an unburned hut, her hair straw and mud. A woman nearby curled around the wound that had killed her. The mud showed how far she had dragged herself to reach her daughter but she had died three yards short of touching her child that last time.
In the harbour a single boat still burned amid the blackened and half-sunken wrecks. From behind Kettle’s eyes Nona wondered what its cargo was that it should sustain a flame when all else had long since guttered into darkness. She knew that Kettle had drawn her sleeping mind along their thread-bond to show her something. Too often lately Nona had rolled yawning from her bed after first waking in the small hours to find herself inhabiting Kettle as the Grey Sister stalked her prey. Last time it had been a Scithrowl commander amid his army of five hundred soldiers. Kettle had ghosted among the lesser tents and cut her way into the grand pavilion in which the officer slept beneath hoola furs. Nona could make no sense of it: signposting their leaders with such luxury. The empire generals slept in tents identical to the common soldiers to foil just such assassination attempts.
Kettle turned from the dark lake and moved on through the town towards its margins. She had something to show Nona. She rarely spoke on these tutorials, needing all her focus to keep her alive. Even here Scithrowl softmen might be lurking, ready to kill or capture scouts, or Noi-Guin assassins, loyal to neither side, only to the coin that paid their fee.
Ahead of them loomed a larger building, no detail hidden from Kettle’s dark-sight. A stone construction, the roof gone, presumably taken by flames, though the stink of burning hung less heavily here. Kettle closed the distance. Gravemarkers stood behind the building. Dozens of them. A church then. Kettle glanced skywards to where the Hope burned white amid the crimson scattered heavens. A Hope church then, roofless by design so that the white light could reach in and wash away all sin.
And suddenly, as Kettle approached the shattered doors, Nona knew where she was. White Lake, not eighty miles from the walls of Verity. White Lake, where her mother lay beneath the ground and doubtless now Preacher Mickel lay sprawled upon it. Adoma had splinter armies pillaging just five days’ march from the capital. Swift horses could bring them to the foot of the Rock of Faith in less than half that time.
Something caught Kettle’s eye. Something Nona had missed. Kettle pressed herself to the church wall, pulling darkness to herself as if drawing a breath. The night entered her as ink soaks into blotting paper. There, out across the graveyard, a pale, questing tentacle, almost flat to the ground, insubstantial as mist. Another, yards long, snaking out between the graves. A pain spider, some creature of the softmen in service to the Scithrowl Battle-Queen Adoma. Rumour had it that they bred such monstrosities, releasing demons from the black ice into unholy alliance with flesh.
More tentacles insinuated themselves across the barren ground, one thin as leather and broad as a hand sliding noiselessly over the top of the church wall just yards from Kettle’s head. Even at that distance her skin sang with echoes of the agony its touch would bring.
Nona woke sweat-soaked and alone, her body hunched, arms tight around her. She lay in the darkness of the Holy Class dormitory trying to still a racing heart. Kettle had kicked her out, requiring her whole concentration.
Sleep did not return that night. They were coming to the sharp end of things. The peace of the convent, seemingly eternal, would not last. Idle days, bickering among friends, the rivalries of children, all of it was passing into memory. A black tide was coming from the east and all the empire hadn’t the strength to stand before it.
‘We don’t even know the book exists. It’s not as if the high priest posts a list of forbidden books on his door.’ Ara stood with Jula and Nona in the lee of the Dome of the Ancestor, watching Path Tower, a dark finger of stone.
‘The Inquisition burned my History of Saint Devid,’ Nona said.
‘It wasn’t yours, and Kettle shouldn’t have allowed it in the scriptorium library,’ Jula said primly. ‘And that was a banned book, not a forbidden one. Banned books are burned, forbidden ones are just … forbidden.’
‘So how come Sister Pan has one, if it even exists?’ Ara asked.