Holy Sister

‘Closer!’

They saw the city walls, the streets, individual rooftops, the flicker of flames, the dark mass of Adoma’s army, the palace itself.

‘What does the pink mean?’ Jula asked.

‘There is sufficient angle and resource to centre the focus at any point within the pink zone.’

All of them save Zole jumped at the unexpected voice. Like the light, the voice seemed to have no source, and like the light there was nothing about it that was natural. Clera glanced around nervously. ‘Who are you? Show yourself!’

‘I am Taproot.’

Jula’s eyes went wide and she made the sign of the arborat, a single finger rising to trace the taproot that began with the first ancestor, then all fingers spreading to show the branches of the Ancestor’s tree. Ruli and Ara exchanged shocked glances.

‘Are you—’

Nona cut across Clera’s question. Outside the palace the last of their friends were dying. ‘How small can that focus be made?’ Nona asked.

A red dot appeared at the centre of the image of the palace. It looked to be about ten yards across.

‘Can you make the focus here?’ Nona reached out to touch the spot in front of the palace where the King’s Road opened onto the plaza. ‘And have it follow between my finger and thumb?’

‘Yes. It would consume one third of one per cent of the remaining propellant to institute and later correct the major attitude changes.’

‘What would that do?’ asked Clera, leaning in. The image’s light patterned fascination on her face.

‘I think it would burn through the ground and melt the rocks themselves,’ Nona said.

‘Adoma has a hundred thousand Scithrowl out there.’ Jula peered at the image. Individuals at the edge of the horde appeared like motes of dust. ‘Could you kill so many with a touch?’

‘In a heartbeat!’ Clera swept her hand along the King’s Road, finger and thumb set to its width, widening the span as she reached beyond the wall to encompass the whole mass of the invaders. ‘Wait! Nothing happened!’

‘Focus is already at authorized minimum. Narrower focus is deemed hazardous to flora and fauna.’

Nona thought she understood. The focus had narrowed as the Corridor narrowed, increasing intensity as the cold intensified. But it had reached the maximum safe intensity years ago and the ice kept coming. Any narrower and the focus would scorch the crops, blind the animals.

‘How can we authorize it to narrow further?’ Nona asked. Could you do it? Jula’s question repeated itself over and again in the back of her mind, though her devils all but drowned it out with their shout for blood and fire. Could you do it?

‘Only the Purified has clearance.’

‘The Purified?’ But Nona knew the answer before the words left her. The silent stranger in their midst, burned clean of humanity by the combined fire of four shiphearts. Had the shiphearts themselves ever been needed, or just someone stripped of all flaws by them? Was Zole more than human now, or less than human? And this voice that claimed to be Taproot, was that human? An ancestor who travelled to Abeth on the ships that sailed between the stars, or one of the Missing who had left before they even arrived?

‘Will you do it, Zole?’

Zole stood statue-still, only her head turning to meet Nona’s gaze. ‘Do you ask it of me?’

Even with her friends dying outside Nona didn’t want to ask to have that power in her hands. The devils in her screamed yes, but somehow their voices failed to dominate her. In a battle, in a fight, to take the lives of those raising their weapons against her had always seemed her right. Though even that certainty had weakened as her skills and powers grew, making the contest more and more uneven. Now, in this place, she could take the lives of more people than she could properly imagine, even with their image floating before her. She could do it in a heartbeat, with no effort or risk. Do it without them ever seeing her face or knowing the blow was coming …

‘Would you do it if I asked?’ Nona asked.

Zole reached out to the light before she answered, letting the images of Verity flow across her grey hand. ‘I feel … different, Nona.’ She spoke as if the two of them were entirely alone. ‘As if I were falling away.’

‘Falling away from what?’ Despite the death unfolding in miniature all across Zole’s palm it was the faint sadness in Zole’s voice that made Nona’s eyes prickle and fill with tears.

‘From everything. I see a wider existence. As though all of Abeth were just like your Corridor, a slice through something bigger.’

‘Would you do it, Zole?’ Nona spoke above the hunger of her devils even as she felt them rising, reaching up across her neck. ‘How many would you kill to save how few?’

‘Nona!’ Ara grabbed her shoulder. ‘The empire is burning!’

‘There is no empire!’ Nona replied. For a moment she managed to block out her devils and speak with the voice of the Nona who had been left behind when they were broken from her. ‘Scithrowl meets Durn now. The battles are all but over!’ She shook her head. ‘Aren’t all of us brother and sister? Should I murder them for the sake of pride, or should I accept that the ice has narrowed and that there is a new order now?’

‘Look!’ Clera pointed at Nona’s neck. ‘She’s like Yisht!’

Jula and Joeli stared at her in horror. Even if they hadn’t known Yisht’s story a convent education breeds a terror of possession.

‘It’s true.’ Nona turned to face them. ‘I can’t make a decision like this. Half of me wants to burn a path a mile wide right through every Scithrowl city … The louder half says that we should burn it all … I am unfit to judge. Sister Thorn should do this if Zole will allow her.’ She stepped aside to let Ara speak with Zole, and found her missing. ‘Ara?’

‘Here.’ Ara was behind the others. She had slid down the wall to sit at its base, blood on her lips, her face almost as grey as Zole’s. She looked unsurprised by news of Nona’s devils, but then she had already inhabited the tainted flesh in question herself.

‘I can take the raulathu from you.’ Zole stepped forward, her hand raised towards Nona’s neck.

‘What?’ Clera demanded. She looked from Nona to Zole as if ready to fight them both or run. ‘What the hell is she talking about?’

‘She means the devils,’ Nona said. ‘My devils.’

‘The Old Stones break them from us. As a sculptor chips away ice to reveal their creation.’ Zole reached for Nona.

Nona stepped back, pressing against Ruli. ‘No.’

‘No?’ Zole cocked her head, curious.

‘They’re devils, Nona!’ Jula sounded on the edge of hysteria.

‘They’re me,’ Nona said. ‘Pieces of who I am.’

‘Terrible pieces,’ Ruli said. ‘I felt them through the thread-bond but didn’t understand.’ She fell quiet, confusion on her face.

‘If you divide the ingredients of the black cure into two halves, both make a poison that will kill you. Together they are something different.’ Nona set her fingers to the rough skin along the side of her neck, finding it hot to the touch. ‘Can you put them back, Zole?’