You would rather be watching the fights. Markus spoke without emphasis but the waves of power bleeding from him shocked Nona with their intensity. It was as if someone had opened a furnace door and an unexpected wall of heat had broken across her.
Regol turned back and walked off without comment.
He wont be pleased when that wears off, Nona said.
No. Markus nodded. But it would have been worse if hed stayed longer. He didnt like me at all, and we both know why.
Oh. Nona laughed, though it came out wrong. Regols not like that. He flirts with all the girls. The ladies of the Sis practically worship
Its you he wants, Nona. You dont have to be an empath to know that.
No, hes just She trailed off as Markus shook his head, his smile half-sad. Anyway, you got rid of him easily enough. A twinge of disappointment had run through her at that.
Easily? Markus leaned back against the wall. He put up a hell of a fight. I would never have suspected it of a Caltess brawler. He put his fingers to his temples. Ill probably have a headache all night
Nona said nothing, only glanced towards the corner. After Joeli had made Regol abandon Darla mid-fight at Sherzals palace the ring-fighter had asked Nona to help him. He hadnt wanted to be manipulated like that ever again. Nona had spent hours training him to erect barriers against that kind of thread-work. He would take this defeat badly.
Nona defocused her vision and looked at Markus amid the glory of the threads, the Paths halo. Marjal empathy was essentially thread-work that concentrated only on living threads and manipulated them more intuitively, based around emotional clusters. It was, in many senses, a tool designed for a specific job. Whereas a quantal thread-worker had ultimately more potential and flexibility, the task was always more fiddly and harder work. The threads around Markus formed a glowing aura, brighter and more dynamic than any she had seen before. The host of threads that joined him to her some years old, some freshly formed ran taut, shivering with possibility, unvoiced emotions vibrating along their length. Markus would read it better than she could, but he would feel the answer rather than seeing it before him in the complexity that filled the space between them.
In fact, Sister Pan had revealed that all marjal enchantment was simply the power of the Path and the control of thread-work, but collected together into useful tools in the same way that iron and wood may be turned into many different implements, and many of those are of more immediate use than a log and a bar of iron and the option to shape both.
Nona?
Nona realized that Markus had said something she missed. She looked back.
You asked me here
I did. She stepped closer and he pressed his shoulders to the wall, every thread he had bent towards her, like the reflex of a river-anemone to touch. I need your help.
Markus frowned. I can help you?
I need to do something dangerous and illegal.
Markuss frown deepened. Why would you trust me? Because we rode together for a few weeks in a cage when I was ten and you were eight? I nearly got you killed two years later.
I trust you because you didnt ask me why I thought you would help, just why I would trust that help. And also because you didnt lie about what happened at the Academy.
All right. He met her eyes. Why would I help you? Its dangerous and against the law.
Youll help me because when they put us in that cage we never really came out of it again. And because your Abbot Jacob is still tied to the Tacsis name and so are his plans for further advancement. Doing this will help make sure that never happens. Hessa told me what happened to Four-Foot when Giljohn took you to Jacobs house.
I suppose you think me weak, serving a man who did something like that? I suppose you would have beaten him to death? Markus didnt try to hide the mix of anger and shame bubbling through him.
Maybe I would have killed him, but youre a better person than I am. Im not proud of my temper.
Markus twisted his lips into half of a doubtful smile. So, you need me, and you trust me. What is it that you need me for, and trust me not to betray you over?
Nona glanced over her shoulder into the night. From inside the Caltess the crowds roar swelled. Another bout coming to a bloody end, no doubt. I have to break into the Cathedral of St Allam and steal something from High Priest Neviss vault of forbidden books.
2
Three years earlier
The Escape
In the dark of the moon by the side of the Grand Pass two dozen citizens of the empire huddled away from the wind. Dawn would show them an unparalleled view of that empire, spread out before them to the west, marching between the ice towards the Sea of Marn.
Nona stood close to the rock wall, pressed between Ara and Kettle. Her leg ached where the stump of Yishts sword had driven in, pain shooting up and down as she shifted her weight, the whole limb stiffening.
Abbess Glass had gathered the survivors in a bend where the folds of the cliff offered some shelter. There were among their number men and women who owned substantial swathes of the Corridor, who had been born to privilege and to command. But here in their bloodstained finery, with flames from the palace of the emperors sister licking up into the night behind them, it was to Abbess Glass they turned for direction.
It will take Sherzals soldiers a while to navigate around Zoles landslide but theyll come. It wont take long then to alert the garrisons and send riders down the road to Verity. Theres no chance of making the capital that way.
We dont need to reach Verity. Lord Jotsis spoke up. My estates are closer.
Castle Jotsis is formidable, Ara said, looking between her uncle and the abbess.
Abbess Glass shook her head. Sherzal will bottle us up anywhere but the capital. She might not be insane enough to lay siege to your castle, my lord, but she would likely encircle your holdings to prevent word reaching the emperor. And besides, I fear that closer is not close enough.
So weve escaped only to be hunted down on the road? One side of old Lord Glosiss face had swollen into a single bruise but she still had enough energy to be temperamental. Unacceptable.
Its the shipheart that Sherzal wants above anything else. The abbess nodded to where Zole waited, some thirty yards closer to the landslide, her hands dark around the glowing purple sphere she had recovered from the Tetragode. If we give her good reason to think that it has gone in another direction she wont spare many soldiers for chasing us. Maybe none.
And how, Lord Jotsis asked, can we make her think we havent taken the shipheart with us?
Abbess Glass turned to stare at the darkness of the slopes rising above them. By making them think it has gone south, towards the ice.
How can we make them think its been sent south? Lord Glosis asked, leaning on the arm of a young relative.
By actually sending it south, to the ice, the abbess said. Zole will take it and let them see the glow upon the slopes.
By actually sending it south, to the ice, the abbess said. Zole will take it and let them see the glow upon the slopes.
But thats madness. Lord Jotsis drew himself to his full height. You cant entrust a treasure like that to a lone novice!
I can when its the lone novice who somehow stole that treasure from the heart of the Noi-Guins stronghold in the first place, Abbess Glass replied.
She wont be alone. Nona limped forward.
Ara hobbled to stand beside Nona. Kettle put her hands on their shoulders. In our state were going to be slowing the abbess down on the road. None of us will be any use to Zole trying to outdistance soldiers across the mountains.
Kettle was right. Nona gritted her teeth against the pain in her thigh and refused to let the admission out.
The abbess advanced on them, windswept, grey hair straggled across her face. The Noi-Guins shipheart is a marjal one. Its said that in the hands of a marjal healer it can mend any wound but that it can also bring harm.
Well, I dont want to go near it. Nona shuddered. She knew what harm the shipheart could bring. It had even squeezed a devil out of Zole, the most tightly bound person she had ever met. And we dont have a marjal healer.
We have Zole, the abbess said, and raising her voice she called to the ice-triber. Zole, time to show us what Sister Rose has been teaching you.
Zole beckoned them rather than approach and bring with her the awful pressure of the shiphearts presence. Nona took a few uncertain steps towards the girl, Ara behind her, then Kettle, all of them limping, the novice because of the arrow wound in her calf, the nun because of a knife wound in her thigh.
We shouldnt be doing this, Abbess. Nona looked back. The Sweet Mercy shipheart did terrible things to Yisht.
And yet Zole is untouched. The abbess and the others were black shapes now, with just edges picked out here and there by the deep purple light of the shipheart.
But Zole was not untouched
Find your serenity. Zoles voice resonated through the night. Serenity will preserve you.
Nona didnt feel serene. She felt scared and in pain, but she reached for her trance, running the lines of the old song through her head, imagining the slow descent of the moon and the children of her village chanting in a circle around the fire. And with the moons fall a blanket of serenity settled upon her, setting the world apart, her pain not gone but no longer personal, more a curio, an object for study.
Zole held the shipheart out towards them, a sphere the size of a childs head, resting on both palms, dark purple, almost black, but somehow glowing with a violet light that seemed to shade beyond vision. Nona advanced. She felt the pressure of the thing, as if she had fallen into deep water. She had plunged into the black depths of the Glasswater sinkhole before, and this was no less terrifying. The need to breathe built in her and threatened her serenity, before, with a gasp, she remembered that there was no reason not to draw breath.
With just a yard between them Nonas skin began to prickle then burn, as if the devils were there already just waiting for their true colours to be made known. Nona had shared her skin with a devil before, Keot, not one of her own making but one that had infected her when she killed Raymel Tacsis. The rocks around the mans corpse had been stained black beneath the crimson.
Hold to yourself. Zole closed the remaining distance that Nonas feet proved unwilling to cross. Zole had seen Nonas old devil and kept the secret. Zole said they called them klaulathu on the ice. Things of the Missing.
Without preamble, Zole pressed the hearts orb to the wound above Nonas knee. Nona had expected her flesh to sizzle, the blood in her veins to boil like the water in Sweet Mercys pipes, but instead icy fingers wrapped around her bones and a black-violet light stole her vision. For a moment she saw strange spires silhouetted against an indigo sky, swept away in the next beat of her heart as if by a great wind. The Path opened before her; not the narrow and treacherous line that had to be hunted, but broad, blazing, so wide that its direction became uncertain, a place one might wander, drunk on power until the end of days. Voices began to sound within Nonas head, all of them hers but speaking from different places, some raging, some jealous, some whispering secret fears or wants, a babble at first but each taking on a separate identity, becoming clearer, more distinct.
Done. Zole pushed Nona back, the base of her palm against Nonas sternum.
Nona staggered and Ara kept her from falling with help from Kettle. The heart-light caught their faces, making something alien of them both.
Are you all right? Kettle asked.
I Nona stood straight, stamped her leg. It still ached but the flesh had been made whole, a white line of scar tissue marking the passage of Yishts blade. Yes. The voices that had filled her mind became jumbled together once more, fading back into the shadows.
Go on. Kettle sent Nona back towards the abbess and the rest of the group, giving her shoulder a small shove to get her going.
By the time Nona reached the ruins of the carriage that they had escaped the palace in she was calm again, her serenity intact.
How do you feel? The abbess watched Nonas eyes with an uncomfortable intensity.
I dont know, Nona said. Tired. But full of energy. If that makes sense. She looked back down at her leg, the scar visible through the tattered smock. The cold no longer touched her. I dont know how Zole can stand it. Part of her wanted to tell the abbess about the devil she had seen at Zoles wrist when she first arrived with the shipheart. She bit down on the impulse. She had lived with Keot for years and Zole hadnt informed on her. Zole would have to deal with her own demons. The abbess probably couldnt help in any case. And the inquisitors with her would want to burn the devil out of Zole.
Abbess Glass took Nonas hand and led her back to the main group. Youre mended? You can walk the distance now?
I could run it! Ara caught them up, her hair rising around her head as if backcombed, a blonde confusion defying the wind. She had a wild look in her eye. Nona met her gaze and a grin broke across both their faces, a shared understanding, and something more complex that perhaps neither understood. Nona wanted to run with her, to chase her. Wanted her friend.
The three of them turned to see Kettle silhouetted against the shiphearts glow, Zole on one knee, applying the heart to the nuns inner thigh. Kettle broke away with a cry after just a moments contact. She came hurrying down the road, not glancing back. She moved quickly, though still with a slight limp.
Sister Kettle? The abbess stepped forward to meet her.
Mother Kettles wide eyes sought the abbess as though she were night-blind.
Here. Abbess Glass took the nuns hands. Youre safe.
Nona raised her brows at the enormity of that lie but said nothing.
I cant go near it again. I cant. Kettle shot a glance over her shoulder as if Zole might be approaching with the shipheart even now.
Its all right, sister. The abbess led them further away. I need you to protect us as we journey west. Even if all Sherzals forces follow the shipheart towards the ice the empire roads are no longer a safe place for the vulnerable. And unguarded Sis lords are likely to be a tempting prize to any bandits we might pass.