LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘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.’ Zole’s voice resonated through the night. ‘Serenity will preserve you.’

      Nona didn’t 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 moon’s 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 child’s 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 Nona’s 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 man’s corpse had been stained black beneath the crimson.

      ‘Hold to yourself.’ Zole closed the remaining distance that Nona’s feet proved unwilling to cross. Zole had seen Nona’s old devil and kept the secret. Zole said they called them klaulathu on the ice. Things of the Missing.

      Without preamble, Zole pressed the heart’s orb to the wound above Nona’s knee. Nona had expected her flesh to sizzle, the blood in her veins to boil like the water in Sweet Mercy’s 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 Nona’s 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 Nona’s 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 Yisht’s 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 Nona’s eyes with an uncomfortable intensity.

      ‘I don’t 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 don’t know how Zole can stand it.’ Part of her wanted to tell the abbess about the devil she had seen at Zole’s wrist when she first arrived with the shipheart. She bit down on the impulse. She had lived with Keot for years and Zole hadn’t informed on her. Zole would have to deal with her own demons. The abbess probably couldn’t help in any case. And the inquisitors with her would want to burn the devil out of Zole.

      Abbess Glass took Nona’s hand and led her back to the main group. ‘You’re 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 shipheart’s glow, Zole on one knee, applying the heart to the nun’s inner thigh. Kettle broke away with a cry after just a moment’s 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 …’ Kettle’s wide eyes sought the abbess as though she were night-blind.

      ‘Here.’ Abbess Glass took the nun’s hands. ‘You’re safe.’

      Nona raised her brows at the enormity of that lie but said nothing.

      ‘I can’t go near it again. I can’t.’ Kettle shot a glance over her shoulder as if Zole might be approaching with the shipheart even now.

      ‘It’s all right, sister.’ The abbess led them further away. ‘I need you to protect us as we journey west. Even if all Sherzal’s 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.’

      ‘But Zole …’

      ‘Zole will have her Shield.’

       3

       Holy Class

       Present Day

      After leaving Markus at the Caltess Nona ran to the city gates. She covered the five miles from Verity’s walls to the foot of the Rock of Faith at a near sprint. The burning of her muscles and the hot thrill of her blood battled the night wind’s chill.

      Doubt dogged her footsteps, each mile and each yard. The voices of her suspicion were almost as real, almost as disembodied as Keot’s voice had been when he lived beneath her skin. Will he be true? Can he be trusted? Questions Nona had no answer for, just the feeling in her gut. Clera betrayed you, the voices whispered, and she was a friend.

      ‘She saved me too.’ Panted out between breaths as Nona picked up her pace, trying to outrun her doubts.

      Nona shook her head, sweat flying in the wind. She was to be a nun. She would choose from the disciplines offered to her. Just a handful of final tests stood between her and the vows. She was to stand her life upon a foundation of faith. Faith that the branches of the Ancestor’s tree would hold her, and that those branches would carry all of humanity into a future less dark than they feared. If a nun could not have faith then who could? The bonds of friendship had always borne her more firmly than those of blood. Markus had ridden with her in the cage and that bond would suffice. She had faith that it would. Also she had a back-up plan. With a gasp of effort she ran faster still, until any that she might have passed on the road that night would have stood amazed and watched her fly.

      At last she came to a halt, breathing heavily. The base of a great limestone cliff rose above her. From its heights the southern windows of Blade Hall offered a view of the city and, twenty miles beyond, the ice glimmering red beneath the moon. Those walls were closer now than they had been when Abbess Glass had first brought

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