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.
“Zole.”
It was the ice-triber, her habit as stained and tattered as Nona’s smock, her face as impassive and unreadable as ever.
Beside Nona, Ara turned, then Kettle and the abbess.
“You did that,” Nona said.
“How?” The abbess seemed too stunned for more than one word.
“She has the shipheart,” Nona said.
Kettle shook her head. “It can’t be. Sherzal’s vault was too—”
Zole held the sphere up, its light somehow both fierce to look upon yet too faint to illuminate the road past glimmers here and there. “It is the Noi-Guin’s shipheart.”
“How could . . .” Abbess Glass started.
Zole bowed her head and raised the sphere higher. In the action Nona saw it, just a glimpse, a stain, dark and purple, flowing from the hand that held the heart, down across the wrist, quickly lost beneath the sleeve of Zole’s habit.
Abbess Glass gathered herself. “How is this possible?”
Zole raised her face to them, her eyes burning with the shipheart’s light. “I am the Chosen One.”
EPILOGUE
LANO TACSIS HAD brought two armies to the Convent of Sweet Mercy. A Pelarthi army that had now been spent, and an army of his own house that had yet to test its strength against the sisters who barred the way. He had hundreds of warriors at his command. But he knew that the eight who stood around him were more dangerous than all the Pelarthi purchased with Tacsis wealth and all the soldiers sworn to his name. And of those eight Noi-Guin one was rumoured to be more deadly than the other seven together.
The Singular of the Noi-Guin was said only to leave the Tetragode when the Tetragode itself was torn down and reconstructed in some new stronghold, hidden from the world. The Singular would move from the old Tetragode to the new, and resume his place as the dark heart of the organization. The Singular was keeper of the Book of Shadows, linked by shadow-bond to every Lightless and every Noi-Guin, the spider at the centre of the web. And yet here he was, at Lano’s right hand, in the light of day and yet so deep in darkness that he seemed a silhouette.
Lano signalled to his captain. “Lead the troops in. Take her down. Crippled would be best but dead if you must. Kill everyone else. The nuns first, then the children.” He wanted vengeance on Sister Cage, of course he did, but dead was dead. Reaching for more than that had been the downfall of his older brother and his father. Nona Grey had given him his lordship and he was prepared to miss out on watching her gruesome death if a quick death was safer and more certain.
Lano allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as his warriors began to ready their advance. Today he would watch Sweet Mercy fall.
Clera Ghomal stepped amongst the Noi-Guin as if she were some noble, an equal rather than the turncoat daughter of a failed merchant. Lano resisted the urge to backhand her. Today was a day of victory, not to be tarnished by squabbling with underlings.
“She’ll run,” Clera said. “Now she has her friend she’ll run. She’s terrified of falling into Tacsis hands again.” She glanced around her. “Or Noi-Guin hands. She’ll make for the caves and you’ll never find her. Not unless you know them like I do.”
“My troops will find any that try to run.” Lano had no intention of being goaded into giving chase himself. He regretted not shutting Clera’s mouth with his fist the moment she had opened it uninvited.
“No.” The Singular started towards the distant pillars. The Noi-Guin began to follow in his wake, the girl with them. “Come.”
Lano made no move to go but a Noi-Guin to either side took his elbow and started him forward. Lano glanced helplessly at his soldiers. He had never intended to lead this charge.
The Singular accelerated across the plateau. “Let her die on a Noi-Guin blade. Let this be certain. Let there be no escape for her.”
“Escape?” Lano intended to bark his laugh but it came out nervous. “She won’t run. Not from here. It’s her home. Her family. Besides”—he gestured to the smoking horizon—“where would she run? The whole world is on fire.”