stain spread like oil on water. ‘And now she has exposed herself to a third.’
Nona shuddered, and not just from the cold. ‘And if Zole does “ascend”, so what? Will it stop the ice from closing on us?’
‘We are also interested in your emperor’s Ark, Nona.’
‘Because it can control the moon?’ Nona shook her head. ‘You thought Zole could open it? But surely the Argatha prophecy was just nonsense, made up for local politics, to entertain the people.’
‘The Ark can guide the moon.’ Tarkax glanced around at his fellows as if they too might need convincing.
‘If that were really true, why would the emperor, and his father, and his father’s mother before him, all have banned the books that say it, and made criminals of anyone trying to find a way? If shiphearts were the key to the Ark why would they still lie scattered? Wouldn’t generations of emperors have been trying to bring them to Verity? I know Sherzal and Adoma seem to think it’s true, but that doesn’t mean it is. Or even that they really believe it.’
‘Your emperors tried many ways to open their Ark, Nona, for hundreds of years. But do you know the most important thing that they discovered?’
Nona kept silent and waited for Tarkax to answer his own question.
‘They discovered that when you hold a treasure of incalculable value and potential, having it closed to you and beyond use is not the worst thing that can happen. The most dangerous thing that can happen is for someone else to discover, or even just believe that they have discovered, the means to open and use it. Such individuals will gather strength to themselves and seek to take your treasure from you.’
Nona frowned. Zole had wrapped her hand once more and stood silent. ‘So … what are you going to do now?’
‘We’re going to send you home, Nona.’ Tarkax grinned, then raised his sealskin mask as the wind strengthened. ‘There are two marvels that will allow it. The first marvel is a work of the Missing. The second marvel is that it is close enough to reach in a day.’
Nona trudged at the back of the group, her mind racing. Zole walked beside her.
‘You were spying on us? Sweet Mercy took you in! The abbess gave you her protection!’
‘Has Tarkax not taken you in and given you his protection?’ Zole asked. ‘Are you not gathering all the information you can and preparing to share it with Abbess Glass on your return? Does the convent not exist in part to train spies?’
Nona opened then closed her mouth. They walked without speaking for several hours after that. Nona watched the other ice-tribers, trudging with bowed heads to either side of them, three men, two women, and Tarkax, all so swaddled in skins and furs that they resembled great forest bears. Two of them dragged a long, heavily laden sled behind them, sliding along on wooden runners. Nona wondered what the tribes of the deep ice, thousands of miles from the Corridor, built their sleds from. The bones of leviathans hauled from the sea perhaps.
‘Where are we going?’ Nona had really wanted to ask whether they were nearly there yet. Her feet were strangers to her and she wondered whether her toes would have to be cut away when they thawed.
‘To the place from where the black ice flows,’ Zole said.
‘Why?’ Nona had really wanted to say that she didn’t want to go there and that she would rather scale the Grampains naked in an ice-wind.
‘Because there is a wonder buried in that place.’
Nona could have asked what the wonder was, but without that mystery to draw her further she felt her legs would just abandon their duty and leave the task of getting her there to her arms.
It took them until nightfall to reach the long dark streak in the ice and follow it to where it grew darker still and finally turned black before abruptly giving way to white once more. Nona knew from her view while crossing the mountains that the stain looked like a great teardrop from above, the long tail of it running to the Corridor wall miles north of them.
Zole took over the lead as the light failed, the darkness being nothing to her eyes. She halted them in a place where the malice from below was still only a whisper.
‘You and I will go alone, Nona. We should be swift.’
Tarkax and the others huddled as close as they could come to the