‘Are you out of your mind?’ she said. Around them everything was terror and chaos, with the screaming of the people being eaten alive, the desperate scrabble for escape, and, underneath it all somewhere, the quiet and impossible sound of his sister weeping. But he looked into Noon’s face and he saw quiet amusement, and something else: a challenge. ‘Tor, if we can kill her here, all of this will end, now. Don’t you see?’
With the familiar weight of the Ninth Rain in his hands, he did see. ‘Will you cover me?’
Noon grinned, and he remembered the sweet taste of her blood.
Noon ran ahead of Tor, letting her instincts take over. The voice within her was a steadying presence, keeping her focussed, while a deeper inner voice moved her body. Spinning and sweeping her right hand down towards the floor, her fingertips brushing the marble surface, she built a great swathe of winnowfire around her, a bright green tunnel of vertical light powered by the alien energy inside. When she had been very small, the plains had once witnessed violent storms that looked like her tunnel of fire. Mother Fast – whom Tor had carefully pushed towards the door – had called them ‘gods’ fingers’, tall wavering columns of darkness that would eat up the land. Now Noon was her very own storm, and outside of it she could sense the figures of those already consumed by the Jure’lia, and beyond them the towering shape of the queen.
The drones fell back as her flames licked their spiral of destruction around her. Next to her, Tor was a blur, his sword slicing through the air with precise movements; drones fell to the floor, their heads severed from their necks, their happy smiles still in place.
‘Keep moving forward, don’t look back!’
A flood of burrowers swarmed towards them in an arrow-shape, a direct attack from the queen herself, no doubt. In response, Noon released some of the energy from the green storm circling her, and a curl of fire swept across the marble floor. Scores of burrowers exploded with yellow hisses of flame, and a strange, acrid smell filled the Hall of Roots.
Halfway there now. More drones came, their faces full of an empty contentment, and Noon lit them up like tapers, noting as she did so that the smell of burning flesh no longer bothered her.
Because you are a soldier, came the voice in her head. And then, I am close now. Look for me.
She glanced at Tor. He was heading towards his sister who was still sitting in a crumpled heap at the edge of the roots. His face was caught in profile, his fine brows drawn down in an expression of faintly annoyed concentration as he bloodied his sword again and again – although, in truth, it wasn’t blood that spurted from the bodies of the drones, but the same thick black substance that formed the body of the queen. It was likely that they would both die here, she reflected, as a cold sense of calm filled her chest. Too late to tell him anything, too late to express her particular affection for how his face looked right now – angry, indignant, desperate.
Concentrate on your task, soldier.
‘What is this? The very last warriors Ebora has to offer?’ The queen had walked to the edge of roots, and Noon caught a glimpse of her face; masklike and beautiful, it hung suspended in the shifting black matter of her body like a leaf floating downstream. In response, Noon released the energy of the storm surrounding her to swirl across the remainder of the hall, but the queen gestured and a wall of oily black liquid rose in front of her. The fire hissed against it, and Noon sensed rather than saw the queen flinch. The wall of black fluid dropped.
‘The last, and the best,’ called Tor. He met Noon’s eyes briefly, and she grinned at the reckless good humour she saw there. ‘You can crawl back to the dirt if you like, your majesty, and we can all carry on with our day.’
‘Manners, I like that.’ The queen turned her head to address Hestillion. ‘This one is blood to you, yes?’
Noon saw Hestillion’s shoulders move as she answered but within the roaring of the winnowfire she could not make out the words, and then a flower of pain blossomed on her leg, distracting her. She looked down to see a burrower making its way up her boot. Noon reached down and grasped it in her palm, summoning the fire to crush the creature in a short explosive gasp.
‘We’ll rush her,’ Tor was saying, his voice pitched only for her. ‘Throw what you’ve got up there for as long as you can, and I’ll circle around. This sword should do the trick, don’t you think? This is what it was re-forged for, after all.’
‘The Ninth Rain,’ said Noon in agreement, but she was thinking of something else now. There was some other factor, something else they had forgotten about, that they shouldn’t forget about. As if moving by itself, her head tipped up and, far above them, she saw the branches of Ygseril, spreading out over the great glass roof. Nestled there were silver shapes, bulbous and strange, surely too large and heavy to stay where they were. And when they dropped, they would crash onto the glass roof. Perhaps they would break through, lacerated on the way down by shards of glass, or perhaps they would roll away to land elsewhere in the palace grounds.
Noon stopped.
‘What are you doing?’
Ignoring Tor, Noon summoned the winnowfire once more, knowing that now more than ever she needed to be in control, and control had never been her defining trait. Briefly, she thought of Agent Lin, her steely expression of determination as Noon fled, frightened and weak.
That isn’t you any more.
‘I am a weapon.’ Noon thrust her arms up, and with it went a column of green fire that briefly turned the inside of the Hall of Roots as bright as a summer’s midday on the plains. Meeting the ceiling of glass, it blossomed, curling out in all directions.
‘What have you—?’
Noon threw herself at Tor, knocking him to the floor and into a pile of broken chairs. At almost the very same moment, the glass ceiling above them shattered with an ear-bruising explosion. The noise was extraordinary, and a deadly rain of glass and twisted iron followed it. Pressing her body to Tor’s, she waited for it to be over even as she tensed her body for what had to come next.
‘Did you just destroy the Hall of Roots?’ Tor’s voice was a hot gasp in her ear.
‘Just the glass,’ she replied, ‘not the branches. Can’t touch those.’
‘What?’
But Noon was already moving. Distantly she was aware that, again, she had been cut in various places, but, blotting out everything else was the sense that something was about to happen that she couldn’t miss. A quick glance told her that the queen had retreated behind her wall of ooze again, and that Hestillion was still alive, her slim arms held over her head. They were shaking. Noon looked up. The glass roof was gone, the edges of it smouldering, and Ygseril’s branches were swaying back and forth.
‘What – what did you do that for?’
Tor was by her side again. A piece of glass had caught him and a sheet of transparent blood had slicked his hair to his scalp, but he held his sword as steadily as ever. Noon pointed upwards. The clutch of silver pods were shivering now, high in the branches, nearly ready to fall.
‘It’s their time, Tor.’
She had spoken quietly, but the Jure’lia queen had heard her anyway.