Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

Nona untied the mule, pulling her hand away swiftly as it tried to bite her, and led it on, dragging the cart through the unwilling undergrowth. In time she found one of the charcoal burners’ clearings and turned the cart before returning to the track.

Hefting Giljohn into the cage nearly broke Nona’s back, but she’d gained a lot of muscle since they had parted company at the Caltess almost six years before, and the years had pared the child-taker closer to the bone. Nona pushed his feet through the gate and closed it on him, knotting the rope to hold it in place. The mule snorted once then fell silent. She leaned back and stared at the ruins of the village with no thoughts, just the open fields around her, overgrown and turning wild, tugged by the damp wind. Above, the grey sky racing eastward, far to the south the smokes of Morltown smudging the air. The idea that her old home no longer existed wouldn’t seem to fit in her skull no matter how she turned it. She might not have liked the place, but it was her foundation, the roots of her. She straightened and walked down the slope towards the spot where her mother’s house had stood.

To call the remains of the village “ruins” was over-generous. “Traces” would be more accurate. In another five years it would be hard to tell the site where the people had lived from the spaces where they had grown their crops. Grey Stephen’s house was a pile of rubble, soon to be swallowed by the rising turf. The stones of James Baker’s home still showed; the lintel beneath which his wife, Martha, used to scowl at the world lay half-buried.

Little more than a stain amid the nettles marked where Nona’s own home had stood. The wattle-and-daub walls had gone to nothing and the thicker timbers lay in ashes and rot among the grass, falling apart at a nudge of her boot.

It took another hour before Giljohn cracked open an eye. The Grey Sisters brewed groton venom from the gallbladder of a rare fish that seldom emerged from beneath the ice. It wouldn’t have been cheap, or easy to obtain. As well as a rapid descent into unconsciousness the victim could look forward to a period of disorientation followed by days in which concentration would prove impossible. The Sisters used it if they needed to capture a quantal or marjal. No drug would safely render a victim unconscious for a week, but a dose of groton could deny an Academic the use of most of their magics for nearly that long, or keep a quantal from the Path.

“Where’s my mother?”

“I . . . don’t know.” Giljohn blinked, spat, and tried to sit up.

“What happened here?” Nona waved an arm at the place where the village had stood.

Giljohn was too occupied with the rope around his wrists to reply, staring at it in fascination as if it might be made of gold and braided with gemstones. Nona repeated the question and he spat again, as if the venom had left his mouth sour, and laughed. “You happened, child.”

“Me?”

“She probably would have done it just for the soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“You killed five of Sherzal’s household guard!”

Nona said nothing. The hunters had brought her back to the village wearing blood, almost enough to drown in.

“It was Onastos Hadmar that she did this for though.”

“Who?”

Giljohn looked vague as if forgetting where he was.

“Onastos who?”

He shook his head. “Hadmar! Up in that convent of yours you forget how rare any sign of the tribes is. Quantal’s the hardest of all to find. Not one in a thousand, girl. Onastos was a prime, wearing Sherzal’s scarlet and silver. And you cut him up like meat. Sherzal’s guard must have destroyed this place while we were on the road. That’s all I know. It’s the first time I’ve been back. I got here last night.”

“So why didn’t they come after me? Catch us on the road?” Nona’s fists tightened at the thought, nails biting palm. Let them come now.

“I’m sure they . . .” Giljohn rolled over, trying to free his hands. “I’m in my own damn cage?”

Nona banged the bars. “Why didn’t they chase us?”

“Damn!” Giljohn hit his head against the cart deck. “It’s good stuff, this groton. Feels like I’m swimming through the world.”

Nona banged again.

“They did chase us! I’m sure they did. But Sherzal got wind of a better prospect. Something Onastos had pointed her at, I’ll bet. And she set all her guard on that instead.”

Zole. That was Nona’s guess. The Chosen One, saving her life before they’d even met.

“Who sent you, and how did you find me?”

“A number sent me.”

Nona shook her head. The groton had his tongue.

“One hundred sent me. A hundred golden sovereigns.”

“They posted a reward?” The size of it staggered her. Giljohn had filled his cage for less than one sovereign.

“Too big a number for me to ignore, girl. Old Giljohn’s fallen on hard times. Yes he has. You and your little friends were the richest lot I ever hauled. Never found another like it.” He rolled to his back, staring at the sky with his single eye. “And who better to hunt you? I knew where you came from. Knew you’d go back. The runners always do. Spent my last coin on something to keep you quiet, came here, waited. Thought my best chance would be when you saw what had happened. That moment of shock. Thought I’d be enough. One shot. One captive. One hundred divided by one. I gambled . . . I lost.”

Kill him.

Nona frowned. Giljohn had rolled to her side of the cart and had the bars in his hands. “Where am I?” Confusion in his voice, the drug taking hold again. “I’m in my own cage?”

“We all are,” Nona said.

“If you let me go I won’t say that I saw you.” Giljohn met her eyes. His clarity seemed to come and go in waves.

“You will if there’s money in it,” Nona said. A sadness rose through her. The village and the child-taker weren’t things she had placed value in, or even liked, but they were her things, part of her own story, and you couldn’t choose those, not when you were a child. Now they both lay ruined, each in their own way. Something had gone out of Giljohn. Perhaps it had left the day the high priest humbled him and beat Four-Foot to death. Perhaps it had left a little each year starting before he came into her life, maybe it had begun the day the Scithrowl took his eye.

Giljohn clutched the bars and stared at her, less than a yard separating them now.

Kill him! Even you should be able to see this one needs killing. He’ll betray you without a thought. He was going to give you to your enemies!

You’re right.

Nona focused and four flaw-blades shimmered momentarily as they sprung from her fingers. “You would have seen me killed, child-taker, just to put coin in your pocket.”

With a snarl Nona lashed out. The bars before Giljohn’s face fell away in sections.

“You won’t hunt for me again.”

The child-taker made no reply, only watched her as the blood dripped from a cut across the tip of his nose. Nona bent and scooped up one of the sections of bar, a wooden disk, narrower than her finger and about two inches across. She took the child-taker’s purse from her pocket and put the disk in as if it were an oversized coin.

“Yours.” She tossed the purse into the cage.