The abbess raised her head. They were far from the great halls now, in a long corridor lined with quarters for the servants of guests. She paused. The others walked a couple of paces before Pelter spun around. “What are you waiting for?” The tone a mistress might use for a tardy novice.
Glass frowned. “There’s a feeling . . . when you know something is there. You absolutely know it, and yet whilst you have all manner of evidence that implies it is there, you’ve nothing that absolutely demands that it is. Like a case built on circumstance. Or the next stair in a dark cellar after you’ve passed the point that you can see where you’re placing your feet. There’s a feeling you get sometimes in those situations, a crisis of doubt and faith. You step down, feeling for the next stair, you pass the point where you might pull back and still not stumble, and you keep going, with just faith and guesswork to keep you from breaking your neck in a black place beneath the ground.” Glass lifted her foot for her next step. “I just had that feeling. That’s why I was waiting.”
38
NONA PLUMMETED THROUGH empty darkness. She wasn’t sure how long she had been falling for or where she had fallen from. All she knew was the terrible certainty that soon she would hit something hard and at a speed that would spread her across it.
The impact, when at last it came, jolted open eyes she had thought already open. She found herself staring at a wall just inches before her face, all her plunging speed arrested with just enough momentum remaining to jerk her forward and bang her head against the stonework.
“Bleed me!” The curse came weakly from a raw throat. Her eyes hurt and the world looked to be on fire.
Keot?
You’re back. He sounded unsurprised. She left you a message.
Nona levered herself from the wall and rubbed her forehead, fingers coming away sticky with blood. Scratches covered the surface of the stone block immediately before her. Slowly her eyes found focus and the scratches gathered into letters, the letters into words.
They’re breaking in. You’ve taken red cure. You’re still sick. I’m coming.
Nona became aware of distant pounding. Actually, not so distant. Hammers or axes being applied to the door at the end of the corridor.
Why don’t they just—
The nun jammed the lock to stop them coming back in. There are many of them out there.
Nona tried to get up and failed, her muscles too weak and too full of hurt to lift her from the ground. She fell back, one of Clera’s worst curse-words escaping through clenched teeth.
The manacles on her ankles and right wrist remained in place, the collar still locked around her neck. She appeared to be just inside her cell. Rolling, she saw the Noi-Guin’s sprawled remains. She dragged herself painfully to the cell door and looked towards the far end of the corridor. The first splinters were beginning to break away from the wood around the lock. The door wouldn’t hold much longer.
Nona considered the door to her own cell, the timber two inches thick. She forced flaw-blades into being around the fingers of her freed hand. With one stroke she shaved off a curling sliver of wood. Then three more. Gathering her strength, she struck down at a steeper angle, muscles screaming, and sliced off a narrow triangle several feet in length, then a second chunk. Panting with effort, she bundled the shaving and chunks of wood into the Noi-Guin’s cloak and shuffled on her hip towards the failing door at the corridor’s end.
The bright crescent of an axe greeted Nona’s arrival at the door. More blows fell as the weapon was levered out. Nona took a few moments to pit her blades against the pieces of timber she’d dragged with her, dividing them further. Using the wall as support, she reached up for the candle guttering above her, barely half an inch remaining to it. She lit the wood shavings and held the cloak above the flames until it caught. With the lengths of wood balanced against each other above the blazing material she retreated. More pieces splintered from the door. Those beyond would be smelling the smoke now.
It’s not enough, Keot said.
The smoke followed Nona back, swirling a pale, luminous green in the altered sight the devil granted her. She heard coughing beyond the door and bit down on a cough of her own. Some heavy piece of the door fell, hitting the ground with a metallic clunk.
The lock.
Nona could see the flames, an ethereal scarlet, through the coiling smoke. The scene had an otherworldly beauty to it. It wouldn’t keep the Lightless back for long. Maybe not at all. But it was all she could do. Shuddering and sweating as the red cure fought the blade-toxin in a battle raging all the length of her veins, Nona staggered to her feet to make her last stand.
“Hey!” A voice behind her. “Quick! Over here!” A woman’s voice.
Nona turned from the corridor’s end where choking and cursing now mixed with the splintering of timbers. A figure leaned out of the doorway of a cell on the opposite side to Nona’s and three doors further back. A spiky-haired figure with a lantern in hand. In the devil-sight’s skewed colour palette it was hard for Nona to know if she should recognize the person.
Keot drained from Nona’s eyes, leaving her blinking, stumbling forward. “Kettle?”
The woman caught Nona as she fell, her strength spent. Back along the corridor the sound of advancing feet, coughing and confusion. The newcomer dragged Nona back into the cell, pushing the door shut, locking it as she struggled with Nona’s weight. “Shit on a Scithrowl! You’ve got fat.”
Nona managed to look up at that. Only one person cursed quite as colourfully as that. “Clera?”
“Come on! Help me out, it’s like I’m dragging a whale.” Clera grinned down at her, face pale and mud smeared. Behind her a small square door in the wall stood open. The kind that every prisoner dreams about, stone-clad, perfectly disguised, leading onto a narrow tunnel that stretched away from captivity.
Nona kicked ineffectually as Clera bundled her backwards through the door, pushing her headfirst along the crawlway. While Nona lay panting on her back, the stone ceiling just a foot above her face, Clera went to get the lantern. She joined Nona on all fours moments later, and reached back to pull the secret door closed behind them, setting several bolts in place.
“Ssssh.” A finger to lips. “I’ll have to go first.”
Clera wriggled her way over Nona, a snug fit in the confines of the tunnel. When their faces drew level she paused, her nose almost touching Nona’s.
“You look awful. You’re not going to die are you?”
“P-poisoned.”
“What was it? I’ve got some antidotes . . .”
“On . . . Noi-Guin knife. Took red cure.” Nona’s ribs screamed protest against Clera’s weight and her breath came in gasps. All of her hurt but it seemed as though she’d been hurting forever and after so long alone in such dire straits it felt good to be with a friend. Even with Clera who long ago had betrayed her to the Tacsis. Just having someone there, albeit on top of her, was a wonderful thing. If there had been space she might even have put her arms around the girl.
“Red cure? That should work. Let’s just hope your eyes don’t turn red this time.” Clera grinned, licked the end of Nona’s nose, and continued to wriggle past, as if for all the world they were playing some convent game, not escaping torture and death in the bowels of the Tetragode.
“W-what are you doing here?” Nona whispered, her words largely lost as Clera’s chest scraped across her face.
Clera ignored the question. “I can’t turn around here so if you can’t follow me I’ll have to go ahead and come back before I can drag you.”
Legs slithered around Nona’s head and Clera was clear.
“I . . . I can do it.” Nona braced her heels against a lump in the tunnel floor and pushed. She inched forward, gasping.