Nona who had been left behind when they were broken from her. ‘Scithrowl meets Durn now. The battles are all but over!’ She shook her head. ‘Aren’t all of us brother and sister? Should I murder them for the sake of pride, or should I accept that the ice has narrowed and that there is a new order now?’
‘Look!’ Clera pointed at Nona’s neck. ‘She’s like Yisht!’
Jula and Joeli stared at her in horror. Even if they hadn’t known Yisht’s story a convent education breeds a terror of possession.
‘It’s true.’ Nona turned to face them. ‘I can’t make a decision like this. Half of me wants to burn a path a mile wide right through every Scithrowl city … The louder half says that we should burn it all … I am unfit to judge. Sister Thorn should do this if Zole will allow her.’ She stepped aside to let Ara speak with Zole, and found her missing. ‘Ara?’
‘Here.’ Ara was behind the others. She had slid down the wall to sit at its base, blood on her lips, her face almost as grey as Zole’s. She looked unsurprised by news of Nona’s devils, but then she had already inhabited the tainted flesh in question herself.
‘I can take the raulathu from you.’ Zole stepped forward, her hand raised towards Nona’s neck.
‘What?’ Clera demanded. She looked from Nona to Zole as if ready to fight them both or run. ‘What the hell is she talking about?’
‘She means the devils,’ Nona said. ‘My devils.’
‘The Old Stones break them from us. As a sculptor chips away ice to reveal their creation.’ Zole reached for Nona.
Nona stepped back, pressing against Ruli. ‘No.’
‘No?’ Zole cocked her head, curious.
‘They’re devils, Nona!’ Jula sounded on the edge of hysteria.
‘They’re me,’ Nona said. ‘Pieces of who I am.’
‘Terrible pieces,’ Ruli said. ‘I felt them through the thread-bond but didn’t understand.’ She fell quiet, confusion on her face.
‘If you divide the ingredients of the black cure into two halves, both make a poison that will kill you. Together they are something different.’ Nona set her fingers to the rough skin along the side of her neck, finding it hot to the touch. ‘Can you put them back, Zole?’
‘I can draw them out and give them to the fire.’
‘But can you put them back as they were?’
‘It would make you less pure, further from the Ancestor.’ Zole watched her without judgement.
‘Even so.’ Nona leaned her head to expose her neck to Zole. ‘You’ve burned away all your sins and weaknesses, and it’s left you so distant from us you hardly care who lives and who dies. I can’t make a decision like this with my head full of broken pieces, but I can’t make it with those pieces gone either.’ She met Zole’s grey eyes. ‘Please.’
Zole set her palm to the first of Nona’s devils. The feeling as it fell apart and unwound beneath her touch, beneath Nona’s skin, was something both bitter and sweet. Something lost and something gained.
Zole found the second and third of Nona’s devils without needing to look for them, even though they fled from sight. In moments Nona’s anger, her thirst for revenge, and her capacity for hate were no longer screaming at her from separate sources but woven back into the fabric of who she was, the good with the bad.
Nona took a deep breath and addressed the air. ‘Won’t the focus burn up the whole city as it narrows, or have to burn a path in from outside?’
‘The moon’s albedo can be rapidly varied between zero and one.’
‘What?’
‘The moon will go dark until it is pointed and focused.’
‘You can turn the moon on and off at my request?’
‘Yes.’
Nona stood for a moment in blank amazement before finding her voice again. ‘Zole, tell this thing to obey me.’ She approached the image. The counterattack had faltered and the remaining defenders were pressed against the walls. At points around the palace the Scithrowl were unopposed, deploying ladders and scaling chains against the battlements where the guards fought to throw them back.
‘Why would I put such a power in the hands of one who has yet to be shriven of a single raulathu? You are unformed clay, Nona Grey.’
‘At least I care. At least it will hurt me, whatever decision I make. At least I’m terrified!’ Nona defocused her eyes to see the thread-scape. She had learned to look far deeper than when she had tried that first day in Path Tower and declared that Zole