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She turned and hurried down the passage, her feet slipping on loose stone scattered over bedrock. Hessa had said to ambush the woman as close to the entrance as possible. It seemed obvious now, but Nona hadn’t even thought of waiting anywhere save at the cut itself, waiting for Yisht to return to the scene of her crime. She retraced her steps. More climbing, more wriggling, more stealthy advance, and at last she settled herself some yards back from the shaft down which her enemy must come. She turned her lantern low, hooded it, and crouched to wait.
The waiting and the natural darkness put far more fear in Nona than Luta’s efforts with enchanted shadow at the Academy had. Yisht scared Nona in a way that Raymel Tacsis never had, not even with demons writhing beneath his skin or peering at her from his bloody eye. Raymel would murder her with glee, with passion: he would enjoy her death. Yisht would cut her down without reflection, with no more concern than the butcher carries for pigs when their throats are cut. Somehow that idea felt worse.
When something slithered and thumped close at hand Nona almost cried out. She pressed herself to the wall, dry-mouthed, the gourd clutched in a trembling hand. A faint glow lit the circle of the shaft in the ceiling, the black length of the rope dangling beneath, twitching as someone climbed down, still out of sight in the shaft.
Nona forced the fingers around the gourd to unclench even as a pair of black boots, the rope trapped between them, slid into view. Black-clad legs. Narrow hips. Without warning, Yisht released the rope and dropped to the floor.
Nona dug as deep into the moment as ever she had, slowing Yisht’s descent to a crawl. She flung the gourd out of the darkness of the tunnel, her arm so stiff with nerves that Nona doubted her ability to hit Yisht at all, even if she were standing still, let alone strike her face while she was dropping. Even so, when the gourd left her fingers and passed beyond her control Nona knew it to be a true throw – the same way that when she loosed a throwing star she might not always hit her target but she always knew whether she would or not.
Yisht raised her hand as she fell. She caught the gourd a foot before her face, her hand moving to reduce the impact as if she knew the gourd to be fragile and dangerous to break. Her off-hand had already dropped her lantern and now produced a throwing knife, releasing it back along the path the gourd had taken. A cold terror gripped Nona even as she twisted aside. It was as if Yisht knew precisely what would happen and had practised exactly this situation a thousand times.
Nona dropped to her left, her mind running furiously through her options and finding precious few that held even a glimmer of hope.
She sees the future. She knows what I’m going to do.
Nona hit the ground and rolled, twisting out of the path of another thrown dagger. She rose, a rock in her left hand and a collection of smaller stones in her right. She threw the stones at the fastest tempo consistent with accuracy, shaking each up into a throwing grip as its turn came. She loosed them, miss, hit, hit, miss, all in flight, their fate known before the first covered half the distance. Another knife angled through the darkness, just the glimmer of its edge to betray its approach. Nona deflected it with the rock.
Nona’s first stone passed within a finger’s width of the gourd and sailed past to strike Yisht in the chest. The ice-triber already had her hand open, the flask dropping. She’d understood what would happen if a stone broke the gourd while it was in her grasp.
The second stone caught the top of the gourd, shattering it and exploding a modest shower of the liquor within. The third hit Yisht’s palm. The fourth would have missed the gourd if it had still been in Yisht’s hand but hit the dropping gourd dead centre, completing the job of smashing it and splashing the boneless liquor back across the woman’s chest.
The pooled oil from Yisht’s dropped lantern flared up, and beads of liquor sparkled on the oily blackness of her jacket. Nona was far from sure any of it would penetrate to the skin. Of more help would be the rising fumes and the splatters that had reached Yisht’s palm as the flask shattered.
‘Nona Grey.’ Yisht’s voice carried no emotion. ‘You chose a lonely place to die.’ She pulled the tular from its open-sided scabbard. The blade resembled a long narrow rectangle of flat steel, slightly wider at the end than at the hilt, cut at an angle at an the extremity to produce one sharp corner and one more open.
Nona needed to kill time, enough of it to let the boneless drop Yisht, but not enough of it to let Yisht drop her. She could stay in the light and pit her speed against Yisht’s sword and her unnatural ability to know exactly what any opponent would do in the next few seconds … or she could run blind into the dark.
She turned and ran. She knew the tunnel well enough for the next fifty yards. She ran with her hands out before her, not at a flat sprint but far faster than she felt comfortable running in total darkness.
The sound of booted feet on stone pursued her into the night. Nona considered diving to the side and letting Yisht pass her … but could the woman’s knowledge of the near future tell her what would happen if she slashed left or right? Could her vision of the next few moments be effectively a vision of the next few yards around her in any direction? Nona didn’t want to put that to the test.
She had passed the side tunnel. Passed it or almost reached it. Either way, she had no means of finding the opening inches above arm’s reach without wasting far more time than she had. Yisht had closed the gap: she sounded so close that a swing of her tular might trim Nona’s hair.
Hell. The tunnel might make a sharp turn in the next few yards. Or Nona might sprawl over a rock or break a leg in a fissure. Inevitably, Yisht would find her senseless or injured and kill her without relish or mercy. Nona skidded to a halt, angling to the side. If she had to die she’d do it facing her enemy, blades out.
Yisht came on, swift, not missing a step. Nona ran towards her, one hand reaching to find the wall, the other before her, flaw-blades cutting the darkness.
Nona tripped on the rougher ground where the floor curved up to become wall. She pitched forward as Yisht came upon her. Something jolted her arm, a metallic squeal and an impact against her blades that echoed through her bones all the way to her shoulder. Nona rolled and came up, arms reaching. Behind her Yisht cursed in the ice-tongue and came to a stumbling halt.
‘You poisoned me.’
Nona ran back the way she’d come. Yisht’s footsteps followed for a few yards, then came to a halt again. She slurred something.
A moment’s silence. The sound of something slumping to the ground.
Nona released a breath and let the tension inside her unwind. She took a step towards Yisht. Another.
What am I doing?
She needed the others. She turned again and started back, slowly, arms searching the space before her.
With a roar Yisht launched herself into a stumbling run, her ruse having failed to bring Nona to her.
Nona just ran, screaming, all control lost in the dark. She hit a wall, bounced off it and fell, her head blazing with pain, wet with blood. Yisht tripped over her before she’d stopped rolling and in a moment the woman’s weight had her pinned, elbows holding her forearms to the ground, both hands wrapped about Nona’s throat. And there, far below the ground, with the two of them locked together in the blind darkness, Yisht began to throttle her.
Nona couldn’t lift her arms to use her blades, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She raged, blades flexing, body heaving, seeing lights in that dark place that held no light, and the thunder of her heart filled her ears. She fought. She fought hard. And she lost.
