LORD CARVON JOTSIS seemed to have the best knowledge of Sherzal’s palace among the group who had escaped the banqueting hall. He led their party through the palace’s underbelly, through roaringly hot kitchens, steaming laundry rooms, and past endless servants’ chambers.
Their group numbered a score or so: four Sis lords—Jotsis, Mensis, Halsis, and old Glosis, who appeared not yet ready to die despite having enjoyed at least eighty years in her seat. With them were various family members and additional guests, including a merchant or two, and the cage-fighter, Regol. Now, shamefaced over his flight from the battle at the banquet doors, he was helping Terra Mensis along. The girl had broken a wrist during the escape though otherwise appeared astonishingly pristine. Had there been time Glass would have explained to Regol the reason for his lost courage. But time had run out on them and they were chasing it. Glass walked alongside Darla, trying to bind the cuts on her arms and side with strips of cloth torn from her habit. All were too deep for dressings to be much help. The injury in Darla’s side was a puncture wound and the sword that made it must have penetrated her vitals. Glass talked all the while, hardly aware of what she said, just comforting noise. Words of praise for Darla’s courage and skill, words of comfort and of hope that she didn’t feel, the words of the Ancestor, mother and father to them all who would surely gather each of them into the eternal embrace soon enough.
Carvon Jotsis led them with a certainty common to those of his station whether or not they knew where they were heading. In the distance shouts rang out, the sounds of running feet came and went, and the darkened corridor behind them promised attack at each moment. But it never came. Eventually they emerged from a long service tunnel into a cellar and up into the main stables. Ara felled the trio of stablehands who showed some inclination towards barring their way, using her fists and feet rather than her sword, but it still looked a brutal business. Ara’s uncle left her to it and went to the main entrance, Glass following. Some yards back from doors as wide as those of any barn a huge carriage stood beneath protective sheets. Sherzal’s, no doubt. The wheels were nearly as tall as Glass.
“Twelve hells.” Carvon turned from the narrow gap between the stable doors. “The main gates are shut. There’s a line of soldiers in front of them, two dozen archers on the walls above those.” He walked back towards Glass and the inquisitors.
“There must be another way.” Ara left Darla in Melkir’s care, resting against a hay bale, and came to join Lord Jotsis in front of Glass. “It won’t take long before they’re coming up behind us.”
“There’s no other way, not for us.” Carvon shook his head. “They say there’re ways into the mountain from the basements but I don’t know how to get there, or how to get through the caves if we found them.”
“So we go out there.” Ara drew herself straight, trying to look fierce, but her exhaustion showed. “Regol and I could make it onto the walls. Attack along both sides. Clear the archers.”
Glass didn’t bother to point out that it would be suicide. Reinforcements would arrive before they got to the gates. And even if they got above the gates opening them would be no simple thing. And merely leaving the palace wouldn’t save them . . . The weight of this knowledge pressed down upon her shoulders. Her arrival had killed these people. Whole families condemned to die.
“I’m game.” Regol flashed Ara a wolf’s smile. “I came for a free meal. I get enough of fighting to the death back in Verity. But I’m damned if I’m supporting that woman against the emperor or inviting the Scithrowl over the mountains.”
Seldom spoke up behind Glass. “We’re done for.”
“We are.” Agika joined them. “We should pray.”
Glass smiled. She turned back towards the inquisitors and nodded. She had never been a zealot in the mould of Sister Wheel but she believed that at the end of things the Ancestor would gather them to the whole and all division would be set aside. It was an end worth praying for. She reached out for Agika’s hand, then Seldom’s. “Sister, brother, it has been an honour to serve with you.”
Lord Glosis, last to arrive, clambered up the stairs from the cellar, helped by a young nephew. “They’re on our trail.” She paused to catch her breath. “I could hear them in the corridor right behind us.” Another wheezing chestful of air hauled in under her ribs. “They’re coming!”
Ara and Regol moved quickly to flank the stairs, both with bloodstained swords in hand. The sounds of a fight would draw guards and soldiers from other directions; it would be over quickly. The sounds of footsteps on stone stairs grew louder, closer. A dark head popped up. Regol swung. Ara swung. Swords clashed, Ara’s blade turning Regol’s aside as the head jerked back.
“Clera?” Ara shouted. “What in hell are you—”
“Don’t kill me!” Clera came up again, hands raised.
Regol stepped back, frowning. Ara gave a cry and pushed past Clera, heading down the steps. She emerged a moment later in a staggering, limping, moving embrace with Nona Grey and Sister Kettle, all three of them clutching swords.
“I’ve seldom had a prayer answered so swiftly . . .” Glass released the inquisitors’ hands and hurried across to Nona and Kettle.
Glass wrapped her arms around Kettle’s altogether too-skinny frame, then Nona’s, similarly lacking in softness, all hard angles.
“Sister Kettle! So good to see you, Mistress Shade asked me to bring you back to the convent in one piece and I would hate to disappoint that woman.” Glass found her smile so wide it hurt. She took Nona’s hands. “And, novice, I’ve reconsidered your punishment. I’ve decided death was too harsh. Banishment seems extreme too. So . . . no visits to town for a month and you’re to attend the optional Spirit classes on seven-days instead.”
Glass stepped back and found both of them teary-eyed. To her dismay she discovered her own eyes misting. “Enough of this! The gate is heavily guarded. How are you going to get us out?” She noticed that Nona was limping. Kettle too; and the young nun also sported a livid black-and-scarlet wound across her throat.
Nona’s gaze wandered over the various stalls with horses in, the rope and tack hung across the walls, the hay heaped beside sacks of grain. Her eyes came to rest on Sherzal’s huge carriage. One of the Sis had pulled back the sheeting from the door. It gleamed darkly, lacquered in black, emblazoned with Sherzal’s coat of arms: a storm cloud above a mountain, both lit by the jagged golden lightning that joined them.
“Is it a clear path to the outer gates?” Nona asked.
“Apart from all the archers,” Regol said. “And the soldiers.”
Nona looked across at the cage-fighter, registering him for the first time. She stood frozen for a heartbeat then looked away, almost shy. “Everyone needs to get into the carriage.”
“How will that help?” Lord Jotsis pushed through the survivors starting to gather around the newcomers.
“I will move it.” Nona turned her wholly black eyes on the man. “There are palace guards entering the cellar below as we speak. Get in the carriage and you might survive.”
“Uncle.” Ara was already pulling the lord towards the carriage.
Glass watched without comment. Nona’s unassuming air of command was remarkable. The girl had Sis lords hurrying to do her bidding.
Kettle turned around and scattered caltrops down the stairs. “Better hurry, abbess, they’re coming.”
Glass nodded and followed Carvon Jotsis. A sense of urgency took hold and the guests in their soiled finery started to hurry towards the carriage. It looked large enough to hold them all though there would be no room for modesty. It would take eight horses to pull and horses wouldn’t see them through locked gates. What one girl could do Glass couldn’t imagine, but she had prayed and Nona had come. Now she would have faith.
Nona reached out, took a lantern from one of the passing guests and smashed it at the base of the piled hay. She pointed to a pitchfork. “Block the stairs.” Regol moved to begin the task while the others stood horrified.
“You’ll burn us alive!”