abandoning their ladders and scaling chains before the walls among the heaped bodies of the fallen. Nona watched the retreat through Kettle’s eyes, invited in as the Grey Sister took a place on a wall tower.
‘Look!’ Ruli tugged at Nona’s arm, pulling her from her visions.
Approaching along the broad, paved expanse of the King’s Road, named in a time before the empire, came a strange band, each wearing robes of a single pale colour, no two shades the same. Their advance was slow, almost reluctant. At their head walked a white-haired man, his eyes milky, skin thick with old burns. Nona knew him. ‘Rexxus Degon!’ The Chief Academic who had watched Nona when Sister Pan had brought her with Hessa and Ara to compete at the Academy. Beside him was a woman with long grey hair, her robe almost white. They looked to have come direct from the Academy building, huddled up against the emperor’s walls on the far side of the palace. Many of their following were no older than the novices around Nona.
‘Academics!’ Jula said. ‘I thought there were more of them.’
‘There were,’ Apple replied.
‘And now there are not,’ Sister Iron said.
‘There are Mystic Sisters with them!’ Nona spotted the sky-blue habits at the back. Sister Pan always wore the common black of the Holies and the sight of the blue was a rarity, even at Sweet Mercy. Two Mystic Sisters that she didn’t recognize, a pair of Mystic Brothers too, twins to look at them. ‘What are they doing here?’
Whatever answer might have been forthcoming went unheard as an urgent tug from Kettle stole Nona away. She stood within Kettle’s skin once more, alongside the ragged defenders waiting on the wall tower. The elevation afforded a view of the Scithrowl’s endless horde arrayed across Verity’s garden-lands, an ugly scar where fields green with jump-corn had once swayed. Something was coming. Nona couldn’t see what Kettle was looking at, just that a great number of Scithrowl were on the move, swirling around, pushing.
‘They’re getting out of the way of something,’ Kettle said.
A space opened around a group of perhaps two dozen people. Flames leapt from nowhere, winding up into the air around those approaching the wall, a bright fire torn on swiftly cycling winds that seemed to centre on the newcomers.
‘Adoma’s Fist!’ Kettle raised the bow she had acquired and lofted an arrow towards the Scithrowl mages.
Others on the wall followed her example and soon scores of arrows had taken flight. None of them seemed to reach their targets. Perhaps the winds had turned them from their path.
As the Scithrowl drew closer Nona could see individuals. A group of five, two men and three women, nearly naked, dancing at the base of the rising firestorm; three more in white cloaks, advancing with their arms raised. Workers of flame and air, weaving a protection against arrows. Three heavyset men, in bronze armour, walked at the fore, the fires overhead reflecting on the scales of their mail and the oiled thickness of muscle on huge arms. Rock-workers perhaps, come to tumble the walls. And behind them, two dozen individuals, some tall, some short, some old, some young, clad in all manner of styles, some in the loud colours favoured by their people, others in black cloaks; one in a leather dress set with silver plates; a painfully thin man in antique armour lacquered with red enamel. This last one was their leader. Nona remembered him and many of the others from the memories Kettle had shared of her time in Adoma’s court. One thing only united them amid their variety. Sigils. Even at this distance they scratched at Nona’s mind. All of them wore at least a couple of sigil wards. Like the Path-mage had …
‘They’re all quantals!’
Nona realized she was back with the abbess and had spoken aloud.
‘Tell me!’ It wasn’t Wheel who was shaking Nona. Sister Pan had her arm in an iron grip. ‘What did you see?’
‘Adoma’s Fist,’ Nona said. ‘Adoma’s Fist is coming.’
Rexxus Degon and his allies had reached the convent party. Ahead of them, beyond the walls, the windstorm had twisted the day’s smoke into strange patterns. The remnants of the siege towers collapsed before the strengthening gale, sparks and embers filling the air.
‘Kettle showed me. Adoma’s Fist is coming,’ Nona repeated. She hadn’t thought there would be so many quantals. If the marjals were full-bloods specializing in fire, air, and stone-work they alone could threaten the walls, but with a score of Path-mages at