Grey Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “Take the mask if it will come. But we have to move. The others will be coming. They’ll have felt him die.”

  “How many?” Zole stooped to wrestle with the black-skin mask.

  Kettle stared down the tunnel, all her senses open wide. Noi-Guin were shadow-bonded, not to a few closest to them, but each to the other in a great dark web.

  “All of them.”

  32

  ABBESS GLASS

  THE EMPIRE HAD always rested against the Sea of Marn. The roots of its origin lay tangled as much in myth as in history, but most scholars agreed that from tough and independent fisherfolk a tightly knit confederation of ports and coastal towns had grown. The midst of this proto-state had spawned the founder of the empire. That man, Golamal Entsis, had forged eastward, overland, despite his naval power and the saltwater in his veins. In fact, apart from short-lived strongholds established at vast cost on the Durnish shores and never held for more than a generation, the empire’s history had always been one of driving east along the Corridor.

  At its height the empire stretched seven hundred miles east, through all of what later became Scithrowl, and deep into the Alden, the federation of city-states that was now the Kingdom of Ald. The reversal had been swift. In the space of forty years and six weak emperors the border had fallen back against the rocky spine of the Grampains, and there it stayed, immovable.

  Some now declared “empire” too grand a name for the territory currently held, and “emperor” too lofty a title for the men and women who took its highest seat. To Abbess Glass’s mind, both titles had been earned through centuries of greatness. Even so, she had to agree that when the Corridor wind picked up its feet and raced eastward then the empire could be crossed at such a speed that it really did feel quite small. Brother Pelter exchanged the carriage horses at various stops and had them driven hard. Along the spine of the empire lay metalled roads, built in the reign of Golamal the Fifth for swift movement of troops in time of war. They had been well-maintained ever since. Along such routes the carriage devoured the miles before it. Twice they took to the rivers, pressed upstream by the wind’s hand, swapping to new carriages at the Patience Monastery and at the estate of the newest archon, Hedda. Glass felt at each stage as though they were fleeing something rather than just hastening towards Sherzal’s palace. Perhaps Pelter worried that Red Sisters were in hot pursuit, bent on freeing his prisoner. No such rescue would come, though. Glass had forbidden it and, though she might never quite understand why, the loyalty that had grown around her came coupled with an obedience that was just as deep and enduring.

  During the long days of travel Glass made conversation, or at least one half of it, and slowly the boredom, and the pressure of questions unanswered, eased Brother Pelter into supplying the other half. Glass sensed that the Inquisition guards, Melkir and Sera, who rotated from duty atop the carriage to duty beside her, would have liked to join in too. But Brother Pelter, whilst not following the stricture himself, had made it clear that nobody was to talk to the prisoner. And so Glass was left with only Brother Pelter to speak to.

  She found the man to be almost exactly what her research had indicated him to be: ambitious, focused, easily flattered, and whilst deeply versed in the points of heresy on which most Inquisition trials hinge, his knowledge of the faith in a broader sense would not compete with that of any novice that Sister Wheel had passed as fit to move up to Grey Class.

  “Do you know who the Inquisition’s prime instigator was when I was high inquisitor, brother?” Glass lifted her voice above the clatter of the wheels and the drumming of rain on the carriage roof.

  “No.” The inquisitor frowned as if his ignorance on the matter bothered him.

  “There wasn’t one,” Glass said. “The last holder of the office was Juticar, cousin to our current emperor’s grandfather. Juticar died holding the title. According to Inquisition records he attended three meetings in thirty-six years, although he was quite a regular at executions.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Pelter fixed Glass with those eyes of his, perhaps his greatest asset, holding as they did something truly chilling, usually only to be found in the reflection of a brittle blue sky in deep ice.

  Glass shrugged. “By my reckoning we’ll be at Sherzal’s palace sometime the day after tomorrow. So the office of prime instigator seems at least topical. It was a paper title, you see, an invention to please some emperor of long ago, an office meant for royalty, so that the Crown could feel . . . if not a sense of ownership . . . at least some illusion of control of the Inquisition and some more solid feeling that it could not be wielded against them. The raft of regulations protecting emperors and their siblings from the sharp edge of the Inquisition was part and parcel of it. Similar to those laws protecting high inquisitors.”

  “And former high inquisitors.” Brother Pelter took on a sour look, reminded of the fact that such details had him crossing half the empire rather than hauling the abbess the five miles from Sweet Mercy to the Tower of Inquiry.

  “Well, we can hardly make such a fuss about heresy, which is after all the business of following the details of the faith, if we’re not prepared to follow our own rules elsewhere, can we, brother?” Glass smiled. “If you’re happy to set hot irons to a man to establish the degree of his piety then at least you can endure a few days’ ride to ensure you yourself follow the letter of the law.”

  “You’d do well to practise your penitence, abbess.” In the light slanting through the carriage shutters Pelter’s pockmarked face took on a somewhat monstrous aspect. “It’s over for you and your convent. The Lansis will have what they want. You should apply yourself to the question of what state you will be in at the end of it. Ashes perhaps. Sherzal is fond of burnings. Not as a spectacle, but as a neat end to problems.”

  “Does High Inquisitor Gemon know what you’ve done yet, brother?” Glass ignored the threat. “Did any part of this come from his desk? Does the Tower even know where you’re headed? Or was this all Sherzal’s bidding? The prime instigator . . . the office is well named for her.”

  “I’ve indulged you on this journey, abbess, but you will speak of the emperor’s sister with respect! Hers is the voice the Inquisition listens to. Gemon’s time is coming to an end.”

  “He didn’t sanction my arrest, did he?”

  “Sherzal’s sanction is sufficient.”

  “So . . . Gemon hasn’t sent any senior inquisitors for this trial I’m supposed to have? There should be three judges. I hope you’re not thinking to adjudicate, brother? You’re neither senior, nor threefold . . .”

  “Sherzal isn’t about to let Gemon send his favourites.” Pelter smoothed down the grey tufts of his hair, a nervous habit. “We will recruit inquisitors of the required rank and number from the environs.”

  “Environs?” Glass asked.

  Brother Pelter glowered at her.

  “Oh,” Glass said. “You mean you’ll be picking my jury up along the way?”

  Pelter gripped the seat, thrusting his face towards her. “We will present ourselves to the honourable Sherzal with a trio of senior inquisitors, abbess, and when they put you to the question it will be me who employs the iron, be it sharp, or hot, to discover the truth. So you would do well to rid yourself of any hint of mockery.”

  Abbess Glass pressed herself back, away from the fierceness of the man’s face and the rank cloud of his breath. “Of course, brother.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AS NIGHT FELL Pelter had the carriage put in at Treytown, a settlement of modest size, perhaps five hundred homes, many dependent upon the tin mines for a living. The place boasted a church of the Ancestor considerably larger than most such towns could afford and was able to provide lodgings for the inquisitor and his guards, along with a penitent’s cell for the abbess.

  Come morning the local priest unlocked Glass’s door and she bore his disapproval as the yawning guards escorted her to the carriage.

  “We’
re making a diversion today.” Brother Pelter handed her the prisoner-ration, a brick of black bread that was supposed to last the day.

  “Indeed?” Glass accepted the bread into her chained hands. She had been tightening the rope on her habit daily. If the journey had been all the way to the empire’s old boundary out in the Alden she might have arrived with the figure she’d had at twenty, though she wouldn’t have counted it a good exchange for all those hungry days. “Where to?”

  “The shrine at Penrast,” Pelter said. “I had Melkir and Sera do a little investigating around town last night. It seems that the Inquisition is following reports of heresy at the shrine. An investigation led by senior inquisitors . . .”

  “Who will be useful in judging at my trial,” Glass supplied.

  “As I said, from the environs.” Pelter nodded.

  “And who is leading this inquiry?”

  “Brother Seldom and Sister Agika. Friends of yours, I believe?” Pelter allowed himself a narrow smile.

  Abbess Glass folded her hands across her diminished belly and pressed her lips into a thin line. Seldom and Agika had been trusted subordinates during most of her tenure in the Inquisition’s highest seat, but the estrangement that had preceded the announcement of her departure had been the talk of the tower, and famously bitter. “It’s when your power is taken, or given, away that you discover who your friends are, brother. There’s a lesson for us all in that.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY REACHED THE shrine by noon. From a distance Penrast looked like a toy discarded by some lordling child. A silver cylinder rising from the broken hilltop at a drunken angle, thirty yards tall, maybe twenty yards across. Its walls were a yard thick, a weight of silver-steel that to purchase would beggar empires greater than the one it stood in. Except no fire could melt the stuff, no blade could cut it. Abbess Glass had it on good account that an Ark-steel blade couldn’t scratch the mirrored surface. And so, by having the properties so valued in Ark-steel, but to an even greater degree, the thing moved from priceless resource to worthless curiosity.

  Steps led down into the underchambers via a tunnel hewn into the bedrock. Until the Church of the Ancestor took the site over it had been claimed by the smallfolk that the Missing had fashioned the tower, or the “titan’s ring” as they called it. Now the official line was that the tribes had brought it with them from the stars.

  “You’ll come with me, abbess.” Pelter gestured her down from the carriage. “The face of an old ‘friend’ will help motivate the inquisitors to step up and do their duty.”

  Abbess Glass, with Sera to steady her, emerged into the cold bluster of the day. After a short transit, huddled against the wind, the three of them escaped into shelter again, now bowed over to avoid scraping their heads as they descended the steep, rocky stairs.

  The Missing, or whichever of the four tribes built the place, had not bothered with building material. The walls were either bedrock, sheared away with miraculous precision, or the soil itself, fused into a smooth marble-like substance as hard as stone.

  Whatever inquiry had been underway appeared to be in the end stages. The Inquisition guards on duty had a bored look. Inquisitors Seldom and Agika were not among those who favoured the more brutal methods of extracting information. Agika was a marjal touch with a gift for coaxing the truth off unwilling tongues, and Seldom had come to Glass’s way of thinking on the subject of interrogation, namely that the information came more swiftly and more accurately if the questions were presented as a concerned attempt to reduce the subject’s final punishment.

  Glass waited with Sera while Brother Pelter went to speak to the inquisitors. Sera quickly fell into conversation with other guards at the doorway, men she’d not seen in months, leaving Glass to twiddle her thumbs or study the room.

  The chamber held benches for the faithful during services or contemplation or whatever it was they did at the shrine. Of the original occupants, though, there were no signs remaining save for one symbol carved into the glassy surface of the rear wall. To Glass’s eye it had much in common with sigil-work, though it didn’t twist the mind as sigils did. If the marking held any magic it was of a deeper kind, too deep for Glass to touch.

  Glass was tracing the symbol’s curves with a finger when another guard arrived and thrust a peasant into the room. At the doorway Sera looked up then returned to her conversation. Glass had the room’s only lamp in one hand, using it to illuminate the symbol. She abandoned her inspection and crossed over to the new arrival. The young man looked worried enough without being left in the dark.

  “Sit, conserve your energy.” Glass gestured to the nearest bench. The man gave her a look as blank as it was scared. Glass rephrased. “Sit, you need to rest.”

  “Thank you, sister.” The man slumped in the wooden pew. His jerkin looked to be made of sackcloth and mud, he had dirt along both cheekbones, and smelled of pigs. “I don’t understand what I’ve done.”

  Glass took a seat and made a smile for him. “Perhaps you’ve done nothing?”

  “I don’t understand.” The man shook his head, looking at his knees. “In my uncle’s village the old men leave the first cut of the harvest for the corn god. I heard they have a stone church to the Hope down in Whittle. Why are they arresting people here? The Ancestor’s own children? For what? They took Master Root. Said he was reciting the Ancestor prayer wrong. And the rector, they took him too, because he said this place was here when the tribes came. It’s madness . . .”

  Glass shook her head. It was a confusion she had heard many times before, most often at the edges of the empire. “The greatest threat to any faith is not other faiths or beliefs but the corruption and division of its own message. When the Durnish sail on us beneath their banners we band together and become strong. Nobody begins to wonder if they should worship Orm or Gataar or the triple-headed goddess. But when we’re left to our own devices it’s not long before someone, often greedy for power and influence, takes it upon themselves to change the Ancestor’s teachings, just a little bit, but in a way that makes that person more important or special or allows them privilege. And before you know it you have four different churches, four high priests at war, a legion of archons arguing. This has happened time and again. More blood has watered our fields as a consequence of such internecine wars . . .” She stopped, seeing the man’s incomprehension. “We present more of a danger to ourselves than do the Durns or the Scithrowl, and even the Scithrowl wars can be said to have been over interpretations of the faith.”

  “But in my uncle’s village—”

  “The ice closes and it brings together many people and many faiths. The emperor has sanctioned the Hope Church: its holy texts are about the future and do not dispute the Ancestor’s teachings. The Ancestor’s Church itself has declared that those who follow the small gods may do so unmolested in the more remote corners of the empire. Only in the cities, and those towns declared as church towns, is such practice forbidden.” She raised a hand to deflect the next question on his lips. “The thing for you to do is wait and see whether the clerics who taught at this shrine have been found guilty of heresy. Answer any question truthfully. If it turns out that they are guilty and that you were part of their flock then you must do the penitence placed upon you and attend a sanctioned church to learn the true teaching. After that you will be without taint and of no further interest to the Inquisition.”

  Glass had given that speech or one similar an untold number of times. She had repeated it so often that, like a word repeated again and again, it had lost its meaning for her. In the end she saw only the immediate consequences, the victims in the here and the now, rather than those postulated casualties from the wars of a divided church. She had begun to lose heart for the work before her boy died. And when Able choked out the last of his life before her, her heart had broken entirely. She had never returned to the Tower of Inquiry.

  New figures arrived with lanterns at the doorway and Sera gestured for
Glass to approach. Glass got to her feet, aided by the peasant who for the first time noticed the chains around her wrists.

  “Thank you, sister,” he said, gaze still held by the silver chain.

  Brother Pelter bustled into the room. At his shoulders stood the hawk-like Seldom and the slender Agika, dark-eyed and sceptical. “The senior inquisitors have agreed to accompany us to Sherzal’s palace, abbess.” He rubbed his hands together, unable to contain his enthusiasm.

  Glass acknowledged the inquisitors with a curt nod and turned back towards the field-worker. “Remember what I’ve told you, young man. Honesty and penitence.” She glanced towards the waiting inquisitors. “You’ll be fine.” She meant it too. He likely would be. Of her own prospects she was far less certain.

  33

  ZOLE RAN BESIDE Kettle, the Noi-Guin’s black-skin hanging from her hand, twisting strangely as though it were a live thing.

  “We have to lose ourselves.” The tunnel ahead held Kettle’s attention. The most obvious of the side passages had been blocked off but any cave system is riddled with fissures and holes. “The lost are hard to find.” They ran another fifty yards, Kettle slowing to investigate an opening low in the wall. “Two days and two nights. Then we make our move.”

  “We should separate,” Zole said. Her left hand bristled with cross-knives stolen from the dead assassin.

  “We should not!” Kettle abandoned the narrow opening and moved on, veering down the smaller fork where the passage split. “You’re in my care, novice. And how would I find you again?”

  “I found you before. I can do it again. I will make a diversion. You can rescue Nona.”

  “This is the Tetragode, Zole! The Tetragode! You’re a novice! You shouldn’t be here! Neither should I . . .”