Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

With Kettle. She’s here with Zole. They killed a Noi-Guin and now they’re hiding. Kettle thinks the other Noi-Guin will torture me to bring her and Zole into the open.

You had better escape then.

Nona uncurled, finding her muscles stiff, her arm and hip sore from supporting her on the stone floor. She stood and faced the wall, feeling for the iron pin that secured the chain leading from her ankle cuff. She didn’t know if the winding trick had worked, or even if it could work, but it was all she had. With every ounce of the speed at her disposal she repeated the process, winding the chain around the pin so fast that the disc she built against the wall had no time to collapse. At the last circuit she gripped the outer edge before the links could shift, and applied all her strength to turning it.

Nothing. Just a double handful of chain dangling from scraped fingers.

Again! Keot flowed across her skin, trying to reach her right hand but finding himself blocked by the wristband.

Nona tried again. And again. She lost count of her efforts.

Any hunska, even a full-blood, tires quickly when using their speed at its limit. Eventually Nona slumped on the floor, exhausted, her fingernails splintered, hands sore. She lay, reaching for her serenity trance, waiting while her body gathered its resources for more bursts of speed. She heard people approaching, many of them, on soft feet. Her serenity shielded her from the jolt of shock but the fear still rose, a tide of it. She gained her feet and prepared to fight.

The door remained closed. Nona heard the newcomers arrange themselves outside her cell, exchanging a muttered comment or two. And then . . . nothing. Kettle was half-right perhaps. The Noi-Guin were ready for any attempt to free her, but not ready to hurt her. Not yet. Their reticence made little sense to Nona. What were they waiting for? Tellasah could claim the kill that had been denied her for so long. She could do it before her peers. If she wanted to torment Nona she could do that too. Why wait?

Nona sniffed at the water they’d left her, stale stuff in a mud-clay jug. If she broke it the pieces would be too brittle to serve as weapons, too crumbly to bear any edge that might cut an enemy or even her own wrists. The water might be laced with drugs, but if she didn’t continue to drink it she wouldn’t be much use. She took a sip and returned to her battle against the pin.

Hours passed. Many of them. Perhaps days. The guards outside changed shifts, Nona snatched fitful sleep, her stomach growled and true hunger, her childhood friend, returned to her for the first time in years. Nona wound her chain a hundred times, tried a hundred times to twist the pin to the left or right. The iron resisted her.

* * *

• • •

THE BANG THAT hauled Nona from the dark confusion of her dreams was the cell door being thrown open. Light streamed in. More light than Nona remembered being in the world. She flung up her arms, screwing her eyes tight behind them.

“Ice! It stinks in here!” A man’s voice, cultured and full of good humour.

Nona sat up and squinted through weeping eyes at the dazzle of light. It came from a single lantern, held aloft by a tall figure. Two figures—one portly, one slim—stood beside that one, and robed Lightless stood to both sides, perhaps four of them, more filing in.

Nona pulled the scraps of her smock around her and retreated on her backside into a corner.

“And this animal, rotting here amongst her own sewage, killed my Raymel?” The humour left the man’s voice. “Lano? Is it her?”

The slim figure leaned in, a dark-haired man in fine clothing. “It’s her, Father.”

“She is yours, my lord.” The woman holding the lantern wore a black-skin facemask. A Noi-Guin. A belt laden with cross-knives hung over her shoulder, down to the opposite hip. “You may dispose of her as you wish. My contract has been fulfilled. The Tetragode regrets the delay.”

Nona knew the two men though she couldn’t see them clearly yet. She smeared away the tears that the light had filled her eyes with.

“It was not well done.” Thuran’s voice narrowed to sharpness. “But at least it has been done.” He stepped back. “Secure her.” And the Lightless surged forward.

Still half-blind, Nona tried to stand but the Noi-Guin, that Nona now knew must be Tellasah, hooked a foot into a loop of the chain and jerked Nona’s feet from under her. The Lightless had her a moment later. They were not unskilled, having been trained for years in the Noi-Guin arts, and all of them had at least a touch of hunska. Nona broke someone’s wrist and struck an unguarded throat, but dazzled, chained, and fresh from sleep, she couldn’t fight them off.

Four Lightless pinned Nona to the stone floor, the two injured retreated, and Thuran Tacsis crouched over her, his son Lano, lean, dark, watching hungrily over his shoulder. Tellasah held a long thin cane tipped with a needle towards Nona. The Noi-Guin kept the needle point hovering about eighteen inches above Nona’s hip, ready to jab her should she somehow start to break free, presumably with a fast-acting poison.

Nona stopped struggling and stared at the red, bearded face of the old man hunkered down beside her. A Sister of Discretion on a mission in which capture is likely often conceals two things in her mouth. First a waxed tablet of crail root powder, secured below the gum. Crail root stops the heart. It’s not painless but it is swift. And second, requiring great skill to use, a needle in a leather tube. It’s not possible to spit the needle without poisoning yourself, but anyone it hits will suffer the same fate. The needles are coated with chamon, a venom milked from eels that feed at the bottom of ocean trenches only accessible from rare spots where warm upwelling water melts holes in the ice. Chamon brings about a slow death: the victims bleed into their lungs and suffer nightmare hallucinations. Most of the poisons the Grey Sisters use are chosen for swiftness. Chamon is not swift, but unlike many of the faster toxins it has no antidote. Nona would happily have spat such a needle if she had one.

“I have a party to attend, Nona. A very important gathering filled with very important people, and I really must show my face. But I will be back to see you later.” He took something from the pocket of his jacket, a disc of black iron maybe four inches across and almost an inch thick, set with raised sigils around the edge, one side having a leather cover held in place by a strap. Thuran Tacsis removed the cover with care, revealing a spiralling set of sigils, each like a twisted spider, something deeply unwholesome in the way they held the eye and seemed to writhe.

“This is the Harm. It has been in my family for generations. The pain it causes is said to be unsurpassed. Worse than burning or acid. Worse than any venom. And it doesn’t leave a mark.” Thuran held the device above Nona’s stomach. He frowned. “It’s very effective but I’ve never really enjoyed it. Pain should leave a mark. Pain should be ugly and irreversible. So when I come back from mingling with lords and ladies, the highest of the Sis, when I’m done with the wonderful music, the exquisite food, conversing with my peers, I will return to this cell and hurt you in more primitive and more satisfying ways. We will start with cutting pieces off you. Everything it won’t kill you to lose. For now though . . .” A shrug, and he pressed the iron disc down onto Nona’s stomach.

Pain filled her, spreading rapidly from the contact site. It felt as if the disc were red-hot, flowing out to cover her entirely. Somehow it combined the first awful shock of a burn with the lasting agony, maintaining both together. Each part of Nona’s body made its own contribution as the effect reached through her. Bones snapped, fingers burst, teeth shattered, her tongue blistered, her eyes scalded. The torment lasted far longer than Nona could endure. She had no way of knowing how long and could do nothing in its grip.