Sister Pan bowed to the Scithrowl mage. ‘This is true, but I cannot duel you.’

Yom Rala tilted his head. ‘You can still manage a few steps? Remarkable at your age, sister. But I should have expected no less.’ He glanced at Nona. ‘Have you brought a champion to stand in your stead?’

‘Nina? She’s a little girl. She really ought to start running now.’ Pan motioned for Nona to go and suddenly it seemed like a really good idea. Even so, Nona stayed. The suggestion’s power blew her will away like clockseeds in a Corridor wind, but something stronger anchored Nona to the spot. She hadn’t realized that she loved the old woman before. But she did. And Nona Grey could no more walk away from that than from her own skin.

Through the wide hole torn in the city wall Nona could see Adoma’s horde surging forward. Tens of thousands armed for war, running full tilt towards the breach.

‘She’s a crazed old nun.’ One of the senior mages came to stand at Yom’s shoulder. ‘The softmen say she hasn’t reached the Path in a decade and more.’

‘It is true,’ Pan said. ‘I haven’t reached the Path since before this girl beside me was a twinkle in her father’s eye.’

Yom bowed his head with regret and waved one of his flame-weavers forward. ‘Kill her and be done.’

‘I haven’t reached the Path in twenty years because in all that time I have never left it.’ Sister Pan glanced again at Nona. ‘Run, child. Please.’

And Nona was running, even as she knew it was wrong and that she should stay with her teacher, even as her eyes clouded with tears … she ran. That ‘please’ had made her go. She ran faster than she had ever thought she might without the Path to speed her way.

She felt the step that took Sister Pan from the Path. The Path where she had walked every day and every hour of Nona’s life. What that might be like lay beyond Nona’s imagining. She only knew that not even the Ancestor could own that much power. Sister Pan had walked in glory all this time, knowing that to leave would be the end of her. That single step from the Path sent shockwaves through the world. Waves that would ride the thread-scape around the entirety of Abeth’s globe. There would be no quantal, not even an ice-triber at the edge of some distant hot-sea near the planet’s pole, who would not know that some great thing had fallen.

What saved Nona, more than the distance she was able to put between herself and Sister Pan, was that even though Pan could not hope to own what the Path had given her, she somehow managed to give it direction.

The blast lifted Nona from her feet and threw her the length of the street, almost to the feet of the abbess and Chief Academic. All of them were felled. Nona struggled for her breath and despite the pain all along the side where she hit the ground, was among the first to rise. She gazed back the way she had come, towards the yawning breach and the fires fringing it. Nothing lay beyond save a great wide trench torn yards deep in the black earth of the empire and smoking all along its length.

23

Holy Class

In the aftermath of Sister Pan’s spectacular demise Nona became aware of three things. First that although Adoma’s Fist had been so broken that not even a tatter of sigil robe fluttered to the ground where they had stood, and although the many thousands charging for the breach had been reduced to fragments of charred bone, the Scithrowl horde remained tens of thousands strong and against all sense, rather than running for their homeland in panic, they were once again advancing. The second thing was that Sister Pan’s death had struck her like a knife between the ribs. Nona thought of the dried flower that had fallen from the nun’s hidden book and found she had tears running from her eyes. The third thing she realized was that neither Jula nor Ruli were among the novices regrouping before Abbess Wheel.

‘Where’s Jula?’ Nona tried to shake an answer from Alata. Discarding the disoriented Alata, she caught hold of Ketti who was bleeding from a gashed forehead. ‘Where’s Ruli?’

‘I …’

‘Concentrate!’ Nona’s own senses were ringing, and not just from the physical force of the explosion. Her blood still resonated with the energies released. Perhaps the Path itself had quivered like a plucked string. Nona had been shaken to her core and felt in no condition to exercise any of the gifts her quantal or marjal heritage had bestowed upon her. ‘Ketti!’

‘I … thought they were helping them …’

‘Who?’

‘That woman and the guardsmen.’ Ketti touched her forehead and looked at her crimson fingers in astonishment.

‘What woman? What did she do?’

‘She was helping Ruli up.’ Ketti gestured down the street. ‘Over there. By the gateposts with the carved lions.’ Between Nona and the gate stood the cart in which Sister Pan had ridden with the shipheart. It sat listing on a broken wheel, the iron casket nearby, lying on its side on the flagstones.

‘Where did they go?’

‘I …’ Confusion clouded Ketti’s eyes. ‘I thought they came this way. The men were carrying Jula.’

Over by the garden wall Abbess Wheel called Nona’s name. The foremost of the Scithrowl horde were now charging through the charnel-filled trench where their brothers and sisters had perished just minutes before. Sister Iron and Sister Tallow were leading the way towards the breach, with soldiers emerging from the side streets to support them. The setting sun threw their shadows towards the enemy and stained all their steel with blood. On the nearest stairs from the city wall defenders queued to descend and join the stand.

Mally came running back from the main group. ‘The abbess wants you to bring the shipheart, Nona … I mean Sister Cage.’

Nona ignored her, taking Ketti’s face in her hands and steering it towards her own. Once Ketti had been much taller than her. Now she had to look up. ‘Concentrate! The men, what were they wearing?’

‘Scarlet. Guards’ uniform.’

Nona released her. Ketti wiped the blood from her hand and started back towards the other novices around the abbess. ‘And silver!’ she called over her shoulder before drawing her sword from its scabbard.

‘The shipheart, Nona!’ Mally pointed, unwilling to go near the fallen casket.

Scarlet and silver. Sherzal’s colours. The men who had caught Nona in Rellam Forest just outside her village, the men who had set her on the long path to the place where she now stood: beneath the dirt and blood those men had worn Sherzal’s colours too.

‘Sherzal’s guards have taken Jula!’ Nona tried to open the thread-bond she had forged with Ruli using the commonality of their marjal blood. Immediately deafening echoes of Sister Pan’s final act filled her skull and she doubled up, both hands pressed to the sides of her head.

‘Are you … all right, Nona?’ Mally, at her side now.

Nona looked towards the breach where the Scithrowl charge was already within the long shadow of the walls. Abbess Wheel was leading Nona’s classmates and teachers towards that gap. The people who had been Nona’s life since she was a small girl. Before them lay only torn earth, broken stone, and certain death. The Scithrowl were numberless, unstoppable. She saw Ketti at the back. Alata and Leeni side by side, ready to die as they had lived; together. Ghena looking short beside Sister Oak. A fresh pang of sorrow stabbed through Nona. She saw Sister Pan’s sad smile. None of them wanted to die. Not even Pan with a hundred years behind her. But at least they would die together, and fighting.