‘I have the Path, Ruli.’ Nona offered a faint smile.
‘You have the Path at the convent,’ Ruli said. ‘But let’s be honest … you’re not very good with it there. Ara is much better. And Hessa – she knows more about threads than Sister Pan does already! But isn’t that the whole point of Sherzal wanting the shipheart? This far from it even a Holy Witch finds it hard to touch the Path. And your serenity … well … it’s rubbish.’ Ruli looked down. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’ve given up on serenity.’ Nona smiled. ‘It wasn’t me. But I do have a new record on blade-path …’
‘Blade-path?’ Darla asked. ‘What the hell has blade-path got to do with anything?’
‘New record?’ Ruli asked. ‘You completed it? Well …’ She looked around the cave, Tarkax lying in a pool of his own blood, Ara and Zole paralysed, Clera bound and staring dazed over her gag. ‘… congratulations?’
‘I used the grease,’ Nona said.
‘What?’
‘The grease you gave me. I’d been doing it all wrong. I kept going slower and slower and falling off sooner and sooner. It felt wrong. It didn’t fit. So I did what I do to reach the Path. I ran at it. I cleaned the resin from my feet and greased my soles. Blade-path’s all downhill, except the bits that aren’t and by the time you reach them you’re going fast enough to carry through.’
‘But the corkscrew?’ Ruli looked up at her, blinking.
‘If you’re going fast enough you can slide around the inside.’ Nona grinned. ‘It’s wonderful. Everything fits together. All the choices, all the balancing, they happen at fight-speed, they make sense. I did it in thirty counts!’
‘THIRTY counts?’ Ruli gasped. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘It’s not as fast as Sister Owl,’ Nona said. ‘But I was pleased with it.’
‘I still don’t care,’ Darla said. ‘How is that silly game going to help against what’s out there?’ She waved her sword towards the slope.
‘But it’s not just a game,’ Nona said. ‘We do it for a reason.’
‘Balance and timing,’ Jula said.
‘The hunska do it for that. But the quantal do it because it trains the mind for the Path. I had a … I suddenly saw everything in a new way.’ Nona turned back towards the daylight.
‘An epiphany,’ Jula breathed.
‘An epiphany.’ Sister Kettle had taught Nona the word but she hadn’t found it on her lips when she wanted it. An epiphany. Seeing the world anew with new understanding. Like when Sister Pan’s trick pictures suddenly made sense and you saw the bump as a hole, the young woman as an old lady. The same thing had happened with Clera. Nona had taken a step back and in an instant seen her treachery whole and clear. The new picture didn’t erase the old – the bump was still a hole, but now it was a bump as well; the old lady was still a young one, but now she was old too. Clera was still her friend, and now an enemy also.
Nona saw too that the truth had been hers for the taking. Sister Apple’s bitter pill … All that had stopped her asking Clera about the throwing star and unravelling the whole tale was her own desire not to speak of Amondo and the forest where she had stood, clothed in blood, revealed to the world as a monster, hungry for the kill. One truth for another and they wouldn’t be standing in this cave. But that itself, like most truths, had proved too bitter for the mouth to speak.
Epiphany? She saw herself. A child of nine, the dried blood of six royal soldiers still in her hair. She saw the child-taker, Giljohn, with one hand on Four-Foot’s reins, the cart and cage behind him, rattling up the lane. She saw Grey Stephen bent in conversation. Her mother weeping. She had stared at the memory so long, so many times … Could it be possible? To see it another way?
‘So you think you can walk the Path now?’ Ruli asked. ‘Even here?’
‘I think so,’ Nona said. ‘I just need to get angry enough.’ Rage could throw her at the Path back in the convent, close to the shipheart. Rage would throw her at it now – enough of it would. And this time she wouldn’t try to slow herself, wouldn’t try to stutter to a halt and gain her balance. She would take the speed and aim it down the Path and take all the power it would give her. And own it. All she needed was the rage. She reached for it … but where a fire had once blazed only an ember remained. Had her mother truly saved her?
‘Stay here,’ Darla said, looking down. ‘You don’t have to go out there. Or … we could scatter and run.’
‘No,’ Nona said. If they ran Darla would be the first caught.
‘We can wait,’ Jula said. ‘The poison will wear off and Tarkax can fight and …’
‘And Sister Tallow will come with the others,’ Ruli finished.
‘Go.’ Zole managed to put some heat into the word. She understood. If you wanted to win against the odds you had to carry the fight to the enemy. You had to take them unprepared.
‘I have to—’ But something dark and vast reached up to grab her and before Nona’s mouth closed on the last word she was gone.
Nona had been yanked from her body so swiftly she hardly had time to feel it begin to fall. She saw nothing, not even darkness, felt nothing save the pull and a sense of rushing. Then in one moment she slammed back into herself. She saw a paved yard, Heart Hall on her right, the Ancestor’s dome rising above the dormitory block to her left … Nona had been poured into someone’s skull, but not into her own. She leaned onto her crutch and took another limping step. Hessa!
Hessa’s thoughts rose around Nona, a tide that threatened to drown her. Nona shouted that she had to go, screamed to be released back to the cave, but Hessa just took another step as if she’d heard nothing.
Hessa had known it would be Yisht. Even so, finding the gate to the under-tunnels unlocked put a cold terror in her. She had shared every excruciating moment that Nona endured when Yisht had held her hands tight about her neck. It might have been Nona’s throat that was closed, but Hessa’s lungs had burned too, striving for a breath that wouldn’t come.
‘Why would you think you could come back?’ Hessa whispered. It made no sense. Did the woman want to die?
‘What are we doing here?’ Ghena hugged herself against the ice-wind, weaker now than it was, at the end of its reign, but still able to carry a sting.
‘You need to go to the abbess. Tell her Yisht has broken into the under-tunnels again.’ Hessa had been put in Red dormitory while Grey Class ranged.
‘The abbess? You’re mad! She’ll kill me. It’s the middle of the night.’ Ghena’s habitual temper hadn’t been improved by Hessa waking her with a pinch and cajoling her to come out into the night despite her protests.
‘Tell her Yisht is back. If you don’t she really will kill you! This is serious, Ghena. Deadly serious.’
‘Ancestor’s tits!’ Ghena spat on the ground and took off running in the direction of the abbess’s house. ‘You better be right about this, Hop-along!’
Hessa turned back to the gate and sighed. She had taken threads from everything of Yisht’s that Nona had brought her. Blood, hair, clothes, a boot-knife. And each bright and coiling thread she had pulled taut across her mind, feeling the woman’s impotent rage as she jolted westward in her barrel. What had scared her wasn’t the depth of that rage, but how cold it ran.
Hessa pushed the gate and it swung open, the tunnel beyond yawning darkly and swallowing the light from her lantern. She sighed again and began her long and painful descent of the stairs.