Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘Got to … got to help Ruli …’ Nona let out a sigh and dropped her chin to her chest. A moment later the thread-bond took her.

Ruli’s screams were so loud that Nona couldn’t imagine how they hadn’t heard them in the corridor less than a hundred yards away. The agony was worse than anything Nona had endured that day and yet somehow she knew the girl hadn’t said a word about what she’d seen in the book.

The pain slackened and as Ruli drew breath Nona heard Jula’s sobs. The novice had been far less close-mouthed than her friend. In between her tears she had been telling Sherzal everything she remembered from Aquinas’s Book of the Moon. Which, given it was Jula, was pretty much everything that lay between the book’s covers. Clearly Sherzal’s guards were better educated than most because one of them was making extensive notes as Jula spilled her guts.

‘Stop hurting her! You said you would!’

‘I said I might. When you’ve told us everything.’

Ruli unscrewed her eyes and brought Sherzal into hazy focus. The emperor’s sister was pacing in front of Jula who sat nearby against the wall. In addition to the note-taking guard two others flanked the girl.

‘Shall we try that again?’ A gentle voice close by Ruli’s ear.

Ruli shivered and tried to turn away but strong fingers gripped her chin and steered her face towards Safira, crouched at her side. Behind Kettle’s former lover stood Joeli Namsis, looking slightly sick.

Give me your body, Ruli.

Nona? Sweet Ancestor, I thought you’d abandoned me!

Give me your body.

I thought you’d never ask, dear. And with that Ruli fled to the sanctum Nona offered her, surrendering all control.

One of Ruli’s arms had been bound to her side. The other was in Safira’s grip, the hand flopping uselessly on a broken wrist. But the broken wrist wasn’t the main source of Ruli’s pain and it didn’t stop what Safira was doing to her fingers from reaching her. Safira took another black needle and prepared to push it under one of the only two of Ruli’s fingernails that didn’t yet have one bedded beneath it. Nona supposed they must be coated with something like red asp venom. Just needles beneath the fingernails on their own surely couldn’t account for the monstrous agony coursing through Ruli’s hand?

‘Ready?’ Safira asked.

‘You’re right to think that Aquinas’s book is the key.’ Nona struggled to keep her voice steady, hissing her words past Ruli’s teeth.

‘What?’ Safira narrowed her eyes.

‘The book was the key. But you never understood what it was the key to.’

Safira studied Ruli’s eyes, suspicious. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Yes, child, do explain yourself.’ Sherzal loomed over them both, still smiling. Ruli’s lack of screaming and pleading had drawn her interest. Even Jula’s sobs had fallen silent.

‘Wh— who do you think you’re fighting here?’ Nona forced a smile onto Ruli’s lips. ‘The Scithrowl? Your brother? A handful of novices?’

The smallest frown rippled Sherzal’s brow just above her nose. ‘Adoma. It’s always been Adoma. At least since Shella Yammal passed to the Ancestor.’ Sherzal stepped closer to peer at Ruli’s face. ‘I knew her of old, you know. Before this silliness of convents and abbesses.’

Nona spat blood from Ruli’s mouth and forced herself to look at her fingers. The pain was unreal but somehow with the shipheart burning through her nothing else could quite seem to feel more important. ‘If you had truly known Abbess Glass then you would have known death would not stop her.’

Sherzal’s eyes widened and she took an involuntary step back. Nona felt Ruli’s surprise too, along with a sudden shock of betrayal. Nona hadn’t told any of them the truth. Not all of it.

‘When the abbess set us hunting for that book she wasn’t after something that held the secrets of the moon … just something that you would want very badly. Abbess Glass always played the long game. I thought you knew that?’ Nona spat again. ‘She wanted us to take something that would have you bring us here, past all the emperor’s secrets and defences, right to the gates of the Ark. Why do you think we left it so late? There were years to take that book in. Why do you think we hid our plans so poorly? We couldn’t make it too easy, though. Was it Joeli who found out what we were doing and told you?’ Nona drew a breath and locked Ruli’s eyes on Sherzal’s. ‘Or Markus? Or both?’ A pang ran through Nona at the unintended admission on Sherzal’s face. The others had thought including Markus was a stupid move. That he would betray them all in a heartbeat. But they had trusted Nona’s judgement in the end. And while Nona had chosen to include Markus so that there was yet another way Sherzal would know what they were after and want to take it from them … deep down Nona had believed Markus would be true, that the fellowship forged in the cage would endure …

‘This is nonsense!’ Sherzal pulled herself together. ‘The girl’s just trying to buy time. Get on with it, Safira. And you!’ She turned towards Jula. ‘Every detail, or I will cut this child’s nose and ears from her face and drop them in your lap.’

Safira leaned in with another needle.

‘Sorry, Kettle,’ Nona muttered, and Safira paused, momentarily puzzled. Nona drew on the shipheart’s power and as Safira came into line with the finger intended for her needle Nona drove out a single flaw-blade, twice as long as her usual ones. Safira froze, skewered. The blade entered beneath her chin and emerged from the back of her skull.

‘Safira!’ Sherzal stepped forward, impatient with the delay.

Safira twitched then slumped. Nona vanished her blade and the woman fell, pinning Ruli and her injured arm to the floor.

Nona bit down on the pain and continued to address Sherzal as if nothing of consequence had happened. ‘You brought us here, under pressure, in haste, careless, and you showed us the way in, showed us each trick and trap and secret.’

‘Kill her!’ Sherzal barked the words at Joeli and ran for the door by which they had entered.

‘I wouldn’t advise it, Joeli.’ Nona locked Ruli’s eyes on the Namsis girl. ‘I’m waiting for you and there’s no place I won’t find you if you hurt another of my friends.’

Sherzal halted by the door. ‘Show me the corridor.’

What looked like a clear window opened in the middle of the door, but the view shifted as if the window were moving swiftly along the corridor outside.

‘Stop!’

The image fixed upon three figures. Three dirty, wet, blood-stained figures advancing towards the door. Nona was in the lead and in her arms she held Ara’s limp form, the girl’s eyes glittering through slits. Clera walked ten paces behind Nona, nervous, glancing back along the brightly lit hall.

‘You think the guards you have here will stop us?’ Nona asked. It felt very strange to see herself walking towards them. Ara was controlling her flesh just as Nona was controlling Ruli’s.

‘What I think is that the blast doors outside can only be opened from in here,’ Sherzal said. ‘That’s what I think.’

‘If you leave now you might still escape,’ Nona said. ‘You know ways out of this city, tunnels beneath the walls. You have money, contacts, followers. You could buy your way along the ice and come down somewhere where Scithrowl and Durn are half a dozen kingdoms away.’