wincing as if he stood too close to the heat of a fire. Zole continued her advance and others of Tarkax’s tribe emerged, pushing at his shoulders.
The guards already ran off. As Zole drew closer Ara and the novices backed into the chamber. Even Nona couldn’t endure the combined pressure of both shiphearts.
‘How is she here?’
‘You knew? You lied to us?’
Nona shook her head. ‘I promised Abbess Glass. Zole did too.’
When Nona had returned alone with the shipheart she had reported to Abbess Glass immediately. On the abbess’s instructions she had let them all believe Zole to be dead and had made no mention of Yisht. Somehow the absence of any mourning among the novices had deepened Nona’s affection for Zole. The girl walked a lonely path and she walked it without complaint or compromise.
Nona hadn’t heard from Zole again for nearly two years and when she did it was to discover that they were thread-bound. Somehow during their long escape from the black ice, when Zole carried her half senseless from that freezing hell, the ice-triber had forged the bond between them.
At Abbess Glass’s suggestion Zole had set herself the task of bringing to the empire both of the shiphearts controlled by her tribe. At the same time, and seemingly at her own behest, Zole had set to convincing the emperor’s sister that Yisht still lived and was attempting exactly the same thing – to bring Sherzal the two shiphearts she needed. All those years ago Abbess Glass had seen the pieces before her and set them in motion. Tarkax Ice-Spear’s ambition to protect the tribes by keeping the Corridor open was just one more factor to wrap into the long game. Quite how she knew where the cascade of cause and event would lead Nona had no idea, but the abbess had always made it her business to know things. Nona had seen the results: the application of knowledge could unlock doors that her flaw-blades couldn’t so much as scratch, and it could bring down those so mighty that no feat of arms would stay their hand.
Zole had waited on the ice, ready with the Old Stones. Nona had told her that it was safe to come, and here she was, with the other half of the key to the Ark.
Zole stood within the chamber where Sherzal had tortured Ruli. She held the two shiphearts from her tribe, one like iron red from the forge, the other a poison green. The Noi-Guin shipheart and the Sweet Mercy shipheart lay against the far wall, one a black-violet that seared the eye, the other golden. She had grown from the girl who sent Nona back from the heart of the black ice. She stood before them a woman of the ice, hard, uncompromising, perfect. Zole watched Nona and the others as if from some distant place, no hint of recognition in her face, no warmth, just a focused efficiency.
‘Can you do it?’ Nona asked. Of all of them only Nona could stand within spear’s reach of Zole and meet the awful light in her eyes. ‘Can you take all four and open the Ark?’
‘It will be hard.’
Nona wondered if she stood alone in seeing the hints that remained of that younger Zole. She had been hard and seemingly without emotion even then, but Nona remembered that Zole had named her friend and come to the Tetragode to save her. She remembered the shy edge of Zole’s tiny smile when she made one of her rare jokes, so dry that it might pass by entirely unnoticed.
‘Hard?’ As always when Zole called a thing hard it meant that it was essentially impossible … a suicidal act.
‘Very hard.’ Zole’s eyes held something as close to fear as Nona had ever seen.
‘Try.’ Nona reached out for the wall and sagged against it. ‘The Scithrowl are coming. I need to help …’
Nona didn’t feel herself fall but she hammered into Kettle as if she had dropped from a great height.
27
Holy Class
Kettle lay sprawled, stunned by a blow from one of the small shields that many of the Scithrowl in this wave seemed to favour. The man who had struck her down now leapt over her into the space created. Another Scithrowl followed, this one a squat woman, her skin a peculiar purple-red that Kettle had never seen before. She carried a short spear with a long serrated blade that looked to have been used to finish off a fair number of wounded enemies. Without pause