‘More raiders? I didn’t see any!’ Clera turned to look back along the road.
‘We need to get moving!’ Nona started back towards the track.
‘Nona!’ both of them shouting.
Nona stopped and turned back towards them. ‘Sister Apple was shadowing you. She’s a senior Sister of Discretion – you would hardly expect to see her. And yes, Clera, more raiders. They didn’t see us in the squall, or did and weren’t interested. They may be next time.’ She set off again. ‘Let’s go,’ offered over her shoulder.
Ara wanted to know how Nona knew about Sister Apple’s presence or absence given the impossibility of spotting a Grey Sister who didn’t want to be seen. So while they hastened along the road Nona told them the whole story, except for the part about Zole being a four-blood-prophecy-fulfilling legend. She wasn’t entirely happy with that part herself. Not that she wanted to be Sister Wheel’s darling or anything … it just didn’t make sense. By giving Zole into the church’s care Sherzal had made Abbess Glass trust her intentions. It was a precious gift: it removed any suspicion that the emperor’s sister wanted to steal Ara or Nona to control the Argatha or the prophecy. She had just given Abbess Glass the Argatha and put into her hands control of the prophecy, fake though it might be.
And yet … Nona knew that Sherzal’s intentions were not to be trusted. She had tried to abduct Ara. And she had put Yisht into the convent to steal the shipheart … Had Zole just been the price she was prepared to pay for the chance to steal it?
When Nona had finally laid the whole thing out for them Ara seemed satisfied.
‘So … if you spent the morning hunting the forest and helping Sister Kettle … that explains why you had to run so hard to catch up with me.’ Ara jogged on, gathering her breath. ‘But you said Clera was racing to catch up with you … so why was she so far behind too? Sister Tallow said to take things slow and steady – so since I got clear of the chaos at the river I’ve been doing just that.’
Both of them turned to look at Clera, running beside them, red-faced, holding her side. Under their stares she stumbled to a halt. ‘I need a rest. I can’t run all the way to the Kring. There’s the best part of sixty miles left!’
‘Why were you so far behind Ara?’ Nona asked.
‘Got lost, I said already. All right?’ Clera scowled, exasperated. ‘I’m a city girl. You may have been brought up by wolves, and Arabella here might have had estates to hunt on, but I know streets and markets and houses, and if I see three trees together I know I’ve gone the wrong way.’
Shelter that second night came in the form of a pigsty among a collection of hovels that made Nona’s village look prosperous. Their initial welcome was the two points of a pitchfork and a hasty assembling of fierce-eyed peasants armed with hatchet and hoe. Through Ara’s smooth diplomacy the opening offer of brutal murder was negotiated down to room in the unoccupied sty on fresh straw and the threat of violence if they tried ‘anything funny’. Clera, fishing in her habit in the privacy of their new accommodation, came out with a handful of silver from which she dug out a copper and went on to purchase a slab-like loaf of black bread and a wrap of rancid butter.
‘Where did you get all that money?’ Nona asked, chewing on her portion of the loaf.
‘I told you, my father’s fortunes have changed.’ Clera’s jaw bulged as she ground away at the bread. It seemed as if more grit had been used than flour. She played her gold sovereign across her knuckles. ‘The church teaches faith – but what you learn is that it’s money that moves mountains. The church preaches the Ancestor’s creed, but it’s gold that talks. Everything we do, all this business of emperors and temples, all the war, alliances, murders, hospitals … all of it floats on money. The currents that move these things, make them dance, are all financial. Politics, religion, love, faith, even hate, are just the things people say. This—’ she held the coin before her eye between finger and thumb. ‘This is what they mean.’
‘That’s a shallow view of the world, Clera.’ Ara watched from the corner, hunched in her ice-rimed coat.
‘Says the girl whose whole life was built on gold.’
‘There are things that can’t be bought or sold,’ Nona said.
Clera shook her head. ‘Some would say everything has its price, and that it’s often surprisingly cheap. Others that if a thing cannot be bought, it has no value.’
‘What about friendship?’ Nona asked.
‘Ah.’ Clera lay back, settling herself to sleep. ‘There you have to be careful.’
Ara had managed to establish that several novices had passed through the village hours before them, but how many novices or hours proved difficult to pin down. Nona doubted that there were any behind them, though. Not unless the Durns had them.
The novices took turns watching through the night. Nona spent her hours staring at the darkness, wondering if Sister Kettle still lived and what horrors Sister Apple might have wrought upon her attackers if not. She wondered too at the raiders she’d seen, lying at broken angles where the Noi-Guin had left them. They’d been young men, pale with short, fair beards and eyes the blue of cornflowers. She wondered what had driven them across the sea. They looked too well-fed, too well-equipped, to have come so far in order to terrorize peasants in their shacks. Does a man with a good iron sword cross an ocean to steal a half-starved goat?
She watched the darkness and painted the raiders across it, breathing life back into their pale limbs. Would they come this far inland, or retreat now, fearing to be cut off when the emperor’s new armies arrived?
No raiders came in the night. Or if they did they moved on, hoping for richer pickings than promised by the cluster of hovels. The three girls got up as the sky paled and set off towards the valley, a shallow one that stretched east and north towards the distant hills where the sun would soon rise.
‘She said it was the only way through. The only easy way anyhow – and if we want to catch the others we want the quickest path.’ Clera had taken the lead. The old woman who extorted a copper from her for last night’s bread had also furnished her with directions to Aemon’s Cut, a gorge that she claimed to be the only safe passage through the colourfully named Devil’s Spine.
Nona could tell from the terrain that some river of ice had pressed forward here as it once had across the Grey, but more recently, perhaps only a century or two earlier, retreating to leave the bedrock scraped bare of soil, fierce ridges standing where veins of harder stone ran. The Spine was one such vein of obdurate granite left standing where the slow, implacable currents of the ice carved softer rock away. It stood perhaps a thousand yards proud of its surroundings but near vertical, and honed to a razor-edge running north and south for a dozen miles and more.
The novices had heard of the Devil’s Spine. Ara had even seen it before as a small child – a curiosity on a trip to visit some or other far-flung fruit of her family tree. But not until they drew close, harried by the ice-wind, did they properly appreciate the wisdom in seeking an easy passage from one side to the other.
‘We’ll go to Aemon’s Cut and press on. We’ll catch the rest or we won’t. We can meet them at the Kring if not,’ Clera said. ‘Apart from not having Ruli, this is the group we were going to be in anyway.’