Moments later Ara had downed two of the guards that were harrying those of the Sis retreating with Darla, and made a path for retreat through the banquet doors. Glass, Regol, Seldom, Agika, and Melkir followed. An arrow caromed off Melkir’s shoulder-plate, another hammering into the door to Glass’s left.
“I’ll hold them, Holy Mother.” Darla towered over the escaping clergy, a wild grin on her face, scarlet splashes across the blue taffeta gown she’d been squeezed into.
Regol sidestepped a guardsman’s thrust and pulled a sword from the hand of a dying lordling. He swept the guard’s blade up and ran him through, then took his place beside Darla, holding the doorway. Ara had hurried ahead, down the passage they proposed to escape along, to check for defenders.
Four long tables ran the length of the banquet hall, leading towards a dais where the high lords must have dined with Sherzal at the circular table. The remains of the feasting were still scattered across the tables. Candles lit the room, scores upon scores in brackets on the walls, and dozens of silver lamps were set in lines down the centre of each table. Across the hall Lord Carvon Jotsis was leading the Sis into the servants’ corridor. The shuddering light gave the scene an unreal quality.
“Hurry, abbess!” Melkir took her arm, trying to lead her on.
Glass held back for a moment. Through the doorway to the reception hall, narrowed by the partly closed doors that framed Darla and Regol, she could see the musicians’ gallery. A figure in cream and saffron skirts approached the broken rail. Joeli!
“Abbess!” Melkir at her shoulder. “They can’t hold for long!”
The crowd of guards before the entrance was growing rather than shrinking. Some had hold of the doors, heaving them back against the makeshift wedges that had been set, so that more could attack the pair denying them passage.
“Joeli . . . you can end this.” A whisper as Melkir pulled her away. The girl would have a clear vision of Sherzal and space in which to work. Even if she could get nothing past Sherzal’s sigil wards but a little doubt it might buy them time.
Up on the gallery Joeli reached out a hand as if to steer someone’s will. But her gaze turned towards the wrong doorway, her unfocused eyes seeming to find Glass. The girl’s fist closed, not in the delicate manipulation of thread-work but a violent snatch. Between the widening doors Regol suddenly leapt back, turning. A moment later he was sprinting past Glass, bewildered terror on his face.
“Dung on it!” A cry from Darla as an arrow sprung from her shoulder. She roared, sweeping her sword out and driving back four palace guards.
“Don’t . . .” Glass’s heels dragged the floor as Melkir hauled her towards the servants’ corridor.
Joeli repeated her action and this time Darla froze in mid-parry, as if suddenly distracted by some vital thought. A heartbeat later the guard to her left drove his sword into her side. Darla had nothing but a tattered gown to armour her. She folded around the steel, cursing, now lost among her attackers.
They closed in, swords rising and falling.
44
CLERA LED KETTLE and Nona back through the palace, aiming to reach the tunnel by which they had entered not long before. They had approached the chambers where Sherzal’s guards crowded but whatever battle had raged seemed to be over, the other participants fled or corpses. Wrapped in Kettle’s shadows, they saw no sign of Abbess Glass.
Nona limped along behind Clera, trying not to wonder whether her friends still lived. She could still sense the shipheart at her back. “We could have . . .” She tried to think what exactly they could have done. Dragged the vault? Hacked their way in with axes. None of it would have worked.
“We’re lucky that the shipheart wasn’t just resting on a table,” Kettle said. “I didn’t know quite how dangerous its effects on people were close up, or how fast they took hold.”
“It would have been a price worth paying to take it from Sherzal.” Nona had meant to say to take it back for the Church, but the truth was that denying Sherzal would give her the most pleasure.
Kettle shook her head. “If it had turned you into a thing like Yisht who knows what you would have done with it or where you would have gone?”
“Yisht brought it all the way here!” Nona protested. “I could have held it for an hour.”
“I doubt that she did. Sherzal would have had transport and containment waiting and ready close to the Rock. The shipheart likely warped her within an hour.”
“Shhhh!” Ahead of them Clera raised her hand.
They both limped up to join her. Voices could be heard on the stairs: “. . . back to help the guards chase them down.” A young man’s voice. One of the Sis.
“You’ll accompany me to my rooms and stand guard like a son should!” An older man, familiar.
“Istead will look after you,” the younger man replied. “What’s Sherzal going to think of us if we just scuttle off and hide? I’ll make for the gates. They don’t know the palace—that’s where they’ll go. They’re not getting out. I’ll bring Sherzal the old woman’s head!”
“Lano—”
“You know I’m right. We outnumber them fifty to one.” The sound of running feet followed, fading into the distance.
“Damn boy!” Thuran Tacsis’s voice. “We’ll get to the rooms and wait this out, Istead.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Clera had already turned from the corner and hurried back along the hall, waving frantically at Nona and Kettle to follow. Kettle turned but Nona remained, gripped both by a debilitating fear and by a rising anger. Just the sound of the man’s voice brought back the full
