Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

The ice-triber drew in a huge breath like the gasp made when you fall into freezing water. She dropped the grey mustard package and staggered back, still gasping, wheezing for air. All across her skin the devil taints swirled, flowing over her, converging on her head. Somehow Keot had been sucked from or driven from Nona, or both at once, and his initiation into Yisht’s crowded flesh did not appear to be a gentle one.

The pain in Nona’s leg demanded her attention. She pressed her fingers hard into the wound where the blood spurted with each beat of her slowing heart, and rolled, awkwardly, to see Kettle, with both hands pressed to a crimson throat, eyeing her frantically. Nona reached out to pull Kettle’s robe open, exposing the tight-bound bandolier of poisons and cures. In amongst them would be stanching powder, which when applied to wounds would, along with causing excruciating pain, dramatically reduce the blood flow. Nona could see only two containers that looked as if they might hold powder, and snatched one at random. Kettle gave a slight nod. Behind them Yisht bellowed and roared, underlining the need for haste.

Nona readied the stanching agent, raised herself from the ground, and pulled one of Kettle’s hands from her throat, trying not to grimace. The cut wasn’t as deep as she had feared given all the blood. Kettle must have managed to jerk her head back and lessen the damage. The nun held the middle of the slice together, pinched between finger and thumb, while Nona applied the powder. Kettle immediately went rigid, showing her teeth in agony’s grimace. The wash of blood slowed, clotting darkly around the powder.

Nona rolled to her side and applied the remains of it to her leg wound. It hurt less than the Harm, despite her fears. She had Thuran Tacsis to thank for showing her that whatever hurts she suffered in life, worse were possible.

“Come.” A pained rasp from Kettle.

Nona reached out for her sword, thrust it through her belt, and together they began to crawl away down the corridor. Behind them, Yisht was throwing herself around, impacting the walls, roaring, shattering masonry.

With every yard they put between Yisht and themselves Nona’s fear grew that the ice-triber’s raging would summon Sherzal’s guards. It seemed, though, that whatever the emergency was that had drawn away those charged with the defence of the emperor’s sister, it was proving to be a big one.

After twenty yards Nona got to her feet using the wall for support and helped Kettle up. Apart from the pain and weariness she felt a kind of emptiness, a hole where Keot had been. She had tried so hard to be rid of the devil, especially in the early days, turning the whole of her will against him, but to no avail. And then, at her weakest, he’d been ejected without conscious effort, like a sickness coughed out . . .

The reason came to Nona as a small epiphany, only half-believed. Every time she forgave, every time she showed love or loyalty, the devil’s hold on her had been weakened . . . Was that really all it had taken? For her to throw herself between a friend and certain death?

Kettle and Nona hobbled on, leaning on each other, and as they approached the junction where another passageway intersected their own Nona saw Clera peeking from the corner.

“Ancestor’s balls! What did you do to her?” Clera stared past them.

Kettle made no reply, hurrying around the corner and out of sight of Yisht. Nona let the nun go and took a last look at Yisht before joining her. The woman was hunched on the floor, curled around whatever battle was raging through her. Her howling had subsided to terrifying groans.

Nona longed to go back and kill the ice-triber, to give her the end her crimes demanded, but the shipheart lay close at hand and time was short. She pulled back out of sight, turning to see that Kettle had crouched down against the wall, a small ceramic tub of black ointment in her hand. The nun removed some of it on the end of a thin wooden applicator and offered it to Nona, pointing the blackened end towards her throat where she still pinched the sides of the cut together.

The stuff had an acrid smell and Nona knew it for flesh-bind, a costly adhesive that stuck flesh to flesh with frightening swiftness, forming a bond that was hard to break. The price of the ingredients, along with common sense, forbade its use by any but the oldest novices in Holy Class. Too many girls had been glued together in compromising positions in past years to allow its use by the younger and more mischievous novices. An unfortunate side-effect was that if left too long it would permanently dye the skin black too.

Nona applied the stuff to the edges of Kettle’s wound and, steeling her stomach against the grisly business, pressed the skin together, taking care not to get glued in place. The end result proved messy but effective.

Kettle repaid the favour on Nona’s leg, more quickly and with far neater results. Clera hovered anxiously, taking quick glances around the corner to check on Yisht.

Nona stretched her injured leg. It hurt like hell. “Where’s the vault?” she asked.

“Back there.” Clera waved absently towards double doors that stood ajar at the end of the corridor. “It’s a steel box big enough to fit a horse in. Stuffed full of Sherzal’s treasures. You can’t carry it and you’ll never get it open.” She sounded wistful, as if the proximity and inaccessibility of such wealth were a source of great sorrow to her.

Nona could feel the shipheart. The hidden fire that had drawn her forward had now grown into something awful, too fierce to dare. Like the fire in the hearth it was something you wanted to come close to until suddenly you were close enough and another step would see you burned. She lifted her hand, fighting weariness, and forced her flaw-blades into being. They flickered unevenly. “I’ll get in.”

“It’s sigil-worked. I don’t think you’ll cut it.” Clera flinched as a particularly loud howl from Yisht shook the air. “We have to go! I checked ahead. There’s some kind of battle going on in the great halls downstairs. It’s the ideal distraction.”

Nona shook her head. “We came for the shipheart.”

“No.” Kettle gripped Nona’s arm with surprising strength.

“No?” Nona blinked. “But we—”

“The shipheart . . . does things . . . if you get too close. What happened to Yisht . . . It’s too powerful. It takes anything bad in you and gives it voice. It makes—”

“Devils!” Nona said.

Kettle nodded. “I think you just lost something that you don’t want back. How would you fare if the shipheart makes six replacements of your very own from the darkest parts of your mind? Speaking with your own voice?”

“But—”

“It would take someone of extraordinary purity to carry a shipheart unscathed. We’re none of us that.” She looked down. “I hadn’t understood how quickly the effects could occur or how bad they could be,” Kettle said. “We have to go.”

“Now!” Clera shouted. “We have to go now!” Her loudness suddenly made Nona realize how quiet it had become. Yisht had fallen silent, and Nona doubted it was a good thing.

Even so Nona hesitated. “We came for the shipheart . . .” Amidst the consuming aura of the thing she felt something more, there was a bond. Something of her lay in there too . . . her shadow! She understood it in that moment. The shipheart had drawn her shadow in, whether in Yisht’s defence or by its own nature. “We can’t come this close and just leave.”