“You swear it?”
“I swear it.”
“By the Ancestor?”
“By the Ancestor.” The faintest echo of that grin. “And by the Hope, and the Missing Gods who echo in the tunnels, and by the gods too small for names who dance in buttercups and fall with the rain. Now go. For the love of all that’s holy, go. You wear me out, Nona. And I’ve got to concentrate on being alive. It would break her heart to get here and find me dead.” She drew a shallow breath. “They’re both in that direction. If you take it until you find some sort of trail there’s a good chance you’ll find Ara and the others on it. Try to travel with Ara and Zole. Tarkax may be able to protect you if the Noi-Guin track you from here.” Another shallow breath, snatched in over her pain. “Go! Now!”
Nona came forward. She set her canteen in Kettle’s lap and kissed her icy forehead. Then she ran.
41
CLERA FOUND NONA before Nona found Ara. She came hurrying along a forest track in the late afternoon, chased by a dark squall.
“Nona! Hold up!”
Nona turned on the path, relieved, feeling the sweat on her forehead start to freeze as she faced the wind.
“You were racing!” Clera came puffing to a halt. “My excuse was trying to catch up to you. What’s yours?”
“The same.” Nona grinned. “Are the others safe? I’ve been imagining awful things.”
“Don’t know. You’re the first I’ve seen.” Clera bent over, hands on her thighs, catching her breath. “I got very lost for a while back there so I’m pretty sure everyone’s ahead of us . . . Ancestor bleed me! Where in the hells did you get that?” She straightened, staring at the naked blade in Nona’s hand, a shortsword of Durnish blue-steel, as long as a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips.
“I took it off a raider.” Nona frowned. “Do you think the others are safe?”
Clera puffed through her lips. “Don’t know. We need to find Ara though, and the rest of them . . . Raider? One of the ones that chased us?” She glanced back along the track and scanned the trees more slowly. “They’re going to want that sword back . . .”
“No,” Nona said. “They’re not. Come on.” She set off at a jog.
“Wait up!” Clera hurried to catch up. “Are they after you?”
“Someone might be. And we need to find the others.”
“Someone?” Suspicion crossed Clera’s face. She looked nervous. “You’re not making a lot of sense . . .”
“Save your breath for running.” Nona led off as the wind started to build.
The edge of the squall caught them before they’d covered fifty yards, whipping the screw-pines into a frenzy, howling between the trunks, seizing icicles as long as Nona’s blade and shying them across the track.
“You . . . you killed the person who had that sword . . . didn’t you?” Clera ducked beneath a broken length of icicle, hunska-swift.
“They’re not alive any more.”
The wind took whatever answer Clera had to that and for the next ten minutes they ran in a maelstrom of ice, wind, and flying branches, dodging what they could, relying on the thickness of their coats and hoods to take the brunt of any impacts they failed to avoid.
An hour later they were crunching their way through frozen puddles on a lane between beleaguered potato fields. The hedgerows bore scattered stands of hoare-apple, the dark red fruit glistening with frost.
“Where is she? Typical Ara. She’s going to have me running all the way to the Kring.” Clera pulled level again.
“You’re very keen to find Ara,” Nona said, eyeing her friend. “I didn’t think you liked her.”
“Well I do.” Clera snatched a breath. “And you should throw that sword away. It’s weighing you down, and you’re hardly going to use it. We haven’t moved past knife-work yet!”
“I should throw this sword away?” Nona slowed.
“It must weigh a ton.”
Nona came to a halt. She held the sword up between them. “I should throw it away?” She met Clera’s dark gaze. “I don’t need it?”
Clera looked away, her eyes on the track ahead. “. . . Nona . . .”
Nona let the sword fall. It fell point first and stuck in the ground between them. “Come on then.” And she ran on.
• • •
“HEY! NOVICES!” THE cry came from behind them.
Nona and Clera stumbled to a halt and turned. A moment later Nona had Ara in her arms. The Jotsis heir, eyes bright, face reddened by the wind, returned the hug grinning. “Who are you and where have you hidden Nona?” Ara squeezed her and stood back. “Since when are you a hugger?”
“I’m your Shield. You have to hold your Shield tight.” Nona glanced around at Ara’s cold camp. Just the windbreak and a log to sit on. “We have to find Zole next.”
“What the hell for?” Clera looked suddenly fierce.
“Zole?” Ara’s smile fell away. “She’s Tarkax’s responsibility. We need to find Jula and Ruli!”
“Zole,” Nona confirmed. “Because Sister Apple isn’t looking after you any more and we need Tarkax in case anyone makes a move on you. Also, the countryside is thick with Durnish raiders. I saw another party two miles back. That’s the third I’ve seen.”
“Sister Apple wasn’t looking after me in the first place!” Ara glanced around as if the Poisoner might be standing behind a tree. “Was she?”
“More raiders? I didn’t see any!” Clera turned to look back along the road.
“We need to get moving!” Nona started back towards the track.
“Nona!” both of them shouting.
Nona stopped and turned back towards them. “Sister Apple was shadowing you. She’s a senior Sister of Discretion—you would hardly expect to see her. And yes, Clera, more raiders. They didn’t see us in the squall, or did and weren’t interested. They may be next time.” She set off again. “Let’s go,” offered over her shoulder.
• • •
ARA WANTED TO know how Nona knew about Sister Apple’s presence or absence given the impossibility of spotting a Grey Sister who didn’t want to be seen. So while they hastened along the road Nona told them the whole story, except for the part about Zole being a four-blood-prophecy-fulfilling legend. She wasn’t entirely happy with that part herself. Not that she wanted to be Sister Wheel’s darling or anything . . . it just didn’t make sense. By giving Zole into the church’s care Sherzal had made Abbess Glass trust her intentions. It was a precious gift: it removed any suspicion that the emperor’s sister wanted to steal Ara or Nona to control the Argatha or the prophecy. She had just given Abbess Glass the Argatha and put into her hands control of the prophecy, fake though it might be.
And yet . . . Nona knew that Sherzal’s intentions were not to be trusted. She had tried to abduct Ara. And she had put Yisht into the convent to steal the shipheart . . . Had Zole just been the price she was prepared to pay for the chance to steal it?
When Nona had finally laid the whole thing out for them Ara seemed satisfied.
“So . . . if you spent the morning hunting the forest and helping Sister Kettle . . . that explains why you had to run so hard to catch up with me.” Ara jogged on, gathering her breath. “But you said Clera was racing to catch up with you . . . so why was she so far behind too? Sister Tallow said to take things slow and steady—so since I got clear of the chaos at the river I’ve been doing just that.”
Both of them turned to look at Clera, running beside them, red-faced, holding her side. Under their stares she stumbled to a halt. “I need a rest. I can’t run all the way to the Kring. There’s the best part of sixty miles left!”
“Why were you so far behind Ara?” Nona asked.
“Got lost, I said already. All right?” Clera scowled, exasperated. “I’m a city girl. You may have been brought up by wolves, and Arabella here might have had estates
to hunt on, but I know streets and markets and houses, and if I see three trees together I know I’ve gone the wrong way.”
• • •
SHELTER THAT SECOND night came in the form of a pigsty among a collection of hovels that made Nona’s village look prosperous. Their initial welcome was the two points of a pitchfork and a hasty assembling of fierce-eyed peasants armed with hatchet and hoe. Through Ara’s smooth diplomacy the opening offer of brutal murder was negotiated down to room in the unoccupied sty on fresh straw and the threat of violence if they tried “anything funny.” Clera, fishing in her habit in the privacy of their new accommodation, came out with a handful of silver from which she dug out a copper and went on to purchase a slab-like loaf of black bread and a wrap of rancid butter.
“Where did you get all that money?” Nona asked, chewing on her portion of the loaf.
“I told you, my father’s fortunes have changed.” Clera’s jaw bulged as she ground away at the bread. It seemed as if more grit had been used than flour. She played her gold sovereign across her knuckles. “The church teaches faith—but what you learn is that it’s money that moves mountains. The church preaches the Ancestor’s creed, but it’s gold that talks. Everything we do, all this business of emperors and temples, all the war, alliances, murders, hospitals . . . all of it floats on money. The currents that move these things, make them dance, are all financial. Politics, religion, love, faith, even hate, are just the things people say. This—” she held the coin before her eye between finger and thumb. “This is what they mean.”
“That’s a shallow view of the world, Clera.” Ara watched from the corner, hunched in her ice-rimed coat.
“Says the girl whose whole life was built on gold.”
“There are things that can’t be bought or sold,” Nona said.
Clera shook her head. “Some would say everything has its price, and that it’s often surprisingly cheap. Others that if a thing cannot be bought, it has no value.”
“What about friendship?” Nona asked.
“Ah.” Clera lay back, settling herself to sleep. “There you have to be careful.”
• • •
ARA HAD MANAGED to establish that several novices had passed through the village hours before them, but how many novices or hours proved difficult to pin down. Nona doubted that there were any behind them, though. Not unless the Durns had them.
The novices took turns watching through the night. Nona spent her hours staring at the darkness, wondering if Sister Kettle still lived and what horrors Sister Apple might have wrought upon her attackers if not. She wondered too at the raiders she’d seen, lying at broken angles where the Noi-Guin had left them. They’d been young men, pale with short, fair beards and eyes the blue of cornflowers. She wondered what had driven them across the sea. They looked too well-fed, too well-equipped, to have come so far in order to terrorize peasants in their shacks. Does a man with a good iron sword cross an ocean to steal a half-starved goat?
She watched the darkness and painted the raiders across it, breathing life back into their pale limbs. Would they come this far inland, or retreat now, fearing to be cut off when the emperor’s new armies arrived?
No raiders came in the night. Or if they did they moved on, hoping for richer pickings than promised by the cluster of hovels. The three girls got up as the sky paled and set off towards the valley, a shallow one that stretched east and north towards the distant hills where the sun would soon rise.
• • •
“SHE SAID IT was the only way through. The only easy way anyhow—and if we want to catch the others we want the quickest path.” Clera had taken the lead. The old woman who extorted a copper from her for last night’s bread had also furnished her with directions to Aemon’s Cut, a gorge that she claimed to be the only safe passage through the colourfully named Devil’s Spine.
Nona could tell from the terrain that some river of ice had pressed forward here as it once had across the Grey, but more recently, perhaps only a century or two earlier, retreating to leave the bedrock scraped bare of soil, fierce ridges standing where veins of harder stone ran. The Spine was one such vein of obdurate granite left standing where the slow, implacable currents of the ice carved softer rock away. It stood perhaps a thousand yards proud of its surroundings but near vertical, and honed to a razor-edge running north and south for a dozen miles and more.
The novices had heard of the Devil’s Spine. Ara had even seen it before as a small child—a curiosity on a trip to visit some or other far-flung fruit of her family tree. But not until they drew close, harried by the ice-wind, did they properly appreciate the wisdom in seeking an easy passage from one side to the other.
“We’ll go to Aemon’s Cut and press on. We’ll catch the rest or we won’t. We can meet them at the Kring if not,” Clera said. “Apart from not having Ruli, this is the group we were going to be in anyway.”
• • •
CROSSING THE ROCK wastes took longer than anticipated. Fissures ran across the stone, miles long, yards wide in places. In other areas the stone lay pockmarked with sink-holes, some filled with dark water, some empty with sharp edges, some wide enough to drown in, some small enough to trap a foot and break an unwary ankle.
By late afternoon they had spotted the Cut. By early evening they had reached the approach. The three novices wound their way through a maze of rocky gullies that snaked in confusion across the fractured rock up towards the Cut still almost half a mile off. The wind, that had plagued them since leaving the Rock of Faith, slackened as if daunted by the Devil’s Spine, growing fitful.
“It’s changing,” Ara said.
“We might find we have a Corridor wind tomorrow to blow us the rest of the way to the Kring,” Clera said.
Nona hoped so. Her father had hunted up on the ice most of his life whereas she had spent most of hers hiding behind whatever walls she could find when the ice-winds blew. Three days bearing up under its breath had only deepened the respect she felt for him. It added a new dimension to her concerns over Yisht. Would a woman raised in such a place truly let her ambitions be thwarted by children or forget the indignity they’d heaped upon her?
A break in the clouds scattered sunlight across the ridged rock. Nona stopped in her tracks. Just as there’s a power in many clear voices, ringing in harmonies, it lives too in the shadows of clouds and in the light moving across landscapes, watched in still moments.
“It is changing,” Clera started up again. “We’ll be home and safe in the warm before we know it. I’m going to buy everything in the Pillared Market.” Her chatter had a nervousness to it. She seemed distracted, glancing around.
“We should—” Nona bit off the words, eyes upon the pebble that had just bounced past her. She made a slow turn, poised to spring. Ahead of her Ara and Clera came to a halt. Tarkax stood in the mouth of a small cave some way back along the gully. They had passed just ten yards beneath without seeing him. He beckoned to them, an urgent gesture, one finger to his lips. Behind him in the shadows they could see a smaller figure in a range-coat.
“Come on!” Nona started off towards the warrior.
“No!” Clera called after her. “We need to push on—you can’t trust him.”
Nona looked back. Clera hadn’t moved. Ara stumbled to a halt halfway between them.
“That’s why we’re here!” Nona said. “We came to find Tarkax. Sister Kettle told me to. So Ara has a guard over her now Sister Apple’s gone. Trusting him is the whole point.”
“Well I don’t.” Clera raised her arm towards Aemon’s Cut. “That’s where we need to go. That’s the path to our target. Sister Tallow is waiting there. She’ll have half the convent’s Red Sisters with her now they know how serious it is with the Durnish.”
“I told Kettle we’d find Tarkax,” Nona said, frowning.
“Well we’ve found him. Now let’s go,” Clera said. “R
emember who he is. I saw him at the Caltess, talking to Yisht. If we hadn’t put her in a barrel it would be her standing in that cave. It would be her that Sister Kettle told you to find to look after Ara. Did you trust Yisht?”
Nona didn’t answer that, just glanced back towards Tarkax, now crouched further back in the shadow of the cave’s entrance.
“Let’s go!” Clera started back along the gully towards the Cut.
“No! Clera!” Nona had promised Kettle. She had sworn to a dying woman. To her friend. “Come on.” She waved Ara after her and hurried up across the steep slope towards the warrior of the ice-tribes.
“Nona . . .” Ara followed, but slower, faltering. “What about Clera?”
“She’ll follow us,” Nona said, unsure of whether she wanted it to be true.
Nona reached the cave first. Tarkax remained crouched, his eyes not straying to her but keeping to the ridges and gullies. Nona moved past him, seeing in surprise that the gloom held four novices. Her eyes had yet to adjust but one of them was so large she could only be Darla. Ignoring them for the moment, Nona turned to see Ara coming past Tarkax, and running up behind her, a wrathful Clera looking ready to punch someone.
“Nona!” Jula and Ruli closed on her from both sides.
“Glad the Durnish didn’t chop you up, squirt.” Darla pulled her hood back. She had a black eye and a bloody nose. Nona wondered how the other person looked.
Zole glanced her way but said nothing, remaining close to Tarkax.
“Why are you here?” Nona asked it of the cave in general.
“There are soldiers waiting by the Cut.” Tarkax didn’t turn his head. “Perhaps a dozen. They’re in ambush positions so it’s hard to tell.”
“Raiders!” Ara said. “This far inland?”
“Soldiers,” Tarkax corrected. “Not Durn men.”
“What’s the problem with soldiers?” Clera remained at the mouth of the cave, out past Tarkax. “The emperor’s general probably dispatched them to hold the pass in case the Durnish came this way in force.”