The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,132

himself. His face just inches before the iron fingers reaching for Yaz.

“You know how long it took me to build this body,” he said to the assassin. “How much of myself I put into it. How hard I worked to hide it from you.”

The iron hand closed like a trap around his head, engulfing it. Yaz staggered forward to grab one finger with both hands. She tried to pry it back but found no give in it.

“You don’t think breaking this body will break me?” Erris spoke beneath the assassin’s wrist. “You have held me too long. I have lived too long.” He was speaking to the city, to Vesta, not to the work of metal and magic that held him. Addressing the vast but broken mind that had kept him across all these centuries.

The symbols flowing across the assassin’s faceplate shone brighter now, painting themselves across Yaz. Every symbol on the walls glowed more strongly and the shadows, with no place left to hide, went scurrying down the nearest shafts.

“This isn’t what you were made to do,” Erris said.

The fingers moved fractionally, beginning to squeeze. Erris gasped as if in pain. “There. I’ve done it.”

In that instant every one of the thousand symbols on the walls, ceiling, and floor burned red. The assassin opened its hand and released Erris’s head. The script continued to flow over its face.

“I’ve bound myself in here,” Erris said. “This is all I am. I’ve finally escaped you. I can live or die but I can’t go back.”

A tone like metal being torn screeched out from the assassin’s chest and Yaz had to cover her ears. The voice was nothing human and yet the hurt in it, the depth of its sorrow, threatened to carry her away like a wave stripping fishers from their boat.

“I understand that I can’t return if I leave.” Erris hung his head. He turned and reached for Yaz’s hand. She let him take it and folded her fingers into his. His flesh felt warm. Almost human. But not quite. “Yaz will come with me.”

The symbols pulsed again.

“She will not return. Will you, Yaz?” He met her eyes.

“I . . .” She found that she didn’t want to say so. Even though it was a place of emptiness and death it also held mysteries and answers. The idea that she might never come again, that all these secrets would be locked away from her forever, somehow seemed too much to ask, even though she had been inches from death and didn’t stand much further from it now. “I will go as far away as I can get.”

Erris began to lead her toward the mouth of the nearest horizontal shaft. They walked quickly and quietly beneath the glow of the symbols’ scarlet fire.

“What did you do?” Yaz hissed, afraid that if she spoke too loud it might somehow make the city change its mind.

“I used the only currency I had,” Erris said. “Myself.” He glanced back at the assassin. “I have been a part of the void so long, even as the city’s mind fell apart, that I think it values my existence. A kind of love, if you like.”

Behind them a clang rang out and looking back Yaz saw that the assassin was literally falling to pieces, coming apart now that its purpose had been served. A maelstrom of emotions swept over them, sorrow, anger, loss. Yaz’s own feelings floated on that tide, leaving her hollow, walking like a dead man, tears running from her eyes, her breath hitching in her chest as she fought against sobbing.

The whirlwind of feelings began to subside as they entered the corridor. Their footsteps echoed before them and, as the entrance receded behind them into a square of red light, the star orbiting Yaz began to provide their illumination. As it circled it sent their shadows in a slow dance, drawing together, merging, parting, sliding across one wall then the next.

Yaz realised that they were still holding hands and self-consciously undid herself from Erris’s grasp. “I still don’t understand what you did back there.”

“I did what I used to do best,” Erris said. “I