She turned back towards Regol with a stare that should have transfixed him.
Kill them together.
‘I hate you!’ The words broke from her, dripping venom.
Nona snarled, shaking her head to rid it of the voices. She tried to bite down on their anger, it was something she didn’t own. With an effort she lowered her gaze from Regol’s confusion to the stains rising slowly up her wrists from where her fingers made contact with the shipheart.
‘Stay here! If you follow me I’ll kill you.’ And then without looking back, she turned for the archway and began to run.
24
Holy Class
Nona ran the length of the hallway to the bronze doors at the far end. Two of the guardsmen who had delayed Sherzal’s men were still on duty. Nona slowed to a walk as she drew closer. Nothing in her appearance qualified her for entry and the two men were drawing their swords before the unease they felt at the shipheart’s approach turned to fear and then terror. The slowness of her advance allowed them to retain enough of their wits to be able to unlock the doors. They ran through, leaving the doors wide open behind them. Nona followed them.
She gathered her recollection of what she’d seen through Ruli’s eyes and it proved sufficient to get her to the iron door of the library. Considering the lock, she pulled its thread without so much as a twitch of her fingers. Once in she took the last lantern, upended the reading table and struck a leg from it. A flaw-blade jabbed into the far wall soon uncovered the hidden alcove. Nona didn’t waste time on the complex tangle of threads that might or might not yield to her efforts and undo the lock for the stairs. Instead she simply set the wheels to the same numbers that Sherzal had. She squeezed through and was already a third of the way down the square spiral of steps before the door in the library floor had finished opening.
Her devils spoke with separate voices now, their opinions tearing at her in ways Keot had seldom been able to. Ignoring them, Nona hurried down the long corridor. The Ark-lights still shone but she spared no time to marvel at them. She held the shipheart in one hand with the lantern hanging from her wrist. In the other she held the table leg which she repeatedly threw ahead of her and retrieved. The process stopped when the leg came apart mid-air, reaching the ground as a scattering of neatly sliced cubes.
The far end of the corridor looked to be closer than Nona had thought it should be, and there was no door there. Rather it was as if a blank wall had risen up since the others passed this way, sealing the passage closed.
Nona went to the sidewall where Sherzal had tapped out her rhythm and did her best to reproduce it. Nothing happened. She cut the muddy hem from her tunic and tossed it forward to check if anything had changed. It fell to the floor in pieces. She snarled in frustration. One of her devils tried to turn it into a scream of primal rage while others fought to take hold of her limbs.
Nona bit down and focused her will. She sat and rolled the shipheart to the opposite wall where it would exert less pressure on her thoughts. After a moment to regroup she reached for her clarity and for her serenity. She pictured Amondo’s hands moving as they would have to if the juggler were to sustain not three or four balls in the air but nine. She passed the image of the missing flame and the lines of the falling moon from one side of her mind to the other. The keys to both trance states circulated through her, drawing every worry, every demand and secret terror, into their orbit as she achieved both states simultaneously.
The memory of Sherzal striking the wall became Nona’s sole focus. Her joint trance gave it a crystal clarity. Sherzal’s hand hit the beat, the vision repeating, recycling until the tempo ran through Nona’s veins like the erratic pounding of a second heart.
Nona stood up and struck the required pattern. The opening appeared in the wall and she pressed the glowing disc inside the recess. A second cloth test showed the trap to be disarmed and Nona hurried on.
Before she cleared the area protected by the blades something struck her, not a flaw-blade but still sharp