Many miles became few miles and, as the fog cleared, became a singular remaining mile. The land had opened up into heath where the soil stood too thin and too sour for crops. Farmsteads lay scattered, raising sheep and goats, few houses stood close enough to see one from the next. Apple picked up speed, running now as she crossed rough ground, divided here and there by grassed-over lanes and collapsed walls of dry stone. Ahead the land dipped. In the broad valley a stream threaded its path between stands of trees before losing itself in a thicker extent of woodland. Kettle waited among those woods, Apple could feel it; her nearness tugged at the scar her shadow-cry had left.
Apple slowed as she approached the first trees. She had been careless before: her haste had delivered her into the hands of men she could have stepped around unnoticed if she had kept her focus. She moved between two elms and the shadows flowed around her, raised with both hands. Shade-work had always come easy to her. Darkness pooled in her palms. When the shadows answered her will it felt as if she had remembered some name that had long escaped her, or recognized the solution to a puzzle, a sort of mental relief, joy almost. Other shadow-magic had been worked within the woods. The empty spaces shivered with the echoes of it. Kettle’s cry lay there, sharp and deep, but other traces too, the sour workings of Noi-Guin. Apple had tasted their like before, back at Sweet Mercy on the night Thuran Tacsis had sent two of them to kill Nona. Quite how they had failed in that task was beyond her.
Apple wrapped herself in darkness and sought the patience of the Grey Sister. Mistress Path had taught her the mantras twenty years ago and Apple had made them part of her own foundation, woven through her core. Today though, with Kettle’s distress throbbing through the shadow, patience came hard.
The undergrowth scratched and tore and rustled with each step Apple took. She felt as raw as any novice, her woodcraft rusty with disuse, certain that her advance would be heard by any foe within a thousand yards. Bait the trap. A tactic as old as killing. Leave a comrade, a friend, a lover wounded, then wait and watch. A Noi-Guin could be resting among the branches of any tree, crossbow ready, bolt envenomed.
Kettle wouldn’t have called me if that were true. Apple advanced, leaving patience behind her but bringing the shadows.
All that drew her eyes to Kettle was the bond between them. The nun lay at the base of a great frost-oak, the length of her body fitting around the rise and fall of roots. Leaves and mud covered her range-coat, her headdress gone, the spread of raven hair showing the paleness of her face only in thin slices. She lay sprawled like a dead thing, a part of the forest floor, a work of camouflage of which any Grey Sister would be proud.
‘Kettle!’ Apple came to her side, the fear of an assassin’s bow crushed beneath the certainty that Kettle lay dead and that no purpose remained to her in the world. She took Kettle’s muddy fingers in her own, shocked by the coldness of them. ‘Kettle … it’s me.’ She choked on the words, overwhelmed, while her other hand, still calm, sought the nun’s pulse with practised ease. Nothing. No … not nothing, a whisper.
Apple reached to pull Kettle to her, to lift her from the cold ground, but saw the hilt of the knife, jutting from her side just above the hip. She touched a finger to the pommel, an iron ball. Leather binding wound the grip. She recognized the dagger. Kettle had shown one like it to her after it was confiscated from Nona. Noi-Guin for certain then. The one that got away. Apple eased her lover onto her lap and sat for a moment, hugging her, eyes squeezed tight against the tears. Seconds later she drew a deep shuddering breath and strove for calm.
Think.
Apple set Kettle back upon the ground and stripped her own range-coat to lie her on. With Kettle arranged on the coat she examined her for other injuries, checking the colour of her skin, lifting an eyelid, listening to her breath, watching the speed with which circulation returned to her extremities when pinched. She took a thin leather tube from the collection within her habit and broke the seal. Already the cold was making her shiver. She tipped the liquid into Kettle’s mouth, sat back, and watched. The knife was the only wound. It must have been coated with blade-venom but there were no strong indications to narrow down the type.
For the longest minute in Apple’s life nothing happened. All about her the trees groaned against the wind, their leaves seething. Then Kettle twitched, spluttered and started to choke. Apple seized her head. ‘Easy! Just breathe.’
‘W-where?’ Any further question became lost in coughing and choking. One hand clutched at the range-coat just above the knife. ‘Hurts.’
‘I told you to breathe, idiot.’
‘A-Appy?’ Kettle rolled her head to see, eyes squinting as if the light were too bright. Her skin was bone-white, lips almost blue. ‘Sister.’ The faintest smile.
‘I’ve given you adrene, it won’t last long. Tell me what you’ve taken. Quick!’
‘Nona. She made me call.’ Kettle slurred the words, staring past Apple at the leaves, black against a white sky. ‘Gone now.’
Apple shook her. ‘What did you take? It’s important!’
‘B—’ Kettle blinked, trying to focus. ‘Black cure.’ Her breath came shallow and fast. ‘And … kalewort.’
‘Kalewort?’
‘I … was cold. Thought it … might be nightweed on—’
‘Who puts nightweed in blade-venom?’ Apple shook her head. ‘Where’s the assassin?’
‘Gone.’ Kettle’s eyes closed and her head flopped back.
Apple bit her lip. The black cure should have had more effect whatever the Noi-Guin had used. She tasted blood and frowned. Her mind lay blank. Nothing in her great store of lore suggested a cause or cure.
Despair closed about Apple. Her lips moved, reciting venoms, none of which fitted the symptoms. Tendrils of shadow caught around Kettle, moving across her in wisps. Apple stared, her brow furrowed, mind racing. On the white inch of wrist exposed before Kettle’s range-coat swallowed her arm, a line of shadow followed the path of the largest vein.
‘No?’ Apple motioned the shadows around her forward and like a dark sea they washed over Kettle. As they drew back traces of shadow remained, held by her veins as a lodestone will hold powdered iron, revealing the invisible lines of its influence. ‘Yes!’
She grabbed Kettle’s face in both hands. ‘Wake up! Kettle, wake up!’ Kettle lay, as boneless as the Durns in the road. Apple slapped her. ‘Wake up! It was dark-venom.’
‘I’m dead then.’ Kettle rolled her eyes open. ‘I’m so sorry.’ A glistening tear pooled in the corner of her eye. She lifted a hand, as if it were the heaviest thing in the world, to Apple’s cheek. ‘You’re bleeding.’
Apple took the fingers and kissed them. ‘You are my blood.’
The darkness began to thicken around them, shadows streaming towards Apple, clotting about her.
‘What are … you doing?’ The smoothness of Kettle’s brow furrowed and her hand dropped back to her side.
‘Saving you,’ Apple said. The effort of drawing so much shadow so fast tightened her voice. She felt a coldness in her bones, an ache behind her eyes.
‘H-how?’ Kettle sought her eyes. ‘There’s no way.’
‘There is a way.’ Apple saw Kettle only because the darkness ran so deep in her. Night enfolded them both now, a fist of darkness within the depths of a forest grown lighter as its shadows were stolen. ‘I have to push you into shadow.’
‘No.’ Kettle managed to shake her head. ‘The Ancestor—’
‘I have to. It’s the only way.’ Apple gathered the darkness