“She’s mad. Look at her!”
The air was already hot on Glass’s face and her eyes stung. The memory of her burned hand returned to her, not the unreal agony of the burning but the long dark misery of pain in the weeks that followed. She hoped Nona’s plan reached beyond torching the palace.
Nona ignored the cries of protest. “Make sure the horses can get out, Terra.”
“But . . .” Terra held up her broken wrist.
“Just do it.”
Nona limped towards Sherzal’s carriage. Kettle limped after her. Clera chased both of them. “Burn to death in the carriage. Is that the plan?” She stopped in her tracks. “I liked Sherzal’s better!” Behind her the panicked whinnying of horses had begun.
“I am rather wondering what the plan is myself,” Kettle said. Behind her the flames were leaping up across the hay, smoke billowing from the stairs to the cellar. Regol stumbled out of it, coughing, wiping his eyes.
“I’m going to walk the Path,” Nona said. “Unlock the doors!” She waved towards the stables’ main entrance. The two inquisitors ran over, hauling the locking bar clear.
“You won’t be able to!” Kettle said. “Not so soon. You walked an hour ago!”
Glass had no practical experience but she had heard Sister Pan’s stories. On rare occasions the old woman, her tongue loosened perhaps by convent wine, spoke of past days, and of the deeds of the greatest Holy Witches. Walking the Path was always dangerous, a step too far. Take too much power to yourself and it would rip you apart. It took time to recover from. When extremity drove a Holy Witch to return to the Path too soon it always ended in disaster, often for everyone around. The old saying was “seven moons to be sure.” Some of the greatest had walked again after a single moon, a single night to recover their focus, and for some of those it had been their last moon too. The curtain wall of Heod’s Fist, a great castle close to Ferraton where Glass had grown up, held a scar yards across and feet deep, and in its midst the shape of a person etched into the blackened rock. Sister Pan’s teacher, Sister Nail, had died there in defence of the castle against the army of the rebel king. A second walk attempted at the sunset of a day when she had walked the Path at sunrise.
Ara hurried back from the carriage to help Melkir lift Darla from her resting place among the hay bales.
“You can’t walk again, Nona.” Ara struggled with Darla’s weight. “You know you can’t.”
Nona opened her mouth to reply, then froze. Glass realized that until this moment Nona hadn’t seen the gerant novice, lying down among the hay bales.
“Darla . . .” Nona dropped her sword. “What have they done to you?” She was beside the girl in a moment, kneeling over her, oblivious to the crackle of the fire, rising towards a roar. “What have they done to you?” Her hands moved across Darla’s wounds, inches above them, trembling.
Darla lay, white-faced, lips blue-tinged. “What kept you . . . runt?” Darla managed a smile, then grimaced and coughed. Dark blood ran over her lip, dribbled down her chin.
Nona swung around to stare up at the people standing around her: Glass, Melkir, Ara, Kettle. She fixed on the nun. “You can help her.”
“Nona . . .” Kettle looked down, head shaking.
“You can! You’ve got supplies. You’ve got—” Nona bit off whatever she had been going to say, suddenly stricken by some realization.
“. . . s’too late . . .” With immense effort Darla closed a big hand around Nona’s. “. . . tired . . .” Her brown eyes clouded with confusion, a kind of wonder, staring at some distant place above Nona’s head.
A moment passed. Another. Darla’s gaze remained fixed.
“She’s gone, Nona.” Kettle put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. Nona flinched it off as if it burned.
Sister Agika bowed her head. “The Ancestor has taken her to—”
“Damn the Ancestor!” Nona gripped Darla’s fingers. “Get up. Darla, get up. I’m taking us out of here. We’re going back to the convent. We’re going . . .”
Ara took Nona under both arms, drawing her up, choking back tears. “She’s gone, Nona.” Smoke rolled over them both.
Glass retreated from the heat and smoke, coughing, making for the carriage. A panicked horse ran past her, nearly sending her to the floor. She reached the steps and helped Lord Glosis into the carriage ahead of her, Agika coming up behind. The survivors were packed along two broad bench seats, crowding the stuffed leather, and crammed upright in the space between.
Nona, Ara, and Kettle came from the fire. It swirled around the three of them like a cloak of shadows and flame. Nona, pale in her rags, her black eyes unreadable, looked as though the blaze had birthed her. She looked like something not of the world.
“You can’t. It’s madness.” Ara lacked conviction now.
But what choices were there?
46
“THE SHIPHEART IS here. I’ve stood before it. I am restored.” Nona took Ara’s hands from hers. She needed Ara safe. “Get into the carriage.”
“There’s no room.”
“Then get onto it and watch for arrows.”
Nona closed her eyes, closed her ears to the roar of the fire, and opened her heart to the banked fury that had trembled in every limb since she left Darla, still warm, among the hay.
The Path had seldom seemed so distant. Just a thread. Little more than the crack that had run through her dreams back in the day when Giljohn first put her into his wooden cage. She saw it as a wisp, there and not-there. Her feet remembered the blade-path, its narrow treachery, the fall yawning beneath. Darla had hated that thing. She never managed more than four steps. But she returned to it time and again, no fear in her. Nona had asked her why once. Darla had given that fierce grin of hers. “My father told me, your weaknesses have more to teach you than your strengths.”
General Rathon wouldn’t know his daughter was dead. Not yet. He wouldn’t know that Nona had used the last of the flesh-bind that might have saved her. He wouldn’t know that it had been spent on hollow revenge against a man not fit even to look at his daughter.
Seven moons to be safe. Nona hadn’t any interest in being safe. If the Path tore her apart she would welcome it and hope only that no stone of Sherzal’s palace was left atop another. She would turn her helpless rage to a fire that would purge the mountain, a fire that would consume the pallid flames behind her, scouring the tunnels of the Tetragode.
She looked again for the Path and found it blazing, a river, twisting through more dimensions than a mind should know, running at right-angles to imagination. The shipheart’s pulse beat in her ears. Without hesitation Nona threw herself forward.
This time it was different. The Path wasn’t something narrow, veering through sudden angles, trying to throw her at every step. The Path had become a plane, a flowing expanse of molten silver so wide that falling from it seemed an impossibility. Even if she weren’t running, the Path would draw her on. She could race forever, untiring, each step bringing new energy. The world lay behind her. Time had no hold. The Path enfolded, filled, led, gave direction.
The hard part wasn’t staying the course, it was turning from it. Too many steps taken, and leaving would cease to be an option—at least leaving and remaining whole. That was true of many paths perhaps. Nona saw Clera’s dilemma now, how hard it must have been for her to do what had seemed so simple from Nona’s side, how easy it would be to return to her course.