While Clera made sure Yisht swallowed the dose Nona made a quick search of the warrior, removing two daggers and five cross-knives for throwing. She didn’t want to leave the ice-triber anything that would help her escape or encourage her to return. Reaching into the front of Yisht’s tunic, Nona’s fingers brushed against something cold. She pulled it out. An amulet, a sigil cast in black metal, small enough that she could just curl her thumb and forefinger about its circumference. Like the sigils Yisht had drawn in the air outside the dormitory it drew the eye, twisting Nona’s vision about it. Yisht’s fingers twitched and some deep sound escaped her throat, a threat perhaps.
‘Is that stuff working?’ Nona yanked the sigil and it came free, trailing a broken thong. She slipped it into an inner pocket.
‘Give it a few more seconds.’ Clera frowned. ‘She’s tougher than she looks. And she looks pretty damn tough!’
It took forever to drag Yisht all the way back. The scariest part was when her dead, shark-like eyes happened to point Nona’s way.
They met their only real problem where the fissure ran between their tunnel and the tunnel from Shade cavern to the recluse. Ara and Clera had had a hard time squeezing through, even with Nona’s constant assurance that it widened out any moment. Clera lost her nerve and would have started to scream but for Ara’s hefty shove popping her out of the tightest neck and into the wider section.
‘How are we getting her through there?’ Ruli asked.
‘Well we can’t get her up there!’ Ara pointed at the tunnel in the ceiling.
‘Rope?’ Nona reached out to tug the rope that Yisht had let down. Ara had already been up to the room above to ensure the excavation would be noticed.
‘We’d never heave her up,’ Clera said. ‘And if we could, how do we get her out unseen?’
‘So,’ Ruli returned to her theme. ‘How do we get her through this crack? She weighs as much as Darla!’
‘Cut bits off?’ Clera suggested.
‘She’s not that big,’ Ara said. ‘And if we scrape her a bit … well, does it matter? We can leave some clues that lead the Poisoner to the digging. After that she won’t be coming back, will you, Yisht?’
In the end they dragged her. Clera and Ara at her feet – Clera too scared to take the head end in case Yisht got stuck and blocked the way. Nona and Ruli pushed the ice-triber’s shoulders. Though really it was Ruli pushing the shoulders and Nona pushing Ruli’s as there was only room for one to fit and Nona had no strength. Inevitably Yisht got stuck.
‘Turn her! Turn her shoulders!’ Clera, close to hysteria.
‘We’ve turned them,’ Ruli called back. ‘It’s her head.’
‘Well cut her ears off! Anything! I don’t know. I can’t stay down here.’
Nona pushed but Yisht’s head had wedged between the two faces of the rock.
‘Let me have a go again,’ Ruli said.
Nona backed out, seeing that Ruli had a small open earthenware tub in her hand. ‘Grease?’ The whisper hurt.
‘Yes.’
‘Why,’ Nona whispered. ‘Do you. Have grease?’
‘I have lots of things in my pockets, Nona Grey,’ Ruli replied primly and recommenced her wriggling.
In the end the grease worked and Yisht came free with a sudden lurch.
Getting her up the stairs was a nightmare. So was getting her into the barrel, and wedging the padding around her. Getting the lid on was a nightmare too and Ruli managed to crush her thumb with the coopering hammer.
‘You’re sure she’ll be able to breathe in there?’ Ara asked as they heaved the barrel onto its side, preparing to roll it to stand with the others in the winery yard.
‘No,’ said Clera.
‘No she won’t be able to? Or no you’re not sure?’
‘No I don’t care.’
‘She was trying to steal the shipheart, Ara,’ Ruli said. ‘And you hate her.’ Ruli looked as though she were trying to convince herself as much as Ara.
‘She’s probably going to murder us all if she sees us again, and I doubt we could stop her, so I really don’t care if she dies in there.’ Clera set the barrel rolling and ducked after it out into the ice-wind. ‘Come on!’
39
‘She’s gone!’ Ruli came bustling up to the Grey table, the refectory loud with the usual lunchtime chatter. ‘Rattling her way down Vinery Stair as we speak!’
‘Thank the Ancestor for that!’ Ara glanced towards Zole at the far end of the table. The girl had her head down, attacking her food.
‘Thank the Ancestor,’ Hessa said, uncharacteristically pious. She reached up to rub her neck. ‘I never want to see that woman again.’
Nona nodded, finding her own hand at her neck, touching the bruises there. Hessa had said that the thread-link between them should fade away given time, and Nona had thought it was doing so, but Hessa had suffered through every bit of Nona’s choking. It was pure luck that nobody in the dormitory had woken and rushed to fetch Sister Rose: the dose of boneless Hessa had tested helped there, stopping her thrashing and making a noise. But for that, the novices’ absence would have been noticed and the whole plan discovered. ‘We’ve just got to make sure the abbess finds out what she was up to now.’ Nona scooped more scrambled egg into her mouth, began to say more and thought better of it.
‘Let them notice she’s gone first,’ Ara said. ‘They’ll check her room. They’ll discover the shaft then. When they do it should be easy enough to tell.’
Nona had been expecting the abbess or at least Sister Pan to come and talk to her about her revelations. She’d been hiding her blades since the day of her arrival. Now, to have them discovered one day and ignored the next and the next left her puzzled. Ara had gone on about how rare a thing any three-blood was, and the Academics had certainly seemed impressed with the discovery. But the abbess had just sat in her house ignoring Nona, doing whatever it was she did in there, and then left for the palace. Was anyone even going to train her to use her marjal talent for anything other than shadow-work?
A cheer went up. ‘Time?’
‘Two hundred and six,’ Ara called down.
Nona blinked. Far below, partly obscured by Nona’s toes, Clera was doing her victory dance. A new personal best for completing the blade-path, and a new record for the current Grey Class to boot. She’d beaten Croy’s record by four counts.
‘Your turn!’ Ara pulled the lever to arrest the pendulum and reset the dial.
‘Bleed this!’ Nona swung her legs up onto the platform and walked with sticky feet to the start of the course. ‘I’m going to do it this time.’
She stepped out, cautious, feeling her way. As ever, the whole blade-path felt as if it were somebody else’s glove, something that refused to fit her no matter what she did. And if it were a glove then it wasn’t just a case of being the wrong size for her, it was the wrong hand too. With too few fingers!
Nona got just past the halfway point. A record for her at least. And fell with a wail of frustration.
Clera, still by the lower stop-lever, followed Nona back up the long flight of wooden stairs offering advice. Nona ignored her.
The ice will come, the ice will close
She called on her serenity mantra. She’d found serenity while in the agony of a marjal-quantal blood-war.
No moon, no moon
She’d found serenity under the critical eyes of a score of Academics.
We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down
She’d found serenity in the face of Luta gathering shadows to strike terror into her heart.
Soon, too soon.
‘Shut up!’ Nona spun on a step, Clera nearly running into her. ‘Shut up, Clera, or I swear I’ll push you down these stairs.’
Clera stepped back, hands raised. ‘Fine, all right. I was just trying to help.’ Hurt in her voice, her expression hard to see in the stairwell’s gloom.
Nona turned back and continued to stamp up the steps.
We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down …
When she was up on the platform once more Nona stood with her back against the wall rather than sitting at the edge with the others. She stared at the blade-path, ignoring everything, her mantra trembling unvoiced behind her lips.
‘It’s your turn.’ Clera, braving Nona’s threat, stood from the edge and came to wave her hand before Nona’s face. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Nona stepped forward. She stopped just before the pipe, her feet black with resin. ‘I’m serene.’ She took her first step. ‘I’m so fucking serene that if I miss my footing I’ll just walk on the air instead.’
Nona felt as if she were wrapped in a blanket of golden light. She saw the world both with perfect ease and as if she were viewing it from the end of a long tunnel, removed from the currents of its need, distant from its immediacy.