The Girl and the Stars

Yaz lay shivering and in the space of a few minutes the entire length of the worm vanished into the wall, leaving a tunnel from which water gushed in a continuous stream and would continue to do so, she guessed, until the worm started heading down again.

“Yaz! Are you alright?” Erris came hurrying across to her, the concern that had been absent when facing a spear now written across his face. “Nothing broken?”

“I’m not sure.” The words came through chattering teeth; she was as weak as the rest of her drop-group had been the day they arrived, shivering and dripping. Yaz had once believed that there was no such thing as cold water. By definition it wasn’t cold—it was molten ice. Ice would never melt inside an Ictha tent without flame. “I think so.”

Erris helped her up. Only the dim radiance of the walls lit the chamber now. “Where’s your star-stone?”

Yaz cocked her head, listening for the star’s heartbeat. “That way.” She pointed at the exit through which most of the water had drained.

They found the star lighting the tunnel joining the next chamber to the one beyond that. Whether Arka and the other two had been washed further way or had been unwilling to pass the star in the tunnel in order to return Yaz didn’t know, but they were gone now.

“Better hurry then.” She stooped to collect her star.

“You need to get dry.” Erris took a handful of her skins and made a fist. Water dribbled out between his fingers.

Yaz willed heat from her star, picturing the sigil on the forge pot. “I’m fine.”

“You’re still shivering.” Erris’s dark eyes held a warmth of their own.

“I’m fine.” She pulled away and broke into a gentle run. “We’ll get there faster like this and it’ll stop me being cold.”

28

   YAZ AND ERRIS had hurried across the Broken’s territory from the long slope of the city and now approached the bridge over the chasm beyond which the stars vanished and the taint shaded the world into black. As they’d come closer to the Tainted’s caverns the familiar sense of menace had reasserted itself. The old malice waiting patiently for her return.

In all that time journeying from the city cavern they saw no one, heard nothing save the groaning and dripping of the ice. It brought home to Yaz how small the space they all had to live in was, and even so how thin on the ground they had grown. Eular had said she would be an agent of change, and he had been right, but she hadn’t wanted that change to end lives, ruin others, and destroy a fragile existence on the edge of what was possible.

Yaz realised that her fall had, against all the odds, taught her to hope again, to think for the first time that things might become better. The worst had already happened. The threat that had loomed over her life for years had finally come to pass, and the girl who had forgotten how to dream had, despite her conviction that it was selfish and more than she deserved, begun to hope for the future.

Now though, with darkness and despair literally reaching out to engulf her, she knew how cruel and fragile a thing hope is, and how sharp the edges of new-forged dreams can be once shattered.

“The ice is changing.” Erris ran his fingers over the greying walls as they approached the bridge.

“Careful.” Yaz moved to pull his hand away then stopped. “Can those things actually get under your skin? I mean, if it’s not real?”

Erris pursed his lips and looked at his wet fingertips. “My skin is real. It’s just not the same as yours. And the answer is that I’m really not sure.” He wiped his hand on his tunic, still wet from the flood. “I’ll avoid touching it.”

“The bridge is just along here.” Yaz led the way, her star’s red light glistening on the walls ahead of her. Everywhere she went the star seemed to bleach the ice, swiftly banishing the grey as though it were reluctant shadow.

The sound of the river reached them now, a muffled roar.

“Will they have guards?”

“I hope so. But they didn’t last time. It’s not a place you can sneak into without light, and if you have light they’ll see you coming.”

Yaz dimmed her star to almost nothing and advanced through the last dim chamber as quietly as she could. She set the star behind her and eased out onto the bare rock before the ravine. A slight warmth, rising from some unknown source, perhaps the river itself, had hollowed out a vaulted roof above the chasm and must be behind the slow disintegration of the bridge. The stars burned few and far between out here, just the occasional tiny point of light in the vast bulk of the ice. On the far side the walls shaded still further into grey and the light died entirely. A group of Tainted waited at the opposite end of the bridge, three adults and four children, two so small that Yaz thought they must have been among those the regulator threw down just before the Ictha arrived at the pit.

All seven were so dirty and shaggy haired that Yaz couldn’t tell which were male or female. Save by height she couldn’t tell young from old. They had descended into a kind of savagery that made them indistinguishable, a monolithic knot of rage and hate. The largest of them clutched a sword that could well be Petrick’s. Other than that they seemed unarmed. Yaz found herself very relieved not to see a spear among them. A hurled spear would bring her attempt at negotiation to a swift and unfortunate end. But the Tainted lived to capture, not to kill, and weapons seemed rare among their ranks.

Howls rang out as they saw her. They rushed forward together, careless of the bridge’s narrowness. One child almost tumbled into the depth but snagged an adult’s leg as it fell and hauled itself snarling back onto the ice. As they came Yaz backed along the edge of the ravine. She let her star rotate into view, increasing its radiance as it did so. The star’s unvoiced song reached out, seeking harmonies from the few points of light wavering through the ice. The Tainted lifted their arms to shield their eyes. Running feet faltered. Howls became hisses. Only the sword wielder staggered on, driven more by his own momentum than by any enduring desire.

The swordsman was alone by the time he passed the cavern mouth that Yaz had emerged from. Erris rose behind him, seizing both his arms. The man stood an inch or two taller than Erris and struggled with a wild, unhinged strength, but Erris held him as if controlling an unruly child, drawing him back into the cavern while Yaz retraced her steps.

Once in the cavern Yaz let the hunter’s star’s crimson light flood out, painting the man in Erris’s grasp in stark detail. Erris had taken him to a sitting position on the ground, squatting behind him, still holding his arms by the wrists.

The man was lean, close to the point of starvation like all the Tainted. A black stain covered and infected one eye, reaching down across his mouth and chin. Under the filth his hair was perhaps brown rather than the black it seemed, and he had the early Axit tattoos on his neck and wrists, indicating he had received his push relatively late. The design needled into his neck sat against a scarlet background, this one due to a second demon rather than more ink. He still held Petrick’s sword, though his grip had slackened beneath the pressure of Erris’s hand around his wrist.