“High Oracle, please. Stop this!”
Pelagia looked over Hathena’s shoulder at Sister Kara writhing on the dais, whispering heresies as blood continued to run from her nose—and now her mouth, her ears, even her eyes.
She had found out what she wanted. Her fears were confirmed. And now the Ritual of Prophecy was killing Kara.
Pelagia’s hand dropped to her belt, her fingers playing over the pommel of the ceremonial mace carried by all of the Sisters of the Oracular Order.
Hathena glanced down, then backed away, shaking her head. “No. Pelagia, no, you can’t—”
The High Oracle stepped forward, lifting her mace from her belt. With her other hand she pointed at Beatris. “Enough! Stop the recording.”
Beatris operated the recording lever. The machine stopped with a heavy clunk.
Hathena opened her mouth to speak, but Pelagia pushed past her, her shove sending the Sister careening to the floor. The High Oracle mounted the dais. The mace in her hand felt suddenly very, very heavy.
Kara didn’t even know she was there. She had calmed, and was now kneeling, her head upturned, her lips moving, although she didn’t speak.
The other Sisters stood. Hathena was shouting, butPelagia blotted the sound out, reciting the Seven Strictures inside her head, over and over and over again.
The prophecy was being interfered with. Someone had found a way, somehow, to influence the visions, to despoil the power of the Sisters of the Oracular Order.
It had to be some kind of witchcraft. There was no other explanation.
Heresy.
Then the High Oracle swung her arm back, raising the mace. Behind her, the others in the circle called out—Hathena included. She pushed herself up from the floor and dived toward Pelagia, grabbing the High Oracle’s arm, yanking it back with enough force to send both of them falling to the floor. Pelagia’s mace clattered away across the stones; she struggled to rise, but Hathena was faster, shoving the High Oracle away as she scrambled back to where Kara had collapsed onto the embroidered cushion, her curled body wracked with sobs.
Pelagia stood and pulled the veil off her face. “Hathena, you dare to interfere!”
Hathena wrapped her arms around Kara. She regarded Pelagia over the top of Kara’s shaking head. “You were going too far, High Oracle.”
Pelagia paused, the silence in the Cloister of Prophecy disturbed only by Kara’s weeping. As Pelagia stepped up onto the dais and looked down at the novice, Hathena pulled her even closer.
Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Then Pelagia turned and pointed at Beatris. “Destroy the audiograph recording, immediately. Burn it!”
Beatris, shaking, began pulling the punch card reel from the machine. The High Oracle turned back to Hathena, the two women looking at each other as time seemed to stretch out to eternity.
Then Pelagia said, “We had to know, Sister.”
Hathena stared at her. “There had to be another way.”
“The future of the Sisters of the Oracular Order hangs in the balance,” said Pelagia. “We cannot allow the Ritual of Prophecy to be interfered with.” She looked at the other Sisters, cowering from their leader. “There is heresy at work,” she said. “And we must work to fight it.”
She turned back to Hathena, then took a deep breath. “But I must thank you, Sister. Perhaps I allowed myself to be overcome. Look after Kara. You may suspend your duties until she has recovered. I must meditate on my actions and consider a better way forward.”
Hathena held her gaze for a moment, then she nodded. Pelagia turned and marched out of the chamber without another word.
After she was gone, Hathena glanced over to the corner of the Cloister of Prophecy, where the High Oracle’s mace lay. As Kara’s weeping began to subside, Hathena shifted her position, only now uncurling her fingers from the grip of her own mace on her belt.
PART ONE
THE KNIFE OF DUNWALL
1
GREAVES AUXILIARY WHALE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROW, DUNWALL
18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“He’d looked into Jessamine Kaldwin’s eyes at the moment her life slipped away. And in that moment a thought occurred to him: he’d made a mistake. He’d been misled. That kind of thinking was useless. She was just as dead, whether he regretted it or not. But he’d seen his true face reflected in her eyes; seen himself for what he really was. Not a renowned assassin, not some great shaper of history. Just another playing piece in an unknowable game.”
—THE KNIFE OF DUNWALL
Excerpt from a penny novel, Chapter 3
He knelt on the hard, wet floor of the ruined slaughterhouse, glanced around at the neatly ordered piles of rubble, and sighed. He pushed the top of his deep hood back a little and tugged absentmindedly on the bottom of his jerkin, wet from the night rain. He pulled at his beard with a gloved hand.
Daud considered his situation, and he sighed.
So, this was it. Weeks—months—of traveling, of crisscrossing the Empire. Months of following rumors and whispers, of listening to stories with no endings, of seeking out strange cults, chasing leads that led nowhere. Months of searching, scrambling for what little information there was, grasping at the threads, pulling them gently, as though they would break in his grasp. This was it: a pile of rubble in the cavernous, burned-out shell of a whale oil factory in an unsavory quarter of the wettest bloody city in all the Isles.
It was the right place; he was just far too late. The stories were true—something had happened in the factory. Something vital to his mission. But whatever calamity had reduced the Greaves Auxiliary Slaughterhouse 5 to a broken shell, it had happened months ago.
All that time and effort wasted. The factory had been important, but now it was a dead end.
Daud stood, planted his hands on his hips, and tilted his head as he regarded the nearest rubble pile, as though viewing it from a different angle would somehow make any kind of difference at all.
No. It was not a
