Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

Zole had waited on the ice, ready with the Old Stones. Nona had told her that it was safe to come, and here she was, with the other half of the key to the Ark.

Zole stood within the chamber where Sherzal had tortured Ruli. She held the two shiphearts from her tribe, one like iron red from the forge, the other a poison green. The Noi-Guin shipheart and the Sweet Mercy shipheart lay against the far wall, one a black-violet that seared the eye, the other golden. She had grown from the girl who sent Nona back from the heart of the black ice. She stood before them a woman of the ice, hard, uncompromising, perfect. Zole watched Nona and the others as if from some distant place, no hint of recognition in her face, no warmth, just a focused efficiency.

‘Can you do it?’ Nona asked. Of all of them only Nona could stand within spear’s reach of Zole and meet the awful light in her eyes. ‘Can you take all four and open the Ark?’

‘It will be hard.’

Nona wondered if she stood alone in seeing the hints that remained of that younger Zole. She had been hard and seemingly without emotion even then, but Nona remembered that Zole had named her friend and come to the Tetragode to save her. She remembered the shy edge of Zole’s tiny smile when she made one of her rare jokes, so dry that it might pass by entirely unnoticed.

‘Hard?’ As always when Zole called a thing hard it meant that it was essentially impossible … a suicidal act.

‘Very hard.’ Zole’s eyes held something as close to fear as Nona had ever seen.

‘Try.’ Nona reached out for the wall and sagged against it. ‘The Scithrowl are coming. I need to help …’

Nona didn’t feel herself fall but she hammered into Kettle as if she had dropped from a great height.

27

Holy Class

Kettle lay sprawled, stunned by a blow from one of the small shields that many of the Scithrowl in this wave seemed to favour. The man who had struck her down now leapt over her into the space created. Another Scithrowl followed, this one a squat woman, her skin a peculiar purple-red that Kettle had never seen before. She carried a short spear with a long serrated blade that looked to have been used to finish off a fair number of wounded enemies. Without pause she thrust it down at Kettle’s chest. Kettle lacked the strength to do anything but throw up an empty, helpless hand.

‘No.’ Nona’s word on Kettle’s lips.

Lying in the same chamber as four shiphearts made Nona feel like a candle burning not just at both ends but along the whole of its length. Their power filled her even as it tore her apart. Quick as thought, she drove a sheet of flaw-blade from Kettle’s palm, cutting the Scithrowl woman in half.

Get up.

Kettle struggled to her feet. Her speed had left her. Exhaustion dragged her down more than the minor wounds that stuck her habit to her in bloody patches. Several blows fell on the flaw-armour Nona moved around Kettle as she rose.

Let me in.

‘They’re all dead, Nona.’ Kettle waved her arm and Nona filled the air with a moving storm of flaw-fragments. The Scithrowl in front of her fell in pieces. Behind them the length of the King’s Road lay tight-packed with their kin, stretching all the way back to the breach in the walls and the ocean of Adoma’s horde pressing in.

Over a hundred yards back but now within the circle of the city walls scores of Scithrowl bore a stepped platform on their shoulders, rising yards above the sea of heads. On the lowest step a dozen archers in black chainmail loosed arrow after arrow from their eagle-bows, sending them soaring over the spear tips of their army towards the palace walls or up at bowmen on Verity’s rooftops. On the next step four wind-workers plied their arts to shield the archers from incoming missiles, but Nona imagined they focused their efforts primarily on the third and highest step where a figure sat in crimson armour upon a throne of gold. Adoma, the battle-queen herself, entering the city and driving her followers into a frenzy. The woman commanded the eye, her skin like a hole in the night. It was said she had melted the black ice and drank the waters to gain her powers. Even at this distance Nona could feel the malice bleeding from her.

Let me help, Kettle! Where’s Apple?

‘I don’t know.’ Kettle stepped back and with an elbow to the back of the neck felled the man who had so recently struck her down. ‘I don’t know!’ Her voice broke as she retreated among the emperor’s guards fighting in front of the palace walls. Images flashed before Nona’s eyes. She saw Leeni fall with a spear driven through her chest. Alata had died fighting above her corpse. She saw Sister Tallow and Sister Iron fighting back to back, with the Scithrowl clambering over the circular wall of dead ringing the pair. She saw Sister Tallow with her sword deep in the body of the biggest gerant Nona had ever seen. Somehow the old woman had pierced the man’s armour but where the Ark-steel blade she had given to Nona might have sliced free, her Barrons-steel remained caught. When the Scithrowl cut her down Tallow looked surprised. Not scared or proud or at peace or defeated … just surprised.

Kettle’s memories assaulted Nona. She saw Ketti, broken by an axe. Tall, quick, Ketti. Always talking about boys. Now she would never find one to hold. Nona blinked the vision away, blinked away the deaths of other novices, of nuns she had known most of her life.

‘No.’ So much marjal empathy rang in Nona’s voice that even those in the front line paused to listen, weapons stuttering mid-swing.

Abbess Wheel stood nearby, her right arm in a makeshift sling, bandages across her forehead. A pitifully small band of convent survivors stood tight around her.

‘No!’ Nona stepped back towards the battle-line. Men and women of the palace guard jerked out of her path as if seized by invisible hands. The Scithrowl howling for blood just yards ahead of her fell silent although she was only Kettle, wounded, unarmoured, unremarkable.

As Nona raised Kettle’s arms an arrow hammered out of the fire-broken night. It shattered inches from her shoulder. Another glanced away. She brought her hands together over her head, struggling against some opposing force. Stone blocks and roof slates tore free from the buildings to either side of the King’s Road, flinging themselves into the army packed across its width. Walls groaned and collapsed in rolling clouds of dust.

‘The moon is falling.’ Nona’s voice shuddered through men’s bodies as if Abeth itself had spoken, and terror followed. ‘The. Moon. Is. Falling.’

She swung an arm at the backs of Scithrowl trying to retreat over those still advancing on the palace. Spinning fragments of flaw-blade sliced through armour, flesh, bone. Even the paving slabs beneath the enemy’s feet were cut into pieces.

Nona led the charge, slipping and sliding in a street that had become a charnel house. The gerant captain who had sought to block her passage into the palace as night fell now joined her counterattack.

They couldn’t win. Perhaps a dozen Nonas might turn the tide, but even as the Scithrowl died in heaps their dead were trampled by fresh warriors eager to bleed for their queen. And all along the road the Scithrowl were starting to spread out, clambering over rubble, seeking ways to encircle the palace, ways to come at it from all angles while Nona could defend only one.

Nona let the empire soldiers advance around her. She saw little Ghena hurry past, a bloody spear gripped in both hands, looking both fierce and exhausted at the same time.