‘Ow!’ Ara’s face creased with sudden pain and she too started to turn.
Nona was already spinning around when she felt the sharp jab in the side of her neck. As she turned Nona saw Clera tangled with Zole, both of them twisting, punching, blocking with a speed that only a hunska full-blood could hope to follow. They fell together, Clera beneath the ice-tribe girl.
‘Get Zole off her!’ Ara dived in snatching at a wrist and missing.
Tarkax stood unmoving for what seemed an age at fight speed, long enough for Ara to finally catch Zole’s arm and hang on despite a kick to the stomach. Nona just watched, flooded with a cold certainty and hot despair. Jula, Ruli, and Darla also stood statue-still, but trapped in the moment as any without hunska blood would be.
Clera tore free, bleeding from the mouth, a hank of her dark hair in Zole’s fist as Ara wrestled the girl from the ice away, gaining momentary advantage from the fact that the whole of her attention was aimed at Clera. For his part Tarkax threw himself back and to the left, towards the cave wall. And Nona watched. Her neck stung where the venom-coated pin had been jabbed in.
Ara held Zole atop her, her arms looped beneath Zole’s armpits, her hands clamped behind Zole’s head and both legs wrapped around the ice-triber, but Zole still somehow managed to reach down and grip beneath Ara’s ribcage, causing her to cry out in excruciating pain. It was all the chance Zole needed to twist out of the hold. She rolled across the floor towards Clera.
Nona didn’t act. She couldn’t act. She had to see this played out. She had to believe it. She stood and she watched through slitted eyes.
Tarkax landed beside his backpack and tore it open.
Zole rose from her roll, hurling herself bodily at Clera. Clera’s foot, aimed at her face, caught her collarbone and brought her down with a snapping sound, the whole of Clera’s thigh muscle absorbing the girl’s momentum.
Tarkax, fumbling, brought out a leather wrap from among his supplies and began to unroll it. It held close on a dozen small leather tubes, sealed with wax and sewn to the wrap. A throwing star blurred across Nona’s vision and took the leather strip, tubes and all, from Tarkax’s grip. Clera’s throwing star.
Ara got up, stiffly. Zole rolled to her side and jerked into a sitting position, eyes blazing. Tarkax drew his tular in a stuttering motion.
‘You?’ Ara stared at Clera, horrified. She took an awkward step towards her. ‘Why?’ She had to jerk her whole body around to take the next step.
Zole tried to stand but fell to her side. Tarkax staggered forward and tumbled, the sword flying from his hand, his head hitting the rocks hard.
‘Money,’ said Clera, rising smoothly to her feet. ‘Lots of money. Enough gold to raise my family to the Sis, and more besides.’ She turned to look at Nona, still standing where she had stood since the first sharp prick of betrayal. ‘It’s Ara he wants, Nona. Thuran Tacsis swore to the emperor not to harm you. He’ll take her, get his concessions from the Jotsis and sell her back. All through third parties. She won’t lose anything but a month or two and some family prospects. And that scarcely matters if she’s to be a Red Sister.’ Clera stepped closer. ‘So you see, it’s hardly anything.’ Closer still. Close enough to whisper. ‘I’ll miss you, Nona.’ She pulled her head back and stared. ‘What in hell is wrong with your eyes? They’re black … every bit—’
Nona’s fist connected with the side of Clera’s head, the sort of solid blow that puts an end to conversations and to fights. She was at Tarkax’s pack almost before Clera hit the ground, but she felt as though she were running through a bad dream. Clera would abandon her for as little as money? Trust, Sister Apple had said, was the most insidious of poisons. It hurt Nona to know how well she had learned that lesson.
‘Tie her up, quick!’ She threw the rope from the warrior’s pack at Darla. ‘Quick! Gag her too.’
A moment later she had the leather wrap, crouching so as not to be seen from outside the cave. Clera’s throwing star, the four-pointed one from Partnis Reeve, was stuck in it. The contents of four tubes dripped from the leather, unstoppered by the impact.
She brought it back across the cave and threw herself down beside Tarkax. ‘Which one? Which one?’ She waved it before his face but his eyes were unfocused, blood leaking from beneath his cheek and forehead where he had struck a rock. He had been reaching for the antidote, she knew that, but which tube was it in? She couldn’t risk using the wrong one. She might dose him with a whole new poison.
Rising, Nona went to Ara and held her face in both hands, putting herself in her eye line. ‘You’ve been poisoned, Ara. Clera jabbed you with a needle. It was coated with lock-up. Tincture of segren root. You had it before, first day with the Poisoner. You’ll be fine.’ She glanced across to Ruli, standing helpless, watching as Darla and Jula bound the unconscious Clera. ‘Help me lie her down.’
Together they lay Ara on the ground, the unnatural stiffness of her limbs unpleasant to touch.
‘Your eyes, Nona.’ Ruli looked up from her examination of Ara, one hand still twined in the gold of her hair. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘I …’ Nona reached up to touch them. ‘I don’t know. I can see. They don’t hurt.’
‘But, they’re black … like someone poured ink into them.’ Ruli looked frightened, but there was plenty more to be frightened about than odd eyes.
‘I took the black cure … the one I made with Hessa and Ara.’
Ruli’s fear turned to horror. ‘Why? Why would you do that?’
Nona pointed towards the brightness of the slopes. ‘Those soldiers haven’t just come for Ara. I don’t care what promises Thuran Tacsis made or where he made them. Raymel Tacsis wants his revenge and someone out there knows that if they don’t go back with me they may as well not go back at all. Maybe all of them know that. And if they come I’m going to go down fighting, not poisoned and helpless, ready to be bound and carried off to some torture chamber.’ It was almost true. She had put the vial to her lips when she heard that the soldiers were advancing on the cave, worried that they might carry venoms to take her alive – but what had made her tip it into her mouth? That had been the memory of Clera coming back off the plateau having brewed the catweed liquor. She had blamed the stink on poor Malkin because, despite the plant’s name, Sister Apple’s silly rhyme held truth, catweed didn’t smell like a cat weed, but segren root did.
‘I took it because I didn’t trust my friend.’ That was the truth, and like many truths it was hard and it hurt.
When Nona raided Sister Apple’s stores she had stolen catweed and segren root along with anything else that looked useful. After Clera’s alchemy out on the plateau some of both were missing, the segren root cut to disguise the loss … but Nona had spotted it anyway, because the smell had made her suspicious and, hating herself, she had checked up on Clera. Nona had come on the ranging knowing that Clera was carrying lock-up … she just hadn’t quite known why.
‘Zole’s talking …’ Jula was crouched beside the girl that Sherzal had set among them. The four-blood come to claim her place in history.
‘Tarkax got the biggest dose, then Ara, then me. Zole got jabbed in the fight but Clera must have been running out of needles, or used one twice.’
‘Kill. Her.’ Zole watched Nona kneel beside her, her black eyes dull.
‘I’m not killing her,’ Nona said. Whatever Clera had done she was Nona’s friend. It wasn’t a bond made for breaking. ‘She’s well tied.’
‘Kill.’
‘No!’ Nona snapped the word. ‘Tell me what Sherzal wants. We’re probably going to die here, so you may as well. The Tacsis aren’t going to want to leave witnesses. Tell me and I’ll do my best to draw things out so you’ve got a chance to face this on your feet.’
‘Argatha.’ Zole forced the word past a locked jaw.