“There’s a reason the shipheart was kept walled up in the caves,” Kettle said.
Nona’s mind was full of the shipheart now, close, powerful, the beat of it running through her, not kind, not comforting, just vast and endless.
I feel it too. Keot’s voice held a certain hunger.
You do?
Like a memory. I know this thing. It’s old, as old as I am. He sounded stronger by the moment.
But . . . the shiphearts are older than the empire! Nona wasn’t sure how old they were but certainly thousands of years. Enough time for nations to rise and fall, for knowledge to fail and be rebuilt. The shiphearts brought the tribes to Abeth.
Do you think so?
You don’t? Nona didn’t like the smugness in the devil’s voice. Everyone knows they did.
Maybe they drew your people here. They didn’t carry them.
What do you know about it? You never know the answer to anything interesting. All of a sudden you know things?
The heart is waking up my memories.
And why would it do that? Nona kept her eyes on the doorways ahead, trying not to let Keot distract her.
Because it’s where I was born.
Nona made no reply, returning her attention to the corridor. Keot’s certainty unsettled her. There was a draw to the shipheart’s presence. Perhaps the fascination that the flame holds for the moth. She felt its pull in the marrow of her bones.
They advanced around another corner. From her time with Hessa Nona knew that the shipheart had to be within fifty feet or so now. Keot blazed across her chest and down over her abdomen. He seemed to be feeding on the shipheart’s power in ways that Nona couldn’t understand. His natural anger and lust to kill began to bleed out into her. Earlier she had felt his grip on her weakening and thought that one day she might be able to drive him out. Kettle must know of the devil now, having worn Nona’s flesh and bones back in the Tetragode. What she might do about it was a problem for later. If there was a later.
A cold shiver ran through Nona, toes to head, pulling her away from thoughts of Keot. Something had changed. Suddenly the halls of Sherzal’s palace seemed echoingly empty, not conveniently empty but as if Nona had turned around in a crowded market square to find in that instant the place stood deserted with just the wind to stir the space where people should have been.
“She’s watching us,” Nona said, knowing it to be true though not knowing how. She tried to reach for her own anger rather than Keot’s and found only fear. Over her shoulder she saw that Clera was backing away.
The cracking of stone was their only warning. Shards of masonry broke from the wall at the margins of the area from which Yisht stepped. She emerged behind them, the stonework releasing her with reluctance, as if she were pulling free of thick mud.
Clera spun around with a squeal of fear. Nona and Kettle disentangled, turning as they did, the nun hopping back on her good leg.
Yisht broke clear about the same time that Clera recovered enough of her wits to hurl the throwing stars she’d been given. Kettle and Nona threw theirs a fraction later, six in the first volley, more following.
Clera had never been particularly accurate with throwing stars. Her right-hand throw at least centred on Yisht’s body mass, the left angled wide of target. Lacking hunska speed, though, the warrior should have been hit at least five times. She stepped through the hail of sharp metal unharmed. Her ability to read the immediate future allowed her to begin plotting a path that would evade the stars even before her opponents had decided to throw them.
Yisht had changed. She wore the same black garb, knives across her chest in a black leather harness, her tular—the flat-bladed sword favoured by the ice-tribes—at her hip. She seemed to wear the same body too, though it moved in unnatural ways as if occupied by some larger presence. The flat bones of her face cut the same angles, but her black eyes sat in a crimson sea rather than the whites she once had, and her skin had become a moving patchwork of scarlet, deep purple, black, grey, and bone-white.
Nona knew exactly what she was looking at. “She’s full of devils.”
Where Nona had one, and Raymel had returned from death’s border with four, Yisht had so many that they competed for space, surging across any exposed skin. Nona could almost hear them screaming for her blood.
Clera, who had been closest to the point where Yisht emerged, now passed Kettle and Nona, moving fast. “I know another way out!”
“We want the vault, not a way out!” Kettle called after her. To Nona’s ear the nun didn’t sound as convinced as she had before.
Nona gathered her courage, reaching for another weapon. Kettle set her back against the wall, calling on the shadows. The sword Nona drew from her rope belt felt unfamiliar in her hand, a Noi-Guin blade, a little shorter, straighter, and heavier than the swords Sister Tallow trained the novices with.
Yisht had never been one for smiling, but she smiled now, her teeth bloody. She pulled her tular from the grip of its scabbard, along the side slit as tulars are nearly twice as broad at the end as at the hilt. By rights she should be the one afraid, facing a sword-trained novice whose speed could leave her swinging at air.
Nona held her ground, making test cuts to learn the feel of her weapon. Behind her the darkness began to thicken and clot as Kettle focused her strength to give the night claws.
Yisht came in at a steady pace, sword before her, arm extended.
“Clera!” Nona called after her departing friend. Yisht had defeated them both once before, along with a classful of other novices, but they had been children then.
“Friends are a weakness,” Yisht said. “I taught Zole this lesson.”
She attacked as she spoke and at the first parry Nona’s sword was all but taken from her hands. The ice-triber’s strength was incredible. Nona struck back, launching a blinding sequence of blows, moving as fast as she ever had. Yisht met each one with a perfectly placed parry. Nona tried to carry her slices over the interposed edge but Yisht somehow twisted her blade to stop such moves, almost disarming her.
A vicious swing at stomach level had Nona leaping backward, pulling in her hips and belly as the end of Yisht’s tular sliced within a finger’s breadth.
How can you be losing? Keot howled.
She knows everything I’m going to do! Nona turned a thrust from her chest. She can see the future.
She can’t see the future, just what you and your friends are going to do next, because you’re such primitive things. She can’t predict a dice roll or see what I will do.
Well, do something then! Nona deflected another attack, feeling the wind ripple behind Yisht’s tular as it passed her face. Don’t just talk! But she knew that talk was all Keot had.
It’s easy, Keot said. Do something she can’t stop even if she knows it’s coming!
Nona fell back another step then leapt into the moment. She swung at Yisht’s head from the woman’s right and their two blades met in a jarring crash. Nona pulled her sword away, starting to rotate on a heel. She accelerated into the motion, turning her back on Yisht, relying only on the lack of time to keep the woman from cutting her down. Yisht’s sword was high up on her right side, still shaking with the echoes of that last parry. If Nona could spin around and cut in low from the left there was no way Yisht could physically move her blade fast enough to interpose it.
Yisht’s boot heel smacked into Nona’s backside as her spin turned her through the half-circle. She must have started the kick before Nona started turning, and it sent her sprawling away onto her front. Nona barely managed to avoid being skewered by the follow-up, pinned to the floor. She rolled away beneath Yisht’s descending blade with an inch to spare.
Kettle’s shadows launched themselves at Yisht over Nona’s prone body. Nona saw the ice-triber fall back before the mass of rending darkness, just as she had once fallen back before Nona’s own avenging shadow.
A moment later the nightmare of claws and teeth fell apart, collapsing into a wash of dark
ness. Nona rolled just in time to see the chunk of stone and plaster that had struck Kettle fall to one side as the nun dropped bonelessly to the other. Yisht must have used her rock-work to break the lump free. Nona could see the spot where the piece had fallen from, high above Kettle where the wall joined the ceiling. But the blow was a glancing one. Kettle had sensed it at the last, and managed to pull back far enough to save her skull from being smashed.
Yisht came on at speed, neatly sidestepping a knife that came winging down the corridor. Nona only just got to her feet in time to meet the attack. She held her place between Kettle and the ice-triber, trading blows. Although her speed kept Yisht on the defensive each clash of swords threatened to tear Nona’s from her fingers. Her arm ached and she was tiring swiftly. Of Clera there was no sign other than the knife.
Kill her! Keot sounded desperate. The devil drove himself into Nona’s right hand, strengthening her grip on the sword hilt.
Kill her!
Too crowded for you inside Yisht, is it? Don’t fancy sharing?
Nona fought on. To her side she caught a glimpse of Kettle starting to move. An arm lifting to her head. A groan followed.
Yisht stumbled, her footing wrong after a difficult parry, one boot skidding on scattered ceiling plaster. Seeing her chance, Nona pressed the advantage but suddenly found her sword stolen from her hand by some wrist-rolling action that went unrevealed until the result had become inevitable. Yisht surged up, her stumble a ruse, and Nona, now letting time escape only in the smallest fractions, suddenly became aware of several square feet of ceiling plaster descending upon her. The falling mass had already covered more than half the distance to the floor.
Nona dived back, twisting from the thrust of Yisht’s blade, turning her shoulder to the plaster as it hammered into her. She hit the ground hard in a white cloud of dust and fragments, rolled and kept rolling, knowing that a razored tular would come scything out of the dust any moment.
But none did.
The air cleared to reveal Yisht, her blacks now whitened, the slow colour-tides across her skin pale beneath powdered plaster. She stood with one foot pressing Kettle’s head to the floorboards, the blade of her sword against the nun’s pale throat. Whatever looked at Nona from her eyes did not appear to be human.
“Friends are a weakness,” Yisht repeated. “You should run away now . . . but you won’t.” She moved the sword a fraction and Nona cried out. Yisht smiled, the devils fighting over her tongue. “You should have let me kill you back in the convent. I was different then. Not kind, but not cruel. That has changed. Now I am cruel.”
Run away, Keot said. The nun’s doomed. In any case, she’s just a burden.
“I will cut her throat on the count of three. One . . .”
No! Run! Keot shrieked. Run, you idiot . . . His voice growing faint and thin.
Nona threw herself forward empty-handed. Yisht timed her move perfectly, lifting her sword with a spray of blood just as Nona’s feet left the ground, committing her to her trajectory.
The tular came level with Nona as she reached it, ready to impale her. She lashed out with her flaw-blades, her fingers scarlet where Keot had invaded them. Her blades met steel, slicing the weapon into bright, tumbling sections, but Yisht had seen what would happen, and had seen the last foot of her sword, deflected from Nona’s chest, piercing her upper thigh instead and grating over bone.
Yisht sidestepped Nona’s tackle and the girl fell to the ground beside Kettle with a scream, her leg a hot, wet agony. The remains of Yisht’s tular fell beside her, torn from the woman’s grasp.
“I could leave you both to bleed to death. I doubt you’d last until Sherzal’s guards found you.” Yisht stepped back, beyond range if Nona had the strength to swing at her.
The blood pumped from the wound in Nona’s leg at an alarming rate. If she hadn’t had to slaughter pigs on Sister Tallow’s instructions she would not have believed how much blood was in her or how fast it could leave. Of course she had inflicted worse wounds on others, but in the heat of battle there was no time or desire to observe the aftermath.
Direct pressure on the wound. That was the most important thing. Unless something else was about to kill you more quickly, of course.
Yisht had a small package in her hand. “Grey mustard. I had hoped to spend more time helping you make a slow exit from this world.” The creature didn’t sound like Yisht any more. “I hear that Lord Tacsis wanted the same pleasure. But grey mustard isn’t exactly a kindness . . .”
“No!” Nona didn’t want to beg, but she knew what the stuff could do. “Please.” She raised her hand as if she could somehow ward off the coming cloud of spores.
And as she did so, something red left her fingers, a crimson cloud, its tendrils seeking purchase on her skin but losing their grip one by one as though some force were sucking it from her.
No!
A moment later Keot lost his last connection with her and shot away as though drawn by a bowstring, to hit Yisht square in the forehead.
The ice-triber drew in a huge breath like the gasp made when you fall into freezing water. She dropped the grey mustard package and staggered back, still gasping, wheezing for air. All across her skin the devil taints swirled, flowing over her, converging on her head. Somehow Keot had been sucked from or driven from Nona, or both at once, and his initiation into Yisht’s crowded flesh did not appear to be a gentle one.
The pain in Nona’s leg demanded her attention. She pressed her fingers hard into the wound where the blood spurted with each beat of her slowing heart, and rolled, awkwardly, to see Kettle, with both hands pressed to a crimson throat, eyeing her frantically. Nona reached out to pull Kettle’s robe open, exposing the tight-bound bandolier of poisons and cures. In amongst them would be stanching powder, which when applied to wounds would, along with causing excruciating pain, dramatically reduce the blood flow. Nona could see only two containers that looked as if they might hold powder, and snatched one at random. Kettle gave a slight nod. Behind them Yisht bellowed and roared, underlining the need for haste.
Nona readied the stanching agent, raised herself from the ground, and pulled one of Kettle’s hands from her throat, trying not to grimace. The cut wasn’t as deep as she had feared given all the blood. Kettle must have managed to jerk her head back and lessen the damage. The nun held the middle of the slice together, pinched between finger and thumb, while Nona applied the powder. Kettle immediately went rigid, showing her teeth in agony’s grimace. The wash of blood slowed, clotting darkly around the powder.
Nona rolled to her side and applied the remains of it to her leg wound. It hurt less than the Harm, despite her fears. She had Thuran Tacsis to thank for showing her that whatever hurts she suffered in life, worse were possible.
“Come.” A pained rasp from Kettle.
Nona reached out for her sword, thrust it through her belt, and together they began to crawl away down the corridor. Behind them, Yisht was throwing herself around, impacting the walls, roaring, shattering masonry.
With every yard they put between Yisht and themselves Nona’s fear grew that the ice-triber’s raging would summon Sherzal’s guards. It seemed, though, that whatever the emergency was that had drawn away those charged with the defence of the emperor’s sister, it was proving to be a big one.
After twenty yards Nona got to her feet using the wall for support and helped Kettle up. Apart from the pain and weariness she felt a kind of emptiness, a hole where Keot had been. She had tried so hard to be rid of the devil, especially in the early days, turning the whole of her will against him, but to no avail. And then, at her weakest, he’d been ejected without conscious effort, like a sickness coughed out . . .
The reason came to Nona as a small epiphany, only half-believed. Every time she forgave, every time she showed love or loyalty, the devil’s hold on her had been weakened . . . Was that really all it had taken? For her to throw herself between a friend and certain death?
Kettle and Nona hobbled
on, leaning on each other, and as they approached the junction where another passageway intersected their own Nona saw Clera peeking from the corner.
“Ancestor’s balls! What did you do to her?” Clera stared past them.
Kettle made no reply, hurrying around the corner and out of sight of Yisht. Nona let the nun go and took a last look at Yisht before joining her. The woman was hunched on the floor, curled around whatever battle was raging through her. Her howling had subsided to terrifying groans.
Nona longed to go back and kill the ice-triber, to give her the end her crimes demanded, but the shipheart lay close at hand and time was short. She pulled back out of sight, turning to see that Kettle had crouched down against the wall, a small ceramic tub of black ointment in her hand. The nun removed some of it on the end of a thin wooden applicator and offered it to Nona, pointing the blackened end towards her throat where she still pinched the sides of the cut together.
The stuff had an acrid smell and Nona knew it for flesh-bind, a costly adhesive that stuck flesh to flesh with frightening swiftness, forming a bond that was hard to break. The price of the ingredients, along with common sense, forbade its use by any but the oldest novices in Holy Class. Too many girls had been glued together in compromising positions in past years to allow its use by the younger and more mischievous novices. An unfortunate side-effect was that if left too long it would permanently dye the skin black too.
Nona applied the stuff to the edges of Kettle’s wound and, steeling her stomach against the grisly business, pressed the skin together, taking care not to get glued in place. The end result proved messy but effective.
Kettle repaid the favour on Nona’s leg, more quickly and with far neater results. Clera hovered anxiously, taking quick glances around the corner to check on Yisht.
Nona stretched her injured leg. It hurt like hell. “Where’s the vault?” she asked.
“Back there.” Clera waved absently towards double doors that stood ajar at the end of the corridor. “It’s a steel box big enough to fit a horse in. Stuffed full of Sherzal’s treasures. You can’t carry it and you’ll never get it open.” She sounded wistful, as if the proximity and inaccessibility of such wealth were a source of great sorrow to her.
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