And Abbess Glass, her tongue possessed by a poison that compelled the truth, had to answer. “No.”
• • •
GLASS FOUND HER voice again as Sherzal’s guards advanced on the judges’ bench.
“The Inquisition may be a price worth paying, Sherzal, but your assassin killed an innocent child when stealing from the Church of the Ancestor. A child’s life was too high a cost. As are all the lives that will be spent when the Scithrowl hordes sweep along the roads to Verity. The battle-queen may withdraw, she may not, but even if the hordes do return to the east it will be like a storm-tide retreating, leaving devastation.” Glass spoke nothing but the truth and she spoke it with the confidence of her office, exerting a magic all of her own, one that stilled the chatter of the lords and even made Sherzal’s soldiers pause in their advance on Melkir. “All this blood spilled for your ambition, Sherzal! If this myth of shiphearts and wielding the moon were true then Crucical himself could strike such a bargain with Adoma. If you shared your knowledge with him no Scithrowl would have reason to cross the Grampains. If it were true.”
“Well, take her!” Sherzal urged her guards on.
Melkir levelled his sword but Safira moved faster than the eye, stepping around the blade and locking her right leg behind his left to send him clattering to the floor.
Glass spoke on, even as the guards closed around her. “And all the peoples of the Corridor are children of the Ancestor, whether they know it or not, whatever borders enclose them. Crucical would not use the moon as a weapon of aggression. It is our gift from those far deeper in the Ancestor’s great tree than we. The emperor could seek ways to better employ the moon’s blessing, and to deter others from attack. The empire could become the jewel on Abeth’s belt, not a dark and murderous master, condemning whole nations to icy ruin.”
Two guards took Glass’s arms, seeming unsure what to do next while she kept on addressing their mistress.
“Your plan has much in it that is good, Sherzal. What it does not require is you. No part of the greater good requires you to sit as emperor!”
“Silence the woman!” Sherzal shouted. “Or must I do it my—”
The sound that overwhelmed all others was an enormous and physical thing, as if a giant’s hammer had struck the palace—not against the outer walls but here within the chamber. Chairs and their occupants flew in all directions, centred on the area where the Sis families had been seated. Cracks, wide enough to receive fingers, even whole hands, ran out across the marbled floor, a cloud of powdered stone rising from the impact site.
Motion behind and above the scene caught Glass’s eye, a large figure driving smaller ones from behind a screen in the musicians’ gallery. Darla! Her opponents were archers, crossbows useless at such range. Their weapons must have been trained on the one guest that Sherzal knew had the potential to be her greatest physical threat. Slipping away during the trial to deal with Ara’s watchers would have been an impressive feat for someone closer to seven foot tall than to six, but Darla had managed to get herself escorted out, saving the need for subterfuge.
The dust began to settle. In its midst a figure on one knee, one hand to the floor. A woman in the tatters of a dress. The fabric, indeed the whole of her form, shuddering, shifting . . . warping . . . as she struggled to contain her power.
Arabella Jotsis! The archers must have been instructed to shoot her at any sign that she had begun to walk the Path. The last of their number fell, wailing, from the gallery.
And Ara stood, the glow around her limbs and torso almost too bright to look upon.
42
THE DETONATION UP in the main levels of the palace drew all the guards from their subterranean barracks, leaving just three of the four who had been on duty in the corridor.
“If they get to the sigil-work on the walls we’re done for,” Clera said. “I don’t know what it does, but Sherzal puts enough faith in it not to have a gate between her and the Noi-Guin.”
“And we can be pretty sure there are sigils there that will strip away shadow-work,” Nona said.
“So, you go up there and incapacitate them, Clera.” Kettle waved her on. “They’ll let you get close, then . . .”
“I’m not sure I could stop them all in time.” Clera frowned.
“Jab a pin varnished with lock-up into them,” Nona said, remembering a certain cave and unable to keep a trace of bitterness from her voice.
“They’re dosed with standard venoms every month to keep their tolerance high. Sherzal knows the Noi-Guin’s tricks. Besides, I don’t want them to know it was me.”
Nona unwrapped the chain around her waist. She’d fixed it there as a belt for the remains of her prison smock, and to provide a place to thrust the spare blades picked up after the battle at the cell-block. She set down her weapons and gave the chain to Kettle. Next she crossed her arms, back to back, the knuckles of one hand resting against the inside of the elbow of the other. “Bind me.”
Kettle started to wrap both limbs together, turn after turn of the chain. “I used this ploy with Zole at the entrance to the Tetragode. I don’t think it will work here though . . . I look like a Lightless.”
“That’s why I’m going alone,” Nona said.
Kettle finished binding Nona’s arms and tucked the end of the chain away. “If Clera doesn’t think she can disable the three of them quickly enough what makes you think you can?”
“That’s right.” Clera scowled. “I’m as fast as you are! These men aren’t pushovers. It just takes a moment for them to touch the right sigil and then—”
“Because I want
