“Joeli . . . you can end this.” A whisper as Melkir pulled her away. The girl would have a clear vision of Sherzal and space in which to work. Even if she could get nothing past Sherzal’s sigil wards but a little doubt it might buy them time.

Up on the gallery Joeli reached out a hand as if to steer someone’s will. But her gaze turned towards the wrong doorway, her unfocused eyes seeming to find Glass. The girl’s fist closed, not in the delicate manipulation of thread-work but a violent snatch. Between the widening doors Regol suddenly leapt back, turning. A moment later he was sprinting past Glass, bewildered terror on his face.

“Dung on it!” A cry from Darla as an arrow sprung from her shoulder. She roared, sweeping her sword out and driving back four palace guards.

“Don’t . . .” Glass’s heels dragged the floor as Melkir hauled her towards the servants’ corridor.

Joeli repeated her action and this time Darla froze in mid-parry, as if suddenly distracted by some vital thought. A heartbeat later the guard to her left drove his sword into her side. Darla had nothing but a tattered gown to armour her. She folded around the steel, cursing, now lost among her attackers.

They closed in, swords rising and falling.

44

CLERA LED KETTLE and Nona back through the palace, aiming to reach the tunnel by which they had entered not long before. They had approached the chambers where Sherzal’s guards crowded but whatever battle had raged seemed to be over, the other participants fled or corpses. Wrapped in Kettle’s shadows, they saw no sign of Abbess Glass.

Nona limped along behind Clera, trying not to wonder whether her friends still lived. She could still sense the shipheart at her back. “We could have . . .” She tried to think what exactly they could have done. Dragged the vault? Hacked their way in with axes. None of it would have worked.

“We’re lucky that the shipheart wasn’t just resting on a table,” Kettle said. “I didn’t know quite how dangerous its effects on people were close up, or how fast they took hold.”

“It would have been a price worth paying to take it from Sherzal.” Nona had meant to say to take it back for the Church, but the truth was that denying Sherzal would give her the most pleasure.

Kettle shook her head. “If it had turned you into a thing like Yisht who knows what you would have done with it or where you would have gone?”

“Yisht brought it all the way here!” Nona protested. “I could have held it for an hour.”

“I doubt that she did. Sherzal would have had transport and containment waiting and ready close to the Rock. The shipheart likely warped her within an hour.”

“Shhhh!” Ahead of them Clera raised her hand.

They both limped up to join her. Voices could be heard on the stairs: “. . . back to help the guards chase them down.” A young man’s voice. One of the Sis.

“You’ll accompany me to my rooms and stand guard like a son should!” An older man, familiar.

“Istead will look after you,” the younger man replied. “What’s Sherzal going to think of us if we just scuttle off and hide? I’ll make for the gates. They don’t know the palace—that’s where they’ll go. They’re not getting out. I’ll bring Sherzal the old woman’s head!”

“Lano—”

“You know I’m right. We outnumber them fifty to one.” The sound of running feet followed, fading into the distance.

“Damn boy!” Thuran Tacsis’s voice. “We’ll get to the rooms and wait this out, Istead.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Clera had already turned from the corner and hurried back along the hall, waving frantically at Nona and Kettle to follow. Kettle turned but Nona remained, gripped both by a debilitating fear and by a rising anger. Just the sound of the man’s voice brought back the full horror of those endless hours waiting for his return, it made her remember the unbelievable agonies from just a brief touch of the Harm and her gut-churning disgust at the tortures he planned. But the fear brought rage with it, a fire roaring out its defiance, refusing to be made small by an old man’s threats—threats issued when all the advantage was his.

Nona put her weight on her injured leg, gritting her teeth against the hurt. She didn’t know who this Istead was. He could be a deadly warrior employed as Lord Tacsis’s personal bodyguard. In her current state it wouldn’t take much of a fighter to take her down, and then she’d be in Thuran Tacsis’s clutches again, the whole nightmare that she’d escaped reinstated simply because she was too proud to run. The silence where Keot should be felt like a hole. The devil would have had advice, and she probably would have opted to do the opposite.

You can only hesitate so long before choice is lost. The two men’s shadows preceded them. Nona pressed herself into the corner. The unknown quantity, Istead, came first. A tall man, well-built, his blond hair and square jaw reminiscent of Raymel Tacsis. Nona wasted no more time. She surged up as fast as she could on her good leg and punched him at the junction of chin and neck, driving flaw-blades deep into his brain. Ripping free in a crimson spray, Nona made to throw herself at Lord Tacsis.

Abused flesh can only tolerate so much. Nona’s leg collapsed beneath her and she fell sprawling before her enemy. Thuran immediately began to turn to flee, drawing breath to shout for aid. Nona managed to swing her non-traitor leg to kick his trailing foot and he toppled facefirst onto the rug that ran the length of the corridor.

Nona scrambled onto Thuran’s back, grabbed two handfuls of greying hair and banged his face repeatedly into the floor with measured violence. It was an expensive rug but not so thick that it would stop Lord Tacsis feeling the floorboards below.

“Unlock that door.” Nona gestured to the nearest door with her head.

Kettle, who Nona knew would have returned for her, limped past and set to work with her picks. The lock surrendered in moments.

“Help me drag him.” This to Clera who had just that second popped her scarf-wrapped face around the corner. “Wait.” Nona sliced and lifted Thuran’s thick jacket, winding it around his head so there would be no trail of blood.

“You’re mad,” Clera hissed, but she took a leg and between the three of them they got the man into the room, closing the door behind them.

The chamber was a spacious drawing room, perhaps for one of the many guest suites in the wing. The furniture was draped with sheets and the place had a musty smell as if it were not often used.

“Under here.” Nona lifted the sheet covering a table set against the wall that must be the palace’s outer wall.

Clera rolled Thuran into place, keeping her head averted in case even in his dazed state he might recognize her over her scarf. She left him face down.

“Flesh-bind.” Nona held her hand out to Kettle, and the nun dug into her robe. She retrieved and handed over the small tub without comment, passing across a wooden applicator a moment later.

Nona knelt, put the tub to one side, and further sliced apart Thuran’s jacket, a thing of gold thread and silk embroidery that must have cost more than a labourer could earn in a lifetime. She found the leather pouch containing the Harm and extracted the sigil-worked disc of iron with considerable care. Her fingers didn’t want to go anywhere near it. She forced them to their task, requiring the same effort as if she had wanted to hold them to hot coals. Next she applied the last of the flesh-bind to the sigiled surface. Her mouth twisted as she contemplated the pallid skin covering the small of Lord Thuran Tacsis’s back. He had started to moan, returning to his senses.