloom at the shapeless heap that was Thurin.

‘If you see him you should run,’ the heap replied.

‘Arka told me that the rest are not as bad as Hetta,’ Yaz said. ‘They don’t eat people.’

‘Let them catch you and you’ll wish they had eaten you.’ A long silence. ‘Theus is worse than Hetta. Much worse.’

It was as if Thurin were daring her to ask. She held her tongue. She wasn’t sure if it was pride that kept her lips sealed. Or maybe it was just knowing that since she had to go after Zeen it was better she didn’t hear anything which might make it harder to leave.

Thurin told her anyway. ‘Theus has a plan. He leads them. All of them. Even Hetta is scared of Theus. He’s looking for something in the black ice. Been looking for it a long time. A very long time.’

‘Who is he? What tribe? How old is he?’ The man had taken her brother. Yaz found herself needing to know, however bad it might be.

Thurin didn’t speak for a while and the barracks seemed to hold its breath, as if the others were listening too and feared to betray themselves.

‘Theus is as old as the body he wears. When I first saw him he was wearing Gossix, a boy I used to know.’

‘Wearing?’ Yaz shuddered. She could only think of a flayed skin, just as the Ictha wore the skin of mole-fish, the hides of tuark, and seal furs traded from the Triple Seas far to the south. ‘None of the tribes would—’

‘Theus is not of the tribes.’ Thurin’s voice fell to a whisper, haunted with memory. ‘He comes from the ice itself.’ He seemed about to say more but the door burst open and light flooded in, chasing shadows to the corners.

‘On your feet, drop-group!’ Pome stood, revealed in the light of his own star.

He watched, hard-faced, as they stood, Thurin last of all, favouring him with a dark look.

‘Inspection time.’ Pome strode in between them. ‘Let’s see what sorry excuses we’ve been given this time.’

Maya shrank away from the star as Pome waved it past her on the end of its iron rod. Pome swung back to Kao by the doorway. ‘Big fellow, eh? Golin?’

Kao nodded.

‘I should have been leader of this drop-group,’ Pome said. ‘But Tarko has his politics to play. In the end though, drop-groups aren’t here or there. You come sit with us sometime, down at the Green Shack, and I’ll tell you how things are under the ice. The Broken are listening to me these days and they like what I’m saying. Tarko has me marked for great things.’

Kao nodded and Yaz found herself starting to nod too. She stopped. There was nothing she liked about this young man: not his attitude, the things he said, or the way his gaze slid over her, and yet somehow his words had been carrying her along with them.

‘Get out, Pome.’ Thurin spat. ‘Take your pretty lies with you.’

Pome curled his lip in annoyance and strode towards Thurin, thrusting his star before him. ‘Was that you talking, Taint? Or did you let a demon take your tongue again?’

Thurin backed from the starlight, shielding his face as if it were a fierce heat.

‘See?’ Pome looked back at the rest of them. ‘The Tainted can’t stand the stars. The light is what keeps us safe.’ He glanced at Kao. ‘Never go where it’s dark, boy. Not down here. They’ll have you in a moment.’

‘Yessir.’ Kao gulped and nodded.

Pome turned and jabbed his star at Thurin, who was pressed to the back wall now. The light made him gasp as if in pain, forcing him to slide into the corner on his rear.

‘Stop that!’ Yaz found herself moving forward. However convincing Pome’s words felt, she didn’t like what he was doing one bit.

‘Or you’ll stop me?’ Pome swung round, thrusting his star at her chest.

Yaz squinted down to where the star blazed against her mole-fish skins, brighter even than before. It was just light though, no heat, no pain. The star gave off a faint sound, like the strains of a distant song, with a rapid beat beneath it. ‘You should leave.’

Pome frowned and jabbed the star against her. He looked puzzled.

‘Pome!’ It was Arka at the doorway. ‘Get out here.’

Pome’s face tightened. He forced a smile over gritted teeth and left without saying anything more.

‘Are you all right?’ Yaz tilted her head, not sure if she should offer Thurin her hand to help him rise. Outside, Arka and Pome’s raised voices diminished into the distance.

‘Fine.’ Thurin got to his feet, not looking at Yaz or her half-offered hand. He brushed himself down and went to his bed.

Thurin didn’t speak again until they were all settling to sleep. ‘People think Pome’s special because he can withstand the stars, but that’s not why he’s dangerous. He’s dangerous because his words get under your skin. Listen to him too long and you start believing what he says. And if he doesn’t manage to hook you that way then watch out for the ones he does hook.’

Sleep took an age to find Yaz. Imagination chased her through her exhaustion. Strangers’ eyes watched her from tainted faces, laden with malice. At last she turned her thoughts from Thurin’s words only to rediscover the unsettling warmth, the dampness in the air – something she knew only from the Hot Sea – the irregular splat of meltwater drops falling upon the roof, the distant groaning of the ice always on the move. All of it conspired to keep her dreams away and instead her mind replayed the events of the pit and the screaming rush of her fall, over and over.

Yaz lay in the gloom staring at the roof above her. In her whole life this was the first time she had tried to sleep anywhere but within her family tent. She needed the constant complaint of the wind against the hides. She needed her father’s growling snore building to the familiar snort then temporary silence. She needed the cold and the knowledge that Zeen and her mother pressed her, hide-wrapped, to either side. Yaz thought of her mother then and a tear ran from the corner of her eye. What must it be like in the tent now with just the two of them in all that space? Father, grim-faced, hands in fists upon his lap, knuckles white. Mother, proud, her face carved by the endless wind, iron in her long dark hair, eyes as pale as the wastes. Four years ago she had two sons and a daughter. Now they were gone. Would her pride still carry her over the ruin of her family? A second tear rolled after the first.

Finally Yaz dozed, woken periodically by a gnawing hunger, not helped by regular gurgles from Kao’s stomach. Hunger reminded her that however suicidal her mind might have been in throwing her down the Pit of the Missing, her body intended to live and was demanding that she look after its needs or things would go hard on her.

When a dark shape crept past her Yaz imagined that whoever it was was heading for the distant hut Arka had pointed out. But the figure, too slim to be Kao and too tall for Maya, left the door ajar and turned the wrong way. Curious, Yaz slipped from her covers and moved to follow.

She saw now as she left the barracks that it could only be Thurin ahead of her. On the ice he wouldn’t last long, too thin to resist the wind’s assault. Yaz herself lacked the full solidity of the Ictha but Thurin looked as though he might be blown away before the wind froze him.

The gritty rock felt curious underfoot, sticking to her damp feet. To leave a shelter without boots and liners was to lose toes to the frost, but here a lifetime’s learning could be undone in one drop. Yaz stumbled as she followed Thurin away from the settlement, stubbing her big toe on a fold in the rock. She cursed as quietly as she could, hobbling along a good thirty yards behind her quarry.

Thurin crossed the length of the cavern, jumping two small streams, and came to an archway that led to some new chamber, darker than the one they occupied. Near the entrance a single light burned, a star-stone larger than any of those Yaz had yet seen, bedded in the ice at a level she might reach if she were to stand on Thurin’s shoulders and stretch.

Thurin came to a halt near the arch. ‘You’re not doing a very good job of spying on me, you know.’ He didn’t turn towards her.

Yaz froze and said nothing.

‘Stealth isn’t really a skill you need on the ice. I’m told the wind hides every other noise and that there’s nothing to hunt.’

Still Yaz remained motionless, the air trapped in her lungs.

‘You should have told me that you weren’t trying to be quiet.’ Thurin at last turned to face Yaz and she released her breath. ‘But I have heard that the Ictha can’t lie.’ He cocked his head. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ Yaz lied, and they both smiled.

‘You can’t sleep. Most can’t on the first night. Maybe the others are just faking it. The big lad, Wayo?’

‘Kao.’

‘Kao, then. He can’t really snore like that? I’m sure it must be some kind of a joke …’

Yaz found herself chuckling and made herself stop, suddenly stern. ‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Answering questions.’

Yaz didn’t smile this time. ‘I have more. I want to know—’

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Thurin asked.

‘I—’ Yaz looked down, mortified at the reminder she had nothing on but the mole-fish skins she’d been sewn into. She should have stolen Kao’s cape but it was so warm she hadn’t noticed her state of undress. Now beneath the brightness of the nearby star she felt next to naked. ‘No!’ She had hoped the word would come out defiantly but it ended up as more of a squeak. ‘Too hot if anything.’ Not a lie. Under Thurin’s amused gaze every inch of exposed skin felt as if it were burning.

‘It’s a breath away from freezing.’ Thurin shook his head. ‘The stories about the Ictha appear to be true. Are you all as strong as bears too?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen a bear, let alone wrestled one.’

Thurin smiled, though there was a sadness in it, the same sorrow that had been haunting him when they first met and ran beneath his laughter. He turned back towards the ice again.

‘I have more questions.’ Yaz moved closer.

‘I didn’t come here to answer your questions,’ he said.

‘But you said—’

‘I have questions of my own.’ He crossed to where the rock held a puddle and crouched before it.

Yaz bit back on her impatience and went to stand behind him. Shouting at Thurin was unlikely to get her the answers she needed. Though she was prepared to knock his head against the rock as a last resort if that was what it took. ‘Well?’

Thurin reached out to the water, putting his hand into it, flat against the rock at the bottom, long fingers splayed.

‘Ah …’ Something twisted inside Yaz, a curious sensation, as if she were a pool into which a ball of ice had fallen, sending out ripples. Only she was the ice and the ripples as well as being the pool.

Thurin let out a small gasp, pain perhaps, and raised his hand. Somehow the water rose with his hand, a slowly undulating glove, inches thick on every side, beautiful where the light came through to project moving lines of light and shadow across Yaz’s stomach and thighs.

‘You’re a witch-child!’

Thurin laughed and the water fell away in sparkling drops. ‘I’m not a child. And it’s an old blood that runs through us. Older than the Ictha or any other tribe. Marjal blood.’

‘Us?’ Yaz wasn’t sure she wanted this strange young man as her kin.

‘Well, you’re too small for a gerant, unless you’re twelve … and you don’t look twelve.’ For a moment Thurin’s gaze ran the length of her.

Yaz let anger burn away any sense of shame at her state of undress. ‘I’ve seen the long night sixteen times. None but the Ictha can endure it.’

‘Ah, but that’s why the regulator threw you down, is it not?’ An eyebrow arched. ‘You wouldn’t have lasted many more. You don’t strike me as a hunska even though you have the black hair. Your eyes are too pale. Are you quick?’

‘Quick enough.’ Yaz thought of Zeen. Her brother made her seem slow. In the hand-slap game there was no beating him, and although his eyes weren’t the night black of some southerners like Quina, they were the darkest she knew among the Ictha.

‘Not gerant huge or hunska fast, and yet thrown down here with the rest of us. You’re a marjal, Yaz.’

She hadn’t been sure Thurin had even registered her name. It sounded strange in his mouth, the southern tribes blunted the edges of their words.

‘Will I be able to do … that … then?’ She nodded at the rippling puddle.

Thurin pursed his lips. ‘We marjals have many tricks; the gods reach into their bag of marvels and scatter us with this gift or that, but never too many. The most common are skills to work with shadow or air. My talent is the most prized of the basic skills down here. We can influence the ice, even in its molten form.’ He waved a hand at the puddle and the ripples vanished. ‘I can also work with fire, that’s a rarer skill than ice-work but useless. There’s nothing to burn here.’ He shook his head, smiling ruefully at the gods’ joke. ‘The rarest elemental skill is rock-work. But there’s no rock on the ice and no fire beneath it.’

‘How do you even know you can work flame if there’s no fire down here?’ Yaz asked.

Thurin smiled. ‘At the forge they melt iron down. I can understand the heat, move it around. It feels the same as when I manipulate the ice. I think my flame-work might actually be stronger than my ice-work.’ He shook his head again at the irony.

‘Are there other magics?’ Yaz asked. None of this sounded like the river that runs through all things, the source of her strangeness.

‘Some. Oddities that crop up now and then. Welaz could make things float in the air. Anything. Even people. But he’s dead now. Old Gella can make a wound heal faster than it should. Dekkan can find things that are lost.’ He shrugged and pulled his coat around him. ‘How can you not be cold?’ he asked.