Glass leaned over and, with bound hands, adjusted the slats of the window shutters so that she could gaze out across the vineyards. Beyond them, farmland stretched until distance and rolling hills devoured the detail, merging the patchwork fields into a blur. The sky above lay pale and strewn with streamers of cloud running west to east. Sweet Mercy was said to have been built upon the Rock of Faith to raise the sisters above mortal concerns and let them focus their adoration upon the Ancestor. Now the everyday world had reached up its hand and plucked Glass from her eyrie. She settled back and sighed. She would have to see how well she remembered the ways of the worldly and whether she still had that old fire in her. She would most certainly need it.
Once on level ground the carriage began to bump along the Verity Road, past the hedgerows and farmhouses that Glass had so often looked down upon from Sweet Mercy’s heights. A mile rumbled beneath the wheels, another followed, and Glass retreated into the ordered chaos of her mind. She had from an early age practised the memory arts often employed by Holy Sisters. The nuns used them when engaged within the scriptorium or required to recite lengthy portions of the family tree at ceremonies sponsored by some or other Sis family. Some archives of useful information she recalled using nonsense songs, often lewd, or rambling stories associating one fact with the next in unexpected ways that anchored them into her memory. For the disposition of the clergy and of the Inquisition however she kept a map, hung upon the back of her mind and ever-glowing. Each report that arrived at her desk brought certain players into sharp resolution, their location at a particular time and place assured, their current whereabouts diffusing along likely routes and towards likely destinations as time blurred fact into speculation. The abbess received far fewer updates than she once had when the highest seat in the Tower of Inquiry was hers, but information flowed into Sweet Mercy at a rate that would have surprised many a lord’s spymaster. It came on feathered wings, on holy writ, on Grey feet and on Red; it came through shadow-bonds and thread-links; through couriered parchment in cipher or merely whispered watchwords; and it came through open ears in Verity, many patient and attentive ears, some devout, some mercenary, and all passing word to the Rock. Always it arrived unseen, often borne by the return of carts that carried the barrels and bottles of Sweet Mercy red to the great and the good up and down the length of the empire.
The carriage rumbled to a halt, jolting Glass from her inspection of imaginary maps. She frowned, wondering if the road ahead were blocked. The driver rapped four times on the roof and the guard beside the abbess leaned forward to open the door.
“Abbess Glass, how wonderful to see you.” Lord Thuran Tacsis clambered in as Brother Pelter vacated the opposite seat to squeeze beside Glass.
Thuran shared little in appearance with his sons, being neither golden and handsome as Raymel had been, nor dark and lean as Lano was. A portly man of no great height, he would barely reach his elder son’s ribs. A florid face, that seemed unlikely ever to have been handsome, gave over to a thick grey beard. He was smiling as he took his seat. A second man climbed in behind Thuran, a man in his forties with a thick head of dark blond hair and a luxurious blue robe. Taking his place beside Thuran, he fixed the abbess with glacial eyes.
“Joen Namsis.” Glass made a politer nod than decorum demanded. “You’re a long way from home.” Joeli’s father kept estates close to the coast and was rarely seen in Verity’s social circles save at the grandest of Tacsis flings.
“On my way to another engagement I received word that my daughter had been severely injured whilst in your care, abbess. High Priest Nevis suggested that I visit Joeli before deciding whether to remove her from the convent.”
Glass nodded. “A broken knee. A nasty injury. And not one sustained during training.” She offered her most sincere smile. The girl’s class mistress, Sister Spire, reported several of Joeli’s friends injured on the same day, and Nona covered in bruises. The truth of the matter was pretty clear, and Nona must have been heavily outnumbered for Joeli not to report the incident, painting herself as victim. “Imagine, all that time practising punching and kicking and stabbing and slashing . . . and then poor Joeli hurts herself falling down the dormitory stairs.” The carriage lurched back into motion and Glass peered through the slats. “Though if you’re wanting to visit your daughter at the convent you’ll find we’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re only riding a short distance with you, abbess.” Thuran Tacsis spoke up now, still full of apparent good humour. Glass didn’t allow the mask to fool her. She knew the Tacsis lord as a cunning operator. He wielded considerable power at court on account of the family’s wealth, but he had also inherited and possibly improved upon many of the skills his distant ancestors had relied on to make that fortune in the first place. “Joen must get to the convent and see his daughter. I’ve asked him to draw up plans for the running of the place in the emperor’s name. In anticipation of Crucical taking Sweet Mercy from the Church, as he surely will once your guilt has been established.”
“It never hurts to be prepared.” Glass nodded. She wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction he was so obviously trying to squeeze from her distress. “And will you be visiting the convent, Lord Tacsis?”
“I have other business to attend to.” His smile broadened. “You should have let that child hang, abbess. It would have been a quick and easy death. Less than she deserved after leaving Raymel for dead.”
“On that we disagree.” Glass kept her tone light.
“I hope your chains are more comfortable than the last time you faced trial, abbess. I heard that they put you in an iron yoke and burned the flesh from your palm.”
“It was me that demanded the candle and held my hand to it.” Glass met Thuran’s eyes.
“And again you kept the girl from an easy death. Drowning is not so bad, I’m told. Takes no longer than a bad hanging and hurts less. The assassin’s knife would have been quick too.”
“I didn’t believe she deserved death, easy or hard.”
“No. You had her trained to kill instead.” A flicker of anger now. “And she killed my son!”
Glass kept her mouth shut, her gaze darting to the inquisitor and finding him peering through the window slats, studiously ignoring the conversation.
“And in the end, oh delicious irony,” Thuran forced the humour back onto his face, “it is your own order that she breaks and which sees her driven from your protection.” He raised a hand to stroke his chin. “Imagine if she were captured out there somewhere in the Corridor . . . Do you think she would meet an easy death then, dear abbess?”
“I would think anyone who tried to capture that girl would be taking their life in their hands.” Glass fixed Thuran with a hard stare, backed by a confidence she didn’t feel.
“Imagine if she were captured,” Thuran repeated, his voice soft now. “Do you think they would invite me to watch her die?”
“The emperor forbid you—”
“The emperor will never know.” He lurched forward, roaring his words, flecks of spittle peppering Glass’s cheeks. “Do you think you’re going to tell him? Do you think it’s Crucical’s palace the inquisitor here is taking you to?” Thuran’s face was now red and twisted, the rage he’d been holding back all this time let free in a sudden rush. “Did you think you’d won again with your forgotten laws and petty little rules? Did you, abbess? Did you?”
“I cannot be tried at the Tower—”
“You’ll be tried in a palace, you sorry hag! You’ll be tried in a palace, found guilty in a palace, and burned in a palace! Just not Crucical’s. Pelter here is taking you to Sherzal! How do you like that? And while you’re getting your just desserts I will be making sure that a certain young novice of your acquaintance is wishing with all her black heart that you’d let her hang or drown or even that Raymel had taken his pleasure, because she won’t die easy, abbess, she really won’t!”
Glass bent her head to hide the emotion she couldn’t keep from her face.
She stared at her hands and at the silver chain wrapped around her wrists but what she saw in her mind were dominos falling, endless lines of dominos, one toppling the next, lines splitting, splitting again, everything in motion, the complexity doubling and redoubling, the clatter swelling into a roar, the speed increasing, everything out of control.
It seemed so long ago when Judge Irvone had pronounced, “This is a poor decision, abbess,” and she had replied, “Even so.” And had with two words toppled the first domino.
30
NONA SLIPPED FROM Kettle’s mind into her own dreams, and from those into a fitful state halfway between sleep and waking. Gradually her eyes found focus on a single point of brightness and her body made sense of itself. She realized that the cold beneath her cheek was that of a flagstone and raised her head. She uncoiled slowly, groaning to herself.
A single small candle had been placed on the ground just beyond the sweep of the door. Already it had burned down to less than a thumb’s length. Its only purpose appeared to be to illuminate the knife set before it on the floor. Nona squinted then sat back against the wall. A single object had answered most of her questions. A throwing knife of modest size, its pommel a plain iron ball, the grip bound from pommel to hilt with a thin strip of leather. The Noi-Guin had left the weapon. The same Noi-Guin who had failed to take Nona’s life on her second night at Sweet Mercy, the Noi-Guin who had stabbed Kettle in the wilds while hunting Nona two years later and been hurt in turn, the Noi-Guin who had tried to re-enter Sweet Mercy by the caves; the Noi-Guin the holothour had driven away.
Was it a woman who captured me in the graveyard?
Yes.
The same one who came to Raymel’s side after I sliced his neck? The same one who was sent to kill me?
Yes.
You didn’t think to mention it?
How would it help?
Tellasah, that was what the Lightless had named her with the bitter taste of the Poisoner’s truth upon the tongue he had bitten off moments later. She might well have been waiting close to the Rock, waiting for any whisper of her prey. How far had she followed Nona before making her move? Maybe for days. Nona had been headed in the right direction after all, and what better way to get your target to your lair than have it walk itself there? It must have been when Nona started talking to people in White Lake that Tellasah had decided to strike, worried that the novice would find companions or guides there and gain safety in numbers.
Keot circled Nona’s neck, trying to find a weakness in the collar that would let him slide beneath. She ignored his efforts and found her gaze returning to the knife. It had been left there as a message. To put fear into her.
And it was working.
* * *
• • •
HOW ARE YOU going to get out of here?
Nona had been staring at the candle, and now as it guttered into darkness, wax consumed, Keot broke into the emptiness of her mind.
“I don’t know.” Prison cells and chains were much the same all the length of Abeth’s Corridor. Simple and effective. Nona had no sudden inspiration as to how to defeat them. With the band off one wrist or the collar removed from her neck she would make short work of the rest of her restraints, but the things were made not to be removed without a key.
Why do you think they haven’t killed you yet?
“Whatever the reason, it can’t be good.” Nona slammed her wristband against the wall. Despite her effort to hold her hand back it hit the stones too, skinning her knuckles. In the darkness she could barely see her arm, let alone any detail, but the wristband revealed no damage beneath questing fingertips. She checked the chain, first where it attached to the wall, then each link until she reached her ankle cuff. She tried twisting, pulling, swinging the chain against the ground. All with no result. She attempted to thread the chain beneath the wristbands but the links proved too thick and the fit too snug.
Animals in traps often gnaw their foot off to escape.
“I don’t think I would get far hopping.” The Poisoner had taught them that all bonds could be slipped, but Nona suspected she had meant those on wrists rather than ankles, and with the bands fitting so tightly it seemed unlikely they would come off over her hands without taking most of her skin and breaking bones. Perhaps not even then.
Nona stared at the slightly darker patch by the door, all that she could see of the knife now that the candle had burned out. It would be a useful thing to have, but at the full extension of the chain and lying flat she was still yards short of reaching it.
“Tellasah left it there, and me here, so I would try to reach it. So I would know who had me and so that the fear would grow inside me.”
Nona pulled off the smock they’d put her in. Immediately she felt the cold, as if invisible hands were touching her in the dark, pinching away her body-warmth. She felt more vulnerable too, which she reminded herself was ridiculous, given that she was chained in the dungeons of the Noi-Guin. She could hardly be more vulnerable and a linen smock would not preserve her.
Nona knew without trying that the garment wasn’t long enough to reach the knife, but artfully torn it might be. She would normally slice the thing apart with an invisible fingernail. Robbed of her abilities, she resorted to brute strength. At first the material resisted her, but once she found a seam it ripped quickly. Within a minute or two she’d made the thing twice as long as she was tall and had torn additional holes in it, hoping one would encircle some part of the weapon.
The flagstones were gritty, grime-covered, and cold. Lying naked, flat out, Nona began to flail with her torn smock. Experience trying to grapple hidden and possibly nonexistent edges in the dark of the undercaves had schooled Nona to persistence.
A score of tries brought no success. Twice Nona thought she had snagged the dagger, only to gently increase the pull and find her smock returning to her without the scrape of metal on stone.
Again! Keot urged.
Nona threw the material out, drew it back, threw it out, drew it back. She threw again. It snagged! She pulled. The knife’s weight resisted her. It seemed well entangled. She pulled harder. Somewhere outside, close at hand, something fell with a clatter . . . a small bell perhaps?
The door began to open almost immediately. Nona pulled harder. The knife resisted. She pulled harder still . . . and the smock came free with a tearing sound.
A figure stood in the doorway, one of the Lightless, framed by illumination that had seemed barely enough to see by when Nona had been escorted down the corridor, and now made her screw up her eyes.
The man bent down and picked up the cord that tied the knife in the cell to the bell that had rested just outside the door. He looked at her, lying there before him, his face too shadowed for any expression to be read, then backed out, closing the door behind him. A key turned in the lock.
A game. He was sitting just outside all this time. Waiting. Keot sounded grudgingly appreciative.
Nona opened her mouth to curse her gaoler, or Keot, or both, and finding she had no words sufficiently vile, closed it again. She levered herself to her knees and retreated to the wall, wrapping herself in failure, misery, and the tatters of her smock.
* * *
• • •
“A CORD.” NONA wondered how she had missed seeing it. Even disguised and in a darkened room the cord shouldn’t have escaped her. She had been trained to see. She sat up straighter, shrugging off self-pity, and applied her training, focusing on the memory of a flame, the start of the route into her clarity trance. Not every discipline she had learned could be forbidden by sigil-marked iron.
Clarity settled upon Nona, frosting across her skin, cleansing the darkness of ambiguity, and bringing every faint sound into focus as if the instrument of her being had been tuned to perfection. Nona isolated one sense then the next as Sister Pan had taught her, then brought all five together. She could hear the man outside the door draw breath, exhale, draw breath. The dark still hid what it hid, but those shapes it did offer
were extracted and given meaning. Nona ran her fingertips across her restraints, learning all their secrets, from the sigils cut into the curved iron to the details of hinge and clasp.
“Nothing.”
The iron peg that anchored the end of the chain attached to her ankle cuff had been driven between two great stones in the wall, held there more by the weight pressing on the stone above it than by the mortar filling the joint.
Nona moved the chain to one side and pulled, bracing her legs against the floor and tugging slightly upward.
Every prisoner tests their chains. If they came loose then the gaolers would replace them with stronger ones. An untold number of desperate men and women have tested these cells before you and helped refine them.
Why don’t you help me then? Nona replied. When I die you’re going back to lurking on the boundary where Raymel found you.
There’s nothing I can do. I can’t make you stronger.
Nona put her head back against the cold stone wall. They had taken her blades, taken all of the marjal skills she had been working on in private. Her flame-work was still remedial, her rock-work hardly enough to fracture a pebble, but both might have been useful. They had shut her off from the Path and threads. All they’d left her was her speed.
With a lever I could turn this pin. Work it free. Nona imagined a steel rod narrow enough to slide through the eye of the pin alongside the last link of chain. With a long enough lever and a fulcrum a person could move the world.
You don’t have a lever.
It doesn’t have to be a lever. Anything that could wrap it, grip it, allow her to apply her strength further out to twist it. If she held the pin in her fist and tried to rotate it she could break her bones and not move it a degree. If the pin were fixed at the centre of a cart-wheel she could grip the outer rim and twist it with little effort no matter how tightly it was anchored.
You don’t have anything else. Keot sounded as if he were already thinking of his return to the chaos he came from and of his next escape. Nona doubted opportunities came along often. Perhaps there wouldn’t be another chance for Keot before the ice closed and the moon fell.
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