Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘Yes, but she can’t do it.’ Nona shook her head. ‘It’s the shipheart, it does that, it gives you power, makes you think you’re indestructible … it’s like the Path. But Yisht will kill her!’

Darla returned to peer out at the slopes, knowing that to those out there in the day’s last light she would be invisible within the cave’s gloom.

‘Why is this happening?’ Ruli helped Nona up. ‘I mean, why now, why is Yisht going for the shipheart just as we’re trapped and about to die?’

‘We’re not going to die.’ Nona shrugged off her range-coat. ‘They are.’ She flexed her fists and felt the flaw-blades form. ‘And what better chance would Yisht get? Half the Red Sisters are out with Tallow to escort us back. The best of the Grey Sisters are absent too. And if news of Sister Kettle has reached the convent then the abbess may have sent more sisters to help … it’s the ideal time to strike.’

‘The soldiers who went looking for Tarkax’s kills are back. The full twelve are on the slope again. They’re getting ready to make their move.’ Darla kept her voice low but it shook with nerves.

Nona started to advance. ‘Let me—’ But Hessa’s terror reached out and seized her. Nona fought the thread-bond, knowing she would only be able to watch Hessa’s fight, knowing her friends needed her in theirs. But the bond’s strength proved too great. Her body fell, helpless, with her enemies gathering to strike. And once more Nona became bound within Hessa’s mind. A silent witness.

Hessa let herself down the rope, good leg questing for the floor, the lantern dangling from her elbow on its strap, smoky and hot. She made it and collapsed to the smooth wet stone, the muscles in her arms burning.

Lifting her lantern, she cried out in horror. Just an arm’s length from her face and unseen during her descent Sister Flint sat with her back to the wall beneath the connecting passage. Her long neck lay at an odd angle to her shoulders, the bones making an unsightly bulge beneath dark skin where the angle grew most acute. Her eyes stared at nothing, reflecting the lantern’s flame, and a thin red line of drool ran from the corner of her mouth.

Go back. Nona spoke into the clamour of Hessa’s thoughts and went unheard.

Hessa looked towards the entrance to Yisht’s shaft, glowing with the distant light of the assassin’s lantern. The sound of pick-blows and crashing rock echoed back and out into the main tunnel. She returned her gaze to Sister Flint. She had been a Red Sister, as fine a warrior as Sweet Mercy could produce. And Yisht had killed her.

Go back! Nona shouted it but struggled to be heard against the beat of the shipheart’s pulse.

Hessa raised her hands. She could see the threads that she had drawn from Yisht hanging in her fingers, golden, silver, scarlet, and black. Pull on this golden thread and a stream of memories would come rushing to flood her with the woman’s bloodstained history. Pull it far enough and she would see the ice, see Yisht even before her memory began, swaddled in furs and innocence. Pull on that scarlet one and she could change the woman’s mind, pull hard enough and any opinion she might hold would be overturned, however firm it might be set. Pull this silver thread, the one that anchored her to her soul, and the woman would come undone. Hessa knew she could do it. She held Yisht’s life in her hands, and the shipheart gave her all the power and clarity she needed.

Hessa edged to the shaft, scraping herself across the rubble, cutting her hands, tearing her habit. Dark splatters amongst the broken rock caught the light of Hessa’s lantern and returned it. She rolled and touched a finger to one glistening patch. ‘Blood!’ Yisht hadn’t escaped unharmed from her encounter with Sister Flint then …

A tremendous crash echoed down the shaft and moments later rock dust billowed out, obliterating Hessa’s vision, making her cough.

Silence. Then, as the dust began to settle, the sound of loose rock being pulled away. Hessa shuffled the last foot and peered around to see up along the steep slope of the narrow slot that Yisht had carved. The whole passage glowed. Light, from some source far brighter than any lantern, caught the last of the dust and turned it into gold. At first Hessa thought Yisht must have broken through to the surface, but as the dust continued to settle she saw the woman’s blurred black outline, and on every side the light shafted around her as if a miniature sun were before her, level with her waist. And if it were a sun then it was the Hope rather than Abeth’s red star, a young sun full of white and gold.

And the heat. Even at this distance it made Hessa sweat.

‘She’ll never get out with it …’ Hessa squinted against the brightness.

The light changed, shadows ran and swung, the quality of the shipheart’s pulse altered. Yisht turned to the side, her fingers red around the shipheart’s glowing sphere, her bones dark within the rosy haze of her flesh.

Leave! Nona shouted it at Hessa and for a moment she thought that she might have been noticed.

Hessa watched, just one eye at the very edge of the cut, her resolve blown away like focus mist in an ice-wind. Yisht would never get out with the shipheart. She started to pull away. Yisht held the shipheart before her and thrust it towards the wall. The air whined as if a thousand mosquitoes had gathered to feast … and the rock flowed away as though it were liquid mud. Yisht stepped forward into the void.

‘No!’ Hessa understood now. Yisht might be a marjal half-blood, or even a prime, but her rock-work was only sufficient to aid her in digging, weakening the stone ready for the pick’s swing, or allowing a slow and silent start to the shaft she had sunk beneath her guest quarters. Perhaps it also gave her intuition as to where the tunnels and fissures ran … But as she had come closer to the shipheart her skills had been magnified, allowing the last yards of the cut to be hewn away in just a few hours. And now – actually holding the shipheart – the rocks moved to her will. Hessa had no idea what such a gift must be costing Yisht. There was a reason that the shipheart lay buried rather than in the hands of a nun … but whatever it cost her it also afforded a marjal rock-worker their escape. She could tunnel out, closing the shaft behind her and emerging at some pre-arranged location, no doubt to be met by Sherzal’s troops.

Hessa reached her arm around the edge of the cut and pulled on all Yisht’s threads at once. The warrior came flying backwards out of the hole she had created. The opposite wall arrested her motion with a crunch that made Hessa wince. For a moment she felt guilty – she hadn’t meant to injure the woman – then ridiculous, knowing exactly what Yisht would do to her given a chance. In the moment after that Yisht’s thoughts and memories flooded her, drawn out when Hessa pulled on the golden thread of her being.

Images washed over Nona, trapped at the back of Hessa’s mind. One image, burning with importance, caught her attention and Nona seized it as it passed: the amulet she’d taken from Yisht, the sigil black against a tide of moments, recollections, sensations. And with the amulet’s image came understanding. A sigil of negation, fashioned with vanishingly rare talent by a master of the art a century before. Yisht’s key to the defences on the abbess’s house. Her secondary mission, to claim the secrets there, now abandoned … Pressed to any enchantment the amulet would erase the magic or at the very least disrupt it.