22

Present

Holy Class

The defenders behind Verity’s wall gave Nona free rein, which to her mind was a considerable lapse since she had come over from the Scithrowl side in the enemy’s uniform and the walls of the emperor’s own palace lay just two hundred yards further on. It seemed that she was so smoke blackened, muddy, and blood-spattered that others could no longer tell what she was wearing. In the general chaos at the base of the wall just not trying to kill anyone proved sufficient to identify her as not being Scithrowl.

She picked her way through the injured, lying haphazard in the wall’s shadow among scattered equipment. Carts stood laden with all manner of things from barrels of tar and sheafs of arrows to tight-wrapped bandages and water tubs. One cart was a foot deep in scattered pieces of antique armour, as if the grand houses had turned out their spares, and another sported dozens of fresh army tabards in the emperor’s green and gold, unsullied by use, as if someone expected to recruit fresh conscripts while the veterans rained down from on high, arrow-shot or run through with Scithrowl steel.

‘I know you.’ A young soldier bumped into her as his sergeant led the way to the nearest wall ladder.

‘Cage! From the Caltess!’ The soldier’s companion stopped to stare. ‘You are her! You have her eyes. You beat Denam—’

The man behind him pushed him on and the column passed Nona by, all of them staring, eager to distract themselves from the screams above and the zip of arrows sailing past.

Nona turned towards the nearest buildings. The city had long ago flowed out to press against boundaries that had once seemed foolishly over-generous. The houses of the great and the good stood cheek by jowl, crowding to find a place beside the emperor’s own. Close by, in the shadows of the city wall, nestled all the services that money likes to keep on hand. Bathhouses, stables, goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewellers, tailors, dressmakers, and establishments where a person of quality might throw their money after cards or dice, sample poisons that twist the mind in strange ways, buy the company of a young bed-partner, or satisfy less common urges proscribed by the laws of both state and Church.

And all of it was burning.

Nona guessed that the Path-mage she had killed might have been part of Adoma’s Fist. She still had hope that the battle-queen’s wars on her other border had kept the Fist in the east. The idea they might be here, among the horde, scared her in a way that mere numbers could not. She knew that their role was to crack open fortresses and cities that defied their queen, and the west held no bigger defiance than Verity.

If the Fist were here then probably they were holding their strength in reserve and waiting to see if the walls would fall to more conventional assault. That or just waiting for enough defenders to mass in one place so that when the Fist struck it would cause maximum carnage.

In Nona’s brief period of contemplation two men fell from the wall, hammering into the cobbled street close enough that she felt the warm spatter of their blood across her face. She moved quickly out of the danger zone. The corpses of other casualties that had fallen since the last clear-up lay strewn around, Scithrowl among them. Further back the buildings not yet aflame had been opened to the most badly injured. Their screams, as overworked healers bound wounds and set bones, rose to challenge the clamour from the walls above.

Nona pushed on, past the wounded, the supplies, a skittish donkey standing in the stays of an empty wagon, past the reserves and into an alley leading between the first buildings.

The stink of charring flesh pursued Nona towards the palace. She made her way towards the emperor’s spires visible even above the roofs of mansions. In a street still a hundred yards shy of the palace walls a line of grim-faced men from Crucical’s elite palace guard turned Nona aside. Seeing the suspicion in their leader’s eyes as he tried to see past the mud on her tunic she didn’t stay to argue.

Nona’s goal now was to reunite with her friends. The smoke-haunted streets were echoingly empty. Spent arrows lay here and there, curious in isolation, flames licked up amid the apple trees in a nearby garden where one of the Scithrowl fire-pots had landed. All the windows were shuttered as if the grand houses had closed their eyes to the day’s horrors.

Nona hunted for her serenity and sought direction. Her thread-bonds with Kettle and with Ruli had been pulling her in different directions but now they started to converge. She followed their guide, jogging along broad streets between mansions with boarded windows. She worked her way around blocked and burning roads, seeking to join up with Abbess Wheel and the convent party.

A body lay by the gates of one pillared manse, a white-haired old lady whose broken string of Marn pearls was scattered across the flagstones. An arrow protruded from her chest. Nona found it hard not to believe all this a dream. The mighty Verity, rich, powerful, untouched by war for generations. Before nightfall Scithrowl warriors would prowl where the nobility promenaded the evening before. Only days ago Nona had met Lano Tacsis in these very streets. Much as she wanted the man dead she wanted his soldiers lined up in the defence of the city more. It would have been a poor time for her to have killed their leader. Even so, she hoped the Scithrowl would catch him and give him a cruel death.

Nona turned onto another wide, tree-lined avenue where but for the drifting smoke everything could have been normal. The wind gusted, clearing the air, and there out of nowhere was Abbess Wheel, crozier held aloft as a golden beacon, half of Sweet Mercy hard on her heels.

In the chaos of the defence Abbess Wheel found nobody of sufficient authority and interest to allocate Sweet Mercy’s strength with any direction or goal. Rather than commit her force blind, Wheel had sent Kettle and Bhenta to scout for any Scithrowl forces already at work within the walls. She kept Nona close to monitor Kettle’s observations through her thread-bond.

In the meantime the abbess gathered her flock in the shelter of a high-walled garden where no stray arrow would find either novice or nun, and set up her own command post. Nona hugged Ruli and Jula quickly, deflecting their questions as she hurriedly changed back into the old Red Sister habit with which she had been issued and tossed away the filthy clothes that had come from a dead Scithrowl on the Vinery Stair. Kettle and Bhenta re-joined the group as Nona finished changing. The ease with which they had scaled the wall underlined the fact that Scithrowl assassins were almost certainly at work within the city. Apple pushed through the novices to take Kettle into her arms, careless of Wheel’s disapproval. They held tight for a moment then parted. Apple kept any recriminations for their risk-taking behind tight and worried lips.

‘Sister Kettle, Sister Cauldron, report!’ Abbess Wheel’s crow-screech demanded their attention.

Kettle pushed a stray strand of red hair back into Apple’s headdress and hurried to the abbess. Nona followed.

To her credit Abbess Wheel listened in grim silence and had only praise for their efforts. Minutes later Kettle and Bhenta were leaving again on Wheel’s orders, this time to scout for any sign of a breach where reinforcements were needed. Nona was to stay close to monitor Kettle’s progress for Wheel, despite her protestations that Apple could do that almost as well.

Nona stood, watching through Kettle’s eyes while describing what she saw with her own mouth. There were no breaches yet but in half a dozen places the battle atop the walls was slowly being lost.