Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘Those siege towers are the primary threat.’ Sister Tallow addressed the assembly as if they were standing on the sands of Blade Hall. ‘The emperor has doubtless massed his forces at the Amber Gate but you will have observed that the soldiers here stand too thin to withstand the flow of Scithrowl up those towers for long.’

‘A Mystic Sister could reduce one to kindling … We’ve seen what a Holy Sister can do!’ Wheel cast an approving glance at Nona, having been apprised of her efforts on the way into the city. ‘Though we have precious little to work with here.’

The Mystic Sisters ordained at Sweet Mercy were under Wheel’s orders on behalf of High Priest Nevis, but they had long ago been dispatched to the east front or the western one. Whether any still survived was unclear. Sister Pan had been able to confirm the deaths of the three most powerful of her former pupils.

Wheel’s gaze flickered across the nuns in front of her. Sister Pan was looking around with a slightly confused smile as if she thought they were on a trip for seven-day. Joeli had hunched down, perhaps worried she might catch an arrow even here. Her thread-work was remarkable but she wouldn’t be exploding a siege tower with it. Nona had already walked the Path and a second walk, even if it were tomorrow, would be a huge risk. Wheel beckoned Sheryl and Haluma, novices from Mystic Class. ‘Sister Pan tells me that you girls have walked the Path …’

A monk hastened past, his habit splashed with crimson, a longsword in hand. ‘Grey Brothers have fired the towers!’ He ran on.

Nona hurried out into the road for a view of the wall, past the novices who were risking quick looks around the corner of the street. The slanting, hide-covered roofs of the five surviving siege towers punctuated the battlements of the city wall. White smoke vomited from the chain-screened doorways, spilling out over the drawbridges anchored to the walls. It swirled around desperate Scithrowl charging out, more scared of what was behind them than the bloody steel of those waiting outside.

Nona called back her observations to Sister Apple then returned to shelter beside her and the abbess.

‘How could Greys set things like that afire? And unseen?’ Nona shook her head in wonder.

‘A structure like that?’ Sister Tallow frowned. ‘To fire that with what a man could carry, and carry undetected …’

‘I hope they got away,’ said Nona.

‘No,’ replied Apple. ‘They did not.’

‘They would have had to infiltrate the Scithrowl,’ Apple said. ‘They would have had naphtha oil hidden all across them in waterskins beneath their clothes. Then, Ancestor take them and love them, they must have lit themselves up inside the structure. Somewhere near the bottom, but not too close to the entrance.’

It took half an hour to clear the walls of Scithrowl. By that time the siege towers were pillars of flame, starting to collapse in on themselves. Kettle reported that the besieging Scithrowl had retreated to join the greater body of the horde, abandoning their ladders and scaling chains before the walls among the heaped bodies of the fallen. Nona watched the retreat through Kettle’s eyes, invited in as the Grey Sister took a place on a wall tower.

‘Look!’ Ruli tugged at Nona’s arm, pulling her from her visions.

Approaching along the broad, paved expanse of the King’s Road, named in a time before the empire, came a strange band, each wearing robes of a single pale colour, no two shades the same. Their advance was slow, almost reluctant. At their head walked a white-haired man, his eyes milky, skin thick with old burns. Nona knew him. ‘Rexxus Degon!’ The Chief Academic who had watched Nona when Sister Pan had brought her with Hessa and Ara to compete at the Academy. Beside him was a woman with long grey hair, her robe almost white. They looked to have come direct from the Academy building, huddled up against the emperor’s walls on the far side of the palace. Many of their following were no older than the novices around Nona.

‘Academics!’ Jula said. ‘I thought there were more of them.’

‘There were,’ Apple replied.

‘And now there are not,’ Sister Iron said.

‘There are Mystic Sisters with them!’ Nona spotted the sky-blue habits at the back. Sister Pan always wore the common black of the Holies and the sight of the blue was a rarity, even at Sweet Mercy. Two Mystic Sisters that she didn’t recognize, a pair of Mystic Brothers too, twins to look at them. ‘What are they doing here?’

Whatever answer might have been forthcoming went unheard as an urgent tug from Kettle stole Nona away. She stood within Kettle’s skin once more, alongside the ragged defenders waiting on the wall tower. The elevation afforded a view of the Scithrowl’s endless horde arrayed across Verity’s garden-lands, an ugly scar where fields green with jump-corn had once swayed. Something was coming. Nona couldn’t see what Kettle was looking at, just that a great number of Scithrowl were on the move, swirling around, pushing.

‘They’re getting out of the way of something,’ Kettle said.

A space opened around a group of perhaps two dozen people. Flames leapt from nowhere, winding up into the air around those approaching the wall, a bright fire torn on swiftly cycling winds that seemed to centre on the newcomers.

‘Adoma’s Fist!’ Kettle raised the bow she had acquired and lofted an arrow towards the Scithrowl mages.

Others on the wall followed her example and soon scores of arrows had taken flight. None of them seemed to reach their targets. Perhaps the winds had turned them from their path.

As the Scithrowl drew closer Nona could see individuals. A group of five, two men and three women, nearly naked, dancing at the base of the rising firestorm; three more in white cloaks, advancing with their arms raised. Workers of flame and air, weaving a protection against arrows. Three heavyset men, in bronze armour, walked at the fore, the fires overhead reflecting on the scales of their mail and the oiled thickness of muscle on huge arms. Rock-workers perhaps, come to tumble the walls. And behind them, two dozen individuals, some tall, some short, some old, some young, clad in all manner of styles, some in the loud colours favoured by their people, others in black cloaks; one in a leather dress set with silver plates; a painfully thin man in antique armour lacquered with red enamel. This last one was their leader. Nona remembered him and many of the others from the memories Kettle had shared of her time in Adoma’s court. One thing only united them amid their variety. Sigils. Even at this distance they scratched at Nona’s mind. All of them wore at least a couple of sigil wards. Like the Path-mage had …

‘They’re all quantals!’

Nona realized she was back with the abbess and had spoken aloud.

‘Tell me!’ It wasn’t Wheel who was shaking Nona. Sister Pan had her arm in an iron grip. ‘What did you see?’

‘Adoma’s Fist,’ Nona said. ‘Adoma’s Fist is coming.’

Rexxus Degon and his allies had reached the convent party. Ahead of them, beyond the walls, the windstorm had twisted the day’s smoke into strange patterns. The remnants of the siege towers collapsed before the strengthening gale, sparks and embers filling the air.

‘Kettle showed me. Adoma’s Fist is coming,’ Nona repeated. She hadn’t thought there would be so many quantals. If the marjals were full-bloods specializing in fire, air, and stone-work they alone could threaten the walls, but with a score of Path-mages at their backs there was no chance of resisting them. On Scithrowl’s distant border with the Kingdom of Ald it was said that Adoma’s Fist had struck down great castles and laid waste to armies. They had never been seen within the empire though. Not by any that lived to tell of it. The hope that they would remain in the east, occupied with the war against Ald had always been a vain one, but now as it shattered Nona realized how hard she and many others had clung to it.