both, Yaz couldn’t tell.
‘But why?’ Quina persisted. ‘Why are all of us here nearly grown and all the young ones … none of the older ones … with the Taints?’
‘It’s a good question.’ Thurin closed off Kao’s retort with a raised hand. ‘It depends on how the pit is. The vents form, stretch and twist as the ice flows, and then are abandoned as the heat finds a new more direct route to the surface. There can be many ways down and sometimes who falls where just depends on how heavy they are. The shafts sort them like …’ He wriggled his fingers as if trying to pluck a good analogy from the air.
‘Fish in a sorting basket,’ Maya offered.
Yaz and Quina grunted. It was well said. In a sorting basket the fisher shook their catch in the right way and the largest rose to the top, the small fry packing the tail.
The door banged open. Arka leaned in. ‘Come on then, eat!’ She frowned at Thurin. ‘You know this stuff. Show some initiative.’
The five of them followed her out into the same gloom that had seen them to bed. Kao, Quina, and Maya clutched their capes about them, and Yaz brought her blanket. Arka cast a disapproving eye over them. ‘All right, all right, you can go fetch your clothes from the drying cave. I want you back here before I get bored of waiting. Thurin, make sure they don’t get lost.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Run!’
Thurin led off at a steady pace, weaving around the larger puddles. Quina kept easily at his shoulder, Yaz next holding to a straighter path, Kao and Maya labouring at the rear, one too heavy for speed, the other too short-legged for it.
Yaz slowed considerably when they reached the ravine. The narrow path down into it gave onto a decidedly fatal-looking drop on one side. Quina was nearly dressed by the time Yaz joined her and Thurin. The heat immediately made Yaz sweat, droplets beading the redness of her skin and making her wonder why she’d bothered drying the clothes. In the north an Ictha could not afford to sweat. Even that small amount of moisture could see them freeze entirely. Here in the heat and dampness she seemed to do little else.
‘Be quick about it,’ Thurin advised. ‘We don’t want to make Arka look bad. Pome is just itching to find fault and get himself put in charge of us. If he put half as much effort into defending us against the Tainted as he does into fighting Tarko and agitating then we’d still have them confined to the black ice.’
‘He … he’s not dangerous though?’ Little Maya looked worried. She looked worried most of the time.
Thurin made a half-shrug. ‘Arka thinks he is, but Tarko doesn’t see it. Arka isn’t convinced that everyone who’s disappeared lately has been taken by the Tainted or while scavenging. But that’s hard to prove. Just because some of those who vanished were standing in Pome’s way doesn’t mean he had a hand in it. Life down here is dangerous … So don’t go making enemies of Pome or anyone else. Especially Pome.’ He glanced at Yaz, a warning look, as if standing up for him last night had been a foolish thing.
Yaz dressed in a hurry, haste making her clumsy, and then had to wait for Maya and Kao to finish before Thurin would lead them back.
‘Why dry clothes all the way out here anyway?’ she asked.
‘The stone keeps the heat in better than any shelter. And we don’t like to make too much heat under an ice roof. Sometimes they don’t just drip. A chunk can fall. And that tends to hurt.’
Yaz winced.
Quina stood, fully dressed in her clan furs. Their clothes identified their clans both by design and composition. Nothing but men survived on the ice in the far north so the Ictha had no furs save the few they traded. They wore hides and skins. Among the Broken, though, the differences were lost amid years of repairs. The coat and leggings that wrapped Thurin’s narrow musculature were a patchwork of furs and leathers in which Yaz saw no clues at all to his clan.
Quina offered her a narrow smile, quick then gone. ‘More speed less haste. We’ll get your brother back from the Tainted. They got Thurin back after months. So you can take the time to match your ties up.’
Yaz looked down to realize she had mismatched one side of her outer coat to the other. ‘Dung on it!’
Quina’s grin returned. ‘Is that how they curse in the north?’
Yaz felt her cheeks colouring but she nodded. She found herself liking this narrow girl with her guarded ways and swift smiles.
‘I thought the Ictha would be good at swearing, what with all those long nights to practise!’ Quina went to the doorway. ‘I’ll teach you some better ones later.’
Maya’s struggling head emerged wide-eyed from the top of her parka. ‘You’re going to rescue your brother?’
‘Yes.’ Yaz frowned. The Ictha would call it throwing good spears after bad. The Ictha couldn’t afford grand gestures. Weakness had to be abandoned on the ice. Grow too old, get sick, become injured, become a burden and the harsh equations of wind and cold dictated that you be left. No one would come after her. She had committed the crime of weakness and the Pit of the Missing was her sentence, though somehow the regulator had commuted it. She set her jaw defiantly. This was a new world. New rules applied. ‘Yes, I am. And soon. Coming with me?’
Maya paled at that and edged towards Thurin, waiting in the doorway. Thurin shot Yaz another glance, this one unreadable. Quina had already left the hut.
‘Come on!’ Thurin waved to go, even though Kao was still struggling to get his other over-boot on and lace it.
‘I feel better like this.’ Yaz stamped her boots, the rock no longer grating against the soles of her feet. Back in the clothes she’d been wearing when she dropped Yaz felt like an Ictha again. She looked like one too. The mix and colour of her skins declared it. She wondered how long it would take for her differences to fade into the patched oneness of the Broken. She wondered if the guilt would ever fade. If she would ever lose the feeling that it had been her fault which dragged her here. Her failure that deprived the Ictha of a pair of able hands and took her parents’ first and last child from their tent.
The others started up the path at a half-run, laughing as Kao bellowed curses after them. Yaz followed, deep in her thoughts, Kao labouring behind her, still snatching at his boot. He began to catch them up in the second great chamber, puffing and blowing.
‘Call that running? Arka told us to hurry!’ Quina sped off, showing a remarkable turn of speed. ‘Come on!’
Thurin made to chase after her but paused when he saw that Yaz had come to a halt. ‘The Ictha girl needs to rest?’
‘No …’ Yaz wasn’t sure what it was but it was … something. The river that runs through all things remained hidden from her; she had used its power on the previous day to match the endurance of her tribe and it would be some time yet before she could find it again. But even when the river lay beyond her reach there were echoes of it everywhere, lines, infinitely many and infinitely fine, running from and to every part of every thing. She only had to defocus her vision to see those threads, and sometimes, like now, they encroached without her asking. They had pulsed in the air around Regulator Kazik while he inspected her at the mouth of the pit and they vibrated now, throughout the cavern, as if they were a net across which something heavy were advancing. ‘Over there.’ She pointed without seeing.
‘No?’ Thurin spoke the word in disbelief.
