Grayson gave the slightest nod of his head and came to standbesideLyra instead of in front of her.
When Nora reached them, she said. “Four parts. Three Ascendants.…” Nora took her time with the next part. “And the Kyrie.”
Kyrie.To Lyra’s ears, the word sounded like English but also not.
“Checks and balances,” Nora continued. “And someone must train each new Watcher in the art of death so that she might someday be prepared to take up the mantle of the Hand.”
“To kill,” Lyra said flatly, and then she thought about the greenhouse and all those exotic flowers.“Poison.”
“Not just poison,” Nora replied. “The nameKyrieis derived fromthe wordValkyrie. Long ago, during the nascent years of the Blade, the women of the family fashioned themselves as warriors. Lethal fighters, trained from birth.”
“An obvious choice, then,” Grayson said, “to train the Watchers of the Gilded Blade to become something much worse.”
The Watcher watches, Lyra thought dully.The Hand acts.
“Someone must train the Watchers,” Nora agreed, reiterating what she’d said before, but this time, she didn’t stop there. “And someone must be in the position to judge the Judge.”
Checks and balances, Lyra thought. Something about those words had the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up.
Gigi raised her hand. “Nora, out in the bayou, you said something about true believers.”
“True believers in what?” Jameson asked, his voice low and harsh.
Nora didn’t so much as look at Jameson. She addressed her reply to Grayson and only to Grayson in a way that made Lyra think that there could have been something between them once—not that therehad beenbut that therecould have been, if things had unfolded differently.
Maybethathad been Alice’s plan, when she’d sent Nora to Grayson.
“Across the centuries,” Nora told Grayson, “there have been iterations of the Blade that favored the art of the cascade and iterations that, like the Kyrie, favored a more direct approach.”
Lyra looked to Alice’s poem, to the last stanza.
Some kings truly need to fall
While others just need guided.
Our gloved hands,
The Gilded Blade,
And none of us divided.
Except Nora was indicating that there was very much a divide.
“It all depends,” Nora continued, “on the Woman in White.”
The Judge.
“What does it mean,” Grayson demanded, “that the Kyrie sits in judgment of the Judge?”
Nora tilted her head very slightly to one side. “Isn’t it odd that Iwantto tell you? But that’s the art of the cascade, I suppose. A nudge here, a nudge there, a ball of snow gathering mass as it rolls down a hill, and suddenly, years later, I’m telling a boy I kissed exactly once all about the fact that the Woman in White is the only one who knows how to access the web. She’s the only one who knows which families are in the Blade, who knows the current holder and heir of each and every family line. And thus, the Judge’s power is nearly absolute. All that influence, all those strings to pull, and she’s the lone conduit. If the Watcher or Hand even try to follow her or usurp her or circumvent that ancient law, they might well findthemselvesjudged.”
Lyra thought about Edgar Aquila Reyes, about the fact that he’d killed himself rather than face the judgment of the Gilded Blade.
“But the Judge’s powerisn’tabsolute,” Grayson noted. Nora had used the wordnearly.
“There is a reason Ascendants wear cloaks and veils when they make contact with anyone. There is a reason Candidates are made to choose new names for the Crucible. The identities of the Ascendants—their true identities, the lives they once lived—are not intended to be known by anyone but the other Ascendants and the head and heir to the Kyrie line. Should the Woman in White’s ability to render judgment be deemedcompromised, it is the responsibility of the Kyrie line to address the source of the issue.”
“Can’t kill the Judge.” Nash Hawthorne hadn’t said a word since Gigi had arrived, but he made those four count. “Not if she’s the lone conduit to the web.”
