Grey Sister
Clera thought the Tacsis wanted Ara, not me, and not for killing. She doesn’t deserve to die for that!
The convent would drown her if they caught her.
Nona closed her eyes. She couldn’t deny that the Ancestor, or at least the Ancestor’s Church, had some harsh rules.
* * *
• • •
THE FORCE THAT pulled Nona back into Kettle’s head allowed no alternatives, but after so many unions of their minds Nona was starting to understand the process. When not half-dead with exhaustion and toxins, and with the sigil collar off her neck, Nona felt that she would be able to exercise some choice in any future calls. It would require her to intercept the process, to cling on to her own identity and the flesh that housed it, and to match Kettle’s excitement or panic with a calm of equal weight. For now though she was plucked from her own head like an unfurled leaf before the ice-wind.
* * *
• • •
KETTLE HAD EXTRACTED herself from the vertical passage into which Nona had manoeuvred her body. Escaping Nona’s pain had been a vast relief but a short-lived one as she began to appreciate quite how wedged in she was. There had been several moments of panic and cursing, the conviction that she would never escape pressing down with terrifying weight, but she had at last emerged, filthy and panting, into the tunnel above.
In all, a day had passed and a night and another day since Zole and Kettle had hidden. The vigilance of the Noi-Guin would be fraying. All that time at highest alert, scouring tunnels, guarding key points, extending their perimeter. Nobody, no matter what their training, could stay focused indefinitely. Kettle had eaten and drunk sparingly, counted away the hours, listened to the silence, and now it was time to act. Nona would be recaptured soon.
Kettle knew that to try to reach the cells was likely a suicidal venture. She had no idea of the Tetragode’s layout and just a thread-bond to follow. And if the thread-bond were to guide her through the twists and turns of the cave system she would need to rejoin the tunnels that Nona had been taken through. This meant a return to the area just past the fortress where Zole had killed the Noi-Guin. That fact still sounded unreal. A novice killed a Noi-Guin. But Nona had repeated the feat.
Kettle cleaned off her Lightless robes as best she could, checked her weapons, then hurried back along the long convolutions of tunnel and cavern towards the fort. She wrapped herself in clarity rather than shadows, straining every sense for news of her enemy.
She was perhaps two hundred yards from the place where Zole had vanished into the wall when she heard approaching feet. What surprised her was that they were coming from behind, and fast, half a dozen or more people. Kettle picked up her own pace and kept ahead of them. Approaching the main tunnels of the Tetragode at speed had not been her plan. At last she spotted a fold in the rock wall where she could hide. Moments later seven Lightless came jogging by, the shadows swirling behind them. Kettle guessed they had been recalled to defend or breach the cells. Most of the Lightless seemed unable to use shadow-bonds over longer distances but in the confines of the Tetragode all of them appeared to be linked to some central will.
With the Lightless out of sight but still audible Kettle gave chase. More patrols might be converging on the cells from behind her, and if the one in front stopped for any reason then she might become trapped between them. In any event the forces arrayed against her at the cells would certainly be significantly beyond her ability to overcome. But choices, always slim, had now run out. Soon Nona would be recaptured and not long after that Lord Tacsis would return to exact his revenge. Kettle had suffered the agony of the Harm in what she had to assume was full measure. It was certainly beyond any pain she had experienced before. Dying in an attempt to free Nona seemed by far the better option than sharing her final hours through the thread-bond.
The patrol wound its way along what appeared to be a major highway of the Tetragode, the floor well-trodden, chasms and inclines tamed with bridges and stairs, even the occasional dim lantern burning in a niche. Other Lightless joined the general flow from side passages, mostly in groups but sometimes just singly. Kettle found herself dangerously close to a pair of Lightless up ahead, struggling with what looked to be a door-ram, a heavy timber two yards long, iron-shod at one end. She dropped her pace.
Seated at the back of Kettle’s brain, Nona could feel the nun’s unvoiced thoughts and regrets churning, struggling to break into her conscious mind and being relentlessly shut off. No part of Kettle wanted to die. She wanted to be back at Sweet Mercy, to hold Apple, to see another dawn. She wondered how many Lightless she could take down before they got her. She wept for the novice trapped and facing an awful death. She worried for Zole. But no hint of this maelstrom of fears was allowed to disturb her focus.
The hurrying footsteps behind Kettle drew closer and she considered her choices. She could sprint past the pair ahead of her and hope that burdened by the ram they wouldn’t challenge her . . . but more likely they would demand her aid, then realize that they didn’t know her.
A faint tremor ran through the mountain. Kettle felt it through the soles of her feet and it trembled in her chest. A moment later she felt the pulse along dozens of shadow-bonds. What message was imparted Kettle couldn’t tell, and a shadow-bond usually allowed for only the simplest of communications, but enough of the emotion leaked out for her to get a taste of it. Panic.
The Lightless approaching from behind stopped, reversed their course and started to sprint away. The pair ahead dropped the ram. Kettle heard it hit the ground and pressed herself to the wall as the men who had been carrying it raced past her, robes streaming. They should have seen her but they didn’t. Kettle followed them a short way until she found a side passage where she waited as a full dozen more of their comrades hurried past, swift, silent, determined.
Zole. It had to be. She had seen the Lightless head towards the cells and known that either Kettle or Nona was in trouble. This was Zole’s diversion. Panic! How could even Zole panic the Noi-Guin?
Kettle emerged from her hiding place, listened hard, then carried on, tracking the thread-bond as swiftly as she dared. Twice more she had to backtrack and hide at the hurried approach of groups of Lightless and Noi-Guin. She passed areas where a greater density of caverns, together with hand-hewn connecting tunnels, made the Tetragode almost a subterranean town rather than a series of locations isolated by the twisting distances of an ancient river course. She saw signs of industry, forges whose smoke passed up great shafts to vent above the snowline, and of communal living, dining and sleeping areas, even what looked to be a temple of some kind.
On the temple steps a lone guard stood watch, armoured in what looked to be black glass.
“Stop!” The call arrested Kettle in mid-stride. “Show me your face.”
Kettle turned and spun a throwing star at his head. He almost avoided it. The star caught him just below the left cheekbone rather than in the eye. He proved less fast after that and the second star took him in the throat just above the line of his breastplate.
Kettle ran on, wrapped in clarity. She entered a large chamber, her exit on the far side. The faint echoes of a door being battered reached her from the distance. And something closer, just the ghost of a sound, high up. Kettle swerved and a cross-knife sliced past her ear, rotating as it flew. Kettle kept running. She knew her attacker lay above and behind her, probably in some gallery over the tunnel through which she entered the cavern, probably a Noi-Guin. She jerked left, then right, running an erratic zigzag path, relying on her speed and the distance between them to not be where she was expected to be when the knives arrived. And arrive they did, a storm of them, hissing out of the dark, clattering against the rocks to both sides of her, striking sparks from the stones at her heels. A sharp line of pain scored her shoulder and another knife flew past. Without breaking stride, Kettle found the most likely antidote, kilm oat, and smeared it over the cut. If she was right and fast enough the venom on the blades wouldn’t touch her. If she had to take an oral cure then the effects might overwhelm her before the antidote kicked in. She muttered a prayer to the Ancestor.