I have any choice in the matter. Damn near soiled myself!’
Further back among the antechamber’s columns five guardsmen huddled together, spears ready. Two of them were weeping. Nona felt like crying herself. That or screaming to drown out the voices echoing in her fracturing mind. The power that the shipheart gave her was incredible but her skin was already crawling as if a dozen devils were already following their separate paths across her.
‘How are you here?’ The question escaped Nona despite her gritted teeth and the urgency of her mission. It shamed her to admit to herself that she hadn’t once thought of Regol in the past two days. If she had she would have expected to find him with the Caltess fighters rather than within the palace. And all Partnis Reeve’s fighters had probably been conscripted to join the force at the Amber Gate. For a moment the image of Denam in full armour flickered across her mind. If anyone could give the Scithrowl pause it would be that ten-foot stack of muscle and hate. ‘Why aren’t you with the others?’
‘You know me.’ Regol’s smile twisted. ‘Darling of the Sis. Everyone wanted me in their personal guard. I had to choose which invitation from which lord’s lady I wanted to accept.’
Even before he had finished speaking Nona knew that she would be asking no more questions. She had to get to the others. ‘A blue room. A room with blue light. I need to get there!’
Regol frowned. ‘I know it. Follow me.’
Nona followed, her pace even, the shipheart held in her two hands, as far out in front of her as she could reach. Its light infected the illumination of crystal lamps hung on golden chains, turning each corridor into something otherworldly and sending straying servants back screaming into the rooms they’d looked out from. She fixed her gaze on Regol’s retreating back and walked on.
He’s betraying you with some Sis whore.
The voice in Nona’s head was hers, but she didn’t own it.
What you had together was precious, sacred, holy. A different voice. Also hers. Also not hers.
Tear out his heart!
Nona felt her flaw-blades spring into being and a liquid rage replaced her blood. Her eyes fixated on the spot between Regol’s shoulder blades where Sister Tallow used to instruct her to sink the knife for best effect. She tore her gaze away and a glance at her hands confirmed her fears. Both were stained with devils of her own making, writhing in the shipheart’s glow.
She choked down a horrified laugh. To pass Abbess Wheel’s Spirit-test and take the black of a Holy Sister every novice had to be able to recite the thirteen methods for purging a devil and to give a detailed account of how the victim should be put to death, and how their corpse should be disposed of. The method depended on the nature of the possession and whether the devil was driven from the victim successfully or not. She’d not worn the black a week and here she was, unholy and unclean, fit only for killing.
Nona! A fresh voice shook her from her contemplation. This was a voice she didn’t own. One she knew. Urgent. Desperate even. Nona! Where are you?
Nona let the thread-bond take her. Anything to get away from the shipheart. She left just enough of herself behind to keep her upright, legs moving.
Kettle sprinted across a terracotta expanse, pushing herself to the limit. Ahead flames leapt, roaring from a shattered roof. She raced along a blazing rafter, too swift to burn. Bursting clear of the fire, she ran on with reckless haste. Apple needed her. She leapt from the slope of one tiled roof, across a broad street, and crashed into a roof on the opposite side. Hunska speed carried her up the slope, scattering broken tiles beneath her heels. She crested the roof ridge and before her lay the wideness of the King’s Road, crammed with Scithrowl warriors from one side to the other, their numbers stretching back a hundred yards to the shattered walls of Verity and the ocean of their countrymen still massed beyond. Their howls and screams shook the air, resonating in Kettle’s chest, an inhuman noise, at once terrifying, desperate, exhilarating.
The emperor’s lines stood ten ranks thick but the Scithrowl’s surging advance had isolated pockets of defenders. One such group lay beneath her, now twenty yards within the Scithrowl horde, trapped against the wall of some lord’s townhouse. The stranded defenders included a score of empire