As Yaz advanced, the man began to froth and howl, repeatedly ramming his head backwards in an attempt to hurt Erris while bucking like a landed fish to break free.

“I don’t know how to do this . . .” Yaz held the star before her while the man writhed. She needed to force the demons out of him without breaking his own personality into fragments. It felt like trying to clean dirt off someone’s face using only a lump hammer.

“I’m just the beautiful assistant,” Erris said, using a gap when the man was sucking in breath for more roaring. “You’re the magician.”

Yaz bit her lip and moved the star closer to the man’s head. A moment later he went rigid and began to have a fit, the froth about his mouth starting to colour with blood. Even as he frothed, the black and scarlet stains began to retreat, flowing down his neck. Moments later both had vanished beneath his rags.

“Stand him up, quickly.” Yaz stepped back.

Erris stood the man back on his feet, lifting him with an ease that made him look somehow pretend, as if the Tainted were made of rags and sticks rather than flesh and bone.

“Who are you?” Yaz sent her star away and stepped in close. Close enough for the man’s stench to hit her, and to see the lines of cleaner skin showing where the drool had cleaned his chin.

“I . . .” The man looked disoriented, as if waking from a long and dream-haunted sleep.

“Your name.”

“Etrix, of the Axit!” He glanced around, taking in the chamber then the hands holding his wrists, stretching out his arms. “Who are you?” A snarl reached his lips. “And where’s Tarko?”

Yaz could see the red stain starting to finger its way back up, already touching the man’s throat. “Listen to me, Etrix. You’ve been tainted. The demons will reclaim you soon. I don’t know how to drive them out yet. I’m sorry. But I need you to take a message to Theus for me. You know Theus?”

A shadow of memory crossed the man’s face, fear replacing fierceness. “Theus . . .” A nod.

“Tell him that Yaz of the Ictha is waiting for him at the bridge. I’ve come to fulfil the terms of our agreement.”

“Tell him yourself, bitch!” Suddenly the man was straining to sink his teeth into any part of her he could reach, the scarlet stain running up beneath his ear. “You’re going to die in these caves and I’m going to listen to your screaming.”

Yaz reached behind her and the red star thunked into her open hand. She brought it back toward Etrix’s head and his eyes rolled up until only whites showed. The scarlet stain sank back down his neck. Yaz reached out, tearing the man’s patchwork furs open across his chest. She shone an intense beam of starlight at the retreating anger demon, using the light to drive both it and the malice demon down across prominent ribs. It was like chasing a slippery fish across the ice, a fish that kept sliding free, trying to head off in unwanted directions. But she drove them past his belly before he started to bleed from the eyes.

“Let him go.” Yaz backed off.

Rather than just letting the man fall, Erris lowered him gently.

“What’s your name?” Yaz demanded.

“Etrix!” The man stayed on his hands and knees, spitting blood.

“And what are you going to do?” Yaz asked.

“I’m going to kill that stinking Theus!”

For a moment Yaz thought the rage had him again, but no, this was Axit pride. She saw it in his eyes as he struggled to his feet, shaking off Erris’s attempt to help.

“Tell him that Yaz of the Ictha is waiting for him at the bridge. I’ve come to fulfil the terms of our agreement.” Yaz brought the star a little closer, making the man wince but keeping the demons on the run. “The taint is going to claim you again but if you deliver my message I may be able to help you escape it.”

Etrix nodded. He’d clearly lived with the demons riding him long enough to know that they were still in him. “I’ll tell him. But then I’m going to kill him.” He stalked away from Erris, giving Yaz a wide berth.

At the opening leading out onto the ravine’s edge he turned, some conflict twitching on his cheeks. “Help us. Help the children. Help us or kill us.”

He was gone, running into the gloom, before Yaz could respond.

* * *

YAZ PACED WHILE Erris crouched. Etrix had been gone some time and the Tainted were still gathering at the bridge, dozens now, though none dared to advance into the light of the hunter’s star. Yaz found herself longing for somewhere soft to sit, somewhere clean and dry and warm and comfortable. She had been cold and wet, hungry and thirsty for too long. Sleeping on hard floors or not at all. Her body ached for kindness and still all that stretched before her was more hardship, more fear, more fighting.

“I hadn’t thought it would be like this.” The first words Erris had spoken since Etrix ran off. “Children?”

“You didn’t know they threw children down the pit?” Yaz had been trying to avoid thinking about the little ones.

Erris frowned. “I didn’t see them in the city. And I didn’t know they were being . . . infected . . . like this. What sort of lives do they live in this place?”

“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Yaz said, feeling helpless. In a single sentence she had become one with those who threw them down the pit in the first place. But she really couldn’t see a way to help them. She didn’t even know if she could get Zeen, Thurin, and Kao free.

“What if Etrix does what he says and kills this Theus you’re trying to bargain with?”

Yaz went to the cavern mouth and peered at the crowd gathered across the chasm. She worried for Thurin if Etrix kept his promise. “I think if Theus were destroyed it might be even worse. From what I see he is the only one that holds them together. Without him they’d all be like Hetta.”

“Hetta?”

“They’d be running loose, just killing the Broken, maybe eating them too. Theus needs them to search the ice for demons that were once part of him. Without their fear of Theus, the Tainted would swarm the Broken within days. They have the numbers, and you’ve seen what they’re like.”

29

   WHEN THEUS FINALLY arrived the howls and hoots of the Tainted heralded him. Erris and Yaz were standing by the bridge as he emerged from the dark mouth of a black ice cavern further along the ravine. He made his way slowly, seeming to enjoy the adulation of his minions. Clearly pride was one component of himself that had already been rediscovered and added to the whole during the course of the Tainted’s searching. He wore Thurin’s body. Kao lumbered behind him, his face a vacancy waiting to be filled, and Zeen capered around them both, wild with laughter, too often dangerously close to the edge and a fatal plunge to the waters far below. Etrix followed, as frantic and unfocused as the rest of them once more.