“If we can get near I can make them believe we belong there.” Zole flexed her fingers.

“Really?” Even detached from Kettle’s thoughts Nona could feel the Grey Sister’s doubt. “This isn’t like Pan’s classroom you know. These Lightless are—”

“Go home.” Zole’s narrow gaze rocked Kettle on her heels.

Kettle paused as if struggling with some reply, then without a word she turned and strode back to the track. Once clear of the trees, she turned to the left and walked back the way she’d travelled. Overhead the red stars bore witness and in the east the white eye of the Hope began to rise. It took perhaps fifty yards before Kettle’s confident stride faltered. She glanced back, saw Zole following, and came to a halt.

“What . . .”

“I changed your mind,” Zole said.

Kettle turned to face her.

“It was not easy, but a large part of you wants to go back to the convent anyhow, and I just helped it.”

“Thread-work?” Kettle asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t do that again.” Kettle shivered. “At least not on me. What makes you think it will be easier on a Lightless?”

“Because they are not you, sister,” Zole said. “You have a strong mind and it is well-trained. If you really did not want to do something I could not make you do it. But making a guard believe that you are a Lightless who is new to the order, or that the person next to them recognizes you should be easier.”

“Should be?”

“Some people hold their threads more tightly than others.” Zole shrugged. “I can also do this.” She thrust an open hand at Kettle, who burst into laughter.

Even at the back of Kettle’s mind, shielded from her emotions, Nona felt the echoes of it and in the darkness of her cell she smiled.

“Marjal empathy,” Zole said over Kettle’s snorts and giggles. “Sherzal had Academy tutors train me before I came to Sweet Mercy.”

“I . . .” Kettle fought for breath, bent double. “You’ll never need a punchline . . .” More laughter, before she forced herself to stand, still grinning.

“It works on you because you trust me,” Zole said, no hint of a smile on her. “But with less guarded minds I can have quite an effect.”

“I don’t trust anyone.” Kettle dropped her smile. “Not out here. Not on a mission.”

“‘Trust is the most insidious of poisons.’” Zole quoted Sister Apple. “But you do trust me, and you are not on a mission—nobody told you to do this.”

Kettle frowned and glanced to the west, through the treetops. The moon’s focus would be sweeping across the Marn by now, making the sea steam. Time was slipping away. “So that’s the plan? Present myself at the gates as a Lightless with a prisoner and hope that because I walk in shadow it won’t take too much of a push for you to make them believe it?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then we see.”

“They’re dangerous, these Noi-Guin,” Kettle said. “They’re like us, like Grey Sisters, but worse because killing is all they do. If just one of them spots us we’re done for.”

“The Noi-Guin are even spoken of on the ice.” Zole rolled her head, clicking the bones in her neck. “They come after people in the night and murder them in their sleep. We are going into their home, where they believe that they are safe. If they find us we will see what they are made of. And show them what we are made of.”

Kettle grinned. “And what’s that?”

Zole did not smile in return. “Sweet Mercy.”

29

ABBESS GLASS

THE CARRIAGE THAT Brother Pelter had waiting for Abbess Glass proved to be quite luxurious. She had expected one of the usual black wagons with barred windows normally used to transport suspects but this one looked rather like the sort some lesser lord might own to bear him to the palace, although if the doors had ever sported a coat of arms the evidence had been expertly removed.

“For me?” Abbess Glass pursed her lips. “I’m impressed.”

Brother Pelter climbed in and one of the Inquisition guards helped Glass into the opposite seat before joining her, another climbing up top. The other guards remained at the pillars as the carriage rattled away across the Rock.

“Two guards is all I warrant, brother?” The abbess inspected the silver chain wrapped half a dozen times around her wrists. “I’m not sure whether to be offended that you think me so lacking in threat or complimented that you have such trust in my good behaviour.”

Brother Pelter made no reply, only watched her, cold-eyed. He had sent a rider on ahead, clutching a message-scroll, presumably to forewarn of their arrival.

“I suppose it might be of considerable help to some parties if I did escape.” Glass sat back. “Nothing makes the Inquisition’s job quite as easy as when someone declares their own guilt by running.”

“Like the novice in the caves,” Brother Pelter replied. “Nona Grey.”

Glass shrugged. “Nobody was arguing over her guilt, brother, just her punishment.”

* * *

• • •

EVEN THE EXPENSIVE suspension of the inquisitor’s carriage proved unable to provide much comfort over bare rock and they bounced and jolted along. Beside Glass the overlapping plates of the Inquisition guard’s armour rattled to the point of irritation. It proved something of a relief to begin the descent of the Vinery Stair where a layer of earth softened the road.

Glass leaned over and, with bound hands, adjusted the slats of the window shutters so that she could gaze out across the vineyards. Beyond them, farmland stretched until distance and rolling hills devoured the detail, merging the patchwork fields into a blur. The sky above lay pale and strewn with streamers of cloud running west to east. Sweet Mercy was said to have been built upon the Rock of Faith to raise the sisters above mortal concerns and let them focus their adoration upon the Ancestor. Now the everyday world had reached up its hand and plucked Glass from her eyrie. She settled back and sighed. She would have to see how well she remembered the ways of the worldly and whether she still had that old fire in her. She would most certainly need it.

Once on level ground the carriage began to bump along the Verity Road, past the hedgerows and farmhouses that Glass had so often looked down upon from Sweet Mercy’s heights. A mile rumbled beneath the wheels, another followed, and Glass retreated into the ordered chaos of her mind. She had from an early age practised the memory arts often employed by Holy Sisters. The nuns used them when engaged within the scriptorium or required to recite lengthy portions of the family tree at ceremonies sponsored by some or other Sis family. Some archives of useful information she recalled using nonsense songs, often lewd, or rambling stories associating one fact with the next in unexpected ways that anchored them into her memory. For the disposition of the clergy and of the Inquisition however she kept a map, hung upon the back of her mind and ever-glowing. Each report that arrived at her desk brought certain players into sharp resolution, their location at a particular time and place assured, their current whereabouts diffusing along likely routes and towards likely destinations as time blurred fact into speculation. The abbess received far fewer updates than she once had when the highest seat in the Tower of Inquiry was hers, but information flowed into Sweet Mercy at a rate that would have surprised many a lord’s spymaster. It came on feathered wings, on holy writ, on Grey feet and on Red; it came through shadow-bonds and thread-links; through couriered parchment in cipher or merely whispered watchwords; and it came through open ears in Verity, many patient and attentive ears, some devout, some mercenary, and all passing word to the Rock. Always it arrived unseen, often borne by the return of carts that carried the barrels and bottles of Sweet Mercy red to the great and the good up and down the length of the empire.