Glass leaned over and, with bound hands, adjusted the slats of the window shutters so that she could gaze out across the vineyards. Beyond them, farmland stretched until distance and rolling hills devoured the detail, merging the patchwork fields into a blur. The sky above lay pale and strewn with streamers of cloud running west to east. Sweet Mercy was said to have been built upon the Rock of Faith to raise the sisters above mortal concerns and let them focus their adoration upon the Ancestor. Now the everyday world had reached up its hand and plucked Glass from her eyrie. She settled back and sighed. She would have to see how well she remembered the ways of the worldly and whether she still had that old fire in her. She would most certainly need it.
Once on level ground the carriage began to bump along the Verity Road, past the hedgerows and farmhouses that Glass had so often looked down upon from Sweet Mercy’s heights. A mile rumbled beneath the wheels, another followed, and Glass retreated into the ordered chaos of her mind. She had from an early age practised the memory arts often employed by Holy Sisters. The nuns used them when engaged within the scriptorium or required to recite lengthy portions of the family tree at ceremonies sponsored by some or other Sis family. Some archives of useful information she recalled using nonsense songs, often lewd, or rambling stories associating one fact with the next in unexpected ways that anchored them into her memory. For the disposition of the clergy and of the Inquisition however she kept a map, hung upon the back of her mind and ever-glowing. Each report that arrived at her desk brought certain players into sharp resolution, their location at a particular time and place assured, their current whereabouts diffusing along likely routes and towards likely destinations as time blurred fact into speculation. The abbess received far fewer updates than she once had when the highest seat in the Tower of Inquiry was hers, but information flowed into Sweet Mercy at a rate that would have surprised many a lord’s spymaster. It came on feathered wings, on holy writ, on Grey feet and on Red; it came through shadow-bonds and thread-links; through couriered parchment in cipher or merely whispered watchwords; and it came through open ears in Verity, many patient and attentive ears, some devout, some mercenary, and all passing word to the Rock. Always it arrived unseen, often borne by the return of carts that carried the barrels and bottles of Sweet Mercy red to the great and the good up and down the length of the empire.
The carriage rumbled to a halt, jolting Glass from her inspection of imaginary maps. She frowned, wondering if the road ahead were blocked. The driver rapped four times on the roof and the guard beside the abbess leaned forward to open the door.
“Abbess Glass, how wonderful to see you.” Lord Thuran Tacsis clambered in as Brother Pelter vacated the opposite seat to squeeze beside Glass.
Thuran shared little in appearance with his sons, being neither golden and handsome as Raymel had been, nor dark and lean as Lano was. A portly man of no great height, he would barely reach his elder son’s ribs. A florid face, that seemed unlikely ever to have been handsome, gave over to a thick grey beard. He was smiling as he took his seat. A second man climbed in behind Thuran, a man in his forties with a thick head of dark blond hair and a luxurious blue robe. Taking his place beside Thuran, he fixed the abbess with glacial eyes.
“Joen Namsis.” Glass made a politer nod than decorum demanded. “You’re a long way from home.” Joeli’s father kept estates close to the coast and was rarely seen in Verity’s social circles save at the grandest of Tacsis flings.
“On my way to another engagement I received word that my daughter had been severely injured whilst in your care, abbess. High Priest Nevis suggested that I visit Joeli before deciding whether to remove her from the convent.”
Glass nodded. “A broken knee. A nasty injury. And not one sustained during training.” She offered her most sincere smile. The girl’s class mistress, Sister Spire, reported several of Joeli’s friends injured on the same day, and Nona covered in bruises. The truth of the matter was pretty clear, and Nona must have been heavily outnumbered for Joeli not to report the incident, painting herself as victim. “Imagine, all that time practising punching and kicking and stabbing and slashing . . . and then poor Joeli hurts herself falling down the dormitory stairs.” The carriage lurched back into motion and Glass peered through the slats. “Though if you’re wanting to visit your daughter at the convent you’ll find we’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re only riding a short distance with you, abbess.” Thuran Tacsis spoke up now, still full of apparent good humour. Glass didn’t allow the mask to fool her. She knew the Tacsis lord as a cunning operator. He wielded considerable power at court on account of the family’s wealth, but he had also inherited and possibly improved upon many of the skills his distant ancestors had relied on to make that fortune in the first place. “Joen must get to the convent and see his daughter. I’ve asked him to draw up plans for the running of the place in the emperor’s name. In anticipation of Crucical taking Sweet Mercy from the Church, as he surely will once your guilt has been established.”
“It never hurts to be prepared.” Glass nodded. She wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction he was so obviously trying to squeeze from her distress. “And will you be visiting the convent, Lord Tacsis?”
“I have other business to attend to.” His smile broadened. “You should have let that child hang, abbess. It would have been a quick and easy death. Less than she deserved after leaving Raymel for dead.”
“On that we disagree.” Glass kept her tone light.
“I hope your chains are more comfortable than the last time you faced trial, abbess. I heard that they put you in an iron yoke and burned the flesh from your palm.”
“It was me that demanded the candle and held my hand to it.” Glass met Thuran’s eyes.
“And again you kept the girl from an easy death. Drowning is not so bad, I’m told. Takes no longer than a bad hanging and hurts less. The assassin’s knife would have been quick too.”
“I didn’t believe she deserved death, easy or hard.”
“No. You had her trained to kill instead.” A flicker of anger now. “And she killed my son!”
Glass kept her mouth shut, her gaze darting to the inquisitor and finding him peering through the window slats, studiously ignoring the conversation.
“And in the end, oh delicious irony,” Thuran forced the humour back onto his face, “it is your own order that she breaks and which sees her driven from your protection.” He raised a hand to stroke his chin. “Imagine if she were captured out there somewhere in the Corridor . . . Do you think she would meet an easy death then, dear abbess?”
“I would think anyone who tried to capture that girl would be taking their life in their hands.” Glass fixed Thuran with a hard stare, backed by a confidence she didn’t feel.
“Imagine if she were captured,” Thuran repeated, his voice soft now. “Do you think they would invite me to watch her die?”
“The emperor forbid you—”
“The emperor will never know.” He lurched forward, roaring his words, flecks of spittle peppering Glass’s cheeks. “Do you think you’re going to tell him? Do you think it’s Crucical’s palace the inquisitor here is taking you to?” Thuran’s face was now red and twisted, the rage he’d been holding back all this time let free in a sudden rush. “Did you think you’d won again with your forgotten laws and petty little rules? Did you, abbess? Did you?”
“I cannot be tried at the Tower—”
“You’ll be tried in a palace, you sorry hag! You’ll be tried in a palace, found guilty in a palace, and burned in a palace! Just not Crucical’s. Pelter here is taking you to Sherzal! How do you like that? And while you’re getting your just desserts I will be making sure that a certain young novice of your acquaintance is wishing with all her black heart that you’d let her hang or drown or even that Raymel had taken his pleasure, because she won’t die easy, abbess, she really won’t!”