“Your friends are dead,” Kettle said.
Next his mouth recovered. He spat a dark mess at Kettle who caught it neatly in the patch she’d cut from his trouser leg. She moved back. The man kept spitting and gagging as if he had the foulest taste in his mouth. At the back of Kettle’s mind Nona puzzled. The antidote to boneless tasted of nothing . . . perhaps a little salty.
“How far from here is the Tetragode?” Kettle asked.
“Ten miles.” The man slurred the words, his muscles still weak from the boneless. He blinked, a look of horror and astonishment coming over his face.
“We’re looking for a girl who has been captured. Tell me about anyone who has passed this way in the last few days who might have had her with them.”
The man’s face contorted with effort but his mouth betrayed him. “Tellasah came through two days ago, she was leading a mule, the box on it smelled as if it held a prisoner, or a body.”
“Who is Tellasah?” Kettle asked.
“She is a Noi-Guin, second order.” The man struggled to raise his hands to cover his mouth but the ropes held him.
“Describe the entrances to the Tetragode and their defences,” Kettle said.
“The main entrance is a cave at the foot of cliffs in the Grampain Mountains, half a mile west of the ri—” With a scream the man bit down hard and blood sprayed from his mouth. He gargled through it as if he were still answering the question but Nona couldn’t make out the words.
Kettle glanced down. Between the man’s gore-spattered legs lay a chunk of flesh. A large piece of tongue. Nona felt Kettle clench her jaw. A moment later her knife jutted from the man’s left eye, his pain over.
“You gave him Mistress Shade’s truth pill along with the antidote?” Zole asked, her voice as flat and free of emotion as ever.
“I did.”
“How many more do you have?”
“None.” Kettle pulled her knife free and wiped the blade on the man’s sleeve. “It’s not just a matter of rare ingredients, a powerful enchantment has to be used to bind them. Apple swapped favours with an Academic named Hanastoi, but no help from the Academy is ever cheap . . .”
“No point trying to capture another one then.” Zole knelt and started searching through the man’s pockets. “They must have a camp near here. What is your plan?”
“I don’t have one.” Kettle started back towards the trail. She paused. “How did you follow me without my noticing?”
“Carefully.” Zole looked up, pocketing a few coins. “Do not feel too bad about it. I am the Chosen One, after all.”
Although there was no hint of a smile Nona suspected that she might have witnessed Zole’s first joke.
“We should take their robes.” Kettle led the way back to the track. “If we can find any that aren’t obviously bloody. And cut our hair like they do. You’re almost there as it is.” She glanced back at Zole’s black and bristling thicket.
“You should,” Zole replied. “You are shadowed like they are. I should be your prisoner.”
“They won’t buy it.” Kettle reached the first of the fallen Lightless. The woods were thick with the smell of death, clinging despite the wind. “The guards will know this lot by sight. I can’t believe there are so many out here that they wouldn’t. And if there were that many then there would be passwords and such. Besides, we’ll probably be spotted hunting for the entrance. I doubt it’s obvious . . .”
“If we can get near I can make them believe we belong there.” Zole flexed her fingers.
“Really?” Even detached from Kettle’s thoughts Nona could feel the Grey Sister’s doubt. “This isn’t like Pan’s classroom you know. These Lightless are—”
“Go home.” Zole’s narrow gaze rocked Kettle on her heels.
Kettle paused as if struggling with some reply, then without a word she turned and strode back to the track. Once clear of the trees, she turned to the left and walked back the way she’d travelled. Overhead the red stars bore witness and in the east the white eye of the Hope began to rise. It took perhaps fifty yards before Kettle’s confident stride faltered. She glanced back, saw Zole following, and came to a halt.
“What . . .”
“I changed your mind,” Zole said.
Kettle turned to face her.
“It was not easy, but a large part of you wants to go back to the convent anyhow, and I just helped it.”
“Thread-work?” Kettle asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t do that again.” Kettle shivered. “At least not on me. What makes you think it will be easier on a Lightless?”
“Because they are not you, sister,” Zole said. “You have a strong mind and it is well-trained. If you really did not want to do something I could not make you do it. But making a guard believe that you are a Lightless who is new to the order, or that the person next to them recognizes you should be easier.”
“Should be?”
“Some people hold their threads more tightly than others.” Zole shrugged. “I can also do this.” She thrust an open hand at Kettle, who burst into laughter.
Even at the back of Kettle’s mind, shielded from her emotions, Nona felt the echoes of it and in the darkness of her cell she smiled.
“Marjal empathy,” Zole said over Kettle’s snorts and giggles. “Sherzal had Academy tutors train me before I came to Sweet Mercy.”
“I . . .” Kettle fought for breath, bent double. “You’ll never need a punchline . . .” More laughter, before she forced herself to stand, still grinning.
“It works on you because you trust me,” Zole said, no hint of a smile on her. “But with less guarded minds I can have quite an effect.”
“I don’t trust anyone.” Kettle dropped her smile. “Not out here. Not on a mission.”
“‘Trust is the most insidious of poisons.’” Zole quoted Sister Apple. “But you do trust me, and you are not on a mission—nobody told you to do this.”
Kettle frowned and glanced to the west, through the treetops. The moon’s
