A fuzzy sort of pain blossomed as Clera struck the nerve cluster at the bottom of Nona’s neck. Nona fought to hold on to consciousness but lost her grip and pitched forward into a darkness the lantern could not illuminate.
• • •
NONA SAW, THOUGH whether her own eyes were open or not no longer mattered. Kettle’s urgency had hauled Nona into her mind once more.
The nun crept along a tunnel, part natural, hewn out in sections. The stink of smoke hung in the air, stinging her eyes; her arm ached and the taste of blood filled her mouth. She used a tiny mirror on a thin metal rod to look around the next corner. Twenty yards away five Lightless and another guard waited before the ruins of a door. Beyond it figures moved in a smoke-filled corridor.
Noi-Guin. Kettle’s heart sunk so far that even Nona felt it drop. However the previous encounter had ended, it clearly had not gone easily.
Kettle withdrew and began to set traps in the corridor behind her. First a scattering of envenomed caltrops: small, razored pieces of tempest-glass, tough enough to pierce any boot sole, small enough to be overlooked. Next she set a small sigil-marked piece of iron to the rock wall. It bound fast and she drew out the Ark-steel wire attached to it, pulling it taut and binding it to the opposite wall with a second sigil-marked fastener. The device would require a fortune to replace, and not a small one. Finally, with great care, she felt among her poisons and antidotes, removing a screw-topped steel tube. She undid the lid and extracted a leather tube from within. She coated the tube with a thick tar-based adhesive, holding it by the weak, untreated ends. Nona sensed the Grey Sister’s anxiety . . . Without further hesitation Kettle threw herself at the nearest wall, kicked off, gaining height, stretched up, pressed the tube to the ceiling, and landed on soft feet. The tube stayed where she stuck it.
Nona knew she had to leave. She was no use to the nun as a mute watcher. She had to get back to her body, deal with Clera. Quite how to do that was another matter. Nona set to work.
Ducking under the near-invisible wire, Kettle returned to the corner with her mirror in one hand, a throwing star in the other. She peered around. The Lightless were beginning to advance, the Noi-Guin behind them. Soft feet had not been soft enough.
The nun took her enemy’s measure, threw her star, exposing only her hand, and started to run away. A leap over the caltrops turned into a slide beneath the slanting wire. A moment later she was sprinting away down the tunnel.
Kettle turned on her lead foot, body spinning, her other heel scraping against stone as it absorbed her momentum, the timing a simple judgment call. The first of the Lightless were rounding the corner. Throwing stars spat from both her hands, the aim of less importance than the rate of fire. The Lightless, hunska-fast themselves, spun and twisted to avoid the incoming stars. Caltrop spikes pierced leather soles and found flesh, the ball of a foot, the soft instep, the heel. A point that’s driven through leather is apt to have any venom wiped from it but the weapon-smiths who wrought these particular works of devilry for the convent included shallow wells along each spike, reservoirs where toxins might be smeared, waiting to be washed out with blood.
Some Lightless failed in their attempts to dodge Kettle’s throwing stars, others lamed themselves on the caltrops. The first to pass these twin threats unscathed, a woman, ran into the wire. The effects were ugly. Ark-steel is reluctant to break. The wire cut in across her face, sliding down across the resistance offered by the skull beneath, cutting into her neck. The man hopping behind her hit the wire lower down. It sliced into his thigh. A third Lightless, tearing at the throwing star embedded in his pectoral muscle, stumbled into the pair before him and their joint weight at last parted the wire. The three of them fell in a welter of blood and sliced flesh.
The Noi-Guin came around the corner at a rush, batting away a throwing star that would have hit him. He wove between the remaining pair of Lightless.
Kettle had six stars left. She threw one high. So high that the Noi-Guin became suspicious at the last and lunged upwards with his knife, trying to intercept it. His effort came too late. The throwing star hit the tube Kettle had stuck to the ceiling. Grey mustard powder jetted out with the force of the impact, blooming into a cloud.
If the Noi-Guin hadn’t been lunging upward, tracking the star, he might have been able to run on, avoiding all but the outermost edges of the cloud. As it was he dropped immediately, but not quite fast enough. Kettle allowed herself no pity. When the Noi-Guin tore off his black-skin mask with a blistered hand, reaching towards his mouth with the other, a steel vial in his grip, she threw another star at his fingers then drew back from the screaming.
Grey mustard spores become rapidly denatured by exposure to air with even a slight moisture content. Quite how quickly they would lose their bite in the dampness of the Tetragode Kettle wasn’t sure, but she also knew she couldn’t afford to wait long. She smeared mud from a nearby seep over her face, neck, ears, and hands, took a deep breath, drew her sword, and ran, avoiding the bodies of those still busy dying. She rounded the corner, praying to every aspect of the Ancestor that there wouldn’t be another Noi-Guin lined against her, and slid into the turn, dropping to avoid the reflex-thrown cross-knives. There wasn’t a Noi-Guin waiting for her. There were three. A dozen Lightless stood ready before them.
“Take her alive.” The voice of the central Noi-Guin. She held a sword that
