Kettle settled herself deep at the end of a chain of choices committed to memory and waited. She crouched in the chill, utter darkness of a passage where perhaps no person had ever been before in all the long millennia since the stream that carved it had found a different course. She wrapped herself in clarity, ears open to the smallest suggestion of sound, her mind touching the darkness, sensitive to any vibration that a shadow-worker’s power might cause. She ate, chewing slowly on the trail-biscuit from her pack, letting the moments slide by and accumulate into hours. And Nona, summoned along the thread-bond by the terror that Kettle had experienced approaching the Tetragode, albeit suppressed and channelled into more useful forms by her training, now found her grip on the nun’s perception slipping. As fear mellowed into calm, and boredom became the most immediate threat, Nona’s place in the back of Kettle’s mind became smaller and smaller. At the last she began to feel the cold of her cell and the shivering of her own flesh, which unlike Kettle’s was wrapped in nothing but the torn remnants of a smock.
• • •
NONA’S EYES SNAPPED open. “Damn.”
What? Where were you? Keot burned across her throat, just below the collar.
With Kettle. She’s here with Zole. They killed a Noi-Guin and now they’re hiding. Kettle thinks the other Noi-Guin will torture me to bring her and Zole into the open.
You had better escape then.
Nona uncurled, finding her muscles stiff, her arm and hip sore from supporting her on the stone floor. She stood and faced the wall, feeling for the iron pin that secured the chain leading from her ankle cuff. She didn’t know if the winding trick had worked, or even if it could work, but it was all she had. With every ounce of the speed at her disposal she repeated the process, winding the chain around the pin so fast that the disc she built against the wall had no time to collapse. At the last circuit she gripped the outer edge before the links could shift, and applied all her strength to turning it.
Nothing. Just a double handful of chain dangling from scraped fingers.
Again! Keot flowed across her skin, trying to reach her right hand but finding himself blocked by the wristband.
Nona tried again. And again. She lost count of her efforts.
Any hunska, even a full-blood, tires quickly when using their speed at its limit. Eventually Nona slumped on the floor, exhausted, her fingernails splintered, hands sore. She lay, reaching for her serenity trance, waiting while her body gathered its resources for more bursts of speed. She heard people approaching, many of them, on soft feet. Her serenity shielded her from the jolt of shock but the fear still rose, a tide of it. She gained her feet and prepared to fight.
The door remained closed. Nona heard the newcomers arrange themselves outside her cell, exchanging a muttered comment or two. And then . . . nothing. Kettle was half-right perhaps. The Noi-Guin were ready for any attempt to free her, but not ready to hurt her. Not yet. Their reticence made little sense to Nona. What were they waiting for? Tellasah could claim the kill that had been denied her for so long. She could do it before her peers. If she wanted to torment Nona she could do that too. Why wait?
Nona sniffed at the water they’d left her, stale stuff in a mud-clay jug. If she broke it the pieces would be too brittle to serve as weapons, too crumbly to bear any edge that might cut an enemy or even her own wrists. The water might be laced with drugs, but if she didn’t continue to drink it she wouldn’t be much use. She took a sip and returned to her battle against the pin.
Hours passed. Many of them. Perhaps days. The guards outside changed shifts, Nona snatched fitful sleep, her stomach growled and true hunger, her childhood friend, returned to her for the first time in years. Nona wound her chain a hundred times, tried a hundred times to twist the pin to the left or right. The iron resisted her.
• • •
THE BANG THAT hauled Nona from the dark confusion of her dreams was the cell door being thrown open. Light streamed in. More light than Nona remembered being in the world. She flung up her arms, screwing her eyes tight behind them.
“Ice! It stinks in here!” A man’s voice, cultured and full of good humour.
Nona sat up and squinted through weeping eyes at the dazzle of light. It came from a single lantern, held aloft by a tall figure. Two figures—one portly, one slim—stood beside that one, and robed Lightless stood to both sides, perhaps four of them, more filing in.
Nona pulled the scraps of her smock around her and retreated on her backside into a corner.
“And this animal, rotting here amongst her own sewage, killed my Raymel?” The humour left the man’s voice. “Lano? Is it her?”
The slim figure leaned in, a dark-haired man in fine clothing. “It’s her, Father.”
“She is yours, my lord.” The woman holding the lantern wore a black-skin facemask. A Noi-Guin. A belt laden with cross-knives hung over her shoulder, down to the opposite hip. “You may dispose of her as you wish. My contract has been fulfilled. The Tetragode regrets the delay.”
Nona knew the two men though she couldn’t see them clearly yet. She smeared away the tears that the light had filled her eyes with.
“It was not well done.” Thuran’s voice narrowed to sharpness. “But at least it has been done.” He stepped back. “Secure her.” And the Lightless surged forward.
Still half-blind, Nona
