Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘I can draw them out and give them to the fire.’

‘But can you put them back as they were?’

‘It would make you less pure, further from the Ancestor.’ Zole watched her without judgement.

‘Even so.’ Nona leaned her head to expose her neck to Zole. ‘You’ve burned away all your sins and weaknesses, and it’s left you so distant from us you hardly care who lives and who dies. I can’t make a decision like this with my head full of broken pieces, but I can’t make it with those pieces gone either.’ She met Zole’s grey eyes. ‘Please.’

Zole set her palm to the first of Nona’s devils. The feeling as it fell apart and unwound beneath her touch, beneath Nona’s skin, was something both bitter and sweet. Something lost and something gained.

Zole found the second and third of Nona’s devils without needing to look for them, even though they fled from sight. In moments Nona’s anger, her thirst for revenge, and her capacity for hate were no longer screaming at her from separate sources but woven back into the fabric of who she was, the good with the bad.

Nona took a deep breath and addressed the air. ‘Won’t the focus burn up the whole city as it narrows, or have to burn a path in from outside?’

‘The moon’s albedo can be rapidly varied between zero and one.’

‘What?’

‘The moon will go dark until it is pointed and focused.’

‘You can turn the moon on and off at my request?’

‘Yes.’

Nona stood for a moment in blank amazement before finding her voice again. ‘Zole, tell this thing to obey me.’ She approached the image. The counterattack had faltered and the remaining defenders were pressed against the walls. At points around the palace the Scithrowl were unopposed, deploying ladders and scaling chains against the battlements where the guards fought to throw them back.

‘Why would I put such a power in the hands of one who has yet to be shriven of a single raulathu? You are unformed clay, Nona Grey.’

‘At least I care. At least it will hurt me, whatever decision I make. At least I’m terrified!’ Nona defocused her eyes to see the thread-scape. She had learned to look far deeper than when she had tried that first day in Path Tower and declared that Zole had no threads. Sister Pan had been right to correct her. Everything had threads. Even now the water that comprised the bulk of Zole’s body had countless threads joining it to the world. But the threads that really mattered, the brightest ones that Nona had been unable to see on her first attempt, the threads that both described Zole and bound her to the people around her … those threads were more completely absent than they had ever been.

‘In the end none of this will matter, Nona Grey.’ Zole spread her hands. ‘Who will know our names in a hundred years? Who built the forest of stone upon the doorstep of Sweet Mercy? Change runs through everything. Perfection is the only constant.’

‘It matters to me. Now.’ Nona took Zole’s cool grey hands in her own, filthy with mud and blood. ‘You’re leaving us. I know that. I don’t know where you’re going. To join the Missing maybe. But you’re going. And it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re my friend, Zole. I would die for you. The least you can do is give me the moon.’

Nona wasn’t sure if she imagined the brief and tiny curl of Zole’s lips, but if the smile were imagined the order was not.

‘Let Nona guide the moon.’

29

Holy Class

The sound of a battle can be described as a roar, and sometimes it truly is. When a thousand warriors charge a roar precedes them and swallows up all other noise. But in between charge and counter-charge there is the screaming of those too wounded to hold their peace and not yet close enough to crossing the Path that they fall silent. There is the clash of weapons, most often on shields for tight-packed conflict is an ugly, graceless thing and there are few parries made. There are the desperate cries for aid and there is the sobbing of the lost.

Kettle heard all these things. She saw a forest of legs and bodies rising around her, and at her back the palace wall. She saw the black sky above. Here and there crimson stars shone through the wind-torn smoke. Of the Hope there was no sign.

She didn’t hurt so much as ache, her pain a dull throb beneath the blanket of exhaustion that smothered her. She wouldn’t think of Apple. Instead she left those raw voids in her mind untouched, her thoughts skittering around them. The Scithrowl sounded very close. She would not have to avoid thinking of Apple for too long.

It did not seem that anything short of the Ancestor in person, stepping out of thin air and clad in glory, could silence a pitched battle. But when, without warning, the focus moon lit around them, all the many thousands locked in combat paused in astonishment.

The focus, not due for hours yet, had not crept upon them, rising smoothly to its blazing climax. One moment it had been dark, the next they were plunged into the fierce heat of the moon. Every flame looked pale now – all the city’s fires, the torches and battle-lanterns amid the throng, the flame-serpents coiling around Adoma’s throne platform, all flickering ghosts of themselves. Those closest to death knew with certainty that they were now looking across the Path.

In that following moment, when one soldier might think to take advantage of his enemy’s distraction, a second wonder happened. In the space of three heartbeats the moon dimmed to a dull crimson disc on which the eye could rest. And every eye rested there. This was a wonder past the skill of any mage.

Kettle raised her head, an action she had thought beyond her. She pushed with her legs, sliding her back against the emperor’s walls, rising from the dead and wounded heaped about her and struggled up, drawn by a communal intake of breath all around her. Across the face of the moon something was being written as if by a dark finger. Two words in black on red. Written in the Scithrowl tongue.

Go home.

A muttering spread across the length of the King’s Road and out to the fields beyond. The literate among Adoma’s horde sharing the meaning.

Far back among her forces Adoma rose from her throne, a distant figure gleaming crimson. The battle-queen’s words reached Kettle as if she were standing at her side, reverberating across the intervening yards through the art of the wind-workers ringing her seat. Few among the emperor’s forces understood her words but the tone left no doubt that her message was one of defiance.

‘The Scithrowl do not run from lights and tricks! This is our home now. Before me lies my palace.’ Power lay behind those words. Hers was a voice to stir a heart to violence, to wake pride in any chest. The army around her had claimed hundreds of Corridor miles in the battle-queen’s name. They wouldn’t run. Not beneath her gaze and with victory just a spear’s throw ahead of them. The Scithrowl warriors began to raise their weapons and find their voice.

The rising cheer faltered as the moon went wholly dark, leaving twice a hundred thousand eyes night-blind. Kettle cursed herself for letting her training slip and allowing herself to lose an edge. Apple would scold—

The moon lit again though not to full focus. A brilliant light fell around Adoma’s throne, filling half the width of the road. The intensity rose from dazzling to blinding so swiftly that there was almost not enough time to look away. A moment later the searing circle of light had gone, replaced by a general illumination bringing the day to Verity’s night.