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Nona slid until her bottom touched the floor. She bowed her head. ‘Long night. Just tired.’ The words slurred from her mouth. Had the throwing star been dipped in some kind of venom? ‘Just … close my … eyes.’
‘You can’t sleep—’ But Hessa’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way off, becoming little more than muffled echoes in the cavern whose darkness swallowed … everything.
A slap brought the world back, the daylight streaming through the narrow windows, the low murmur of conversation, and beneath it the distant thunder of rain on the high roof.
‘Get up, girl!’ Sister Wheel’s other bony hand, knotted in the remnants of Nona’s habit, hauled her to her feet.
Behind the nun Devid stood ready, his tunic soaked and sticking to him, sculpting the muscles of his chest and shoulders. The bow before him was nearly as tall as he was, not a single arch like the hunters of the Grey used but a composite of different curvatures and woods. In the hands of a skilled archer such a bow truly could bring down the white eagles that rode the Corridor wind. Though no peasant would ever protect his herd with one – the price of such a weapon would exceed that of any shepherd’s flock, and his land to boot.
The high priest stamped his way to the man’s side. ‘Get this done.’
Half the seats lay empty now, nuns, novices, guards and bearers all crowding to either side of the line between Nona and Hessa against the hall’s north wall and the archer before the south wall. Even Abbess Glass had been allowed to approach, her guard close by. Nona glanced at the abbess’s right hand, fat with bandages, and at her own, the strip of fabric black with blood, the skin from fingertips to the heel of her palm red and sticky. Abbess Glass met her eyes and gave that same nod, sure and intense.
‘Ancestor witness this our trial of faith and swiftness.’ Sister Wheel waved the onlookers back.
Devid pulled a long arrow from the quiver over his shoulder, white fletched, perhaps with eagle feathers, the steel head long and narrow, designed to penetrate rather than slice. He nocked it to the bow and looked to the high priest who gave him an impatient wave.
Nona watched, her hands before her chest as before, one atop the other, the back of the left against her sternum, the palm of the right facing Devid and his bow. The man had a raw-boned, brutal face, as if the clay from which he had been formed had been in the Ancestor’s hands for no more than a moment, just long enough for bold strokes.
‘She’s only a child.’ The words rumbled out of him so deep and low that Nona had trouble picking them apart. ‘Both of them, little girls.’ He looked at the high priest again, helpless.
‘You’ll shoot that arrow hard enough to put it through the damn wall, Devid.’ The high priest thudded down his staff, though the sand deadened the impact. ‘The Ancestor will decide who is worthy of tomorrow. There will be no sin on your hands. Now do it!’
Devid lifted one huge hand to rub an eye, shook his head, then returned the hand to the bowstring. He drew in a smooth motion, muscles bulging, veins standing proud along his forearm, the bow creaking with the strain. Held. Held. And with a cry of anger or shame, let fly.
The arrow came fast, no matter how hard Nona clung to each passing fragment of the moment. It flexed back and forth like a decked fish, shuddering with the power of the bowstring’s push as it flew towards her. Its path from Devid’s height to Hessa’s heart would take it just over Nona’s left shoulder.
She threw herself backward towards the ground and watched, helpless, hands outstretched and rising.
To push against that thin shaft – to do so hard enough to deflect it from Hessa, and to give that push in the tiny span during which the shaft passed her by – would likely just break through it. And that would leave the arrowhead or the shaft behind it still travelling towards Hessa at lethal speed.
Too quickly, allowing no time for thought, the arrow was before her. Hands, already in place, already closing, now clamped upon the arrow. Nona saw her skin exit the tight curl of her fingers, carried away on the first emerging inch of the arrow shaft, the next inch slid out bloody. She wouldn’t feel it until long after the arrow had found its final destination.
The emerging, blood-slicked arrow moved more slowly than it had covered the yards between Nona and the archer, but it was not slow, and lubricated with her blood her grip would not reduce its speed below a lethal level before the arrow left her hands. Nona pulled down, hoping she could be gentle enough to draw the arrowhead down rather than snap off the rear portion.
She watched the arrow’s flights escape her hands. In the same instant the steel point, deflected slightly downward, touched her beneath the collarbone. By the time her hands caught up with the end of the arrow the arrowhead was buried three inches deep in her shoulder, slowed by the thickness of her flesh and turned further from its path by the rotation of her body as she fell backward. She grasped the wood again, willing some sharpness into her touch, hoping it would help to grip rather than reduce the shaft to sections.
Still no hint of the pain had reached her. She knew by the length of arrow that had vanished into her that the arrowhead must have emerged high on her back, but she felt nothing. The sharpness in her fingers shaved pieces from the arrow like a carpenter’s plane on timber. The rear of it fell into tumbling inch-long sections. They bounced off her, peppering the area around the bloody hole beneath her collarbone as she fell.
She knew her head would hit the sand hard. But the impact never came. She fell and there was no bottom to it, just whiteness, and then no colour at all.
18
Nona spat sand from her mouth, finding more between her teeth and behind her lips than she could get rid of. Something cold and wet covered her face. She tried to push it away. The pain arrived in that instant, all at once, something too huge for her body, trying to explode out from beneath muscle and skin. She screamed, or tried to: it came out more as a whimper. The wet thing moved and through eyes screwed tight in agony she saw the blur of someone leaning over her, cloth in hand.
‘Stay still.’ Sister Rose set a hand to Nona’s chest.
‘Hessa?’ Nona tried to roll but the white fire in her shoulder stopped her more effectively than the nun.
‘Hessa’s fine.’ A smile. ‘The arrow hit the ground a foot before her.’ Sister Rose looked to the side. ‘We need to move her!’ Called to someone else.
Other voices reached into Nona’s awareness. She focused on the roof high above her, the sand beneath her heels. She was still in Blade Hall. People were talking to her right. A roll of her head brought them into view.
Abbess Glass stood there, free of the yoke, head high, Sister Apple at her shoulder. The archons and the high priest faced her, all of them on the practice sand now. Looking the other way, she saw a host of nuns and novices, church-guards escorting them from the hall and everyone leaving as slowly as possible so as not to miss anything. Sisters Flint, Kettle and Mop were approaching, presumably to carry Nona to the sanatorium, though any one of them could lift her.
‘… irregular! In this day and age, to be thwarting the due process of the emperor’s law with archaic texts and talk of prophecy … You would do well to give the child over to the civil judges, abbess, however thick the hunska runs in her veins. It’s very disappointing. This matter could make all kinds of trouble for us – not the least of it in the emperor’s own court—’
