she thrust it down at Kettle’s chest. Kettle lacked the strength to do anything but throw up an empty, helpless hand.
‘No.’ Nona’s word on Kettle’s lips.
Lying in the same chamber as four shiphearts made Nona feel like a candle burning not just at both ends but along the whole of its length. Their power filled her even as it tore her apart. Quick as thought, she drove a sheet of flaw-blade from Kettle’s palm, cutting the Scithrowl woman in half.
Get up.
Kettle struggled to her feet. Her speed had left her. Exhaustion dragged her down more than the minor wounds that stuck her habit to her in bloody patches. Several blows fell on the flaw-armour Nona moved around Kettle as she rose.
Let me in.
‘They’re all dead, Nona.’ Kettle waved her arm and Nona filled the air with a moving storm of flaw-fragments. The Scithrowl in front of her fell in pieces. Behind them the length of the King’s Road lay tight-packed with their kin, stretching all the way back to the breach in the walls and the ocean of Adoma’s horde pressing in.
Over a hundred yards back but now within the circle of the city walls scores of Scithrowl bore a stepped platform on their shoulders, rising yards above the sea of heads. On the lowest step a dozen archers in black chainmail loosed arrow after arrow from their eagle-bows, sending them soaring over the spear tips of their army towards the palace walls or up at bowmen on Verity’s rooftops. On the next step four wind-workers plied their arts to shield the archers from incoming missiles, but Nona imagined they focused their efforts primarily on the third and highest step where a figure sat in crimson armour upon a throne of gold. Adoma, the battle-queen herself, entering the city and driving her followers into a frenzy. The woman commanded the eye, her skin like a hole in the night. It was said she had melted the black ice and drank the waters to gain her powers. Even at this distance Nona could feel the malice bleeding from her.
Let me help, Kettle! Where’s Apple?
‘I don’t know.’ Kettle stepped back and with an elbow to the back of the neck felled the man who had so recently struck her down. ‘I don’t know!’ Her voice broke as she retreated among the emperor’s guards fighting in front of the palace walls. Images flashed before Nona’s eyes. She saw Leeni fall with a spear driven through her chest. Alata had died fighting above her corpse. She saw Sister Tallow and Sister Iron fighting back to back, with the Scithrowl clambering over the circular wall of dead ringing the pair. She saw Sister Tallow with her sword deep in the body of the biggest gerant Nona had ever seen. Somehow the old woman had pierced the man’s armour but where the Ark-steel blade she had given to Nona might have sliced free, her Barrons-steel remained caught. When the Scithrowl cut her down Tallow looked surprised. Not scared or proud or at peace or defeated … just surprised.
Kettle’s memories assaulted Nona. She saw Ketti, broken by an axe. Tall, quick, Ketti. Always talking about boys. Now she would never find one to hold. Nona blinked the vision away, blinked away the deaths of other novices, of nuns she had known most of her life.
‘No.’ So much marjal empathy rang in Nona’s voice that even those in the front line paused to listen, weapons stuttering mid-swing.
Abbess Wheel stood nearby, her right arm in a makeshift sling, bandages across her forehead. A pitifully small band of convent survivors stood tight around her.
‘No!’ Nona stepped back towards the battle-line. Men and women of the palace guard jerked out of her path as if seized by invisible hands. The Scithrowl howling for blood just yards ahead of her fell silent although she was only Kettle, wounded, unarmoured, unremarkable.
As Nona raised Kettle’s arms an arrow hammered out of the fire-broken night. It shattered inches from her shoulder. Another glanced away. She brought her hands together over her head, struggling against some opposing force. Stone blocks and roof slates tore free from the buildings to either side of the King’s Road, flinging themselves into the army packed across its width. Walls groaned and collapsed in rolling clouds of dust.
‘The moon is falling.’ Nona’s voice shuddered through men’s bodies as if Abeth itself had spoken, and terror followed. ‘The. Moon. Is. Falling.’
She swung an arm at the backs of Scithrowl trying to retreat