Holy Sister

‘They do.’

‘He’s out there with his soldiers and eight Noi-Guin. His teachers from the Tetragode. Others too.’

Nona looked down at her sword. ‘My power’s not spent.’

‘You think you can kill me without reaching for the Path, little Nona?’ Clera drew her sword, a twin to Nona’s, taken from the body of a Red Sister.

Nona turned away, her back to Clera, and looked out across the plateau. If her friend struck her down then she would be at peace with it. She didn’t want to live in a world where Clera would do a thing like that. ‘I think I won’t need to kill you. I think you’ll fight them with me. Sister.’

As Nona spoke she saw that some of the convent girls had followed her out among the pillars. They watched now, peering around stone columns. She waved for them to advance and four Grey Class novices came forward. At Nona’s nod they lifted Ara, carrying her rapidly away, back through the pillars. ‘Take her to Sister Rose! Hurry!’ She turned back to Clera. ‘Well?’

‘Fight them with you?’ Clera threw up her hands. ‘Even if Lano only had a second better army out there you wouldn’t stand a chance. But he has eight Noi-Guin, Nona! Eight!’

As Clera protested Nona pulsed an urgent plea to Ara, begging her to wake up. Nothing. She gritted her teeth against the backwash of her friend’s pain and tried again.

‘Eight of them! And one of them is the Singular.’ Clera shook her head. ‘And he is flat out the scariest bastard I have ever known. He’s the spider at the middle of their web of shadow-bonds. If it was just him on his own, no army, no other Noi-Guin, you still wouldn’t stand a chance—’ She broke off, seeing Nona’s distracted look. ‘I’m sorry, am I boring you?’

‘I’m not going to fight them today! Not out here on their terms! That would be insane! There are eight of them!’ Nona steeled herself against the desperation and pain now pulsing at her down three thread-bonds. Ara had found her senses and joined her distress to that of Ruli and Kettle. Nona spoke a message into Ara’s mind then raised her eyes to meet Clera’s outrage. ‘I’m going to run of course! I’m in a hurry. Other things to do. I need you to get out there and appear as if you’re still loyal.’

‘That won’t be hard. I like to be on the winning side.’

‘Tell them I’m scared. About to run. Tell them they’ll lose their chance at me unless they act right now. I’m going to make for the undercaves. For the shipheart vault where Hessa died. Make sure you’re in the lead. In the lead, Clera. It’s important.’

‘In the lead. You want us to hunt you down …’ Clera frowned. ‘I can do that. But when they find you, Nona, they’ll kill you. I can’t stop them.’

‘Just bring them. Bring them all. And we’ll see who sinks and who swims.’

Clera met her eyes for one last time then turned and fled, out across the Rock to where the lights and banners of Lano’s first rank were just starting to come into view.

‘When they come you must be Grey Sisters, not Red.’ Nona addressed the young novices and old sisters, no more than two dozen of them, all watching her in the heart of the pillar forest. ‘Nobody touches the Tacsis lord or the Noi-Guin, don’t go anywhere near them. Draw the house troops out among the pillars. Use the convent buildings. Don’t take risks, just take opportunities. Wound rather than kill. You want to slow them down, make them rethink, give them a reason to retreat. In the end you’re to run rather than make a stand. You carry the convent with you.’ She waved her hand towards the convent buildings. ‘These are just stones piled up to keep the wind off.’

Nona dispersed her sisters to hide while she took her place among the Pelarthi dead, heaped in dozens, scattered in scores. She bit down on the urgency from her thread-bonds, closed her ears to the whispering of her own devils, and called her clarity to her. The hidden world of detail opened itself to her, from the star-speckled, smoke-streaked vault of heaven above to the complaints of the Rock of Faith below. The Rock’s voice came too deep for ears but rumbled faintly through her bones as the stone cooled beneath the night’s wind.

The Tacsis torches and pole-lanterns would be hard to miss but if the Noi-Guin came ahead of them, insinuating themselves into the darkness between the pillars, they could murder her before she knew they were there. Nona defocused her sight to see the thread-scape. Sister Pan had said that ultimately a true quantal mage would see only the world’s threads for they were the deepest truth and revealed not only every single thing as it was but also the past, the future, and the relationship of each thing to every other. Indeed, when watching the thread-scape you learned how artificial ideas of individual objects, or even people were, since each was infinitely connected and interwoven with the world around them.

Nona focused on the now. She saw the pillars and saw through them. In that moment of her clarity she saw that they might be a map, perhaps a pillar to mark each Ark. She pushed that insight aside and looked beyond. She saw the Rock, the caves beneath, the motion of the wind. The soldiers of Lano’s army appeared as complex multi-dimensional knots sliding along a multitude of threads. And ahead of them slid a handful of knots bound more tightly than that of any soldier. Each of these was shot through with black threads and also joined by them in a web of their own making. Noi-Guin, coming for her.

To their rear all the dark threads converged on a black central node. The Singular, advancing behind his minions.

With a start Nona realized that the assassins were already much closer than she had imagined they might be. She turned and began to sprint, winding herself around the curve of the pillar at her back. The sharp retort of cross-knives hitting stone followed her, beginning at the spot where she had been standing just a heartbeat before. Without warning another of the Noi-Guin broke from the darkness beside a pillar immediately ahead of Nona and attacked with breathtaking speed and the advantage of surprise, his weapons serrated kill-spikes designed to anchor in flesh. It was all Nona could do to twist out of their path and fall to the ground. Another assassin came at her with a black-tipped spear. Nona, knowing she couldn’t evade the blow, reached out hoping she might somehow deflect it.

In that instant something black hurtled into the assassin. A small novice. A hunska. Nona didn’t even know her name. Two more leapt on the man with the kill-spikes, one of them screaming as she was immediately impaled.

‘No! Run!’ Nona was on her feet. She struck a cross-knife out of the air with her hand.

More novices came charging in, knives in hand. They would all be dead in seconds. With a scream of her own Nona started to run again. The girls wouldn’t retreat if she made a stand. She couldn’t have all their deaths on her hands.

Nona fled as if all the demons of the black ice were at her heels, and in truth there wasn’t much to choose between that and the reality of the situation. She sprinted through the pillar forest and broke out into the open ground in front of the abbess’s house. Here she was at her most vulnerable. Once the Noi-Guin emerged from the pillars they would have a clear shot at her. As she ran Nona reached for the strap across her chest. Kettle had given her the Grey Sister’s full field equipment. She jagged left, right, left. Cross-knives hissed past her. She knew that even as she slowed herself, hoping to evade the missiles, others among the Noi-Guin would be sprinting towards her flat out on straight lines. Her fingertips counted along the vials in the harness and searched for the coded markings. Sister Apple had had them hunt out specific vials in the most difficult of circumstances on many occasions. The rule was that you drank whatever was in the vial you picked, no matter whether you picked right or wrong. A cross-knife hammered into Nona’s shoulder and she stumbled, almost dropping the vial she’d torn free. She flipped the top and knocked back the contents, sliding to the left as more knives hit the rock around her.