“Every time I dine somewhere that you are also a guest, Nona, I find myself attacked.” He rubbed his jaw as if remembering a punch. “By the same woman!”

“Safira?” Kettle stepped forward. “Is she . . .”

“I punched her pretty hard,” Regol said. “But she’ll get up again. I can’t claim it as a fair fight, though.”

“Are we safe?” Terra Mensis broke into their circle, cradling her injured wrist. She seemed to have picked up new injuries in the carriage and sported a livid bruise across most of the left side of her face.

“I rather doubt it,” Abbess Glass replied. “Sherzal will send her soldiers after us. How soon depends on how bad a fire we left her with, but I can’t see us outrunning them.”

As if to answer her the sky cleared further and beneath the starlight the whole curve of the road could be seen, leading back to the broken gates of the palace. A troop of perhaps fifty soldiers was advancing along it at speed. They’d covered half the distance already.

* * *

• • •

NONA SET HER back to the rocks beside the road, as spent as she had ever been. Yisht had called friends a weakness. The pain that Hessa’s death, and now Darla’s, had caused her was very different from that of the Harm, but it was deeper and longer-lasting. A weakness, though? It had been friendship that had Kettle follow her half the length of the empire, friendship that had Clera spirit her out of the dungeons of the Noi-Guin, and if she had to die she would rather do it here under the scarlet heavens with her sisters of the Red and the Grey, free and fighting, than any alternative she could imagine.

Kettle stood, throwing aside the halves of the arrow she’d taken from Ara’s calf, and came to stand beside Nona. Ara followed, testing her weight on her tightly bound leg with a grimace. “Ouch.” She leaned back beside Nona, the wind spreading golden hair across the rocks.

“Nice dress,” Nona said.

“Thanks. Terra helped me choose it. It was stupidly expensive.”

Regol came to stand before them. His dark hair swept by the Corridor wind, he glanced across at the approaching troops. All around them the rocks lay red with starlight. He turned his gaze upon Nona and suddenly it felt as if the focus moon were blazing, making her sweat. “Will you hold the road with me, sister?” he asked. “I’ve wanted to see you fight again.”

“I’m not a sister, just a novice.” The moment the words left her she felt stupid. Was that the best she could think of to say? And why did it even matter with fifty swords approaching?

Regol grinned. He always grinned. “You’re my sister of the cage.”

A chill ran the length of Nona’s spine despite the heat of his regard. How did he know she would be Sister Cage, a secret shared only with Ara and Mistress Path?

“We were both born from Giljohn’s cage after all!” He laughed, breaking any tension, and turned towards the palace, swinging his sword in a figure of eight.

Abbess Glass stood revealed as Regol moved aside. She too was smiling, albeit a smile tinged with sadness. “You three have done astonishing things to bring us so close to an impossible success. Astonishing.” She reached out her hands and Nona took them, Kettle and Ara laying theirs over hers. “But the world is not changed by individual acts of violence, no matter how good the cause. Neither can it truly be changed by the power of the Path. The greatest of the Mystic Sisters all knew this. However much strength is concentrated in a single Martial Sister, however far the reach of a Sister of Discretion, it is overreached by the strength and reach of the masses. You may be rocks but humanity is the tide and you only have to stand upon the sand to see how that contest concludes.

“In the end it is not whether we live or die here, but how the message echoes through the empire and beyond. We are not leaders, merely servants. Even the emperor’s power is illusion. Ultimately the will of the people drives us, as inevitably as the advance of the ice. And the people are, each and every one of them, the children of the Ancestor, holy, chosen. We have shown them Sherzal’s true heart and they will judge her actions. Those who cannot slow the pursuit must flee. They must scatter across the slopes and we must trust that some will find their way to safety and speak of what happened here.”

Abbess Glass stepped closer, staring into each of their faces in turn, her eyes kind. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to look ahead, on being able to see the consequences of actions. It’s a meagre skill perhaps, compared to the talents that the Ancestor has placed in you girls, but it has served me well until this night. But you should know, the greatest joy to those who see the future is that life remains full of surprises. And you have all surprised me.”

“Holy Mother . . .” Kettle’s voice grew too thick with emotion to continue.

“I had a son once.” The abbess smiled, remembering. “I couldn’t have loved him more. But I never had a daughter. I would have been proud to call any of you my own.” She lifted her hands, forestalling any embrace. “You are my children, children of the Ancestor, daughters of the Rock of Faith, daughters of Sweet Mercy. I expect you to meet your enemy with ferocity and make a good account of yourselves.”

Nona turned towards the road where Regol stood ready, behind him a thin line of the Sis with Lord Carvon Jotsis at the centre. Sherzal’s soldiers were close, close enough for her to hear the tramp of their boots as they jogged forward, eight abreast. Each man was chain-armoured, each bearing shield and spear. The stars still watched, their light gleaming on steel.

Beside the carriage Agika and Seldom led the elderly and infirm in prayer. Terra Mensis stood, having cut away the singed length of her skirts. Clutching the knife awkwardly in her left hand, she went to stand beside her father, tears in her eyes, ready to follow the others who were already making for the main road. Soon the story of Sherzal’s treason would be spreading along the Grand Pass in both directions.

“Something’s coming . . .” Nona said as Kettle led the way to stand by Regol.

“Well . . . yes,” Ara said, hefting her sword.

“No. Something else.” Nona glanced out into the night, down across the slopes, dark and beyond her seeing, edged with the faint crimson starlight. On high the wind tore the clouds still further and the Hope blazed forth, adding its light to the world. Nona strained her senses. She heard . . . footsteps? A beat at least. Something that had been growing for a while but that hadn’t registered above all the loud emotion. Suddenly it came to her.

“It’s a sh—”

The cracking of rock drowned her out. With no warning a great wedge of the mountainside slid down across the road ahead. In just seconds it was over save for a few dozen loose boulders that continued to roll away down the slopes, crashing and bouncing into the distance. Nona watched in confusion as cascades of loose stones died to trickles. An untold weight of bedrock had slumped a score of yards, obliterating the road and the soldiers upon it.

Everyone from the carriage just stood and stared, unsure of what they had seen. Even as they watched the failing starlight stole away the details. Only Nona turned from the scene. Only Nona looked behind them to see a grime-covered hand clasp the edge of the road. A moment later the rest of the person followed, hauling itself up one-handed to stand and return Nona’s stare. The figure clasped something glowing to its chest. Something spherical, the size of a human head, lit from within by a deep violet light. The glow from it was so deep that it seemed as if it might be the edge of some blaze to challenge the focus moon if only the eye could follow it off the far end of the rainbow’s spectrum.