Eventually, with about two-thirds of the mile-long journey to the pass road complete, the ruins of Sherzal’s grand carriage lurched sideways and came to a halt with the front right wheel hanging over an unknown drop. Ara stood panting, braced against the brake lever.
A minute’s work saw most of the carriage’s passengers disembarked, or carried off. Two older men had been killed by arrows that found their way past shutters and seat bases. A matronly woman in a voluminous dress had been shot through the shoulder, the arrow still in place, its steel head emerging from her back. Regol, Kettle, and Ara kept close around the abbess.
* * *
? ? ?
NONA CRAWLED FROM beneath the wreckage of the carriage, her arms aching, legs scraped and torn. She had lunged for the axle and let it drag her, with only the fading power of the Path to shield her from harm.
“Nona!” Ara hobbled across to help her up. Behind Ara Nona could see the distant flames licking up above Sherzal’s walls. She hoped the conflagration would spread and gut the place from lowest cellar to tallest tower.
“Where’s Clera?” Nona asked looking over the survivors.
“She never got in,” Ara said.
“I called to her.” Kettle pressed her mouth into a speculative pucker. “She backed away into the smoke.”
“But—” It made no sense. The abbess would have taken her back. Nona knew it.
“She made a choice, Nona.” Abbess Glass spoke in a low voice. “She helped you when you needed help, but she fancied her chances better with the emperor’s sister.”
Nona looked around her. Starlight washed the roadway through a wind-torn hole in the clouds. It lit the ruined carriage, one side torn away, the roof sagging, and shone red across a score of Sis in ballgowns and formalwear, ill-suited for walking the mountains. Many bore injuries, including Kettle, Ara, and herself. Her gaze settled on Regol, the only fighter among them fit for combat, save for Melkir.
“My lady.” He executed a half-bow, showing her that same old smile, even now.
She found herself suddenly aware of how tattered and inadequate her smock was, the wind playing it around her, and how filthy everything beneath it lay. “Regol.” She had meant to tell him she was a novice rather than a lady, but she wasn’t sure she was either right at that moment. And with his gaze upon her she was no longer sure which she would rather be.
“Every time I dine somewhere that you are also a guest, Nona, I find myself attacked.” He rubbed his jaw as if remembering a punch. “By the same woman!”
“Safira?” Kettle stepped forward. “Is she . . .”
“I punched her pretty hard,” Regol said. “But she’ll get up again. I can’t claim it as a fair fight, though.”
“Are we safe?” Terra Mensis broke into their circle, cradling her injured wrist. She seemed to have picked up new injuries in the carriage and sported a livid bruise across most of the left side of her face.
“I rather doubt it,” Abbess Glass replied. “Sherzal will send her soldiers after us. How soon depends on how bad a fire we left her with, but I can’t see us outrunning them.”
As if to answer her the sky cleared further and beneath the starlight the whole curve of the road could be seen, leading back to the broken gates of the palace. A troop of perhaps fifty soldiers was advancing along it at speed. They’d covered half the distance already.
* * *
? ? ?
NONA SET HER back to the rocks beside the road, as spent as she had ever been. Yisht had called friends a weakness. The pain that Hessa’s death, and now Darla’s, had caused her was very different from that of the Harm, but it was deeper and longer-lasting. A weakness, though? It had been friendship that had Kettle follow her half the length of the empire, friendship that had Clera spirit her out of the dungeons of the Noi-Guin, and if she had to die she would rather do it here under the scarlet heavens with her sisters of the Red and the Grey, free and fighting, than any alternative she could imagine.
Kettle stood, throwing aside the halves of the arrow she’d taken from Ara’s calf, and came to stand beside Nona. Ara followed, testing her weight on her tightly bound leg with a grimace. “Ouch.” She leaned back beside Nona, the wind spreading golden hair across the rocks.
“Nice dress,” Nona said.
“Thanks. Terra helped me choose it. It was stupidly expensive.”
Regol came to stand before them. His dark hair swept by the Corridor wind, he glanced across at the approaching troops. All around them the rocks lay red with starlight. He turned his gaze upon Nona and suddenly it felt as if the focus moon were blazing, making her sweat. “Will you hold the road with me, sister?” he asked. “I’ve wanted to see you fight again.”
“I’m not a sister, just a novice.” The moment the words left her she felt stupid. Was that the best she could think of to say? And why did it even matter with fifty swords approaching?
Regol grinned. He always grinned. “You’re my sister of the cage.”
A chill ran the length of Nona’s spine despite the heat of his regard. How did he know she would be Sister Cage, a secret shared only with Ara and Mistress Path?
“We were both born from Giljohn’s cage after all!” He laughed, breaking any tension, and turned towards the palace, swinging his sword in a figure of eight.
Abbess Glass stood revealed as Regol moved aside. She too was smiling, albeit a smile tinged with sadness. “You three have done astonishing things to bring us so close to an impossible success. Astonishing.” She reached out her hands and Nona took them, Kettle and Ara laying theirs over hers. “But the world is not changed by individual acts of violence, no matter how good the cause. Neither can it truly be changed by the power of the Path. The greatest of the Mystic Sisters all knew this. However much strength is concentrated in a single Martial Sister, however far the reach of a Sister of Discretion, it is overreached by the strength and reach of the masses. You may be rocks but humanity is the tide and you only have to stand upon the sand to see how that contest concludes.
“In the end it is not whether we live or die here, but how the message echoes through the empire and beyond. We are not leaders, merely servants. Even the emperor’s power is illusion. Ultimately the will of the people drives us, as inevitably as the advance of the ice. And the people are, each and every one of them, the children of the Ancestor, holy, chosen. We have shown them Sherzal’s true heart and they will judge her actions. Those who cannot slow the pursuit must flee. They must scatter across the slopes and we must trust that some will find their way to safety and speak of what happened here.”
Abbess Glass stepped closer, staring into each of their faces in turn, her eyes kind. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to look ahead, on being able to see the consequences of actions. It’s a meagre skill perhaps, compared to the talents that the Ancestor has placed in you girls, but it has served me well until this night. But you should know, the greatest joy to those who see the future is that life remains full of surprises. And you have all surprised me.”
“Holy Mother . . .” Kettle’s voice grew too thick with emotion to continue.
“I had a son once.” The abbess smiled, remembering. “I couldn’t have loved him more. But I never had a daughter. I would have been proud to call any of you my own.” She lifted her hands, forestalling any embrace. “You are my children, children of the Ancestor, daughters of the Rock of Faith, daughters of Sweet Mercy. I expect you to meet your enemy with ferocity and make a good account of yourselves.”