‘Nona’s not going alone!’
‘Correct, she is not going alone. She’s going with Zole.’ The abbess turned from dispensing brief advice to Nona and set a hand to Ara’s shoulder. ‘We have a long road ahead of us, novice, charged with the protection of the emperor’s subjects, including many of his most powerful supporters, your own uncle among them. Would you leave us with a lone Grey Sister and a single Inquisition guard for protection? We will likely need someone among our number who can call on the power of the Path …’
Nona saw the anguish in Ara’s expression and tried to ease her mind. ‘We have to bring two things back to Sweet Mercy to make it right again. Zole and I will bring the shipheart. You’ll bring the abbess.’
‘But …’ Ara glanced up the curve of the road towards Zole, painted in violet light amid the darkness. ‘Sherzal will send an army after you!’
‘When we make it to the ice armies won’t matter,’ Nona said.
‘Because the ice will kill you!’ Ara shook the abbess’s hand from her shoulder, anguish on her face.
‘Zole was raised on the ice.’ Nona smiled. ‘You’ll be in more danger down on the plains than we will up there.’
‘Also,’ Abbess Glass interjected. ‘Consider that if Sherzal doesn’t get the shipheart back she will very definitely find her alliance with the Scithrowl in tatters. And likely the Noi-Guin turned against her. As soon as the odds shift against recovering the heart Sherzal would be sensible to recall her forces to defend the Grand Pass against the Battle-Queen’s hordes. It’s certainly what any sane person would do. My guess is that if you reach the ice she won’t dare risk mounting further pursuit in any significant numbers.’
There were no preparations to be made, no rations to be apportioned, no equipment save clothing to be dispersed. Nona stood ready, wrapped in Kettle’s coat. She was armed with a Noi-Guin sword, a knife, and eighteen throwing stars.
Kettle embraced her next. ‘It’s a hug, Nona, not spiders running down your back. Relax.’
Nona tried to unstiffen, and smiled. ‘Get the abbess home.’
Ara hugged Nona next, her hunska quickness allowing her friend no escape. ‘Come back to us,’ she breathed into Nona’s ear. ‘To me.’ She pressed some coins into her hand. ‘This may help.’
Kettle and Ara retreated, leaving Regol standing before her, looking almost nervous.
‘Careful on the ice.’ His old smile covered up any uncertainty.
‘I should watch for hoolas and ice-bears?’
‘If you like. I just meant that it’s slippery.’ He turned to go. ‘You should visit us at the Caltess when you get back.’ And walked off to rejoin the group. ‘I know Denam misses you.’
Nona watched as Abbess Glass, flanked on the drop-side by the Inquisition guard, Melkir, led the way down towards the main road and the long descent from the mountains. Ara brought up the rear, Regol by her side. Nona knew a moment’s jealousy. A day earlier she would have blamed it on Keot. She turned back towards Zole further up the track. In the distance the flames from Sherzal’s palace lit the slopes but seemed less vigorous than they had been.
‘Time to go,’ she said to nobody in particular: now that she had lost her devil, she lacked both an audience for her passing thoughts and a scapegoat for unworthy emotions. The peaks loomed somewhere above her in the darkness and an arduous journey lay ahead with only Zole for company.
‘Do not fall behind.’ Zole led the way, her gaze fixed upon the fractured rock before her.
‘I’ll try to avoid falling in any direction.’ Nona snatched a cold breath and hauled herself up.
Kettle’s coat blunted the wind’s teeth. Other items of warm clothing had been recovered from two guests who made it into the carriage but thanks to arrows from Sherzal’s soldiers did not make it out again. She wore a dead man’s shoes, a poor fit but better than bare feet on icy rock. Back on the road Nona had considered herself well wrapped. On the slopes, despite the strenuous climb, she found herself shivering each time they rested.
Nona kept a distance of no less than two to three yards while following Zole. If she came closer the beat of the shipheart started to vibrate through her bones and each thought threatened to coalesce into its own creature that would then run roughshod through her mind. Any further away and she lost the light.
The shipheart’s glow served both to draw any pursuit and to illuminate the girls’ progress across the mountains’ slant. Nona quickly began to learn how to interpret the confusion of night-black shadows and dull violet surfaces revealed by Zole’s strange lantern. Gravity and rocks provide a harsh but swift education.
Navigating the raw flanks of the Grampains proved a worryingly slow affair. Nona had no experience of mountains and Zole had little more. The ice was, as she said, mostly flat. The first shock had been in discovering how quickly a sharp incline could sap your strength. Nona knew herself to be fit, but within half an hour her breath came in ragged gasps and her newly healed leg ached almost as badly as it had when the wound lay open. The strength and coldness of the wind was an unwelcome revelation too. The Grampains forced the gale to climb just as the novices must, and the wind seemed displeased by the task, dumping any warmth it might have held back on the plains as if to lighten the load. Above them the rocks glistened with frost, and ice collected in every crevice.
‘They’re catching up.’ Nona’s glance back showed a serpent of fireflies weaving its way along the ridge she’d toiled up not long before. Distance reduced each lantern in the pursuit to a glowing point. Slowly but surely Nona and Zole were losing ground. The soldiers giving chase knew these slopes and patrolled across them regularly. The advantage was theirs. ‘Close now.’
Zole grunted.
‘We’re not going to be able to outrun them.’ Nona felt as if she were whining but the truth was that she was frozen and exhausted. Also terrified of the invisible drops beyond those jagged edges picked out in violet light on either side. The unseen falls held more fear than the empty yards below the blade-path ever had. ‘Zole!’
Zole paused, not looking back. ‘We are not trying to outrun them.’
‘What then?’ Nona furrowed her brow.
‘I am looking for the best place to kill them.’
‘Kill …’ Nona turned to face the pursuit. ‘But there are hundreds …’
‘Hundreds foolish enough to follow into the heights someone who has already shown them a landslide.’
Nona watched the points of light twinkle, their advance almost imperceptible. A warm hand held each of those lanterns, other soldiers clambered up between them.
‘Can’t we hide instead?’ Killing came easy when an enemy raised their weapon against her, but to end so many lives, soldiers of the empire following the orders of their commander … it felt wrong. She pictured Zole’s face when she had first hauled herself up onto the road, lit from beneath by the heart-light, something demonic in the play of shadows. Did devils own her now? Their claws around her heart?
Zole turned and the light flooded across Nona’s shoulders, the pressure building, an almost physical push. ‘It is harder to hide ourselves in the rock than to bring it down upon them. And if we hid we would not be able to travel. They would surround us. There will be Noi-Guin among their number and some may be able to sense the proximity of the shipheart just as you and I can. We might not stay hidden long.’
Nona hugged herself and said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say. For once Zole had said it all.
Dawn broke over the peaks, a grey wave spilling pale light across the slopes. The black serpent, its head now only a few hundred yards behind them, began to resolve into individual figures.
Zole set