Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

“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 darkness. 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.