for Ara and Clera’s deaths escaping only now that they were saved. She forced herself to hands and knees, crawling clear of the others, taking the shipheart away before collapsing again. Clera stopped screaming and even Nona’s devils were quiet in the moment of silence that followed.
All three of them lay sprawled in several inches of freezing water in the small square chamber from which Nona had departed Crucical’s basement.
Clera patted weakly at the water, now running out into the corridor. ‘Sorry, probably my mess. I think I wet myself.’ She levered herself up. ‘What in all the hells was that? And where are we?’
Nona rolled over, groaning. ‘The emperor’s palace.’ She pushed herself into a sitting position, her back to the wall, injured leg stretched out before her. Blood clouded the water around the knife hilt. ‘Ara?’
‘Aren’t I dead yet?’ Ara didn’t move a muscle, just lay on her front in the draining flood, her chest heaving.
‘Sorry,’ Nona said, ‘no time for that. I have things for you to do.’ She tapped out the code that activated and deactivated the blade-wall outside. ‘You need to learn this.’ She tapped it out again. As her fear, exhaustion, and pain started to subside from the heights reached in the extremes of the escape Nona began to feel Ruli’s distress again, echoing down their thread-bond.
‘One question.’ Clera got to her feet, dripping. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to start your flood once we got to the ring?’
‘Nearly cracked my skull trying it from the vault. I don’t think I could have done it from the holothaur cave. Too far.’ Nona drew in a breath, trying to undouble her vision. ‘Have you got the pattern?’
‘Yes.’ From Clera.
‘No.’ From Ara.
‘Good enough. I have to go.’
‘Go?’ Clera splashed towards the doorway, wanting more distance between her and the shipheart. ‘Go where?’
‘Don’t leave!’ Nona added a layer of marjal coercion to the alarm in her voice. ‘Check the trap’s not on first.’ She pulsed instructions to Ara along their bond. It was easier than talking.
‘Got to … got to help Ruli …’ Nona let out a sigh and dropped her chin to her chest. A moment later the thread-bond took her.
Ruli’s screams were so loud that Nona couldn’t imagine how they hadn’t heard them in the corridor less than a hundred yards away. The agony was worse than anything Nona had endured that day and yet somehow she knew the girl hadn’t said a word about what she’d seen in the book.
The pain slackened and as Ruli drew breath Nona heard Jula’s sobs. The novice had been far less close-mouthed than her friend. In between her tears she had been telling Sherzal everything she remembered from Aquinas’s Book of the Moon. Which, given it was Jula, was pretty much everything that lay between the book’s covers. Clearly Sherzal’s guards were better educated than most because one of them was making extensive notes as Jula spilled her guts.
‘Stop hurting her! You said you would!’
‘I said I might. When you’ve told us everything.’
Ruli unscrewed her eyes and brought Sherzal into hazy focus. The emperor’s sister was pacing in front of Jula who sat nearby against the wall. In addition to the note-taking guard two others flanked the girl.
‘Shall we try that again?’ A gentle voice close by Ruli’s ear.
Ruli shivered and tried to turn away but strong fingers gripped her chin and steered her face towards Safira, crouched at her side. Behind Kettle’s former lover stood Joeli Namsis, looking slightly sick.
Give me your body, Ruli.
Nona? Sweet Ancestor, I thought you’d abandoned me!
Give me your body.
I thought you’d never ask, dear. And with that Ruli fled to the sanctum Nona offered her, surrendering all control.
One of Ruli’s arms had been bound to her side. The other was in Safira’s grip, the hand flopping uselessly on a broken wrist. But the broken wrist wasn’t the main source of Ruli’s pain and it didn’t stop what Safira was doing to her fingers from reaching her. Safira took another black needle and prepared to push it under one of the only two of Ruli’s fingernails that didn’t yet have one bedded beneath it. Nona supposed they must be coated with something like red asp venom. Just needles beneath the fingernails on their own surely couldn’t account for the monstrous agony coursing through Ruli’s hand?
‘Ready?’ Safira asked.
‘You’re right to think that Aquinas’s book is the key.’ Nona struggled to keep her voice steady, hissing her words past Ruli’s teeth.
‘What?’ Safira narrowed her eyes.
‘The