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“Adoma will provide two shiphearts and her war clans will clear our path to Verity,” Sherzal said, her voice rising above the swell of complaint. “My brother will be faced with two choices, where before he had only one, though he will not admit it.
“The first choice is to have the Scithrowl take the empire under their control, have their heresy in every church of the Ancestor, have our people enslaved, our nobility overthrown. Surely Crucical would ruin the Ark to deny them such a prize, but it would be a hollow victory, one battle in a lost war. This is currently his only choice. The Scithrowl cannot be held.
“The second choice is to accept me as the new emperor, maintaining the Lansis dynasty. To take the offer of Adoma’s shiphearts and by adding them to our own to gain dominion over the moon itself.
“Adoma will, through the sigil-work of her mages, retain the ability to destroy her two shiphearts from her own throne and in doing so destroy the Ark. This is her assurance of our good faith. But we will control the moon, and in exchange for its use in preserving Scithrowl and in furthering Adoma’s interests to the east, she will withdraw her forces.
“Our borders will be secured, our future ensured for generations to come, our honour restored. We will let the ice crush Durn and the moon will burn their ports to ash. And you, my friends, by joining your forces to my advance, will ensure that the flower of the empire survives this crisis and that your position as prime among the Sis is assured, favoured by my throne.”
The shouts of protest continued but began to ebb, many lords falling to intense discussion with their neighbours. Glass knew enough of folk to see that the tide had turned and all that remained was for Sherzal’s guests to realize it themselves.
“The only casualties that are unavoidable stand before us.” Sherzal recaptured the lords’ attention. “The Inquisition will never accept a Scithrowl alliance. I will need to make an end of the abbess and her organization.” She waved a hand at the judges. “Can any among you claim that the Inquisition is a thing of worth, an asset that should not be sacrificed in the cause of greater good?”
And Abbess Glass, her tongue possessed by a poison that compelled the truth, had to answer. “No.”
* * *
• • •
GLASS FOUND HER voice again as Sherzal’s guards advanced on the judges’ bench.
“The Inquisition may be a price worth paying, Sherzal, but your assassin killed an innocent child when stealing from the Church of the Ancestor. A child’s life was too high a cost. As are all the lives that will be spent when the Scithrowl hordes sweep along the roads to Verity. The battle-queen may withdraw, she may not, but even if the hordes do return to the east it will be like a storm-tide retreating, leaving devastation.” Glass spoke nothing but the truth and she spoke it with the confidence of her office, exerting a magic all of her own, one that stilled the chatter of the lords and even made Sherzal’s soldiers pause in their advance on Melkir. “All this blood spilled for your ambition, Sherzal! If this myth of shiphearts and wielding the moon were true then Crucical himself could strike such a bargain with Adoma. If you shared your knowledge with him no Scithrowl would have reason to cross the Grampains. If it were true.”
“Well, take her!” Sherzal urged her guards on.
Melkir levelled his sword but Safira moved faster than the eye, stepping around the blade and locking her right leg behind his left to send him clattering to the floor.
Glass spoke on, even as the guards closed around her. “And all the peoples of the Corridor are children of the Ancestor, whether they know it or not, whatever borders enclose them. Crucical would not use the moon as a weapon of aggression. It is our gift from those far deeper in the Ancestor’s great tree than we. The emperor could seek ways to better employ the moon’s blessing, and to deter others from attack. The empire could become the jewel on Abeth’s belt, not a dark and murderous master, condemning whole nations to icy ruin.”
Two guards took Glass’s arms, seeming unsure what to do next while she kept on addressing their mistress.
“Your plan has much in it that is good, Sherzal. What it does not require is you. No part of the greater good requires you to sit as emperor!”
“Silence the woman!” Sherzal shouted. “Or must I do it my—”
The sound that overwhelmed all others was an enormous and physical thing, as if a giant’s hammer had struck the palace—not against the outer walls but here within the chamber. Chairs and their occupants flew in all directions, centred on the area where the Sis families had been seated. Cracks, wide enough to receive fingers, even whole hands, ran out across the marbled floor, a cloud of powdered stone rising from the impact site.
Motion behind and above the scene caught Glass’s eye, a large figure driving smaller ones from behind a screen in the musicians’ gallery. Darla! Her opponents were archers, crossbows useless at such range. Their weapons must have been trained on the one guest that Sherzal knew had the potential to be her greatest physical threat. Slipping away during the trial to deal with Ara’s watchers would have been an impressive feat for someone closer to seven foot tall than to six, but Darla had managed to get herself escorted out, saving the need for subterfuge.
The dust began to settle. In its midst a figure on one knee, one hand to the floor. A woman in the tatters of a dress. The fabric, indeed the whole of her form, shuddering, shifting . . . warping . . . as she struggled to contain her power.
Arabella Jotsis! The archers must have been instructed to shoot her at any sign that she had begun to walk the Path. The last of their number fell, wailing, from the gallery.
And Ara stood, the glow around her limbs and torso almost too bright to look upon.
42
THE DETONATION UP in the main levels of the palace drew all the guards from their subterranean barracks, leaving just three of the four who had been on duty in the corridor.
“If they get to the sigil-work on the walls we’re done for,” Clera said. “I don’t know what it does, but Sherzal puts enough faith in it not to have a gate between her and the Noi-Guin.”
“And we can be pretty sure there are sigils there that will strip away shadow-work,” Nona said.
“So, you go up there and incapacitate them, Clera.” Kettle waved her on. “They’ll let you get close, then . . .”
“I’m not sure I could stop them all in time.” Clera frowned.
“Jab a pin varnished with lock-up into them,” Nona said, remembering a certain cave and unable to keep a trace of bitterness from her voice.
“They’re dosed with standard venoms every month to keep their tolerance high. Sherzal knows the Noi-Guin’s tricks. Besides, I don’t want them to know it was me.”
Nona unwrapped the chain around her waist. She’d fixed it there as a belt for the remains of her prison smock, and to provide a place to thrust the spare blades picked up after the battle at the cell-block. She set down her weapons and gave the chain to Kettle. Next she crossed her arms, back to back, the knuckles of one hand resting against the inside of the elbow of the other. “Bind me.”
Kettle started to wrap both limbs together, turn after turn of the chain. “I used this ploy with Zole at the entrance to the Tetragode. I don’t think it will work here though . . . I look like a Lightless.”
