‘The Tainted did not bring a hunter to our caves. Tainted do not go to the city.’
‘And hunters don’t come this far into our territory!’ Pome shouted to mutters of agreement from behind him. ‘But still we have a hunter on our doorstep hard on the heels of Thurin’s restoration. We have challenged the order of things, against the will of many here, and now we see the price. The Tainted are lost to us and a quick death is all the mercy we can afford them.’
Tarko rubbed both hands across the back of his neck as if seeking to ease some tension. He looked tired – close to exhaustion even – but when he answered it was with a measured tone. ‘And what would you have me do, Pome? Return Thurin to the Tainted? Leave him to the hunter? I thought you were eager to fight. Today we have driven off a hunter. When have the Broken known such a victory?’
This time the mutters were for Tarko and they were louder. He continued, ‘I’ve set a watch on the long slope so we will know if a hunter comes our way again. But we’ve shown that here at least we have some defence against them.’ He nodded to himself and looked out across his people, waving them on. ‘Now, each to their task. The ice does not mine itself.’
The gathering appeared to be over. Slowly the crowd began to break up, moving off in threes and fours, some deep in their silence, others talking animatedly among themselves to the accompaniment of the drip drip drip from above and the distant groan of moving ice.
‘What happened?’ Thurin asked Arka, amazed. ‘How did you drive off a hunter?’
‘Tarko worked the ice,’ Arka said.
‘Tarko has marjal blood, like Thurin?’ Maya asked.
‘Someone’s been paying attention. Tarko is the strongest ice-worker among us.’ Arka gave the girl an approving look and Maya beamed up at her. ‘He broke a block from the ceiling bigger than Hetta and let it drop on the hunter. That got its attention. The second one seemed to hurt it. Anyway, it retreated after that.’ She pointed to the far end of the cavern where more caves opened out. ‘Let’s go.’
Yaz ignored the woman and kept her gaze on Thurin. His mother had died in the effort to rescue him, perhaps on the same day Yaz fell. It explained the sadness in him. And he was tainted but was rescued from that too. She needed his help if she were to rescue Zeen. Guilt rose, the old Ictha guilt that always reached up to run its claws through her whenever she thought about herself rather than others. She’d been looking at Thurin as someone who might be a friend. Or even more than that. Those were the sorts of dreams that saw you die on the ice, the sort that hurt the clan. Thurin was her means to recover Zeen. That was her focus. Nobody would know the Tainted better than someone who lived among them. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
Thurin frowned, uncomfortable. ‘Nobody lasts long down here. But I will miss her. Very much.’ He paused and added, ‘I’m sorry about your brother.’
There seemed nothing else to say. Sometimes all your words are the wrong shape and none of them will fit into the silence left when the conversation pauses. Yaz looked away from Thurin, her stomach a cold knot. Zeen would be poisoned and insane when she found him. She would need to do whatever had been done for Thurin. The knowledge ate at her. Each new thing she learned only bound her tighter to the Broken. She needed them, and while every instinct told her to go out now and get her brother to safety, her head told her to stay, to listen, and to learn.
‘How—’ But already Arka was leading the others back towards the settlement. Yaz hurried to catch up with her. ‘How do you make someone who’s tainted better again? And what’s this city? And why can’t you just bring ice down on them there too?’
‘Because in the undercity the ceiling is made of stone,’ Arka said. ‘And the rest will have to wait until I’ve eaten. Maybe the Ictha don’t need food but I’m starving.’
‘Food!’ Kao said it as though remembering a lost love. ‘Hells yes.’
Arka led them to the settlement, past the barracks and further in amid a confusion of huts and larger buildings, all different both in design and orientation. They looked almost to have been made from discarded pieces of larger, more complex objects, like the child’s doll Yaz’s father had fashioned for her when she was little. The thought stung her and she wondered what her parents were doing now, what Quell was doing, and how far away they were from her now, up in the freshness of the wind.
She looked around and sniffed in distaste. The settlement lacked the order of an Ictha camp, it was dirty, and it smelled … it smelled delicious! Yaz sniffed again. Arka had led them to one of the largest halls and as she opened the door a wave of warmth rolled out along with the most wonderful aroma. All five of the drop-group suddenly found themselves as hungry as Kao had declared himself to be. They wasted no time installing themselves around a platform that Arka named a table on objects she named chairs, designed to allow them to sit while at the same time being raised to be on a level with the table. Yaz wondered what was wrong with the floor but she made no complaint.
An older woman with dark hair that fell in a strange curling way came in hefting a huge bowl that seemed to be made of iron, blackened with fire on the outside and steaming from within, the source of the wonderful aroma. Yaz was as amazed by the woman’s curls as she was by the fact that metal was so plentiful here that it could be used to make bowls to keep food in.
Arka held up her hand. ‘Two things. One: don’t touch the pot, it will burn you. We serve food hot here. Madeen will bring bowls. Two: this is Madeen. She cooks the meals. Never upset her or you might get something nasty in yours.’
Madeen gave the lie to these words with a motherly smile as she hefted the pot onto the table, then swung round suddenly to aim a narrow-eyed scowl at Maya who jumped and nearly fell from her chair. Laughing, Madeen went to fetch the bowls.
‘Oh, and three: these are spoons.’ Arka showed off a metal scoop.
The pot contained what Arka described as stew. Yaz stared at the steaming and complicated pile of … pieces … in the strange bowl before her. ‘But what is it?’
‘Stew. Eat it. It’s good.’ To prove her point Arka scooped up a lump and put it, still steaming, into her mouth.
‘But … won’t it burn me?’ Yaz could feel the heat rising off the stuff.
‘No.’ Kao spoke the word oddly, trying to fit it around a large mouthful while rapidly sucking and blowing air into and out of his lips. ‘Is good.’
Yaz, Maya, and Quina joined Thurin, Kao, and Arka and started to eat. Yaz had only ever eaten fish before, hot from the sea or cold on the journey from a closing sea to an opening one. The Ictha ate their travel rations frozen. As far as she knew all the other tribes did too.
The warmth was delicious on its own. Whether it made the slices of fungi taste so wonderful or whether they tasted that good cold Yaz couldn’t say, but she knew for a fact that a burned mouth was a small price to pay. She ate with a dedication that nearly matched Kao’s. She’d never tasted anything so full of flavour, so complicated, savoury with a slight saltiness to it.
Towards the bottom of the bowl, as Yaz mustered the strength of will to slow down, she discovered small chunks that seemed familiar, though far more tasty hot and soaked in the stew’s dark juice. ‘This is fish!’
‘It is.’ Arka nodded. ‘You can’t live on the fungi alone, not for too long. Without fish and salt you fall sick and die. Fish livers hold most of what you need to live.’
‘And where do you get fish? Where do you get salt down here?’
Arka met her gaze with serious eyes. ‘Where do you get iron up there?’
‘I … The priests trade it with us.’
‘And we trade it with the priests.’ Arka had all their attention now, though Kao still pushed in another mouthful as he stared at her. ‘Some say it’s the only reason they put us down here.’
‘But …’ Yaz ran out of words.
‘Broken