The Girl and the Moon Read online

  Yaz trod water with the others, waiting. She looked to see if Erris was making progress beneath them but their legs were churning up too much mud to see anything. Time passed with agonizing slowness and still the audience above remained in place.

  “He’s keeping them there,” Yaz said.

  “He knows about my ice-work,” Thurin said. “He’ll be worried some of us might survive much longer than expected.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. He should have told them we had marjal and quantal powers,” Quina said.

  “He thought he was going to have us beheaded,” Yaz said. “So it didn’t matter. If he said at the trial we could do all the things we can then that might have caused awkward questions. And if he said it afterwards then that could have been even worse. If we’re so very rare then killing us might be considered a waste.”

  “Are they going to stay there all damned day?” Thurin was hurting, Yaz could tell.

  “We could go a little higher,” she suggested.

  “They’ll see us, catch us, and drown us again properly.” Thurin shook his head.

  “Bring up some muddy water to hide us,” Quina said. “I mean, not just here, but all over.”

  “It could work.” Thurin frowned with concentration. “I doubt they do this often enough to know how much silt four bodies churn up. But . . . if I’m busy not drowning, keeping the airway open, and bringing up mud from the depths . . . this bubble might collapse. Fair warning.”

  Yaz swam behind him and put an arm under each of his, closing them around his chest. “I’ll keep you up. You focus on the other stuff.”

  “But mainly the bubble not collapsing,” Quina urged.

  * * *

  Erris’s head broke the surface some while later. It felt like an hour at least. He reached for another handhold, driving a hinge pin into the soft stone before he fell back. “Hello.” He looked up, blinking water away. “They’re still there?”

  “He is.” Yaz resisted snarling. She had no proof that the small knot of figures still standing vigil at the side of the sinkhole were Eular and his guards, but she was sure of it even so.

  “How are you holding up, Thurin?” Erris asked.

  Thurin gave a pained grunt.

  “It’s getting darker,” Quina said past chattering teeth. “At least there’s that. They won’t stay all night, will they?”

  Yaz was far from sure how long the old man would stand there just to make sure they had all died. The water wasn’t cold. Cold water is called ice. An Ictha could swim in near freezing water all day, but Thurin and Quina were beginning to suffer with it and even Yaz, to her shame, felt chilly after so long immersed in the Glasswater.

  “I don’t think there’s anything else we can do,” Erris said. “Except rise higher as it gets darker. I could circle round to that ladder then try to climb up and kill them but doing it one-armed without a weapon could be tricky.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic. Erris wasn’t a killer. Also, the sinkhole was just a couple of hundred yards from the start of the convent buildings and unless he silenced the watchers quickly they’d have the whole population of nuns and novices on them.

  They waited. Erris began the slow climb around the sinkhole to the ladder since he couldn’t swim. When he left the air bubble Yaz felt suddenly alone. Thurin was better equipped to keep her from drowning but somehow it was Erris she associated most with safety. She wondered if either of them felt that way about her. She’d saved both of them before. But she’d hardly kept them safe.

  Every now and then, as the sky darkened, Thurin would ease up a little closer to the surface to lessen the burden on his ice-work. Yaz trod water and meditated murder against Eular. Of all the welcomes to the green lands Yaz had considered, none of them had come close to being met by Eular and drowned in a hole. Thurin began to pant with the strain while shuddering with the cold.

  “We’ll have to fight!” Quina stammered past chattering teeth.

  “Wait.” Yaz pointed. “They’re leaving.”

  Slowly the final group departed. One figure lingered longer than the rest, barely visible against the darkening sky, then at last they too pulled away.

  Thurin immediately began to rise to the surface but kept just below it for another few minutes. At last he broke into the air. At first the night sky was a small circle at the top of their broken bubble, then moments later they were swimming at the bottom of a deep bowl-shaped dent in the water’s surface, and gradually it flattened out until they were simply swimming. The sky lay full dark above them, crimson stars reflecting in the water.

  Slowly, making as little noise as possible, they swam across to where the iron ladder reached the surface. Yaz climbed out first since Erris had not yet appeared and both Thurin and Quina were so cold as to be barely able to grip the rungs. She helped the other two onto the ladder where they hung for a while, letting the water drip from their furs and hoping it wasn’t making too much noise.

  “Let’s go.” Yaz began to climb. She’d reached about halfway to the sinkhole’s rim when it struck her that rather than getting darker it was getting lighter. She paused and looked at the sky behind her. A red glow was building rapidly, as if the sun were rising but at ten times its normal speed, chasing the stars from the sky.

  “What’s happ—” Light reached into the sinkhole, painting the wall, racing down it as fast as Yaz might climb. A brilliant star, a thousand times bigger than any she’d ever seen, moved into view over the opposite rim of the Glasswater.

  “It must be the moon,” Quina gasped several yards beneath her.

  Moonlight proved warmer than sunlight and its intensity continued to build. The walls and ladder began to creak as they heated up. Yaz’s few remaining furs began to steam.

  “Keep climbing!” Thurin called from below Quina, sounding somewhat panicked.

  The heat hit Yaz like a blow now: her skin felt as if it were on fire. Below Thurin, where the light struck the water’s surface, it began to steam almost immediately.

  “We should go back?” Quina asked.

  Suddenly the coolness of the water seemed inviting, but Yaz climbed on swiftly. The moon was the thing Taproot wanted to save, the thing that kept these lands free of ice. It might be hot but surely it wasn’t going to kill them? It might feel as if she were burning but if it really got that hot then surely there wouldn’t be trees and grass.

  Fast as she was, the fog rising from the sinkhole nearly beat Yaz. She stumbled onto level ground only to be overtaken by a white wave of mist that reduced visibility to just a couple of feet.

  Shrouded in the mist and shielded from the worst of the heat, Yaz helped Quina then Thurin off the ladder. A few moments later the wind changed and took the fog with it, leaving them exposed to the moon’s full glare. And Yaz, fresh from near drowning, now hit by the nighttime ferocity of a moon ten times brighter than the summer sun, curled up on the rock with her arms about her head.

  3

  Yaz lay coiled on the hot rock, sure that her hides were not only steaming but smoking in the intensity of the moon’s light. She’d never felt anything like it. The air seemed to sear her lungs with each breath.

  The sound of heavy footsteps on the ladder told Yaz that Erris would soon be joining them. She tried to raise her head and squint but even through closed eyelids the light was too intense and she returned her arm to its place across her face. A moment later his hand, already dry, closed on her wrist.

  Yaz couldn’t tell how long the heat and the light lasted. Like her near drowning earlier in the day it was almost certainly shorter than it felt, and it felt like forever.

  Finally the light dwindled and died, departing as swiftly as it had come, and Yaz opened her eyes to see the last of the mist leaving the sinkhole in tatters, stained red with starlight. The rock all around her was hot to the touch and her skin felt burned. Echoes of the moon’s light still dazzled her, leaving her vision unable to penetrate the night out on the surrounding plateau.

  “Wow.” Quina uncurled and sat, blinking. “I wonder how often that happens.”

  Thurin crouched beside her, massaging his forehead. “Once a year would be enough for me.”

  “Every night.” A new voice spoke from the darkness. “Without it the ice would join hands across the Corridor and there would be no life save that of the tribes.” Sister Owl came closer and the starlight offered up her outline. “When I was a child it was a journey of a hundred and fifty miles from the cliffs of the southern ice to those of the northern ice. Now it’s barely a hundred. Without the moon we would have been swallowed up long ago.”

  Yaz stood, suddenly angry. “Yes, we survived. Thanks for your concern.” She’d nearly drowned. Thurin’s ordeal had been just as bad. “You couldn’t have moved Eular on more quickly?”

  Sister Owl spread her hands. “You told me yourself that he knew young Thurin is water-sworn. Left to his own devices I believe the archon would have stood watch until dawn. In the end Abbess Claw had to arrange for a summons to arrive demanding his presence at the cathedral in Verity. Fortunately the archon’s long absence from the city has vexed the high priest and on learning of Eular’s proximity she was quick to insist that he present himself immediately. With luck she may even refuse to confirm his appointment. It’s rare for archons to choose their successors, after all, and in cases of sudden death these transitions of power come under closer scrutiny.” The nun blinked and widened her eyes. “Forgive me, I’m rambling. The curse of old age, I’m afraid. Follow me. We must get you out of sight. The archon left three Church guards to watch the Glasswater and the longer I keep them befuddled the harder it is to unthread the confusion without leaving s
ome memory of that lack of memory. Indeed—” She clamped her wizened lips tight, frowning at her wandering tongue, and turned to lead them away.

  Yaz followed. Mali had told her the old woman was a teacher, used to holding forth before a class of novices. Clearly brevity was not her strength. Even so, Yaz had a sudden desire to be sitting among a group of such girls with the time to listen to Sister Owl’s ramblings. She was sure Sister Owl had a vast amount of knowledge stored in her head that Yaz desperately needed to learn if she were to survive in this strange iceless land of blazing moons and unknown faiths.

  * * *

  Sister Owl led them through the dark, deserted convent. Yaz saw no one, no lights burned, but she felt watched. Yaz and her friends were, Sister Owl had explained, balanced on a delicate edge in the midst of a hidden conflict. A conflict that would determine the fate of the Church and hence the empire.

  Yaz remembered how Sister Owl had come to the prisoners during their brief confinement before the trial and had spoken to them, confident none of the Church guards that Eular had left to oversee them would know the language of the north.

  The ancient woman had hobbled up to the gates of their subterranean prison and peered through the iron bars to where Yaz and the others sat in chains.

  “The Ancestor is a many that speaks with one voice,” she had said. “Whereas the Church is a single entity that speaks with many voices.” She had wrapped a gnarled hand around a bar and drawn herself in close. “I’m not about to wash the Church’s dirty . . .” She struggled for the right word in the tongue of the north. “. . . hides in front of strangers I’ve only just met, but suffice it to say that I have been engaged in a secret war for the heart of our faith since before Abbess Claw was an itch in her mother’s belly. There are forces out there”—she waved her arm at the stony walls—“forces that have long been seeking to infiltrate both the Church and the royal family, seeking to subvert both to ends that I don’t yet fully comprehend but which are certainly not in the best interests of our people. I do not trust Archon Eular’s motives, no matter what level of support he might have within the highest circles. Long ago Sister Cloud foretold the coming of the made man, a prophecy spoken only for my ears. She left no instructions but I can’t imagine she intended for me to stand by idle while he and his companions were put to death.”

  “So set us free,” Yaz had said. “You must know that these bars can’t hold us. We’re trying not to start a battle. We don’t want to fight you. But Eular is our enemy from the ice and we won’t let him kill us.”

  Sister Owl had pursed her lips and frowned. “It’s complicated. Faith is simple but religion . . . that can become tangled. Abbess Claw guides this convent in service to the high priest. Our laws must be obeyed or chaos will replace them and a much larger battle than the one you worry about will start. Our abbess is a clever woman though. You might think she chose her name because of the damage a claw can inflict. But in fact it was the ability to cling on to impossible edges and climb despite the odds that inspired her.”

  Yaz thought of the hoola that had once attacked them on a tall pressure ridge, navigating the near vertical ice as if it were flat ground thanks to its fearsome claws. “And how does your abbess hope to obey the law without killing us?”

  Sister Owl smiled. “The law says that you must be thrown into the Glasswater sinkhole, secured in iron yokes. And the law—”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Thurin snarled from the back of the cave. “I’d rather die fighting.”

  “And the law,” Sister Owl continued undaunted, “must be followed. The made man will not, I imagine, be inconvenienced by submersion in water?” She looked at Erris.

  “No.” Erris inclined his head.

  “And you, young man, so eager to fight, you share my own marjal talent for manipulating water, do you not?”

  “I do.” Thurin still sounded angry.

  “As a child I would swim in the Glasswater with my fellow novices on rare occasions when we felt brave enough to dare the cold. On one such dip I amazed and dismayed my fellow novices by vanishing beneath the water and staying there far longer than anyone could hold their breath. It was, on reflection, a cruel trick and I regretted it immediately on returning to the surface . . .”

  “You brought air down with you,” Thurin said, uncertain. “I could do that.”

  “The law demands only that you be yoked and thrown in,” Sister Owl said. “The wording does not explicitly state that you be killed. If you were to emerge unscathed, then the abbess would consider justice to have been served and the mercy of the Ancestor to have fallen upon you. It would however be prudent to keep this miraculous salvation a secret for a while.”

  * * *

  And so it was that after their emergence from the Glasswater, Sister Owl led them swiftly into the heart of the convent. She took them below ground, passing down a short flight of stone steps and through a doorway into a long, hand-hewn chamber with three windows at the far end piercing a thick wall. Abbess Claw was waiting, seated behind a table on which a single candle burned. The convent’s murder teacher, Mistress Shade, stood beside her. Yaz had learned a few things about Sweet Mercy from Mali on the long night before her execution. In addition to Sister Owl’s instruction in the ways of the Path, the arts of battle were taught by Mistress Blade. In Shade Class the young novices were taught the arts of murder and deception. Mistress Shade was a surprisingly young woman who looked wholly unsuited to hiding in the shadows while waiting to stab someone in the back. Her pale skin seemed to glow, where her very blonde hair escaped her headdress it caught and returned every scrap of light, and she was small, barely taller than Quina. Even so, Yaz sensed something dangerous about the nun.

  She wondered if the chamber was a place where novices were taught. It smelled of many strange things, few of them natural.

  The abbess indicated that Yaz and the rest take seats at the smaller desks facing hers. Yaz squeezed in, Quina took a chair from behind the desk next to her. When Thurin and Erris had found places the abbess spoke and Sister Owl translated.

  “She asks that you tell us all you know about Archon Eular.”

  And so for some time first Thurin then Yaz recounted the adventures that had taken them from the distant north to the green centre. Stories for which there had been neither the time nor privacy after Eular had made his accusations. Abbess Claw watched and listened without expression. Even the most outlandish elements of Yaz’s story concerning Eular, like his ability to pass decades in timeless sleep and to step across vast swathes of ice using gates left behind by the Missing, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. When Yaz spoke of Taproot, a man older than the four tribes’ existence on Abeth, a man without a body who existed in fragments and partial copies haunting the minds of great cities, then even Abbess Claw’s impressive composure was tested. But she made no interruption.

  At last, when the tale had been told, Abbess Claw spoke with Sister Owl and Mistress Shade for a while. Yaz understood none of it and had no reason to expect to, but to her surprise their conversation seemed tantalizingly close to making sense. Yaz wondered about the bond she had with Mali, a bond that allowed her to understand the novice without knowing what any of the words actually meant. Maybe this was an additional effect, seeded by that connection. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking and the others were also sitting there believing themselves on the edge of understanding.

  Early on Owl looked up at Yaz. “If this ancient of yours, this Taproot . . .” She frowned at the name. “If he says you and you alone can open the ark using four shiphearts—then why did Eular want to see you dead?”

  Yaz blinked. She hadn’t fully considered the matter. Eular had been furious with her, and Seus was too. That had seemed reason enough. But their anger was a small thing set against the scale and duration of Seus’s larger ambitions. “I can only guess that Seus doesn’t know the ark can be opened that way. Eular wanted me when he thought I could help his army take the ark so that Seus could use direct force to break into it. However long it might take. Now that dream is gone they just want to kill me.”